War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy/Chapter 7
VII
WHO WAS LUCAS MALLORY?
WELL, war makes funny things to happen. Ben Crider's tavern is straight down the valley, southward, from here. And though the Criders had lived there about as long as we had lived here, I had never seen their house from here, even in winter-time, owing to the trees being so thick around it. But, one night, I saw a light in that direction. Even then I wouldn't have noticed it, I expect, if it hadn't been behaving so funny. It went around in circles, then right, then left, then up and down, and to all quarters of the circle, and in all sorts of combinations of them. I thought it was some boys, maybe, playing with firesticks—as they often used to do in the hills about here. Next day I could see the window in the gable of the Crider tavern, for the first time in my life—and, by hokey, the reason was that three trees in a northerly line from the window had been cut down!
I rode over.
"Ben," I says, "why did you cut those nice old trees down?"
"Fire-wood," says Ben briefly. "This war'll be making us do worse things than that before it's over. We'll be burning up our grain, eating our horses, and cows and mules, et cetera. About the only thing that will be plenty, presently, will be pure spring water—and I'd hate to live on that. A dollar'll cost two dollars and a half before the thing is done, and you'll have to give your farm to get a suit of clothes. Are you still so crazy for it?"
"I never was," says I. "I'm peaceful."
"So am I. Then why don't you help to stop it?" yells Ben. "No one can be peaceful. It's one side or the other. Where are you?"
"Me?" I says. "How can I stop it?" "By fighting—joining the Knights—helping the Underground—doing everything you can against it."
"What," I asks, "shall I make the Unions do? I'm Union, you know! You want me to help the rebels."
"Make Abe Lincoln let the South go her way. She deserves it. She'll go, anyhow. She's stronger than the North. Why shouldn't she? If you want to leave me, have I a right to pin you to your chair and keep you?"
"But you wouldn't rather have twenty or thirty little tomcat governments, none of 'em having any power or dignity, than this one great, grand, glorious Union?" says I.
"If the people want it that way—yes," says Ben, violent. "It's their country, not Abe Lincoln's."
"You can bet," says I, "that they'd be cutting down each other's trees then to beat the band!"
Ben flares up entirely unaccountable, and says:
"Who's cutting down other people's trees?"
"No one, yet, as I know," says I. "I'll cut down my own as often as I please," says Ben.
"No, only once," says I.
"You re an ignorant fool!" says Ben.
"But that's so—ain't it—that you can't cut a tree down more than once?"
"Fool!" says Ben.
"Ben," I says on, "if it's fire-wood, why don't you cut it into cord sticks—instead of laying whole on the ground?"
Ben was a bit puzzled for a minute.
"Ain't had no time?" asks I.
He grabs on that.
"You bet not! This dam war's a mighty busy business—night and day—especially night!"
"What's in the war to keep a lonely country tavern busy," says I, "especially at night? That's funny."
"Well, you try keeping one. First a company of Confederates comes and eats me out of house and home. Then a regiment of Federals does the same."
"You get your house eaten pretty often, Ben," says I.
"Some one rides off with a horse," Ben goes on, "leaving me a polite note to the U. S. A. or the C. S. A., to pay for 'em. I got twenty such notes! Well, do you think any of 'em is going to get paid? And there are other things keep me busy and poor," but he didn't tell me these.
"You got hard luck, Ben," says I, "and I'll send the hireland over to cut your trees into fire-wood and help anything else."
"No, you don't," says Ben, more angry than I could see any excuse for. "You mind your own business and keep to your own pasture and I'll do the same. I know where you stand. And, while we're about it, you might as well know that the neighbors think some of your family had better join something—or enlist in the army—one side or the other!"
"Suppose, Ben," says I, "you take your own advice and tend to your own business and keep behind your own fences and join things and enlist yourself—like they say you're doing. If you don't maybe there's a licking due you."
"Hah!" laughs Ben, "I wouldn't give much for the skin of any man who raises his hand against me! I can bring a thousand men up the valley in ten minutes."
"Well," says I, madder and madder, "I'll risk my skin and do it now—one against a thousand and one!"
And I would—if a squad of Unions hadn't rode up just then.
"Are these the aforesaid thousand?" I asked Ben. "All right if they're that color."
"No," says he. "They re not that color, dam' you!"
Of course everybody knew that Ben was a kind of secessionist—but I didn't know he was as outspoken and fighty as that. He use' to sit in "Africa" at the church—right out front.
The commanding officer studies us both for a minute, and looks up and down the valley, then from the felled trees all about—especially at the house and the doors and the windows—and whether any other house could be seen from them. But no house except mine could have been seen from Crider's—and mine was hid, just as his had been, by thick trees.
"What are these trees cut down for?" he asks me, thinking I owned them.
"Fire-wood," grins I. "The soldiers eat me out of fire-wood all the time."
"Why aren't they made into fire-wood then? They can't be eaten this way."
"Too busy."
The officer smiles a little, then says sudden:
"Where's Lucas Mallory?"
"Again, please," says I, "I never heard that name before. Is it a bird or a beast?"
"A man."
"An Irishman? You're in the wrong county for Irishmen. Three counties further on. Try something Dutch."
"Don't know anything of Lucas Mallory, eh? Well, then, what do either of you know of Sharon Lodge of the K. of the G. C.?"
"What is that, sir?" asks Ben, very polite and dumb and innocent.
"Oh, hell!" says the officer. "Knights of the Golden Circle. What are your names? I suppose you know that?"
I gave him mine. But when it came time for Ben to give his he says: "Phineas Brown, sir," kind of simple, winking to me.
The officer wrote that down.
"And where is Crider's?" says he.
Ben winked at me again and says:
"Some six miles further south. In this direction. Crider passed through here not more than twenty minutes ago, sir, that road, south, sir."
"What does Crider look like?"
"He's a tall bald man with whiskers, and looks sneaky," says Ben.
At that the officer faces his men about and goes off south at a hard gallop.
"That s not a good photograph of you, Ben," says I. "Except, maybe, the sneaky parts."
"You bet not. I suppose I'm drafted and they're looking for me," says Ben. "I'm going to the woods. You had better do the same for a while—in another direction. Don't forget you've been seen with me." He laughs like the joke's on me.
And Ben actually starts toward the woods and away from his house.
I went home—a good deal mixed.