“Yes, there is a rebel angel, and she is a dandy,” said Jim, as he covered me up. “She is out by the fire making milk toast for you. You see, I went out to the Brown plantation, to try and steal an egg, and some bread, and milk, but I thought, on the way out, as it was a case of life and death, the stealing of it might rest heavy on your soul when you come to pass in your chips, so I concluded to go to the house and ask for it. There was a young woman there, and I told her the red-headed corporal that captured the female smuggler, was dying, and couldn't eat any hard-tack and bacon, and I wanted to fill him up on white folks food before he died, so he could go to heaven or elsewhere, as the case might be, on a full stomach, and she flew around like a kernel of pop-corn on a hot griddle, and picked up a basket of stuff, and had the nigger saddle a mule for her, and she came right to the camp with me, and said she would attend to everything. She's a thoroughbred, and don't you make no mistake about it.”
I must have gone to sleep when Jim was talking about the girl, for I dreamed that there was a million angels in rebel uniforms, poaching eggs for me. Pretty soon I heard a rustle of female clothes, and a soft, cool hand was placed on my forehead, my hair was brushed back, a perfumed handkerchief wiped the cold perspiration from my face, and I heard the rebel angel ask Jim what the doctor said about me. Jim told her what the horse doctor had said about curing a horse that had been sick the same as I was, and then she asked if we had not sent for the regular doc-doctor. Jim said we had not thought of that. She asked what had been done for me, and Jim told her about the French mustard episode, and the cayenne pepper tea. I thought she laughed, but it had become dark in the tent, and I couldn't see her face, but she told Jim to go after the regimental surgeon at once, and Jim went out. The angel asked me how I felt, and I told her I was all right, but she said I was all wrong. I thanked her for the trouble she had taken to come so far, and she said not to mention it. She said she had a brother who was a prisoner at the-North, and if somebody would only be kind to him if he was sick, she would be well repaid. She said the last she heard of him he was a prisoner of war at Madison, Wis., and she wondered what kind of people lived there, away off on the frontier, and if they could be kind to their enemies. That touched me where I lived, and I raised up on my elbow, and said:
“Why bless your heart, Miss, if your brother is a prisoner in old Camp Randlll, in Madison, he has got a pic nic. That town was my home before I came down here on this fool job. The people there are the finest in the world. All of them, from old Grovernor Lewis, to the poorest man in town, would set up nights with a sick person, whether he was a rebel or not. Your brother couldn't be better fixed if he was at home. The idea of a man suffering for food, clothing, or human sympathy in Madison, would be ridiculous. There is not a family in that town,” I said, becoming excited from the feeling that any one doubted the humanity of the people of Wisconsin, “but would divide their breakfast, and their clothes, and their money, with your brother, egad, I wish I was there myself. I will be responsible for your brother, Miss.”
She told me to lay down and be quiet, and not talk any more, as I was becoming wild. She said she was glad to know what kind of people lived there, as she had supposed it was a wilderness. In a few minutes Jim came back and said the doctor was playing poker with some other officers, in a captain's tent, and he didn't dare go in and break up the game, but he spoke to the doctor's orderly, and he said I ought to take castor oil. That didn't please the little woman at all, and she told Jim to go to the poker tent and tell the doctor to come at once, or she would come after him. It was not long before the doctor came stooping in to my pup tent. His idea was to have all sick men attend surgeon's call in the morning, and not go around visiting the sick in tents. He asked me what was the matter, and I told him nothing much. Then he asked me why I wasn't at surgeon's call in the morning. I told him the reason was that I was wading in a swamp, after the rebels that ambushed some of our boys the day before. “Then you've got malaria,” said he. “Take some quinine tonight, and come to surgeon's call in the morning.”
The little woman, the rebel angel, got her back up at the coolness of the doctor; and she gave him a piece of her mind, and then he called for a candle, and he examined me carefully. When he got through, he said:
“He is going to have a run of fever. He must be sent to the hospital. Jim, go tell the driver to send the ambulance here at once, and you, Jim, go along and see that this fellow gets to the hospital all right. He can't live here in a tent, and I doubt if he will in the hospital.”
That settled it. In a short time the ambulance came, and I got in and sat on a seat, and the rebel angel got in with me, and we rode seven miles to the hospital, over the roughest road a sick man ever jolted over, and I would have died, if I could have had my own way about it, but the little woman talked so cheerfully that when we arrived at the great building, I should have considered myself well, only that my mind was wandering. All I remember of my entrance to the hospital was that when we got out of the ambulance Jim was there on his horse, leading the mule belonging to the angel. Some attendants helped me up stairs, and down a corridor, where we met two stretchers being carried out to the dead house with bodies on them, and I had to sit in a chair and wait till clean sheets could be put on one of the cots where a man had just died. The little woman told me to keep up my courage, and she would come and see me often, Jim cried and said he would come everyday, a man said, “your bed is ready, No. 197,” and I laid down as No. 197, and didn't care whether I ever got up again or not. I just had breath enough left to bid the angel good bye, and tell Jim to see her safe home. Jim said, “You bet your life I will,” and the world seemed blotted out, and for all I cared, I was dead.