The Carroll Farm Fight

by Greg Hunt

  Mel smiled in the dark about the whippings he took for sneaking down here and sampling the preserves and jellies mother had put up for the winter. When he grew older, his target was more likely to be the hard cider, muscadine wine, or corn liquor Daddy stored there.

  When he was a boy, those times only seemed like an ordinary part of life. But now, thinking back, there seemed to be something special about those days that he hardly understood. He couldn’t leave. Facing whatever was about to take place here wouldn’t be as hard as skulking off somewhere and not knowing what was happening to his farm.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mel was jolted awake as the walls and ground shivered and quaked all around him and an earsplitting roar tumbled in through the half-open door. Dirt and pebbles from the log roof above showered thickly down on him. His first thought was that it was an earthquake, which wasn’t unheard of in these parts. He pictured the roof collapsing on him, crushing him to death, or worse, burying him alive. There were five terrifying rumbles in close succession, then silence.

  He tumbled off the cot and out the doorway, scrambling desperately up the steep wooden steps into the open air. No more than ten feet away, the crews of the five cannons positioned above the root cellar were shocked by the appearance of a frantic man who seemed to literally spring from the ground beneath them.

  “You could warn a man before you cut loose with a racket like that!” Mel stormed at them.

  “Hell, we didn’t know nobody was down there,” one of the crew laughed. He was holding a long pole with something that looked like a sheepskin brush tied around one end. “I thought we’d woke the dead with that first salvo.”

  The fifteen or so men manning the big guns all began to laugh, and seeing the humor in it, Mel did too. He had seen the cannons up there last night, but had no idea that they’d start firing them so early. But now he realized that if he was still here and still alive when the sun set tonight, he’d have to think about finding someplace else to sleep.

  “Has the fight started already?” Mel asked. The wind was pushing the black pall of smoke from the cannons to the northeast, down into the valley beyond, but he saw no sign of attacking soldiers in that direction.

  “Naw, we’re calibrating the range,” one of the men explained. “When the real fight breaks out, you’ll know about it soon enough.”

  The sun hadn’t even risen far enough to start leaking through the treetops to the east, but already the camp was awake and active. Down in the valley the smoke rose from hundreds of breakfast fires, and some of the men were already filing off to finish their work on the earthen barricades on the western and northern portions of the farm.

  Last night Mel had considered staying down in the root cellar while they settled things up above him, but this morning he saw that was an impractical plan. Not only was it bound to get impossibly noisy down there, but there were also other normal needs like food, water, and a morning constitutional that had to be taken care of.

  The surly little town-burning colonel was up and about already too, surveying the completion of the fortifications on the crest of the hill overlooking White Tail Valley. They looked like they would serve their purpose well, Mel thought. The soldiers could stand in a three-foot ditch behind a long pile of dirt and logs that was raised high enough to lay a long gun across. They could duck down out of the line of fire to reload, then rise back up and take their shot without exposing anything more than their head and shoulders.

  The colonel’s crew, including Major Elliott, stayed in tow as he strolled back and forth. Every few seconds he would pause, point off in one direction or another, and give somebody an order. The whole thing would probably have come together just as well without him, but some men seemed born to want to tell everybody else what to do.

  Mel walked over to the front of the cabin and washed his face and hands at the pump. Outside the cluster of tents nearby he spotted a pot suspended with an iron tripod over a dying fire. No one was around, so he went over and took a look. The pot contained some kind of hash made with potatoes, onions, and shredded beef, all his he felt sure. He found a plate nearby and dipped some of the food out of the pot, then claimed a hunk of half-eaten cornbread from another abandoned plate. Coffee was all this breakfast needed, but the large, smoke-blackened coffeepot in the edge of the fire was empty. Instead he washed his meal down with fresh water from the pump.

  Down the hill in the cornfield to the south, the long dirt berm they had thrown up yesterday was crawling with armed men. The cannons covering that approach were perched on the hillside below the barn. The whole scene in the valley was blanketed by a shadowy ground fog that Mel knew would not burn off until the sun cleared the treetops to the east.

  Ordinarily the dissolution of the morning fog down in the cornfield would signal that it was time to round up Doc and harness him to the plow. But not today, and probably not for a long time to come.

  As he was finishing his breakfast the cannons at the barricade behind the house rumbled out again, and Mel headed back up that way to see what they were firing at. This time he walked up close behind the barricade so he could get a better look. Nobody seemed to notice or care.

  As in the cornfield, White Tail Valley was blanketed in morning fog. If he was hunting this morning, Mel would already be down there in the edge of the woods, waiting for the deer to leave the woods and begin their morning grazing. But the deer would be far away today. That first blast from the big guns would have already sent them racing away into the deep woods. Mel hoped that they would return to the valley when this lot left because when all this was over, he’d need their meat to survive on for quite a spell.

  The colonel paced by behind him, still barking orders at his underlings. “. . . and tell the platoon leaders to keep reminding the men not to fire until the order is given. Too many of these men are still green recruits, and they haven’t developed any battle discipline yet. I believe they’ll feint from the north, up this valley, to make us concentrate our forces on this side. Then the main attack will be from the west. They’ll want to take the road, and will probably be willing to pay a high price for it. But it’s still all guesswork. I’m blind without any field intelligence to help me plan. Damn that idiot Hess all to hell. He must have gotten his fool self captured or killed at the exact time that I need him most.”

  Dead and buried, Mel thought, but not in the kind of grave a man was likely to pick for himself.

  Far down the valley he spotted men moving cautiously toward them. With the bottom halves of their bodies hidden in the thick ground fog, they drifted forward like eerie specters floating on a feathery cloud. There weren’t many of them, two dozen maybe, and they were scattered out. As Mel watched their approach, Major Elliott came over and stood beside him.

  “They’re not sending out many men if they aim to start this thing,” Mel said.

  “Those are skirmishers,” Elliott explained. “Their job is to come close enough to get an idea of our strength and defenses.” Three of the cannons fired a volley, but the approaching men were still too far away. The exploding balls threw dirt and grass in the air, but killed no one.

  “Did they think they could hit any of them with a cannonball? It seems like a waste of iron and powder to me.”

  Elliott chuckled. “It would be a miracle,” he agreed. “We just want to give them something to think about when they start charging up that valley in force. And besides,” he added, lowering his voice, “this is the first time the colonel’s had a chance to fire his field artillery in battle. He’s showing off a bit, I expect.”

  “I’m thinking maybe that colonel might be as green as some of those recruits he was talking about a minute ago.”

  “Colonel Mayfield fought in Mexico with Taylor. Claims to have seen plenty of action down there when they took Mexico City.”

  “He claims that, does he?” Mel grinned.

  “There’s rumors to the contrary, but none that are repeated too loudly,” Elliott said quietly. “In a
n army, somebody always has to be in charge, and for us, it’s him.”

  Two of the cannons fired, and Mel watched their dark destructive metal balls arc through the air, their fuses sizzling. This time they went over the heads of the distant line of approaching men, bouncing and tumbling along the ground before finally exploding.

  “I expect I could hunt for a year with the powder it takes to fire one of those things off one time. It does seem a waste.”

  “Everywhere an army travels, about all it leaves behind is waste of one kind or another.”

  “Looking around my farm, I’m bound to agree with you,” Mel said. “But what are you Arkansas boys doing away off up here in Missouri anyway, Major?”

  “We’re bound to keep those Missourians from advancing on down into Arkansas,” Elliott tried to explain. “So we’re marching up here to meet them.”

  “So if everybody stayed home, there wouldn’t be any fighting, would there? Or am I only a big dumb hillbilly who doesn’t understand anything?”

  Elliott gave Mel a curious look. “The fact is, Mr. Carroll, I really don’t have a good answer to either one of those questions. All I know for sure is, here we are, and there they come.”

  The crackle of gunfire down in the valley interrupted their conversation. Judging by the black plumes of rifle smoke, some of it came from the tree line opposite the approaching men, and some from the skirmishers out in the open valley. A few of the skirmishers toppled down into the ground fog, but the rest moved doggedly forward.

  “Before daylight we sent a couple of platoons down into the edge of the woods,” Elliott explained, “so they won’t come too close to our lines without paying for it.”

  The crackle of gunfire was brisk for a couple of minutes, then began dying away. The remaining skirmishers began to withdraw, still shooting and reloading as they retraced their progress up the valley.

  “I’d give my good leg for two companies of cavalry right now.” It was the colonel again, still on the move with his entourage trailing along. “Major Elliott, if you will, sir, rejoin my staff now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Elliott said. Then to Mel he said hurriedly, “Mr. Carroll, I suggest that you find a better place to weather this storm. If you stay here, it might reach a point when you’ll either have to fight or die. Maybe both.”

  “Major Elliott! Stop dawdling!” The colonel was clearly annoyed, and Elliott hurried away to catch up with his leader.

  Mel had a couple of options in mind for his own safety, depending on where the attack came from and how the fighting progressed. But for now, things were still quiet. The gunfire down in White Tail Valley had stopped, and the men the colonel had sent down there earlier were now hightailing it back.

  Mel saw a man taking the makings out of a pouch, and he sidled over in that direction. For all he knew, it was his own tobacco, rifled from the curing shed behind the barn. The man rolled himself a smoke, then handed the makings to Mel without being asked. Mel rolled one for himself and stuck it over his ear, wishing that he could somehow retrieve his corncob pipe from the cabin. It was damned inconvenient not being able to set foot in his own home.

  “I figure we’ll have this wrapped up by dinnertime,” the man said. He had on a linen shirt with ruffles down the front, and trousers from what had probably been a brown Sunday suit. The clothes had suffered considerably from the long days of marching and harsh camp life.

  “You think so?” Mel said.

  “Sure, they ain’t but a couple of thousand of them. A sergeant told me he heard two officers talking. They said all these Missouri boys was conscripts, and they didn’t have no stomach for fighting. Cowards to a man, on the lookout for any excuse to skedaddle. After we give these boys a drubbing, we can probably march all the way to Springfield. Maybe clear up to Independence, if Ol’ Persimmon has a mind to take us that far.”

  “That’s a lot of marching,” Mel noted.

  “It’s what armies do, boy. March and fight, march and fight. Hell, I love to march. Once we done fifty miles in one day, and I could have managed another ten or twenty, but the rest of the outfit was tuckered. Say, where’s your musket anyway?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Stole, huh? Well, after the shooting starts, take you one from some dead man, and then have at ’em. I aim to lay my hands on one of them new Spencer carbines before the day’s out.”

  Mel moved on, glad to get shut of the man. It was hardly worth a smoke to have to listen to that nonsense. He took another look down the long sweep of White Tail Valley, and suddenly they were there. They filled the far end of the valley from side to side, hundreds, probably thousands of them—who knew?—walking doggedly forward, rifles and bayonets at the ready. It was a sight he could never have imagined seeing down there in his lovely, lonely, deer hunting territory.

  “Here they come, boys!” somebody shouted, but the announcement wasn’t needed. For a moment the scene seemed frozen, all eyes fixed in the same direction, all guns pointed down the long valley before them.

  A man in front of Mel, leaning forward against the barricade, muttered to his companion, “Look there, Jesse. They’re wearing uniforms. I wish we had ’em too. I’d feel more like a real soldier, I expect.”

  “You can take it up with the gen’ral next time he invites you over for supper,” his companion said. “That is, if you’re still around to need one after today.”

  “Well I’d druther be buried in a uniform, too, if it came to that.”

  Mel knew it was time to move to someplace safer, but he felt funny about it, even though he had no part in this business and didn’t even have a weapon in his hands if he did decide to fight.

  Down in the valley the men in the blue uniforms kept coming and coming. There were far too many to count, but he had an uneasy feeling that there were more of them than there were in this bunch up here on his hillside. Without warning the five cannons rumbled out their angry challenge, and down the valley the rounds cut their bloody swaths through the advancing soldiers. But they still kept coming.

  Mel turned away and started back toward the enormous mulberry tree where he had decided to weather this thing out.

  “You, stop! Get back on line, soldier, before I put a ball of lead between those yella shoulder blades.” The voice was harshly confident, and Mel could tell its owner was perfectly willing to do what he said. He turned and saw a man striding toward him. He held a cocked revolver in one hand, and the other rested on the hilt of his sheathed sword. His eyes were furious, his face red as a plum. He wore a complete gray uniform, but instead of the gold on his shoulders, there were stripes on his sleeves.

  “Where’s your weapon, soldier? Thrown it down already, have you, and the battle not even started yet? I seen yella cowards before, but I never seen . . .”

  “Don’t call me that, mister,” Mel bristled. “This isn’t my fight is all.”

  “I’m about to make it your fight,” the man stormed. “Mister!”

  Mel stood still, thinking that he could probably take that revolver away from him if he came a little bit closer. But then what?

  “Sergeant Boone,” a voice called out from nearby.

  “Sir?” the sergeant said, keeping his eyes on Mel. He seemed to recognize Major Elliott’s voice.

  “Holster that weapon, Sergeant, and return to your men,” Elliott ordered.

  “But, sir, this man . . .”

  “That man is a civilian, and he’s moving to safety, as I instructed him to do.”

  The red-faced sergeant glared at Mel a moment more, not able to let go of his anger so easily, but no longer sure what to do with it. Reluctantly he lowered the hammer of his revolver with his thumb and turned back toward the real fight.

  Mel thought he should thank Elliott, but the major had turned away too. The enemy was too near now for niceties.

  Years had passed since he’d last climbed the old mulberry tree, but his hands and feet remembered the way up into it as if he’d last climbed it only the
week before. It was an ideal boy-climbing tree because the limbs were well spaced and stretched far out from the trunk. From near the top he remembered seeing much farther down White Tail Valley than anyone could possibly see from the ground. To the east it seemed like he could see halfway to town, and to the south and west, beyond his cornfield and pasture, the rolling hills and thick virgin forests seemed to stretch to the edge of the world.

  To a ten-year-old-boy it was a wondrous, liberating thing to be at the top of a tall tree on top of a high hill. A boy would do it for the pure happiness of the doing of it. But to persuade a grown man to make the climb, it took something a lot more curious and important, like the chance to watch hundreds of men fighting and killing each other to decide who would control a little chunk of ground out in the middle of nowhere.

  The shooting and the yelling down below started about then. When the thick mobs of advancing men in the valley reached the bottom of the long hill leading up to the barricade, they all started running and screaming wild, primitive noises at the top of their lungs like crazy people. As the firing from both sides intensified, a thick haze of powder smoke began to blur the battlefield, much like the thick dawn fogs that swallowed the hilltop in more peaceful times.

  The attackers in front began to fall by the dozens, their battle cries changing to shrieks of pain. The men behind them leaped over their bodies and kept on running. Few even paused to reload their muskets, choosing instead to keep moving as they clumsily rammed home fresh powder and ball. Like a running deer, instinct told them that stopping made them an easier target.

  Each time the hilltop cannons fired, the speeding balls cut swaths through the advancing throng, and their final explosions wreaked dreadful carnage. Men were splattered, dismembered, beheaded and mutilated in a shocking variety of ways, like random victims of some terrible vengeance at the very hand of God.

  But Mel figured that God didn’t have much to do with the slaughter on his farm today. This was the work of fools, carried out with wondrous zeal.