At church a week later, on the fourth of September, she heard the news of Atlanta’s fall.
13
August-December, 1864
MOSBY’S men, although the prospects of rich booty attracted to his ranks many who were bent on loot alone, had nevertheless a lively appreciation of the humorous aspects of their adventures. Joe Blackwell’s lonely farm near Piedmont, which came to be known as “Mosby’s Headquarters,” was a jolly place, where men laughed equally at their own mishaps and at the discomfiture of the Yankees. “Chief” Blackwell himself was a robust giant whose slaves, except for feminine house servants, had run away long since to become camp followers of the Yankees. His farm hand was an Irishman named Lot Ryan, who because he lacked teeth with which to bite cartridges was unfit for military service. The Chief’s house was small, and there were only eight chairs at his table; but a second table and a third and even a fourth could always be set if hungry Rangers must be fed.
Blackwell, a voluble braggart who liked to talk of his exploits but never risked his skin on a raid, was a natural butt for jokes. He swaggered in a gray uniform, with enormous spurs and pistols in his belt; and he was always ready on a moment’s notice to harangue an audience on any subject under the sun, from the science of war to the art of making love. At night, strutting to and fro by the dying coals of a bonfire in the farm yard, he would deliver himself of endless dogmatic disquisitions, while his listeners chuckled with quiet mirth or guffawed in louder laughter.
Faunt thought him vulgar and tiresome, and the fact that the Chief amused the others reminded him that though he rode with these men and fought with them, he was not one with them in their careless fellowship. They paid him perfect courtesy, they never questioned his actions or his manner, but they never sought his company. He knew himself set apart by the fact that alone among them he never brought in prisoners. They were as deadly as he in the rushing scurry of combat, the shock of a charge well driven home, the blood-stirring pursuit; but if a man threw up his hands in surrender to them, he was spared. Of Faunt this was not true—and they knew it, and he knew they knew.
Once Colonel Mosby himself spoke of this to Faunt, not chidingly but in quiet curiosity. Mosby had sent the word abroad for a rendezvous at Upperville. On the way, Faunt encountered a regiment of Yankee cavalry. He whirled his horse, and the whole regiment came thundering after him. While he rode, he fitted to one of his pistols the adjustable stock which made it more accurate at long range; and he chose a spot where the road crossed a rise of ground, and wheeled his horse and opened fire. Even at seventy yards, he threw the head of the column into a delaying confusion that let him turn unseen into a byway and thread a path through the woodlands and leap his horse over a rail fence into another road.
But he found himself there confronting two bluecoats as surprised as he. Before they could lift their weapons he lifted his, and remembered as he did so that he had not reloaded the empty cylinder. The mate to that pistol was in his saddle holster, and there was a Colt Navy of somewhat lighter caliber in his belt, under his coat on the left-hand side. But the saddle holster was buckled and the Yankees’ carbines were in their hands, so there was no time to arm himself. Instantly he levelled the useless weapon, made his horse bound toward the Yankees, and called for their surrender.
They were no more than boys, too young for quick decision. They dropped their pieces, and he drove the men ahead of him. But he must be at Upperville that night, and he had twenty miles or more to go; so it was necessary to dispose of these prisoners. He might have shot them out of hand, but Faunt had a sardonic sense of humor. As though absent-mindedly, he pushed his horse between them, leaving one of them on either side and a little behind.
They took the chance he seemed to give them. The boy on the left threw his arms around Faunt’s body to pin him; the other snatched the stocked pistol, and wrenched the loaded weapon from the saddle holster. They fell back in triumph, thinking the tables turned; and Faunt drew the Navy from his belt and shot one and then the other.
As the riders fell, one horse pranced aside and then stood snorting. Faunt pursued and caught the other, and led it back. He dismounted to recover his heavy pistols, and removed the adjustable stock and secured it to the cantle of his saddle; and he was charging the empty chambers in the cylinders when Colonel Mosby and two of his men, drawn by the shots, leaped the fence and pulled up beside him.
“What happened?” Mosby asked, looking at the blue-clad bodies in the road.
“They tried to escape,” Faunt explained. “You’ll find their carbines back down the road.”
Mosby’s companions dismounted to search the dead boys, to take their money and watches, to strip off their boots and to halter their horses for leading. While they went to recover the carbines, Mosby and Faunt rode ahead, and Colonel Mosby remarked: “You seldom take prisoners, Mr. Currain.”
His tone was neither criticism nor question, but Faunt for once was in a mood for speech. “I once lived down on the Northern Neck,” he said quietly. “My wife and baby died there, and I built a chapel over their graves. Yankee patrols have stabled their horses in that chapel, befouled it, trampled those graves.”
Mosby nodded in quiet understanding. “I suppose a personal hatred is as good as any other reason for killing Yankees.”
The other Rangers rode up on their heels. “At least, Colonel,” Faunt remarked, “I don’t fight for a chance to rob the dead.”
“The hope of gain is what holds us together.”
“It’s not your motive,” Faunt retorted. Mosby himself never took a share of any booty. “Nor mine.” He felt a flame of anger, never long subdued. “I’d like to kill every man in blue, from the least one of them up to—” He caught himself. “Up to Abraham Lincoln.” He felt Mosby’s glance, and he said harshly: “No, I don’t take prisoners.” And after a few paces, in a more controlled tone, he added: “The Yankees have ravaged Virginia from the Potomac to the Rappahannock. They’ve destroyed the finest, gentlest way of life men ever succeeded in creating on this earth. Lincoln’s men!” He spat the name, said again: “No, I don’t take prisoners, Colonel.”
Mosby touched his horse. “We’ve far to go,” he remarked; and for an hour, without speech, they held a faster pace. Faunt, hearing his own words over again in his thoughts, remembered another man who sometimes rolled forth execrations against the North; that little actor whom he had first seen long ago in Richmond, after John Brown’s insane attack on Harper’s Ferry. Wilkes Booth’s first generous gift of morphine, which Faunt had gone to fetch through the lines, was not the last; nor was it the last time Faunt did a similar errand. The secret route through Maryland to Washington was familiar to him now. There were men along the way, Thomas Jones whose farm topped the high bluff below Pope’s Creek and who received mail and travellers from the South and sent them safely northward; George Atzerodt who made wagons at Port Tobacco and had a barge that could set two men and their horses across the Potomac; John Surratt who kept the tavern at Surrattsville and was the Federal postmaster there and ran mail for the Confederates as well; Sam Arnold who could always be found at Barnum’s City Hotel in Baltimore or at his brother’s home in Hoffstown; “Peanuts” Burroughs who kept the stage door at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Any one of these men would help him or hide him according to his needs. Booth had vouched for him to them all; and Faunt had spent more than one hour with that little man who never forgot he was an actor, who sought always the center of the stage. Some day, Booth had said more than once, he would come and ride with Mosby’s men; and Faunt had promised him a welcome.
When they slackened their pace, Mosby told Faunt the purpose of this gathering tonight. “General Sheridan has been put in command in the Valley,” he said. “We’ll give him an early lesson.” They found scores of men at the rendezvous before them, and next day three hundred Rangers climbed the easy road toward Snicker’s Gap. When they paused to breathe their horses, Faunt looked back across the wide and lovely sweep of Lo
udoun County, wooded hills and pleasant valleys and the wall of the Bull Run Mountains beyond. From this distance no scars of war were visible. Loudoun and Fauquier were the heart of “Mosby’s Confederacy,” that region behind the Yankee lines where a handful of partisans kept all Grant’s communications in daily, nightly peril. When the men moved on again, Faunt thought that beautiful reach of country was well worth fighting for.
The Gap was unguarded. They descended steeply to the levels and forded the Shenandoah and hid themselves in the low wooded hills east of Berryville. Their scouts presently reported a cavalcade of five or six hundred wagons coming from Harper’s Ferry toward Berryville; and although the train was guarded by almost ten times their own number, the Rangers in a surprise attack scattered the escorting brigade, burned seventy-five wagons, and drove back up the road through Snicker’s Gap two hundred prisoners, six or seven hundred horses and mules, and more than two hundred head of beef cattle.
They rode in a high and laughing exultation, for this had been their greatest deed; but Mosby expected Sheridan’s swift counter attack, so he left Captain Chapman with a company of Rangers to watch the Valley. Faunt stayed with them. Sheridan, since the raid had interrupted his communications, fell back to Halltown; but he burned barns and corn cribs and killed or drove off livestock from the farms, arid Captain Chapman fretted for a chance at him. When a brigade of Custer’s cavalry went into bivouac at dusk one day near Berryville, Faunt undertook to spy out the camp and estimate the chances for a night attack.
Since he must wait for darkness, he returned to a house near Castleman’s Ferry, a quarter-mile north of the spot where the Rangers had crossed on their successful foray. The householder was a gentleman named Province McCormick. He and his wife greeted Faunt hospitably, they gave him supper, they exulted in Mosby’s fine stroke at Sheridan’s wagon train. Mr. McCormick’s daughter and her baby were at home, his son-in-law was here ill and unable to leave his bed.
When night came, Faunt delayed till the enemy cavalry encampment was surely asleep. Then he proceeded cautiously upon his mission, flanking the road that climbed from the river toward Berryville and avoiding the town itself. When he approached the camp, he left his horse and went afoot, secret in the darkness. He discovered a picket watching the road and crept near the man; but a shot would alarm the Yankees, so he summoned the sentry to surrender.
“I’ll be damned if I will!” the Yankee retorted, and fired; but he missed, and Faunt put a bullet precisely through his forehead. Then, since a surprise attack was now impossible, he rode back to the river and crossed and reported his failure.
Next morning they had begun the ascent to the Gap when, looking back, they saw a house burning in the Valley below them. Faunt recognized it as Province McCormick’s home by the Ferry; and he and Captain Chapman rode full pitch that way, the other Rangers hard on their heels. When they came there, the house was already beyond saving; but Faunt saw Mr. McCormick, and his daughter, with her baby in her arms, under the trees by the gate. The sick man, Mr. McCormick’s son-in-law, lay wrapped in blankets on the ground beside them.
Faunt and Captain Chapman reached the gate and pulled up their horses, the Rangers clustering around. Faunt lifted his hat; he said to his commanding officer: “Captain, this is Mrs. Brown. And Mr. McCormick. And Mr. Brown. They gave me supper last night.” He asked Mr. McCormick: “Sir, where is Mrs. McCormick?”
The old gentleman seemed half-dazed. “Why, after you were gone, a messenger brought a note to tell Mrs. McCormick that her sister was dead. She left at dawn to go to her sister’s home. Then an hour ago Captain Drake of the Fifth Michigan cavalry rode up and accused us of signalling to your men. We did light a lamp last night, but it was just to read the note about Mrs. McCormick’s sister; and I told him that, but he said I was a liar and that the light was a signal to the assassins who killed one of his pickets. He said he was going to burn my house.”
Mrs. Brown spoke in sobbing rage. “Two of them caught me and stripped my ring off my hand and dropped me over the banisters. I ran back upstairs to save what I could, and they set fire to the house under me.” Her voice rang with scorn. “I saw even their chaplain steal a paper of pins out of Mother’s bureau drawer! My baby was asleep, and when I went to get him, one of them said: ‘Let the damned little rebel burn!’ But I got my baby!”
Captain Chapman asked crisply: “Which way did they go?”
Mr. McCormick said: “Down the lane toward Mr. Sowers’s house.” He turned to point, and uttered an exclamation; and they saw in that direction a smoke column billowing above the trees.
Faunt instantly flung his horse to a gallop, Captain Chapman came beside him, and the others pressed on their heels. When they reached the Sowers house it could not be saved, and the Yankees were gone; but they saw another smoke column a short half-mile beyond. Faunt spurred his horse, and he called to Captain Chapman:
“No quarter today, Captain!”
The other nodded; he shouted over his shoulder: “No quarter today!” The order ran from man to man.
They burst from the woods below the burning house at full gallop; and before the Yankees could form, the Rangers were upon them. Many of the enemy, with no time to reach their horses, squandered like quail from a flushed covey; and those already in the saddle, after an instant’s milling confusion, broke in headlong flight.
Faunt, hot after them, firing carefully in deadly rage, liked the hard jar of the heavy pistol in his hand. There was a Yankee crouching in a fence corner, cowering helplessly. Faunt saw him at close range, and since his pistols were sighted for fifty yards he remembered to aim low. With the shot, he moved clear of the smoke and saw the man sliding helplessly sidewise and saw the dark hole in the Yankee’s cheekbone where the heavy bullet entered. Another bluecoat tried to swing his horse into the woods, but a low branch swept him from the saddle. While the Yankee lay on his back upon the ground, the breath jarred out of him, Faunt checked his horse long enough to make that bullet sure. A third, on a good mount, raced ahead. Faunt nursed his horse in relentless chase; but this man had too great a start, so Faunt at last turned back toward the burning house.
Rangers were searching the woods, and he saw more than one of them stop to kill a wounded Yankee. They left no living man behind; but when the troop was reassembled, Faunt discovered an unharmed prisoner among them. Hard rage still on him, he spoke to Captain Chapman.
“The orders were no quarter, sir.”
Chapman hesitated, but two or three men muttered in stern agreement, and the Captain swore. “Damn them, house-burners, abusing women, yes! Take him into the woods!”
Faunt and three others, their pistols drawn, rode with the prisoner a little off the road. Faunt asked: “Are you ready?”
The young man smiled faintly. “Why, I’d like a moment.”
Faunt nodded, and the Yankee swung to the ground. He knelt with his back toward them, as serenely as though he were alone, and he bowed his head for a time that seemed long. Then he rose, and turned to face them, holding his coat open, baring his breast. Faunt shot him through the heart.
Next day they rejoined Colonel Mosby, and Faunt heard Captain Chapman’s report. “Thirty horses, no prisoners.”
Mosby made no comment, but that evening he called Faunt to him. “Mr. Currain,” he said gravely, “our operations have taken on a new character. General Grant has given orders to hang our men whenever they are captured.” Faunt’s lips set; but Mosby added: “However, that may only be meant to frighten us. I can’t yet believe General Grant means what he says. We will wait and see. In the meantime, I wish you to take some dispatches to General Lee.”
“I can be useful here.”
Mosby smiled faintly. “This is a time to walk softly, to avoid excess,” he suggested. “Since March, with a loss of only about twenty men, we have killed or wounded or captured twelve hundred Yankees, plus sixteen hundred horses and mules and a lot of beef cattle. We have done all this, till yesterday, within the rules and
customs of war. Now they threaten to hang us as guerrillas. My opinion is that if they carry out the threat, we must retaliate, teach them a little decency; but first I wish to report to General Lee and have his orders. Come back to me with his reply.”
So Faunt, the dispatches buttoned inside his coat, began the journey to Richmond. Since there were everywhere in his way scattered detachments of the enemy, he spent the daylight hours in secret places, travelled at night. He had found that his health was better if he slept in the open air, taking shelter only from snow or rain; and since that first severe hemorrhage he had had no serious ill turn. Hard riding wearied him, or any sustained exertion; so he saved himself for the hot moments of combat and the headlong chase.
Lee would surely be near Petersburg, but Richmond was on Faunt’s road, and Nell, and it was long since he had seen her. He waited till nightfall to ride into the city, submitted to the picket’s challenge, showed Colonel Mosby’s pass. The officer commanding, when he read that pass, cried:
“Are you one of Mosby’s men?”
“I am, as you see.”
“Does he want recruits?”
Faunt said drily: “I suppose any officer wants men.”
“Then take me back with you! I’ll serve in the ranks anywhere.”
Faunt recognized the greed in the other’s tone. “I’m not recruiting,” he said coldly. “I’ve dispatches for General Lee. May I pass?”
He went directly to Nell’s house. Except for occasional hours with Burr or Brett while Lee’s army wintered around Orange Court House, he had not seen any of his family for months; nor did he now wish to do so. Since that day when he met Anne and Julian and mocked at Julian’s crutches, the boy must hate him. Good enough! Anne was Julian’s wife now. Brett said she had a baby. Good again! If he himself had played a fine and honorable part that day he taunted Julian, no one need ever know. Certainly it was the last credit entry on the ledger of his life. Now he was an outcast, coming back to one as base as he. To Nell.
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