House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Trav nodded. “Yes.” He extended his hand; and then suddenly his arm was around Faunt’s shoulders in an awkward embrace. “Take care of yourself,” he said huskily.

  Faunt freed himself, smiling in a deep content at that caress. “Bad advice to give a soldier, Trav. Good-by.” He watched Trav join the General and they drove away.

  The encounter left a lonely longing in him; Nell in Richmond was not far away. He sought Colonel Mosby’s permission, borrowed a horse, took the Richmond pike and found her glad welcome waiting.

  He told her what news there was; and he spoke of the burning of Chief Blackwell’s little farm which had been their headquarters. Would that hinder them, she asked; but he said there were other places they could use. “Glen Welby, for instance; Major Carter’s home near Rectortown. We’ll still give them trouble enough.”

  “Will you go back there soon?”

  “Not for a week or two, certainly.”

  She told him what was happening in Richmond. He had heard of General Morgan’s death, and when she spoke of it he commented: “They say he was betrayed by a woman.” He had a momentary feeling that the word startled her, but she smiled, said teasingly:

  “You poor men! Adam, and Samson, and now General Morgan. What treacherous creatures we are.” And she said: “But perhaps he deserved it. Even his own officers accused him of robbing the bank at Mount Sterling. Of course he’s a hero, now he’s dead, so the charges against him will be dropped.” His elaborate funeral here in Richmond was spoiled, she said, because the military escort had to hurry away to help repulse a Yankee attack at Chaffin’s Farm. She went on to other gossip. The Secretary of War was the latest target for abuse, because he had allowed some of his friends to use the burdened railroads to bring flour from the Valley for their own use while the army was on short rations. Mr. Northrop had ordered the impressment of all wheat and meat in Virginia, and when someone protested that civilians would starve, he said, “Let them.” Sheridan had beaten Early in the Valley and captured Winchester.

  Everything she told him was so dreary that Faunt at last protested, half-smiling. “I declare, Nell, isn’t there any sunshine anywhere?”

  “I don’t know where, Faunt,” she declared. “Grant has two men to Lee’s one; Sherman has two men to Hood’s one; Sheridan has two men to Early’s one. Oh, I wish you were out of it! I worry so for you. Suppose you’d been there when Mr. Blackwell’s house was burned. You’d have been taken.”

  He said mildly: “I think not. I don’t expect to be captured, Nell.” Then, seeing her lips whiten with pain at his words he rose and went to touch her bent head. “Let’s be a little more cheerful, shall we?” She looked up at him and smiled; and he said in tender chiding: “You know I came here for happiness, my dear.”

  He had Sunday with her, and on Monday he and Colonel Mosby began their return journey. Mosby since his wound had not shaved, and Faunt spoke of this. “I’m not sure your new beard doesn’t become you, Colonel.”

  “I think I shall keep it,” Mosby confessed with a chuckle. “Close-shaven, I am too easily mistaken for a boy; but the Yankees will not take liberties with a bearded man.”

  “The liberties taken have been the other way around,” Faunt suggested.

  Mosby nodded thoughtfully. “But we’ve busy days ahead,” he remarked. “The Federals are trying to rebuild the Manassas Gap Railroad. General Lee wants us to discourage them.”

  “What does General Lee think about Hangman Grant?”

  Mosby said quietly: “So far, no one has carried out the orders to hang us whenever we are caught. We have always operated within the rules and customs of war. I hope we won’t be driven into a contest of assassination.”

  But when they came to Gordonsville they heard that at least one of Grant’s subordinate commanders had taken him at his word. A force of Rangers under Captain Chapman had attacked, a week before, an ambulance train near Front Royal, and found themselves trapped between two regiments of Custer’s cavalry. They shot their way clear; but they left six prisoners behind. General Custer ordered the prisoners executed. He paraded a band through Front Royal playing the Dead March; but except for this, there was no ceremony. A disorganized crowd of soldiers shot David Jones and Lucien Love in front of the church. Some others thrust Tom Anderson against an elm tree south of town and riddled him with bullets. A Front Royal boy named Henry Rhodes, who that day served for the first time with Mosby’s men, was hustled to an open field at the other end of town and there, although his mother clung to him till he was dragged away, one of Custer’s men emptied his pistol into the boy’s body. Tom Overby and young Carter were hanged.

  Frank Angela met them in Gordonsville with the news. “I rode into Front Royal that night,” he said. “The folks there say General Custer rode by, about the time they was hung, all dressed up in a velvet uniform with his yellow hair a-shining down his shoulders, eating plums off a branch he’d broke off someone’s tree.”

  Faunt turned without a word toward the door, but Mosby called him back. “Wait a moment, Mr. Currain.”

  Faunt said tightly: “I’m riding toward Front Royal, Colonel.”

  Mosby shook his head. “Wait a little, if you please,” he said sternly. “What we do must be done with a decent deliberation.” Faunt hesitated, and Mosby insisted: “Be easy, Mr. Currain. My men are dead. I won’t forget, but haste will not help them.”

  Faunt’s first rage cooled to a still ferocity. Mosby next day, though he still used crutches to walk, was able to sit his horse; and he sent men ahead to watch the workmen busy on the Manassas Gap Railroad, while he and Faunt and a troop of Rangers followed more slowly. Within a fortnight, harassing the construction crews by day and by night, he put an end to that enterprise. The task was ridiculously easy, since an army would have been needed to guard the sixty miles of track against surprise that might strike anywhere. This done, Mosby led a force into the Valley and wrecked a train and found a Federal paymaster among the passengers with a hundred and seventy thousand dollars in good Yankee currency in his strongbox; and every raider had better than two thousand dollars as his share.

  But there was bad news too. Sheridan had driven Early up the Valley; and while Mosby’s men were gathering greenbacks, the enemy cavalry found four guns that Mosby had hidden in the forest on Cobbler Mountain and carried them away. Soon afterward, Yankee horsemen had appeared at Glen Welby with orders to burn Major Carter’s home. Mrs. Scott, the Major’s daughter, seated herself in the parlor with her son on her knee and declared that if the house were burned so would she be, so the house was saved; but the bluecoats told Mrs. Carter they knew the house was regularly used by Colonel Mosby, and the officer commanding said firmly:

  “And if I ever hear of your welcoming that murderous guerrilla here again, I will not spare the house a second time.”

  When this was reported to him, Mosby said harshly: “They knew we used Chief Blackwell’s farm; they knew we used Glen Welby.” Faunt was with him. “They know too much about us, Mr. Currain.”

  Faunt spoke in open challenge. “They’re overbold, Colonel. It’s six weeks since they hanged your men. Perhaps they take courage from long impunity.”

  Mosby looked at him with blazing eyes. “I have a good memory, Mr. Currain. You need not remind me.” He smiled grimly. “Meanwhile, since our return from Petersburg, we have killed or captured six hundred bluecoats, with a loss of thirty men. I don’t think our enemies hold us too lightly.”

  But there was still no formal retaliation for the butchery at Front Royal. Faunt took his own revenges when the opportunity came; but they did not content him. Then at last, early in November and for the first time since Front Royal, twenty-seven of Custer’s men were captured by the Rangers.

  Mosby ordered them brought to Rectortown, and he summoned the whole battalion of the Rangers to assemble there. When Faunt reported to him, Mosby said in sombre tones: “Well, Mr. Currain, you will presently be satisfied. I have General Lee’s orders, approved by Sec
retary Seddon; and I have twenty-seven prisoners from Custer’s command. A certain Colonel Powell has hung another of us, so there will be seven executions.”

  “It’s full time,” Faunt said firmly.

  Colonel Mosby called Lieutenant Thomson. “Put seven marked slips in a hat, Mr. Thomson,” he directed. “Seven marked slips and twenty blanks. Take the men who draw the marked slips into the Valley as near Winchester as is safe. Hang them and placard the bodies.”

  Lieutenant Thomson hesitated. “Is it possible to assign someone else to this duty, Colonel?”

  Mosby shook his head. “It is as painful for me as for you, sir; but it is necessary.”

  Faunt, sitting his horse near by, moved nearer. “I am willing to undertake it, Colonel.”

  Mosby’s eyes met his. “No, Mr. Currain. Lieutenant Thomson is too good a soldier to evade even this task.” He added: “And I have another duty for you, Mr. Currain. Come with me.”

  He turned his horse to depart. Faunt, looking back as they rode away, saw the twenty-seven prisoners lined up for the drawing of the lots, and he watched with a grim satisfaction till a bend of the road put the scene behind them.

  When they had ridden for some distance, a horseman at a canter overtook them. It was Lieutenant Thomson. “Colonel,” he said apologetically, “one of the marked slips was drawn by a drummer boy. I thought you might wish to spare him.”

  Mosby said instantly, with a sort of relief: “Yes. I never hated anything worse than this, yet we must curb Custer’s insane ferocity.” Then in a low tone: “But a substitute must be drawn in the boy’s place, Lieutenant. Seven of them must die.” As the other turned away, Mosby called him back. “However, Lieutenant, only three of our men were hanged, two by Custer, one by Powell. You must hang three of these; but I have no objection if you prefer to shoot the others.”

  The Lieutenant, white and still, saluted and rode away. Faunt and Mosby went slowly on; and at last, in a new tone, Mosby said:

  “Well, that is done. Mr. Currain, I said I had work for you. You remember our friend Mr. Booth?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have a letter from him. He wishes to ride with us for a week or two. He has done the South good service, and I’m glad to oblige him. He asks that one of us—and he suggested you, Mr. Currain—meet him in Port Tobacco, at the home of a wagon maker with a German name. Perhaps you know the man?”

  “George Atzerodt, yes,” Faunt agreed. “And of course I’ll be glad to go.”

  So when as dusk came down and a cold rain began to fall, Lieutenant Thomson and a detail of Rangers rode with Custer’s doomed men toward Ashby’s Gap, Faunt was travelling in the opposite direction. He looked forward to seeing Wilkes Booth again. The little actor had an overpowering quality not easy to define. By the very exuberance of his nature, by his tremendous loquacity, by his freedom from every restraint, he overpowered the senses. A year ago, on that journey to Washington to receive Booth’s contribution of needed drugs, Faunt had seen the man in action on the stage. Booth then was playing in The Marble Heart, and when Faunt presented himself at the stage door the actor welcomed him and smuggled him into a box where, although the performance was just beginning, there was an extra chair.

  “And this is a gala night,” Booth assured him. “The President and Mrs. Lincoln will be in the State Box.” He smiled. “So the audience will have no eyes for me.”

  It was a measure of Booth’s genius that from the moment he stepped upon the stage even Faunt forgot the shadowed figure of the President in a box near his own. His eyes turned that way only in the intervals of the play. Afterward Booth again absorbed him, so that not until he was on the return journey did his thoughts dwell long upon the man whom he abhorred. Even at a distance, Faunt had felt something still and sad and brooding in the other, had felt himself shrink to unimportance; and thereafter he refused to remember those half-caught glimpses. In the months since that day, he had thought more often of Wilkes Booth than of the President. Twice since then he and Booth had met, once in Baltimore, and once at the Surratt tavern. As he rode now toward the Northern Neck, he looked forward to this next encounter.

  At the signal station on Ben Grimes’s farm at Mathias Point, Lieutenant Caywood advised against his crossing to Pope’s Creek. Since Wat Bowie led a party of Mosby’s men into Charles County a few weeks before, and mounted them at the expense of the provost guard in the court house, the Yankees in southern Maryland sometimes made unexpected visitations upon even the most innocent. Bowie himself was killed opposite Leesburg on his way back to “Mosby’s Confederacy”; but his raid had put the enemy on the alert, and several times a black signal in Major Watson’s dormer window had warned the mail boat not to cross.

  But when at dusk that day the signs were fair, Faunt made the venture. There was no one to meet him on the bank, so he left the mail packet in the usual place in the dead tree on the beach and himself made a cautious way up that tangled ravine which the road descended. He halted once when half a dozen horsemen, Yankee cavalry by the sound, passed down the road on the other side of the ravine and not fifty feet from where he stood hidden; and even when they were surely gone he waited a longer while before continuing the ascent.

  There was a light in Mr. Jones’s house, and Faunt went near enough to listen and be sure there were no enemies within before he knocked. Mr. Jones opened the door, but when Faunt identified himself, the other came out and closed the door behind him.

  “I can’t take you in,” he said. “I had callers not an hour ago, some troopers.”

  “They’ve gone on beyond the landing.”

  “They may return. You wait in the pines behind my barn and I’ll come to you in an hour or two. We can’t talk now.”

  Faunt respected the other’s precautions, and Mr. Jones eventually joined him with a message. “Wilkes Booth was here last week, Mr. Currain. He’s living in the National Hotel in Washington; but he’s promised to join those brothers of his and play Julius Caesar in New York the last of this month, and he said to tell whoever came that he wouldn’t miss that chance to show his brothers who’s the best actor, even to ride with Mosby.”

  Faunt was disappointed, but he said: “Well, he can come another time.”

  “That man will give up anything to make a show of himself in a theatre,” Mr. Jones commented. “He’s got a crazy idea in his head now, came down here to see if it could be worked.”

  “What is it?”

  “Why, he’s talking about kidnapping Lincoln and shipping him to Richmond. His notion is he’ll wait till some night when the President comes to the theatre, and jump up into his box and knock him senseless and swing him down to the stage and out into the alley. Then he’ll have a carriage and some relays of horses ready, and haul him down here, and get George Atzerodt to ferry him across the river.” Mr. Jones seemed to suspect he had talked too much. “I wouldn’t be telling you this if there was any chance he’d try it.”

  Faunt smiled. “It’s a harebrained scheme, certainly,” he agreed; yet his blood stirred. Audacity sometimes worked miracles.

  “He went to Bryantown to see Dr. Green and Dr. Mudd,” Mr. Jones explained. “But he didn’t tell them what he was up to, just let on he was looking for a farm to buy. George Atzerodt brought him to see me. I told him he was crazy and to go back to Washington and forget it.”

  Faunt thought of riding on toward Washington in the hope of seeing Booth, and he might have gone at least as far as Surrattsville; but Mr. Jones said the Surratts had moved to Washington the month before, had opened a boarding house. “It’s on H Street,” he said. “Five-forty-one, if you ever want to put up there. But you wouldn’t find Booth. He’s already gone on to New York to get ready for that play they’re going to do.”

  When Faunt rejoined Mosby and reported the failure of his errand, he found the Colonel in ill humor, with a persistent cold.

  “I’m not used to being laid up with anything less than a Yankee bullet,” Mosby remarked. “And this is
no time for me to be sick. All the news from Richmond is bad, Currain. When Hood marched north into Tennessee, Sherman burned Atlanta and headed for the sea and there’s no one to stop him. And Early has been driven up the Valley, so we have to cover a lot of territory.”

  “Did you hang those men?” Faunt asked.

  “Three of them,” Mosby assured him. “Two got away. We shot the others.” He added regretfully: “We’re getting into the habit of shooting prisoners. I sent Captain Richards to dispose of Blazer the other day.” Captain Blazer with a hundred picked men had been assigned to special duty against the Rangers some weeks before, had had some success. “They polished him off, captured Blazer, killed or captured most of his men. But John Puryear shot the Yankee lieutenant after he’d been disarmed and was a prisoner.”

  Faunt knew Puryear, a young man and a hard fighter but a fair one. “Why?”

  “Oh, he had provocation,” Mosby admitted. “Blazer had captured him the day before; and this lieutenant tried to make him talk, put a rope around his neck and hauled him up clear of the ground two or three times. Puryear was still a prisoner when Captain Richards hit them, and he knocked one of them off his horse and grabbed the fellow’s guns and took a hand in the fight.”

  “Good!”

  “Oh, that was all right; but after the fight the lieutenant was disarmed, dismounted, standing with the other prisoners, and Puryear just plain shot him.” Mosby said soberly: “When we go outside the rules and customs of war, Mr. Currain, we forfeit the respect of friends as well as enemies.” He shook his head. “Well, it’s done. I’m glad you’re back. Sheridan is bound to make a big strike at us now. He can’t go after Early and leave us in his rear. So we’ll need every man.”