CHAPTER XLI.

ON HORSEBACK FROM CORINTH.

Mounting a sober little iron-gray, I cantered out of Corinth, in a northeasterly direction, past the angles of an old fort overgrown with weeds, and entered the solitary wooded country beyond.

A short ride brought me to a broken bridge, hanging its shaky rim over a stream breast-high to my horse. I paused on its brink, dubious; until I saw two ladies, coming to town on horseback to do their shopping (the fashion of the country), rein boldly down the muddy bank, gather their skirts together, hold up their heels, and take like ducks to the water. I held up my heels and did likewise. This was the route of the great armies; which whoso follows will find many a ruined bridge and muddy stream to ford.

It was a clear, crisp winter’s morning. The air was elastic and sparkling. The road wound among lofty trunks of oak, poplar, hickory, and gum, striped and gilded with the slanting early sunshine. Quails (called partridges in the South) flew up from the wayside; turtle-doves flitted from the limbs above my head; the woodpeckers screamed and tapped, greeting my approach with merry fife and drum. Cattle were grazing on the wild grass of the woods, and a solitary cow-bell rang.

Two and a half miles from town I came to a steam saw-mill, all about which the forest resounded with the noise of axes, the voices of negroes shouting to their teams, the flapping of boards thrown down, and the vehement buzz of the saw. This mill had but recently gone into operation; being one of hundreds that had already been brought from the North, and set to work supplying the demand for lumber, and repairing the damages of war.

Near by was a new house of rough logs with the usual great opening through it. It was situated in the midst of ruins which told too plain a story. Tying my horse to a bush, I entered, and found one division of the house occupied by negro servants, the other by two lonely white women. One of these was young; the other aged, and bent with grief and years. She sat by the fire, knitting, wrapped in an ancient shawl, and having a white handkerchief tied over her head. The walls and roof were full of chinks, the wind blew through the room, and she crouched shivering over the hearth.

She offered me a chair, and a negro woman, from the other part of the house, brought in wood, which she heaped in the great open fireplace.

“Sit up, stranger,” said the old lady. “I haven’t the accommodations for guests I had once; but you’re welcome to what I have. I owned a beautiful place here before the war,—a fine house, negro quarters, an orchard, and garden, and everything comfortable. The Yankees came along and destroyed it. They didn’t leave me a fence,—not a rail nor a pale. If I had stayed here, they wouldn’t have injured me, and I should have saved my house; but I was advised to leave. I have come back here to spend my days in this cabin. I lost everything, even my clothes; and I’m too old to begin life again.”

Myself a Yankee, what could I say to console her?

A mile and a half farther on, I came to another log-house, and stopped to inquire my way of an old man standing by the gate. His countenance was hard and stern, and he eyed me, as I thought, with a sinister expression.

“You are a stranger in this country?” I told him I was. “I allow you’re from the North?”—eying me still more suspiciously.

“Yes,” I replied; “I am from New England.”

“I’m glad to see ye. Alight. It’s a right cool morning: come into the house and warm.”

I confess to a strong feeling of distrust, as I looked at him. I resolved, however, to accept his invitation. He showed me into a room, which appeared to be the kitchen and sleeping-room of a large family. Two young women and several children were crowded around the fireplace, while the door of the house was left wide open, after the fashion of doors in the South country. There was something stewing in a skillet on the hearth; which I noticed, because the old man, as he sat and talked with me, spat his tobacco-juice over it (not always with accuracy) at the back-log. I remarked that the country appeared very quiet.

“Quiet, to what it was,” said the old man, with a wicked twinkle of the eye. “You’ve probably heard of some of the murders and robberies through here.”

I said I had heard of some such irregularities.

“I’ve been robbed time and again. I’ve had nine horses and mules stole.”

“By whom?”

“The bushwhackers. They’ve been here to kill me three or four times; but, as it happened, the killing was on t’ other side.”

“Who were these men?”

“Some on ’em belonged in Massissippi, and some on ’em in Tennessy. They come to my house of a Tuesday night, last Feb’uary. They rode up to the house, and surrounded it, a dozen or fifteen of ’em. ‘Old Lee!’ they shouted, ‘we want ye!’ It had been cloudy ’arly in the evening, but it had fa’red up, and as I looked out thro’ the chinks in the logs, I could see ’em moving around.

“’Come out, Old Lee! we’ve business with ye!’

“’You’ve no honest business this hour o’ the night,’ I says.

“’Come out, or we’ll fire your house.’

“’Stand back, then,’ I says, ‘while I open the doo’.’

“I opened it a crack, but instead of going out, I just put out the muzzle of my gun, and let have at the fust man.

“’Boys! I’m shot!’ he says. I’d sent a slug plumb thro’ his body. Whilst the others was getting him away, I loaded up again. In a little while they come back, mad as devils. I didn’t wait for ’em to order me out, but fired as they come up to the doo’. I hit one of ’em in the thigh. After that they went off, and I didn’t hear any more of ’em that night.”

“What became of the wounded men?”

“The one I shot thro’ the body got well. The other died.”

“How did you learn?”

“They was all neighbors of mine. They lived only a few miles from here, over the Tennessy line. That was Tuesday night; and the next Sunday night the gang come again. I was prepared for ’em. I had cut a trap through the floo’; and I had my grandson with me, a boy about twelve year old; and he had a gun. We’d just got comfortably to bed, when some men rode up to the gate, and hollah’d, “Hello!” several times. I told my wife to ask ’em what they wanted. They said they was strangers, and had lost their road and wanted the man of the house to come out. I drapped thro’ the hole in the floo’, and told my wife to tell ’em I wa’n’t in the house, and they must go somewhar else.

“’We’ll see if he’s in the house,’ they said. The house is all open underneath, and I reckoned I’d a good position; but befo’e I got a chance at ary one, they’d bust in. They went to rummaging, and threatening my wife, and skeering the children. I could hear ’em tramping over my head; till bimeby the clock struck; and I heerd one of ’em sw’ar, ‘Ten o’clock, and nary dollar yet!’ After that, I could see ’em outside the house; hunting around for me, as I allowed. I fired on one. ‘My God!’ I heered him say, ‘he’s killed me!’ I then took my grandson’s gun, and fired again. Such a rushing and scampering you never heered. They run off, leaving one of their men lying dead right out here before the doo’. We found him thar the next morning. He laid thar nigh on to two days, when some of his friends come and took him and buried him.”

“Why did those men wish to murder you?”

“They had a spite agin me, because they said I was a Union man.”

“They called him a Yankee,” said one of the young women.

“But you are not a Yankee.”

“I was born in Tennessy, and have lived either in Tennessy or Massissippi all my days. But I never was a secessioner; I went agin the war; and I had two son-in-law’s in the Federal army. Both these girls’ husbands was fighting the Rebels, and that’s what made ’em hate me. They was determined to kill me; and after that last attempt on my life, I refugeed. I went to the Yankees, and didn’t come back till the war wound up. There’s scoundrels watching for a chance to bushwhack me now.”

“Old Lee’d go up mighty quick, if they wa’n’t afeared,” remarked one of the daughters.

“I’m on hand for ’em,” said the old man,—and now I understood that wicked sparkle of his eye. “Killing is good for ’em. A lead bullet is better for getting rid of ’em than any amount of silver or gold, and a heap cheaper!”

Two miles north of Old Lee’s I came to the State boundary. While I was still in Mississippi, I saw, just over the line, in Tennessee, a wild figure of a man riding on before me. He was mounted on a raw-boned mule, and wore a flapping gray blanket which gave him a fantastic appearance. The old hero’s story had set me thinking of bushwhackers, and I half fancied this solitary horseman—or rather mule-man—to be one of that amiable gentry. He had pursued me from Corinth, and passed me unwittingly while I was sitting in Old Lee’s kitchen. He was riding fast to overtake me. Or perhaps he was only an innocent country fellow returning from town. I switched on, and soon came near enough to notice that the mule’s tail was fancifully clipped and trimmed to resemble a rope with a tassel at the end of it; also that the rider’s face was mysteriously muffled in a red handkerchief.

I was almost at his side, when hearing voices in the woods behind me, I looked around, and saw two more mounted men coming after us at a swift gallop. The thought flashed through my mind that those were the fellow’s accomplices. One to one had not seemed to me very formidable; but three to one would not be so pleasant. I pressed my iron gray immediately alongside the tassel-tailed mule, and accosted the rider, determined to learn what manner of man he was before the others arrived. The startled look he gave me, and the blue nose, with its lucid pendent drop, that peered out of the sanguinary handkerchief, showed me that he was as harmless a traveller as myself. He was a lad about eighteen years of age. He had tied up his ears, to defend them from the cold, and the bandage over them had prevented him from hearing my approach until I was close upon him.

“It’s a kule day,” he remarked, with numb lips, as he reined his mule aside to let me pass at a respectful distance,—for it was evident he regarded me with quite as much distrust as I had him.

At the same time the two other mounted men came rushing upon us, through the half-frozen puddles, with splash and clatter and loud boisterous oaths; and one of them drew from his pocket, and brandished over the tossing mane of his horse, something so like a pistol that I half expected a shot.

“How are ye?” said he, halting his horse, and spattering me all over with muddy water. “Right cold morning! Hello, Zeek!” to the rider of the tassel-tailed mule. “I didn’t know ye, with yer face tied up that fashion. Take a drink?” Zeek declined. “Take a drink, stranger?” And he offered me the pistol, which proved to be a flask of whiskey. I declined also. Upon which the fellow held the flask unsteadily to his own lips for some seconds, then passed it to his companion. After drinking freely, they spurred on again, with splash and laughter and oaths, leaving Zeek and me riding alone together.