* * * * *
“Ewald’s dead?” Caleb shook his head.
“Pneumonia,” Sergeant Masterson spoke softly. “Thought you might be called to Glory yourself.”
Caleb drank the broth in his coffee cup.
“His parents came for his body.” Masterson sipped something stronger than broth. “That was a terrible day. Mother and father crying up a storm, his mother pleading with Captain Clark and Colonel Morgan to let them take young Rémy home with them, that they’d lost one son and wasn’t that enough. But Colonel Morgan would not allow that, said that Rémy had signed an oath. Sent them home, he did. Their father driving the buckboard, the poor old mother just kneeling over the coffin in the back, wailing her little head off.”
Caleb couldn’t finish the broth. He set the cup down and stared at the fire. “How many others have …?” He couldn’t finish, but Sergeant Masterson did it for him.
“Died?” Masterson let out a mirthless chuckle. “I don’t know. Lost count of the funerals Chaplain Garner has led. Many families have come to claim their young men.”
With a sigh, Caleb shook his head. “This isn’t the way war is.”
“Oh, lad, it most certainly is. It was that way when we fought in Mexico. It was that way when my father took part in the campaigns against the Seminoles down in Florida. I’ve buried far more soldiers felled by disease than those that died from lance or ball.”
Caleb had to inhale deeply, and summon up his courage as he exhaled. “Doc Torrey says you likely saved my life.”
“Not me, lad.”
“He said …”
“Doctor Torrey saved your life, son. He and Doctor Hamlin. Or God Almighty did. I did as I was told, as any soldier would do.”
“Well …” Caleb smiled. “Thanks.”
To his surprise, Harold Masterson grinned back, almost like he was human, a barber again, fingering scissors back in Pennville, and not that gruff, no-account sergeant with the foul mouth and horrible attitude.
“Well, what’s the matter with Seb Woolard?” Caleb asked, and immediately regretted bringing up that subject.
The smile left Masterson’s face. “He’s a bad one, that boy. I wish he wasn’t in Company E, that’s certain sure.”
Caleb felt his eyes well with tears, but he would not cry. “I thought he was my friend.”
“He’s no one’s friend. And you shouldn’t make friends, not these days. Friends are here one minute and gone the next.”
“He blames me and …” He couldn’t say Ewald’s name. “For a tent?”
“He’s trash. Dirt poor trash. All of those Woolards from Milan are trash. Likely his pa stole that tent. And those brogans he wears, I suspect they was procured by a quick hand, as well. Me thinks it’s a mighty good thing he doesn’t yet have a musket. He’d likely murder one of our own rather than some Yankee.”
Caleb didn’t want to think about that. “How is Rémy?”
Masterson snorted. “Rémy. That boy will be fine. Don’t you ever fret over Rémy, Cole. If this regiment had a hundred Rémy Ehrenreichs, we’d lick the Yankees in sixty days.” Masterson slipped the flask into the mule-ear pockets of his britches. Rising, he extended his right hand. “And with a hundred lads like you, Caleb Cole, we’d cut that time in half. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Into town. About thirty Kansas Yanks, captured at Lexington and paroled by General Sterling Price, are in town. Let’s go see who we’re really supposed to be fighting.”
Chapter Eight
January 8, 1862
Houston, Texas
“Right turn, march!”
Musket on his shoulder, Ryan followed the order in perfect time with Matt Bryson. He almost even smiled. Thousands of heels clicked on the paved streets.
No slackening or quickening the cadence—no shortening or lengthening the step.
Conforming, naturally, “with the principles prescribed in the School of the Soldier, Number 402” as written in Hardee’s Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics.
If he ever met that W. J. Hardee, once a Union officer but now, he had heard, a Confederate commander, Ryan McCalla would like to shove that little book down Brigadier General William J. Hardee’s throat. Heck, he didn’t have any need for it any more. Nobody in the Second Texas Infantry did. They had those dad-blasted one-hundred-and-fifty-plus pages memorized.
The Houston band’s blaring of “Dixie” wailed closer, and Ryan could see the gazebo, stands overflowing, and a throng of Texians lining the parade grounds of what was now called Camp Bee.
“Platoon, halt!” Sergeant Rutherford shouted, and Company C, once the Bayland Guards, stopped.
“Right, dress!”
They moved as if machines, never faltering, never stumbling. The second platoon followed the first, then he heard Captain Smith call for the company to form into two ranks, single file. Again they marched. Stopped. Formed into two ranks.
“Left, face!”
One fluid motion.
“Right, dress!”
The band, if Ryan could call it a band, reached a crescendo. A cymbal clashed, followed by the applause of the onlookers.
“Gentlemen,” he heard Colonel Moore tell Captain Ashbel Smith and the other company officers, “that was an excellent display. You, your sergeants, and your men are to be congratulated.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted Houston’s mayor. “These soldiers are an excellent representation of Southern manliness and discipline. They will show those Yankee mongrels that they have gravely misjudged Texian mettle and Confederate fortitude.” Ryan couldn’t see the city official’s face, only his tall gray silk hat bobbing as the mayor must have nodded. More applause. At least, the city band had stopped its butchering of “Dixie” and other patriotic tunes.
“That was glorious, Colonel Moore,” a woman’s voice rose above the din. “These men march beautifully.”
“We should,” Gibb Gideon muttered down the line, “we’ve been doing it since summer.”
Ryan would have smiled, however, back to the men, eyes facing the officers and viewers, Sergeant Rutherford said: “Another word, and I cut out your tongue and feed it to the dogs.”
* * * * *
In October, the Second Texas had left Galveston Island for Houston, establishing Camp Bee on the flat grasslands just outside the city. A Union ship had sailed into the harbor under a flag of truce, and the Yanks had basically said: “Surrender or be blown to Kingdom Come.”
A few shells were traded, to no effect, before Confederate Colonel Joseph J. Cook had negotiated a truce with the Federals. The Yanks agreed to a four-day cease fire in which non-combatants could evacuate the island for the mainland. They did. So did the Second Texas, weapons and all, and so did every other Rebel soldier on the island. Cook and the other Texas commanders had a great laugh at that, imagining the Yanks’ reaction to having no prisoners, no confiscated weapons, only a deserted town to their name, but now only seven miles of salt water separated the Yankees from the Texas mainland. Galveston lay less than fifty miles from Houston.
At some point, the Yankees would have to invade, Ryan figured, or Colonel Moore would try to take back the island and reopen the Texas port.
Instead of bunking in a Galveston warehouse, Ryan now shared a conical tent with his messmates. Called a Sibley tent, it resembled a Comanche teepee rather than any other type of tent Ryan had ever seen, with a smoke hole at the top and pegs along the bottom, except an Indian’s lodge was made from buffalo hide, and the Sibley was canvas.
The tents, like the .69-caliber muskets many of the soldiers carried, had once been property of the US Army, recently conscripted into the Confederate Army.
Those tents had been designed and patented by an officer named Henry Hopkins Sibley, a West Point graduate who had risen to the rank of major in the First Dragoons. Now, accordin
g to Little Sam Houston, Sibley was a brigadier general leading an army of Texians to claim New Mexico Territory and the Colorado gold fields for the South.
That made Ryan wonder how the North could ever hope to win this war. A gifted inventor like Henry Sibley had resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army. A tactician and author like William J. Hardee—even if Ryan despised the manual Hardee had authored—had left the North for the South. Albert Sidney Johnston, formerly a general in the Texas Army and in the US Army, now commanded the Confederacy’s Army of the Mississippi. Even the Second’s commander, Colonel John Creed Moore, had been graduated from West Point and had fought against the Seminole Indians. Ryan wondered who was left to command the Northern armies.
They stood at attention, then at ease, and listened to the mayor and Colonel Moore pontificate and praise, stump and speechify. A preacher prayed for deliverance from the Yankee blockade. A woman sang a hymn, a cappella, and the mayor talked for another fifteen minutes before the brass band launched into “Bonnie Blue Flag.” More applause, and, finally, Colonel Moore told the captains to dismiss their troops, the captains passed down the word to the lieutenants, who, in turn, ordered the sergeants, and, at last, Sergeant Rutherford barked out: “Dis-missed!”
Yet even as the assembly ended, as Gibb Gideon and Harry Cravey led the way back to their Sibley tent, Ryan McCalla noticed that everyone still acted like soldiers. Harry Cravey, who had started drilling with an axe an eternity ago, carried his musket properly. Only a month ago, Sergeant Rutherford had screamed in Baby Cravey’s face for a good twenty minutes for dragging the weapon behind him. Now, it remained on his shoulder, hand clasped firmly on its stock, bayonet glistening in the sun.
“You boys almost look like soldiers,” a long-bearded man in duck trousers and a muslin shirt told them as they marched past.
Almost.
Well, the man did have a point. Sam Houston Jr. looked resplendent in his tailored uniform, but Gibb Gideon wore ragged britches that needed hemming, and the closest thing Ryan had that resembled an Army uniform was a woolen vest with brass buttons.
“Sergeant Rutherford,” Ryan called out to the gruff, mustached non-commissioned officer walking alongside, “when are we getting uniforms?”
“You don’t need uniforms to kill Yankees, McCalla!” Rutherford barked.
That was the same answer Rutherford had given last week when Matt Bryson had complained about the lack of uniforms.
A city of canvas appeared before them, stretching out across the dead winter grass. Rutherford veered off for his personal tent. Captain Williams’ Company D, formerly the Confederate Grays, turned sharply down what had been dubbed Moore Lane, and disappeared into their Sibley tents. Gideon and Cravey kept marching down San Jacinto Boulevard for thirty rods before stopping. Lowering their weapons, removing the bayonets, the soldiers stacked the long guns in a circle in front of their tent.
Gideon stooped by the pit, piling a piece of fat lighter in the ash, and covering it with broken twigs. “Who wants coffee?” he said, and, although no one answered, he knew his messmates well enough to know that everyone wanted coffee.
“Need help?” Ryan asked.
“You know better’n that. Give me a few minutes.”
Ryan disappeared inside the tent, unfolded his camp chair, and sat down by his bedroll, reaching down for the case holding his fiddle. Little Sam had peeled off his coat, slipped his arms through his suspenders, and was pulling off his shirt. Matt Bryson had dropped onto his bedroll, removed his brogans, and began massaging his feet. Outside, Harry Cravey announced that he’d fix a pot of beans if anybody else was hungry.
“Sounds good,” Gibb Gideon said. “I’ll do the coffee, you cook the beans.”
Matt Bryson snorted. “This feels like Sunday.”
It was, however, Wednesday.
“Maybe you’d rather be drilling the School of the Company again.” Little Sam pulled on a freshly laundered ivory shirt, with an inset bib of rose-colored stripes, and began tucking it inside his blue trousers.
Ryan plucked a string on the Miremont, frowned, turned the knob to tighten it.
Outside, the fire crackled. Somewhere in the tent city, a jew’s-harp began twanging out “Old Dan Tucker” accompanied by the sounds of laughter and a cacophony of voices. It certainly did feel like a Sunday.
Ryan moved to the next string, tuned it, then the next. By now, he could smell the aroma of Gibb Gideon’s coffee, and heard Harry Cravey pouring beans into a pot. He hoped Baby cooked them through this time. Last time, it had been like eating pebbles.
“Are you going like that?”
He looked up from his violin at Little Sam, now busy tying a red silk cravat around the paper collar he had affixed to his shirt.
Ryan glanced at his shirt, vest, and trousers, then looked back up at Houston.
“It’s only three-twenty,” Matt Bryson said, checking his watch. “The ball doesn’t begin for more than three hours.”
Little Sam shrugged, adjusted his cravat, pulled up his suspenders, and began combing his hair.
“You going to eat Cravey’s beans in that clean shirt?” Ryan asked.
He caught Little Sam’s eyes from the reflection of the little mirror they had tacked to the center pole. Sam Houston Jr. winked.
“I’m not eating with y’all, boys.” He slipped a comb into a pocket, and grabbed his coat and wide-brimmed gray hat. “I’ll be seeing you gents tonight. Play ‘Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair’ for me, Ryan.”
“I always do.”
“And you boys don’t spike the punch.”
* * * * *
Built by Captain E. S. and James H. Perkins, Perkins Hall stood in Houston at the corner of Franklin and Main Streets, the first opera house in the city. The last time Ryan had been here was back in November, playing with other amateur musicians in a benefit concert for the Hospital Fund.
There had been no alcohol at the concert hall that time, but, three songs into the ball, Ryan could smell the beer and ale flowing out of the kegs supplied by Peter Gabel’s brewery.
Seeing Little Sam Houston lead a young redhead onto the dance floor, Ryan turned toward the guitar player on his right as soon as they had finished “Barbara Allen” and mouthed the title of Stephen Foster’s song.
Applause sounded politely as Ryan began a violin introduction, and he had to smile as Little Sam gave him a wink while leading the young girl in a pink grenadine dress and fringed sash of pink ribbon around the floor.
Forty minutes later, the guitar player, a Company E lieutenant named Arnett from Robertson County, announced that the band would take a break for fifteen minutes, but that the choir from the city’s First Baptist Church would come on stage and sing.
Ryan put his fiddle in the case, closed it, and headed off the stage, avoiding the onrushing girls and elderly women of the choir. He turned to his left, went down the steps, and exited onto the main floor, ignoring Gibb Gideon’s calls for him to join him and several other infantrymen by the Gabel kegs. He found himself beside the tables of punch bowls, fruits, cakes, cookies, and pies.
He slaked his thirst with a glass of punch, and looked across the crowd for his mother and father.
“Do you ever get to dance?”
Turning quickly, Ryan almost splashed the remaining punch in his glass across his buttoned vest.
The best he could answer was: “Ummmm.”
She smiled, and bowed. Her blue dress was satin de Mai and thin silk, more fitting for the summer than winter, although Houston rarely felt winter’s breath. Trimmed with blue and white ruches, with a blue belt and clasp, the dress featured sleeves made of white muslin, and she wore a hat of mixed chip and straw, accented with a blue rosette and ostrich plume.
It was only later, lying in his bedroll back in the Sibley tent, that he remembered her dress. At that moment, if he
had been asked to describe what she was wearing, he would have been only able to say: “Ummmm.”
“I saw you play at the benefit for the hospital in November,” she said.
“Yes.” He set the glass on the table before he dropped it on the floor. “I was there.”
Idiot.
Her hair was midnight, tucked up in a chignon somewhere behind the hat and plume, her face dark, her eyes a far-reaching brown. She extended her delicate white-gloved hand.
“I am Irene Vardakas.” He would never be able to pronounce that last name.
His right hand shot forward. “Ryan McCalla.”
He was about to formulate a complete sentence when a fat man wearing an ill-fitting plaid sack suit tapped a brass-headed walnut cane on the floor near Ryan’s brogans, muttered something, and slapped Ryan hard across the back.
“Why don’t you kids get into some boats, row your way out to sea, and take the fight to the Yanks?” He laughed. His breath stank of ale.
The Baptist choir finished its first song.
Reluctantly Ryan turned away from his Greek goddess, and looked at the triple-chinned man with bloodshot eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir?”
The drunk repeated his question, and Ryan suggested he take up his battle plan with Captain Smith. He jutted his head toward a figure two tables down, standing between a chocolate cake and a picked-over ham. Captain Ashbel Smith seemed busy fending off an assault by a man wearing a green jacket that had been in fashion back when Sam Houston was president of the Republic of Texas.
The drunk looked toward Captain Smith, then back at Ryan, then at the Greek goddess, finally let out a chortle, and used his cane to push back his silk hat, before waddling back toward Gibb Gideon and the kegs of beer and ale.
“So …” Irene tried again. “Do you ever get to dance?”
“Sometimes,” Ryan said. He couldn’t remember ever dancing with anyone anywhere.
“My father says it’s my duty to dance with a brave young soldier defending Southern womanhood and Texas honor.”
The choir finished another song.
And There I’ll Be a Soldier Page 7