Once more, and for the last time, Chadwick Buford jogged along the turnpike from the Ohio to the heart of the Bluegrass. He had filled his empty shoulder-straps with two bars. He had a bullet wound through one shoulder and there was a beautiful sabre cut across his right cheek. He looked the soldier every inch of him; he was, in truth, what he looked; and he was, moreover, a man. Naturally, his face was stern and resolute, if only from habit of authority, but he had known no passion during the war that might have seared its kindness; no other feeling toward his foes than admiration for their unquenchable courage and miserable regret that to such men he must be a foe.
Now, it was coming spring again—the spring of '64, and but one more year of the war to come.
The capture of the Fourth Ohio by Morgan that autumn of '62 had given Chad his long-looked-for chance. He turned Dixie's head toward the foothills to join Wolford, for with Wolford was the work that he loved—that leader being more like Morgan in his method and daring than any other Federal cavalryman in the field behind him. In Kentucky, he left the State under martial sway once more, and, thereafter, the troubles of rebel sympathizers multiplied steadily, for never again was the State under rebel control. A heavy hand was laid on every rebel roof. Major Buford was sent to prison again. General Dean was in Virginia, fighting, and only the fact that there was no man in the Dean household on whom vengeance could fall, saved Margaret and Mrs. Dean from suffering, but even the time of women was to come.
On the last day of '62, Murfreesboro was fought and the second great effort of the Confederacy at the West was lost. Again Bragg withdrew. On New Year's Day, '63, Lincoln freed the slaves—and no rebel was more indignant than was Chadwick Buford. The Kentucky Unionists, in general, protested: the Confederates had broken the Constitution, they said; the Unionists were helping to maintain that contract and now the Federals had broken the Constitution, and their own high ground was swept from beneath their feet. They protested as bitterly as their foes, be it said, against the Federals breaking up political conventions with bayonets and against the ruin of innocent citizens for the crimes of guerillas, for whose acts nobody was responsible, but all to no avail. The terrorism only grew the more.
When summer came, and while Grant was bisecting the Confederacy at Vicksburg, by opening the Mississippi, and Lee was fighting Gettysburg, Chad, with Wolford, chased Morgan when he gathered his clans for his last daring venture—to cross the Ohio and strike the enemy on its own hearth-stones—and thus give him a little taste of what the South had long known from border to border. Pursued by Federals, Morgan got across the river, waving a farewell to his pursuing enemies on the other bank, and struck out. Within three days, one hundred thousand men were after him and his two thousand daredevils, cutting down trees behind him (in case he should return!), flanking him, getting in his front, but on he went, uncaught and spreading terror for a thousand miles, while behind him for six hundred miles country people lined the dusty road, singing "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys," and handing out fried chicken and blackberry-pie to his pursuers. Men taken afterward with typhoid fever sang that song through their delirium and tasted fried chicken no more as long as they lived. Hemmed in as Morgan was, he would have gotten away, but for the fact that a heavy fog made him miss the crossing of the river, and for the further reason that the first rise in the river in that month for twenty years made it impossible for his command to swim. He might have fought out, but his ammunition was gone. Many did escape, and Morgan himself could have gotten away. Chad, himself, saw the rebel chief swimming the river on a powerful horse, followed by a negro servant on another—saw him turn deliberately in the middle of the stream, when it was plain that his command could not escape, and make for the Ohio shore to share the fortunes of his beloved officers who were left behind. Chad heard him shout to the negro:
"Go back, you will be drowned." The negro turned his face and Chad laughed—it was Snowball, grinning and shaking his head:
"No, Mars John, no suh!" he yelled. "It's all right fer YOU! YOU can git a furlough, but dis nigger ain't gwine to be cotched in no free State. 'Sides, Mars Dan, he gwine to get away, too." And Dan did get away, and Chad, to his shame, saw Morgan and Colonel Hunt loaded on a boat to be sent down to prison in a State penitentiary! It was a grateful surprise to Chad, two months later, to learn from a Federal officer that Morgan with six others had dug out of prison and escaped.
"I was going through that very town," said the officer, "and a fellow, shaved and sheared like a convict, got aboard and sat down in the same seat with me. As we passed the penitentiary, he turned with a yawn—and said, in a matter-of-fact way:
"'That's where Morgan is kept, isn't it?" and then he drew out a flask. I thought he had wonderfully good manners in spite of his looks, and, so help me, if he didn't wave his hand, bow like a Bayard, and hand it over to me:
"'Let's drink to the hope that Morgan may always be as safe as he is now.' I drank to his toast with a hearty Amen, and the fellow never cracked a smile. It was Morgan himself."
Early in '64 the order had gone round for negroes to be enrolled as soldiers, and again no rebel felt more outraged than Chadwick Buford. Wolford, his commander, was dishonorably dismissed from the service for bitter protests and harsh open criticism of the Government, and Chad, himself, felt like tearing off with his own hands the straps which he had won with so much bravery and worn with so much pride. But the instinct that led him into the Union service kept his lips sealed when his respect for that service, in his own State, was well-nigh gone—kept him in that State where he thought his duty lay. There was need of him and thousands more like him. For, while active war was now over in Kentucky, its brood of evils was still thickening. Every county in the State was ravaged by a guerilla band—and the ranks of these marauders began to be swelled by Confederates, particularly in the mountains and in the hills that skirt them. Banks, trains, public vaults, stores, were robbed right and left, and murder and revenge were of daily occurrence. Daws Dillon was an open terror both in the mountains and in the Bluegrass. Hitherto the bands had been Union and Confederate but now, more and more, men who had been rebels joined them. And Chad Buford could understand. For, many a rebel soldier—"hopeless now for his cause," as Richard Hunt was wont to say, "fighting from pride, bereft of sympathy, aid, and encouragement that he once received, and compelled to wring existence from his own countrymen; a cavalryman on some out-post department, perhaps, without rations, fluttering with rags; shod, if shod at all, with shoes that sucked in rain and cold; sleeping at night under the blanket that kept his saddle by day from his sore-backed horse; paid, if paid at all, with waste paper; hardened into recklessness by war—many a rebel soldier thus became a guerrilla—consoling himself, perhaps, with the thought that his desertion was not to the enemy."
Bad as the methods of such men were, they were hardly worse than the means taken in retaliation. At first, Confederate sympathizers were arrested and held as hostages for all persons captured and detained by guerillas. Later, when a citizen was killed by one of these bands, four prisoners, supposed to be chosen from this class of free-booters, were taken from prison and shot to death on the spot where the deed was done. Now it was rare that one of these brigands was ever taken alive, and thus regular soldier after soldier who was a prisoner of war, and entitled to consideration as such, was taken from prison and murdered by the Commandant without even a court-martial. It was such a death that Dan Dean and Rebel Jerry had narrowly escaped. Union men were imprisoned even for protesting against these outrages, so that between guerilla and provost-marshal no citizen, whether Federal or Confederate, in sympathy, felt safe in property, life, or liberty. The better Unionists were alienated, but worse yet was to come. Hitherto, only the finest chivalry had been shown women and children throughout the war. Women whose brothers and husbands and sons were in the rebel army, or dead on the battle-field, were banished now with their children to Canada under a negro guard, or sent to prison. State authorities became openly arrayed against provost-marshals and their followers. There was almost an open clash. The Governor, a Unionist, threatened even to recall the Kentucky troops from the field to come back and protect their homes. Even the Home Guards got disgusted with their masters, and for a while it seemed as if the State, between guerilla and provost-marshal, would go to pieces. For months the Confederates had repudiated all connection with these free-booters and had joined with Federals in hunting them down, but when the State government tried to raise troops to crush them, the Commandant not only ordered his troops to resist the State, but ordered the muster-out of all State troops then in service.
The Deans little knew then how much trouble Captain Chad Buford, whose daring service against guerillas had given him great power with the Union authorities, had saved them—how he had kept them from arrest and imprisonment on the charge of none other than Jerome Conners, the overseer; how he had ridden out to pay his personal respects to the complainant, and that brave gentleman, seeing him from afar, had mounted his horse and fled, terror-stricken. They never knew that just after this he had got a furlough and gone to see Grant himself, who had sent him on to tell his story to Mr. Lincoln.
"Go back to Kentucky, then," said Grant, with his quiet smile, "and if General Ward has nothing particular for you to do, I want him to send you to me," and Chad had gone from him, dizzy with pride and hope.
"I'm going to do something," said Mr. Lincoln, "and I'm going to do it right away."
And now, in the spring of '64, Chad carried in his breast despatches from the President himself to General Ward at Lexington.
As he rode over the next hill, from which he would get his first glimpse of his old home and the Deans', his heart beat fast and his eyes swept both sides of the road. Both houses: even the Deans'—were shuttered and closed—both tenantless. He saw not even a negro cabin that showed a sign of life.
On he went at a gallop toward Lexington. Not a single rebel flag had he seen since he left the Ohio, nor was he at all surprised; the end could not be far off, and there was no chance that the Federals would ever again lose the State.
On the edge of the town he overtook a Federal officer. It was Harry Dean, pale and thin from long imprisonment and sickness. Harry had been with Sherman, had been captured again, and, in prison, had almost died with fever. He had come home to get well only to find his sister and mother sent as exiles to Canada. Major Buford was still in prison, Miss Lucy was dead, and Jerome Conners seemed master of the house and farm. General Dean had been killed, had been sent home, and was buried in the garden. It was only two days after the burial, Harry said, that Margaret and her mother had to leave their home. Even the bandages that Mrs. Dean had brought out to Chad's wounded sergeant, that night he had captured and lost Dan, had been brought up as proof that she and Margaret were aiding and abetting Confederates. Dan had gone to join Morgan and Colonel Hunt over in southwestern Virginia, where Morgan had at last got a new command only a few months before. Harry made no word of comment, but Chad's heart got bitter as gall as he listened. And this had happened to the Deans while he was gone to serve them. But the bloody Commandant of the State would be removed from power—that much good had been done—as Chad learned when he presented himself, with a black face, to his general.
"I could not help it," said the General, quickly. "He seems to have hated the Deans." And again read the despatches slowly. "You have done good work. There will be less trouble now." Then he paused. "I have had a letter from General Grant. He wants you on his staff." Again he paused, and it took the three past years of discipline to help Chad keep his self-control. "That is, if I have nothing particular for you to do. He seems to know what you have done and to suspect that there may be something more here for you to do. He's right. I want you to destroy Daws Dillon and his band. There will be no peace until he is out of the way. You know the mountains better than anybody. You are the man for the work. You will take one company from Wolford's regiment—he has been reinstated, you know—and go at once. When you have finished that—you can go to General Grant." The General smiled. "You are rather young to be so near a major—perhaps."
A major! The quick joy of the thought left him when he went down the stairs to the portico and saw Harry Dean's thin, sad face, and thought of the new grave in the Deans' garden and those two lonely women in exile. There was one small grain of consolation. It was his old enemy, Daws Dillon, who had slain Joel Turner; Daws who had almost ruined Major Buford and had sent him to prison—Daws had played no small part in the sorrows of the Deans, and on the heels of Daws Dillon he soon would be.
"I suppose I am to go with you," said Harry.
"Why, yes," said Chad, startled; "how did you know?"
"I didn't know. How far is Dillon's hiding-place from where Morgan is?"
"Across the mountains." Chad understood suddenly. "You won't have to go," he said, quickly.
"I'll go where I am ordered," said Harry Dean.
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