LXI WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON

Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh, the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring, with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be, in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I feel the thrill of it to this hour.

How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe news. Harry and Cécile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha, General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated. Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all, Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters, from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind, and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one whomsoever.

A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr. Gregory, it said,--oh, hang Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear! the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now; while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so filled her with bliss, or ever could again.

Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless, daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care; Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an end--except himself.

If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing "Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."

On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now they were gone to union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.

"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"

"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm, Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"

I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure, which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a club for a fan.