The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
new name the same old pronunciation--emphasis on the front end of it.
He then did the bravest thing that can be imagined--a thing to make one
shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and
affectations; he began to write his name so: d'Un Lap. And he waited
patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work
of art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name
accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had
known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been
as familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of
victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by
consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and
originally written d'Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into
English it would mean Peterson: Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone
or rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter; d', of or
from; un, a or one; hence d'Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that
is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter--Peterson.
Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them;
so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way;
he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was 'no
slouch,' as the boys said.
That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town
jeweller,--trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright,
educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in
life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of
ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked
upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously. We
did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of
unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four
in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new
occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I
did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn't at twenty-five.
Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey
had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one
time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he
would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his
account which some of us hadn't: he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.
Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber;
lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an
experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar,
and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training,
but was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to
him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow, anyway, and
the boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made
corporal.
These samples will answer--and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd
of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did
as well as they knew how, but really what was justly to be expected of
them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did.
We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary;
then, toward midnight, we stole in couples and from various directions
to the Griffith place, beyond the town; from that point we set out
together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south-eastern corner of
Marion County, on the Mississippi River; our objective point was the
hamlet of New London, ten miles away, in Ralls County.
The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that
could not be kept up. The steady trudging came to be like work; the
play had somehow oozed out of it; the stillness of the woods and the
sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the
spirits of the boys, and presently the talking died out and each person
shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second
hour nobody said a word.
Now we approached a log farm-house where, according to report, there was
a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt; and there, in the
deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of
assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than
it was before. It was a crucial moment; we realised, with a cold
suddenness, that here was no jest--we were standing face to face with
actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no
hesitation, no indecision: we said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with
those soldiers, he could go ahead and do it; but if he waited for us to
follow him, he would wait a long time.
Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us, but it had no effect.
Our course was plain, our minds were made up: we would flank the
farmhouse--go out around. And that is what we did. We turned the
position.
We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over
roots, getting tangled in vines, and torn by briers. At last we reached
an open place in a safe region, and sat down, blown and hot, to cool off
and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed, but the rest of
us were cheerful; we had flanked the farm-house, we had made our first
military movement, and it was a success; we had nothing to fret about,
we were feeling just the other way. Horse-play and laughing began again;
the expedition was become a holiday frolic once more.
Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and
depression; then, about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled,
heel-blistered, fagged with our little march, and all of us except
Stevens in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We
stacked our shabby old shot-guns in Colonel Ralls's barn, and then
went in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican War.
Afterwards he took us to a distant meadow, and there in the shade of a
tree we listened to an old-fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder
and glory, full of that adjective-piling, mixed metaphor, and windy
declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and
that remote region; and then he swore us on the Bible to be faithful to
the State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil, no matter
whence they might come or under what flag they might march. This mixed
us considerably, and we could not make out just what service we
were embarked in; but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and
phrase-juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that
he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed
the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour,
colonel Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey; and he
accompanied this act with another impressive blast.
Then we formed in line of battle and marched four miles to a shady and
pleasant piece of woods on the border of the far-reached expanses of a
flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war--our kind of war.
We pierced the forest about half a mile, and took up a strong position,
with some low, rocky, and wooded hills behind us, and a purling, limpid
creek in front. Straightway half the command were in swimming, and the
other half fishing. The ass with the French name gave this position
a romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and
simplified it to Camp Ralls.
We occupied an old maple-sugar camp, whose half-rotted troughs were
still propped against the trees. A long corn-crib served for sleeping
quarters for the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, was Mason's
farm and house; and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the
farmers began to arrive from several directions, with mules and horses
for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last,
which they judged would be about three months. The animals were of all
sizes, all colours, and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky,
and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time; for we were
town boys, and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my
share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could
throw me without difficulty; and it did this whenever I got on it.
Then it would bray--stretching its neck out, laying its ears back,
and spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. It was a
disagreeable animal, in every way. If I took it by the bridle and tried
to lead it off the grounds, it would sit down and brace back, and no
one could budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military
resources, and I did presently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen
many a steam-boat aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even
a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the
corn-crib; so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and
fetched him home with the windlass.
I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride,
after some days' practice, but never well. We could not learn to like
our animals; they were not choice ones, and most of them had annoying
peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens's horse would carry him,
when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which form on the
trunks of oak-trees, and wipe him out of the saddle; in this way Stevens
got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers's horse was very large and
tall, with slim, long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size
enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to, with his
head; so he was always biting Bowers's legs. On the march, in the sun,
Bowers slept a good deal; and as soon as the horse recognised that he
was asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were
black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could ever make
him swear, but this always did; whenever the horse bit him he always
swore, and of course Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at
this, and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his
balance and fall off his horse; and then Bowers, already irritated
by the pain of the horse-bite, would resent the laughter with hard
language, and there would be a quarrel; so that horse made no end of
trouble and bad blood in the command.
However, I will get back to where I was--our first afternoon in the
sugar-camp. The sugar-troughs came very handy as horse-troughs, and we
had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed
my mule; but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry-nurse
to a mule, it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I
believed that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties
about everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and
ordered Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice, to feed the mule; but he
merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly
seven-year-old horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is
fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain, and
asked if it was not right and proper and military for me to have an
orderly. He said it was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps,
it was but right that he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers
said he wouldn't serve on anybody's staff; and if anybody thought he
could make him, let him try it. So, of course, the thing had to be
dropped; there was no other way.
Next, nobody would cook; it was considered a degradation; so we had no
dinner. We lazied the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing
under the trees, some smoking cob-pipes and talking sweethearts and war,