Raiding With Morgan

by Jim R. Woolard

  His world appeared a tad brighter until he blundered into a deadly duel just inside Barrack Ten’s front door. He slid sideways and flattened himself against the wall, separating himself from two knife-wielding Rebels. A lean string bean of a soldier, with full beard, narrow shoulders, and pigeon-toed feet, kept circling to keep his opponent—smallish, mild-mannered, affable Billy Burke—in front of him.

  Ty realized his messmate was in serious trouble. The tall jasper’s arms were half again as long as Billy’s and his strategy was readily apparent. Slashing back and forth with his razor-sharp weapon, the shuffling string bean was forcing Billy to retreat into the corner of the room, where the attacker would have the advantage and slash Billy to ribbons.

  The many Rebel onlookers watched with an amused indifference. Ty looked for Ebb White and Given Campbell. They weren’t in the room and no one else was inclined to intervene and prevent the spilling of his friend’s blood. That left it up to Ty and he didn’t hesitate, trusting to survival instincts honed during the hot ride across Indiana and Ohio when he was expecting the slam of an enemy bullet into his chest any second.

  As the string bean, eyes locked on Billy, passed in front of Ty again, Ty stuck his leg out and tripped him, speeding his fall with a hearty shove. Billy’s opponent landed on his side with a rapping thud, banging his head on the floor and losing both his knife and his wind. Ty stepped over him and swept up the long blade.

  A voice near the door shouted, “Somebody snitched. The guards are coming.”

  Without breaking stride, Ty confronted Billy, his naturally deep tone stern and ringing with authority. “Give me your knife, Private. Now.”

  Billy Burke instantly obeyed an order from a superior officer by reversing his knife and presenting it to Ty, handle first. Ty heard the guards demanding that the onlookers move aside and let them through. He calmly walked in the opposite direction, with the crowd parting and closing behind him. The Rebels wanted no part of the knife fight and had cared less if someone was killed, but aiding the guards was leaping beyond the pale.

  Once in E.J.’s empty kitchen, Ty closed the door behind him and deposited the knives in a pantry drawer with the chef’s other cutting utensils. He then stood facing the door, ready if the tall jasper and any of his friends wanted to seek him out. The guards, frustrated they couldn’t locate and punish the participants in a reported knife fight, yelled for the Rebels to line up for a search of their bodies and their bunks. Such a spontaneous search for no reason that morning had let Ty know he needn’t inquire about the greatcoat he’d left in Ebb White’s safekeeping. Boone Jordan’s gift had been warming a Union backside for days whenever the weather was cold.

  The shouting and bullying by the guards in the barrack continued. Ty recalled Given Campbell’s assessment of the blue bellies’ current attitude yesterday afternoon: “Ty, I didn’t think it could happen, but our situation is worse than ever. You’ll notice that there will be absolute silence after lights-out. Those bastards hear one word inside the barrack and they’re likely to shoot through the wall. During the day, you can’t walk around the yard. Unless you have a letter to mail or a written pass, you must stay in the street in front of your barrack. The guards and round-the-clock patrols delight in handing out severe punishment for the slightest offense, even if you’ve never heard of the rule you’ve supposedly broken. To protect ourselves, we say, ‘Hisst! Hisst!’ when we’re talking if a guard comes near us, trying to overhear the conversation.

  “Some of us are at wit’s end. Tempers explode faster than popcorn, and we’ve taken to fighting amongst ourselves. You don’t have any trouble spotting black eyes, busted lips, and broken teeth. It’s a sorry end for men who fought side by side under enemy fire and were willing to die for one another.”

  “Will we ever turn on the guards?” Ty had asked.

  “It’s possible. There are less than a thousand of them and eleven thousand of us. Nobody has said anything to me personally, but there are rumors that a mass rush on the stockade walls is being planned. I’m keeping an ear to the ground for our barrack.”

  Ty was thinking again how his limp would keep him from joining any mass escape attempt, when the door flew open and two revolver-toting guards, both privates and both walking with limps worse than his, marched into the kitchen. They were from the Yankee invalid companies assigned to Camp Douglas security and frequently the meanest of blue-belly guards.

  “Hiding in here out of sight, are we?” the clean-shaven invalid snarled, aiming his pistol at Ty.

  Ty slowly removed his hospital-gifted coat and donned an apron before saying, “No, I’m a cook. I’m to start baking the bread for supper.”

  The big-eared invalid nodded and said to his companion, “I’ve spied him in here with Pursley and that gray coat and red cravat is the kind they give you when you leave the Smallpox Hospital. See those red marks on his cheeks. He’s had the pox, all right. You touch him if you want, Horace, but I don’t search anybody that’s got the pox or had the pox. You do with him what you want. I’m for leaving him be.”

  “Hell, Mike, I ain’t laying a finger on him, either. That’s how I believe Jericho came down with the pox.”

  The main barrack room had quieted enough so that the squeal of front-door hinges raised Horace’s brow. “Come on, I don’t want the lieutenant harping on us for lollygagging.”

  Ty exhaled sharply as the two invalid Yankees exited the kitchen. Fear of the pox had forestalled a personal search of his body and clothing. Even though he kept the stiletto safely ensconced in his boot, he was thankful that he wasn’t searched. Given Campbell had passed along solid reasons for him to be careful even when dealing with his fellow Rebels. Facing a knife was vastly different than disarming an attacker from behind.

  Danger lurked everywhere within the walls of Camp Douglas for the careless, the unprepared, and the unarmed. Wariness was the watchword for those longing to see home again, or surviving until they found a new one.

  CHAPTER 29

  Another long stretch of absolute boredom, hunger, deadly disease, prolonged morning roll calls, instant inspections, and wire-tight tension—both inside and outside the barracks—stilled laughter and made smiles distant memories. Letter writing, checking for mail, cooking with E.J. Pursley, and reading the same books again and again barely kept Ty from going crazy and pounding the wall with his fists. Not even the introduction of a bathhouse for washing and shaving and gas-heated tubs for clothes washing alleviated the monotony. The high point of Ty’s day was his nightly prayers for the well-being of Dana, who was the love of his life, Mr. Jordan, his grandfather, his messmates, and himself.

  Barrack Ten’s morale hit rock bottom on Friday, September 9, 1864. On that day, the Chicago Tribune announced a blue-belly bullet had killed General John Hunt Morgan the previous Sunday in the streets of Greeneville, Tennessee.

  Many of Morgan’s Raiders thought the announcement was a Yankee prank, refusing to believe that their beloved “Thunderbolt of the Confederacy” was growing cold in the ground like a common trooper. But additional Tribune articles related the details of how the general had been shot in the back in the early morning of September 4 as he walked away from Union Cavalry, which had ordered him to halt—evidence difficult to refute and confirmed by the Camp Douglas commandant.

  Yankee patrol officers took particular delight in reminding the men of Barrack Ten that their untouchable, uncatchable hero leader had been consigned to future history books—which the North would write—as a fallen, fleeing raider. This spawned an ever deeper hatred of them, and the pinch-eyed, sullen faces that resulted had Ty feeling he was inside a box of matches, where the tiniest spark might ignite a conflagration the guards couldn’t handle.

  Though it took more time than Ty had anticipated, the guards struck the match he feared in late October. A keen night wind was blowing off Lake Michigan and the temperature had dropped below freezing.

  Shouted commands and curses rent the frigid air near Barrack
Ten, swelling to a volume that awakened Ty and his bunkmates. “What’s that all about?” Billy Burke muttered.

  “I’ll check,” Ty whispered.

  “Just open the door a crack,” Given Campbell said quietly. “Don’t alert the guards you’re out of your bunk.”

  Ty padded to the door and opened it far enough to peek with one eye into the yard. The gas-burning reflector lamps mounted on the stockade wall cast white light the length of the street fronting Barracks One through Twenty. Ty groaned. The members of Barrack Eight were seated, buck naked, in the frozen mud of the street, shaking and shivering, arms wrapped about themselves. The punishments of last winter were starting even earlier.

  Ty crept back to his bunk and spoke to Given Campbell in a whisper again. “Guards have Barrack Eight sitting naked in the mud. I believe some of the guards are drunk. I’ll keep watch and wake the barrack if they head this way.”

  By Ty’s reckoning, Barrack Eight was left to suffer in the street for a full hour. As they returned to their bunks, Barrack Nine was jousted from theirs. Despite the midnight hour and their inebriation, the guards gave no sign they were tiring or losing interest in inflicting their choice of punishment for the evening.

  With his back to the door of Barrack Ten, a short Yankee watched the disgruntled Rebels from Barrack Nine file out. He turned to speak to the guard next to him and Ty made out Mouse’s narrow face in the lamplight flooding the street. The Mouse shouted loud enough for Ty to hear him say, “Let’s roust Barrack Ten. I’ve been dying for a chance to whap on E.J. Pursley’s skinny ass ever since he shooed me from his kitchen last summer with a butcher knife.”

  That threat kindled fresh hatred in Ty for the Yankees; his animosity burned his insides like scalding water. He’d had enough and seen enough of their cruelty to last three lifetimes. There would be no abusing of E.J. Pursley, not tonight or any other night. He tiptoed to the kitchen in the dark and, from memory, grasped the heavy-bladed metal coal shovel E.J. kept behind the stove.

  Given the ongoing ruckus outside the barrack, Ty knew eyes were following him in the dark as he crossed from the kitchen to the front door. What he planned called for him to act alone, and he said in a low voice, “Everybody stay in their bunks. I’ll yell if I need you.”

  He didn’t know who might or might not respond when he called out, beyond Given Campbell, Ebb White, and Billy Burke. He hoped he wouldn’t need his friends. He was praying he could employ the tactical strategy of stiff, unexpected resistance that Given Campbell claimed Texas Ranger Shawn Shannon had executed to quell a drunken riot in a Texas town.

  Ty, of course, didn’t have Ranger Shannon’s revolver at his disposal, and he feared that flashing his stiletto would so enflame the besotted Yankees, they would shoot him. So it was the metal shovel that could inflict considerable bodily harm, or nothing. One thing was in his favor. He had seen from the door earlier that neither Mouse nor his fellow blue bellies were armed with bayoneted rifles, which meant he could initially hold them at bay with the shovel.

  Mouse and two blue bellies were a few paces away when Ty stepped through the front door and came to rest on the stone stoop of Barrack Ten, the shovel hanging limply at his side. His sudden appearance startled the three guards.

  They halted and stared at him with bleary eyes. Their revolvers were holstered. Mouse and the guard on his left held wooden paddles with holes drilled opposite the handles. The third guard bore a coiled whip.

  Ty took a deep breath and silently thanked his Maker. These three were so accustomed to Rebel prisoners obeying their orders and accepting any punishment they doled out, they had grown careless. One of them should have had a pistol at the ready in case they encountered a defiant prisoner. Still, to them, Ty was but a single man, albeit a big, broad-shouldered one for his age.

  Mouse tilted his head, sniffled, peered over his snout of a nose, and said, “I recognize you. You’re E.J. Pursley’s bread baker. We’ve come for that little runt. Maybe when he can’t feel his butt no more, he’ll apologize for chasing after me with that knife while the bunch of you laughed behind my back. Out of the way, secesh. We’re coming in.”

  Ty stood silently without moving, waiting until he had their complete attention. “You’ll have to kill me first.” The guard on Mouse’s left frowned as Ty swung the shovel across his chest and spread his feet. “I’ll say it again. You’ll have to kill me first.”

  Uncertainty beset the Yankees. They weren’t too drunk not to realize they had nothing in their hands except two paddles and a whip; Ty could wade into them with the shovel before they could draw their pistols, not a desirable outcome, given the wicked curve of the shovel’s blade.

  The standoff continued for a lengthy half minute, with Ty on his toes awaiting their first move. The guard on Mouse’s right broke the silence by saying in a whiskey-blurred, sputtering voice, “Hell’s bells, boys, we’ve had enough fun for one night!”

  Mouse’s cheek twitched, a visible hint he might doubt the wisdom of escalating the confrontation. His grip tightened on the handle of his paddle; yet he gave no thought to drawing his pistol. He knew a tightly knit group of Morgan’s men inhabited Barrack Ten and he would invite much trouble if he shot the young man whom Lieutenant Shawn Shannon had treated like a son. Lastly, he had too much pride as an officer to yell for help in encountering a single Reb with a limp, who was armed with a mere coal shovel.

  Mouse nodded slowly, pursed his thin lips, and said, “You win tonight, but you won’t catch me without my rifle and bayonet again. You best not forget that.”

  Ty stayed put until the Mouse and his cohorts called it quits, sent Barrack Nine back to their bunks, marched in a stumbling shamble to the end of the street, and disappeared around the far corner of Barrack One.

  When he entered Barrack Ten, he was greeted with backslapping and congratulations from his bunkmates, as well as from men he knew only by sight.

  “Cleverest bluffing of them Yankees I ever saw,” Given Campbell said.

  A pox-scarred private proclaimed, “Sweet as sugar pie.”

  Billy Burke chimed in, “I’ve dreamed of seeing Mouse scurrying for his hole and it’s come true at last.”

  E.J. was one big, gummy grin from ear to ear. “Sorry to bring trouble down on you. But I’m damn glad I share a mess with a man who will stand up for an old codger against an ass that ain’t big enough to paddle and do some real harm with it. Last time my maw laid into me, I hurt for most of that winter.”

  The statement that most pleased Ty—who had never imagined himself any kind of hero—came from Ebb White. “Your father and Shawn Shannon would be proud of you, Corporal, mighty proud.”

  Ty went to bed fully aware he had acquired a personal enemy in Mouse that would bear watching whenever he was in sight. At the same time, he needed to keep a steady eye peeled for Jack Stedman’s son, for tonight he had experienced the depth of hatred that drove the thinking of Frank and Jack Stedman’s offspring, and he was convinced more than ever that his father’s murderer was somewhere inside the Camp Douglas stockade, waiting for the chance to extract a final measure of revenge.

  Returned from morning detail, Given Campbell pulled Ty aside in E.J.’s kitchen. “Rumors of a mass revolt were flying fast and furious in the wood lot. Last night’s escapade with paddles and whips went a step too far and even riled men I’ve never seen show any interest in trying to escape. Mouse and his drunken pals may have provoked what the camp commandant wants the least—eleven thousand Rebels determined to flee, no matter if some of us are killed.”

  Though Private Campbell was speaking softly, Ty read the excitement in his voice. “What will you do if they revolt? Will you join them?”

  Given Campbell fingered his short beard. “Yes, I’m plumb tired of watching men dig through the garbage barrels searching for bones. The war will drag on for months, but we can’t win. Our cause was lost at Gettysburg when General Lee squandered our finest men. I can’t swallow the dog and swear the Union oath. I’
m headed home to Texas, not back to our lines and the Yankee bullet waiting for me. I promised Lieutenant Shannon that I’d personally inform his uncle if he died in the pox hospital. That’s a chore needs doing—the sooner, the better.”

  “What about Ebb, Billy, and E.J.?”

  “If any of them want to join me, they’re welcome. What will you do, Corporal?”

  Ty considered his choices, weighed his chances, and said with considerable reluctance, “I hate it here as much as you do. But with my bad leg, I couldn’t keep up with you, once you’re outside the stockade. I won’t slow you down. I’d be excess baggage and useless to you.”

  “I regret that more than I can say, Corporal. I’m sorry we can’t offer you a Trojan horse like Cally’s. But then a pickle barrel would be a mighty tight fit for you. I don’t want to overstep my authority, sir. Do you mind if I ask our messmates their druthers?”

  Ty underwent an awakening with Given Campbell’s use of the word “sir” when addressing him. In his military history discussions with Ty, Professor Ackerman had stressed that how an officer reacted in a dangerous situation often impacted his subordinates in unanticipated ways. His successful bluffing of Mouse and the guards had erased any doubts amongst his messmates of his ability to lead, though he was young, and they deemed him fit for command. For the true soldier, the ranking of officers, once established, determined the line of authority and insured that proper protocol was observed. Age was a moot issue.

  Over the course of the day, Given Campbell talked with Ebb, Billy, and E.J. individually and reported to Ty that Ebb and Billy were supportive of the Rebel breakout, when and if it occurred. E.J.’s response was that he was a turtle afoot and wasn’t inclined to trade his soup ladle for the dungeon.