Part 18

He was the more willing to accede to this proposal because he had never entirely recovered from the effects of the exposure he had suffered in the blizzard, and was subject to rheumatism and bronchitis, and was not sorry to have the heavy outdoor work done by some of the younger and stronger men during the severity of the winter.

A location was chosen on the prairies about midway between the different homesteads, and on a cold, bright morning in October the sod was broken for the schoolhouse.

There were men and teams enough to accomplish its construction quickly, and within a few days a solid little structure, about thirty feet square, was erected.

The question of heating and seating had arisen at the meeting, and it had been decided that each settler should furnish one desk or chair, and that each settler who had timber should cut a load of cord wood and those who had no timber should contribute their share by hauling it to the nearest market and selling it, buying a stove with the proceeds.

This program was carried out, two of the settlers who had no timber driving forty miles to Nebraska City, where they bought a good second-hand stove, which was set up in the schoolhouse.

The new schoolhouse was ready for occupation the first of November, and from that time on throughout the long, cold winter the little sod schoolhouse accommodated about twenty children, of all grades and sizes, of whom Joshua Peniman was the teacher.

Within a short time after the opening of the school a general feeling arose in the settlement that the Sabbath should be observed, and at the general request of the settlers Joshua Peniman consented to act as leader, holding services every Sunday in the sod schoolhouse. As the settlers were of all creeds and denominations the services were necessarily non-sectarian. The services were very simple, consisting of the reading of the Bible, prayers by members of the congregation, responsive reading from the Psalms, and hymns led by the clear, sweet voice of Hannah Peniman.

In the fall of that year another great boon came to the pioneers. A stage-coach line was established, the terminal of which was the Big Sandy station on the Little Blue. This line carried mail and passengers, thus doing away with the long, lonely, dangerous ride across the prairies to get mail, and bringing a postoffice, with mail and newspapers within about six miles of the Peniman homestead. After that it was possible to get papers not more than a day or two old, and to send and receive letters without the perilous journey hitherto necessary.

Joshua Peniman had proved up on his claim, and was holding fast to the claims he had staked out next his own for Joe and Lige, with two other 160-acre tracts which he hoped to hold for Ruth and Nina as soon as they should be old enough to take them. The harvest of that year was rich and plentiful, and the winter of 1858-9 saw the family comfortably established in a home that was beginning to have the appearance of a real farm, with hay, grain and corn stored in their granaries, a cow-house and chicken-house added to the buildings, and many substantial improvements added to their dwelling.

During the winter whenever Joe could snatch time from his other duties he and Herbert James trapped beaver, mink, and otter in the river. In Beaver Creek, where a beautiful little town was springing up, they got many fine beavers, the skins of which sold for from two to three dollars a pound, many of the beavers weighing from two to three pounds apiece. With the money he made by the sale of the skins he bought law books, adding one at a time to his precious collection, and studying them so industriously that when he went to Omaha to return the books he had borrowed from Judge North he rendered to the lawyer so good an account of his reading that the Judge called him a prodigy.

"You are the kind of a boy I like," he said genially, patting Joe on the shoulder. "I'd like to take you into my office to study law. You are highly gifted, and I believe will make a great success of the profession."

Joe glowed under his praise. Nothing would have given him greater happiness than to enter Judge North's fine offices as a student. It was a great temptation. But there was much work to be done at home, his father was no longer strong, and his work much interrupted by his teaching and ministerial duties, and much of the responsibility of the farm work had fallen upon him and Lige, who was now a tall, handsome, well-set-up lad of seventeen, while Joe had grown to the full stature of a man, and was approaching his nineteenth birthday.

"I can't come into your office now, Judge North," he answered regretfully, "but I would like to come and talk with you whenever I can, and have you advise and help me. I want to be a lawyer, and even though I cannot be spared from home now I can go on preparing myself until the younger boys get old enough to take my place on the farm."

"Good lad," said Judge North; "I like you none the less for your faithfulness to your duty."

As he smiled at him again that strange sense of familiarity came over the boy. Where had he seen that man before? Who was it of whom he so reminded him?

There was something about him that was not like a stranger, that carried a subtle sense of warmth, affection, to his heart. In the gleam of his deep blue eyes there came and went an expression that eluded him like an evanescent perfume. For some reason that he could not account for to himself the lad's heart warmed to him strangely. In the long, friendly talk that followed Joe told him of his ambitions, and of how that ambition had been roused in his breast by hearing a lawyer, a man by the name of Lincoln, make a Fourth of July speech in Illinois.

"Lincoln?" said Judge North, much interested. "Do you mean Abraham Lincoln? Well, well! So you heard one of those great speeches, did you? I wish it had been my privilege. Have you followed his debates with Douglas? He has a grip on this slavery question that no other man in the country can equal. Did you know that he is being talked of as a candidate of the new Republican party to succeed Buchanan as President?"

"No," cried Joe, much astonished. "_That_ Mr. Lincoln? Why, he was only a country lawyer, a member of the legislature from Sangamon County, when I heard him!"

"He is the greatest man in this country to-day. A great lawyer. A great statesman. I hope that he may be elected."

Joe went home more eager and encouraged in his study of the law than ever before. He felt that if in so short a time a country lawyer like Mr. Lincoln should have become the nominee for President that there was hope for him in the years that lay before him.

A few evenings after his return there was a citizens' meeting at Milford, and he and Herbert rode over. His father, who had automatically become the leader of the settlement, had been asked to preside. Joe had had no intention of speaking, his purpose was to attend the meeting simply as a spectator. But before he was aware of it his blood was up and he was on his feet making a fiery anti-slavery speech.

He scarcely knew what he was saying. But with the first words he uttered all the long, deep thoughts that had been growing up within him while he worked in the fields in the vast silence of the prairies burst forth in a torrent, and he only came to himself when the little hall rocked with shouts and applause.

After that he was often asked to speak at meetings, and no one was more astonished than he when he was asked to accept the presidency of the Young Men's Republican Club, that was being organized in the county.

Feeling was running hot and high everywhere. And in the fall (1859) the torch was set to the smouldering powder of public opinion by John Brown's seizure of the national arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

Instantly the war-spirit of the country sprang to life.

Troops were hurried to the spot and the little band of hot-headed abolitionists seized. But though they paid the penalty of their well-meant but misdirected enthusiasm with their lives, the blaze was started. Nothing could stop it now.

War was inevitable.

The song,

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on,"

was born in a night and swept the country like wildfire, old men and young singing and cheering it.

The Republican party, born of the slavery agitation, grew apace, and "denied the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or any individual to give existence to slavery in the Territories." It repudiated the doctrine of State sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision, and nominated Abraham Lincoln for President.

The nomination of the man whose anti-slavery speeches were read and quoted from ocean to ocean was a challenge thrown down to the slave-holding States, which responded to it with haughty defiance and the nomination of John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. The Northern Democrats, unable to endorse the attitude of their Southern brothers, split from their own party and nominated Stephen A. Douglas.

The nomination of Lincoln--his inspiration and guide--left no doubt in Joe's mind as to his course of action. He accepted the nomination of president of the Young Men's Republican Club, stripped off his coat and plunged into the campaign with the same energy, the same efficiency, the same unbounded enthusiasm that he had always brought to every task before him.

He spoke in sod houses, dugouts, schoolhouses, stores, churches, and halls, extolling the Republican candidate for President, and praising the man who seemed to him the very embodiment of the spirit of the freedom and democracy of America.

At many of these meetings Joshua Peniman presided. And as he heard the fiery utterances of his son his heart grew cold within his breast.

The campaign was a fierce and bitter one, but Lincoln was elected.

The South, angry, defiant, outraged by the election of a "nigger-lover," a plebeian, a country lawyer and rail-splitter, and the defeat of their own aristocratic candidate, Mr. Breckinridge, was incensed to fury. Many times they had threatened that the Southern States would no longer remain in the Union if the Republican party was successful, and on December 20, 1860, they made good their threat. A popular convention at Charleston passed an order of secession.

Throughout the intense excitement that followed Joe and his father had many discussions, in some of which Lige joined.

That war was inevitable they now knew. But how it was to be met by them--Quakers--was a thing upon which they could come to no agreement.

"We cannot take up arms," Joshua Peniman said firmly. "We are Quakers. Our religion, the Bible, the Word of God Himself forbids it."

"But it is our duty, Father," Joe urged passionately. "If we have to go to war with the South they will have all the advantage. They are ready for war. The Federal arsenals in the Southern States have fallen into their hands and furnished their soldiers with equipment. You know that we are not prepared. A great army will have to be raised and furnished with the munitions of war. Should we, whom you have always taught to love and honor the flag, sit still and see that flag torn down, our country divided, and left a prey to foreign nations?"'

Joshua Peniman blanched. "God forbid," he cried quickly. "But if it comes to that terrible pass there are others--not Quakers--who have not been reared in the faith that makes it impossible for them to fight. Let them go. Let them protect the country."

"It will take us all, Father," put in Lige. "This war is going to be no light matter. The South has the men, the money, the military training. It is going to take all the men the North can raise to hold the nation together if war comes."

And war did come.

Early in the spring Fort Sumter was fired upon.

This roused the North to the highest pitch of excitement. In April President Lincoln called for volunteers to suppress the rebellion.

The hour had come that Joshua Peniman and his sons had so long prayed might be spared them.

On the morning of June tenth Joe came and stood before him in the living-room of the little soddy.

Neither had slept. Joe's face was pale and his lips close set as he stood looking at his father.

"I enlisted last night, Father." He spoke in a hoarse, shaken voice, and his lips moved stiffly as if he could with difficulty frame the words.

Joshua Peniman started. He knew that it must come, yet the dart passed no less cruelly through his heart because it had been anticipated.

"Already?"

He looked grey and worn. Lines that had not been there a few months before had written themselves in his forehead and creased his cheeks. As the lad looked at him his heart rose up and choked him.

"Oh, Father," he cried, "I _had_ to do it! It breaks my heart to go against your will. But I had no choice. I must go. Why, think what a skulker I would be if after all I have done and said I were to--to stay at home!"

"You were already under orders," Joshua Peniman said slowly. "You are a member of the Quaker Church. By your covenant with that body you have forsworn war. Your church and your God forbid you to fight. God Himself has commanded that 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

"Oh, but, Father, that means a different kind of killing. War is not _murder_!"

"War is always murder. The coldest, bloodiest, most terrible murder. Murder of the soul as well as the body."

"Oh no, Father, no, that isn't so!" cried out the boy. "Think of the men who have engaged in war! Think of Washington--his soul was not killed by war. This is a thing that must be done. It is a duty. We must fight for the Union--liberty--freedom--for our own homes and firesides."

"This issue need not have been met by war. It would not have been if war-crazy hot-heads had not forced it upon us. There is a better way for countries and nations to settle their difficulties than by war. Sometime men will come to realize its brutality and nations will combine to adjust their controversies by reason, not might."

"I don't believe that such a time will ever come. But if it does it is not here _now_. This issue is upon us. What are we going to do?--sit passive and let the South secede and break up the Union? Why, even Jesus did not suffer evil passively. He drove the money-changers from the Temple. And He Himself said 'Think not that I come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.'"

"But the 'sword' that the Master speaks of in that passage of Scripture is not the literal sword, the sword used in war, but the sharp sword of conscience. Better that the Union be dissolved than that the hands of men should be stained with the blood of their brethren."

"Oh, Father," cried Joe, "how can you say so! Do you care nothing for the preservation of your country?"

Joshua Peniman flinched, and a hot flush passed over his face.

"God knows that I love my country as well as any man," he answered sadly. "But dearly as I love my country I love my God, my religion and the commands that He has given more."

"But remember what the Lord said to His disciples, in the twenty-second chapter of St. Luke: 'But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.' The time has come, Father, when it is our duty to go to war, when the man who tries to escape that duty is dishonoring his God as well as his country. The time has come, when, as Jesus told His disciples, 'He that hath no sword should sell his very garment and buy one' and go forth to battle for the right."

Joshua Peniman gazed into the face of his son with sorrowful eyes. "Thee knows thy Scripture, Joe," he said in an unsteady voice. "I have striven mightily for thee. I thought I had brought thee up in the faith of our fathers----"

Hot tears sprang into Joe's eyes. "You have, you have, Father! As God hears me I would not take up arms against my fellow-man for anything less sacred than the preservation of our nation. I have studied deeply into this question. I have searched the Scriptures. And I feel that it is my sacred duty to go. Remember what the Lord said to Ezekiel, 'Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of that land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the trumpet and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood shall I require at the watchman's hand!'"

As the lad finished the long quotation from the book of Ezekiel, over which he had pored through many nights before, he fixed his gaze upon his father's face and said in a solemn voice:

"We are the watchmen, Father. If we rise not now, if we do not blow the trumpet, then should our nation perish, should the youth of our land be cut down, the Lord, according to His word will require their blood at the watchmen's hand."

Joshua Peniman gazed long and earnestly into his son's face. Then laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Thee has read thy Scripture carefully, son. I must confess that I have never read it in that light before. Perhaps thee is right. God knows. I am sure that it would grieve thee to go against the teachings of thy father, thy church and thy people. But I believe that thou art following what thou believest to be thy duty. It is breaking my heart, my son. But every man must settle an action of this kind for himself, according to his own conscience and his own God. If thou believest that the Lord sanctions thee, that it is thy duty to go, I will say no more; go, and may God go with thee."

The fire of youth and patriotism burned hotly in Joe's breast, but it was with bowed head and wet eyes that he left his father's presence.

All his life he had carried every pain, every grief and trouble to his mother, and he sought her now, kneeling beside her and burying his head in her lap.

She, too, had passed a sleepless night. Many hours of it she had spent upon her knees, praying for strength and wisdom in the trial that was to come upon her. She showed the strain of anxiety and labor of the past five years, and the suffering of the present had left her wan and pale, with heavy shadows in her eyes.

She clasped the boy to her and bowed her face upon his.

"Oh, Mother," he cried, "_you_ don't blame me, do you? _You_ don't think that I am doing wrong? I'm not deserting God, Mother, or the Friends' religion, or you! I love the old faith. I believe in it. I'll live and die in it. But oh, Mother, I _have_ to go! No man who loves his country and is a man can hold back now!"

She held him close, tears streaming down her face.

Presently he raised his head. "I'll have to go, dear. They are waiting for me. I"--he hesitated, then said brokenly,--"I enlisted last night."

She gave a little gasping cry.

"You have enlisted--already? Oh, Joe, Joe!"

"Lige enlisted, too, Mother," he forced himself to tell her, "and Herbert. In the First Regiment of Nebraska Volunteers."

"Lige--Lige, too?"

Her cry stabbed him like a knife.

"Yes, Mother, he asked me to tell you. You know how soft he is. He said he--he couldn't."

"Lige--Lige, too!" she repeated in a stricken whisper. "Both my boys! My two eldest--my sons--my little boys! We came to this far country to save you this. We thought to keep you free from warfare and slaughter! And now it has come--even here! You--the descendants of old Quaker stock--you are going away to war!"

He caught her in his arms and held her close, whispering to her, consoling her, explaining over and over again the convictions and principles that actuated himself and his brother in this, the most difficult and momentous decision of their lives.

At length she was calmer, and withdrawing herself from his arms, said, "Send Lige to me."

As he was leaving the room she stopped him.

"Joe, dear," she said, "thee must not feel hardly toward thy father. He is not a fanatic. His belief in the wickedness and futility of war is as deep and strong as his belief in God. He could not change it now--even for thee."

When Joe left the room his heart felt ready to burst with pain. He knew that the call of his country was a sacred one. He felt in every fibre of his being that he was doing his plain duty as a man and an American. Yet the habit and training of years, the principles inculcated in him from babyhood, were not easily overcome. Even with a mind clear and positive upon his duty doubts and fears and questionings rose to torture him.

Blinded by the tears that would come in spite of all his efforts he walked toward the river.

So harassed and broken was he that he did not hear the murmur of voices in the little arbor they had built under the willow trees until he was very near it. Then he looked up suddenly, and stood still.

On the rough bench they had made on the river bank he saw Nina sitting, and Lige, with arms tightly clasped about her and his face close to hers, was gazing into her eyes.

He could not hear the words that were spoken, his heart was beating too loud and fast, but he saw that her arms were about his neck, that her face was wet with tears, and that her eyes gazed into his with a look of love and sorrow.

Up to this moment Joe had always thought of Nina as his sister. He knew that he had loved her devotedly from the first moment he had seen her; but it was only now, when the wild plunge of his heart, the wild fury in his breast, the hot, fierce current of blood that surged up to his brain brought the revelation to him, that he knew that the love he felt for her was not that of a brother.

For an instant a wild, mad rage against Lige filled him; made him want to strike him, to hurl him headlong from the arbor and down the bank of the river. Then the sense of fairness and justice that had always been a leading trait of his character asserted itself.

Why, he asked himself, should Lige not love her, as well as he? She was not their sister. He had the right. Handsome Lige. Merry, sparkling, generous Lige! No wonder she loved him!

He stole away unobserved. Then when he had reached the house he called out loudly, "Lige, oh, Lige, Mother wants you!"

When he saw Lige coming he turned away.

He hoped he was not selfish, but he could not speak to him then.

He made no effort to see Nina alone, but bade her good-bye the next day with the same grave, sad, brotherly kiss that he gave to Mary and Sara and Ruth.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

*IN FIELD AND CAMP*

When the First Nebraska Volunteers embarked at Omaha under the command of Colonel John M. Thayer, on July twenty-first, Joe and Elijah Peniman and Herbert James went with it.

The troops were raw and undisciplined, the equipment poor, food scanty and hard to get.

The Peniman boys, neither of whom had ever been away from home before, were desperately homesick, and seeing the sordidness of war, its meanness, its dirtiness and its horrors at close range, and losing some of their high vision in the daily muck and grind, came gradually almost to believe that their father was right, and that they had gone against his will, violated the faith of their childhood, and broken their mother's heart to follow a chimera that could only end in utter defeat.