“I’m with you,” added Budge Isham; “I am from Alabama, and if she secedes, as she is sure to do, I am ready to lay down my life in her defence.”
“Sorry, pards, but that shoves me into the Union army,” remarked Al Bidwell, puffing quietly at his pipe; “we must keep the balance right, but we’ll part friends here and we’ll be friends till we shoulder our muskets. Then we’ll do all we can to kill each other.”
Further discussion disclosed that the citizens of New Constantinople were about equally divided in their allegiance, but all of them were not yet ready to take up arms in support of the cause with which they sympathized. There were eight who announced their intention of making their way to San Francisco, there to 99 find the most available route to the points necessary to reach. It was typical of that stupendous struggle, the greatest of modern times, that four of these recruits were ardent supporters of one cause and four equally eager to risk their lives for the other. They were the warmest of friends and had been for years, willing to face any danger for the sake of the remainder. It would be the same until they parted, and then, as one of them had already expressed it, they would devote every energy to trying to kill one another.
None of the volunteers faltered until Maurice Dawson decided to leave his daughter at the settlement until his return, if so be he should be permitted to return. He knew of no better or safer place for her, nor of any friends to whose care he would more cheerfully commit her, in case it should be his lot to fall on the field of battle.
It had been Parson Brush’s intention to be Dawson’s comrade in his perils, but when the father begged him to stay behind to look after his child he consented. And so the programme, so fraught with momentous consequences, was arranged.
CHAPTER X
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY
The four years of stupendous war came to an end. The sun of the Southern Confederacy went down in gloom and defeat behind the hills of Appomattox, never to rise again, and blessed peace brooded over a reunited nation, which shall endure through the coming ages to the end of time.