“Oh, Lily! Of course! I forgot all about nights!” Berry responded eagerly. “But how can you keep awake?”
“I reckon I kin,” declared Lily.
“Well, we’ll begin to keep a steady watch from to-day. I’ll be on guard days and you can watch nights,” said Berry. “If you hear or see anything, Lily, you must let me know as quickly as you can!”
“Yas, Missie Berry, I kin swarm up dat oak tree side yo’ winder an’ tells yo’, if I hears sojers or sees armies,” promised Lily, and returned to her work, while Berry put on her red cap and started off for another look along the roads leading to Corinth.
It was the twenty-eighth day of March, 1862, and on that very day General Halleck, of the Union army, had informed General Buell that Grant would attack the enemy “as soon as the roads are passable.” It was to be a deliberate forward movement on Corinth from Pittsburg Landing, to be undertaken some days later; for the Union forces had no idea of the Confederates’ plan to surprise them by an attack on Pittsburg Landing.
The river banks at the Landing rise eighty feet above the river, but are cloven by a series of ravines, through one of which runs the main road to Corinth. Beyond the crest of the acclivity stretches a rough tableland. On this plateau five divisions of General Grant’s Army of West Tennessee were camped, feeling themselves absolutely secure from any hostile visit, and unsuspicious of any shock of battle, and little imagining that a small Yankee girl was to be the means of saving them from capture.
As Berry ran along through the forest she could hear the cheerful songs of cardinals and robins. Squirrels scolded at her as they clung to the trunks of the tall oaks; and the air was full of the springtime fragrance. The silver chain and whistle hung about her neck, and Berry gave them a little loving touch, thinking of the absent brother who had given them to her. As she came out on the high plateau and stood looking toward the Tennessee River there was no sound except the songs of birds and the chattering of squirrels to break the stillness. Berry’s keen glance scanned the distant road, but there was no moving form to be seen. She turned and looked toward Shiloh woods; the woods where Confederate troops would lay on their arms on the night before the Battle of Shiloh were now quiet in the spring sunshine.
Berry perched herself on the stump of an old tree and began to wish that she had asked Mollie to be her companion.
“Mollie would not imagine why I wanted to climb up here; and we could play our old games,” thought Berry, recalling the previous autumn when she and Mollie had made families of dolls out of sticks and twigs with moss for hair and with gowns of oak-leaves and vines. They had made playhouses among the ledges or at the roots of some big tree, where, happy and undisturbed, they would play for hours. Berry wondered if they would ever again play together on that pleasant hillside.
She had only been resting a few moments when she heard the crashing of underbrush on the slope beneath her. Berry quickly concealed herself behind a tree; and in a moment the sound of loud voices, the jingle of arms and the noise of approaching feet made her whisper, “Soldiers!” And it was not long before half a dozen men, in the blue uniform of the Northern army, came out into the open space on top of the ridge. They were evidently tired from their climb up the ravine, and, to Berry’s surprise, they apparently had no notion of concealing themselves—they were talking and laughing together as if they had no thought of war.