“Colonel, here are about thirty horses I have been ordered to kill. If I do not kill them I take a certain responsibility. I feel under obligations to many Southern people for courtesies, and I feel that the nursing I received during a recent sickness, from one of your Southern ladies, about the same as saved my life. I believe the war is very near over, and that neither you nor our men will have occasion for much more active service. You have come home to your desolate plantations, and found everything gone. This is the fate of war, but it is unpleasant all the same. If you can use these animals for your work, in raising crops, you may take them in welcome, and if there is any cussing, I will stand it. My advice would be to take them to some isolated place on your plantation, and keep them out of sight for a time. Our army will move within a week, and perhaps never come back here. The animals are branded 'U. S.' which will always remain. If the horses are found in your possession, later, you may have to say that they were given to you by an agent of the quartermaster. If they are taken from you, grin and bear it. If you are permitted to keep them, and they do you any good, I shall be very glad. If I get hauled over the coals for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, I will lie out of it some way, or stand my punishment like a little man. The horses are yours, as far as I am concerned.”
“Well, sah, you are a perfect gentleman, sah,” said the colonel, as he took my hand and shook it cordially. “And I should be proud to entertain you at my place, sah. We have got little left, sah, but you are welcome to our home at any time. I am an old man, with a bullet in my leg. Two of my boys are dead, in Virginia, sah, and I have one boy who is a prisoner at the north. If he comes home alive, we will be able to make a living and have a home again. The war has been a terrible blow to us all, sah. I reckon both sides, sah, have got about enough, and both sides have made cussed, fools of themselves. When this affair is settled, sah, the north and south will be better friends than ever, sah. I wish you a long life, sah.”
The other gentlemen expressed thanks, and they picked out two or three horses apiece and led them away, it seemed to me as happy a lot of gentlemen as I ever saw. I called the colored man, and we started for camp. For a five dollar bill, and a promise to always take a deep interest in the colored man's welfare, I got his promise that he would never tell anybody about my giving the horses away, and for nearly a year he kept his promise. I went back to headquarters and reported that the animals had been disposed of, and that evening I was invited to set into a poker game with some of the officers, and when we got up I had won over a hundred dollars. I looked upon the streak of luck as a premium for my kindness to the gentlemen who took the horses, but some of the officers seemed to have a suspicion that I concealed cards up my sleeve. It is thus that the best of us are misunderstood.
CHAPTER XX.
I Demonstrate that Gambling Does Not Pay—I Cause a General
Stampede—Christmas in the Pine Woods of Alabama—Millions
of Dollars, but no Christmas Dinner.
When I went away from the party of officers, where we had been playing draw-poker, with a hundred dollars in my pocket, which I had won from men who thought they were pretty good poker players, I felt as though I owned the earth. I had my hand in my pocket, hold of the roll of greenbacks, and in that way constantly realized that I was no common pauper. I had never thought that I was an expert at cards, but this triumph convinced me that there was more money to be made playing poker than in any other way. I figured up in my mind that if I could win a hundred dollars a night, and only played five nights a week, I could lay up two thousand dollars a month. To keep it up a year would make me rich, and if the war lasted a couple of years I could go home with money enough to buy out the best newspaper in Wisconsin. It is wonderful what a train of thought a young man's first success in gambling, or speculation, brings to him. I went to bed with my hundred dollars buttoned inside my flannel shirt, and dreamed all night about holding four aces, full hands, and three of a kind. All that night, in my sleep, I never failed to “fill” when I drew to a hand. I made up my mind to break every officer in the regiment, at poker, and then turn my attention to other regiments, and win all the money the paymaster should bring to the brigade. I got up in the morning with a headache, and thought how long it would be before night, when we could play poker again, and I wondered why we couldn't play during the day, as there was nothing else going on. It got rumored around the regiment that I had cleaned the officers out at poker the night before, and the boys seemed glad that a private had made them pay attention. I had not yet got my commsssion, and so any victory I might achieve was considered a victory for a private soldier. Several of the boys congratulated me. The nearest I ever come to quarreling with my old partner, Jim, was over this poker business. I showed him my roll, and told him how I had cleaned the officers out, and instead of feeling good over it, Jim said I was a confounded fool. I tried to argue the matter with Jim, but he couldn't be convinced, and insisted that they had made a fool of me, and had let me win on purpose, and that they would win it all back, and all I had besides. He said I had better let the chaplain take the hundred dollars to keep for me, and stay away from that poker game, and I would be a hundred ahead, but I didn't want any second-class chaplain to be a guardian over me, and I told Jim I was of age, and could take care of myself. Jim said he thought I had some sense before I was commsssioned, but it had spoiled me. He said in less than a week I would be borrowing money of him. I knew better, and went around camp with my thumbs stuck in my armholes, and felt big. It was an awful long day, but I put in the time thinking how I would draw cards, and bet judiciously, and finally night came, and I went over to the major's tent, where the officers usually congregated. I was early, and had to wait half an hour before the crowd showed up. As they came in each had something to say to me. “Here's the man who walked off with our wealth last night,” said one. “Here's our victim,” said another. “We will send him to his tent tonight without a dollar.” They chaffed me a good deal, but I made up my mind that I could play as well as they could, and some of them were old fellows that had played poker before I was born. Well, we went to work, and the first hand I got I lost ten dollars. It was the history of all smart Aleck's, and there is no use of going into details. In less than an hour they had won the hundred dollars, and fifty that I had sewed inside my shirt to keep for a rainy day, and they had joked me every time I bet until I was exasperated to such an extent that I could have killed them. Winning or losing money with them was a mere pastime, and they seemed to enjoy losing about as much as winning. I was too proud, or too big a fool to leave the game when I had lost all I had, and I borrowed a little of each of them, and lost it, and then I said I was tired and I guessed I would go to bed, and I went out, dizzy and sick at heart, and the officers laughed so I could hear them clear to my tent. On the way to my tent, and as I walked around for half an hour before going there, I thought over what a fool I was, how I had forgotten all the good advice ever given me by my friends. Knowing that I was not intended by nature for a gambler, I had gone in with my eyes open, made a temporary success, got the big head, as all boys do, and gone back and laid down my bundle, and become the laughing stock of the whole crowd. I figured up that I was just an even hundred dollars out of pocket, and decided that I would never try to get it back. I would simply swear off gambling right there, forget that I knew one card from another, pay up my gambling debts when I got my first pay, and never touch a card again.
That was the wisest conclusion that I ever come to. After I had walked around until my head cleared off a little, I went in the tent sly and still, to go to bed without letting Jim hear me. I was ashamed, and didn't want to talk. I heard Jim roll over on his bunk, and he said:
“Bet ten dollars, pard, that you lost all you had.”
“Jim, I won't bet with you. I have sworn off betting intirely.”