Two days after the battle of Antietam, Dick went with Colonel Winchester to Washington on official duty. His nerves, shaken so severely by that awful battle, were not yet fully restored and he was glad of the little respite, and change of scene. The sights of the city and the talk of men were a restorative to him.
The capital was undoubtedly gay. The deep depression and fear that had hung over it a few weeks ago were gone. Men had believed after the Second Manassas that Lee might take Washington and this fear was not decreased when he passed into Maryland on what seemed to be an invasion. Many had begun to believe that he was invincible, that every Northern commander whoever he might be, would be beaten by him, but Antietam, although there were bitter complaints that Lee might have been destroyed instead of merely being checked, had changed a sky of steel into a sky of blue.
Washington was not only gay, it was brilliant. Life flowed fast and it was astonishingly vivid. A restless society, always seeking something new flitted from house to house. Dick, young and impressionable, would have been glad to share a little in it, but his time was too short. He went once with Colonel Winchester to the theatre, and the boy who had thrice seen a hundred and fifty thousand men in deadly action hung breathless over the mimic struggles of a few men and women on a painted stage.
The second day after his arrival he received a letter from his mother that had been awaiting him there. It had come by the way of Louisville through the Northern lines, and it was long and full of news. Pendleton, she said, was a sad town in these days. All of the older boys and young men had gone away to the armies, and many of them had been killed already, or had died in hospitals. Here she gave names and Dick's heart grew heavy, because in this fatal list were old friends of his.
It was not alone the boys and young men who had gone, wrote Mrs. Mason, but the middle-aged men, too. Dr. Russell had kept the Pendleton Academy open, but he had no pupil over sixteen years of age. There were no trustees, because they had all gone to the war. Senator Culver had been killed in the fighting in Tennessee, but she heard that Colonel Kenton was alive and well and with Bragg's army.
The affairs of the Union, she continued, were not going well in Tennessee and Kentucky. The terrible Confederate cavalryman Forrest had suddenly raided Murfreesborough in Tennessee, where Union regiments were stationed, and had destroyed or captured them all. Throughout the west the Southerners were raising their heads again. General Bragg, it was said, was advancing with a strong army, and was already farther north than the army of General Buell, which was in Tennessee. It was said that Louisville, one of the largest and richest of the border cities, would surely fall into the hands of the South.
Dick read the letter with changing and strong emotions. Amid the terrible struggles in the east, the west was almost blotted out of his mind. The Second Manassas and Antietam had great power to absorb attention wholly upon themselves. He had wholly forgotten for the time about Pendleton, the people whom he knew, and even his mother. Now they returned with increased strength. His memory was flooded with recollections of the little town, every house and face of which he knew.
And so the Confederates were coming north again with a great army. Shiloh had been far from crushing them in the west. The letter had been written before the Second Manassas, and that and Lee's great fight against odds at Antietam would certainly arouse in them the wish for like achievements. He inferred that since the armies in the east were exhausted, the great field for action would be for a while, in the west, and he was seized with an intense longing for that region which was his own.
It was not coincidence, but the need for men that made Dick's wish come true almost at once. A few hours after he received his letter Colonel Winchester found him sitting in the lobby of the hotel in which Dick had twice talked with the contractor. But the boy was alone this time, and as Colonel Winchester sat down beside him he said:
“Dick, the capital has received alarming news from Kentucky. Buoyed up by their successes in the east the Confederacy is going to make an effort to secure that state. Bragg with a powerful force is already on his way toward Louisville, and we fear that he has slipped away from Buell.”
“So I've heard. I found here a letter from my mother, and she told me all the reports from that section.”
“And is Mrs. Mason well? She has not been troubled by guerillas, or in any other way?”
“Not at all. Mother's health is always good, and she has not been molested.”
“Dick, it's possible that we may see Kentucky again soon.”
“Can that be true, and how is it so, sir?”
“The administration is greatly alarmed about Kentucky and the west. This movement of Bragg's army is formidable, and it would be a great blow for us if he took Louisville. Dispatches have been sent east for help. My regiment and several others that really belong in the west have been asked for, and we are to start in three days. Dick, do you know how many men of the Winchester regiment are left? We shall be able to start with only one hundred and five men, and when we attacked at Donelson we were a thousand strong.”
“And the end of the war, sir, seems as far off as ever.”
“So it does, Dick, but we'll go, and we'll do our best. Starting from Washington we can reach Louisville in two days by train. Bragg, no matter what progress he may make across the state, cannot be there then. If any big battle is to be fought we're likely to be in it.”
The scanty remainder of the regiment was brought to Washington and two days later they were in Louisville, which they found full of alarm. The famous Southern partisan leader, John Morgan, had been roaming everywhere over the state, capturing towns, taking prisoners and throwing all the Union communications into confusion by means of false dispatches.
People told with mingled amusement and apprehension of Morgan's telegrapher, Ellsworth, who cut the wires, attached his own instrument, and replied to the Union messages and sent answers as his general pleased. It was said that Bragg was already approaching Munfordville where there was a Northern fort and garrison. And it was said that Buell on another line was endeavoring to march past Bragg and get between him and Louisville.
But Dick found that the western states across the Ohio were responding as usual. Hardy volunteers from the prairies and plains were pouring into Louisville. While Dick waited there the news came that Bragg had captured the entire Northern garrison of four thousand men at Munfordville, the crossing of Green River, and was continuing his steady advance.
But there was yet hope that the rapid march of Buell and the gathering force at Louisville would cause Bragg to turn aside.
At last the welcome news came. Bragg had suddenly turned to the east, and then Buell arrived in Louisville. With his own force, the army already gathered there and a division sent by Grant from his station at Corinth, in Mississippi, he was at the head of a hundred thousand men, and Bragg could not muster more than half as many.
So rapid had been the passage of events that Dick found himself a member of Buell's reorganized army, and ready to march, only thirteen days after the sun set on the bloody field of Antietam, seven hundred miles away. Bragg, they said, was at Lexington, in the heart of the state, and the Union army was in motion to punish him for his temerity in venturing out of the far south.
Dick felt a great elation as he rode once more over the soil of his native state. He beheld again many of the officers whom he had seen at Donelson, and also he spoke to General Buell, who although as taciturn and somber as ever, remembered him.
Warner and Pennington were by his side, the colonel rode before, and the Winchester regiment marched behind. Volunteers from Kentucky and other states had raised it to about three hundred men, and the new lads listened with amazement, while the unbearded veterans told them of Shiloh, the Second Manassas and Antietam.
“Good country, this of yours, Dick,” said Warner, as they rode through the rich lands east of Louisville. “Worth saving. I'm glad the doctor ordered me west for my health.”
“He didn't order you west for your health,” said Pennington. “He ordered you west to get killed for your country.”
“Well, at any rate, I'm here, and as I said, this looks like a land worth saving.”
“It's still finer when you get eastward into the Bluegrass,” said Dick, “but it isn't showing at its best. I never before saw the ground looking so burnt and parched. They say it's the dryest summer known since the country was settled eighty or ninety years ago.”
Dick hoped that their line of march would take them near Pendleton, and as it soon dropped southward he saw that his hope had come true. They would pass within twenty miles of his mother's home, and at Dick's urgent and repeated request, Colonel Winchester strained a point and allowed him to go. He was permitted to select a horse of unusual power and speed, and he departed just before sundown.
“Remember that you're to rejoin us to-morrow,” said Colonel Winchester. “Beware of guerillas. I hope you'll find your mother well.”
“I feel sure of it, and I shall tell her how very kind and helpful you've been to me, sir.”
“Thank you, Dick.”
Dick, in his haste to be off did not notice that the colonel's voice quivered and that his face flushed as he uttered the emphatic “thank you.” A few minutes later he was riding swiftly southward over a road that he knew well. His start was made at six o'clock and he was sure that by ten o'clock he would be in Pendleton.
The road was deserted. This was a well-peopled country, and he saw many houses, but nearly always the doors and shutters of the windows were closed. The men were away, and the women and children were shutting out the bands that robbed in the name of either army.
The night came down, and Dick still sped southward with no one appearing to stop him. He did not know just where the Southern army lay, but he did not believe that he would come in contact with any of its flankers. His horse was so good and true, that earlier than he had hoped, he was approaching Pendleton. The moon was up now, and every foot of the ground was familiar. He crossed brooks in which he and Harry Kenton and other boys of his age had waded—but he had never seen them so low before—and he marked the tree in which he had shot his first squirrel.
It had not been so many months since he had been in Pendleton, and yet it seemed years and years. Three great battles in which seventy or eighty thousand men had fallen were enough to make anybody older.
Dick paused on the crest of a little hill and looked toward the place where his mother's house stood. He had come just in this way in the winter, and he looked forward to another meeting as happy. The moonlight was very clear now and he saw no smoke rising from the chimneys, but this was summer, and of course they would not have a fire burning at such an hour.
He rode on a little further and paused again at the crest of another hill. His view of Pendleton here was still better. He could see more roofs, and walls, but he noticed that no smoke rose from any house. Pendleton lay very still in its hollow. On the far side he saw the white walls of Colonel Kenton's house shining in the moonlight. Something leaped in his brain. He seemed to have been looking upon such white walls only yesterday, white walls that stood out in a fiery haze, white walls that he could never forget though he lived to be a hundred.
Then he remembered. The white walls were those of the Dunkard church at Antietam, around which the blue and the gray had piled their bodies in masses. The vast battlefield ranged past him like a moving panorama, and then he was merely looking at Pendleton lying there below, so still.
Dick was sensitive and his affections were strong. He loved his mother with a remarkable devotion, and his friends were for all time. Highly imaginative, he felt a powerful stirring of the heart, at his second return to Pendleton since his departure for the war. Yet he was chilled somewhat by the strange silence hanging over the little town that he loved so well. It was night, it was true, but not even a dog barked at his coming, and there was not the faintest trail of smoke across the sky. A brilliant moon shone, and white stars unnumbered glittered and danced, yet they showed no movement of man in the town below.
He shook off the feeling, believing that it was merely a sensitiveness born of time and place, and rode straight for his mother's house. Then he dismounted, tied his horse to one of the pines, and ran up the walk to the front door, where he knocked softly at first, and then more loudly.
No answer came and Dick's heart sank within him like a plummet in a pool. He went to the edge of the walk, gathered up some gravel and threw it against a window in his mother's room on the second floor. That would arouse her, because he knew that she slept lightly in these times, when her son was off to the wars. But the window was not raised, and he could hear no sound of movement in the room.
Alarmed, he went back to the front door, and he noticed that while the door was locked the keyhole was empty. Then his mother was gone away. The sign was almost infallible. Had any one been at home the key would have been on the inside.
His heart grew lighter. There had been no violence. No roving band had come there to plunder. He whistled and shouted through the keyhole, although he did not want anyone who might possibly be passing in the road to hear him, as this town was almost wholly Southern in its sympathies.
There was still no answer, and leading his horse behind one of the pine trees on the lawn, where it would not be observed, he went to the rear of the house, and taking a stick pried open a kitchen window. He had learned this trick when he was a young boy, and climbing lightly inside he closed the window behind him and fastened the catch.
He knew of course every hall and room of the house, but the moment he entered it he felt that it was deserted. The air was close and heavy, showing that no fresh breeze had blown through it for days. It was impossible that his mother or the faithful colored woman could have lived there so long a time with closed doors and shuttered windows.
When he passed into the main part of his home, and touched a door or chair, a fine dust grated slightly under his fingers. Here was confirmation, if further confirmation was needed. Dust on chairs and tables and sofas in the house in which his mother was present. Impossible! Such a thing could not occur with her there. It was not the white dust of the road or fields, but the black dust that gathers in closed chambers.
He went up to his mother's room, and, opening one of the shutters a few inches, let in a little light. It was in perfect order. Everything was in its place. Upon the dresser was a little vase containing some shrivelled flowers. The water in the vase had dried up days ago, and the flowers had dried up with it.
In this room and in all the others everything was arranged with order and method, as if one were going away for a long time. Dick drew a chair near the window, that he had opened slightly, and sat down. Much of his fear for his mother disappeared. It was obvious that she and her faithful attendant, Juliana, had gone, probably to be out of the track of the armies or to escape plundering bands like Skelly's.
He wondered where she had gone, whether northward or southward. There were many places that would gladly receive her. Nearly all the people in this part of the state were more or less related, and with them the tie of kinship was strong. It was probable that she would go north, or east. She might have gone to Lexington, or Winchester, or Richmond, or even in the hills to Somerset.
Well, he could not solve it. He was deeply disappointed because he had not found her there, but he was relieved from his first fear that the guerillas had come. He closed and fastened the window again, and then walked all through the house once more. His eyes had now grown so used to the darkness that he could see everything dimly. He went into his own room. A picture of himself that used to hang on the wall now stood on the dresser. He knew very well why, and he knew, too, that his mother often passed hours in that room.
Below stairs everything was neatness and in order. He went into the parlor, of which he had stood in so much awe, when he was a little child. The floor was covered with an imported carpet, mingled brown and red. A great Bible lay upon a small marble-topped table in the center of the room. Two larger tables stood against the wall. Upon them lay volumes of the English classics, and a cluster of wax flowers under a glass cover, that had seemed wonderful to Dick in his childhood.
But the room awed him no more, and he turned at once to the great squares of light that faced each other from wall to wall.
A famous portrait painter had arisen at Lexington when the canebrake was scarcely yet cleared away from the heart of Kentucky. His work was astonishing to have come out of a country yet a wilderness, and a century later he is ranked among the great painters. But it is said that the best work he ever did is the pair of portraits that face each other in the Mason home, and the other pair, the exact duplicates that face each other in the same manner in the Kenton house.
Dick opened a shutter entirely, and the light of the white moon, white like marble, streamed in. The sudden inpouring illuminated the room so vividly that Dick's heart missed a beat. It seemed, for a minute, that the two men in the portraits were stepping from the wall. Then his heart beat steadily again and the color returned to his face. They had always been there, those two portraits. Men had never lived more intensely than they, and the artist, at the instant his genius was burning brightest, had caught them in the moment of extraordinary concentration. Their souls had looked through their eyes and his own soul looking through his had met theirs.
Dick gazed at one and then at the other. There was his great grandfather, Paul Cotter, a man of vision and inspiration, the greatest scholar the west had ever produced, and there facing him was his comrade of a long life-time, Henry Ware, the famous borderer, afterward the great governor of the state. They had been painted in hunting suits of deerskin, with the fringed borders and beaded moccasins, and raccoon skin caps.
These were men, Dick's great grandfather and Harry's. An immense pride that he was the great-grandson of one of them suddenly swelled up in his bosom, and he was proud, too, that the descendants of the borderers, and of the earlier borderers in the east, should show the same spirit and stamina. No one could look upon the fields of Shiloh, and Manassas and Antietam and say that any braver men ever lived.
He drew his chair into the middle of the room and sat and looked at them a long time. His steady gazing and his own imaginative brain, keyed to the point of excitement, brought back into the portraits that singular quality of intense life. Had they moved he would not have been surprised, and the eyes certainly looked down at him in full and ample recognition.
What did they say? He gazed straight into the eyes of one and then straight into the eyes of the other, and over and over again. But the expression there was Delphic. He must choose for himself, as they had chosen for themselves, and remembering that he was lingering, when he should not linger, he closed and fastened the window, slipped out at the kitchen window and returned to his horse.
He remounted in the road and rode a few paces nearer to Pendleton, which still lay silent in the white moonlight. He had no doubt now that many of the people had fled like his mother. Most of the houses must be closed and shuttered like hers. That was why the town was so silent. He would have been glad to see Dr. Russell and old Judge Kendrick and others again, but it would have been risky to go into the center of the place, and it would have been a breach, too, of the faith that Colonel Winchester had put in him.
He crushed the wish and turned away. Then he saw the white walls of Colonel Kenton's house shining upon a hill among the pines beyond the town. He was quite sure that it would be deserted, and there was no harm in passing it. He knew it as well as his own home. He and Harry had played in every part of it, and it was, in truth, a second home to him.
He rode slowly along the road which led to the quiet house. Colonel Kenton had all the instincts so strong in the Kentuckians and Virginians of his type. A portion of his wealth had been devoted to decoration and beauty. The white, sanded road led upward through a great park, splendid with oak and beech and maple, and elms of great size. Nearer the house he came to the cedars and clipped pines, like those surrounding his mother's own home.
He opened the iron gate that led to the house, and tied his horse inside. Here was the same desolation and silence that he had beheld at his own home. The grass on the lawn, although withered and dry from the intense drought that had prevailed in Kentucky that summer, was long and showed signs of neglect. The great stone pillars of the portico, from the shelter of which Harry and his father and their friends had fought Skelly and his mountaineers, were stained, and around their bases were dirty from the sand and earth blown against them. The lawn and even the portico were littered with autumn leaves.
Dick felt the chill settling down on him again. War, not war with armies, but war in its results, had swept over his uncle's home as truly as it had swept over his mother's. There was no sign of a human being. Doubtless the colored servants had fled to the Union armies, and to the freedom which they as yet knew so little how to use. He felt a sudden access of anger against them, because they had deserted a master so kind and just, forgetting, for the moment that he was fighting to free them from that very master.
All the windows were dark, but he walked upon the portico and the dry autumn leaves rustled under his feet. He would have turned away, but he noticed that the front door stood ajar six or eight inches. The fact amazed him. If a servant was about, he would not leave it open, and if robbers were in the house, they would close it in order not to attract attention. It was a great door of massive and magnificent oak, highly polished, with heavy bands of glittering bronze running across it. But it was so lightly poised on its hinges, that, despite its great weight, a child could have swung it back and forth with his little finger. Henry Ware, who built the house after his term as governor was over, was always proud of this door.
Dick ran his hand along one of the polished bronze bars as he had often done when he was a boy, enjoying the cool touch of the metal. Then he put his thumb against the edge of the door, and pushed it a little further open. Something was wrong here, and he meant to see what it was. He had no scruples about entering. He did not consider himself in the least an intruder. This was his uncle's house, and his uncle and his cousin were far away.
The door made no sound as it swung back, and soundless, too, was Dick as he stepped within. It was dark in the big hall, but as he stood there, listening, he became conscious of a light. It proceeded from one of the rooms opening into the hall on the right, and a door nearly closed only allowed a narrow band of it to fall upon the hall floor.
Dick, believing now that a robber had indeed come, drew a pistol from his pocket, stepped lightly across the hall and looked in at the door.
He checked a cry, and it was his first thought to go away as quietly as he had come. He had seen a man in the uniform of a Confederate colonel, sitting in a chair, and staring out at one of the little side windows which Dick could not see from the front, and which was now open. It was his own uncle, Colonel George Kenton, C. S. A., his gold braided cap on the window sill, and his sword in its scabbard lying across his knees.
But Dick changed his mind. His uncle was a colonel on one side, and he was a lieutenant on the other, and from one point of view it was almost high treason for them to meet there and talk quietly together, but from another it was the most natural thing in the world, commanded alike by duty and affection.
He pushed open the door a little further and stepped inside.
“Uncle George,” he said.
Colonel Kenton sprang to his feet, and his sword clattered upon the floor.
“Good God!” he cried. “You, Dick! Here! To-night!”
“Yes, Uncle George, it's no other.”
“And I suppose you have Yankees without to take me.”
“Those are hard words, sir, and you don't mean them. I'm all alone, just as you were. I galloped south, sir, to see my mother, whom I found gone, where, I don't know, and then I couldn't resist the temptation to come by here and see your house and Harry's, which, as you know, sir, has been almost a home to me, too.”
“Thank God you came, Dick,” said the colonel putting his arms around Dick's shoulders, and giving him an affectionate hug. “You were right. I did not mean what I said. There is only one other in the world whom I'd rather see than you. Dick, I didn't know whether you were dead or alive, until I saw your face there in the doorway.”
It was obvious to Dick that his uncle's emotions were deeply stirred. He felt the strong hands upon his shoulders trembling, but the veteran soldier soon steadied his nerves, and asked Dick to sit down in a chair which he drew close beside his own at the window.
“I thank God again that the notion took you to come by the house,” he said. “It's pleasant and cool here at the window, isn't it, Dick, boy?”
Dick knew that he was thinking nothing about the window and the pleasant coolness of the night. He knew equally well the question that was trembling on his lips but which he could not muster the courage to ask. But he had one of his own to ask first.
“My mother?” he asked. “Do you know where she has gone?”
“Yes, Dick, I came here in secret, but I've seen two men, Judge Kendrick and Dr. Russell. The armies are passing so close to this place, and the guerillas from the mountains have become so troublesome, that she has gone to Danville to stay a while with her relatives. Nearly everybody else has gone, too. That's why the town is so silent. There were not many left anyway, except old people and children. But, Dick, I have ridden as far as you have to-night, and I came to ask a question which I thought Judge Kendrick or Dr. Russell might answer—news of those who leave a town often comes back to it—but neither of them could tell me what I wanted to hear. Dick, I have not heard a word of Harry since spring. His army has fought since then two great battles and many smaller ones! It was for this, to get some word of him, that I risked everything in leaving our army to come to Pendleton!”
He turned upon Dick a face distorted with pain and anxiety, and the boy quickly said:
“Uncle George, I have every reason to believe that Harry is alive and well.”
“What do you know? What have you heard about him?”
“I have not merely heard. I have seen him and talked with him. It was after the Second Manassas, when we were both with burial parties, and met on the field. I was at Antietam, and he, of course, was there, too, as he is with Stonewall Jackson. I did not see him in that battle, but I learned from a prisoner who knew him that he had escaped unwounded, and had gone with Lee's army into Virginia.”
“I thank God once more, Dick, that you were moved to come by my house. To know that both Harry and you are alive and well is joy enough for one man.”
“But it is likely, sir, that we'll soon meet in battle,” said Dick.
“So it would seem.”
And that was all that either said about his army. There was no attempt to obtain information by direct or indirect methods. This was a family meeting.
“You have a horse, of course,” said Colonel Kenton.
“Yes, sir. He is on the lawn, tied to your fence. His hoofs may now be in a flower bed.”
“It doesn't matter, Dick. People are not thinking much of flower beds nowadays. My own horse is further down the lawn between the pines, and as he is an impatient beast it is probable that he has already dug up a square yard or two of turf with his hoofs. How did you get in, Dick?”
“You forgot about the front door, sir, and left it open six or seven inches. I thought some plunderer was within and entered, to find you.”
“I must have been watched over to-night when forgetfulness was rewarded so well. Dick, we've found out what we came for and neither should linger here. Do you need anything?”
“Nothing at all, sir.”
“Then we'll go.”
Colonel Kenton carefully closed and fastened the window and door again and the two mounted their horses, which they led into the road.
“Dick,” said the colonel, “you and I are on opposing sides, but we can never be enemies.”
Then, after a strong handclasp, they rode away by different roads, each riding with a lighter heart.
Dick's horse had had a good rest, and he was fighting for his head before they were clear of the outskirts of Pendleton. When the road emerged once more into the deep woods the boy gave him the rein. It was well past midnight now, and he wished to reach the army before dawn.
Soon the great horse was galloping, and Dick felt exhilaration as the cool air of early October rushed past. The heat in both east and west had been so long and intense, that year, that the coming of autumn was full of tonic. Yet the uncommon dryness, the least rainy summer and autumn in two generations, still prevailed. The hoofs of Dick's horse left a cloud of dust behind him. The leaves of the trees were falling already, rustling dryly as they fell. Brooks that were old friends of his and that he had never known to go dry before were merely chains of yellow pools in a shallow bed.
He watered his horse at one or two of the creeks that still flowed in good volume, and then went on again, sometimes at a gallop. He passed but one horseman, a farmer who evidently had taken an unusually early start for a mill, as a sack of corn lay across his saddle behind him. Dick nodded but the farmer stared open-mouthed at the youth in the blue uniform who flew past him.
Dick never looked back and by dawn he was with the army. He found Colonel Winchester taking breakfast under the thin shade of an oak, and joined him.
“What did you find, Dick?” asked the colonel, striving to hide the note of anxiety in his voice.
“I found all right at the house, but I did not see mother.”
“What had become of her?”
“I learned from a friend that in order to be out of the path of the army or of prowling bands she had gone to relatives of ours in Danville. Then I came away.”
“She did well,” said Colonel Winchester. “The rebels are concentrating about Lexington, but the battle, I think, will take place far south of that city.”
Before the day was old they heard news that changed their opinion for the time at least. A scout brought news that a division of the Confederate army was much nearer than Lexington; in fact, that it was at Frankfort, the capital of the state. And the news was heightened in interest by the statement that the division was there to assist in the inauguration of a Confederate government of the state, so little of which the Confederate army held.
Colonel Winchester at once applied to General Buell for permission for a few officers like himself, natives of Kentucky and familiar with the region, to ride forward and see what the enemy was really doing. Dick was present at the interview and it was characteristic.
“If you leave, what of your regiment, Colonel Winchester?” said General Buell.
“I shall certainly rejoin it in time for battle.”
“Suppose the enemy should prevent you?”
“He cannot do so.”
“I remember you at Shiloh. You did good work there.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And this lad, Lieutenant Mason, he has also done well. But he is young.”
“I can vouch for him, sir.”
“Then take twenty of your bravest and most intelligent men and ride toward Frankfort. It may be that we shall have to take a part in this inauguration, which I hear is scheduled for to-morrow.”
“It may be so, sir,” said Colonel Winchester, returning General Buell's grim smile. Then he and Dick saluted and withdrew.
But it did not take the colonel long to make his preparations. Among his twenty men all were natives of Kentucky except Warner, Pennington and Sergeant Whitley. Two were from Frankfort itself, and they were confident that they could approach through the hills with comparative security, the little capital nestling in its little valley.
They rode rapidly and by nightfall drew near to the rough Benson Hills, which suddenly shooting up in a beautiful rolling country, hem in the capital. Although it was now the third day of October the little party marked anew the extreme dryness and the shrunken condition of everything. It was all the more remarkable as no region in the world is better watered than Kentucky, with many great rivers, more small ones, and innumerable creeks and brooks. There are few points in the state where a man can be more than a mile from running water.
The dryness impressed Dick. They had dust here, as they had had it in Virginia, but there it was trampled up by great armies. Here it was raised by their own little party, and as the October winds swept across the dry fields it filled their eyes with particles. Yet it was one of the finest regions of the world, underlaid with vitalizing limestone, a land where the grass grows thick and long and does not die even in winter.
“If one were superstitious,” said Dick, “he could think it was a punishment sent upon us all for fighting so much, and for killing so many men about questions that lots of us don't understand, and that at least could have been settled in some other way.”
“It's easy enough to imagine it so,” said Warner in his precise way, “but after all, despite the reasons against it, here we are fighting and killing one another with a persistence that has never been surpassed. It's a perfectly simple question in mathematics. Let x equal the anger of the South, let y equal the anger of the North, let 10 equal the percentage of reason, 100, of course, being the whole, then you have x + y + 10 equalling 100. The anger of the two sections is consequently x + y, equalling 100 - 10, or 90. When anger constitutes 90 per cent., what chance has reason, which is only 10 per cent., or one-ninth of anger?”
“No chance at all,” replied Dick. “That has already been proved without the aid of algebra. Here is a man in a cornfield signaling to us. I wonder what he wants?”
As Dick spoke, Colonel Winchester, who had already noticed the man, gave an order to stop. The stranger, bent and knotted by hard work on the farm, hurried toward them. He leaned against the fence a moment, gasping for breath, and then said:
“You're Union men, ain't you? It's no disguise?”
“Yes,” replied Colonel Winchester, “we're Union men, and it's no disguise that we're wearing, Malachi White. I've seen you several times in Frankfort, selling hay.”
The farmer, who had climbed upon the fence and who was sitting on the top rail, hands on his knees, stared at him open-mouthed.
“You've got my name right. Malachi White it is,” he said, “suah enough, but I don't know yours. 'Pears to me, however, that they's somethin' familiar about you. Mebbe it's the way you throw back your shoulders an' look a fellow squah in the eyes.”
Colonel Winchester smiled. No man is insensible to a compliment which is obviously spontaneous.
“I spent a night once at your house, Mr. White,” he said. “I was going to Frankfort on horseback. I was overtaken at dusk by a storm and I reached your place just in time. I remember that I slept on a mighty soft feather bed, and ate a splendid breakfast in the morning.”
Malachi White was not insensible to compliments either. He smiled, and the smile which merely showed his middle front teeth at first, gradually broadened until it showed all of them. Then it rippled and stretched in little waves, until it stopped somewhere near his ears. Dick regarded him with delight. It was the broadest and finest smile that he had seen in many a long month.
“Now I know you,” said Malachi White, looking intently at the colonel. “I ain't as strong on faces as some people, though I reckon I'm right strong on 'em, too, but I'm pow'ful strong on recollectin' hear'in', that is, the voice and the trick of it. It was fo' yea's ago when you stopped at my house. You had a curious trick of pronouncin' r's when they wasn't no r's. You'd say door, an' hour, when ev'body knowed it was doah, an' houah, but I don't hold it ag'in you fo' not knowin' how to pronounce them wo'ds. Yoh name is Ahthuh Winchestuh.”
“As right as right can be,” said Colonel Winchester, reaching over and giving him a hearty hand. “I'm a colonel in the Union army now, and these are my officers and men. What was it you wanted to tell us?”
“Not to ride on fuhthah. It ain't mo' than fifteen miles to Frankfort. The place is plum full of the Johnnies. I seed 'em thah myself. Ki'by Smith, an' a sma't gen'ral he is, too, is thah, an' so's Bragg, who I don't know much 'bout. They's as thick as black be'ies in a patch, an' they's all gettin ready fo' a gran' ma'ch an' display to-mo'ow when they sweah in the new Southe'n gove'nuh, Mistah Hawes. They've got out scouts, too, colonel, an' if you go on you'll run right squah into 'em an' be took, which I allow you don't want to happen, nohow.”
“No, Malachi, I don't, nor do any of us, but we're going on and we don't mean to be taken. Most of the men know this country well. Two of them, in fact, were born in Frankfort.”
“Then mebbe you kin look out fo' yo'selves, bein' as you are Kentuckians. I'm mighty strong fo' the Union myself, but a lot of them officers that came down from the no'th 'pear to tu'n into pow'ful fools when they git away from home, knowin' nothin' 'bout the country, an' not willin' to lea'n. Always walkin' into traps. I guess they've nevah missed a single trap the rebels have planted. Sometimes I've been so mad 'bout it that I've felt like quittin' bein' a Yank an' tu'nin' to a Johnny. But somehow I've nevah been able to make up my mind to go ag'in my principles. Is Gen'ral Grant leadin' you?”
“No, General Buell.”
“I'm so'y of that. Gen'ral Buell, f'om all I heah, is a good fightah, but slow. Liable to git thar, an' hit like all ta'nation, when it's a little mite too late. He's one of ouah own Kentuckians, an' I won't say anything ag'in him; not a wo'd, colonel, don't think that, but I've been pow'ful took with this fellow Grant. I ain't any sojah, myself, but I like the tales I heah 'bout him. When a fellow hits him he hits back ha'dah, then the fellow comes back with anothah ha'dah still, an' then Grant up an' hits him a wallop that you heah a mile, an' so on an' so on.”
“You're right, Malachi. I was with him at Donelson and Shiloh and that's the way he did.”
“I reckon it's the right way. Is it true, colonel, that he taps the ba'el?”
“Taps the barrel? What do you mean, Malachi?”
White put his hands hollowed out like a scoop to his mouth and turned up his face.
“I see,” said Colonel Winchester, “and I'm glad to say no, Malachi. If he takes anything he takes water just like the rest of us.”
“Pow'ful glad to heah it, but it ain't easy to get too much good watah this yeah. Nevah knowed such a dry season befoah, an' I was fifty-two yeahs old, three weeks an' one day ago yestuhday.”
“Thank you, Malachi, for your warning. We'll be doubly careful, because of it, and I hope after this war is over to share your fine hospitality once more.”
“You'll sho'ly be welcome an' ev'y man an' boy with you will be welcome, too. Fuhthah on, 'bout foah hund'ed yahds, you'll come to a path leadin' into the woods. You take that path, colonel. It'll be sundown soon, an' you follow it th'ough the night.”
The two men shook hands again, and then the soldiers rode on at a brisk trot. Malachi White sat on the fence, looking at them from under the brim of his old straw hat, until they came to the path that he had indicated and disappeared in the woods. Then he sighed and walked back slowly to his house in the cornfield. Malachi White had no education, but he had much judgment and he was a philosopher.
But Dick and the others rode on through the forest, penetrating into the high and rough hills which were sparsely inhabited. The nights, as it was now October, were cool, despite the heat and dust of the day, and they rode in a grateful silence. It was more than an hour after dark when Powell, one of the Frankforters, spoke:
“We can hit the old town by midnight easy enough,” he said. “Unless they've stretched pretty wide lines of pickets I can lead you, sir, within four hundred yards of Frankfort, where you can stay under cover yourself and look right down into it. I guess by this good moonlight I could point out old Bragg himself, if he should be up and walking around the streets.”
“That suits us, Powell,” said Colonel Winchester. “You and May lead the way.”
May was the other Frankforter and they took the task eagerly. They were about to look down upon home after an absence of more than a year, a year that was more than a normal ten. They were both young, not over twenty, and after a while they turned out of the path and led into the deep woods.
“It's open forest through here, no underbrush, colonel,” said Powell, “and it makes easy riding. Besides, about a mile on there's a creek running down to the Kentucky that will have deep water in it, no matter how dry the season has been. Tom May and I have swum in it many a time, and I reckon our horses need water, colonel.”
“So they do, and so do we. We'll stop a bit at this creek of yours, Powell.”
The creek was all that the two Frankfort lads had claimed for it. It was two feet deep, clear, cold and swift, shadowed by great primeval trees. Men and horses drank eagerly, and at last Colonel Winchester, feeling that there was neither danger nor the need of hurry, permitted them to undress and take a quick bath, which was a heavenly relief and stimulant, allowing them to get clear of the dust and dirt of the day.
“It's a beauty of a creek,” said Powell to Dick. “About a half mile further down the stream is a tremendous tree on which is cut with a penknife, 'Dan'l Boone killed a bar here, June 26, 1781.' I found it myself, and I cut away enough of the bark growth with a penknife for it to show clearly. I imagine the great Daniel and Simon Kenton and Harrod and the rest killed lots of bears in these hills.”
“I'd go and see that inscription in the morning,” said Dick, “if I didn't have a bit of war on my hands.”
“Maybe you'll have a chance later on. But I'm feeling bully after this cold bath. Dick, I came into the creek weighing two hundred and twenty-five pounds, one hundred and fifty pounds of human being and seventy-five pounds of dust and dirt. I'm back to one hundred and fifty now. Besides, I was fifty years old when I entered the stream, and I've returned to twenty.”
“That just about describes me, too, but the colonel is whistling for us to come. Rush your jacket on and jump for your horse.”
They had stayed about a half-hour at the creek, and about two o'clock in the morning Powell and May led them through a dense wood to the edge of a high hill.
“There's Frankfort below you,” said May in a voice that trembled.
The night was brilliant, almost like day, and they saw the little city clustered along the banks of the Kentucky which flowed, a dark ribbon of blue. Their powerful glasses brought out everything distinctly. They saw the old state house, its trees, and in the open spaces, tents standing by the dozens and scores. It was the division of Kirby Smith that occupied the town, and Bragg himself had made a triumphant entry. Dick wondered which house sheltered him. It was undoubtedly that of some prominent citizen, proud of the honor.
“Isn't it the snuggest and sweetest little place you ever saw?” said May. “Lend me your glasses a minute, please, Dick.”
Dick handed them to him, and May took a long look, Dick noticed that the glasses remained directed toward a house among some trees near the river.
“You're looking at your home, are you not?” he asked.
“I surely am. It's that cottage among the oaks. It's bigger than it looks from here. Front porch and back porch, too. You go from the back porch straight down to the river. I've swum across the Kentucky there at night many and many a time. My father and mother are sure to be there now, staying inside with the doors closed, because they're red hot for the Union. Farther up the street, the low red brick house with the iron fence around the yard is Jim Powell's home. You don't mind letting Jim have a look through the glasses, do you?”
“Of course not.”
The glasses were handed in turn to Powell, who, as May had done, took a long, long look. He made no comment, when he gave the glasses back to Dick, merely saying: “Thank you.” But Dick knew that Powell was deeply moved.
“It may be, lads,” said Colonel Winchester, “that you will be able to enter your homes by the front doors in a day or two. Evidently the Southerners intend to make it a big day to-morrow when they inaugurate Hawes, their governor.”
“A governor who's a governor only when he is surrounded by an army, won't be much of a governor,” said Pennington. “This state refused to secede, and I guess that stands.”
“Beyond a doubt it does,” said Colonel Winchester, “but they've made great preparations, nevertheless. There are Confederate flags on the Capitol and the buildings back of it, and I see scaffolding for seats outside. Are there other places from which we can get good looks, lads?”
“Plenty of them,” May and Powell responded together, and they led them from hill to hill, all covered with dense forest. Several times they saw Southern sentinels on the slopes near the edge of the woods, but May and Powell knew the ground so thoroughly that they were always able to keep the little troop under cover without interfering with their own scouting operations.
Buell had given final instructions to the colonel to come back with all the information possible, and, led by his capable guides, the colonel used his opportunities to the utmost. He made a half circle about Frankfort, going to the river, and then back again. With the aid of the glasses and the brilliancy of the night he was able to see that the division of Kirby Smith was not strong enough to hold the town under any circumstances, if the main Union army under Buell came up, and the colonel was resolved that it should come.
It was a singular coincidence that the Southerners were making a military occupation of Frankfort with a Union army only a day's march away. The colonel found a certain grim irony in it as he took his last look and turned away to join Buell.
A half mile into the forest and they heard the crashing of hoofs in the brushwood. Colonel Winchester drew up his little troop abruptly as a band of men in gray emerged into an open space.
“Confederate cavalry!” exclaimed Dick.
“Yes,” said the colonel.
But the gray troopers were not much more numerous than the blue. Evidently they were a scouting party, too, and for a few minutes they stared at each other across a space of a couple of hundred yards or so. Both parties fired a few random rifle shots, more from a sense of duty than a desire to harm. Then they fell away, as if by mutual consent, the gray riding toward Frankfort and the blue toward the Union army.
“Was it a misfortune to meet them?” asked Dick.
“I don't think so,” replied Colonel Winchester. “They had probably found out already that our army was near. Of course they had out scouts. Kirby Smith, I know, is an alert man, and anyway, the march of an army as large as ours could not be hidden.”
It was dawn again when the colonel's little party reached the Union camp, and when he made his report the heavy columns advanced at once. But the alarm had already spread about at Frankfort. The morning there looked upon a scene even more lively than the one that had occurred in Buell's camp. The scouts brought in the news that the Union army in great force was at hand. They had met some of their cavalry patrols in the night, on the very edge of the city. Resistance to the great Union force was out of the question, because Bragg had committed the error that the Union generals had been committing so often in the east. He had been dividing and scattering his forces so much that he could not now concentrate them and fight at the point where they were needed most.
The division of the Southern army that occupied Frankfort hastily gathered up its arms and supplies and departed, taking with it the governor who was never inaugurated, and soon afterward the Union men marched in. Both May and Powell had the satisfaction of entering their homes by the front doors, and seeing the parents who did not know until then whether they were dead or alive.
Dick had a few hours' leave and he walked about the town. He had made friends when he was there in the course of that memorable struggle over secession, and he saw again all of them who had not gone to the war.
Harry and his father were much present in his mind then, because he had recently seen Colonel Kenton, and because the year before, all three of them had talked together in these very places.
But he could not dwell too much in the past. He was too young for it, and the bustle of war was too great. It was said that Bragg's forces had turned toward the southeast, but were still divided. It was reported that the Bishop-General, Polk, had been ordered to attack the Northern force in or near Frankfort, but the attack did not come. Colonel Winchester said it was because Polk recognized the superior strength of his enemy, and was waiting until he could co-operate with Bragg and Hardee.
But whatever it was Dick soon found himself leaving Frankfort and marching into the heart of the Bluegrass. He began to have the feeling, or rather instinct warned him, that battle was near. Yet he did not fear for the Northern army as he had feared in Virginia and Maryland. He never felt that such men as Lee and Jackson were before them. He felt instead that the Southern commanders were doubtful and hesitating. They now had there no such leaders as Albert Sidney Johnston, who fell at Shiloh when victory was in Southern hands and before it had time to slip from their grasp.
So the army dropped slowly down eastward and southward through the Bluegrass. May and Powell had obtained but a brief glimpse of their home town, before they were on their way again with a purpose which had little to do with such peaceful things as home.
Dick saw with dismay that the concentric march of the armies was bringing them toward the very region into which his mother had fled for refuge. She was at Danville, which is in the county of Boyle, and he heard now that the Confederate army, or at least a large division of it, was gathering at a group of splendid springs near a village called Perryville in the same county. But second thought told him that she would be safe yet in Danville, as he began to feel sure now that the meeting of the armies would be at Perryville.
Dick's certainty grew out of the fact that the great springs were about Perryville. The extraordinary drouth and the remarkable phenomenon of brooks drying up in Kentucky had continued. Water, cool and fresh for many thousands of men, was wanted or typhoid would come.
This need of vast quantities of water fresh and cool from the earth, was obvious to everybody, and the men marched gladly toward the springs. The march would serve two purposes: it would quench their thirst, and it would bring on the battle they wanted to clear Kentucky of the enemy.
“Fine country, this of yours, Dick,” said Warner as they rode side by side. “I don't think I ever saw dust of a higher quality. It sifts through everything, fills your eyes, nose and mouth and then goes down under your collar and gives you a neat and continuous dust bath.”
“You mustn't judge us by this phenomenon,” said Dick. “It has not happened before since the white man came, and it won't happen again in a hundred years.”
“You may speak with certainty of the past, Dickie, my lad, but I don't think we can tell much about the next century. I'll grant the fact, however, that fifty or a hundred thousand men marching through a dry country anywhere are likely to raise a lot of dust. Still, Dickie, my boy, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but if I live through this, as I mean to do, I intend to call it the Dusty Campaign.”
“Call it what you like if in the end you call it victory.”
“The dust doesn't hurt me,” said Pennington. “I've seen it as dry as a bone on the plains with great clouds of it rolling away behind the buffalo herds. There's nothing the matter with dust. Country dust is one of the cleanest things in the world.”
“That's so,” said Warner, “but it tickles and makes you hot. I should say that despite its cleanly qualities, of which you speak, Frank, my friend, its power to annoy is unsurpassed. Remember that bath we took in the creek the night we went to Frankfort. Did you ever before see such cool running water, and Dickie, old boy, remember how much there was of it! It was just as deep and cool and fine after we left it.”
“George,” said Dick, as he wiped his dusty face, “if you say anything more about the creek and its cool water this army will lose a capable lieutenant, and it will lose him mighty soon. It will be necessary, too, to bury him very far from his home in Vermont.”
“Keep cool, Dickie boy, and let who will be dusty. Brooks may fail once in a hundred years in Kentucky, but they haven't failed in a thousand in Vermont. You need not remind me that the white man has been there only two or three hundred years. My information comes straight from a very old Indian chief who was the depository of tribal recollections absolutely unassailable. The streams even in midsummer come down as full and cold as ever from the mountains.”
“We'll have water and plenty of it in a day or two. The scouts say that the Confederate force at the springs is not strong enough to withstand us.”
“But General Buell, not knowing exactly what General Bragg intends with his divided force, has divided his own in order to meet him at all points.”
“Has he done that?” exclaimed Dick aghast. Like other young officers he felt perfectly competent to criticize anybody.
“He has, and it seems to me that when the enemy divided was the time for us to unite or remain united. Then we could scoop him up in detail. Why, Dick, with an army of sixty thousand men or so, made of such material as ours has shown itself to be, we could surely beat any Southern force in Kentucky!”
“Especially as we have no Lees and Stonewall Jacksons to fight.”
“Maybe General Buell has divided his force in order to obtain plenty of water,” said Pennington. “We fellows ought to be fair to him.”
“Perhaps you're right,” said Warner, “and you're right when you say we ought to be fair to him. I know it will be a great relief to General Buell to find that we three are supporting his management of this army. Shall I go and tell him, Frank?”
“Not now, but you can a little later on. Suppose you wait until a day or two after the battle which we all believe is coming.”
The three boys were really in high spirits. Little troubled them but the dryness and the dust. They had tasted so much of defeat and drawn battle in the east that they had an actual physical sense of better things in the west. The horizons were wider, the mountains were lower, and there was not so much enveloping forest. They did not have the strangling sensation, mental only, which came from the fear that hostile armies would suddenly rush from the woods and fall upon their flank.
Besides, there was Shiloh. After all, they had won Shiloh, and the coming of this very Buell who led them now had enabled them to win it. And Shiloh was the only great battle that they had yet really won.
They camped that night in the dry fields. The Winchester regiment was a part of the division under McCook, while Buell with the rest of the army was some miles away. It was still warm, although October was now seven days old, and Dick had never before heard the grass and leaves rustle so dryly under the wind. Off in the direction of Perryville they saw the dim gleam of red, and they knew it came from the camp-fires of the Southern army. Buell had in his detached divisions sixty thousand men, most of them veterans and Dick believed that if they were brought together victory was absolutely sure on the morrow.
The troops around the Winchester regiment were lads from Ohio, and they affiliated readily. Most of the new men were in these Ohio regiments, and Dick, Warner and Frank felt themselves ancient veterans who could talk to the recruits and give them good advice. And the recruits took it in the proper spirit. They looked up with admiration to those who had been at Shiloh, and the Second Manassas and Antietam.
Dick thought their spirit remarkable. They were not daunted at all by the great failures in the east. They did not discount the valor of the Southern troops, but they asked to be led against them.
“Come over here,” said one of the Ohio boys to Dick. “Ahead of us and on the side there's rough ground with thick woods and deep ravines. I'll show you something just at the edge of the woods. Bring your friends with you.”
The twilight had already turned to night and Dick, calling Warner and Pennington, went with his new friend. There, flowing from under a great stone, shaded by a huge oak, was a tiny stream of pure cold water a couple of inches deep but seven or eight inches broad. Under the stone a beautiful basin a foot and a half across and about as deep had been chiselled out.
“A lot of us found it here,” said the Ohio boy, “and we found, too, a tin cup chained to a staple driven into the stone. See, it's here still. We haven't broken the chain. I suppose it belongs to some farmer close by. The boys brought other tin cups and we drank so fast that the brook itself became dry. The water never got any further than the pool. I suppose it's just started again. Drink.”
The boys drank deeply and gratefully. No such refreshing stream had ever flowed down their throats before.
“Ohio,” said Dick, “you're a lovely, dirty angel.”
“I guess I am,” said Ohio, “'cause I found the spring. It turned me from an old man back to a boy again. Cold as ice, ain't it? I can tell you why. This spring starts right at the North Pole, right under the pole itself, dives away down into the earth, comes under Bering Sea and then under British America, and then under the lakes, and then under Ohio, and then under a part of Kentucky, and then comes out here especially to oblige us, this being a dry season.”
“I believe every word you say, Ohio,” said Warner, “since your statements are proved by the quality of the water. I could easily demonstrate it as a mathematical proposition.”
“Don't you pay any attention to him, Ohio,” said Dick. “He's from Vermont, and he's so full of big words that he's bound to get rid of some of them.”
“I'm not doubting you, Vermont,” said Ohio. “As you believe every word I said, I believe every word you said.”
“There's nothing extraordinary about them things,” said another Ohio boy belonging to a different brigade, who was sitting near. “Do you know that we swallowed a whole river coming down here? We began swallowing it when we crossed the Ohio, just like a big snake swallowing a snake not quite so big, taking down his head first, then keeping on swallowing him until the last tip of his tail disappeared inside. It was a good big stream when we started, water up to our knees, but we formed across it in a line five hundred men deep and then began to drink as we marched forward. Of course, a lot of water got past the first four hundred lines or so, but the five hundredth always swallowed up the last drop.”
“We marched against that stream for something like a hundred and fifty miles. No water ever got past us. We left a perfectly dry bed behind. Up in the northern part of the state not a drop of water came down the river in a month. We followed it, or at least a lot of us did, clean to its source in some hills a piece back of us. We drank it dry up to a place like this, only bigger, and do you know, a fellow of our company named Jim Lambert was following it up under the rocks, and we had to pull him out by the feet to keep him from being suffocated. That was four days ago, and we had a field telegram yesterday from a place near the Ohio, saying that a full head of water had come down the river again, three feet deep from bank to bank and running as if there had been a cloudburst in the hills. Mighty glad they were to see it, too.”
There was a silence, but at length a solemn youth sitting near said in very serious tones:
“I've thought over that story very thoroughly, and I believe it's a lie.”
“Vermont,” said the first Ohio lad, “don't you have faith in my friend's narrative?”
“I believe every word of it,” said Warner warmly. “Our friend here, who I see can see, despite the dim light, has a countenance which one could justly say indicates a doubtful and disputatious nature, wishes to discredit it because he has not heard of such a thing before. Now, I ask you, gentlemen, intelligent and fair-minded as I know you are, where would we be, where would civilization be if we assumed the attitude of our friend here. If a thing is ever seen at all somebody sees it first, else it would never be seen. Quod erat demonstrandum. You remember your schooldays, of course. I thank you for your applause, gentlemen, but I'm not through yet. We have passed the question of things seen, and we now come to the question of things done, which is perhaps more important. It is obvious even to the doubtful or carping mind that if a new thing is done it is done by somebody first. Others will do it afterward, but there must and always will be a first.
“Nobody ever swallowed a river before, beginning at its mouth and swallowing it clean down to its source, but a division of gallant young troops from Ohio have done so. They are the first, and they must and always will be the first. Doubtless, other rivers will be swallowed later on. As the population increases, larger rivers will be swallowed, but the credit for initiating the first and greatest pure-water drinking movement in the history of the world will always belong to a brave army division from the state of Ohio.”