Nathan nodded but he was still seeking recruits. Is Oliver now in Andersonville? Is he one of the raiders? If not, possibly we could enlist him.
Nope. Scurvy. He’s a sorry picture now. I saw him tother day going along Main Street. His cords had pulled in on him and he had to travel on all fours. Pitiful sight.
Six new recruits were accepted into the band at the assembly that night. Sergeant Key’d worked cleverly at organizing a screen of singers and religious exhorters. These pickets were trustworthy men who approved heartily the plan for concerted action against the raiders, but who would be prevented by age or infirmity or small stature from taking active part in any pitched battle. A sergeant named Waddell, whose home was in Kenton, Ohio, had founded a prayer meeting late in May, and from the devout boys and elders who had been regular attendants Key could levy with no fear of betrayal. As dusk came down the communicants assembled according to prearranged plan beyond Main Street but not too close to the north fence. There were a number of ordained ministers among the prisoners, and some one of these discoursed fervently, turn and turn about. There was a bearded lay preacher named Frank Ives who served his stint. . . . Brothers, I will take as my text this evening Romans Fourteen, Twelve. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
Hymns arose simultaneously from other circles nearby.
My heavenly home is bright and fair,
No pain nor woe can enter there;
Its glittering towers the sun outshine—
That heavenly mansion shall be mine.
All hail the power of Jesus’ name!
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem—
Tho’ ev’ry prospect pleases
And only man is vile—
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing—
Behind this mask of humanity and psalmody the canny destruction was in planning. The band of Regulators crouched in tight concentric circles; a few sentries walked their beats on the outskirts while Key stood tall before serious eyes watching him. It was impossible to keep raiders or their spies from knowing that something unusual and foreboding was in progress, but at least it was hoped that specific information—the personnel, equipment and tactics to be employed—might be kept from the enemy.
Key’s sober nasal Illinois voice droned calmly under cover of sacred choruses.
I’m going home to die no more,
To die no more, to die no more,
I’m going home to die no more.
Bring forth the royal diadem,
And crown Him Lord of all.
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace—
Armament was the chief problem; that, and coöperation from Rebel authorities. A fear was voiced that when warfare commenced actually on a decisive scale, Wirz would make good his threat to sweep the stockade with canister. His jumping nerves might cry that here rose Insurrection, here came Riot, now the Yankees were trying to storm the gates as he had feared.
We must figure out some plan for apprising our jailers in advance.
Key, that ain’t no good. Too many spies among the Paroles outside, and they’d get word to Curtis or Collins or Sarsfield or somebody in the twinkling of an eye.
That’s correct, Goody. There would necessarily be the briefest of intervals between the apprisal of our intentions, and the actual attack.
But spose the Rebs refused us permission?
I don’t think they would, Ned. Mike Hoare, you got anything to say on the subject?
Hoare was a slim powerful man from Jackson, Michigan, who had been captured during Dahlgren’s abortive raid against Richmond. He spoke, feelingly and to the point, on the subject of armament. In battle they would be going against a horde possessed of knives, slung-shots, brass knuckles, probably some pistols. God was usually on the side with the heaviest artillery. Well. . . .
O that with yonder sacred throng
We at His feet may fall!
It took more nighttime meetings, and shrewd manipulation and bargainings by day, to equip even squad leaders with anything like decent arms. The men were determined that no more of them should commingle with that yonder sacred throng than became absolutely necessary, but that as many raiders as resisted should commingle. The Sucker Laundry and its adjacent barber shop served as a market-place where owners of weapons or incipient weapons might be questioned judiciously and persuaded to part with these essentials when bribed by community resources. MacBean and Dreyfoos gave liberally of their world’s goods to this cause, and MacBean was effective as a missionary enlisting financial support. In this manner nearly two dozen makeshift knives and eight real knives were secured, together with two lead-filled billies and many improvised slung-shots; leaders worked at improvising more. But clubs would prove most effective when the army took the field, and it was lack of these implements which perplexed Key and his lieutenants. Long ago the few trees left standing in the area had been torn apart, the very roots had been excavated piecemeal and burned, every remainder of the old north boundary had vanished as if eaten by ants. Few tent poles could be found which were tough enough to serve.
Face the music, said Sen MacBean. Pine just doesn’t make a good solid club. Maybe a green branch, properly cut and peeled; the rest’s too brittle and splintery.
Nathan said, I should have made more pointed lances or rapiers last spring when still they could be had.
Certainly, you ought. But no use crying over spilt milk. Maybe we can take enough clubs away from the toughs before they bowl us over?
No firearms came to light during a first cautious census by the Regulators. On the hot morning of July second it became known that a shriveled little Italian of the Forty-eighth New York had died in his shebang during the night. Nathan Dreyfoos was called to the scene to act as interpreter during a debate which ensued between neighbors and fellow Forty-eighth New Yorkers. The neighbors sought to have the corpse removed immediately, the comrades wished to wait until a priest named Father Peter Whelan appeared on his rounds; he came inside nearly every day. Nathan spoke only a little Italian, but by resorting to French and Spanish he managed to persuade the survivors to convey the body to the deadline and await Father Whelan there.
The Forty-eighth New York was known commonly as the Dead Ducks or Lost Ducks (their official designation was Les Enfants Perdus) and it was said that every nation in Europe was represented in their ranks, and wags insisted that no two of them could speak the same language. Nathan looked down at the dirty corpse still dressed in its short-tailed jacket and kilt-like nether garment, he looked down at this morsel come so far from some olive-grown hill to give itself to Georgia soil, he pitied the morsel. In helping other lank paupers to lift their dead he felt a lump against the sunken chest and found, to his delight and astonishment, that the little man had been possessed of a small revolver of German manufacture. Apparently L’Enfant had never felt called upon to use or even brandish the weapon since he entered the stockade; his companions expressed obvious wonder at this discovery. Despite their shrieks, Nathan appropriated the revolver in true raider fashion and carried it away with him, as well as nine rounds of ammunition and a box of caps.
I felt that the greater good would be served, Seneca.
Course you’re right. Isn’t that what they call the End justifying the Means?
We could use it. Some one of us. Perhaps Key?
Key it should be. I happen to know that he shoots passing well with a pistol. You know how the bulk of us cavalrymen are, with a hand-gun: passing bad. But I was told that Key won a pig one time in a pistol match when he was with the Sixteenth. And those other Dead Ducks don’t deserve such a prize. Only interesting thing I ever knew that bunch of riffraff to do was to capture and cook and eat a snake they found in the bog, last spring. Brother Nathan, did you ever eat cooked snake? No? Not even in Europe?
I have eaten eels.
<
br /> Mister, to think I’ve got you for a comrade!
Nathan traded a haircut for some rancid grease and with this substance he scrubbed off rust which had formed, and took the stiffness out of the weapon’s mechanism. Soon he had action restored to a serviceable state, and presented the revolver to Leroy Key whose firm face broke into a grin when he saw it.
Before nine o’clock that night three figures rose out of gloom beside Key’s hillside shebang. The Illinois sergeant heard his name spoken.
Need to see you, Sarge. Talk with you.
The Illinoisan’s first thought was, They’ve heard about the revolver. They mean to take it away from me.
He knew that these evening callers were not Regulators; a Regulator would have given the password on approaching the chief’s tent at night; this countersign was changed daily, and on this day the countersign was Sangamon, and no one had said Sangamon.
Sergeant Key stepped out into the putrid disorder, into poultry sounds and far-worse-than-poultry smells which saturated the dusk and seemed always worse when you left the kindness of your own lodging. . . . Even rags stretched between you and the sky seemed to afford a comfort, a guardianship.
He could not have remained inside; they would have sought him out, he would have been stabbed or bludgeoned as he lay.
To the gaze of these three emissaries who squinted their challenge he seemed to stand weaponless.
He said later that he thought one of them was Mosby the Raider’s man Dolan; he was almost certain that it was Dolan; he could not identify the other two.
Will you listen, Key? We people on the South Side have been hearing things.
What did you hear?
Talk of police and such.
You did?
They had been sent to kill him. Their bosses were most of them not brainy men, but they knew enough to squelch an uprising (it amounted to an uprising against authority, since from the beginning the raiders had been the supreme power operating in Andersonville) by cutting off its head. Who had talked, who had carried information? No use figuring that out, you couldn’t figure it out. Too many cooks stirring this particular kettle of broth.
Is it true? They asked it naively.
Yep, said the Bloomington printer.
A tiny fire was burning some twenty yards away; it was strong enough to make a glint on the knife which showed in the hand of the nearest man. The others moved in closer, Key heard the rasp as a club or billy was drawn from under a belt. He flung up his right hand holding the fortuitous revolver, and clicked back the hammer as he lifted it. He would have fired on the instant, but felt that he must wait almost until the men were upon him. He dreaded missing one of the dusky shapes and shooting some innocent person in a hut beyond. The metallic sharp kack was as good as a bullet except that it did not kill. The raiders’ committee fell back before the sound so rapidly that it seemed they must have anticipated Key’s gesture. They ran off like cattle blundering; one of them crashed into and through a shebang, there were grunts, wails, sounds of ripping, the sound of entanglement, the sound of a big man wrenching himself loose from fabric and then thudding away after other creatures who galloped in ruthless retreat.
On the fence a nervous guard fired at the sky, you could tell from the direction of the painted flash that his musket was pointed upward as he fired. Key stood listening and deciding what to do.
He thought that he had given sufficient discouragement to these individuals, but more might creep up on him later. He hated the event more than he hated peril to himself: it was forcing the Regulators’ hand. They were by no means ready for an engagement. But from now on none of them would be safe from murder under cover of darkness, nor would they be safe in daylight unless they clung together. Key released the hammer of his gun, put the revolver inside his belted jacket, and went in search of Nathan Dreyfoos. He owed his life to the present of the revolver on that day.
He called softly outside Dreyfoos’s hut, and the lame voice of Private Allen said, No, he’s not here.
Where’s he at, son?
Gone over to MacBean’s place.
In the region of the Sucker Laundry & Cleaning Co. several dark shapes were motionless as stumps while Sergeant Key approached, then detached themselves from the ground to greet him as they recognized his figure. There were MacBean, Dreyfoos, a long-armed man from the One Hundred and Eleventh Illinois known as Egypt, and Ned Carrigan from Chicago. Carrigan was a jolly youngster of enormous frame who had fought in the ring and admitted reluctantly that he had killed another pugilist with one blow during a prize fight held in a hay barn near St. Louis. Had he emerged from another environment Carrigan might have been one of the raiders; as it was he stood ready to march in phalanx with fellow Westerners.
What you doing, boys?
Talking things over.
Where’s Brother Nathan? That was what Seneca MacBean called Dreyfoos continually, and Key had adopted the address.
I am here, Sergeant Key.
Key felt through darkness, found Nathan’s hand, shook it with spirit. That pistol saved me, Brother Nathan.
The others pushed closer around him as he told of the experience, and there was a general cluck-clucking. Glad you’re sound, Key. But that surely is a poser.
A restlessness rose within the stockade on this night, and through regions close around. It affected the mass of the living. The raiders (such as were sufficiently sensitive to recognize the thing, to feel) ascribed this uncertain tingling to the fact that a definite organization was being formed to controvert them. Key and MacBean and Limber Jim and Nathan Dreyfoos and the rest— They ascribed their nervousness to the indisputable evidence that now their enemies had knowledge of the Westerners’ plan, and the hand of the Regulators might be forced to bring about calamity. The flame-spit of a sentry’s gun, fired from the parapet when hoodlums ran away from Leroy Key and his revolver, had never initiated this quivering but had underlined it, punctuated it, emphasized it, shown that it was there. Camp Sumter with its thousands and the pen controlled by Camp Sumter were become a loose black jelly on the saucer of Georgia.
A boy named Dolliver felt the tremor and he thought of blackbirds. They dwelt in wavering tribes amid prairie sloughs, they clung festooned on reeds and made amiable metallic sounds; but something occurred suddenly to disturb them, and you might not descry the signal given, you might not identify the messenger. He flew in without your seeing him . . . or he could have been a hungry animal approaching soft-footed, wet-footed, intending to feed on blackbirds. He could have been a snake winding there, intending to feed on blackbirds’ eggs. Whatever the peril, the redwings flocked up above grasses, glint of jewelry came off their shininess, the small throats rang with what they were saying and fearing.
A man who hailed from farther on the plains, and like the Indians had crept in a coyote’s skin in order to approach buffalo herds closely, thought of buffalo as Eben Dolliver relied on birds for comparison. Where were this man’s comrades of the Eighth Kansas, where were Williams and Gensarde and Freeman? Dead they were, dead during the month past. Where was Weidman? He was here, he was close, and he would not die until October. But the erstwhile buffalo hunter did not linger for long, dwelling on the tragedy of his friends, thinking of how they had rotted or were rotting, and how he himself was putrefying while still he could walk and talk. He sensed the drift of the night, sensed its peculiar qualm. In comparison he thought of a herd, and could smell fairly the bitter dusty buffalo, the oily perfume shed by kinky manes. He could feel the plain shaking like a drumhead merely because so many creatures stood and moved upon it. They were feeding quietly . . . then a surge reached them and alarm was conveyed to thick brains within the mountainous skulls. Heads lifted, eyes rolled, hoofs touched the ground, refused the ground, there was a telegraph wire stretched under dry earth, a message was tapped there. Was it arrow or bullet or wolf which would come? There was a fri
ght not yet become a true fright (call it rumor spoken silently from cow to cow, call it legend never dignified as fact). A message reeked in the unseen telegraph wire. Which bull might read it, who could read the code? Was this disaster, or merely mosquitoes, or sharp seeds of the spear grass itching their moulting hides? Might one become reassured in time and thus stand ready to munch, chew a cud, lift a tail, let the dung go splashing? The Kansan believed vaguely that such a herd was around him. He was one member of it. In his dream he wore horns bent upon his head.
And also this was the ominous swaying and bawling of cattle who felt a storm on the way. It was sleepy clucking of poultry on lime-smeared perches (perhaps a weasel slunk like a rapid worm, skimming, twisting amid the stones on which the poultry shed was built. The weasel was trying to find a way in).
A wounded veteran of the Seven Days—one of the few such veterans now serving with the Reserves—sniffed suspiciously on the platform of Station Number Thirty-nine. He rolled his quid into his cheek, spat across the jagged chopped pine, called to a fellow guard in darkness thirty yards away.
What you say, Pokey?
Didn’t say nothing. Thought you said something.
Didn’t say nothing myself until now. But hain’t something funny going on?
Somebody down there by the deadline?
Can’t see nothing. Too blame dark. But it feels like they was up to something.
Feels that way.
Station Number One, eleven o’clock and allllls wellll. Station Number Two, eleven o’clock and allllls wellll. Station Number Three . . . repeated yell, voice to voice, boy to man, man to boy, boy to boy, boy to man, man to very old man, going along the rim in yapped solo and chorus, overlapping, muttered, squealed, neglected by two guards who were asleep, finished within a minute or two, seldom derided and interrupted by prisoners in this unsubstantial night.
Men who knew cities felt the tremor of a crowd which might turn into a mob and go to breaking windows and upsetting freight cars to loot them. They thought of a mob not yet a mob, yet ready to spring into a mob if the stone were hurled or the oath were cried.
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