He said it looked like its mother. He’d “gamble on that.”
Not until within an hour of the time appointed for Beavers’s execution did there come a reply from the war department. But when it came it was thoroughly satisfactory. It read thus:—
Legal points conclusive. Release Beavers and restore him to duty. Duplicate sent to General Walker.
Soon after that Beavers deserted, blankets and all, to “the other enemy”—that was his form of speech, not mine.
The next time I saw him was under peculiar circumstances.
In July, 1865, I went on board the steamer Morning Star, at Portland, four miles below Louisville, Kentucky.
I was two or three hours in advance of the sailing of the boat. Only a few people were scattered about the front of the cabin. I went to the clerk, paid for my room and passage, and pocketed thirty dollars in change. A moment later the porter came in with my trunk. I put my hand in my vest pocket to get the dollar due him, but found my thirty dollars gone.
I had all the feelings which a man always has when he finds that his pocket has been picked—which include the feeling of helplessness.
There was on board a brigade of troops going South. They were late enlisters, who had seen none of the fighting. The men were on the deck below, of course. The officers, though their transportation orders called only for deck passage, were by courtesy permitted in the cabin. There were a dozen or twenty of them, mainly rough lumbermen, or something of that kind. They evidently wanted to see a fight. So they concluded to pick that fight with me.
One of them came up to me where I was reading a novel, and began the trouble by saying: “You’re a rebel.”