The bushwhackers & other stories

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Hilary had never heard of Penelope’s web, and the crafty device of raveling out at night the work achieved in the day, but to his impatience it seemed that his departure was indefinitely postponed for his simple outfit progressed no whit day by day, although his mother’s show of industry was great.

The earth also seemed to have swallowed Captain Baker and his command; although Hilary rode again and again to the postoffice at a little mountain hamlet some ten miles distant, and talked to all informed and discerning persons whom the hope of learning the latest details of the events of the war had drawn thither, and could hear news of any description to suit the taste of the narrator—all the most reliable items of the “grape-vine telegraph,” as mere rumor used to be called in those days—not one word came of Captain Baker.

His mother sometimes could control his outbursts of impatience on these occasions by ridicule.

“’Member the time, Hil’ry,” she would say, glancing at him with waggish mock gravity in her eyes as they gleamed over her spectacles, “when ye offered ter enlist with Cap’n Baker’s infantry year afore las’, when the war fust broke out—ye warn’t no higher than that biscuit block then—he tole ye that ye warn’t up ter age or size or weight or height, an’ ye tole him that thar war a plenty of ye ter pull a trigger, an’ he bust out laughin’ an’ lowed ez he warn’t allowed ter enlist men under fourteen. He said he thunk it war a folly in the rule, fur he had seen some mighty old men under fourteen—though none so aged ez you-uns. My, how he did laugh.”

“I wish ye would quit tellin’ that old tale,” said her son, sulkily, his face reddening with the mingled recollection of his own absurdity and the seriousness with which in his simplicity he had listened to the officer’s ridicule.

“An’ ye war so special small-sized and spindlin’ then,” exclaimed his mother, pausing in her knitting to take off her spectacles to wipe away the tears of laughter that had gathered at the recollection.

“I ain’t small-sized an’ spindling now,” said Hilary, drawing himself up to his full height and bridling with offended dignity in the consciousness of his inches and his muscles. “I know ez Cap’n Baker or enny other officer would ’list me now, for though I ain’t quite sixteen I be powerful well growed fur my age.”

As he realized this anew his flush deepened as he stood and looked down at the fire, while his mother covertly watched his expression. He felt it a burning shame that he should still linger here laggard when all his instinct was to help and sustain the cause of his countrymen. His loyalty was to the sense of home. His impulse was to repel the invader, although the majority of the mountaineers of East Tennessee were for the Union, and many fought for the old flag against their neighbors and often against their close kindred, so stanch was their loyalty in those times that tried men’s souls.

One day, as Hilary, straining his eyes, stood on his perch on the crag, he beheld fluttering far, far away—was it a wreath of mist floating along the level, sinuous curves of the distant valley road—a wreath of mist astir on some gentle current of the atmosphere? He had a sudden sense of color. Did the vapor catch a prismatic glister from the sun’s rays? And now faint, far, like the ethereal tones of an elfin horn, a mellow vibration sounded on the air. Hardly louder it was than the booming of a bee in the heart of a flower, scarcely more definite than the melody one hears in a dream, which one can remember, yet cannot recognize or sing again; nevertheless his heart bounded at the vague and vagrant strain, and he knew the fluttering prismatic bits of color to be the guidons of a squadron of cavalry. His heart kept pace with the hoofbeats of the horses. The lessening distance magnified them to his vision till he could discern now a bright glint of steely light as the sun struck on the burnished arms of the riders, and could distinguish the tints of the steeds—gray, blood-bay, black and roan-red; he could soon hear, too, the jingle of the spurs, the clank of sabers and carbines, and now and again the voices of the men, bluff, merry, hearty, as they rode at their ease. He would not lose sight of them till they had paused to pitch their camp at the foot of a great spur of the mountain opposite. There was a famous spring of clear, cold water there, he remembered.

The great spread of mountain ranges had grown purple in the sunset, with the green cup-like coves between filled to the brim with the red vintage of the afternoon light, still limpid, translucent, with no suggestion of the dregs of shadow or sediment of darkness in this radiant nectar. Nor was there token of coming night in the sky—all amber and pearl—the fairest hour of the day. No premonition of approaching sorrow or defeat, of death or rue, was in the gay bivouac at the foot of the mountain. The very horses picketed along the bank of the stream whickered aloud in obvious content with their journey’s end, their supper, their drink, and their bed; the sound of song and jollity, the halloo, the loud, cheery talk of the troopers, rose as lightly on the air as the long streamers of undulating blazes from the camp-fires and the curling tendrils of the ascending smoke. More distant groups betokened the precaution of videttes at an outpost. A sentinel near the road, for the camp guard was posted betimes, was the only silent and grave man in the gay company, it seemed to Hilary, as he watched the gallant, soldierly figure with his martial tread marching to and fro in this solitary place, as if for all the world to see. For Hilary had made his way down the mountain and was now on the outskirts of the camp, the goal of all his military aspirations.