The “one man, sir,” always came that afternoon. His charge was always the same: $2.50 in Confederate currency, or something less than twenty-five cents in real money.
The pretence was a bit flimsy, but it answered Curry’s purpose. His mess was well fed, and he was not caught in his raids upon the pig-pens and sheep-folds thereabouts.
Curry was a slave, and we hired him from the estate to which he belonged as a chattel. One day we were ordered to move from South Carolina to Virginia. Curry came to us and asked to be taken with us. When we explained to him that we could not legally take him out of the state, he deliberately proposed to run away in order to go with us. Having no alert perception of the difference between crime and good conduct, he could not see why we should not abet him in this proposed violation of law. But when we made it clear to him that, for reasons inscrutable to his mind, we could not permit him to go with us out of the state, he fell into melancholy.
That night we had some roast pig for dinner; and Curry had not “buyed it from one man, sir.”
The only reply he would make to our questionings was: “I done got it fur de mess, sir. De mess has been good to me.”
Early next morning—the day on which we were to leave—the enemy landed below, and we were ordered forward to meet them. As we unlimbered in battery and opened fire, Curry rode up on an antique mule, stolen for the occasion from the battery blacksmith. Leaping from his steed he went to the gun that was most short-handed, took a vacant place, and began fighting like an artilleryman. When the head of the mess rode up to him and said: “What are you doing here, Curry?”
His reply was: “Ise takin’ a hand.”
The fight was hot for ten minutes. At the end of it poor Curry lay stretched upon the grass—a bullet through his chest. One of us went to him and said something—no matter what. He looked up and said: “I can’t go wi’ de mess to Virginy. You’ll have to take some no ’count nigger. But Ise fought wi’ de mess anyhow, and you’ll find de res’ o’ dat pig hangin’ up de chimbly.”