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"While I was parching the corn stolen from the mule, in a half of a tin canteen, over the fire, the chaplain came along and wanted to sample it. He was pretty hungry, but I wasn't running a free boarding house for chaplains any more, and I told him he must go forage for himself. He said he would give his birthright for a pocket full of corn. I told him I didn't want any birthright, unless a birthright would stay a man's stomach, but if he would promise to always love, honor and obey me, I would tell him where he could get some corn. He swore by the great bald headed Elijah that if I would steer him onto some corn he would remember me the longest day he lived, and pray for me. I never was very much mashed on the chaplain's influence at the throne, but I didn't want to see him starve, while government mules were living on the fat of the land, so I told him to go down to the quartermaster's corral and rob the mules as I had done. He bit like a bass, and started for the mules.
"Honestly, I had no designs on the chaplain, but he traded me a kicking mule once, and got a good horse of me, because I thought he wanted to do me a favor. As he was familiar with mules, I supposed he would know how to steal a little corn. Pretty soon I heard a great commotion down there, and presently the chaplain came out with a mule chasing him, its ears laid back, and blood in its eyes. The chaplain was white as a sheet, and yelling for help. Before I could knock the mule down with a neckyoke, the animal had grabbed the chaplain by the coat tail with its mouth, taking some of his pants, also, and perhaps a little skin, raised him up into the air, about seven feet, let go of him, and tried to turn around and kick the man on the fly as he came down.
"We drove the mule away, rescued the chaplain, tied his pants together with a piece of string, cut off the tail of his coat which the mule had not torn off, so it was the same length as the other one, and made him look quite presentable, though he said he knew he could never ride a horse again. It seems that instead of reaching into the nose bag, and taking a little corn, he had unbuckled the nose bag and taken it off. I told him he was a hog, and ought to have known better than take the nose bag off, thus leaving the mule's mouth unmuzzled, while the animal was irritated. He accused me of knowing that the mule was vicious, and deliberately sending him there to be killed, so rather than have any hard feelings I gave him a handful of my parched corn.
"A few Sundays afterwards I heard him preach a sermon on the sin of covetousness, and I thought how beautifully he could illustrated his sermon if he had turned around and showed his soldier audience where the mule eat his coat tail. Soon we saddled up and marched another day without food. Reader, were you ever so hungry that you could see, as plain as thought it was before you, a dinner-table set with a full meal, roast beef, mashed potatoes, pie, all steaming hot, ready to sit down to? If you have not been very hungry in your life, you can not believe that one can be in a condition to "see things." The man with delirium tremens can see snakes, while the hungry man,in his delirium, can see things he would like to eat. Many times during that day's ride through the deserted pine woods, with my eyes wide open, I could see no trees, no ground, no horses and men around me, but there seemed a film over the eyes, and through it I could see all of the good things I had ever eaten.
"One moment there would be a steaming roast turkey, on a platter, ready to be carved. Again I could see a kettle over a cook stove, with a pigeon pot pie cooking, with dumplings, light as a feather, bobbing up and down with the steam, and I could actually smell the odor of the cooking pot pie. It seems strange, and unbelievable to those who have never experienced extreme hunger or thirst, that the imagination can picture eatables and streams of running water, so plain that one will almost reach for the eatables, or rush for the imaginary stream, to plunge in and quench thirst, but I have experienced both of these sensations for thirteen dollars a month, and nary a pension yet. It is such experiences that bring gray hairs to the temples of young soldiers, and cause eyes to become hollow and sunken in the head. Today, your Uncle Samuel had not got silver dollars enough in his treasury to hire me to suffer one day of such hunger as to make me see things that were not there, but twenty two years ago it was easy to have fun over it, and to laugh it off the next day.
"When we stopped that day, at noon, to rest, the company commissary sergeant came up to the company, with two men carrying the hind quarters of an animal that had been slaughtered, and he began to cut it up and issue it out to the men. It was peculiar looking meat, but it was meat, and every fellow took his ration, and it was not long before the smell of boiled fresh meat could be 'heard' all around. When I took my meat I asked the sergeant what it was, and where he got it. I shall always remember his answer. It was this:
'Young man, when you are starving, and the means of sustaining life are given you, take your rations and go away, and don't ask any fool questions. If you don't want it, leave it.'
"Leave it? Egad, I would have eaten it if it had been a Newfoundland dog, and I took it, and cooked it, and ate it. I do not know, and never did, what it was, but when the quartermaster's mule team pulled out after dinner, there were two 'spike teams'--that is, two wheel mules and a single leader, instead of four mule teams. After I saw the teams move out, each mule looked mournful, as though each one thought his time might come next, I didn't want to ask any questions about that meat, though I knew there wasn't a 'beef critter' within fifty miles of us. I have had children ask me, many times, if I ever eat any mule in the army, and I have always said that I did not know. And I don't. But I am a great hand to mistrust.
"It was on this hungry day, when filled with meat such as I had never met before that I did a thing I shall always regret. The captain came down to the rear of the company and said, so we could all hear.
'I want two men to volunteer for a perilous mission. Who will volunteer? Don't all speak at once. Take plenty of time, for your lives may pay the penalty!'
"I had the feeling for some days as though there was not the utmost confidence in my bravery, among the men, and I had been studying as to whether I would desert, and become a wanderer on the face of the earth, or do some desperate deed that would make me solid with the boys, and when the captain called for volunteers, I swallowed a large lump in my throat, and said, 'Captain, here's your mule. I will go!' Whether it was that confounded meat I had eaten that had put a seeming bravery into me, or desperation at the hunger of the past few days, I do not know, but I volunteered for a perilous mission. A little Irishman named McCarty spoke up, and said, 'Captain, I will go anywhere that red headed recruit will go.'
"So it was settled that McCarty and myself should go, and with some misgivings on my part we rode up to the front and reported. I thought what a fool I was to volunteer, when I was liable to be killed, but I was in for it, and there was no use squealing now. We came to a cross road, and the captain whispered to us that we should camp there, and that he had been told by a reliable contraband that up the cross road about two miles was a home at which there was a sheep, and he wanted us to go and take it. He said there might be rebels anywhere, and we were liable to be ambushed and killed, but we must never come back alive without sheep meat. Well, we started off. McCarty said I better ride a little in advance so if we were ambushed, I would be killed first, and he would rush back and inform the captain. I tried to argue with McCarty that I being a recruit, and he a veteran, it would look better for him to lead, but he said I volunteered first, and he would waive his rights of precedence, and ride behind me.
"So we rode along, and I reflected on my changed condition. A few short weeks ago I was a respected editor of a country newspaper in Wisconsin, looked up to, to a certain extent, by my neighbors, and now I had become a sheep thief. At home the occupation of stealing sheep was considered pretty low down, and no man who followed the business was countenanced by the best society. A sheep thief, or one who was suspected of having a fondness for mutton not belonging to him, was talked about. And for thirteen dollars a month, and an insignificant bounty, I had become a sheep thief. If I ever run another newspaper, after the war, how did I know but a vile contemporary across the street would charge me with being a sheep thief, and prove it by McCarty. May be this was a conspiracy on the part of the captain, whom I suspected of a desire to run for office when we got home, to get me in his power, so that if I went for him in my paper, he could charge me with stealing sheep. It worked me up considerable, but we were out of meat, and if there was a sheep in the vicinity, and I got it, there was one thing sure, they couldn't get any more mule down me.
"So we rode up to the plantation, which was apparently deserted. There was a lamb about two thirds grown, in the front yard, and McCarty and myself dismounted and proceeded to surround the young sheep. As we walked up to it, the lamb came up to me bleating, licking my hand, and then I noticed there was a little sleigh bell tied to its neck with a blue ribbon. The lamb looked up at us with almost human eyes, and I was going to suggest that we let it alone, when McCarty grabbed it by the hind legs and was going to strap it to his saddle, when it set up a bleating, and a little boy come rushing out of the house, a bright little fellow about three years old, who could hardly talk plain. I wanted to hug him, he looked so much like a little black eyed baby at home, that was too awfully small to say 'good bye papa' when I left. The little fellow, with the dignity of an emperor, said,
'Here, sir, you must not hurt my pet lamb. Put him down, sir, or I will call the servants and have you put off the premises.'
"McCarty laughed, and said the lamb would be fine 'atin' for the boy's,' and was pulling the thing up, when tears came into the boy's eyes, and that settled it. I said,
'Mac, for heaven's sake, drop that lamb. I wouldn't break that little boy's heart for all the sheep meat on earth. I will eat mule, or dog, but I draw the line at children's household pets. Let the lamb go.'
'Begorra, yer right,' said McCarty, as he let the lamb down. 'Luk at how the shep runs to the little bye. Ah. me little mon, yer pet shall not be taken away from yez,' and a big tear ran down McCarty's face.
"The little boy said there was a great big sheep in the back yard we could have, if we were hungry, and we went around the house to see. There was an old black ram that looked as though he could whip a regiment of soldiers, but we decided that he was our meat. McCarty suggested that I throw a lariat rope around his horns, and lead him, while he would go behind and drive the animal. That looked feasible, and taking a horse-hair picket rope off my saddle, with a slip noose in the end, I tossed it over the horns of the ram, tied the rope to the saddle, and started. The ram went along all right till we got out to the road, when he held back a little. Mac jabbed the ram in the rear with his saber, and he came along all right, only a little too sudden. That was one of the mistakes of the war, Mac pricking that ram, and it has been the source of much study on my part, for twenty-two years, as to whether the Irishman did it on purpose, knowing the ram would charge on my horse, and butt my stead in the hind legs. If that was the plan of the Irishman, it worked well, for the first thing I knew my horse jumped up about eighteen feet, and started down the road towards camp, on a run, dragging the ram, which was bellowing for all that was out. I tried to hold the horse in a little, but every time he slackened up the ram would gather himself and run his head full tilt against the horse, and away he would go again. Sometimes the ram was flying through the air, at the end of the rope, then it would be dragged in the sand, and again it would strike on its feet, and all the time the ram was blatting, and the confounded Irishman was yelling and laughing.
"We went into the camp that way, and the whole regiment, hearing the noise, turned out to see us come in. As my horse stopped, and the ram was caught by a colored man, who tied its legs, I realized the ridiculousness of the scene, and would have gone off somewhere alone and hated myself, or killed the Irishman, but just then I saw the captain, and I said,
' Captain, I have to report that the perilous expedition was a success. There's your sheep,' and I rode away, resolved that that was the last time I should ever volunteer for perilous duty. The Irishman was telling a crowd of boys the particulars, and they were having a great laugh, when I said:
" 'McCarty, you are a villain. I believe you set that ram on to me on purpose. Henceforth we are strangers.'
' Be gob,' said the Irishman, as he held his sides with laughter,' yez towld me to drive the shape, and didn't I obey?"
END PART THIRTEEN
Part 14: Bacon and Hardtack-In Danger of Ague-In Search of Whiskey and Quinine-I Am Appointed Corporal-I Make a Speech-I Am the Leader of Ten picked Men-I Am Willing to Resign