Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Something tells me you will find my boy,” she said; “and if you do, tell him how freely I give him this little Lulu, and God bless you both!”

A few weeks later, and news came to the Mather House that when the battle of the Wilderness was over, Captain Tom Carleton was not with his handful of men who came from the field. “A prisoner of war,” was the next report, and then, as if her last hope had been taken from her, Mrs. Carleton broke down entirely, and, secluding herself from the world without, sat down in her desolation, mourning and praying for her two boys,—one a prisoner in Andersonville, and one in Columbia.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HUNTED SOLDIER.

The sun was just rising, and his red beams gilded the summits of the Alleghany Mountains, which in the glory of the early morning seemed as calm and peaceful as if their lofty heights had never looked down upon scenes of carnage and strife, or their tangled passes and dark ravines sheltered poor, starving, frightened wretches, fleeing for their lives, and braving death in any form rather than be recaptured by their merciless pursuers. There were several of these miserable men hiding in the mountain passes now, prisoners escaped from Salisbury and other points, but our story now has to do with but one, and that a young man, with a look of determination in his eye, and the courage of a Samson in his heart. He had suffered incredible hardships since the day of his capture. He had been stripped at once of his handsome uniform by the brutal Texans, who found him upon the field. His gold, which he carried about his person into every battle, had been taken from him, and in this condition he had been sent from one prison to another, until Salisbury received him. At first he had suffered but little mentally, for the ball which struck him down had left him with his reason impaired, and to him it was all the same whether friend or foe had him in keeping. Deprived of everything which could mark his rank as an officer, and always insisting that his name was “Rose,” he passed for a demented creature, whom the brutal soldiery delighted to torment. Gradually, however, his reason came back, and he woke to the full horrors of his condition. Then, like a caged lion he chafed and fumed, and resolved to be free. He could not die there, knowing that far away there was a blithesome little woman waiting for his coming, if, indeed, she had not ceased to think of him as among the living,—a state of things which he thought very probable, as he became aware of the fact that no one of his companions was acquainted with his real name. Rose was the only cognomen by which he was known, and the proud man shivered every time he heard that dear name uttered by the coarse, jesting lips around him. A horrid suit of dirty grey had been given him in place of the stolen uniform, and though at first he rebelled against the filthy garments, he began ere long to think now they might aid him in his escape, inasmuch as they were the garb of the Confederates. Day and night he studied the best means of escape, until at last the attempt was made and he stood one dark, rainy night, out on the highway a free man, breathing the pure breath of heaven, and ready to sell his life at any cost rather than go back again to the prison he had left. He had put his trust in God, and God had raised him up a friend at once, who had seen him leave the prison, and greatly aided him in his escape, just as he had aided others, knowing the while that by so doing he was putting his own life in jeopardy. But a staunch Unionist at heart, he was willing to brave everything for the cause, and it was through his instrumentality and minute directions that Will Mather had finally reached the shelter of the mountains which separate North Carolina from Tennessee. He had found friends all along the route, true, loyal men, who had periled their lives for him; brave tender women, whose hands had ministered so kindly to his wants, and who had so cheerfully divided with him their scanty meals, even though hunger was written upon their thin, haggard faces, and stared in their sunken eyes. And Will had taken down each name, and registered a vow that if ever he reached the North, these noble self-denying people should be rewarded, and if possible removed from a neighborhood where they suffered so much from privation and from the hands of their former friends, who, suspecting their sentiments, heaped upon them every possible abuse. Ragged, bareheaded, footsore and worn, he came at last, at the close of a June day, to the entrance of a cave in the hills to which he had been directed, and where, on the damp earth, he slept so soundly from fatigue and exhaustion that the morning sun was shining through the entrance to the cave, and a robin, on a shrub growing near, was trilling its morning song ere he awoke. The air, though damp from the water which trickled through the rocks, was close and stifling, and Will crept cautiously out from his hiding-place, and sitting down upon the ground drank in the beauty and stillness of the summer morning. Exactly where he was he did not know, but he felt certain that his face was toward the land where the Stars and Stripes were waving, and a thrill of joy ran through his veins as he thought of home and Rose, whose eyes by this time had grown so dim with looking for him. “God take me safely to her,” he whispered, when up the mountain side came the sound of voices and the tramp of feet. Creeping to the farthest side of the cave, and crawling down beneath the shelving rock where the cool waters were dripping, he hoped to avoid being seen. Up to this moment Will’s courage had never flagged, but now, when the Federal lines were not many miles away, and Rose and home seemed certain, he felt a great pang of fear, and his white lips whispered, “God pity me! God help me, God save me, for his own glory, if not for Rose’s sake,” then, knee-deep in the pool of water, he stood with his body nearly double, while the voices and the feet came nearer, and at last stopped directly in front of his hiding-place.

There were terrible oaths outside, and bitter denunciations were breathed against any luckless Union man who might be lurking near, and then the light from the entrance of the cave was wholly obscured, and Will saw that a man’s back was against the opening, as if some one were sitting there. Did they know of the cave? Would they come in there, and if they did would they find him? Will kept asking himself these questions and his breath came gaspingly as he knew that the man whose back barred the entrance to his hiding-place was the bitterest in his invectives against the Yankees, and the most anxious to find them. Something in his voice and language indicated both education and position superior to his companions, who evidently looked up to him as their leader, calling him “Square,” and acquiescing readily when, after the lapse of ten or fifteen minutes, he suggested that they go higher up the mountain to a gorge where some of the fugitives had heretofore taken refuge.

Five minutes more and the footsteps and voices were heard far up the mountain, and Will breathed more freely again, and kneeling down in the pool of water, thanked God who had turned the danger aside, and kept him a little longer. He did not dare leave the cave, but he came out from under the rock, and stretching himself upon the ground tried to wring and dry the tatters which hung so loosely upon him.

It was two days since he had tasted food, and the long fast began to make itself felt in the keen pangs of hunger. Surely he could venture out toward the close of the day, he thought, and see if there were not berries growing in the ledges, and when the sun was setting he crawled to the mouth of the cavern, where just in the best place for him to see it lay a huge corn-cake and slice of bacon, wrapped nicely in a bit of paper.

How it came there he did not stop to ask. That it was there was sufficient for him then, and never had the costliest dinner, served on massive silver, tasted to him half so well as did that bit of bacon with the coarse corn bread.

Refreshed and encouraged he went back to his hiding-place, intending to start again on his perilous journey when the mountain path grew dark enough to warrant him in doing so. But soon after the sunsetting a fearful storm came up, and in the pitchy darkness of the cave Will listened to the bellowing thunder roaring through the mountain gorges, and saw from the opening the forked lightning which struck more than one tall tree near the place of his concealment. Fed by the rain which had fallen in torrents, the stream under the projecting rock was beginning to rise and spread itself over the surface of the cave. It was up to his ankles now, and it rose so rapidly that Will was thinking of leaving the cave and groping his way as well as he could to the westward, when his quick ear caught the sound as of two or more persons coming stealthily up the mountain side. Whoever they were they seemed to move with the utmost caution, and Will’s heart beat high as he hoped it might be some brother fugitives seeking the shelter of the cave. The gleam of a lantern, however, and the same voice he had heard in the morning cursing the Yankees so bitterly dispelled that illusion, and in a tremor of terror he drew back in his watery quarters, crawling in the darkness to the farthest end of the cavern, and feeling the rising water flow over his knees as he waited for what might come next.