Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 (5 page)

 
          
As
Amanda Bowen left the stable, Grimes faced toward the darkest part and made a
clicking sound with his tongue. Into view rolled a shabbier buggy than the one
in which they had fled from
Pike
County
.
In its shafts, led by a
stableman, trod a sinewy brown mule with sleepy eyes.
Grimes chuckled at
Barry’s disappointment.

 
          
“Think
we could get through the lines into
Dixie
with
a gold-trimmed rig and a team of blooded trotting horses?” he teased. “That
mule’s name is
Yonder
, because that’s where he is when
the Yankees are looking for him here. He’s a good sentry-fooler. Drag out the
mail, now.”

 
          
As
the buggy halted beside the wagon, Grimes took hold of the front seat and pushed
hard. It slid back on oiled metal tracks, revealing an open space like a trunk.
Into this he and Barry hustled the mail bags, Grimes dragged the seat forward
again to hide them, and they were off.

 
          
Some
of Barry’s earlier uneasiness returned as they drove southward through
Memphis
. Grimes wore Federal uniform. If captured,
he would face a spy’s death, Mrs. Wilson had said—and so would Barry, if taken
in his company. But Grimes drove with his usual calm assurance.

 
 
         
As they left the town behind, and
approached a crossroads, they saw a white tent and four soldiers at the
intersection. Yonder plodded near, and the blue quartet moved into line across
the way.

 
          
“Halt!”
cried the tallest, and Grimes pulled up. “Who goes there?”

 
          
“Friends,”
replied Grimes cheerfully.

 
          
“One
of you
get
down and come forward.”

 
          
Grimes
tossed the reins to Barry, got down and walked toward the men. He felt inside
his blue jacket and produced an envelope.

 
          
The
soldier who had challenged opened the envelope, took out a paper and looked at
it with a frown.

 
          
“Naturally
you don’t understand,” said Grimes. “Who’s in charge?”

 
          
“Sergeant!”
called the soldier.
“Sergeant of the guard!”

 
          
Out
of the tent swaggered a big man with three stripes on his arm and a visored cap
pulled over his deep-set eyes. He looked at the paper, and finally returned
with Grimes to the buggy. Barry felt as though ice-water trickled in his veins,
but Grimes sauntered as confidently as ever.

           
“We haven’t heard about your special
assignment,” the sergeant was saying.

 
          
“Of
course not,” agreed Grimes loftily. “But look at the signature on my order.”

 
          
The
sergeant did so. “I can’t read it,” he complained.

 
          
“Nobody
can read the way Ulysses S. Grant signs his name,” said Grimes.

 
          
The
sergeant blinked, goggled and looked again. “By gravies, that’s who it is,” he
growled in awe. “You’re to go south, eh? What are you up to?”

 
          
“Tell
me your name and your regiment,” said Grimes, his voice suddenly cold.
“Headquarters will want to know about your challenging General Grant’s orders.”

 
          
“I’m
not challenging anything,” the sergeant pleaded quickly, and pushed the paper
back into Grimes’ hands. “It’s just my duty to stop everybody. I’m supposed to
look into your buggy.”

 
          
“Why
not?” said Grimes
hospitably.

 
          
The
sergeant peered in, and poked a bag in the rear seat. “What’s in that?”

 
          
“Clothes,”
said Grimes. “Want to open it?” He began to unstrap the bag.

           
“No, don’t bother. Go ahead.” The
sergeant looked hopefully at Grimes. “Listen, you won’t make a bad report on
me?”

 
          
“Not
this time,” said Grimes, smiling as he climbed back into the buggy. “Let’s go.”

 
          
The
soldiers stared as
Yonder
ambled past them. “Bluff’s a
valuable thing in this business,” commented Grimes, still unruffled. “I made
that poor sergeant feel so guilty he didn’t worry about whether Grant’s
signature was genuine. Now we’ll be all right. Just below here’s the state of
Mississippi
, and no more Yankees unless we run into a
cavalry patrol.”

 
          
They
ate
noon
dinner
near
Holly
Springs
, at a log house where the owner and his
wife thought Grimes was a Union soldier and eagerly insisted that they were
good Unionists. From there they drove toward Hernando, and as evening
approached came to where the road crossed a railway. Suddenly men with rifles popped
into view from behind the embankment.

 
          
“Pull
up!” roared a man in a wide, rumpled hat and a butternut-dyed jacket. “You’re
our prisoners!” “No prisoners here, boys,” Grimes assured them, laughing.
“Who’s in command?”

 
          
“I
know that voice!” shouted another man, leaping over the embankment. A saber
belted this man’s gray frock coat. “It’s Captain Ab Grimes!”

 
          
“Right,
Lieutenant,” said Grimes. “Your men were only challenging my uniform. I had to
wear it to get out of
Memphis
.”

 
          
Now
cries of excited recognition rang out, and half a dozen men pressed close
around
Yonder
and the buggy. Barry stared with
exultation at the first fighting Confederates he had ever seen. They were a
shabby, hairy crew. He had expected that, for he knew that the South was short
on uniforms and razors. But, for all their lack of brass and boot polish, they
looked ready with their weapons.

 
          
Grimes
was
exchanging greetings with those he knew. “What’s
the news from down here?” he inquired.

 
          
“Big
news from
Virginia
, and some of it bad,” replied the
lieutenant. “Early this month, Lee’s army licked the Yankees somewhere—I think
it’s called
Chancellorsville
. But Stonewall Jackson was wounded, and
last week came the word that he’d died.”

 
          
Grimes’
face turned grave and worried, for the first time since Barry had known him.
“Losing
Jackson
’s worse than losing a battle,” he said,
after a moment. “I always hoped they’d send
Jackson
out here to command in the west.” He
dropped the subject. “We hold Hernando below here all right?”

 
          
“We
hold Hernando a whole lot this week,” volunteered a soldier. “Just waitin’ for
some blue boys to come and try to take it away.”

 
          
The
lieutenant looked at Barry. “Who’s your young friend,
Captain.
A recruit?
We can use him.”

 
          
“He’s
a Missourian, and he’s helping carry the mail down to where he can join up,”
said Grimes. “Where are the
Missouri
troops, still at
Grenada
?”

 
          
The
lieutenant’s face turned darker than when he had told of Stonewall Jackson’s
death. “You haven’t heard?”

 
          
“Heard
what?” prompted Grimes.

 
          
“Your
Missouri
friends are at
Vicksburg
with Pemberton. And they’re bottled up
there—a big Union army cutting them off by land, and a big Union fleet cutting
them off by water. Not even a mouse could come and go to
Vicksburg
now.”

 
          
BARRY
and Grimes were eating breakfast at a
Yazoo
City
hotel.

 
          
They
had left their mule and buggy at Hernando, taken the railroad to
Grenada
, and then the little stern wheeler steamer
Dew Drop
down the
Yallabusha
River
to
Yazoo
City
. There, they had learned what they could of
Vicksburg
: 28,000 Confederates were penned there by
70,000 Federal troops under Ulysses S. Grant to north, east and south, while
the river at the west was patrolled by a fleet of ironclads, gunboats and
transports under Rear Admiral David Porter. Land batteries and ships’ guns
poured shot and shell into the town every day.

 
          
“How
will we get in,” demanded Barry, “if the Yankees have blockaded the place as
well as everybody says they have?”

 
          
“The
way blockade-runners do at
Charleston
and
Wilmington
,” said Grimes decisively. “There are six
regiments of
Missouri
infantry and three batteries of
Missouri
artillery shut up in there, hungry for mail
from home. We’ll get through. When I woke up this morning, I went down to the
river and bought us some equipment. Finished? Then I’ll show you.”

 
          
Swallowing
the last drops of his parched-yam coffee, Barry followed Grimes out and down to
a ruinous old dock by the river. There a grizzled little man crouched by an
upturned dugout canoe, painting it a leaden gray.

 
          
“I
bought this boat for ten dollars in greenbacks,” Grimes told Barry. “We’ll load
it and ourselves on the supply steamer to Haines’ Bluff, where our troops hold
the
Yazoo
against the Yankees. From there we’ll be on
our own.”

 
          
“We
travel in this dugout?” cried Barry. “One shot from a Union gunboat would sink
us.”

 
          
“They’ll
have to see us before they fire, and I rather think we’ll be under water,” said
Grimes. “If we sink her to the waterline, and swim alongside in the dark—”

 
          
“It
might work!” Barry interrupted, his heart beginning to beat fast.

 
          
“We’ll
see if it does. Let’s go to the tinsmith.”

 
          
The
tinsmith was ancient, withered and nearsighted, but he understood at once the
problem Grimes presented. From the rear of his shop he produced four cubical
containers, each about a foot square.

 
          
“
These was
old tea boxes,” he piped. “Will yore postoffice
fit in ’em?”

 
          
Barry
went back to the hotel for the letters. Then he and Grimes carefully packed
them into the four boxes, and the tinsmith soldered the lids shut.

 
          
“Now,
something to paddle this boat of ours when we’re traveling submerged and
quiet,” said Grimes, strolling through the shop. “Ordinary paddles won’t do—too
long, and too apt to splash.”

 
          
Barry
looked, too. “How about these?” he said, lifting one of a stack of long-handled
saucepans.

 
          
“Right!”
cried Grimes. “And they’ll act as balers when we want to come up to the top
again.” He turned to the tinsmith. “Sell us two of those. Likewise some wires
and staples—a hammer—yes, and a pair of pliers.”

 
          
The
tinsmith and a hotel porter helped carry the sealed boxes down to where the
dugout waited. Grimes departed, and returned with a covered basket.

 
          
“Two
ladies fixed us a big lunch,” he said to Barry, “and the commandant here, gave
me a letter to Captain Henry, at Haines’ Bluff. Now, we’ll get aboard the
supply boat yonder.”

 
          
It
was a small steamer, little more than a tug, carrying supplies and several
recruits for the Haines’ Bluff guard post. It steamed down river by midmorning,
and Barry and Grimes, squatting by the dugout on the deck, worked with hammer
and pliers.

 
          
With
staples and wire they fastened the four boxes in the bottom, between the two
boards that served as seats. With more staples they attached the saucepans, by
long pieces of stout cord, to the gunwales. More loops of wire inside the boat
would serve to hold the makeshift paddles safely when not in use. Then they
begged oil from the engineer to clean their hands of the smeared paint from the
drying dugout.

           
By
four o’clock
they came to a crude landing beneath a high
bank of earth and rock, and were met by soldiers with the seedy uniforms and
splendidly kept weapons that Barry began to expect with fighting Confederates.
Grimes presented his letter, and Captain Henry, a serious-faced young man whose
uniform looked somehow elegant for all its tarnished braid and buttons, read it
and shook hands.

 
          
“Welcome
to Haines’ Bluff,” he said. “I’ve heard of your work, and I’ll help you any way
I can.”

 
          
“Will
some of your men wrestle our dugout into the water,” asked Grimes, “and is
there a place where we can squint toward
Vicksburg
?”

 
          
“Come
with me,” offered Henry, “and I’ll lend you my field glasses.”

 
          
Barry
and Grimes scaled the steep bank after him. From its top, they looked over
river and country. Some distance below the guard position, the river was
cluttered with logs, an awkward, rope-bound obstruction that would most
effectively discourage any effort of hostile ships to steam up the
Yazoo
. On the bluff beside them, and on a
high point
opposite, watchful men stood in rifle pits.
Near them were posted cannon.

 
          
Henry
offered Grimes his binoculars. “Look southeast,” he said. “You can see the
course of the
Yazoo
, and where it empties into the
Mississippi
beyond.” Grimes squinted through the
glasses. “How far do you figure from here to the
Mississippi
?” he asked.

 
          
“Twenty
miles, or nearly, counting all curves and turns,” was Captain Henry’s reply.
“Fifteen more to
Vicksburg
by the big river below.
See how the old
Mississippi
almost ties a knot in itself there.” Grimes
continued to study the scene. “There’s a bunch of transports
lying
along the bank this side. Downstream, two or three miles, they’ve got gunboats
strung across.” He handed back the glasses. “Thank you, Captain. Now, Barry and
I had better go down and practise.”

 
          
Returning
to the waterside, they stripped off their clothes and launched the dugout.
While the men of the guard detail watched curiously, they paddled out to
midstream. There, at Grimes’ word, they slid the paddles into the wire loops,
and leaned to one side until the gunwale went under water. The inside of the
boat filled rapidly. When it was sunk to within two inches of the top, Grimes
slipped overboard at the stern, Barry at the bow. They clung to the sides and
paddled with the saucepans.

 
          
“Mighty
slow and hard,” wheezed Grimes, toiling away. “And almost impossible to head
the way we want.”

 
          
“Listen,
I’ve a notion,” ventured Barry. “How would she go upside down? Painted gray,
whittled out of a tree-trunk, she’d look just like a log.”

 
          
“That’s
downright brilliant!” cried Grimes. “Haul down on one side; I’ll boost on the
other.”

 
          
It
was difficult to capsize the dugout with its weight of water, but they managed.
Upside down, the dug- out looked acceptably loglike, and Barry and Grimes,
clinging to the submerged gunwales and paddling with the pans, found they could
make better progress and steer after a fashion.

 
          
They
ate supper that night with the Haines’ Bluff guard, and slept on borrowed
blankets under the stars. At dawn of day they had breakfast with Captain Henry,
and at
6 o’clock
went with several helpers to launch the dugout below the log jam. Clad only in
shirts and trousers, they pushed off.

 
          
“Good
luck!” called the soldiers after them as they dug in their paddles and guided
themselves
into midstream.

 
          
It
was a quiet journey, and a pleasant one. As the sun climbed high in the bright
blue of the sky, the May
day
grew warm. Grimes aft in
steering position, Barry at the bow, sent the dugout easily and with moderate
speed downriver. The current helped their progress.

 
          
“Don’t
work too hard, Barry,” cautioned Grimes. “The hard work will come later, in the
Mississippi
. Keep yourself fresh and steady.”

 
          
For
an hour they paddled easily, almost idly, between banks grown thick with quiet
green trees. All seemed peaceful, until, from somewhere southward,
rose
the deep, thundersome growl of guns, firing into
Vicksburg
’s defenses. The distant bombardment
continued, with only brief intervals, until
noon
, when the two stopped near an abandoned
sawmill and ate a lunch of ham sandwiches and sweet cake. Grimes saved part of
their provisions for supper, and again they paddled down river, with a swifter
current to help them. By midafternoon they had come to the mouth of the
Yazoo
, and looked out across fully a mile of
brown water, the lower
Mississippi
.

 
          
“Take
care, Barry,” warned Grimes. “We’ll slide out at the very edge of the river. We
don’t want to be stopped and questioned.”

           
They worked their way cautiously
along the levee at the left. In midstream moved a smoke-belching gunboat, its
deck crowned with a slope-sided, ironfaced structure from which protruded
cannon muzzles. Two supply vessels followed. Grimes steered the dugout behind a
brushy snag to wait until these had gone by. Then they moved carefully from one
bit of cover to the next. At sundown they sheltered under overhanging reeds and
ate their last sandwiches, washed down with river water. Then, in the twilight,
they drifted into view of a great shadowy cluster of craft, strung along the
right bank. Lights winked on, one, then another, then another, then several,
like stars in the early night.

 
          
“Transports,”
Grimes told Barry. “I could see them from Haines’ Bluff. Just beyond there’s
another bend, and real trouble. That’s where the gunboats are.”

 
          
Keeping
to the left bank, they paddled more swiftly in the cloaking gloom until clear
of the transport anchorage. For a full hour they moved, while stars blazed
overhead. At last they reached the river bend below the transports, and found
themselves almost reversing their course. Beyond
was
broader, quieter water, and a string of lights directly across their way.

 
 
         
“The gunboats,” Grimes called softly.
“They reach nearly all the way from bank to bank. Paddle to the right, Barry,
but not too close to the
Louisiana
side, for the Yankees have a big force of troops opposite
Vicksburg
.”