“Good day.”
It was two miles of dull walking to the next house. A plain-looking old woman appeared and invited us in. As ill-luck would have it, her two sons had been captured at Arkansas Post. Still more unluckily, the two sons, when ill, had been placed in different hospitals, and some surgeon with petty tyranny had refused to let the one brother visit the other. We explained that there were fools in both armies, who treated their own soldiers in the same way. But the old lady said she would forgive everything but that. That was unnecessary cruelty. She then heaped coals of fire upon our unoffending heads by presenting to us a pumpkin, and by authorizing her chief contraband, who bore the fruitful name of “Plenty,” to sell us from his own private stores a bushel of sweet potatoes. Leaving these treasures till we should return, we went on.
At the third house we had the same conversation over that we enjoyed at the first, and as we turned back into the road it began to rain. “Shall we go back or go on?” was the question. “How far did they say it was to the next house, two miles?” “Yes, two miles. If we go on we shall be wet, perhaps frozen. But no matter; that is better than going back and acknowledging a failure. Come on.”
Three miles more, and we came to another house, owned by another old lady. Everything about it was rigidly in order and stiffly neat. There was a startling combination of colors in her parlor; for the floors were unpainted, the walls were white, the ceiling blue, the wainscoting red, and the blinds green. Again we were told that there was nothing to sell. But luckily, at the first item on our list, the old lady’s black overseer came in, and being an intelligent contraband, pricked up his ears and asked, what the gentlemen wanted to pay for dried peaches. We inquired what price he asked for them. He reckoned that he had ’bout a peck, and that a peck in these times ought to bring $5; and we thought that $5 was precisely the sum we ought to pay for a peck of peaches. This purchase being happily effected, we ran over the list, but to every item our sable friend “reckoned not,” till we mentioned milk. At that liquid name, a thought evidently struck him. He hadn’t no milk, but he had vinegar—cider-vinegar—he made it his own self, and he reckoned that in these times it ought to bring $1 a quart. We forthwith entrusted him with every canteen, to be filled full of this precious, and indeed, unrivalled fluid. We then re-applied to the old lady to know whether she really couldn’t sell us something. But no, not even our free-handed expenditures and the absence of all Yankee cuteness in us, could bring forth the old lady’s stores.
As we retraced our steps we noticed a small log-house near the road, and a middle-aged woman barbecuing beef under a little shed. “Let us try here,” one of us said; and we went up to the fence and asked for eggs. The woman thought she had a few, and civilly invited us to come in out of the rain. We went in, and found that the house consisted of but one room, and all looked wretched and forlorn. Nearly a dozen eggs were produced, and then the woman bethought herself of a certain fowl that might as well be sold, and set her eldest boys to catch him. A great cackling presently announced the fate of the fowl, and the boys, coming in out of breath, informed us that they had run him down. He was a vagabond-looking young cock, who, any one would swear, ought to come to an untimely end, and I felt a moral pleasure as I tied his legs and popped him into the basket.
And now we had the task of walking six miles back in the rain. As we mounted a rocky ridge we noticed near the road some sumach. The sumach had been so scarce at Camp Groce that we thought this a prize. Setting down our baskets, therefore, we went to work picking sumach, and as we filled our haversacks, we talked of the dinner.
“The last haul is a prize, Colonel,” said Lieutenant Dane. “The vinegar is a treasure, and the peaches are worth their weight in Confederate notes. How many shall we ask to dine with us?”
“Yes, it settles the question of dinner. After such luck as this we must go on. I think we can squeeze in six on a side, and one at each end—fourteen in all.”
“Fourteen! Well, now, the question is what shall we have? So far our luck is of a very small pattern—a very small pattern indeed. Ten eggs and one chicken of themselves won’t make much of a dinner for fourteen men.”
“The fact is, we must make this dinner chiefly out of our own brains. Give it the whole weight of your mind; think intensely, and see if you can’t hit on a way to make a dish or two out of chips.”