The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation's Crisis by Joseph A. Altsheler (novels to read in english TXT) 📖

“Dick! Dick Mason!” he cried. Then the two sprang forward and grasped the hands of each other. There was no display of emotion—they were of the stern American stock, taught not to show its feelings—but their eyes showed their gladness.

“Harry,” said Dick, “I knew that you had been with Jackson, but I had no way of knowing until a moment ago that you were yet alive.”

“Nor I you, Dick. I thought you were in the west.”

“I was, but after Shiloh, some of us came east to help. It seemed after the Seven Days that we were needed more here than in the west.”

“You never said truer words, Dick. They'll need you and many more thousands like you. Why, Dick, we're not led here by a man, we're led by a thunderbolt. I'm on his staff, I see him every day. He talks to me, and I talk to him. I tell you, Dick, it's a wonderful thing to serve such a genius. You can't beat him! His kind appears only a few times in the ages. He always knows what's to be done and he does it. Even if your generals knew what ought to be done, most likely they'd do something else.”

Harry's face glowed with enthusiasm as he spoke of his hero, and Dick, looking at him, shook his head sadly.

“I'm afraid that what you say is true for the present at least, Harry,” he said. “You beat us now here in the east, but don't forget that we're winning in the west. And don't forget that here in the east even, you can never wear us out. We'll be coming, always coming.”

“All right, old Sober Sides, we won't quarrel about it. We'll let time settle it. Here come some friends of mine whom I want you to know. Curious that you should meet them at such a time.”

Two other young lieutenants in gray uniforms at the head of burial parties came near in the course of their work, and Harry called to them.

“Tom! Arthur! A moment, please! This is my cousin, Dick Mason, a Yankee, though I think he's honest in his folly. Dick, this is Arthur St. Clair, and this is Tom Langdon, both friends of mine from South Carolina.”

They shook hands warmly. There was no animosity between them. Dick liked the looks and manners of Harry's friends. He could have been their friend, too.

“Harry has talked about you often,” said Happy Tom Langdon. “Says you're a great scholar, and a good fellow, all right every way, except the crack in your head that makes you a Yankee. I hope you won't get hurt in this unpleasantness, and when our victorious army comes into Washington we'll take good care of you and release you soon.”

Dick smiled. He liked this youth who could keep up the spirit of fun among such scenes.

“Don't you pay any attention to Langdon, Mr. Mason,” said St. Clair. “If he'd only fight as well and fast as he talks there'd be no need for the rest of us.”

“You know you couldn't win the war without me,” said Langdon.

They talked a little more together, then trumpets blew, the work was done and they must withdraw to their own armies. They had been engaged in a grewsome task, but Dick was glad to the bottom of his heart to have been sent upon it. He had learned that Harry still lived, and he had met him. He did not understand until then how dear his cousin was to him. They were more like brothers than cousins. It was like the affection their great-grandfathers, Henry Ware and Paul Cotter, had felt for each other, although those famous heroes of the border had always fought side by side, while their descendants were compelled to face each other across a gulf.

They shook hands and withdrew slowly. At the edge of the field, Dick turned to wave another farewell, and he found that Harry, actuated by the same motive at the same time, had also turned to make a like gesture. Each waved twice, instead of once, and then they disappeared among the woods. Dick returned to Colonel Winchester.

“While we were under the flag of truce I met my cousin, Harry Kenton,” he said.

“One of the lucky fortunes of war.”

“Yes, sir, I was very glad to see him. I did not know how glad I was until I came away. He says that we can never beat Jackson, that nothing but death can ever stop him.”

“Youth often deceives itself, nor is age any exception. Never lose hope, Dick.”

“I don't mean to do so, sir.”

The next morning, when Dick was with one of the outposts, a man of powerful build, wonderfully quick and alert in his movements, appeared. His coming was so quick and silent that he seemed to rise from the earth, and Dick was startled. The man's face was uncommon. His features were of great strength, the eyes being singularly vivid and penetrating. He was in civilian's dress, but he promptly showed a pass from General Pope, and Dick volunteered to take him to headquarters, where he said he wished to go.

Dick became conscious as they walked along that the man was examining him minutely with those searching eyes of his which seemed to look one through and through.

“You are Lieutenant Richard Mason,” said the stranger presently, “and you have a cousin, Harry Kenton, also a lieutenant, but in the army of Stonewall Jackson.”

Dick stared at him in amazement.

“Everything you say is true,” he said, “but how did you know it?”

“It's my business to know. Knowledge is my sole pursuit in this great war, and a most engrossing and dangerous task I find it. Yet, I would not leave it. My name is Shepard, and I am a spy. You needn't shrink. I'm not ashamed of my occupation. Why should I be? I don't kill. I don't commit any violence. I'm a guide and educator. I and my kind are the eyes of an army. We show the generals where the enemy is, and we tell them his plans. An able and daring spy is worth more than many a general. Besides, he takes the risk of execution, and he can win no glory, for he must always remain obscure, if not wholly unknown. Which, then, makes the greater sacrifice for his country, the spy or the general?”

“You give me a new point of view. I had not thought before how spies risked so much for so little reward.”

Shepard smiled. He saw that in spite of his logic Dick yet retained that slight feeling of aversion. The boy left him, when they arrived at headquarters, but the news that Shepard brought was soon known to the whole army.

Jackson had left his camp. He was gone again, disappeared into the ether. “Retreated” was the word that Pope at once seized upon, and he sent forth happy bulletins. Shepard and other scouts and spies reported a day or two later that Jackson's army was on the Rapidan, one of the numerous Virginia