Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 (16 page)

 
          
A
day passed, in the same routine, and another.
A third.
Then it was the fourth day since Lee’s surrender, April 13. Barry was counting
these days backward. From April 13, he reckoned only three more until Monday,
April 16, the day he would leave his cell and
march
to
the scaffold.

 
          
He
slept that night as soundly as ever, without dreaming or waking. In the morning
he was waiting to go out with his guards for an hour’s exercise. Then he heard
big boots swiftly tramping, and looked up. It was not his guard detail, but
Captain Latimer, fairly storming up against the bars of the door.

 
          
'‘Barry!”
cried Latimer. “Look here! Read this message!”

 
          
He
was thrusting a paper into the cell.

 
          
“It
just came from the telegraph office,” Latimer babbled. “Read it, read it!”

 
          
Wondering,
Barry gazed at the writing, spelling out the words:

 
          
. . .
therefore
ordered that . . . sentence commuted . . . imprisonment for duration of war .
..

 
 
         
“What is it, Captain?” demanded Barry,
and felt
himself
shaking all over. “Some sort of
trick?”

 
          
“No,
it’s no trick!” Latimer snatched back the telegram and pointed with a shaking
finger. “Look who sent it! ‘By order of the President of the United
States’—Abraham Lincoln has saved your life!”

 
          
Barry
sat down again suddenly. His legs felt too weak to support his weight. He
clutched his knees to keep his hands from trembling.

 
          
“We
did it, boy!” Latimer was whooping. “General Bowhan and I sent an appeal to the
President! I guess that when Lee surrendered Abe Lincoln felt there was no
reason to hang you! Imprisonment for the duration of the war—but the war’s
practically over! You‘ll be free, and here—let me shake your hand!”

 
          
Schultz
came running back, his round face pale,
his
eyes wide
and staring.

 
          
“Know
what I just heard downstairs?” he demanded.

 
          
“We
know,” Latimer assured him. “The President—”

 
          
“Yes,”
said Schultz. “President Lincoln’s been shot.”

           
Latimer stared with open mouth.
Barry rose, caught the bars in his hands and hung on.

 
          
“They
say he’s dead . . .” Schultz’s voice trailed off wretchedly.

 
          
“He
saved your life, Barry,” said Latimer after a moment, the words coming slowly
and almost inaudibly. “It must have been about the last thing he did.” *

 
          
IT
WAS June, and a clear, bright, warm Sunday in the country near
Bowling Green
.

 
          
On
the farmhouse porch sat Jeff Mills, late sergeant of Shelby’s Cavalry, his son
Barry, and Absalom Grimes. It was nearly noon, and they were waiting for
dinner. Mrs. Lucy Glascock Grimes, at last married to her daredevil sweetheart,
had insisted on overseeing Jeff Mills’ chocolate-brown cook in the kitchen, and
they could hear the voices of the two women discussing some point of seasoning
vegetables or crimping pie crust.

 
 
         
“Mr. Mills, I’m going to take leave to
send a friend to stay with you,” said Grimes. “He’s a veteran of the war, like
the three of us here, and life and a little work on a farm would do him good.”

 
          
“Why,
any friend of yours is welcome here, Captain,” said Jeff Mills, cocking his
booted feet on the rail of the porch. “What’s his name?”

 
          
“His
name’s
Yonder
,” replied Grimes, and Barry smiled
joyfully.

 
          
“Yonder, the mule?
Dad, that’s the best mule I ever saw.
Fast—smart—never gets tired! You bet he’ll be welcome here.”

 
          
“Thank
you, Captain,” said Jeff Mills. “We need a mule to help work the place; we have
just my old cavalry horse now. How much—”

 
          
“No
money between us where
Yonder’s
concerned,” said
Grimes emphatically. “He’ll like it here, and that suits me. Anyway, he’ll have
a better right here than your recently vanished cousin. What was his name?”

 
          
“Buckalew
Mills,” said Barry. “He seems to be pretty hard to find in Pike County.”

 
          
“That
he is,” agreed his father. “He got off the farm, so I
hear,
one jump ahead of a court order.

 
 
         
Karl Batz came back from the Union
Army and told folks about Barry’s trial, and that left Buckalew without a
friend. He hung around
Bowling Green
a few weeks. Then
he heard, as I understand, that I was on my way home from Texas, with a parole
in my pocket and a good lively wish to see Cousin Buck and ask him what was
what. That’s when he disappeared.”

 
          
“And
where did he go?” asked Grimes.

 
          
“Nobody
seems to know. But probably he has to work for his own living now, and I reckon
he’s melting off some of that lard he’s been packing around so long.”

 
          
Grimes
smiled,
then
sighed. “That was a funny thing, Barry,”
he said. “When you went into the mail
service, that
seemed to fix it so you and your father would never get this farm back again.
But if you hadn’t been in the mail service, you wouldn’t have been tried—your
cousin wouldn’t have been a witness—he wouldn’t have been shown up as a
farm-stealer. Now the trouble’s all over.”

 
          
“It’s
hard to realize that,” observed Jeff Mills, looking down at a hen scratching
the soil for bugs. “I mean, that we’re at peace now.”

 
 
         
“We’ll get used to it some day,”
nodded Grimes.

 
          
He
relaxed in his chair. He looked thinner and paler than in the days he carried
the mail, but he was no longer on the crutches that had borne him out of
Gratiot Street Prison. The cane that lay across the knees of his elegantly
trousered legs looked more like a cane to be carried for fashion than for
support. On the floor beside him a tall chimney-pot hat rested upside down,
with doeskin gloves laid across its brim—part of the river pilot’s uniform.

 
          
“We’ll
get used to it,” he said again. “We’re no worse off, in Pike County at least,
than before the war. In some ways we’re better off.”

 
          
Barry
sat perched on the railing, chewing a green spear of grass. “You know,” he
ventured, “I don’t feel that we really lost the war. I suppose we did, but it
doesn’t seem that way—that the South lost the war.”

 
          
“America
lost the war,” his father said, very gravely. “Nobody was killed or wounded
except Americans. The houses that were burned, the towns that were bombarded,
were American houses and towns. The hearts that were broken—they were all
American hearts. Maybe we’ve learned a big lesson, and maybe it will help to
make us a big nation.” Barry bit his grass spear in two.

 
          
“I
did more than grow older during the war,” he said. “I wound up knowing the
people on the other side. It seemed to me that both sides were alike in more
ways than they were different. I don’t want to see any more wars between North
and South.” “Amen to that,” said Grimes, equally serious. “It’s like any
quarrel between brothers. If they’re the right sort of people, those brothers
respect each other after the
quarrel’s
settled, and
get on with the job.” He was silent a moment. “Well, Barry, what about you? Now
you have your farm back, are you going to stay on it?”

 
          
“He’s
helping me get things started here,” said Jeff Mills, “but I’m afraid farming’s
going to seem pretty tame after mail running. Why do you ask?”

 
          
“I
remember how Barry used to talk about how he’d like to be a steamboater,” said
Grimes. “Barry, you got a taste of it, carrying the mail up and down the river.
How did you relish that?”

 
          
“It
was champion!” cried Barry, and Grimes laughed at his enthusiasm.

 
          
“All
right, I’ve got an offer to make you.” Grimes leaned back, watching his former
partner closely. “I’m back at piloting myself. I’ve made one trip up the
Missouri to learn the channel, and I’ve got my license as a Missouri River
pilot.”

 
          
“That
country’s opening up,” remarked Jeff Mills. “Right,” said Grimes. “Nebraska,
the Dakotas, even up to Montana—there are farms and towns and a whole new part
of the country coming to life. Now, Barry,” and he leaned forward, “how’d you
like to be my cub pilot—learn the Missouri River— then be a pilot yourself and
help build up the west?” “I’d like nothing better!” Barry said eagerly. “But—”

 
          
“That’s
a wonderful offer,” Jeff Mills interrupted. “And don’t worry about the
farm—just so you come back now and again. This is your home. We lost it, we got
it back, and it’ll always be waiting for you after a trip up the Missouri and
back.”

 
          
“Then
shake hands on it, Barry,” said Absalom Grimes, “and we’ll be partners again.”

 
          
Light
footsteps sounded inside the house, and Lucy Grimes looked out the door.

 
          
“Dinner’s
ready,” she announced.