| Frankfort, KY |
|
 |
 |
 |
   |
| Editor: B General Fred Arocha Asst. Editor: Ginger Arocha |
 |
|
|
 |
| Robert E. Lee once remarked that without music, there would have been no army. |
| Reporter: Ted Harris |
 |
 |
| THE SCOUTS NARATION It was in the bleak mountain country of East Tennessee; the evening was growing late, and the camp-fire was smouldering lower and lower, but we still sat around it, for the spell of the scout’s marvelous gift of story-telling we were none of us willing to dissolve. Captain Charlie Leighton had been a Lieutenant in a Michigan Battery at the commencement of the war, but a natural love of excitement and restlessness of soul had early prompted him to seek employment as a scout, in which he soon rose to unusual eminence. He is a man of much refinement, well educated, and of a "quick, inventive brain." The tale I am about to relate is my best recollection of it as it fell from his lips, and if there is aught of elegance in its diction as here presented it is all his own. He had been delighting us with incidents of the war, most of which were derived from his own experience, when I expressed a desire to know something of his first attempt at scouting. He willingly assented, took a long pull at my brandy flask, and commenced his yarn; and I thought that I had never seen a handsomer man than Charlie Leighton the scout, as he carelessly lounged there, with the ruddy gleams of the dying camp-fire occasionally flickering over his strongly-marked intelligent face, and his curling black hair waving fitfully in the night wind, which now came down from the mountain fresher and chillier. It happened in Western Virginia, said he. I had been personally acquainted with our commander, General R., before the war commenced, and having intimated, a short time previous to the date of my story, that I desired to try my luck in the scouting service-of which a vast deal was required to counteract the guerrillas with which the Blue Ridge fairly teemed at that time-one night, late in the fall of the year, I was delighted to receive orders to report at his head-quarters. The General was a man of few words, and my instructions were brief. "Listen," said he. "My only reliable scout (Mackworth) was killed last night at the lower ford; and General F. (the rebel commander) has his head-quarters at the Sedley Mansion on the Romney road." "Very well," said I, beginning to feel a little queer. "I want you to go to the Sedley Mansion," was the cool rejoinder. "To go there! Why it’s in the heart of the enemy’s position!" was my amazed ejaculation. |
 |
|
| "Just the reason I want it done," resumed the General. "Listen: I attack to-morrow at daybreak. F. knows it, or half suspects it, and will mass either on the centre or the left wing. I must know which. The task is thick with danger-regular life and death. Two miles from here, midway to the enemy’s outposts, and six paces beyond the second mile-stone, are two rockets propped on the inside of a hollow stump. Mackworth placed them there yesterday. You are to slip to F.’s quarters to-night, learn what I want, and hurry back to the hollow stump. If he masses on the centre, let off one rocket; if on the left, let off both. This duty, I repeat, abounds with danger. You must start immediately, and alone. Will you go?" Every thing considered, I think I voted in the affirmative pretty readily, but it required a slight struggle. Nevertheless, consent I did, and immediately left the tent to make ready. It was nearly ten o’clock when, having received a few additional words of advice from the chief, I set forth on my perilous ride. The country was quite familiar to me, so I had little fear of losing my way, which was no inconsiderable advantage, I can tell you. Riding slowly at first, as soon as I had passed our last outpost, I put spurs to my horse (a glorious gray thorough-bred which the General had lent me for the occasion) and fled down the mountain at a breakneck pace. It was a cool, misty, uncertain night-almost frosty, and the country was wild and desolate. Mountains and ravines were the ruling features, with now and then that diversification of the broomy, irregular plateau with which our mountain scenery is occasionally softened. I continued my rapid pace with but little caution until I arrived at the further extremity of one of these plateaux. Here I brought up sharply beside a block of granite, which I recognized as the second mile-stone. Dismounting, I proceeded to the hollow stump which the General had intimated, and finding the rockets there, examined them well to make sure of their efficiency-remounted, and was away again. But now I exercised much more caution in my movements. I rode more slowly, kept my horse on the turf at the edge of the road, in order to deaden the hoof-beats, and also shortened the chain of my sabre, binding the scabbard with my knee to prevent its jingling. Still I was not satisfied, but tore my handkerchief in two and made fast to either heel the rowel of my spurs, which otherwise had a little tinkle of their own. Then I kept wide awake, with my eyes every where at once in the hope of catching a glimpse of some clew or landmark-the glimmer of a campfire-a tent-top in the moonlight, which now began to shine faintly-or to hear the snort of a steed, the signal of a picket-any thing, any thing to guide me or to give warning of the lurking foe. But no: if there had been any camp-fires they were dead; if there had been any tents they were struck. Not a sign-not a sound. Every thing was quiet as the tomb. The great mountains rose around me in their mantles of pine and hoods of mist, cheerless and repelling, as if their solitude had never been broken. The moon was driving through a weird and ragged sky, with something desolate and solemn in her haggard face that seemed like an omen of ill. And in spite of my efforts to be cheerful I felt the iron loneliness and sense of danger creep through my flesh and touch the bones. |
| ON THE BORDER - Part 3 Three months have proved the correctness of Maurice Byrne’s judgment, and the Kentucky border, subjected to all the horrors and miseries of a devastating civil war by invasion from the South, seems again deserving of its ancient ominous title, "the dark and bloody ground." I resume my story toward the close of the latter part of September, when the wild woods of that wild part of the State are in all their autumnal glory, and when the hot noontide sun shines down in unclouded splendor on their leafy loveliness, lighting up the "fall fashions" of the hamadryads-their purples, reds, oranges, yellows, their necklaces of ruby sumach berries-like a veritable fairy orchard. A pity that men’s evil passions should be there to desecrate it! There is no more wind than cloud stirring in the bright blue sky, otherwise the flag surmounting the time-stained homestead of old Jasper Byrne would not hang so straight and heavily as it does. Every day since the State election in August (when Kentucky, with its "State Guard" in full operation, its power in the hands of traitors, with rebellious Virginia, Tennessee, and the worst part of Missouri inclosing her borders, yet chose, deliberately and unconditionally, to adhere to and share the fate of the Union), every day, at sunrise, has the flag been hoisted by a hand that once pulled a deadly trigger on a certain memorable Eighth of January, to be lowered only at sunset. It is the only flag of its kind within a score of miles on the soil of Kentucky; there are bastard, hostile ones all around, yet up to the present time it has flouted and defied them. To this house, then, at noontide, on an autumn day, comes riding through the woods, over the stony road, the gaunt, wasted, cadaverous figure of a young man on a sorry hack of a horse, which has evidently traveled far, fared miserably, and been used unscrupulously. But miserable as is the aspect of the animal, that of its rider far exceeds it in wretchedness. Clad in a tattered, semi-military costume, stained with mire and dust, with an empty coat-sleeve pinned to his breast, a blood-stained rag binding his brow, surmounted by a torn hat, haggard, hollow-eyed, emaciated, unshorn, unshaven, faint with wounds and exhausted with hunger and lack of sleep, so returned Dan Byrne to the family homestead. Its appearance is unlike the careless, open-doored, open-windowed aspect familiar to him, and at once suggestive of the insecurity of the times and the resolution of its owner. Two or three trees in front have been cut down, probably as a precaution against their affording shelter to enemies; the door is shut, and the windows of the upper and lower stories are defended with strong planks, nailed perpendicularly, with interstices of the width of a rifle-barrel between them. Except a couple of dogs, sleeping under the sunny piazza, nothing living is visible. These, awakened by the arrival, come frisking about the horse’s heels barking a clamorous recognition. |
|
|
| Look for part 4 in next edition |