Nathan Gould- Gunfighter from Green Mountain

by Bruce Graham

  John gave a hoarse whisper. “I’ll come to you.”

  “No,” I replied. “I might mistake you---“

  A dark shape loomed from the thicket on the other side, toward John. The figure splashed in the watercourse.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” I yelled.

  Another splash to the right startled me. I spun toward the new sound. “Password!” I shouted.

  “Friend,” came a voice from the first figure.

  Another shape jumped up directly across from me. I jerked the trigger. The report startled me, the recoil sent me backwards against bushes behind me.

  The figure in front of me flopped into the brook with a groan.

  The shape to my left called out, “You’ve shot Sonny. We’re---“

  The figure to my right was lurching across the rill and it seemed directly toward me.

  I shouted out “Alarm, alarm,” and spun and jumped from behind the tree, gun and bayonet directly toward the shape, that suddenly seemed in uniform.

  The man stopped.

  For the first time in almost three years my bayonet buried itself into a solid mass. The man flopped forward, twisting my blade in him and taking my musket to the ground. I tried to wrestle them free, but it was no use.

  The figure to my left was stock still in the brook. He raised his hands in the air. “I give up. We’re surrendering. You’ve killed Sonny and Jubel for no reason. But I quit, I give up.”

  Thrashing to the left told me that John was coming.

  “Don’t shoot, John, he’s giving up.”

  The still standing, bedraggled Johnnie Reb was wilted in the almost total darkness. “Why did you have to kill them, we was all giving up. The War’s over, everybody knows it but you.”

  Several of our comrades rushed up, lanterns lit. A lieutenant looked around. “Got two of them, huh?”

  I leaned against the tree and felt beaten and sick.

  “You better get your gun, Son,” said the lieutenant. “You might need it again.”

  Everybody milled around while I struggled to pull the twisted bayonet from the corpse of the Confederate. He looked so young that I felt as if I’d killed a child.

  “He was only seventeen,” said the standing man in gray. “Jubel Dunston, I was with his brother till he got hurt at Baton Rouge. I hope you’re proud of yourself, Yank. We was surrendering.”

  Our soldiers were carrying the two dead Rebs away.

  I stood my wet gun against the tree. “You should have said something. You could have called out that you were giving up. How were we to know, you came sneaking up on us, didn’t you know we’d have pickets posted with orders to shoot?”

  A soldier poked the Confederate with his bayonet. The two of them stumbled through the thicket.

  “I thought you was our line, I told them so. I thought you was us and didn’t want them to know we was deserting. You proud of yourself, Yank? You got Sonny, too. Maybe he was due for it, he’s done a lot of things he shouldn’t ought to have done. But he wasn’t real bad, he was getting better, he just found Jesus last week. I hope you’re proud of what you done, Yank.”

  I tried to back away from the other men hauling away the bodies and pushing the Reb toward our lines with the tip of a bayonet. I was glad that Sonny had found Jesus, just in time. But my guts were starting to churn and hurt. I was dragging my gun by the butt.

  “Better load up, son,” said the lieutenant. He stared at me in the light of a lantern held by a corporal. “We’ll wait with the light. Corporal, give this man your bayonet.”

  The corporal wrestled his bayonet free from his belt and held it out toward me.

  I paused for several seconds. “Yes, sir.” Then I grasped the bayonet by the base and pushed it into my belt. I dried off the musket on my trousers and fumbled at my belt to reload the piece. The lieutenant frowned at me. “You look white as a sheet, boy. Haven’t you ever killed anyone before?”

  “No, sir. Almost three years and this is my first time.”

  “Probably your last time, also,” said the corporal. “It looks like Jeff Davis is just about ready to give up. A few weeks and we’ll be going home.”

  “Where are you from, boy?” asked the lieutenant.

  I suddenly realized that I was crying, fumbling with my gun. “Bartonsville,” I croaked.

  “Barton?” asked the lieutenant. He grasped my rifle by the stock. He gently drew the rifle from my hands. “I’m from Newport.”

  “Bartonsville, sir,” I repeated. “It’s in Rockingham.”

  The lieutenant pawed at my belt. He produced a cartridge. “Where’s that?”

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “Bellows Falls, south of White River, sir.”

  “Oh, yes, I see now.” The lieutenant put the powder and bullet in my gun. He picked at my belt and held a percussion cap up to the light. He inserted the cap onto the musket. He handed the gun back to me.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “All right, son. Carry on.” The lieutenant spun and led the corporal and the lantern back toward the camp.

  I stood with the musket in my hands and stared at John in the fading light. “A good night’s work. I went through three years of this insanity without killing anybody, and while the War is ending I kill a boy and a man who’d just found Jesus. He found Jesus right on time.”

  “I’m getting back on station. I’ll talk to you later.”

  We spent the rest of the time quietly.

  Over mess the next morning our captain came up to me. “You killed those two Rebs last night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We held a meeting on it this morning. You’re cleared of any misconduct, even though they weren’t armed. You didn’t know that they were surrendering. Rest easy.”

  But I didn’t rest easy, then or later.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Word of Lee’s surrender reached us about the same time as the Rebs in our section laid down their guns. I was sad to see the bedraggled, tired, dirty, shoeless men as they turned in their weapons and equipment. I wondered what would become of them, thrown out of the military that gave them what support it could, aware that the mission for which they had devoted years of their lives had failed, perhaps hundreds of miles from home, their homes quite possibly ruined, means of earning a living destroyed, entire culture and way of life wrecked.

  But in the manner of what many years later I heard referred to as the maintenance of anxiety, I found that my attention was soon redirected from concern for the defeated Confederates toward my own situation. I anticipated the next phase in my life. Would I return to the backwater of Bartonsville, Vermont, or attempt to follow some other course of action? The once boys, now men, of the 7th Vermont Regiment of Volunteers spent much time swapping stories of what they planned to do. We passed the time expecting to be mustered out on returning to Vermont.

  In early May, however, word filtered down that we were destined for what our sergeants said they hoped would be a short assignment: part of the Army of Observation on the Mexican border. While the unpleasantness between North and South was playing out the autocrat of France, whom we heard was called Napoleon the Third, installed a crony of his as Emperor of Mexico. From my high school history I understood that this was against the Monroe Doctrine and was European meddling in United States position as boss of the Western Hemisphere. According to word filtering down from the regimental headquarters, the 7th was to be a part of getting rid of this interloper by our presence along the border. Word was that during the Civil War this European gang had dealt with secessionist Texas on favorable terms. Now that theCivil War was over, it was time for the National Administration to return the favor and pressure the return of Mexico to native governance.

  “We’re being sent to the border to twist Maximilian’s arm and help the Republicans in Mexico in their civil war,” our company captain explained.

  “We studied Napoleon the First in history,” said David Coleman, who often let us know of his broad education at Dartmou
th. “And I know Napoleon the Third. But who was Napoleon the Second? And who is Maximillian?”

  He had caught the captain in his weak spot. That man had been manager of a factory in Burlington, but had to admit that he couldn’t say much for now. “I’ll get back to you on Napoleon the Third,” he said. “But Maximillian is related to him somehow, I think.”

  Two days later the captain returned with definite news that we would be moving by ship, first to Mobile, then to Brownsville, Texas, from whence we would move by wagon train to El Paso, Texas. “And the answer to your question, Private Coleman, is that this Napoleon the Third is the nephew of the great Napoleon, and there was no Napoleon the Second. There were two people who might have taken the title of Napoleon the Second but one, the great Napoleon’s son, died as a child, and the other, the great Napoleon’s elder brother, had no interest in politics. So the Napoleon title fell to the elder brother’s son, Louis, when he became the first president, now called Emperor, of France.

  “Everything we didn’t want to know about French politics,” muttered a slovenly soldier named Winter, from somewhere around Montpelier. “How long do we stay on the Texas border, captain?”

  The captain scowled at the flippant man. “A few months, perhaps a year. We’ll know it when we hear about it.” He spun on his heels and strode away.

  And he was right: we knew about it when we heard about it. We went through the boredom of taking a ship to Mobile, and then another ship to the dismal waterfront town of Port Isabel, close to Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexican border, and again up the river by shallow draft steamboats to Rio Grande City.

  The community was clustered along the River that formed the border with Mexico. The buildings were mostly adobe, with some wooden structures, on both sides of the main street parallel to the River. The buildings were sites for Cantinas, blacksmith and small metal working shops and stores. Two docks, brothers to similar structures on the Mexican shore, gave evidence of once brisk trade. The Regiment ignored the town and took possession of nearby Fort Ringgold and spent several days restoring the Fort that had become run down during the Confederate occupation. On the fifth day, our colonel assembled us and stated that we were expected to drill daily with a target and bayonet practice to keep our “mettle up, in case trouble developes across the border.” He said that a portion of our Regiment might be sent upriver to assist Federal forces moving overland to recover the fort at Laredo, but that wasn’t certain.

  During all of my military service I had received a letter every month or so from my father, which recounted what passed for news in rural Vermont, local gossip, reports of deaths, marriages, births and goings on which, over time, became less meaningful to me, increasingly involving people of no interest to me. My letters to him were frequent for the first couple of years, then dwindling away to every month, and probably likewise as lacking in interest to my father. My father’s final letter before we left for the Mexican border caught up with me in the late summer. It remarked that Judith was keeping company with a man in Bellows Falls, and that my father was also calling on a lady in Chester. Several letters later, my father said that he and the lady were planning to marry, and would wait until I returned before taking that step. He said that she was a widow, with a farm and two adolescent children.

  The ensuing months were nothing but daily drills and exercises, alternating with marches through the desert adjoining the Fort and town. We were issued new shoes and floppy hats in place of our kepis, in deference to the bright sunshine. We endured the change from the swamps, bogs, heavy foliage and humid heat of the Gulf Coast to the desiccated desert and dry heat around Rio Grande City as best we could. Drilling took most of our time and sharpened our combat skills. But by Christmas we were passed the word that matters in Mexico had turned against the foreign forces and their leader, who had never been recognized by the United States as sovereign. We heard that General Sheridan, who was in overall command of the American Southwest, had allowed surplus arms and ammunition to “pass into the hands” of the revolutionaries. It was obvious that we were in no danger of being attacked by Maximilian, who was in retreat from the popular forces. In February we were notified that our mustering out was imminent.

  The months in the Southwest had provided me time to consider my future. The Regiment would be returning to Vermont for disbanding. But I was now resolved not to do so, at least until I had time to examine the alternatives of the West. The hardscrabble life in the Northeast held no allure for me. I wanted to stay somewhere where prospects for a more interesting life were better than whatever was in store in Bartonsville.

  I had left home when I was just out of school, and could see no way that I would be earning a living. My education did not equip me for the sort of work by which my father had grown to prosper. And his idea of prosperity was not mine, since I had seen much bigger and better things than a paper mill on a small stream in Vermont. I was well aware that I wasn’t skilled in much except marksmanship with a rifle and stabbing with a bayonet. But those abilities would not serve me any better in Vermont than in Texas or otherwise west of the Hudson River. I further was uneasy about becoming a part of a farming family, with two step siblings, a woman whose primary interests would have been them, and a father whose concerns would focus on his new wife, where I would be expected to help with tedious chores. And once I returned to Vermont, after the anticipated greetings and huzzahs from the neighbors and relatives, my military service would fade into distant memory and be forgotten. Finally, in my mind would lurk the recollection of the excitement of Army life, such as it was, in comparison with the humdrum boredom of hardscrabble Vermont.

  I even explored with my company captain the possibility of remaining in the Regular Army.

  “Not a chance,” said the captain. “Congress wants the Army shrunk to its pre-war level. Right now there are thousands of others asking the same question. But only one in a hundred has any possibility. And a Vermont volunteer has no chance at all.”

  John was enthusiastic about shedding the blue and getting on with his life, which he felt would be free of parental control. I didn’t feel as if I should argue with him, so I listened quietly to his positive comments. On the day before we were scheduled to journey back to Port Isabel we put our gear together and milled about, aimlessly seeking some outlet for our emotions.

  I wrote a letter to my father:

  Dear Father:

  The Regiment will be mustered out and disbanded when you receive this. But I’m not returning to Vermont yet. I’m spending a while out here in the West. Your new interests will occupy you well without me and I would not be happy to miss out on the chance to experience this part of the country during peacetime.

  My love to you and Judith.

  Nate

  I gave the letter to John. “When you get to Bartonsville, please give this to my father.”

  “Aren’t you coming back?”

  “No. And I want you to lend me two months’ pay, and here is my assignment of the pay due me for them to pay to you. I’m staying here, or somewhere out here.”

  “A Yankee in Dixie?”

  I laughed. “Texas isn’t really part of Dixie, it’s more the West. No, I’ll be going up north when I have the chance, Colorado, perhaps California, somewhere out there. But I just can’t bear the thought of going from this to Vermont. I’d be suffocated, I’d be trapped. You like it, I don’t.”

  John pursed his lips. “It’s part of me. My great-grandfather settled the place about 75 years ago and my Dad and my brothers and sisters were born there. My grandfather still runs the farm. How can I leave it?”

  “I’m not saying you should. But my Dad will understand, his father came up from Connecticut, he worked on the boats up and down the river and Dad just latched onto Bartonsville to work in the mills. So you go back and if I go back in a few years I’ll have gotten the wanderlust out of my system, and we’ll chew the fat at the store.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Okay, I have somethi
ng for you.” John reached into his haversack and waved a pistol toward me. “I picked it up from the Reb you shot, back near Mobile. Remember? Where you stabbed the other one?”

  “Sure. So one of them was armed.”

  “And a nice piece it is. I’ve been holding it to maybe sell it. But I give it to you as a parting gift.” He held it up to the lamplight. “It’s an 1851 Colt Navy, .36 caliber”

  I took the pistol by the handle, fingers off the trigger guard. The cylinder was etched with fine lines. It was heavier than I imagined it would be. “How would a Reb soldier have a gun made for the Navy?”

  “It’s called a Navy because the cylinder is carved with a picture of a sea battle.”

  “Oh,” I said, studying the etching on the cylinder. “I better be careful not to fire it.”

  “It won’t fire, I’m sure,” said John. “It uses percussion caps, just like our long guns, and they’re corroded and wet since I picked it up. You’ll have to clean it and get new caps and new bullets. It needs to be reloaded new right before every battle so it doesn’t misfire.” He handed me a makeshift holster made of pieces of canvas roped together.

  I slid the pistol into the holster and put it on my knapsack. “Thank you, John. I’ll try to not use it to bad effect.”

  As I sat looking at the pistol in its holster I thought of how John and now I had come by it, by me shooting and bayoneting two unarmed young men who wanted to surrender and simply made a mess of it. I visualized my bayonet going into the Reb’s guts, then twisting and coming out. I almost cried at the thought.

  The next day the Regiment formed up and marched off with me watching from the gate to the fort. As my captain marched by I handed him my note of remaining and that John was to have my final pay. When the tail end of the column was disappearing I hefted my knapsack with a pistol inside and a blanket, and strode from the fort toward the main street of the town.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Hotel Rio Grande was roughly the same as the hotel in Bartonsville. The proprietor and staff were Mexican and were glad to see my Union greenbacks. My room was on the second floor. After settling down I wandered back down and into the dirt main street and along the dirt track that served as a sidewalk. Very few of the other men I encountered wore guns, but short knives were very common. At the north end of the street I came to an office for the South Texas Express Line, with two coaches outside, without horses or mules. The office contained a middle aged Anglo man, feet on the desk, studying a newspaper. I affected a relaxed demeanor and ambled into the office.