Thomas Nelson Page

“ He was a queer object as he staggered to his feet in the quagmire; but at the instant a loud "oof, oof," came from, the thicket, not a dozen yards away, and the whole herd of hogs, roused, by his fall, from slumber in their muddy lair, dashed away through the swamp with "oofs" of fear.
"There they go, there they go!" shouted both boys, eagerly,—Willy, in his excitement, splashing across the perilous-looking quagmire, and finding it not so deep as it had looked. ”

“ The boys flung themselves upon the ground and almost held their breath until the horses had passed out of hearing.
"Do you reckon they are hunting for us?" asked Willy in an awed whisper.
"No, for Hugh and the General. Come on."
They rose, went tipping a little deeper into the pines, and again made their way toward the cave.
"Maybe they've caught 'em," suggested Willy.
"They can't catch 'em in these pines," replied Frank. "You can't see any distance at all. A horse can't get through, and the General and Hugh could shoot 'em, and then get away before they could catch 'em." ”

“ They are in the swamp. Let's run," said Willy.
"No; we'll scare them away. They may be near the trap," was Frank's prudent suggestion. "Let's creep up."
"I hear young pigs squealing. Do you think they are ours?"
The squirrel was left, flattened out and trembling on top of a large limb, and the boys stole down the hill toward the pen. The hogs were not in sight, though they could be heard grunting and scuffling. They crept closer. Willy crawled through a thick clump of bushes, and sprang to his feet with a shout. "We've got 'em! We've got 'em!" ”

“ At last, however, they reached a place where the brambles and bushes seemed to form a perfect wall before them. It was impossible to get through.
"Let's go home," said Willy. "'Tain't any use to try to get through there. My legs are scratched all to pieces now."
"Let's try and get out here," said Frank, and he turned from the wall of brambles. They crept along, springing from hummock to hummock. Presently they came to a spot where the oozy mud extended at least eight or ten feet before the next tuft of grass.
"How am I to get the gun across?" asked Willy, dolefully. ”

“ Every man was in his saddle. A few words by the colonel, followed by other words from the captains, and the column started, turning across the bridge, the feet of the horses thundering on the planks. Then the regiment wound up the hill at a walk, the men singing snatches of a dozen songs of which "The Bonnie Blue Flag," "Lorena," and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia Shore," were the chief ones.
It seemed to the boys that to be a soldier was the noblest thing on earth; and that this regiment could do anything. ”

“ How proud Willy was of Frank!
"Go 'way from here; I ain't no deserter. I'm a-huntin' for deserters, myself," the man replied, laughing. [Pg 91]
Frank smiled at Willy with a nod, as much as to say, "You see,—just what Tim told us!"
"Ain't your name Mr. Billy Johnson?"
"Yes; that's my name."
"You are the man we're looking for. March down that road. But don't run,—if you do, we'll shoot you!"
As the boys seemed perfectly serious and the muzzles of both guns were pointing directly at him, the man began to think that they were in earnest. But he could hardly credit his senses. ”

“ The boys were too excited to get sleepy before the silver was hidden. Their mother told them they might go down into the garden and help Balla, on condition that they would not talk. [Pg 60]
"That's the way we always do when we bury the treasure. Ain't it, Willy?" asked Frank.
"If a man speaks, it's death!" declared Willy, slapping his hand on his side as if to draw a sword, striking a theatrical attitude and speaking in a deep voice. ”

“ In this way the boys became acquainted with the roads of the county and even with all the bridle-paths in the neighborhood of their home. Many of these were dim enough too, running through stretches of pine forest, across old fields which were little better than jungle, along gullies, up ditches, and through woods mile after mile. They were generally useful only to a race, such as the negroes, which had an instinct for direction like that shown by some animals but the boys learned to follow them unerringly, and soon became as skilful in "keepin' de parf" as any night-walker on the plantation. ”

“ The boy shut his mouth close, and looked straight at the corporal. The man laid down his pistol, and, seizing Frank, drew his hands behind him, and tied them.
"Get ready, men," he said, as he drew the boy aside to a small tree, putting him with his back to it.
Frank thought his hour had come. He thought of his mother and Willy, and wondered if the soldiers would shoot Willy, too. His face twitched and grew ghastly white. Then he thought of his father, and of how proud he would be of his son's bravery when he should hear of it. This gave him strength. ”

“ At the outbreak of the war nearly all of the men in this community enlisted, thinking, as many others did, that war was more like play than work, and consisted more of resting than of laboring. Although most of them, when in battle, showed the greatest fearlessness, yet the duties of camp soon became irksome to them, and they grew sick of the restraint and drilling of camp-life; so some of them, when refused a furlough, took it, and came home. ”

“ There was a call, and the hurried steps of some one running, just outside the door, and Lucy Ann burst into the room, her face ashy pale.
"The yard's full o' mens—Yankees," she gasped, just as the General and Hugh rose from the table.
"How many are there?" asked both gentlemen.
"They's all 'roun' the house ev'y which a-way."
The General looked at his sweetheart. She came to his side with a cry.
"Go up stairs to the top of the house," called the boys' mother.
"We can hide you; come with us," said the boys.
"Go up the back way, Frank 'n' Willy, to you-all's den," whispered Lucy Ann. ”

“ So a horse was bought, and Hugh went to Richmond and came back with a uniform and a sabre. The boys truly thought that General Lee himself was not so imposing or so great a soldier as Hugh. They followed him about like two pet dogs, and when he sat down they stood and gazed at him adoringly.
When Hugh rode away to the army it was harder to part with him than they had expected; and though he had left them his gun and dog, to console them during his absence, it was difficult to keep from crying. Everyone on the plantation was moved. ”

“ The raiders were up early next morning scouring the woods and country around. They knew that the fugitive soldiers could not have gone far, for the Federals had every road picketed, and their main body was not far away. As the morning wore on, it became a grave question at Oakland how the two soldiers were to subsist. They had no provisions with them, and the roads were so closely watched that there was no chance of their obtaining any. The matter was talked over, and the boys' mother and Cousin Belle were in despair.
"They can eat their shoes," said Willy, reflectively. ”

“ Suppose they see us!"
"Come on, Mah'srs Frank 'n' Willy, let's go home," said the colored boys. "They'll shoot us."
The fight was now in the woods which lay between the boys and their home. But just then the gray-coats got together, again turned at the edge of the wood, and dashed back on their pursuers, and—the smoke and bushes on the stream hid everything. In a second more both emerged on the other side of the smoke and went into the woods on the further edge of the field, all in confusion, and leaving on the ground more horses and men than before. ”

“ When the boys went into the house they found that their Aunt Mary had a headache that morning, and, even with the best intentions of doing her duty in teaching them, had been forced to go to bed. Their mother was too much occupied with her charge of providing for a family of over a dozen white persons, and five times as many colored dependents, to give any time to acting as substitute in the school-room, so the boys found themselves with a holiday before them. It seemed vain to try to shoot duck on the creek, and the perch were averse to biting. ”

“ Up to the time of the war, the boys had led a very uneventful, but a very pleasant life. They used to go hunting with Hugh, their older brother, when he would let them go, and after the cows with Peter and Cole. Old Balla, the driver, was their boon comrade and adviser, and taught them to make whips, and traps for hares and birds, as he had taught them to ride and to cobble shoes. ”

“ The soldiers followed the boys out by a side-door and dashed up the narrow stairs to the second-story just as a thundering knocking came at the front door. It was as dark as pitch, for candles were too scarce to burn more than one at a time.
"You run back," said Hugh to the boys, as they groped along. "There are too many of us. ”

“ The old rock fire-place is just like a cave."
"The gullies are so deep you can't get there except that one way," declared Frank.
"Even the Yankees couldn't find you there," asserted Willy.
"I don't believe anybody could, after that; but I trust they will never have to try," laughed their Cousin Belle, [Pg 109] with an anxious look in her bright eyes at the mere thought. ”

“ And, though the grown people doubted whether the negroes had not been startled by some of the hogs, which were quite wild, feeding in the woods, the boys were satisfied that the negroes really had seen deserters.
This became a certainty when there came report after report of these wood-skulkers, and when the conscript-guard, with the brightest of uniforms, rode by with as much show and noise as if on a fox-hunt. Then it became known that deserters were, indeed, infesting the piny district of Holetown, and in considerable numbers. ”

“ When there first began to be talk at Oakland about the war, the boys thought it would be a dreadful thing; their principal ideas about war being formed from an intimate acquaintance with the Bible and its accounts of the wars of the Children of Israel, in which men, women and children were invariably put to the sword. ”

“ The boys thought she was angry, but when they softly followed her a few minutes afterward, she got up hastily from where she had been kneeling beside the bed, and they saw that she had been crying. A murmur under the window called them back to the portico. It had begun to grow dark; but a bright spot was glowing on the horizon, and on this every one's gaze was fixed.
"Where is it, Balla? What is it?" asked the boys' [Pg 57] mother, her voice no longer strained and harsh, but even softer than usual.
"It's the depot, madam. They's burnin' it. ”

“ You can go if you wish; but, if you go, you can never come back!"
"Hi, Mistis," broke in Uncle Balla, "whar is I got to go? I wuz born on dis place an' I 'spec' to die here, an' be buried right yonder;" and he turned and pointed up to the dark clumps of trees that marked the graveyard on the hill, a half mile away, where the colored people were buried. "Dat I does," he affirmed positively. "Y' all sticks by us, and we'll stick by you."
"I know I ain't gwine nowhar wid no Yankees or nothin'," said Lucy Ann, in an undertone. ”

“ No highways ran through this region, and the only roads which entered it were mere wood-ways, filled with bushes and carpeted with pine-tags; and, being travelled only by the inhabitants, appeared to outsiders "to jes' peter out," as the phrase went. This territory was known by the unpromising name of Holetown.
Its denizens were a peculiar but kindly race known to the boys as "poor white folks," and called by the negroes, with great contempt, "po' white trash." Some of them owned small places in the pines; but the majority were simply tenants. ”

“ Frank was the spokesman.
"And he had a gun—a long squirrel-gun," added Willy, "and he said he belonged to Colonel Marshall's regiment."
"Why, that's Tim Mills. He's a deserter himself," exclaimed the captain.
"No, he ain't—he ain't any deserter," protested both at once. "He is a mighty brave soldier, and he's been home on a furlough to get well of a wound on his leg where he was shot." ”

“ The boys were half inclined to follow and aid in the capture; but Frank, after a moment's thought, said solemnly:
"No, Willy; an Arab never betrays a man who has eaten his salt. This man has broken bread with us; we cannot give him up. I don't think we ought to have told about him as much as we did."
This was an argument not to be despised.
A little later, as the boys trudged home, they heard the horns blowing again a regular "toot-toot" for "Millindy." [Pg 52] It struck them that supper followed dinner very quickly in Holetown. ”

“ They would have been terribly alarmed at this cruel invasion had they not been reassured by the general belief of the community that one Southerner could whip ten Yankees, and that, collectively, the South could drive back the North with pop-guns. When the war actually broke out, the boys were the most enthusiastic of rebels, and the troops in Camp Lee did not drill more continuously nor industriously. ”