Kincaid's Battery
Page 54
LIV
SAME APRIL DAY TWICE
Black was that Friday for the daughters of Dixie. Farragut demandedsurrender, Lovell declined. The mayor, the council, the Committee ofPublic Safety declined.
On Saturday the two sides parleyed while Lovell withdrew his forces. OnSunday the Foreign Legion preserved order of a sort highly displeasingto "a plain sailor," as Farragut, on the Hartford, called himself, andto all the plain sailors of his fleet--who by that time may have beenhard to please. On Monday the "plain sailor" bade the mayor, who hadonce been a plain stevedore, remove the city's women and children withinforty-eight hours. But on Tuesday, in wiser mood, he sent his ownblue-jackets, cutlasses, muskets and hand-dragged howitzers, lowered thered-and-yellow-striped flag of one star and on mint and custom-house ranup the stars and stripes. Constance and Miranda, from their distantroof, saw the emblem soar to the breeze, and persuaded Anna to an actwhich cost her as many hours as it need have taken minutes--thedestruction of the diary. That was on the twenty-ninth of April.
Let us not get dates confused. "On the twenty-ninth of April," saysGrant, "the troops were at Hard Times (Arkansas), and the fleet (anotherfleet), under Admiral Porter, made an attack upon Grand Gulf(Mississippi), while I reconnoitered." But that twenty-ninth was a yearlater, when New Orleans for three hundred and sixty-five separatesoul-torturing days had been sitting in the twilight of her captivity,often writhing and raving in it, starved to madness for news of Lee'sand Stonewall's victories and of her boys, her ragged, gaunt, superb,bleeding, dying, on-pressing boys, and getting only such dubious crumbsof rumor as could be smuggled in, or such tainted bad news as hercaptors delighted to offer her through the bars of a confiscated press.No? did the treatment she was getting merely--as Irby, with much truth,on that twenty-ninth remarked in a group about a headquarters camp-firenear Grand Gulf--did it merely seem so bad to poor New Orleans?
Oh, but!--as the dingy, lean-faced Hilary cried, springing from theground where he lay and jerking his pipe from his teeth--was it notenough for a world's pity that to her it seemed so? How it seemed to theCallenders in particular was a point no one dared raise where he was. Tothem had come conditions so peculiarly distressing and isolating thatthey were not sharers of the common lot around them, but of onestrangely, incalculably worse. Rarely and only in guarded tones werethey spoken of now in Kincaid's Battery, lately arrived here, coveredwith the glory of their part in Bragg's autumn and winter campaignthrough Tennessee and Kentucky, and with Perryville, Murfreesboro' andStone River added to the long list on their standard. Lately arrived,yes; but bringing with them as well as meeting here a word apparently soauthentic and certainly so crushing, (as to those sweet Callenders),that no one ever let himself hint toward it in the hearing even ofCharlie Valcour, much less of their battle-scarred, prison-wasted,march-worn, grief-torn, yet still bright-eyed, brave-stepping,brave-riding Major. Major of Kincaid's Battalion he was now, whose wholetwelve brass pieces had that morning helped the big iron batteries fightPorter's gunboats.
"Finding Grand Gulf too strong," says Grant, "I moved the army below,running the batteries there as we had done at Vicksburg. Learning herethat there was a good road from Bruinsburg up to Port Gibson" (both inMississippi), "I determined to cross--"
How pleasantly familiar were those names in New Orleans. Alikecommercially and socially they meant parterres, walks, bowers in hergreat back-garden. From the homes of the rich planters around the townsand landings so entitled, and from others all up and down the river fromNatchez to Vicksburg and the Bends, hailed many a Carondelet Streetnabob and came yearly those towering steamboat-loads--those floatingcliffs--of cotton-bales that filled presses, ships and bank-boxes andbought her imports--plows, shoes, bagging, spices, silks and wines: camealso their dashing sons and daughters, to share and heighten thesplendors of her carnivals and lure away her beaux and belles to summeroutings and their logical results. In all the region there was hardly afamily with which some half-dozen of the battery were not acquainted, oreven related.
"Home again, home again from a foreign shore,"
sang the whole eighty-odd, every ladies' man of them, around out-of-tunepianos with girls whose brothers were all away in Georgia and Virginia,some forever at rest, some about to fight Chancellorsville. Such achorus was singing that night within ear-shot of the headquarters groupwhen Ned Ferry, once of the battery, but transferred to Harper'scavalry, rode up and was led by Hilary to the commanding general to saythat Grant had crossed the river. Piano and song hushed as the buglesrang, and by daybreak all camps had vanished and the gray columns werehurrying, horse, foot, and wheels, down every southerly road to crushthe invader.
At the head of one rode General Brodnax. Hearing Hilary among his staffhe sent for him and began to speak of Mandeville, long gone to Richmondon some official matter and daily expected back; and then he mentioned"this fellow Grant," saying he had known him in Mexico. "And now," heconcluded, "he's the toughest old he one they've got."
On the face of either kinsman there came a fine smile that really madethem look alike. "We'll try our jaw-teeth on him to-morrow," laughed thenephew.
"Hilary, you weren't one of those singers last evening, were you?"
"Why, no, uncle, for once you'll be pleased--"
"Not by a dam-site!" The smile was gone. "You know, my boy, that in sucha time as this if a leader--and above all such a capering, high-kickingcolt as you--begins to mope and droop like a cab-horse in the rain, hismen will soon not be worth a--what?... Oh, blast the others, when _you_do so you're moping, and whether your men can stand it or not, Ican't!--what?... Well, then, for God's sake don't! For there's anotherpoint, Hilary: as long as you were every night a 'ladies' man' and everyday a laugher at death you could take those boys through hell-fire atany call; but if they once get the notion--which you came mighty neargiving them yesterday--that you hold their lives cheap merely becauseyou're tired of your own, they'll soon make you wish you'd never seteyes on a certain friend of ours, worse than you or they or I have everwished it yet."
"I've never wished it yet, uncle. I can't. I've never believed onebreath of all we've heard. It's not true. It can't be, simply becauseit can't be."
"Then why do you behave as if it were?" "I won't, uncle. Honor bright!You watch me." And next day, in front of Port Gibson, through all thepatter, smoke, and crash, through all the charging, cheering andvolleying, while the ever-thinning, shortening gray lines were beingcrowded back from rise to rise--back, back through field, grove, hedge,worm-fence and farmyard, clear back to Grindstone Ford, Bayou Pierre,and with the cavalry, Harper's, cut off and driven up eastward throughthe town--the enraged old brigadier watched and saw. He saw far, sawclose, with blasphemous exultation, how Hilary and his guns, calledhere, sent there, flashed, thundered, galloped, blazed, howled and heldon with furious valor and bleeding tenacity yet always with aquick-sightedness which just avoided folly and ruin, and at length stoodrock fast, honor bright, at North Fork and held it till, except thecavalry, the last gray column was over and the bridges safely burning.
That night Ned Ferry--of the cavalry withdrawn to the eastward uplandsto protect that great source of supplies and its New Orleans and JacksonRailroad--was made a lieutenant, and a certain brave Charlotte, whomlater he loved and won, bringing New Orleans letters to camp, broughtalso such news of the foe that before dawn, led by her, Ferry's Scoutsrode their first ride. All day they rode, while the main armies lay withNorth Fork between them, the grays entrenching, the blues rebridging.When at sundown she and Ned Ferry parted, and at night he bivouacked hismen for a brief rest in a black solitude from which the camp-fires ofboth hosts were in full sight and the enemy's bridge-building easilyheard, he sought, uncompanioned, Kincaid's Battery and found HilaryKincaid. War is what Sherman called it, who two or three days later, atGrand Gulf (evacuated), crossed into this very strife. Yet peace(so-called) and riches rarely bind men in such loving pairs as do crueltoil, deadly perils, common griefs, exile from woman and dailyexperi
ence of one another's sweetness, valor, and strength, and it wasfor such things that this pair, loving so many besides, particularlyloved each other.
With glad eyes Kincaid rose from a log.
"Major," began the handsome scout, dapper from kepi to spurs in contrastto the worn visage and dress of his senior, but Hilary was alreadyspeaking.
"My gentle Ned!" he cried. "_Lieutenant_--Ferry!"
Amid kind greetings from Captain Bartleson and others the eyes of thetwo--Hilary's so mettlesome, Ferry's so placid--exchanged meanings, andthe pair went and sat alone on the trail of a gun; on Roaring Betsy'sknee, as it were. There Hilary heard of the strange fair guide and ofnews told by her which brought him to his feet with a cry of joy thatdrew the glad eyes of half the battery.
"The little mother saint of your flag, boys!" he explained to a knot ofthem later, "the little godmother of your guns!" The Callenders were outof New Orleans, banished as "registered enemies."