Jim said I had a great head, and he consented, and we left our saddles and moved on. Jim said that now we had only a bridle and a pair of spurs, we were more like regularly ordained horse-thieves. He said the most successful horse-thief he ever knew in Wisconsin never had anything but a halter as his stock in trade. He would go out with a halter, with a rope on the end, pick up a horse, put the rope in the horse’s mouth, and ride away, and nobody could catch him. I asked Jim if he didn’t feel humiliated, a loyal soldier, to class himself with horse-thieves. He said when he enlisted he made up his mind to do nothing but shoot rebels through the heart or the left lung. It was his idea to be a sharpshooter, and aim at the button on the left breast of the enemy, but when he found that lots of the rebels didn’t have any buttons on their coats and that he might shoot all day at a single rebel and not hit him, and that shooting into them in flocks didn’t seem to diminish the enemy the least bit, he had made up his mind to turn his hand to anything; and if the rebellion could be put down easier by his stealing horses at thirteen dollars a month, he would do it if ordered. He said we were only putting in time, promenading around, and we should get our salary all the same. And so we wandered on, talking the thing over. When we came to a plantation we would walk all around it, and examine the woods and swamps adjacent, because the people of the South had learned that a horse or a mule was not safe anywhere out of the most impenetrable swamp. It was dark when Jim and I decided to camp for the night, and we went into a deserted cotton gin and prepared for a sleep. It was almost dark, and Jim said he had just seen a chicken, near a cabin, fly up in a peach tree to roost, and he was going to have the chicken as soon as it was dark. I laid down on some refuse cotton, and Jim went out after the chicken. I had fallen asleep when Jim returned, and he had the chicken, and a skillet, and a couple of canteens of water. I crawled out of my nest and built a fire, while Jim dressed the chicken, and got the water to boiling, and the chicken was put in. For three hours we boiled the chicken, but each hour made it tougher. I told Jim he might be a success as a horse-thief, but when it come to stealing tender poultry he was a lamentable failure, but he said it was the only hen on the place, and if I didn’t want to eat it I could retire to my couch and he would set up with the hen. I was so hungry, and the smell of the boiling hen was so Savory, that I remained awake, and at about midnight Jim announced that he had succeeded in prying off a piece of the breast, so we speared the hen out of the water, laid it on the frame of a grindstone in the gin-house, and sat down to the festive board. “Will you have the light or the dark meat,” asked Jim, with a politeness that would have done credit to a dancing-master. I told, him I preferred the dark meat, so he took hold of one leg and I the other, and we pulled the hen apart. The hen seemed to be copper-rivetted, for when I got a chunk of it down, and it chinked up a vacant place in the stomach, it did seem as though there was nothing like hen to save life. We eat sparingly that night, because we were weak, and the hen was strong, and we laid down and slept peacefully, and awoke in the morning hungry. When the hen became cold, in the morning it was tough. “Will you have some of the cold chicken,” said Jim, and I told him I would try a little. It was better than India rubber, and we made a breakfast and started on. It was Sunday. As we came out to the main road, we saw people dressed up, that is, with clean shirts. As ten o clock approached we could see colored people and white, wending their way to a little church in the pine woods. We kept out of sight, and waited, several parties passed us on horseback, some in carriages, and many on foot. Presently three soldiers of our scattered party came along carrying saddles, and we called them into the woods, where we were. I unfolded to them my scheme, which was to surround that church, hold the worshippers as prisoners inside, while we stole the horses that would be hitched to the fence. Jim kicked on it. He said he had rather walk than to interfere with people who were enjoying their religion. He said he was never very pious himself, but his parents were, and he should always hate himself if he helped to raid that church. The other fellows were for going for the horses. Pretty soon four more of our boys came along, and we called them in. They had got on to the church services, and had their eyes on the horses. That made nine of us, and as we were armed, we believed we could capture those old men and women and negroes, and get the horses.
Being a brevet officer I was placed in command of the party, and a plan was agreed upon. We were to scatter and surround the church, and ask the people outside to step inside, and then lock the door, and place a guard on three sides of the little old church where there were windows, but not to fire a gun unless attacked, and not to speak disrespectfully to any person. If there was any argument with anybody, I was to do the talking. We decided to take about fifteen horses, if there were that number there, because we would be sure to find some of our scattered boys dismounted before we got far toward Montgomery, and it was a good idea to take horses when we had a chance. Well, it was a job I did not like, but what was a fellow to do. We were sixty miles from headquarters, on foot and out of meat. I had never been in a church row before. It seemed as though religious worshippers ought to be exempt from war, with its wide desolation. But business was business. We surrounded the church, walking up quietly from different directions, and as we closed up on the sacred edifice half a dozen men, white and colored, were standing in front, and two men were talking over a horse trade. The minister was expounding the gospel, talking loud, and all else was still. We invited the outsiders to go in, which they did with some reluctance, the door was fastened on the outside, guards were placed, and the preaching stopped. The minister had been informed that the yankees had captured the place. There were only two sides of the church with windows, so two guards were sufficient, and the rest of us went to work skinning the harnesses off the horses. A window was raised and an old man stuck his head out and said, as one of the boys was mounting an old mare belonging to him, “I forbid you touching that mare.” A carbine was pointed at the window, and the old man drew in his head, and the window was slammed down.
We had got sixteen pretty good horses, when a window on the other side opened, and the minister’s head was put out, and he said, “In the name of the church I command you to desist.” He looked so fierce that Jim, who was on guard on that side, and who had objected to the scheme on account of its being a church, cocked his carbine and pointed it at the minister and said, “gol darn you, dry up!” He dried up, the window closed and except for the heads at the windows, and faces looking very mad, all was quit. When we had got the horses strung out, and the men were mounted, I looked in a carriage, accidentally, and saw a basket, covered over with a paper. The paper was a religious one, published at Savannah, and being a newspaper man, I looked at the leading editorial, which was headed, “The Lord will provide.” I never took much stock in regular stereotyped editorials, but when I turned my eye from the editorial to the basket, I realized than an editorial in a religious newspaper, was liable to contain much truth, for the basket was filled with as fine a lunch as a man ever saw. It seemed that the people came quite a long distance to church, and brought their dinner, remaining to the afternoon services. O, but I was hungry. I looked in several other carriages, and found baskets in each. Every man in my party was as hungry as a she wolf, and I knew they would not leave a mouthful if they once got to going on the lunches, and as it wasn’t the policy of my government to take the bread from the mouths of Sunday-school children, I decided to divide the lunches. So I appointed Jim and an Irishman to help me, and we opened all the baskets and took half. Jim came to one basket with two loaves of bread and two bottles of wine, and he stopped.
He said, “Pard, that lay-out in the big basket, with the silver pitcher, is for the communion. I’m a bold buccaneer of the Spanish main, but I’ll be cussed if I touch that.”
The Irishman said no power on earth could get him to touch it, and he crossed himself reverently, and we left the communion lay-out, and passed the half we had taken from the baskets around among the boys, and they eat as
though a special providence had provided them with appetites and means of satisfying them. After enjoying the meal the boys said we ought to return thanks for the good things the pious people had provided for us, so I went to the door of the church, opened it, and faced the congregation. There were old and young, and some of them looked mad, and I didn’t blame them. In a few well chosen remarks I addressed the minister, telling him I regretted the circumstances, but it was necessary to do what we had done. We had tried to do it as pleasantly as possible, but no doubt it seemed hard to them. I said we had got to go to Montgomery, and that if any of them who had lost their horses, would come there within a few days, I had no doubt the proper authorities would return them their horses, but that they must stand the loss of a half of their lunch, as we had divided it up as square as we knew how. One young Confederate soldier, with an empty sleeve, who had come to church with his mother, and who could, no doubt, realize the situation better than the rest, said, “That is all right, Mr. Yankee. I would do the same thing, under the circumstances, if I was in your country, horseless and hungry.” There were some murmurs of dissatisfaction, some smiled at the situation, and we mounted and rode away. Before we were out of sight the whole congregation was out of the church, under the pine trees, taking an account of stock, or lost stock, and no doubt saying hard things of the Yankees. We traveled all day and nearly all night, picked up some of our dismounted men, and arrived in Montgomery the next day before noon. In a few days my one-armed confederate soldier, who was home from the army in Virginia, having been discharged for disability, came to Montgomery with the people who had lost their horses at the church, and I had the satisfaction of seeing many of them either receive their animals back, or vouchers from the quartermaster, by which they got pay from the government for the animals. And I entertained the one-armed confederate for two days, and we became great friends. Two years ago I met him in Georgia, grown gray, and found him connected with a Georgia railroad, and we had a great laugh over my capture of the congregation.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Spotted Horse—His Shameful Behaviour at a Funeral—I was Tempted to Have My Horse Shot—But I Traded Him to the Chaplain.
It seemed to me that my luck was the worst of any man’s in the army, and I was constantly getting into situations that caused, my conduct to be talked about. When we raided the church, mentioned last week, for horses, I saw a nice white horse with red spots on him, with a saddle, and being the commander of the squad of horse-thieves, it was no more than right for me to take my choice first, so I chose the spotted horse, and thought I had the showiest horse in the army. The animal was a sort of Arabian, and before I had rode him a mile I was in love with him, then I got to Montgomery a man told me that horse used to belong to a circus that closed up there the first year of the war, and was sold to a planter. He said the horse was considered one of the finest ever seen in the South. I felt much elated over my capture, and refused several offers to trade. I thought no horse was too good for me, and for two or three days I did nothing but feed and groom my spotted horse, until his coat shone like satin, and he felt so kitteny that I was almost afraid to get on his back. One morning an order was issued for the regiment to turn out in a body to attend the funeral of a major of one of the regiments, who had died, and I was sent for to carry the brigade colors, a position I had been relieved from after we arrived at Montgomery. The boys all dressed up in their best, and I looked about as slick as any of them, and with my spotted horse, I felt as though I would attract about as much attention as any of the officers in the procession. At the proper time I mounted my horse and rode over to brigade headquarters, not without some difficulty, for my horse saw the crowd on the streets, and evidently thought it was circus day, for he pranced and snorted, and walked with one fore-foot at a time, pawing as you have seen a horse in a circus, trained to walk that way. As I rode up to brigade headquarters and stopped, I must have touched my horse with my foot somewhere, for he got down on his knees, and as I got off, the horse laid down right in front of the colonel’s tent, just as he would in a circus. Even then I did not realize that the confounded brute was a circus trick-horse. He had been taught to lay down, evidently, at a certain signal. And he laid there, looking up at me with his cunning eyes, waiting for me to give the signal for him to get up, but I “did not know the combination,” and he wouldn’t get up for kicking, so I stood there like a fool waiting to see what he would do next. The colonel commanding the brigade, the nice old man who had helped me out of my difficulty with my other horse, on the march when he got on a tantrum, come out of his tent and said he guessed my horse was sick, and he told an orderly to go to the cook house and get a little red pepper and let the horse take a snuff of it. In the meantime my horse got up on his fore feet and sat on his haunches, like a dog, just as circus horses always do, reached up his neck and took a nice white silk handkerchief out of the breast of the colonel’s coat, and held it in his mouth. It was a circus trick, and I knew it, but the colonel said, “Poor horse, he is sick,” and as the orderly come with the red pepper the colonel held it to the horse’s nose. The horse got up, and I mounted, and it must have been about that time that the red pepper began its work, for my horse stood on his fore feet and kicked up, then got on his hind feet and reared up, and snorted, and come down on the colonel’s tent, and crushed it to the-ground, and broke the colonel’s camp cot, got tangled in the guy ropes, and tore everything loose and jumped out in the street, and began to paw and snort. I suppose there was a thousand people around by that time, soldiers and citizens, and I sat there on that horse and wished I was dead, and I guess the colonel did so too.
Finally it was time to move, and the colonel sent out the brigade colors to me, and the start started up street towards the funeral. My horse started with them, and seemed proud of the flag, and I guess he would have gone along all right, only a band down the street began to play a waltz. Do you know, that spotted horse began to waltz around just as though he was in a circus, and I couldn’t keep him straight to save me. The colonel seemed mortified, as we were approaching the place where the services were to be held, and it was necessary to appear solemn. Finally we began to get out of hearing of the band, and my horse stopped waltzing, but he kept up a-dancing, and snorting from the red pepper, until I could have killed him. When the colonel and his staff, including myself and the circus-horse, arrived at the place where the funeral was, another band was playing a very solemn sort of a funeral tune, and for a wonder my horse did not act up at all. He seemed to stand and think, as though trying to make out what kind of music it was. He had evidently never heard such music in the circus and did not know what to do. When the body was brought out of the house, and the procession started down the street for the grave, a drum major, with a staff in his hand, came along by me, and I have always thought my horse took the drum major for the ring master of a circus, for he reared up and walked on his hind feet, and pawed the air, and made a spectacle of me that made me so ashamed that I wanted to be killed. I had the brigade colors in one hand, and had only one hand and two feet to cling on the horse by, and I must have looked like a cat climbing the roof of a whitewashed barn. The drum major got scared at my horse walking towards him in that way, and he lost his bear-skin cap off and fell over it, and rolled in the sand, and the horse, thinking that was a part of the circus turned and kicked at the drum major with both his hind feet, until the poor assistant musician got up and climbed over a fence. The horse got quiet then, only he began to nibble his fore leg, as though trying to untie a handkerchief that the clown had tied on, as they do in the circus. The colonel rode up to me, and with a good deal of indignation, asked me what I meant by causing ourselves to become a spectacle for gods and men on so solemn an occasion. He said he was tempted to have my horse shot, and me placed in the guard-house. I told him I hoped to die if I could help it. I said the horse seemed to be possessed to do some circus business wherever he went. I confided to the colonel that the horse had been a circus-horse be
fore the war, and the music and tinsel, and crowd that he saw, had turned his head and made him think that he was again with his beloved circus, where he had spent the best years of his life. The colonel said I ought to have known better than to bring a circus horse to a funeral. Well, when the drum major got out of sight the horse acted better, and we went along all right, the solemn music of the march to the grave seeming to take the circus out of him. He didn’t do anything out of the way on the march, except to put out his fore-feet stiff, and keep time to the music, like a trained circus horse, which attracted a good deal of attention among the citizens on the street, who seemed to know the horse. Just as we got out at che edge of town he did make one raw break. There was a colored drayman, with his dray backed up towards the procession, and when my circus horse saw the dray, before I could prevent him, he whirled around and put his fore feet upon the hind end of the dray, put one foot on the top of a stake on the dray, and stood there for a minute, like a horse statute, until I jerked him down off of there.
The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack Page 139