“But,” said he, as he took a chew of navy plug tobacco, “when death is necessary, we should make it as painless as possible, I have been studying this matter over a good deal, and trying to figure out how to make the death the least painful to these poor victims, and it has occurred to me that if we place them on the edge of the precipice, and you shoot them through the brain, while at the same time I push them, they will fall down a hundred feet into the river, and if they are not killed instantly by having the brain blown out, they will certainly drown. How does that strike you?”
I thought the chaplain was about the most heartless cuss I ever heard talk about killing people, but I said that seemed to me to be the best way, but a cold chill went over me as I thought of shooting anybody through the head and the chaplain pushing him down the cliff into the water. I was just going to ask him what the men had done, when he said:
“Ah, there they come.”
I looked, and a lot of colored men were leading about forty old back-number horses and mules, afflicted with glanders and other diseases.
“Are the niggers to be killed?” I asked.
“Naw,” said the chaplain. “The horses and mules.”
I was never so relieved in all my life as I was when I found that my excellent marksmanship was to be expended on animals instead of human beings. But I did feel hurt, the idea of a brevet officer, a man qualified to do deeds of daring, being detailed one day to drive mules and the next-to shoot sick horses. But I decided to do whatever I had to do, well, and so preparations were made for the executions. The glandered horses were brought out first, and then the ones with sore backs. Many of them were first-rate horses, their only fault being sores made from the saddles, and as it would take months to cure them up, and as the army was going to move soon, it had been decided to kill them rather than leave them to fall into the enemy's hands, or take them along to be cured on the march. I shot about a dozen glandered horses, that being the largest game I had ever killed, and the bodies fell down into the river. Then there was a mule that was ugly, and it occurred to me I would have some fun with the chaplain.
We were outside the lines, and quite a number of men had gathered from the plantations, on hearing the firing, to see what was up. I suggested to the chaplain that it was a shame to kill so many good horses, when they might be of use to some of the planters, but he said they were all rebels, and it was not the policy of the government to set them up in business, by giving them horses to use tilling crops. I argued that the men had come home from the confederate army—this was in 1864—either discharged for wounds or disability, or paroled prisoners, and they were anxious to go to work, but that they hadn't a dollar, and our army had skinned every horse and mule on their places, and the niggers had gone, so that a horse would be a God-send to them. But the chaplain wouldn't hear to it. The men, who had collected, were mostly too proud to ask for a horse from a Yankee, but I could see that they did not like to see the animals killed. I thought if I could get the chaplain, who had been sent out to the execution as a sort of humane society, to see that the animals were killed easy, to go back to camp and leave me alone with the horses, I could kill them or not, as I chose. They brought out the ugly mule next, and my idea was to shoot the mule through the tip of the ear, while the chaplain stood near with a rail to push it over the bank, and maybe the mule would flax around and kick the chaplain up a tree, or scare him so he would leave. I took deliberate aim at the mule's ear, told the chaplain to push hard with the rail so the corpse would be sure to go over the cliff, and fired. Well, I have never seen such a scene in all my life. The mule seemed to squat down, when the bullet hit the top of his ear, then he brayed so loud that it would raise your hat right off your head, then he jumped into the air and whirled around and kicked in every direction with all four feet at once, fell down and rolled over towards the chaplain, and got up, and seeming to think the chaplain was the author of the misery, started for him, and that good man dodged behind trees until he got a chance to climb up one, which he did, and sat on a limb and shook his fist at the mule and me. He used quite strong language at me for not killing the animal dead. Finally the niggers caught the mule and the chaplain dismounted from the limb, and came to me. I told him my carbine was out of order, and I should have to take it apart and fix it, and that there was no knowing whether it would shoot where I aimed it or not, after it was fixed, and I might have trouble with the rest of the horses. It would take an hour at least to fix the gun. He said he guessed he would go back to camp, and leave me to finish up the slaughter, and that was what I wanted. The colored men were anxious to go back too, so I let them tie the horses to trees, and all go back except one, whom I knew. After they had all gone I went up to the dozen southern men who had been watching the proceedings, and asked one who was called colonel by the rest, if he didn't think it was wrong to kill the horses when by a little care they could be of much use in tilling crops. “Well, sah,” said he with dignity. “If it is not disloyalty, sah, for a southern gentleman to criticize anything that a yankee does, I should say, sah, that it was a d——d shame, sah, to steal our horses, and after using them up, sah, kill them in cold blood, sah. Each one of those animals sah, would be a gold mine, sah, at this time, to us who have come from the wah, sah, destitute, with nothing but our bare hands to make a crop, to keep our families from want, sah.”
The other gentlemen nodded at what the colonel had said, as though that was about their sentiments. I told him that I felt about that way myself, but there was an objection. If I gave the horses away, for use on the plantations, and the animals should be used hereafter in the confederate army, it would not only be wrong, but I would be liable to be dismissed from the army.
The colonel said he should want to be dismissed from the Yankee army if he was in it, but I might feel different about it. But he said he would pledge me his word as a Southern gentleman, that if the animals could be lent to them, they should never be used for war purposes. He said he was poor, and his friends there were poor, but they would not take a horse as a gift from a stranger, but if I would lend them the horses for a year, they would use them, and return them to the proper officer a year hence, if the army was yet in existence, or they would take them in exchange for horses that had previously been stolen from them by our army. He said there was not a gentleman present but had lost from two to a dozen horses since the army had been in their vicinity. I admired the dignity and honesty of the old gentleman, and I knew mighty well that we had picked up every horse we could find, and I said: