Once more, and for the last time, Chadwick Buford jogged along the turnpike from the Ohio to the heart of the Bluegrass. He had filled his empty shoulder-straps with two bars. He had a bullet wound through one shoulder and there was a beautiful sabre cut across his right cheek. He looked the soldier every inch of him; he was, in truth, what he looked; and he was, moreover, a man. Naturally, his face was stern and resolute, if only from habit of authority, but he had known no passion during the war that might have seared its kindness; no other feeling toward his foes than admiration for their unquenchable courage and miserable regret that to such men he must be a foe.
Now, it was coming spring again--the spring of '64, and but one more year of the war to come.
The capture of the Fourth Ohio by Morgan that autumn of '62 had given Chad his long-looked-for chance. He turned Dixie's head toward the foothills to join Wolford, for with Wolford was the work that he loved--that leader being more like Morgan in his method and daring than any other Federal cavalryman in the field behind him, in Kentucky, he left the State under martial sway once more, and, thereafter, the troubles of rebel sympathizers multiplied steadily, for never again was the State under rebel control. A heavy hand was laid on every rebel roof. Major Buford was sent to prison again. General Dean was in Virginia, fighting, and only the fact that there was no man in the Dean household on whom vengeance could fall, saved Margaret and Mrs. Dean from suffering, but even the time of women was to come.
On the last day of '62, Murfreesboro was fought and the second great effort of the Confederacy at the West was lost. Again Bragg withdrew. On New Year's Day, '63, Lincoln freed the slaves--and no rebel was more indignant than was Chadwick Buford. The Kentucky Unionists, in general, protested: the Confederates had broken the Constitution, they said; the Unionists were helping to maintain that contract and now the Federals had broken the Constitution, and their own high ground was swept from beneath their feet.
They protested as bitterly as their foes, be it said, against the Federals breaking up political conventions with bayonets and against the ruin of innocent citizens for the crimes of guerillas, for whose acts nobody was responsible, but all to no avail. The terrorism only grew the more.
When summer came, and while Grant was bisecting the Confederacy at Vicksburg, by opening the Mississippi, and Lee was fighting Gettysburg, Chad, with Wolford, chased Morgan when he gathered his clans for his last daring venture--to cross the Ohio and strike the enemy on its own hearth-stones--and thus give him a little taste of what the South had long known from border to border. Pursued by Federals, Morgan got across the river, waving a farewell to his pursuing enemies on the other bank, and struck out. Within three days, one hundred thousand men were after him and his two thousand daredevils, cutting down trees behind him (in case he should return!), flanking him, getting in his front, but on he went, uncaught and spreading terror for a thousand miles, while behind him for six hundred miles country people lined the dusty road, singing "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys," and handing out fried chicken and blackberry-pie to his pursuers. Men taken afterward with typhoid fever sang that song through their delirium and tasted fried chicken no more as long as they lived. Hemmed in as Morgan was, he would have gotten away, but for the fact that a heavy fog made him miss the crossing of the river, and for the further reason that the first rise in the river in that month for twenty years made it impossible for his command to swim. He might have fought out, but his ammunition was gone. Many did escape, and Morgan himself could have gotten away. Chad, himself, saw the rebel chief swimming the river on a powerful horse, followed by a negro servant on another--saw him turn deliberately in the middle of the stream, when it was plain that his command could not escape, and make for the Ohio shore to share the fortunes of his beloved officers who were left behind. Chad heard him shout to the negro:
"Go back, you will be drowned." The negro turned his face and Chad laughed--it was Snowball, grinning and shaking his head:
"No, Mars John, no suh!" he yelled. "It's all right fer YOU! YOU can git a furlough, but dis nigger ain't gwine to be cotched in no free State. 'Sides, Mars Dan, he gwine to get away, too." And Dan did get away, and Chad, to his shame, saw Morgan and Colonel Hunt loaded on a boat to be sent down to prison in a State penitentiary! It was a grateful surprise to Chad, two months later, to learn from a Federal officer that Morgan with six others had dug out of prison and escaped.
"I was going through that very town," said the officer, "and a fellow, shaved and sheared like a convict, got aboard and sat down in the same seat with me.
As we passed the penitentiary, he turned with a yawn--and said, in a matter-of-fact way:
"'That's where Morgan is kept, isn't it?" and then he drew out a flask. Ithought he had wonderfully good manners in spite of his looks, and, so help me, if he didn't wave his hand, bow like a Bayard, and hand it over to me:
"'Let's drink to the hope that Morgan may always be as safe as he is now.' Idrank to his toast with a hearty Amen, and the fellow never cracked a smile.
It was Morgan himself."
