The Lost Army

by Frank Gee Patchin

  CHAPTER XV. IN CAMP AT ROLLA--A PRIVATE EXPEDITION INTO THE ENEMY’SCOUNTRY.

  |The three-months troops whose terms had expired, or were about toexpire, were sent home, and the post at Rolla left in charge of thethree-years regiments that remained, together with a portion of theregular forces of the late army of the southwest. The First Iowa, asalready stated, had been enlisted for three months, and soon after thearrival at Rolla it returned to its own state and was disbanded.

  True to their determination to see more of the war, Jack and Harryremained at Rolla when the regiment departed. At the same time theywrote to their parents and sent messages by their comrades, explainingwhy they wished to stay in Missouri, and their reasons for not goinghome. “We are not enlisted,” Jack wrote to his father, “and so we don’thave to get into danger like the soldiers do. We’ve nothing to do butdrive wagons and stay around the camp, where everything is safe. Theboys will tell you how it is when they get home, and you may be sure wewon’t take any risks we can keep out of.”

  There was a good deal of special pleading in Jack’s letter, as thereader plainly perceives. It was certainly a greater risk for the youthsto remain at a frontier post than to go home, where they would be outof all danger. Furthermore, anybody knows that while the position of ateamster is safer than that of the soldier who goes into battle, it isby no means a situation of unalloyed security. Wagon-trains are liableto attack and capture in the enemy’s country, and one of the favoriteenterprises of a cavalry commander is to strike his enemy’s wagon-trainon frequent occasions. If the wagons can be taken away they become theenemy’s property; if they cannot be secured they are destroyed, and,in either case, the unfortunate drivers fall into the enemy’s hands andbecome prisoners of war.

  The history of war is full of stories of attacks upon wagon-trains; oneof the perplexing problems for the military commander to solve is how tokeep open his line of communications when advancing into the regionof war and protect the trains that bring forward the supplies for histroops. If an army could be maintained without food and ammunition, savewhat it could collect in the enemy’s country, many a leader would begreatly relieved.

  Through the recommendation of the officers of the First Iowa Jack andHarry obtained employment with the post quartermaster at Rolla. Withthe approval of the commander of the troops stationed there he issuednew clothing and blankets to the youths, and they felt, to use an oldphrase, “as proud as peacocks.”

  A rumor came that a rebel army was assembling somewhere to the southwardfor the purpose of attacking Rolla and securing the valuable propertystored there. The garrison was put at work to throw up defenses, cannonwere sent from St. Louis, the hills around the village were cleared ofbrushwood, and everything about the place assumed the appearance of war.

  One day Jack suggested to Harry that they would make an excursion intothe neighboring country, just to see for themselves and have a littlefun.

  Harry agreed to the proposal, but said there was a difficulty in the wayon account of their clothing. They didn’t want to be known as belongingto the garrison of Rolla, for the double reason that the people wouldnot talk freely with them, and, besides, they might be seized andcarried off as prisoners; and furthermore, their suits were new and theydidn’t want to spoil them as long as spoiling could be avoided.

  Fortune favored them. That very day a scouting party brought in awagon-load of clothing which had been collected in a village a few milesaway to be sent to a company from that village, and then serving underGeneral Price. From this load of clothing the quartermaster allowed Jackand Harry to help themselves, and they managed to pick out two suitswhich fitted them about as well as one is ordinarily fitted in aready-made clothing store.

  Slouch hats added to these butternut garments completed their costume,and thus accoutered they set out on a tramp whose duration was anuncertainty. Their plan was to walk from Rolla to Ironton and backagain. The distance between the two points was about a hundred miles,and they intended to take a different road on their return from the onefollowed on the outward journey.

  Ironton was then the terminus of the Iron Mountain Railway, and washeld by a garrison of Union troops. Colonel Wyman, who commanded theThirteenth Illinois, then stationed at Rolla, promised to write to thecommander of the post at Ironton and inform him of the proposed journeyof the youths, so that their story would not be discredited on theirarrival there. It was thought best that they should carry no letters orpapers of any kind which might compromise them in case of capture. Sothey took nothing except sufficient money to pay their expenses on theway, and this was supplied by the commander of the post. The papermoney of the state of Missouri was preferred to anything else by theinhabitants of the region through which they were to pass, andtherefore they carried nothing which bore the stamp of the United Statesgovernment, with the exception of a few small pieces of silver coin andsome of the local “shin-plasters” that were then in circulation.

  The story that they were to tell in case they were questioned was thatthey had come from the northern part of Missouri and were on their wayto visit friends near Ironton. They would freely admit that they hadcome through Rolla, and Colonel Wyman gave them permission to tell allthey knew about the garrison there, except to give a guess as to thenumber of troops at the post. To all questions as to the number ofsoldiers at Rolla, they were to reply that they “did n’t know, butthought there were five or six thousand.”

  The fact was a reinforcement was expected in a few days, but this wasunknown to the youths, and therefore the colonel was quite willing theboys should give whatever information they could, and in saying thatthey did n’t know the number of soldiers at the post they would bestrictly within the lines of truth. On their part they were to learn allthey could about what the secessionists were doing in the region betweenRolla and Ironton, and to what extent it was sending recruits to therebel forces in the field.

  The only baggage either of them carried was an overcoat, if an overcoatcan be called baggage. Jack wanted to add a tooth-brush and a cake ofsoap to his outfit, but the proposal was vetoed by Harry.

  “Don’t you see,” said Harry, “you’d be giving yourself away at once?These fellows here don’t use soap, or so rarely that it is an exception;and as for tooth-brushes, I don’t believe a quarter of the people haveever heard of’em. Suppose they search us or see us using soap andtooth-brushes; they’d know right off that we were not of their kind.

  “And did n’t you hear about how soap-boxes caused a lot of ammunition tobe seized?” Harry added.

  “No; what was that?”

  “It was about the time of the Camp Jackson affair, when the stateauthorities were laying their plans for taking the state out of theUnion and getting ready to fight. The Union commanders at St. Louis weretrying to stop the shipment of arms and ammunition to the interiorof the state, and all packages of goods going in that direction wereexamined. At first only the outside of the packages was looked at, butone day something happened to require a more careful inspection.

  “The examining officers found some boxes labeled ‘soap’ on a steamboatbound for Lexington, on the Missouri river. Had there been only one ortwo boxes he would not have been suspicious, but when he found morethan one hundred boxes he ‘smelt a mouse.’ He naturally wondered whythe people in that part of Missouri could want so much soap, and fromwondering he ordered some of the boxes opened.

  “Every box was found to contain canisters of gunpowder instead of soap.The whole lot was seized, and after that no goods were allowed to goforward without a careful inspection. If the shipper had labeled thestuff ‘whisky’ instead of ‘soap,’ nobody would have been suspicious, aswhisky is a staple article of commerce and consumption in that region.”

  Jack admitted the force of the argument about soap, but insisted that atooth-brush would not be suspicious or betray their real character.

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” replied Harry. “One of these Union men fromthe very region we’re going through said the oth
er day that he thoughtthe colonel of the Illinois regiment was a very nice man, until he sawhim come out in front of his tent one morning with a glass of water inone hand and a little stick with some bristles on it in the other.

  “‘He came out there,’ said the man, ‘and stood round for five or tenminutes pushing that little stick round in his mouth and hawking andspitting and sloshing that ‘er water among his teeth till it made me feelsick. I don’t think he’s much of a nice man after that.’”

  Jack laughed, and agreed that the tooth-brush must be left behind, aswell as the soap, and thus it happened that they started with neither ofthose adjuncts of a civilized toilet.

  They took the road leading in a southeasterly direction from Rolla,starting one morning before daybreak, so as to be well on their waybefore anybody in the village was stirring. The sergeant of the picketon the road they were to travel had been notified to let them go onwithout question, and he did so on their presentation of a pass dulysigned by the commandant of the post. By sunrise they were a good threemiles out of town, and had met nobody.

  The first man they met was a Union refugee, who was making his way tothe post to escape persecution of his secession neighbors; at least thatwas what the youths inferred, though he was too cautious to say so untilhe had reached the protection of the Stars and Stripes. He asked if hewas on the right road for Rolla, and on being assured that he was heappeared greatly relieved.

  “I don’t know where you-’uns are going,” said he, “but you ‘ll findlively times if you get down into Arkansas.”

  “How so?” one of the boys asked.

  “Why,” was the reply, “everybody’s going to the army, and they don’ttalk about nothing else. They say they’ll be up here soon and drive theYanks out of Rolla and everywhere else.”

  “They’re used to driving,” said Jack; “there’s a lot of’em at Rollathat’s just been driven in from Springfield, and don’t act as thoughthey were going back again in a hurry.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard so,” replied the stranger; “p’r’aps they don’t want togo back there yet awhile.”

  The conversation lasted for ten or fifteen minutes, and was asnon-committal as possible on both sides. Neither party was willing toadmit friendliness for the Union side, as each was fearful of afterconsequences. The stranger was the first to move on, as he evidentlydistrusted the youths and wanted to get away from them.