Marcy, the Refugee

by Harry Castlemon

"S'pose I have? I can't be hurt for that now."

"I almost wish I had tested the matter by speaking to Captain Benton about it. If I had, I don't think you would have been turned over to the army to be paroled with the other prisoners. I could have told him about the Hattie, couldn't I?"

"Great smoke!" exclaimed Beardsley. "I never thought of her, and there she is in the creek, where they could have picked her up as easy as you please. It was good of you not to say anything about her, and if I ever get a chance I'll show you that you and your maw have been thinking hard of me without a cause."

Beardsley turned away as if he had nothing further to say to Marcy, and the latter wheeled his horse and rode on toward Nashville, wondering if he had made a mistake in talking so plainly to his old commander.

"If I have it is too late to be sorry for it now," was his reflection. "But I don't think he can say worse things about me now than he could before. Beardsley is nobody's fool, though he does look like it, and he has known all along how mother and I feel toward him."

When Marcy reached the village he found the streets almost deserted; but he knew there was a talkative crowd in the post-office, for every time the door was opened loud and angry voices came through it. Tom Allison, Mark Goodwin, and their friends were not at hand to have the first talk with him, as Marcy thought they would be, but he found them in the office listening to an excited harangue from a paroled soldier, who had discarded his coat and hat and pushed up his sleeves, as if he were prepared to do battle with the first one of his auditors who dared dispute his words. Marcy saw at a glance that some of the crowd were very much shocked, while others were grinning broadly, and nodding now and then as if to say that the speaker was expressing their sentiments exactly. Marcy knew him well. He lived in the settlement, and had been one of the first to put on a uniform and hasten to the front; and so very patriotic was he that he was anxious to fight all his neighbors who could not be persuaded to go into the army with him. But his experience at Hatteras and Roanoke Island had somewhat dampened his ardor, and showed him that there were some things in war that he had never dreamed of.

"How does it come that you stay-at-homers know so much about this business, and about my duty as a soldier, that you take it upon yourselves to tell me what I had oughter do?" shouted the man who had heard the shrieking of Yankee shells at Fort Bartow. "I see some among you who are mighty hard on your niggers, but there aint one who is as hard as our trifling officers were on us. Having no niggers to drive they took to driving us white men, and they 'bused us like we was dogs. Many's the time I have seen men tied up by the thumbs and bucked and gagged for nothing at all; and, Tom Allison, I give you fair warning that if you say again that I'm a coward kase I don't allow to go back and be 'bused like I was afore, I'll twist your neck for ye."

This made two things plain to Marcy Gray. One was that the man had had quite enough of soldiering and that he did not mean to try it again if he could help it. The other was that his friend Allison had presumed to speak his mind a little too freely, and that that was what started the prisoner on his tirade against those whom he called "stay-at-homers." After some twisting, and turning, and elbowing Marcy succeeded in obtaining a glance at Tom.

He was leaning against one of the counters, as far away from the speaker as he could get, and his face was as white as his shirt-front.

"I'm mighty glad to hear that there's Union men among you," continued the soldier, "and if there's any here in this post-office I want them to know that there's more of 'em now nor they was a week ago, and that some of 'em wears gray jackets. And I am glad to hear that them same Union men have took to burning out them among you who was cowards enough to persecute women and children on account of their principles. Now, there's that trifling hound Lon Beardsley. He told me and some others who come up from the Island the same time he did, that we could make a pile of money by burning Mrs. Gray's house."