The bushwhackers & other stories

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“What?” said Captain Bertley, glancing back over his shoulder with the pencil in his hand. “Baby Bunting with a command!”

Despite the ridicule of the idea Hilary’s heart swelled within him as he strolled away, for he cared only to deserve the promotion and the confidence shown him, even if on account of his extreme youth and presumable irresponsibility he was debarred from receiving it.

He could not have said why he was not resentful of being called “Baby Bunting” by Captain Bertley. He felt it was in the nature of a courteous condescension that the officer should comment on the inadequacy of his age and the discrepancy between his limited powers and his valuable deeds—almost as a jesting token of affection, kindly meant and kindly received. But the name fell upon his ear often with a far different significance; the camp cry “Bye, oh, Baby Bunting,” was intended to goad him to such a degree of anger as should make him the sport of the groups around the bivouac fire. The chief instigator of this effort was a big, brutal cavalryman, by name Jack Bixby. He had a long, red beard; long, reddish hair; small, twinkling, dark eyes, and a powerfully built, sinewy, well-compacted figure. He was superficially considered jolly and genial, for few of his careless companions were observant enough of moral phenomena or sufficiently students of human nature to take note of the fact that there was always a spice of ill-humor in his mirth. Malice or jealousy or grudging or a mean spirit of derision pervaded his merriment. He found great joy in ridiculing a raw country boy, whose lack of knowledge of the world’s ways laid him liable to many mistakes and misconceptions, and at first Hilary’s credulity in the big lies told him by Jack Bixby and his simplicity in acting upon them exposed him to the laughter of the whole troop. This was checked in one instance, however; having been instructed that it was an accepted detail of the observances of a soldier, Hilary was induced to advance with great ceremony one day, and duly saluting ask Captain Bertley how he found his health. The officer was standing on ground somewhat elevated above the site of the camp, in full gray uniform, a field-glass in his hand, his splendid charger at his shoulder, the reins thrown over his arm. The humble “Baby Bunting” approaching this august military object, and presuming to ask after the commanding officer’s health, was in full view of a hundred or more startled and amazed veterans.

But Captain Bertley had seen and known much of this world and its ways. He instantly recognized the incident as a bit of malicious play upon the simplicity of the new recruit, and he took due note, too, of his own dignity. He realized how to balk the one and to support the other. He accepted the unusual and absurd demonstration concerning his health by saying simply that he was quite well, and then he kept the boy standing in conversation as to the state of a certain ford some distance up the river, with which Hilary was acquainted, having been of a scouting party which had been sent in that direction the previous day. The staring military spectators, their attention previously bespoken by Bixby, saw naught especial in the interview, the boy apparently having been summoned thither by order of the officer to make a report or give information, and thus the joke, attenuated to microscopic proportions, failed of effect. It had, however, very sufficient efficacy in recoil. Before dismissing Hilary the Captain asked how he had chanced to accost him in the manner with which he had approached him, and the boy in guilelessly detailing the circumstance, before he was admonished as to his credulous folly, betrayed Bixby as the perpetrator of the pleasantry at his expense, and what was far more serious at the expense of the officer. Jack Bixby, dull enough, as malicious people often are, or they would not otherwise let their malice appear—for they are not frank—did not see it in that light until he suddenly found himself under arrest and then required to mount the “wooden horse” for several weary hours.

“You’ll be hung up by the thumbs next time, my rooster,” said the sergeant, as he carried the sentence into effect. “The Cap’n ain’t so mighty partial to your record, no hows. He asked me if you hadn’t served with Whingan’s rangers, ez be no better’n bushwhackers, an’ ye know he is mighty partic’lar ’bout keepin’ up the tone an’ spirit o’ the men.”

Hilary, contradictorily enough, lost all sense of injury and shame in sorrow that he should have divulged Bixby’s agency in the matter and brought this disaster upon the trooper, who perhaps had only intended a little diversion, and had neither the good taste nor the good sense to perceive its offensiveness to the officer. Bixby had served in a band generally reputed bushwhackers, who did little more than plunder both sides, and in which discipline was necessarily slight. And thus after this episode they were better friends than before. True, in the days of dearth, for these men must needs starve as well as fight, when only rations of corn were served out, which the soldiers parched and ate by the fire, and which were so scanty that a strict watch was kept to prevent certain of them from robbing their own horses, on the condition and speed of which their very lives depended, Hilary, as in honor bound, being detailed for this duty, reported his greedy comrade, but in view of the half-famished condition of the troops Bixby’s punishment was light, and the incident did not break off their outward semblance of friendship, although one may be sure Bixby kept account of it.

So the years went—those wild years of hard riding and hard fighting; sleeping on the ground under the open skies whether cloudy or clear—it was months after it was all over before Hilary could accustom himself to sleep in a bed; roused by the note of the trumpet, sometimes while the stars were yet white in the dark heavens, with no token of dawn save a great translucent, tremulous planet heralding the morn, and that wild, sweet, exultant strain of reveille, so romantic, so stirring, that it might seem as if it had floated down, proclaiming the day, from that splendid vanguard of the sun. So they went—those wild years, all at once over.

The end came on a hard-contested field, albeit only a thousand or so were engaged on either side. The squadron, in one of those wild reckless assaults of cavalry against artillery, for which the Confederate horse were famous in this campaign, had gone to the attack straight up a hill, while the muzzles of the big, black guns sent forth smoke and roar, scarcely less frightful than the bombs which were bursting among the horses and men riding directly at the battery. It was hard to hold the horses. Often they swerved and faltered, and sought to turn back. Each time Captain Bertley, with drawn sword, reformed the line, encouraging the men and urging them to the almost impossible task anew. At it they went once more, in face of shot and shell. Now and again Hilary, riding in the rear rank, with his saber at “the raise,” heard a sharp, singing sibilance, which he knew was a minie-ball, whizzing close to his ear, and he realized that infantry was there a little to one side supporting the battery. The rush, the turmoil, the blare of the trumpets sounding “the charge,” the clamor of galloping hoofs, of shouting men, the roar of cannon, the swift panorama of moving objects before the eye, the ever-quickening speed, and the tremendous sensation of flying through the air like a projectile—it was all like some wild tempest, some mad conflict of the elements. And suddenly Hilary became aware that he was flying through the air without any will of his own. The horse had taken the bit between his teeth, and maddened by the noise, the frenzy of the fight, was rushing on he knew not whither, his head stretched out, his eyes starting, straight up the hill unmindful of the trumpet now sounding the recall and the heavy pull of the boy on the curb. Hilary was far away in advance of the others when the line wheeled. A few more impetuous bounds and plunges, and he was carried in among the Federal guns, mechanically slashing at the gunners with his saber, until one of the men, with a well-directed blow, knocked him off his horse with the long, heavy sponge-staff. So it was that Hilary was captured. He surrendered to the man with the sponge-staff, for the others were busily limbering up the guns; they were to take position on a new site—one less exposed to attack and very commanding. They had more than they wanted in Hilary. He realized that as he was on his way to the rear under guard. The engagement was practically at an end, and the successful Federals were keenly eager to pursue the retreating force and secure all the fruits of victory. To be hampered with the disposition of prisoners at such a moment was hardly wise, when an active pursuit might cut off the whole command. Therefore the few already taken, who were more or less wounded, were temporarily paroled in a neighboring hamlet, and Hilary, the war in effect concluded for him—for the parole was a pledge to remain within the lines and report at stated intervals to the party granting it—found himself looking out over a broad white turnpike in a flat country, down which a cloud of dust was all that could be seen of the body of cavalry so lately contending for every inch of ground.

Now and again a series of white puffs of smoke from amidst the hillocks on the west told that the battery of the Federals was shelling the woods which their enemy had succeeded in gaining, the shells hurtling high above the heads of their own infantry marching forward resolutely, secure in the fact of being too close for damage. Presently the battery became silent. Their vanguard was getting within range of their own guns, and a second move was in order. The boy watched the flying artillery scurrying across the plain, as he struck down a “dirt-road” which intersected the turnpike, and soon he noticed the puffs of white smoke from another coign of vantage and the bursting of shells still further away.