The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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"O Barney, I've seen the President!"
"Seen the President! No? Oh! Why could not I have gone in with you? It's
always my luck."
"No: it was my luck. But take heart. He will come out pretty soon, and
we'll loaf about here. Perhaps we can see him as he goes back to the
White House yonder."
But though they waited far into the afternoon, forgetting their dinner
in the impulse of homage, they did not catch sight of the well-known
figure, for the President's way to the Secretary's room was a private
one, and when he went away the boys of course could not see him. But
Jack's good fortune was the talk of the regiment for many a day, and for
months when the fellows of the Caribee got leave they lingered
expectantly about the modest headquarters, hoping that a missing orderly
might bring them Jack Sprague's proud distinction of seeing the
President face to face. On the grand review, a few days later, Jack and
his crony were reminded of the encounter at headquarters, for the man
who had given the envelope to carry to the war office was riding a
splendid horse next to the President. Two stars glittered on his
shoulder now, and as he answered the cheers that saluted the group, the
young men saw that it was General McDowell, the commander of the forces.
The President rode along the lines, with a kindly wistfulness in the
honest eyes that studied with no superficial glance the long line of
shouting soldiery. He was not an imposing figure in the sense of
cavalier bravery, but no man that watched as he moved in the glittering
group, conspicuous by his somber black and high hat, ever forgot the
melancholy, rapt regard he gave the ranks, as at an easy canter he
passed the fronts of the squares or sat solemnly at the march past that
concluded the review.
CHAPTER VII.
THE STEP THAT COSTS.
What between the doings of the camp and the daily visit to Washington,
"soldiering" grew into an enchanting existence for the young warriors of
the Caribee. Their quarters were on the high plateaus north and west of
the city--which were in those days shaded slopes, that made suburban
Washington a vale of Tempe. In the streets they saw bedizened officers,
from commanders of armies down to presidential orderlies. In the Senate
and House they heard the voices of men afterward potent in
public councils.
What an exuberant, vagrant life it was! The blood warms and the nerves
tingle after the tensions and heats of a quarter of a century as those
days of sublime vagabondage come back. The melodious morning calls that
waked the sleepy, lusty young bodies; the echoing bugle and the abrupt
drum! And then the roll-call, in the misty morning when the sun, blear
and very red, rose as if blushing, or apoplectic after the night's
carouse! It was an army of poets--of Homers--that began the never
monotonous routine of these memorable days, for the incense of national
sympathy came faint but intoxicating to the soldier's nostrils in the
visits of great statesmen, the picnics of civilians, the copious
descriptive letters of correspondents and the daily scrawls from
far-away valleys, where fond eyes watched the sun rise, noted the stars,
to mark the special duties their darlings were doing in the watches of
the night. And then the mad music of cheers when the news came that the
young McClellan in West Virginia had scattered the adventurous columns
of Lee, capturing guns, men, and arms, and forever saving the great
Kanawha country to the Union! And in Kentucky the rebels had been
outmanoeuvred; while in Missouri the glorious Lyon and the crafty Blair
had, one in the Cabinet, the other in the camp, routed the secret,
black, and Janus-like rabble of treason and anarchy.
To feel that he was part of all this; that, at rest in the iron ring
girdling the capital, he was might in leash; that to-morrow he would be
vengeance let loose--this was the sustaining, exulting thought that made
the volunteer the best of soldiers. His heart was all in the glorious
ardor for action. Night and morning he looked proudly at the sacred
ensign waving lightly in the summer breeze, and he remembered that the
eyes of Washington had rested on the same standard at Valley Forge; that
the sullen battalions of Cornwallis had saluted it at Yorktown.
It was a beautiful ardor that filled the young hosts that waited in
leash on the green hills of the Potomac those months of turmoil, when
Scott and McDowell were straining the crude machinery of war to get
ready for the vital lunge. Jack and his Acredale squad, as the college
fellows were called, lived in a perpetual dream, from which the hard
realities of drill, now six hours a day, could not waken them. In days
of release they scoured the Maryland hills, secretly hoping that an
adventurous rebel picket might appear and give them occasion to return
to camp decked with preluding laurels. Mile after mile of the charming
woodland country they scoured, their hearts beating at the appearance of
any animate thing that for a brief, intoxicating moment they could
conjure into a rebel advance post. But, beyond wan and reticent yokels,
engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never
encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause.
Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in
Company K with effusive outbreaks by their less restive comrades.
As July wore on, the signs of movement grew. Regiments were moved away
mysteriously, and soon the Caribees were almost alone on Meridian Hill.
Jack was filled with dire fears that the commanding officer, having
discovered the incompetency of Oswald, feared to take the Caribees to
the front. Something of the rumor spread through the regiment, and if,
as reputed, "Old Sauerkraut" (this was the name he got behind his back)
had spies in all the companies, the adage about listeners was abundantly
confirmed. In the secrecy of Jack's tent, however, the subject was
freely discussed. Nick Marsh, the poet of the class, as became the
mystic tendencies of his tribe, was for poisoning the detested
Pomeranian--Oswald was a compatriot of Bismarck, often boasting, as the
then slowly emerging statesman became more widely known, that he lived
in his near neighborhood. Marsh's suggestion fell upon fruitful
perceptions. Bernard Moore--Barney, for short--was to be a physician,
and had already passed an apprenticeship in a pharmacy, coincident with
his college term in Jack's class.
"By the powers of mud and blood, Nick, dear, I have it!"
"Have what, Barney, me b'y?" Nick asked, mimicking Barney's quaintly
displaced vowels.
"Why, the way to get rid of Old Schnapps and Blitzen--more power to
me!"
"All the power you want, if you'll only do that; and your voice will be
as sweet as 'the harp that once in Tara's halls--'"
"Never moind the harp--Sassenach--here's what we can do. Tim Hussey is
Oswald's orderly; he and I are good friends. I know a preparation that
will turn the sauerkraut and sausages, that Oswald eats so much of, into
degluted fire and brimstone, warranted to keep him on the broad of his
back for ten days or a fortnight. Will ye all swear secrecy?"
"We will! We will!"
"On what?"
"On the double crown on your head," Jack answered, solemnly, "which you
have often told us was considered a sign that an angel had touched
you--I'm sure nothing could be more solemn than that. It isn't every
fellow that can get an angel to touch the top of his head."
"No; most fellows can consider themselves lucky if an angel touches
their lips--or heart," Barney cried, naively.
"Well, never mind that sort of angel now, Barney," Nick said, pettishly;
"I notice that you always bring up with something about the girls, no
matter what the subject we set off on. It's the jalap--isn't that what
it's called?--we want to hear about."
"There isn't enough poetry or sentiment in the two o' ye to fill a
wind-blown buttercup. No wonder ye don't care to talk of the
gurls--they'll have none of ye."
"We'll be satisfied if they'll have you, Barney. I'm sure that's
magnanimous. But if your jalap takes as much time in working Old
Schnapps as you take in explaining it, the war will be over, and we
shall have seen none of it."
"It's too great a conception to be hastily set forth. Give me time. I'll
lay a guinea that Oswald goes to the hospital before this day week. Let
us see. This is the 14th; before the 20th--" and Barney gave the barrel
of his gun, near him, a furtive wipe with his coat-sleeve.
"Barney, if you'll do that, I'll gather every four-leaved clover between
here and Richmond to give you; and, what's more, if I die I'll leave you
my bones to operate."
"Ah, Nick, dear, I'd rather have your little finger living than all the
possessions of your father's bank. If you were dead--" And honest Barney
seized the poet's hand sentimentally.
"Come, come, fellows, what sort of soldiering do you call this? You
remind me of two school-girls," Jack remonstrated, as in duty bound to
keep up the warrior spirit.
"Yer acquaintances among females being chiefly of the silly sort, it's
no wonder we remind you of the only things you can look back on without
blushing," Barney retorted; and a neighbor poking his head in the door
to learn the cause of the hilarity, the conspirators sallied out for a
jaunt until parade-time. Now, what means Barney employed, or whether he
had any handiwork in what befell, it does not fall to me to say, but
this is what happened: A market hawker came into camp the next morning
and went straight to the big marquee tent where Colonel Oswald stood, in
all the bravery of a new broadcloth uniform with spreading eagles on the
shoulders. The savory fumes of hot sauerkraut aroused the warrior from
his reveries, and he asked, in vociferous delight:
_"Was haben sie? Kohlen, nicht wahr--sauerkraut--das is aber schon?"_
"Yes, mein golonel, I hof cabbage und sauerkraut und"--looking about
circumspectly--"_etwas schnapps aus Antwerpen gebracht?"_
The "golonel's" eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go
to the rear of the marquee. Passing through from the front, he met him
at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting
three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to
Hussey to store in the larder. There had been a good deal of uneasiness
in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal
epidemics. When, therefore, the evening after the colonel's purchase the
regimental surgeon was summoned in alarm, it was instantly believed in
the regiment that "Old Sauerkraut" was stricken with cholera. He at
first suffered hideous pains in the stomachic regions. This was followed
by a raging thirst, and, unknown to the physician, the three bottles of
schnapps were quite emptied. On the fourth day the poor man, very
woe-begone, but now suffering no pain, was carried to the hospital, and
the next day, as the campaign was about to begin, he was sent North, to
leave room near the field for those who should be wounded in the coming
engagement.
Company K was drilling on the wide plateau between the camp and the
highway when the ambulance bearing the afflicted officer came slowly
over the road worn through the greensward. Hussey sat solemnly on the
seat with the driver, and as the vehicle reached the company, standing
at rest, Barney Moore in the rear rank spoke up:
"Tim, is the poor colonel no better?"
"Divil a betther; it's worse he's intirely. God be good till 'im!"
Neither Jack nor Nick Marsh dared trust himself to meet the other's eyes
as the helpless chief disappeared down the hillside, while Barney
entered into an exhaustive treatise on the symptoms of cholera and the
liability of the most robust to meet sudden disaster in this malarious
upland, circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on
every hand. But when, an hour later, Company K's whole street was
aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found
helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion
to settle their collapsed nerves!
"Well, haven't I won the guinea, now? It cost me just twice that. If
ye's have a spark of honor ye'll pay your just dues, so ye will," Barney
said, in the evening, returning from parade, where Lieutenant-Colonel
Grandison officiated as commander, to the unconcealed delight of all but
the Oswald parasites among the officers.
"Don't say a word, Barney--to whom the medicos of mythology and all the
wizards of antique story are clowns and mountebanks--you shall have the
guinea or its equivalent."
"Twenty-one shillings gold, bear in mind. Yer father's a banker, ye
ought to know that!"
"I do. You shall have the twenty-one shillings in the shinplasters of
the republic."
The colonel had been routed none too soon. The very next morning, when
the Caribees "fell in" for roll-call, the orderly received a paper from
the commander's orderly which read, "Tents to be struck at twelve
o'clock and the men ready to march, with ten days' rations."
At last! All the future, glowing with heroism, exciting with the march,
the attack, the battle--ah! what after? With something of joy and regret
the comely tents, that had given them home and harbor, were taken down,
folded in precise line, and carried away for storage--for in the field
the ranks were to bivouac in the open air. Such gayety; such jokes; such
bravado; and augury of the to be! And the rumors! Telephones, had they
been invented; stenographers, had they been present in legion, could not
have kept track of the momentous tales that were instantly bruited
about. General Scott was going to lead the army in person. His charger
had been seen before the headquarters. The rebels were going to be
swooped up by another such famous dash as the flank march from Vera Cruz
to the plateau of Mexico! Then came a numbing fear that Beauregard's
bragging host had fled, and that the movement would turn out a tedious
stern chase to Richmond. In the agony of all this Jack, returning from a
"detail" to the quartermaster's tent, heard his name shouted where his
tent had been. He hurried to the spot and Nick saluted him with
the cry--
"Here, Jack, are two recruits who declare they must enter Company K."
His gun was on his arm and his knapsack on his back, but only the
realization that a score of eyes were upon him saved Jack from dropping
limply on the ground, as, looking in the group, he saw Dick Perley and
Tom Twigg grinning ingratiatingly at him.
"Where--how in the name of all that's sacred did you get here?" he
gasped.
"Why, we enlisted for drummers in the Caribees, but the recruiting
officer told us as we were eighteen we could carry muskets if we wanted
to. We do want to, and we're going to come into Company K."
They looked him confidently in the face as Dick repeated this evidently
long-practiced explanation. It would not do to take them to task before
the company. Jack waited until the rest were scattered, and then,
leading the boys aside, said, sternly:
"Don't you know you can be put in prison for this? You have run away
from your parents and guardians. No one had a lawful right to enlist
you. I shall send for the provost marshal and have you put in prison
until your parents can come and get your enlistment annulled."
Appalled by Jack's stern manner as much as by his words, the two lads
began to whimper and expostulate tearfully. They had trusted to his
ancient friendship. They could have gone into any other regiment, but
they had enlisted to be with him. Whatever happened, they were soldiers,
and, if Tom Twigg wasn't eighteen until September, it was perfectly
lawful for him to enlist as a drummer. Perley was eighteen in April
last, and he was a soldier in spite of all that Jack could do. Jack was
deeply perplexed. What could be done? If he attempted to put the
machinery of reclamation in order, the boys would be subjected to all
sorts of vicissitudes, prisons, everything distressing and demoralizing
to tender youth.
"Do they know at home what you have done?" Jack asked, doubtingly.
"Yes," Dick said, noting with boyish quickness the indecision in Jack's
troubled face. "I sent a letter to Aunt Pliny, from New York, telling
her we were soldiers, and that we were happy and well."
"You impudent young scamp--to write that to your best friend! Don't you
know it will kill her?"
Dick had no answer for this, and looked perplexedly at Tom, who was lost
in admiration of a neighboring group engaged in athletic exercises. He
felt rather than heard the question put by the Mentor, and observing
Dick's discomfiture, stammered:
"It didn't kill your mother when you went for a soldier, I guess."
The astute young rascal had hit upon the weak place, and Jack stood in
anxious doubt wondering what to do. An aide that he recognized from
division headquarters rode past at the moment and Jack turned to watch
him. He leaped from his horse at the colonel's tent. Jack again looked
at the boys. They were lost in delight at the scene and oblivious of the
debate going on in their guardian's mind.
"Stay here till I come back," he said, authoritatively, and strode off
to Grandison's tent. As he reached it the major, McGoyle, was entering,
and Jack waited until that officer should come out. He came presently,
and Colonel Grandison with him. Jack saluted, and stated his dilemma to
the commander, who listened with amused interest.
"I don't see that anything can be done now, Jack. I'm just about leaving
the regiment. I have been assigned to General Tyler's staff during the
campaign. McGoyle takes command of the regiment. He will need orderlies,
and the boys can serve with him until we can get time to look into the
business. I will settle the matter with him, and if you will write a
telegram to the lad's family I will have it sent as I go to
headquarters."
Jack's relief and gratitude were best seen in the brightening eye and
the more buoyant movement that succeeded the heaviness and agitation of
his first impression. The boys' coming would weigh upon him every minute
until he was in some sort relieved of even passive complicity. He would
feel that the kind-hearted "Pearls," as the aunts were often called,
would look upon him as having led the truants into the army. But
Grandison's interposition had shifted from him a weighty anxiety. The
boys would not be left friendless and irresponsible in the turbulent
streets of Washington. Nor would they, as orderlies, be in continuous or
inextricable danger in battle--for whereas the soldier in the line must
keep in ranks even when not in actual battle, with the enemy's missiles
as destructive as in the charge or combat, the orderlies may take
advantage of the inequalities of ground and natural objects. Jack
explained something of this to the young Marlboroughs, and was fairly
irritated at the crest-fallen look that came into their eager, shining
faces when they comprehended that they were not to be with their hero.
"But you couldn't be in the company in any event. You look more like
rebels than soldiers, with your gray jackets and trousers"--for the boys
still wore their Acredale uniform, an imitation of the West Point
cadet's costume. "We shall be on the march in a few minutes, and there
is only one of two things to be done. Remain here in the 'unassigned'
camp, where you may be transferred into any regiment in the service that
needs recruits; or go, as Colonel Grandison has very kindly consented to
have you, as orderlies or clerks."
The very possibility of being sent into some unknown regiment was a
terror so great that the other alternative became less odious to the
boys, and they trotted after Jack, as he stalked moody and distracted to
Major Mike McGoyle's tent, now the only habitable spot left where a few
hours before a symmetrical little city had stood.
"And so ye want to be solgers, me foine b'yes? Well, well, 'tis litter
for yer mothers' knees ye are, with yer rosy cheeks and curling locks.
It's a poor place here for yer bright oies and soft hands, me lads; but
I'm not the wan to throw the dish after th' milk when it's spilt!"
He stroked the bared heads of the blushing lads, and, turning to their
unhappy sponsor, he added with official brevity: "I will put Twiggs's
son at me papers in the adjutant's office. Young Pearley can remain with
your company until I make out a detail for him."
It was impossible for Jack to sustain the _role_ of frowning displeasure
as Dick skipped back with him to the company. He remembered his own
delight three months before, even with the haunting thoughts of his
mother's reproaches to dampen his ardor, and he was soon dazzling the
neophyte with the wonders that were just about to begin.
It was the afternoon of the 16th of July, and the hillsides, which the
day before were covered with tents as far as the eye could see on every
hand, were now blue with masses of men, while other masses had been
passing on the red highways since early morning, taking the direction of
the Potomac bridges.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.
It has always seemed to me that the life, the routine, the many small
haps in the daily function of a soldier, which in sum made up to him all
that there was in the _devoir_ of death, ought to be read with interest
by the millions whose kin were part of the civil war, as well as by
those who knew of it only as we know Napoleon's wars or Washington's.
For my part, I would find a livelier pleasure in the diary of a common
soldier, in any of the great wars, than I do in the confusing pamphlets,
bound in volumes called history. I like to read of war as our Uncle Toby
related it. I like to know what two observing eyes saw and the feelings
that sometimes made the timidest heroes--sometimes cravens.
For a month--yes, months--the burden of the press, the prayers of the
North, had been, "On to Richmond!" Jack, through Colonel Grandison, knew
that General McDowell and the commander-in-chief, the venerable soldier
Scott, had pleaded and protested against a move until the new levies
under the three-months' call could be drilled and disciplined. But on
the Fourth of July Congress had assembled, and the raw statesmen--with
an eye to future elections--took up the public clamor. They gave the
Cabinet, the President, no peace until General Scott and McDowell had
given way and promised the pending movement.
"Our soldiers are so green that I shall move with fear," McDowell said
to the President.
"Well, they" (meaning the rebels) "are green too, and one greenness will
offset the other," Lincoln responded with kindly malice. It was useless
to argue further; useless to point out that the rebels were not so
"green," for the young men of the semi-aristocratic society of the South
were trained to arms, whereas it was a mark of lawlessness and vulgarity
to carry arms in the Puritan ranks of the North. Something of the
unreadiness of the army, every reflecting soldier in the ranks
comprehended, when he saw within the precincts of his own brigades the
hap hazard conduct of the quartermaster's and staff departments. Some
regiments had raw flour dealt them for rations and no bake-ovens to turn
it into bread; some regiments had abundance of bread, but no coffee or
meat rations. As to vegetables--beans, or anything of the sort--if the
pockets of the soldiers had not been well supplied from home, the army
that set out for Manassas would have been eaten with scurvy and the skin
diseases that come from unseasoned food.
Now, at the very moment the legions were stripped for the march, many of
them were without proper ammunition. Various arms were in use, and the
same cartridge did not lit them all. Eager groups could be seen all
through the brigades filing down the leaden end of the cartridge to make
their weapons effective, until a proper supply could be obtained. This
was promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's
supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish
unrest for the forward movement, there was a good deal of sober
foreboding among the men, who held to the American right to criticise as
the Briton maintains his right to grumble. For the soldier in camp or on
the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip, and no problem in war or
statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution. Of
the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of
July there were, at a low estimate, ten thousand who believed themselves
as fitted to command as the chieftains who led them.
By two o'clock the Caribees were in the line that had been passing
city-ward since daylight. The sun had baked the sticky clay into
brick-like hardness, and the hours of trampling, the tread of heavy
teams, and the still heavier artillery, had filled the air with an
opaque atmosphere of reddish powder, through which the masses passed in
almost spectral vagueness. The city crowds, usually alert, when great
masses of men moved, were discouraged by heat and dust, and the streets
were quite given over to the military. Eager as Jack and his friends
were to note the impression the march made upon the civilians, most of
whom were thought to be secretly in sympathy with the rebellion, it was
impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers. Pennsylvania Avenue,
when they reached it, was a billowy channel of impalpable powder. But at
the Long Bridge the breeze from the wide channel of the river cleared
the clouds of dust, and the men, catching glimpses of each other, broke
into jocose banter. On the bridge they looked eagerly down the river,
where the low roofs of Alexandria were visible, and upward on the
Virginia shore where the gleaming walls of Arlington recalled to Jack
far different times and scenes.