Evelyn Byrd

“Not so, Monsieur,” the girl answered. “They have their babies to feed. They will come back to me when that is done,” and they did.

“Touch the squirrel,” she said to Kilgariff, “and he will fasten his long teeth in your flesh. But I may stroke his fur as much as I please. That is because he has made friends with me. And see! The robin is a wild bird. His first instinct is to keep his wings free for flying. Yet I may take him thus” – possessing herself of the bird – “and lay him on his back in my lap, so that his wings are useless to him, and he does not mind. It is because he knows me for his friend and trusts me. Ah, if only people would learn to know the wild creatures and teach them the lesson of love!”

Kilgariff felt like saying, “I know no such teacher of that lesson as you are,” but he refrained, and so it fell to Dorothy afterward to say: —

“Not many people have your gift, dear, of making other creatures love them.”

“But you have it,” the girl answered enthusiastically. “Oh, how I do love you, Dorothy!”

XI

ORDERS AND “NO NONSENSE”

WHEN General Grant, with one hundred and twenty thousand men, sat down before Petersburg and Richmond and called for reinforcements as a necessary preliminary to further operations, his plan was obvious, and its ultimate outcome was nearly as certain as any human event can be before it has happened.

Richmond lies on the north bank of the James River. Petersburg lies on the Appomattox River twenty-two miles due south of Richmond. Each river is navigable up to the gates of the city situated upon it, so that in besieging the two cities from the east, General Grant had an uninterrupted water communication over which to bring supplies and reinforcements at will. His line of fortifications stretched from a point on the north of Richmond, eastwardly and southwardly to the James River, and thence southwardly, with a westerly trend, to a point south of Petersburg. A rude outline map, which accompanies the text, will give a clearer understanding than words can.

A glance at the map will show the reader three lines of railway upon which Richmond depended for communication with the South and for supplies for Lee’s army. All of them lay south of the James River.

Grant’s problem was to break these three lines of railway, and thus to compel Richmond’s surrender or evacuation. If he could break the Weldon railway first, and the others later, as he purposed, his vastly superior army at the time of Richmond’s evacuation could be easily interposed between Lee and any point farther south to which the Confederate commander might plan to retreat.

That is what actually happened eight months later, with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House as the outcome of this successful strategy.

In the meanwhile, Lee, with less than forty thousand men, was called upon to defend a line more than thirty miles long against an enemy whose numbers were three or four times his own, and whose capacity of reinforcement was almost limitless.

Still more important was the fact that Lee must stand ready, by day and by night, to defend every point on this long line, while his adversary, with the assistance of ships and railroads in his rear, could concentrate irresistible forces at any point he pleased and at any time he pleased, without the knowledge of the Confederate commander. To the military on-looker it appeared easy for Grant to break through Lee’s lines whenever he pleased, by hurling an overwhelming force with irresistible momentum against any part of the attenuated thread that he might elect, breaking through with certainty and entire ease.

Such would have been the case but for the splendid fighting quality of that Army of Northern Virginia which was struggling almost literally in its “last ditch.” Time after time Grant massed his forces and threw them with all his might against the weakest points he could find in Lee’s defensive lines, only to be baffled and beaten by a fighting force that was absolutely unconquerable in its obstinate determination.

But Grant had other arrows in his well-stocked quiver. His enormous superiority in numbers, and his easy ability to manœuvre beyond his adversary’s sight or ken, made it possible for him continually to extend his lines to the left; pushing south and west, and compelling Lee to stretch out his already slender line to the point of hopeless thinness.

Grant could one day assail the defences below Richmond on the north side of the James River in vastly superior force, and the next morning at daybreak hurl five men to Lee’s one against the works defending the Weldon Railroad, thirty miles or more to the south.

Yet even under these conditions the brilliant Confederate strategist not only held his own, but detached from his all too meagre force a strong column under Early, and sent it to sweep the valley of Virginia, invade Maryland, and so far threaten Washington as to compel Grant either to send forces for the defence of the Federal capital or to forego for the time being the reinforcements which he was clamorously demanding for the strengthening of his lines at Petersburg.

Captain Marshall Pollard’s battery was included in the detail of troops made for this final and despairing invasion of the country north of the Potomac; and when the battery marched, Sergeant-major Owen Kilgariff rode by the side of his captain, ready for any duty that might fall to his lot.

The wound in his neck was not yet well, or even nearly so, but he was quite regardless of self in his eagerness to bear his part, and so, in spite of all the warnings of all the doctors, he had rejoined his command at the first moment in which he was strong enough to sit upright in the saddle.

Captain Pollard had but one commissioned officer with him on this dare-devil expedition, and that one officer was shot in the first skirmish, so that Owen Kilgariff, non-commissioned officer that he was, was second in command of the battery.

Early’s column swept like a hurricane down the valley, and like a cyclone burst upon Maryland and Pennsylvania. It marched fearlessly wherever it pleased and fought tremendously wherever it encountered a foe. Its invasion of the North at a time when Grant with three or four men to Lee’s one was beleaguering the Southern capital, was romantic, gallant, picturesque, startling. But it did not accomplish the purpose intended. It was Grant’s conviction that Washington City could take care of itself; that the authorities there had force enough at command, or within call, to meet and repel a Confederate invasion, without any assistance from him. He, first of all Federal generals, acted upon this conviction, and refused to weaken his lines at Petersburg and Richmond by sending any considerable forces to defend Washington against Early. Grant had little imagination, but he had a great fund of common sense.

Only one considerable action was the outcome of this expedition. In a minor encounter on the day before the battle was fought, Captain Marshall Pollard lost a leg, thus leaving his sergeant-major, Owen Kilgariff, in command of the battery, reduced now to four guns, with only four horses to each piece or caisson.

At Monocacy, Kilgariff fought the guns at their best, and by a dash of a kind which artillery is neither armed nor expected to make, captured two Federal rifled guns, with their full complement of horses. In his report he spoke of this feat of arms only as “an opportunity which offered to add two guns to the battery and to raise the tale of horses to the regulation number of six to each gun and caisson.”

But that night General Early sent for Kilgariff, in response to that non-commissioned officer’s request that a commissioned officer should be sent to take command of the battery.

“I don’t see the necessity,” said Early, in his abrupt way. “I don’t see how anybody could fight his guns better than you have done. Get yourself killed if you want somebody else to command Pollard’s battery. So long as you live, I shall send nobody else. How does it happen that you haven’t a commission?”

“I do not covet that responsibility,” Kilgariff answered evasively.

“Well, that responsibility will rest on your shoulders from this hour forth, till the end of this campaign, unless you escape it by getting yourself killed. I shall certainly not send anybody else to command your battery while you live. From this hour I shall regard you as Captain Kilgariff; and when I get myself into communication with General Lee or the war department, I’ll see that the title is made good.”

“Thank you, General,” answered Kilgariff. “But I sincerely wish you wouldn’t. I have already received and rejected one commission as captain, and I have declined a still higher rank offered me.”

“What an idiot you must be!” squeaked Early in his peculiar, falsetto voice. “But you know how to fight your guns, and I’ve got a use for such men as you are. You may do as you please after this campaign is over, but while you remain under my command you’ll be a captain. I’ll see to that, and there’ll be no nonsense about it, either.”

An hour later, an order, officially signed and certified, came to Kilgariff. It read in this wise: —

Special Order No. 7. Sergeant-major Owen Kilgariff, of Captain Pollard’s Virginia Battery, is hereby ordered to assume command of said Battery as Acting Captain, and he will exercise the authority of that rank in all respects. He is ordered hereafter to sign his reports and orders as “Captain Commanding,” and all officers concerned are hereby directed, by order of the Commanding General, to recognise the rank thus conferred, not only in matters of ordinary obedience to orders, but also in making details for court-martial service and the like. This temporary appointment of Captain Kilgariff is made in recognition of peculiarly gallant and meritorious conduct, and in due time it will be confirmed by the War Department. In the meanwhile Captain Kilgariff’s rank, commission, and authority are to be fully recognised by all persons concerned, by virtue of this order.

This order was duly signed by General Early’s adjutant-general, as by his command.

There was nothing for Kilgariff to do but obey an order so peremptory, from a commander who was not accustomed to brook opposition with patience. Kilgariff’s first thought was to send through the regular military channels a written protest and declination. But an insuperable difficulty stood in the way. Under Early’s order, he must sign that document not as “Sergeant-major,” but as “Captain.” Otherwise, his act would be of that contumacious sort which military law defines as “conduct subversive of good order and military discipline.”

But aside from that consideration was the fact that General Early had sent Kilgariff a personal note, in which he had written: —

I have issued an order in your case. Obey it. I don’t want any damned nonsense.

Kilgariff was too good a soldier to protest further while the campaign under Early should continue. He meant to ask excuse later, but for the time being there was nothing for him to do except assume the captain’s rank and command to which Early had thus peremptorily assigned him.

XII

SAFE-CONDUCT OF TWO KINDS

AS Early was slowly making his way back into the valley of Virginia – fighting wherever there was a force to be fought – there came a messenger to Owen Kilgariff one night a little before midnight. He bore a slip of paper on which these words were written: —

Come to me quickly. I am mortally wounded, and it is very necessary for me to see you before I die – not for my sake, for you’d rejoice to see me in hell, but for the sake of others and for your own sake – though for yourself you don’t often care much. I’m in a farm-house hospital three miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the Martinsburg road. My messenger will guide you. The Federals have possession, of course, but the bearer of this note has a safe-conduct for you. Of course, this might be a trick, but it is not. On the word of a gambler (and you know what that means) I am playing fair this time. You are a brave enough man to risk this thing anyhow. Come!

This note bore no signature, but Owen Kilgariff knew the hand that had written it. That handwriting had sent him to jail once upon a time. He had not forgotten. He was not given to forgetting.

He summoned the messenger who had brought him the note.

“You have a safe-conduct for me, I believe?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain,” and he produced the document.

“How did you manage to pass our picket lines? Did you come under a flag of truce?”

“No. That would have taken time, and there is no time to be wasted. Major Campbell is terribly wounded. I live in these parts. I ain’t a soldier, you know. So I slipped through the lines.”

For a moment Kilgariff regarded the fellow with indignant contempt. Then the indignation passed, and the contempt was intensified in his expression. Presently he said: —

“You low-lived, contemptible hound, I can’t make up my mind even to be angry with you. You and your kind are the pest in this war. You haven’t character enough to take sides. You serve either side at will, and betray both with jaunty indifference. Now listen to me. Within twenty-four hours I shall see Major Campbell, who sent me this note. But I shall not go to him under the safe-conduct you have brought.”

With that, Kilgariff tore the paper to bits and scattered its fragments to the night wind.