A Dangerous Promise

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Ben hooted at the bragging, but Mike insisted, "Out on the battlefield, you'll be mighty glad our bugle and drum are there to lead you on."

  Mike's exhaustion vanished. He grinned proudly at Todd, and Todd smiled back. But that night, after most of the men had gone to sleep and Mike lay awake imagining himself drumming bravely as he spurred the men in Captain Dawes's company to attack, he heard muffled sobbing from under Todd's blanket.

  Mike reached out a hand, wanting to comfort his friend, but he pulled back. He gave a couple of soft pretend snores, hoping Todd would think he was asleep, and lay very still. In just a few minutes Todd's sobs ended, gradually turning into a slow, measured breathing as he slept.

  Mike could well remember what it was like to shed secret tears. When he was adopted as a foster child by the stem, unkind Mr. Friedrich, he'd spent many sleepless nights crying for Ma and the rest of his family, grieving over the circimistances that had caused them to be separated. Megan had been taken by a couple who farmed on the Kansas prairie. His oldest sister, Frances Mary, and five-year-old Petey went with a childless couple from northeastern Kan-

  sas, and Danny and Peg had been chosen by a farmer and his wife who lived not too far from St. Joseph.

  It had been Danny who'd worked out a way for Ma to come west and join them, but only Peg lived with Ma and her new husband, John Murphy. A hearty Irishman, John might have been a loving father, but he couldn't financially support all Ma's children, so Mike scarcely knew him.

  But after the heartache of losing Da and living with Mr. Friedrich, Mike had once again found a father. Along had come Captain Joshua Taylor—strong, brave Captain Taylor —who with his wife Louisa had taken Mike to raise as a son.

  Mike sighed. Just when he had needed a father the most. Captain Taylor had gone off to defend the Union. If the war could be shortened by a quick defeat of the South, then maybe life would become peaceful and Mike would again know the joys and comforts of having a father. But until then . . .

  Mike drifted off to sleep, and in his dreams a man—at times Captain Taylor and at times Da—draped a comforting arm around Mike's shoulders.

  The brigade had been marching for a week under a July sun that burned hotter than a campfire, when orders were given to forage for the evening meal. With a foraging detachment led by Sergeant Gridley, Mike was instructed to head for a nearby group of farmhouses.

  "What will we do—request whatever they can spare?" Mike asked Sergeant Gridley.

  The sergeant's lip curled with amusement, "/'m the one who'll do the talking—not you, Mikey boy."

  One of the other soldiers, not too many years older than Mike, snickered. "We don't request. We take.''

  Mike looked the soldier in the eye. "You mean we steaV

  "Simmer down," the sergeant ordered Mike. "These are wartime conditions. We follow emergency rules."

  "I lived on a farm for a while," Mike said. "A farmer can't survive if we take away what he grows and sells."

  Sergeant Gridley stopped and faced Mike. "How about helping our soldiers to survive? You've seen the great number in our brigade. How do you propose feeding them on a long march? Even with the sutlers' wagons and the local merchants coming to sell foodstuffs, we can't provide enough to fill the bellies of thousands of hungry men."

  Mike felt his face redden, and he mumbled agreement. He couldn't imagine how much food it would take to feed an army, and it was true—the men had to have three meals a day to keep up their strength for the march.

  Sergeant Gridley motioned Mike to walk by his side, as he and the eight other soldiers with him climbed the slope leading to a trim white house with a large bam behind it. "During wartime, Mike, people can lose everything—their houses, their possessions, and even their families—but they manage to survive and rebuild their lives. Taking a small amount of food is little to ask of a patriotic farmer. You'll see.

  As they approached the house, a woman stepped out onto the porch. "We're Federal!" she called out. "We mean you no harm!"

  "Ma'am," the sergeant said, doffing his cap as he stood below the porch steps, his men behind him, "we're in need of food."

  "As are we," she said bitterly.

  "Will you call your husband, please, so I might speak with him?"

  The woman leaned against the porch railing, and her stiff-backed courage seemed to slip away as she sighed. "My husband's somewhere in eastern Missouri with General Lyon's forces," she said.

  "That's commendable, ma'am," Sergeant Gridley told her. "Is there another man around your property we might speak to?"

  "My son's gone from home, too," she answered softly—

  almost as though she were talking to herself, Mike thought. ''Ab was bound and determined to run off to join the Missouri State Guard under Sterling Price."

  "A Rebel sympathizer?" Mike blurted out, then clapped a hand over his mouth.

  "Ma'am," Sergeant Gridley said, "we'll respect the privacy of your house, but if you've got preserves put by, we'd appreciate it if you'd bring them out. In the meantime we're in need of potatoes or other vegetables from your root cellar. And if you've got chickens ..."

  The woman closed her eyes and waved a hand toward the bam. "Go ahead," she said. "Take what you need. Just remember that my two daughters and I will need something to live on until our cash crop of oats can be harvested."

  "Thank you, ma'am," the sergeant said. He quickly turned to the men in his detachment and ordered groups to go in various directions. Finally he came to Mike. "There's bound to be chickens and eggs," he said. "You may find them in a henhouse, maybe in the bam. Take a look. Collect whatever you can."

  Reluctantly, Mike trudged to the rear of the house. He saw no signs of a henhouse, but he heard a clucking coming from inside the closed doors of the bam, so he swung one of the big doors open and entered.

  The dimness inside the bam was such a contrast to the bright sunhght that for a moment Mike couldn't see, and he squinted. But something brown and squawking practically ran over his feet and into an empty horse stall.

  A fat hen! And where there was one there were bound to be others, along with the eggs they'd laid so far today. Mike, his eyes growing accustomed to the sparse light, followed the hen into the stall. When he bent down and made a grab for her, the hen loudly complained and tried to flap her wings in protest.

  As he rose, he heard a young girl's voice tearfully protesting, "Janie! He's got Miz Toozie!"

  Mike looked up to see the child clutching the skirt of an older girl. Then he saw the gun. The older girl gazed at Mike from behind the long barrel of a rifle aimed right at his face.

  "Put down Miz Toozie," the older girl said, "and don't you dare reach for your gun."

  "I haven't got a gun," Mike answered.

  "You expect me to believe that? You're a soldier, aren't you?"

  "I'm a drummer."

  She opened the eye she'd been squinting as she aimed and studied Mike. "You're only a boy," she said with surprise.

  "I'm old enough to have signed up with the Union Army!"

  "I don't care how old you are," the girl said calmly, as she leveled the rifle again. "If you don't let go of Miz Toozie, I'm going to shoot you."

  The girl was as tall as Mike, and he guessed she was probably only a couple of years older than he. Her brown hair was caught back into a braid, but her flower-patterned

  40

  dress had faded to the palest of blues, with patches sewn over spots where the fabric had worn through.

  The thought that this family clearly couldn't afford to lose their chickens flashed through Mike's mind. But as he stared at the rifle, he instinctively gripped the hen more tightly. "Listen to me, Janie," he said. "Your mother gave us permission to take some of your supplies to feed our brigade."

  "Miz Toozie is not a supply! She's my friend!" the little girl wailed, and burst into tears.

  "Hush, Lettie," Janie murmured. But she kept the rifle steady as she said to Mike, "We've barely got enough put by to ge
t us through the winter."

  "We've barely got enough to get us through the day," he countered.

  "That's not our fault."

  "It's not ours, either. There's a long march ahead of us, and we have to be fed."

  "But not with Miz Toozie."

  As Mike's initial fear began to subside, his curiosity took over. She might threaten him with the rifle, but surely she wouldn't kill him, would she? "Your ma said that your father is fighting with the Union and your brother's with the Rebs. You wouldn't want either of them to go hungry."

  For just an instant Janie's face twisted in pain. "That has nothing to do with you."

  "Their companies have to forage for food the same way mine does." He began to parrot what he'd been told. "It takes a lot of food to feed an army. Men without food would be too weak to fight, and—"

  "Stop it!" Janie shouted. She angrily slammed the butt of the rifle against the hard-packed floor of the bam. Mike ducked and winced, waiting for the blast.

  But nothing happened, and Janie mumbled, "It wasn't loaded."

  "You gave me a scare," Mike said, and he couldn't help grinning, mostly from the relief of not being shot.

  ''Please don't take Miz Toozie," Lettie begged. "She's been my pet forever and ever, and Ma promised she'd never be eaten."

  Mike sighed. Lettie was so sweet and trusting, she reminded him of Peg, when she was little. "Have you got other hens?" he asked.

  "Fluff-fluff and Pansy and Redtop and—"

  Mike cringed. "Don't tell me their names!" He hated the idea of eating an animal with a pet name.

  Lettie's eyes widened hopefully and she chattered, "And Brownie, and our pigs are named Mr. Grump and—"

  Janie put a hand over her sister's mouth. "Take what you have to," she said to Mike, "but please don't take Lettie's pet."

  Mike handed the still-struggling hen to the little girl, who whispered a few soothing words to Miz Toozie.

  "Thank you," Janie said, and turned to leave the bam.

  Mike called after her, "Can you help me collect the other hens and show me where they nest?"

  The comers of Janie's mouth twisted. "Help you? Not for anything in the world! You're going to have to perform your highway robbery by yourself!"

  Mike knew how much his company needed the hens, but he took Janie's words to heart. "There may be others who'll come into your bam to look around," he told Lettie. "You'd better hide yourself and your hen someplace where they can't flnd you."

  "Out in the oatfield," Lettie whispered.

  "Don't tell me, either," Mike cautioned.

  Without a word, Lettie slipped out a narrow door in back of the bam, and Mike set about his task.

  The detachments returned with a haul of potatoes, squash, turnips, chickens, and eggs, as well as jars of preserved carrots, snap beans, and apple butter. Storing most

  of the food for future meals, the men prepared the perishable foods for a feast. They roasted plucked chickens on spits over the fires, buried potatoes in the ashes for slow baking, and tossed whole pale turnips and green pattipan squash into pots of boiling water.

  When the meal was ready, the soldiers ate hungrily, but Mike chewed his chicken with great difficulty. What if they were eating Brownie or Pansy or Redtop? He almost choked at the thought.

  Later, at tattoo, two of the volunteers in Captain Dawes's company—Amos Dailey and Ezra McNabb—failed to answer the roll call.

  "Does anyone know the whereabouts of either or both of these men?" Sergeant Gridley asked.

  Ben Doland stepped forward. "They set off for home. They didn't know this march was gonna take such an infernal long time, and they got to get ready for harvestin'."

  "Listen to me, men," Captain Dawes announced. "Those of you who are volunteers must remember that you're not free to leave whenever you wish. Each of you signed on to serve for ninety days. That's a contract you made with President Abraham Lincoln, the government of the United States, and the Union Army. Do you all understand?"

  No one said a word, but after the men had been dismissed, Mike heard Ben mutter, "Crops don't wait for no man, includin' the president himself. Can't say I blame Amos and Ezra one bit."

  "Don't you take it into your head to nm off," Harley told Ben. "That would make you a deserter, too."

  "Deserter? That's a hard word to use for a man whose wife took sick, like Amos's did."

  "He had a contract with the army," Harley insisted. "We need every man we can get if we're going to beat those Confederates."

  "Yeah? When's that gonna be?" Ben asked. "We ain't

  seen any fightin' so far. We just walk and walk, and my shoes are gonna fall apart soon."

  A few days later, Major Sturgis's battalion joined General Lyon's forces at Grand River, as the two Union forces had planned. Mike was eager to catch a glimpse of General Lyon. Harley, who'd known Nathaniel Lyon when they were both stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, had described Lyon to Mike: "The general's known to be narrow-minded, with a temper that goes off like a rocket when things don't go the way he thinks they should."

  "I take it you don't like him," Mike had said.

  "I didn't say that," Harley countered. "The man's honest in all his dealings, and always truthful." He paused, then added, "Still, his discipline is often more strict than need be, and he's a hard taskmaster."

  "Well? What is it?" Mike asked. "Do you Uke him or don't you?"

  Harley's broad shoulders heaved in a mighty shrug. "General Lyon is our commanding officer. Even though it's hard to find a man who likes him, it's not for me to speak my mind about him."

  Mike looked away so Harley couldn't catch his grin. The turns Harley went through to avoid saying he disliked the man!

  But when Mike finally encountered the general, he didn't grin. Though the general wasn't exceptionally tall, his features were forbidding: deep-set eyes, a long narrow nose, and dark thick hair and beard.

  It wasn't only the general's appearance that was intimidating. As he strode back and forth in front of the temporary headquarters and expounded in an angry voice that hurt Mike's ears, Mike was glad he wouldn't have any direct dealings with the man.

  "I have requested over and over that I be sent more troops. At least half my strength of over seven thousand

  men are three-month volunteers whose time will soon be up."

  That wasn't news to Mike. He'd heard much the same from Harley, but he perked up when General Lyon said, "My spies inform me that Confederate generals Ben McCulloch and N. Bart Pearce are planning to bring their Arkansas troops to join General Sterling Price and his Missouri State Guard. That will mean the massing of at least eleven thousand Confederate officers and soldiers just below Springfield. If they attack us and we are unable to repel them, we will lose Missouri."

  Mike choked down the lump that rose in his throat. Lose Missouri? That couldn't be!

  Without waiting for a reply from his officers, Lyon continued, his voice becoming even more tense: "Our men have not been paid, and the condition of their uniforms is deplorable! They are badly off for clothing, and the want of shoes makes them unfit for marching."

  Mike well remembered the uniforms of cheap wool shoddy that a crooked clothing supplier had sent to Fort Leavenworth. What had gone wrong that the Union Army had not enough men and not enough proper supphes?

  Soon word spread among the soldiers that Union General Sigel's regiment had been beaten in a skirmish at Carthage. Mike wasn't the only soldier who was disheartened by the news of a Confederate win and felt eager to even the score by supporting General Sigel's troops. But Sigel had retreated to Springfield, and General Lyon decided to join him there. Major Sturgis's battalion set up camp at Pond Springs, a few miles west of Springfield, to wait for further orders.

  Ben sighed loudly. "More walkin'."

  "Take it like a man," Harley told him. "You don't hear the boys complainin', do you?" He winked at Mike, and Mike smiled at the praise.

  Then after all their struggles and uncertain
ty, good news came at last. Arriving in Pond Springs on July 13, the battalion learned of a Union victory on July 11 at the Battle of Rich Mountain in western Virginia.

  While cheers went up, Mike nearly burst with pride. Captain Taylor was in Virginia! He and his company had probably fought at Rich Mountain. And they had won!

  Soon, Mike was sure, he, too, would be involved in a Union victory. Those Confederates, swarming in great numbers up from Arkansas into southern Missouri, would turn tail and go running back!

  Although there were plenty of duties to keep Mike busy, he noticed that he wasn't the only one who was restless. Why should they have such a long wait? The Confederates were within a day's march, ready to strike.

  "If I were General Lyon, I wouldn't wait for those Rebs to take action. I'd strike first," Mike told Todd as they sat by a campfire one evening, both of them with paper and envelopes on their lap, ready to write again to their families.

  "The general has spies and scouts. He knows what's going on, which is more than you do," Todd snapped. Todd had never spoken that way to Mike, and his words cut like a bayonet.

  For an instant Todd looked stricken, too. "Sorry, Mike," he murmured. "It's hard to think about going into battle. Just between you and me, sometimes I wish we hadn't joined up."

  "Would you have wanted to sit out the war, safely back at the fort with your little sisters?"

  "N-no," Todd said slowly.

  "There, you see?" Mike countered. "Our Union forces will soon lick the Rebs, the war will be over, and we'll return home with a row of medals across our chests."

  Todd had to smile. "All right, Mike. If you say so." He licked the end of his pencil and began to write.

  Mike leaned over Todd's shoulder. "That's the second letter to your ma this week."

  Todd grinned. 'There's not much else to do but write letters or play cards, is there? And Ma'd have a fit if I so much as picked up a deck of cards."

  Mike set to his own letter-writing, bragging to Danny about the upcoming battle and the way they were going to defeat those Rebs.