AFTER the battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, as we called it, the region north of Fairfax Court House was a No-man’s land.
Little by little we occupied it during that summer, even to Mason’s and Munson’s hills. But the process of occupation was slow. When we pressed forward immediately after the battle all that region was terra incognita.
About half the people inhabiting it were loyal to one side; about half to the other. So in asking information we had to be circumspect.
But we had assurance that the Hopes were loyal to our side. So when Lieutenant Billy Wilds was sent out with a party of us, on scouting duty, he naturally went to the Hope mansion for information.
He got it in abundance. Charlotte Hope, the daughter of the house, came out to give it to us, and she was very enthusiastic. She was a brunette, full of life, full of health, and full of enthusiasm for the cause. Besides, she knew how to sit gracefully on a rail fence. She had a rich contralto voice that had narrowly escaped being a bass. She was beautiful to her finger tips. She “had a way with her” that was fascinating beyond belief.
As she sat there on the rail fence, explaining the geography of the region round about, we all fell in love with her as troopers should, so far at least as to be ready to do any conceivable deed of derring-do in her behalf. But Lieutenant Wilds fell in love with her in fuller fashion, as was afterwards made manifest.
She sat there on the fence curled up most entrancingly and expounded the geography of the country with great minuteness. But when she tried to tell us just where a certain strong Federal post was, which we very much wanted to attack, she grew impatient of words.
Turning to a negro boy she said: “Saddle Saladin. I’ll go and show them.”
Three minutes later she was in the saddle. Half an hour afterwards Charlie Irving, our captain who had joined us and taken command, gently ordered her to the rear. As I have related in another book of reminiscences she refused to obey. She said: “I believe you are going to charge those fellows, and I want to see the fun.”
Well, she saw the fun. We made the charge. At the end of it Lieutenant Wilds was more in love with her than ever.
As we escorted her back to her home she broke into song. Her song was the old English ballad which begins:—
“In days of old, when knights were bold,
And barons held their sway.”
As she sang, she laid special stress upon two passages in the ballad. One was the line where the hero says:—
“I’ll live for love or die.”
The other was, where as death overcomes him he sings:—
“I’ve kept the vow I swore.”
The song seemed, whether prophetically or otherwise, to have entered this young girl’s soul and to have taken possession of her spirit.
It was not long afterwards that we learned that our gallant young lieutenant was engaged to be married to Charlotte Hope. The marriage was to take place as soon as the war was over. At that time we regarded this as a postponement of only a few months at most. We expected to win then and we expected to win quickly.
Whenever Lieutenant Wilds was sent upon a scouting expedition, he found it imperatively necessary to call at the Hope mansion for geographical and other information, though by this time we had all become familiar with every road and footpath in that quarter of Virginia.
It was a little fiction we were all pleased to love him for. One day about a month later, while we were waiting in the yard for Lieutenant Wilds to secure the necessary geographical information indoors, a Federal force attacked us. The lieutenant came out promptly, swung himself into the saddle, and ordered a charge. We fought there under the cherry trees for full fifteen minutes. At the end of the contest the enemy was driven away, and we pursued—but three of our saddles were empty.
One of them was that of Lieutenant Wilds.
It was Charlotte’s wish that Lieutenant Wilds should be buried in the family grave-yard of the Hopes. It was also her wish that his company should attend the funeral.
We brought two other companies along to stand guard and prevent any possible interruption of the ceremonies. We buried our comrade with all military honors. We fired the conventional salute over the grave.
Then we proceeded to attack a military force which had come up, intent upon disturbing the obsequies.
But before we moved off, Charlotte, who had been dry-eyed from the first, came to one of us and said: “He was just twenty-one. It will take just twenty-one to pay for him.”
It was only two or three days later when Charlie Hopper rode into the camp on a magnificent chestnut-sorrel mare. We did not know him.
He said he didn’t want to enlist. He merely wanted to join the company. He explained that if he enlisted he would be a man under pay. And he didn’t want pay, he said, for the work he wanted to do. Only give him rations and a chance and he would be satisfied.
His idea of a chance soon developed itself. He wanted to be as continually as possible in the presence of the enemy, anywhere, anyhow. He wanted to shoot all the “Yankees” he could. For that purpose he had brought with him the first Whitworth rifle I ever saw, with its long range, its telescopic sights, and its terrible accuracy of fire.
He seemed about sixteen years old. He didn’t tell us anything about himself, not even where he came from. But he had a long talk, and a confidential one, with Charlie Irving. After that Charlie paid him special attention. He detailed him upon every scouting expedition that had “business” in it. Sometimes when scouting expeditions were slack, the young fellow would go off by himself and remain for a day or two in close proximity to the enemy’s lines.
Each day he wore upon his breast a little tag with a number on it.
One day when the number had reached seventeen, he and I lay together behind a sycamore log, shooting at a peculiarly pestilent picket post. After one of his shots he called out, “Eighteen.” The next shot was simultaneous, he and I firing together. The man at whom we fired fell forward over his log, evidently dead.
Charlie Hopper turned to me and said: “You fired at the same moment I did; it’s a disputed bird. I can’t count him.”
Full of curiosity I asked: “What do you mean, Hopper?”
He answered: “Nothing—Just counting—Settling a score!”
It was only a few days later when we were at Falls Church. Young Hopper’s score read twenty, when he asked permission to ride out and personally encounter an officer who had separated himself from his command. The permission was given. Hopper leaped upon his mare, drew his sword, and galloped toward the officer. They met in mid field. The officer fired just as the boy clove him to the saddle. Hopper fell forward on his horse and rode back to the lines.
As he rolled off the saddle, he said: “I’m done for, boys, but I’ve made it twenty-one without counting a single disputed bird.” Then, feebly, he broke into song, singing,—
“I’ve kept the vow I swore.”
Before we buried him in the Hope cemetery the next day, the captain told me that Charlie Hopper was none other than Charlotte Hope.
But I had guessed the secret that day when she had refused to count the “disputed bird.”