Joseph A. Altsheler - The Tree of Appomattox

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The two colonels were at the head of the sombre little column. It had
seemed to Harry Kenton as they left the field that each of them had
suddenly grown at least ten years older, but now as they passed within
the deep shadows they became erect again and their faces grew more
youthful. It was a marvelous transformation, but Harry read their
secret. All the rest of the Invincibles were lads, or but little more,
and they two middle-aged men felt that they were responsible for them.
In the face of defeat and irretrievable disaster they recovered their
courage, and refused to abandon hope.

"A dark sunset, Hector," said Colonel Talbot, "but a bright dawn will
come, even yet."

"Who can doubt it, Leonidas? We won a glorious victory over odds in
the morning, but when a million Yankees appeared on the field in the
afternoon it was too much."

"That's always the trouble, Hector. We are never able to finish our
victories, because so many of the enemy always come up before the work
is done."

"It's a great pity, Leonidas, that we didn't count the Yankees before the
war was started."

"It's too late now. Don't call up a sore subject, Hector. We've got to
take care of these lads of ours, and try to get them across the mountain
somehow to Lee. It's useless to seek Early and we couldn't reach him if
we tried. He's done for."

"Alas! It's true, Leonidas! We're through with the valley for this
autumn at least, and, since the organization of the army here is broken
up, there is nothing for us to do but go to Lee. Harry, is this a high
mountain?"

"Not so very high, sir," replied Harry Kenton, who was just behind him,
"but I don't think we can cross it tonight."

"Maybe we don't want to do so," said Colonel Talbot. "You boys have food
in your knapsacks, taken from the Union camps, which we held for a few
short and glorious hours. At least we have brought off those valuable
trophies, and, when we have climbed higher up the mountain side, we will
sup and rest."

The colonel held himself very erect, and spoke in a firm proud tone.
He would inspire a high spirit into the hearts of these boys of his,
and in doing so he inspired a great deal of it into his own. He looked
back at his column, which still limped bravely after him. It was too
dark for him to see the faces of the lads, but he knew that none of them
expressed despair.

"That's the way, my brave fellows," he said. "I know we'll find a warm
and comfortable cove higher up. We'll sleep there, and tomorrow we'll
start toward Lee. When we join him we'll whip Grant, come back here and
rout Sheridan and then go on and take Washington."

"Where I mean yet, sir, to sleep in the White House with my boots on,"
said the irrepressible Happy.

"You are a youth frivolous of speech, Thomas Langdon," said Colonel
Leonidas Talbot gravely, "but I have always known that beneath this
superficiality of manner was a brave and honest heart. I'm glad to see
that your courage is so high."

"Thank you, sir," said Happy sincerely.

Half way up the mountain they found the dip they wished, sheltered by
cedars and pines. Here they rested and ate, and from their covert saw
many lights burning in the valley. But they knew they were the lights
of the victorious foe, and they would not look that way often.

The October winds were cold, and they had lost their blankets, but the
dry leaves lay in heaps, and they raked them up for beds. The lads,
worn to the bone, fell asleep, and, after a while, only the two colonels
remained awake.

"I do not feel sleepy at all, Hector," said Colonel Leonidas Talbot.

"I could not possibly sleep, Leonidas," said Lieutenant Colonel
St. Hilaire.

"Then shall we?"

"Why not?"

Colonel Talbot produced from under his coat a small board, and Lieutenant
Colonel St. Hilaire took from under his own coat a small box.

They put the board upon a broad stone, arranged the chessmen, as they
were at the latest interruption, and, as the moonlight came through the
dwarfed pines and cedars, the two gray heads bent over the game.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE COVE

General Sheridan permitted the Winchester men to rest a long time,
or rather he ordered them to do so. No regiment had distinguished itself
more at Cedar Creek or in the previous battles, and it was best for it to
lie by a while, and recover its physical strength--strength of the spirit
it had never lost. It also gave a needed chance to the sixteen slight
wounds accumulated by Dick, Pennington and Warner to heal perfectly.

"Unless something further happens," said Warner, regretfully, "I won't
have a single honorable scar to take back with me and show in Vermont."

"I'll have one slight, though honorable, scar, but I won't be able to
show it," said Pennington, also with regret.

"I trust that it's in front, Frank," said Dick.

"It is, all right. Don't worry about that. But what about you, Dick?"

"I had hopes of a place on my left arm just above the elbow. A bullet,
traveling at the rate of a million miles a minute, broke the skin there
and took a thin flake of flesh with it, but I'm so terribly healthy it's
healed up without leaving a trace."

"There's no hope for us," said Warner, sighing. "We can never point to
the proof of our warlike deeds. You didn't find your cousin among the
prisoners?"

"No, nor was he among their fallen whom we buried. Nor any of his
friends either. I'm quite sure that he escaped. My intuition tells me
so."

"It's not your intuition at all," said Warner reprovingly. "It's a
reasonable opinion, formed in your mind by antecedent conditions.
You call it intuition, because you don't take the trouble to discover the
circumstances that led to its production. It's only lazy minds that fall
back upon second sight, mind-reading and such things."

"Isn't he the big-word man?" said Pennington admiringly. "I tell you
what, George, General Early is still alive somewhere, and we're going to
send you to talk him to death. They say he's a splendid swearer, one of
the greatest that ever lived, but he won't be able to get out a single
cuss, with you standing before him, and spouting the whole unabridged
dictionary to him."

"At least when I talk I say something," replied Warner sternly. "It
seems strange to me, Frank Pennington, that your life on the plains,
where conditions, for the present at least, are hard, has permitted you
to have so much frivolity in your nature."

"It's not frivolity, George. It's a gay and bright spirit, in the rays
of which you may bask without price. It will do you good."

"Do you know what's to be our next duty?"

"No, I don't, and I'm not going to bother about it. I'll leave that
directly to Colonel Winchester, and indirectly to General Sheridan.
When you rest, put your mind at rest. Concentration on whatever you are
doing is the secret of continued success."

They were lying on blankets near the foot of the mountain, and the time
was late October. The days were growing cold and the nights colder,
but a fine big fire was blazing before them, and they rejoiced in the
warmth and brightness, shed from the flames and the heaps of glowing
coals.

"I'll venture the prediction," said Pennington, "that our next march is
not against an army, but against guerrillas. They say that up there in
the Alleghanies Slade and Skelly are doing a lot of harm. They may have
to be hunted out and the Winchester men have the best reputation in the
army for that sort of work. We earned it by our work against these very
fellows in Tennessee."

"For which most of the credit is due to Sergeant Whitley," said Dick.
"He's a grand trailer, and he can lead us with certainty, when other
regiments can't find the way."

Dick gazed westward beyond the dim blue line of the Alleghanies, and he
knew that he would feel no surprise if Pennington's prediction should
come true. The nest of difficult mountains was a good shelter for
outlaws, and the Winchesters, with the sergeant picking up the trail,
were the very men to hunt them.

He knew too that, unless the task was begun soon, it would prove a
supreme test of endurance, and there would be dangers in plenty. Snow
would be falling before long on the mountains, and they would become a
frozen wilderness, almost as wild and savage as they were before the
white man came.

But it seemed for a while that the intuition of both Dick and Pennington
had failed. They spent many days in the valley trying to catch the
evasive Mosby and his men, although they had little success. Mosby's
rangers knowing the country thoroughly made many daring raids, although
they could not become a serious menace.

When they returned through Winchester from the last of these expeditions
the Winchester men were wrapped in heavy army cloaks, for the wind from
the mountains could now cut through uniforms alone. Dick, glancing
toward the Alleghanies, saw a ribbon of white above their blue line.

"Look, fellows! The first snow!" he said.

"I see," said Warner. "It snows on the just and the unjust, the unjust
being Slade and Skelly, who are surely up there."

"Just before we went out," sad Pennington, "the news of some fresh and
special atrocity of theirs came in. I'm thinking the time is near when
we'll be sent after them."

"We'll need snow shoes," said Warner, shivering as he looked. "I can see
that the snow is increasing. Which way is the wind blowing, Dick?"

"Toward us."

"Then we're likely to get a little of that snow. The clouds will blow
off the mountains and sprinkle us with flakes in the valley."

"I like winter in peace, but not in war," said Pennington. "It makes
campaigning hard. It's no fun marching at night in a driving storm of
snow or hail."

"But what we can't help we must stand," said Warner with resignation.

Both predictions, the one about the snow and the other concerning the
duty that would be assigned to them, quickly came to pass. Before sunset
the blue line of the Alleghanies was lost wholly in mist and vapor.
Then great flakes began to fall on the camp, and the young officers were
glad to find refuge in their tents.

It was not a heavy snow fall where they were, but it blew down at
intervals all through the night, and the next morning it lay upon the
ground to the depth of an inch or so. Then the second part of the
prophecy was justified. Colonel Winchester himself aroused all his staff
and heads of companies.

"A fine crisp winter morning for us to take a ride," he said cheerfully.
"General Sheridan has become vexed beyond endurance over the doings of
Slade and Skelly, and he has chosen his best band of guerrilla-hunters to
seek 'em out in their lairs and annihilate 'em."

"I knew it," groaned Pennington in an undertone to Dick. "I was as
certain of it as if I had read the order already." But aloud he said as
he saluted: "We're glad we're chosen for the honor, sir. I speak for
Mr. Mason, Mr. Warner and myself."

"I'm glad you're thankful," laughed the colonel. "A grateful and
resolute heart always prepares one for hardships, and we'll have plenty
of them over there in the high mountains, where the snow lies deep.
But we have new horses, furnished especially for this expedition, and
Sergeant Whitley and Mr. Shepard will guide us. The sergeant can hear or
see anything within a quarter of a mile of him, and Mr. Shepard, being
a native of the valley, knows also all the mountains that close it in."

The young lieutenants were sincerely glad the sergeant and Shepard were
to go along, as with them they felt comparatively safe from ambush,
a danger to be dreaded where Slade and Skelly were concerned.

"We agreed that General Sheridan was worth ten thousand men," said Warner,
"and I believe that the battle of Cedar Creek proved it. Now if Sheridan
is worth ten thousand, the sergeant and Shepard are certainly worth a
thousand each. It's a simple algebraic problem which I could demonstrate
to you by the liberal use of x and y, but in your case it's not
necessary. You must accept my word for it."

"We'll do it! We'll do it! say no more!" exclaimed Pennington hastily.

It was a splendid column of men that rode out from the Union camp and
General Sheridan himself saw them off. Colonel Winchester at their head
was a man of fine face and figure, and he had never looked more martial.
The hardships of war had left no mark upon him. His face was tanned a
deep red by the winds of summer and winter, and although a year or two
over forty he seemed to be several years less. Behind him came Dick,
Pennington and Warner, hardy and well knit, who had passed through the
most terrible of all schools, three and a half years of incessant war,
and who although youths were nevertheless stronger and more resourceful
than most men.

Near them rode the sergeant, happy in his capacity as scout and guide,
and welcoming the responsibility that he knew would be his, as soon as
they reached the mountains, looming so near and white. He felt as if
he were back upon the plains, leading a troop in a great blizzard, and
guarding it with eye and ear and all his five senses against Sioux or
Cheyenne ambush. He was not a mere trainer of a squad of men, he was,
in a real sense, a leader of an army.

Shepard, the spy, also felt a great uplift of the spirits. He was a
man of high ideals, whose real nature the people about him were just
beginning to learn. He did not like his trade of a spy, but being aware
that he was peculiarly fitted for it intense patriotism had caused him to
accept its duties. Now he felt that most of his work in such a capacity
was over. He could freely ride with the other men and fight openly as
they did. But if emergency demanded that he renew his secret service he
would do so instantly and without hesitation.

Colonel Winchester looked back with pride at his column. Like most of
the regiments at that period of the war it was small, three hundred
sinewy well-mounted young men, who had endured every kind of hardship
and who could endure the like again. All of them were wrapped in heavy
overcoats over their uniforms, and they rode the best of horses, animals
that Colonel Winchester had been allowed to choose.

The colonel felt so good that he took out his little silver whistle,
and blew upon it a mellow hunting call. The column broke into a trot
and the snow flew behind the beating hoofs in a long white trail.
Spontaneously the men burst into a cheer, and the cold wind blowing past
them merely whipped their blood into high exaltation.

But as they rode across the valley Dick could not help feeling some
depression over its ruined and desolate appearance, worse now in winter
than in summer. No friendly smoke rose from any chimney, there were no
horses nor cattle in the fields, the rails of the fences had gone long
since to make fires for the soldiers and the roads rutted deep by the
rains had been untouched. Silence and loneliness were supreme everywhere.

He was glad when they left it all behind, and entered the mountains
through a pass fairly broad and sufficient for horsemen. He did not feel
so much oppression here. It was natural for mountains to be lonely and
silent also, particularly in winter, and his spirits rose again as they
rode between the white ridges.

At the entrance to the pass a mountaineer named Reed met them. It was
he who had brought the news of the latest exploit by Slade and Skelly,
but he had returned quickly to warn some friends of his in the foothills
and was back again in time to meet the soldiers. He was a long thin man
of middle age, riding a large black mule. An immense gray shawl was
pinned about his shoulders, and woollen leggings came high over his
trousers. As he talked much he chewed tobacco vigorously. But Dick saw
at once that like many of the mountaineers he was a shrewd man, and,
despite lack of education, was able to look, see and judge.

Reed glanced over the column, showed his teeth, yellowed by the constant
use of tobacco, and the glint of a smile appeared in his eyes.

"Look like good men. I couldn't hev picked 'em better myself, colonel,"
he said, with the easy familiarity of the hills.

"They've been in many battles, and they've never failed," said the
colonel with some pride.

"You'll hev to do somethin' more than fight up thar on the high ridges,"
said the mountaineer, showing his yellow teeth again. "You'll hev to
look out fur traps, snares an' ambushes. Slade an' Skelly ain't soldiers
that come out an' fight fa'r an' squar' in the open. No, sirree, they're
rattlesnakes, a pair uv 'em an' full uv p'ison. We've got to find our
rattlesnakes an' ketch 'em. Ef we don't, they'll be stingin' jest the
same after you've gone."

"That's just the way I look at it, Mr. Reed. Sergeant Whitley here is
a specialist in rattlesnakes. He used to hunt down and kill the big
bloated ones on the plains, and even the snow won't keep him from tracing
'em to their dens here in the mountains."

Reed, after the custom of his kind, looked the sergeant up and down with
a frank stare.

"'Pears to be a good man," he said, "hefty in build an' quick in the eye.
Glad to know you, Mr. Whitley. You an' me may take part in a shootin'
bee together an' this old long-barreled firearm uv mine kin give a good
account uv herself."

He patted his rifle affectionately, a weapon of ancient type, with a long
slender barrel of blue steel, and a heavy carved stock. It was just such
a rifle as the frontiersmen used. Dick's mind, in an instant, traveled
back into the wilderness and he was once more with the great hunters and
scouts who fought for the fair land of Kain-tuck-ee. His imagination
was so vivid that it required only a touch to stir it into life, and the
aspect of the mountains, wild and lonely and clothed in snow, heightened
the illusion.

"I s'pose from what you tell us that you'll have the chance to use it,
Mr. Reed," said the sergeant.

"I reckon so," replied the mountaineer emphatically. "'Bout five miles
up this pass you'll come to a cove in which Jim Johnson's house stood.
Some uv them gorillers attacked it, three nights ago. Jim held 'em off
with his double-barreled shotgun, 'til his wife an' children could git
out the back way. Then he skedaddled hisself. They plundered the house
uv everythin' wuth carryin' off an' then they burned it plum' to the
groun'. Jim an' his people near froze to death on the mounting, but
they got at last to the cabin uv some uv their kin, whar they are now.
Then they've carried off all the hosses an' cattle they kin find in
the valleys an' besides robbin' everybody they've shot some good men.
Thar is shorely a good dose uv lead comin' to every feller in that band."

The mountaineer's face for a moment contracted violently. Dick saw that
he was fairly burning for revenge. Among his people the code of an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth still prevailed, unquestioned, and
there would be no pity for the guerrilla who might come under the muzzle
of his rifle. But his feelings were shown only for the moment. In
another instant, he was a stoic like the Indians whom he had displaced.
After a little silence he added:

"That man Slade, who is the brains uv the outfit, is plum' devil.
So fur ez his doin's in these mountings are concerned he ain't human at
all. He hez no mercy fur nuthin' at no time."

His words found an echo in Dick's own mind. He remembered how venomously
Slade had hunted for his own life in the Southern marshes, and chance,
since then, had brought them into opposition more than once. Just as
Harry had felt that there was a long contest between Shepard and himself,
Dick felt that Slade and he were now to be pitted in a long and mortal
combat. But Shepard was a patriot, while Slade was a demon, if ever a
man was. If he were to have a particular enemy he was willing that it
should be Slade, as he could see in him no redeeming quality that would
cause him to stay his hand, if his own chance came.

"Have you any idea where the guerrillas are camped now?" asked Colonel
Winchester.

"When we last heard uv 'em they wuz in Burton's Cove," replied the
mountaineer, "though uv course they may hev moved sence then. Still,
the snow may hev held 'em. It's a-layin' right deep on the mountings,
an' even the gorillers ain't so anxious to plough thar way through it."

"How long will it take us to reach Burton's Cove?"

"It's jest ez the weather sez, colonel. Ef the snow holds off we might
make it tomorrow afore dark, but ef the snow makes up its mind to come
tumblin' down ag'in, it's the day after that, fur shore."

"At any rate, another fall of snow is no harder for us than it is for
them," said the colonel, who showed the spirit of a true leader. "Now,
Mr. Reed, do you think we can find anybody on this road who will tell us
where the band has gone?"

"It ain't much uv a road an' thar ain't many people to ride on it in the
best uv times, so I reckon our chance uv meetin' a traveler who knows
much is jest about ez good as our chance uv findin' a peck uv gold in the
next snowdrift."

"Which means there's no chance at all."

"I reckon that's 'bout the size uv it. But, colonel, we don't hev to
look to the road fur the word."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll turn our eyes upward, to the mounting heights. Some uv us who
are jest bound to save the Union are settin' up on top uv high ridges,
whar that p'ison band can't go, waitin' to tell us whar _we_ ought to go.
They've got some home-made flags, an' they'll wave 'em to me."

"Mr. Reed, you're a man of foresight and perception."

"Foresight? I know what that is. It's the opposite uv hindsight,
but I ain't made the acquaintance uv perception."

"Perception is what you see after you think, and I know that you're a man
who thinks."

"Thank you, colonel, but I reckon that in sech a war ez this a man hez
jest got to set right plum' down, an' think sometimes. It's naterally
forced upon him. Them that starts a war mebbe don't do much thinkin',
but them that fights it hev to do a power uv it."

"Your logic is sound, Mr. Reed."

"I hev a pow'ful good eye, colonel, an' I think I see a man on top uv
that high ridge to the right. But my eye ain't ez good ez your glasses,
an' would you min' takin' a look through 'em? Foller a line from that
little bunch of cedars to the crest."

"Yes, it's a man. I can see him quite plainly. He has a big, gray shawl
like your own, wrapped around his shoulders. Perhaps he's one of your
friends."

"I reckon so, but sence he ain't makin' no signs he ain't got nuthin' to
tell. It wuz agreed that them that didn't know nuthin' wuz to keep it to
theirselves while we rode on until we come to them that did. It saves
time. Now he's gone, ain't he, colonel?"

"Yes, something has come in between."

"It's the first thin edge uv the mist. Them's clouds out thar in the
northwest, floatin' over the mountings. I'm sorry, colonel, but more
snow is comin'. The signs is too plain. Look through that gap an' see
what big brown clouds are sailin' up! They're just chock full uv
millions uv millions uv tons uv snow!"

"You know your own country and its winter ways, Mr. Reed. How long will
it be before the snow comes?"

"Lend me your glasses a minute, colonel."

He examined the clouds a long time through the powerful lenses, and when
he handed them back he replied:

"Them clouds are movin' up in a hurry, colonel. They hev saw us here
ridin' into the mountings, an' they want to pour their snow down on us
afore we git whar we want to go."

Colonel Winchester looked anxious.

"I don't like it," he said. "It doesn't suit cavalry to be plunging
around in snowdrifts."

"You're right, colonel. Deep snow is shorely hard on hosses. It looks
ez ef we'd be holed up. B'ars an' catamounts, how them clouds are
a-trottin' 'cross the sky! Here come the fust flakes an' they look ez
big ez feathers!"

The colonel's anxiety deepened, turning rapidly to alarm.

"You spoke of our being holed up, Mr. Reed, what did you mean by it?"
he asked.

"Shet in by the snow. But I know a place, colonel, that we kin reach,
an' whar we kin stay ef the snow gits too deep fur us. These mountings
are full uv little valleys an' coves. They say the Alleghanies run more
than a thousand miles one way an' mebbe three hundred or so another.
I reckon that when the Lord made 'em, an' looked at His job, he wondered
how He wuz goin' to hev people live in sech a mass uv mountings. Then He
took His fingers an' pressed 'em down into the ground lots an' lots uv
times, an' He made all sorts of purty valleys an' ravines through which
the rivers an' creeks an' branches could run, an' snug little coves in
which men could build thar cabins an' be sheltered by the big cliffs
above an' the forest hangin' on 'em. I reckon that He favored us up here,
'cause the mountings jest suit me. Nuthin' on earth could drive me out
uv 'em."

He looked up at the lofty ridges hidden now and then by the whirling snow,
and his eyes glistened. It was a stern and wild scene, but he knew that
it made the snug cove and the log cabins all the snugger. The flakes
were increasing now, and an evil wind was driving them hard in the men's
faces. The wind, as it came through the gorges, had many voices, too,
howling and shrieking in wrath. The young troopers were devoutly
grateful for the heavy overcoats and gloves with which a thoughtful
general had provided them.

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