FOR twenty-four hours I had had a man on my mind.
He had been court-martialled and was sentenced to be shot. He was in the guardhouse.
I know of no good reason why I should have objected to his execution; he certainly deserved all that he was to get. But I had been his counsel before the court-martial, and it is never a pleasant thing for a lawyer to have his client executed.
He belonged officially to me. I had assumed a responsibility for him, and I felt that it would not be fully discharged if he should be led out and shot.
I had known Beavers for a very brief time; but as his counsel I had learned much from him in confidence as to his career. He was a person of elective affinities. It was his habit to desert. He had served on both sides and in many capacities. He always fought well on whichever side he might happen to be serving. As a gambler, he always “played his game for all it was worth.”
Why he had deserted back and forth in this way without any cogent reason, I never knew. I used to think sometimes that he had done so at first just to try how a new style and color of uniform might suit his particular kind of beauty. His beauty was not in itself conspicuous.
I learned from him incidentally that his various reasons for desertion from one side to the other had not been of a kind that would have controlled the action of a less fastidious man.
On one occasion he had deserted because he smelt mutton from the camp-kettles of the enemy. He had a predilection for mutton.
I learned that he returned to us once, because one night, when he was not quite himself, a comrade had put him to bed and reversed the order of his blankets. Beavers explained to me with great particularity that a certain gray blanket had been placed on top of a certain brown one. He could not be expected to remain with a regiment under such conditions.
At last he had been caught in the act of deserting. He had been tried, and, in spite of such legal acumen as I could bring to bear, had been convicted, sentenced, and the next day but one was to be shot.
Now that he was sure to die, he seemed to make no more of the fact than of any other indifferent thing. I do not mean that he was careless of his fate. He took everything seriously. But facts were to him facts, and he did not worry over them. He did not think it worth while.
So when he was sentenced to death, he adjusted his blankets in the proper order so that he might not have a nightmare, and slept the sleep of the contented.
With all my contempt for Beavers I was sorry that he was to die. There was something in the reckless character of the man that appealed to me. Something that made me feel that it was a pity that this abundant life should be extinguished by a rifle shot.
I had been thinking all night. I had thought of every argument in his favor. I had searched my mind to see if any point had been neglected. Early in the night I had gone to Beavers, and asked him for the aid of suggestion—suggestion that might lead to information. But here again his habits balked me. He said: “I’m gambling in this case on your brains.”
I might myself have been willing to do that, but I was gambling with Beavers’s life for a stake.
Beavers was of course just that kind of man, whom a self-respecting person feels it his duty to despise; but somehow I could not quite despise Beavers. His coolness appealed to me strongly. His bravado seemed a sort of bravery. His readiness to meet the consequences, and pay the penalties of his own misdeeds, was a thing hard to distinguish from heroism.
He had no principles, of course. He did not pretend to have any. But he had certain methods of thought which seemed to serve him in lieu of principles.
It was just before dawn. I had not slept. As I lay in my tent with the flaps thrown back, all that was discernible was the rather spectral-looking tented city with its precise white rows. I had become so nervous, staring through the dark at the place where I knew the tent pole to be, that at last I turned out for good. I tightened my belt. It was our habit to sleep in our clothes—for reasons.
The first gray of the morning touched the camp, and looking down the row I saw a fragile figure moving from one tent to another, and pausing occasionally in uncertainty. At first I could not be certain whether it was a woman or not. Finally the figure straightened up and stood looking towards the guardhouse; it was that of a woman.
I had not seen a woman in two months.
The camp was silent with that quietude that is so impressive just before the dawn.
After staring at the guardhouse for a moment, while I stood staring at her, the woman turned her eyes and we stood looking at each other. After halting a moment she came staggering up the narrow lane between the two rows of tents, making a peculiar, nervous movement with her hands, but saying nothing. She stood for a few moments a little way from the tent door, clasping and unclasping her hands.
I saw that she was ill. She reeled up against the tent pole, and would have fallen had I not caught her by the arm. I seated her on a log, all the seat there was. After a moment she revived a little, and said in a faint voice, “Beavers.”
At that moment reveille sounded. The woman was too evidently ill for me to leave her. I sent a sergeant to attend the roll-call. I directed our cook to provide the woman with coffee and food.
Then I questioned her a little. She had walked twenty-two miles over railroad ties.
She was Beavers’s wife.
She said to me: “You are his counsel, I believe?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I have done everything I could to save him.”
“No, you have not,” she answered. “You have not made the point that he was never legally enlisted as a soldier, I’ll warrant! He’s over forty-five and can’t be conscribed. He was pardoned out of the penitentiary on condition that he should enlist, but the court-martial had no proof of that. There’s nothing whatever to show that he’s a soldier; and if he ain’t a soldier, he can’t be punished for desertion. I’ve come to tell you, for he would never think of it.”
I jumped to my feet. I called a sentinel, and told him to take the woman to the guardhouse and make her as comfortable as possible. I mounted my horse and galloped to the station. I roused the telegraph operator two hours before his time. He was a sleepy fellow, but he was accustomed to taking imperative messages out of hours. I gave him this one to the war department:—
Beavers to be shot to-morrow morning. No proof whatever he was ever soldier. If not soldier, could not have deserted. Too old for conscript law, and no proof of enlistment except Governor Letcher’s telegram. Telegram not under oath, not legal testimony. Witness not subjected to cross-examination. As counsel, I demand stay in this man’s case.
I rode back to the guardhouse, and found that a new member had been added to the battery. The company was known as Lamkin’s Battery.
We named the new member “Little Lamkin’s Battery,” to distinguish it, I suppose, from the big one.
Beavers sat all that morning with his wife’s hand in his, and Little Lamkin’s Battery in his arms.
He said it looked like its mother. He’d “gamble on that.”
Not until within an hour of the time appointed for Beavers’s execution did there come a reply from the war department. But when it came it was thoroughly satisfactory. It read thus:—
Legal points conclusive. Release Beavers and restore him to duty. Duplicate sent to General Walker.
Soon after that Beavers deserted, blankets and all, to “the other enemy”—that was his form of speech, not mine.
The next time I saw him was under peculiar circumstances.
In July, 1865, I went on board the steamer Morning Star, at Portland, four miles below Louisville, Kentucky.
I was two or three hours in advance of the sailing of the boat. Only a few people were scattered about the front of the cabin. I went to the clerk, paid for my room and passage, and pocketed thirty dollars in change. A moment later the porter came in with my trunk. I put my hand in my vest pocket to get the dollar due him, but found my thirty dollars gone.
I had all the feelings which a man always has when he finds that his pocket has been picked—which include the feeling of helplessness.
There was on board a brigade of troops going South. They were late enlisters, who had seen none of the fighting. The men were on the deck below, of course. The officers, though their transportation orders called only for deck passage, were by courtesy permitted in the cabin. There were a dozen or twenty of them, mainly rough lumbermen, or something of that kind. They evidently wanted to see a fight. So they concluded to pick that fight with me.
One of them came up to me where I was reading a novel, and began the trouble by saying: “You’re a rebel.”
“No,” I replied. “I was a rebel while the rebellion lasted, but I have taken the oath of allegiance, and am at present a loyal citizen of the United States.”
“Well, you were a rebel,” he said, with more offence in his tone than in his words; “and I want to know what you are doing here in the North.”
“I’m not in the North,” I replied; “but in the middle of a river that separates the North from the South.”
By this time half a dozen others of the crowd had gathered in front of me with angry faces. It was manifestly their purpose to make trouble, and I saw no use in trying to ward it off. They were planning a fight; and whether it was to be a safe one or not, it seemed to me a good time to begin it.
I sprang to my feet and faced them. I was utterly unarmed, while they carried their weapons. I grasped a chair as the only means of defence at hand, and with remarks which are better not repeated, perhaps, told them to come on.
Just at that moment a stateroom door opened behind me, and two warm hands thrust two pistols into my grasp. The next moment a stalwart figure, armed in the same way, stood beside me, and, presenting two pistols, called out: “Hands up, gentlemen! The first man that moves dies. You’re twenty to two of us, but—”
Some language followed.
The men threw up their hands.
Without taking his eyes off his adversaries or lowering his weapons, my comrade called out: “Mr. Clerk, send for the captain.”
When the captain came, my comrade reported that these men had made an unwarranted assault upon an inoffensive passenger, and said: “They have no business in the cabin, anyway. As a first-class passenger, I call on you to send ’em below, where they belong.”
The captain was willing enough. He had been three times arrested during the war for aiding “rebel sympathizers.” A minute later these officers had become deck passengers.
Then I turned to my deliverer, and to my astonishment he was Beavers. He had grown stout, and was resplendent in a suit of clothes with checks so broad that it might easily have taken two persons to show the pattern; otherwise he was the same old nonchalant, reckless Beavers, ready to gamble upon any chance and to pay his losses though the payment might be with his life.
I made my identity known to him of course. He replied immediately: “Why, of course, I reckonized you long before this thing occurred, and I have been trying to get an excuse for speaking to you. Because you see when you came aboard in mufti I didn’t know who you was, and so I lifted thirty dollars out of your clothes. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d a’ known it was you, and now I want to hand it back. I could just as easily have picked that other fellow’s pocket—the one that picked the quarrel with you. I never go back on my friends, never! And I’ve never forgot how you got me out of that scrape.”
He handed me back the thirty dollars and I thanked him. He said: “Don’t mention it.” He added, though I never knew what he meant by it: “I’ll square the whole thing with that other feller. He’s got more’n thirty dollars in his wad.”
I naturally felt a little warm towards Beavers. I owed him my life. Therefore when he suggested some alcoholic celebration of the incident I compromised on a cigar. However little you may esteem a man, it is difficult to snub him a few minutes after he has saved your life.
Beavers went to the baggage-master and said something to him which I didn’t hear. The baggage-master shook his head in dissent.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Beavers; “it’s five dollars to you, old man.”
“Oh, well, that’s different,” said the baggage-master, and two minutes later Beavers was searching one of his trunks. Presently he came up with a wad of papers in his hand and we returned to the cabin. There he spread out some architectural designs for a gorgeous monument, and said: “Look at that. That’s the design of the monument I’ve just put up over that wife of mine. She was a mighty good sort, and I’ve spent good money to give her a proper send-off. I’ve paid five thousand dollars to the architect for the design, and fifteen thousand dollars to have it built. You see business is good with me just now. I’ve got a faro bank at Louisville and another at Evansville and two at Cairo, and another at St. Louis, and three at Memphis and one at Vicksburg, and two at New Orleans. As for me I run the river and make what there is in it.”
Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
“By the way,” he said, “you remember about Little Lamkin’s Battery? Well, he’s on board.” Beckoning to a negro nurse, he said: “Bring that little rascal here.”
A few minutes later the nurse returned, having a peculiarly bright, three-year-old boy in charge, whom I greeted as an old friend. After talking with the little chap for a few moments I turned to Beavers and said: “What are you going to make out of him, Beavers?”
“Something better than his father is,” he replied, “for his mothers sake; and that reminds me you’re just out of the war and you’ve got your way to make. It won’t do for you to know me. If you ever meet me goin’ up and down the river, I’ll cut you dead and don’t you say nothing.”