The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 60

"Dat you shall, Honey. De name er Gawd, ter see Miss Jennie Barton settin' here in dis dirty road!"

He helped them climb to seats on the top of his load. Jennie found a berth between a flour barrel and mattress, while Mandy sat astride of an enormous bundle of bed clothes. Lucy scrambled up beside the driver.

The hot sun was pouring its fierce rays down without mercy. The old negro pulled a faded umbrella from beneath his seat, raised it, and handed it to Jennie with a grand bow.

"Thank you, uncle. You certainly are good to us!"

"Ya.s.sam--ya.s.sam--I wish I could do mo', honey chile. De ve'y idee er dem slue-footed Yankees er sh.e.l.lin' our town an' scerin' all our ladies ter death. Dey gwine ter pay fur all dis 'fore dey git through."

Three miles out they began to overtake the main body of the fugitives who escaped at the first mad rush. Hundreds of bedraggled women and children were toiling along the dust-covered road in the blistering sun, some bare-headed, some with hats on, some with street clothes, others with their morning wrappers just as they had fled from their unfinished breakfast.

Little girls of eight and ten and twelve were wandering along through the suffocating dust alone.

Jennie called to one she knew:

"Where's your mother, child?"

The girl shook her dust-powdered head.

"I don't know, m'am."

"Where are you going?"

"To walk on till I find her."

Her mother was wandering with distracted cries among the crowds a mile in the rear looking for a nursing baby she had lost in the excitement.

Jennie's eyes kindled at the sight of faithful negroes everywhere lugging the treasures of their mistresses. She began asking them what they were carrying just to hear the answer that always came with a touch of loyal pride.

"Dese is my missy's clothes! I sho weren't gwine let dem Yankees steal dem!"

"Didn't you save any of your own things?"

"Didn't have time ter git mine!"

They came to a guerilla camp. Men and horses were resting on either side of the road. Some of them were carrying water to their horses or to the women who cooked about their camp fires. The scene looked like a monster barbecue. These irregular troops of the South were friends in time of need to-day.

They crowded the road, asking for news and commenting freely on the sh.e.l.ling of the city.

A rough-looking fellow pushed his way to Jennie's cart.

"When did they begin firin'?"

"Just after breakfast."

Yesterday she would have resented the familiar tones in which this uncouth illiterate countryman spoke without the formality of an introduction. In this hour of common peril he was a Knight entering the lists wearing her colors.

He didn't mince words in expressing his opinions.

"It's your own fault if you've saved nothing. The people in Baton Rouge must have been d.a.m.ned fools not to know trouble wuz comin' with them gunboats lyin' thar with their big-mouthed cannon gapin' right into the streets. If the men had had any sense women wouldn't a been drove into the woods like this--"

"But they had no warning. They began to sh.e.l.l us without a minute's notice--"

His rough fist closed and his heavy jaw came together with a grinding sound.

"Waal, you're ruined--so am I--and my brothers and all our people, too.

There's nothin' left now except to die--and I'll do it!"

The girl clapped her hands.

"I wish I could go with you!"

He turned back toward his camp fire with a shake of his unkempt head.

"Die fighting for us!" Jennie cried.

He waved his black powder-stained hand:

"That I will, little girl!"

The rough figure rose in the unconscious dignity with which he waved his arm and pledged his word to fight to the death. War had leveled all ranks.

The talk on the road was all of burning homes, buildings demolished, famine, murder, and death.

Jennie suddenly found herself singing a lot of Methodist Camp Meeting hymns with an utterly foolish happiness surging through her heart.

She led off with "_Better days are coming._" Mandy was still too scared to sing the chorus of this first hymn but she joined softly in the next.

It was one of her favorites:

"_I hope to die shoutin'--the Lord will provide._"

The old man driving the cart kept time with a strange undertone of interpolation all his own. The one he loved best he repeated again and again.

"I'm a runnin'--a runnin' up ter glory!"

How could she be happy amid a scene of such desolation and suffering?

She tried to reproach herself and somehow couldn't be sorry. A vision of something more wonderful than houses and land, goods and chattels, slaves and systems of government, had made her heart beat with sudden joy and her eyes sparkle with happiness. It was only the picture of a dark slender young fellow who had never spoken a word of love that flashed before her. And yet the vision had wrought a spell that transformed the world.

The guns no longer echoed behind them. A courier came das.h.i.+ng from the city at sunset asking the people to return to their homes.

Two old men had rowed out to the war s.h.i.+ps during the bombardment. They called to the commander of the flags.h.i.+p as they pushed their skiff alongside:

"There are no men in town, sir--you're only killing women and children!"

The commander leaned over the rail of his gunboat.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen. I thought, of course, your town had been evacuated before your men were fools enough to fire on my marines. I've sh.e.l.led your streets to intimidate them."

The firing ceased. The order to sh.e.l.l the city had been caused by four guerillas firing on a yawl which was about to land without a flag of truce. Their volley killed and wounded three.