MR. ROSENBAUM RECITES A THRILLING EXPERIENCE.
"HIST, boys, don't talk friendly to me out loud," said the prudent Rosenbaum. "What's happened? I know you have got the house. I have been expecting for a long time that there would be a raid made upon it. What the devil is that saying you have: 'It's a long worm that don't have a turn.' No; that isn't it. 'It's an ill lane that blows nobody no good.' No; that's not it, neither. Well, anyway, Mrs. Sophronia unt her crowd got entirely too bold. They played too open, unt I knew they'd soon get ketched. Who did you get in the house?"
Si started to call over the names, and to recite the circumstances, but as he reached that of Brad Tingle, Rosenbaum clutched him by the arm and said earnestly:
"Hold on. Tell me the rest after a while. I'm afraid of that man. He's come pretty near getting on to me several times already. He's listening now, unt he'll be sure to suspect something if he don't hear you treating me as you did the others. Begin swearing at me as you did at the rest."
Si instantly took the hint.
"I'll stand no more foolishness," he called out249 angrily. "If you don't surrender at once I'll blow your rebel head off."
"I have to give up," Rosenbaum replied in an accent of pain, "for I believe I broke my leg when I fell. I find I can't stand up."
"Give up your arms, then, and we'll help you up to the fire, and see how badly you're hurt," said Si.
Rosenbaum gave groans of anguish as Si and Shorty picked him up and carried him over to the fire.
"Now we're out of ear-shot o' the house," said Si, as they deposited him on the opposite side, and somewhat behind a thicket of raspberries, "and we can talk. Where did you come from this time, Levi?"
"Straight from General Bragg's Headquarters at Tullahoma, and I have got information that will make General Rosecrans's heart jump for joy. I have got the news he has been waiting for all these weeks to move his army. I have got the number of Bragg's men, just where they are stationed, and how many is at each place. I'm crazy to get to General Rosecrans with the news. I have been cavorting around the country all day trying some way to get in, unt at my wits' ent, for some of the men with me had their suspicions of me, unt wouldn't have hesitated to shoot me, if they didn't like the way I was acting. To tell the truth, it's been getting pretty hot for me over there in the rebel lines. Too many men have seen me in Yankee camps. This man. Brad Tingle, has seen me twice at General Rosecrans's Headquarters, unt has told a lot of stories that made much trouble. I think that this is the last250 visit I'll pay General Bragg. I'm fond of visiting, but it rather discourages me to be so that I can't look at a limb running out from a tree without thinking that it may be where they will hang me."
"Excuse me from any such visitin'," said Si sympathetically. "I'd much rather stay at home. I've had 12 or 15 hours inside the enemy's lines, playin' off deserter, and I've had enough to last me my three years. I'll take any day o' the battle o' Stone River in preference. I ain't built for the spy business in any shape or form. I'm plain, out-and-out Wabash prairie style—everything above ground and in sight."
"Well, I'm different from you," said Shorty. "I own up that I'm awfully fond o' a game o' hocuspocus with the rebels, and tryin' to see which kin thimble-rig the other. It's mighty excitin' gamblin' when your own head's the stake, an' beats poker an' faro all holler. But I want the women ruled out o' the game. Never saw a game yit that a woman wouldn't spile if she got her finger in."
"Mrs. Bolster came mighty near marrying him, and he's pale yet from the scare," Si explained.
"Yes," said Shorty frankly. "You'll see I'm still while all around the gills. Never wuz so rattled in my life. That woman's a witch. You could only kill her by shooting her with a silver bullet. She put a spell on me, sure's you're a foot high. Lord, wouldn't I like to be able to manage her. I'd set her up with a faro-bank or a sweat-board, and she'd win all the money in the army in a month."
"Yes, she's a terror," accorded Rosenbaum. "She251 made up her mind to marry me when I first come down here. I was awfully scared, for I was sure she saw through me sharper than the men did, and would marry me or expose me. But I got some points on her about poisoning a neighboring woman that she hated unt was jealous of, unt then I played an immediate order from General Bragg to me to report to his Headquarters. But it took all the brains I had to keep her off me."
"She's safe now from marryin' anybody for awhile," said Shorty, and he related the story of her nuptials, which amused Rosenbaum greatly.
"But you have signed Jeff Hackberry's death warrant," he said. "If he tries to live with her she'll feed him wild parsnip, unt he'll get a house of red clay, that you put the roof on with a shovel. It'll be no great loss. Jeff ain't worth in a year the bread he'll eat in a day."
"She may be smothered in that hole," Shorty bethought himself. "I guess we'd better let her out for awhile."
"Yes," said Rosenbaum. "She can't do no harm now. Nobody else will come this way to-night. The men that were with me will scatter the news that the house is in Yankee hands. They think there's a big force here, unt so we won't be disturbed till morning."
"Then I'll go in and let her out," said Shorty.
The other inmates of the cabin were asleep when he entered, but they waked up, and begged him not to let the woman out until morning.
"Keep her in there till daylight," said 'Squire Corson, "and then restore me to my home and functions,252 and I'll call out a posse comitatus, and have her publicly ducked, according to the laws of the land, as a common scold. I've never heard such vile language as she applied to me when I gave her the advice it was my duty to give to live in peace and quietness with her husband. That there woman's a Niagary of cuss words and abuse."
"If yo' let her out, take me outside with yo'," begged Jeff Hackberry. "She'll kill me, sho', if I've to stay in here till mornin' with her. She begun by flingin' a bag o' red pepper in my face, and set us all to sneezin' until I thought the 'Squire'd sneeze his durned head off. Then she jobbed me with a bayonet, and acted as no woman orter act toward her lawful husband, no matter how long they'd bin married, let alone their weddin' night."
"Sorry, but it's agin all my principles to separate man and wife," said Shorty, as he moved to the puncheon trap-door and undid the hasp. "You took her for better or worse, and it's too early in the game to complain that you found her a blamed sight worse than you took her for. You're one now, you know, and must stay that way until death do you part."
Shorty lifted up the trap-door, and Si helped the woman out with some difficulty. They expected a torrent of abuse, but she seemed limp and silent, and sank down on the floor. The boys picked her up and laid her on the bed beside Jeff Hackberry. "She's fainted; she's dead. She's bin sufferkated in that hole," said Jeff.
"No, yo' punkin-headed fool," she gasped. "I hain't dead, nor I hain't fainted, nor I hain't253 sufferkated. Yo'll find out when I git my wind back a little, I'm so full o' mad an' spite that I'm done tuckered clean out. I'm clean beat, so clean beat that I hain't no words to fit the 'casion. I've got t' lay still an' think an' gether up some."
"She's comin' to, Shorty," said Si. "It'll be pleasanter outside."
"You say you have been having unusually exciting times," said Si to Rosenbaum, as the boys again seated themselves by the fire.
"Veil, I should say so," replied Rosenbaum with emphasis. "Do you know that General Bragg is the very worst man that ever lived?"
"All rebels are bad," said Shorty oracularly. "But I suppose that some are much worse than others. I know that the private soldiers are awful, and I suppose the higher you go the wuss they are. The Corporals are cussider than the privates, the Sergeants can give the Corporals points in devilishness, and so it goes on up until the General commanding an army must be one of the devil's favorite imps, while Jeff Davis is Old Horney's junior partner."
"No; it isn't that," said Rosenbaum. "I've known a good many rebel Generals, unt some of them ain't really bad fellers, outside of their rebelness. But old Bragg is a born devil. He has no more heart than a rattlesnake. He actually loves cruelty. He'd rather kill men than not. I've seen plenty of officers who were entirely too willing to shoot men for little or nothing. General Bragg is the only man I ever saw who would shoot men for nothing at all—just 'for example,' as he says, unt to make the others254 afraid unt ready to obey him. He coolly calculates to shoot so many every month. If they've done anything to deserve it, all right. If they hain't, he shoots them all the same, just to 'preserve discipline.'"
Si and Shorty uttered exclamations of surprise at this cold-blooded cruelty.
"I know it's hard to believe," said Rosenbaum, "but it's true all the same, as anybody around his Headquarters will tell you. Jeff Davis knows it unt approves it. He is the same kind of a man as General Bragg—no more heart than a tiger, I have seen a good deal of the inside of the rebel army, unt General Bragg is the coldest-blooded, cruelest man in it or in the whole world. It's true that the men he orders shot are generally of no account, like our man Jeff Hackberry—but it's the principle of the thing that shocks me. He just takes a dislike to the way a man looks or acts, or the way he parts his hair, looks at him with his steely-gray eyes, unt says coldly: 'Put him in the bull-pen.' In the bullpen the poor devil goes, unt the next time General Bragg gets an idea that the discipline of the army is running down, unt he must stiffen it up with a few executions, he orders all the men that happen to be in the bull-pen taken out unt shot."
"Without any trial, any court-martial, any evidence against them?" gasped Si.
"Absolutely without anything but General Bragg's orders. It is like you read of in the books about those Eastern countries where the Sultan or other High-muk-a-muk says, 'Cut that man's head off,' unt the man's head is cut off, unt no questions asked.255 unt no funeral ceremonies except washing up the blood."
"Lucky for you, Levi," said Shorty, "that he didn't have any of the common prejudices against Jews, and slap you in the bull-pen."
"O, but he did," said Rosenbaum. "He hated a Jew worse than any man I ever met. Unt it brought me so near death that I actually watched them digging my grave.
"While I had my ups unt downs, unt some very narrow escapes," continued Rosenbaum, "when I first went inside Bragg's lines, I got along very well generally. I played the peddler unt smuggler for the Southern Confederacy in great shape, unt run them through a lot of gun-caps, quinine, medicines, unt so so on, unt brought in a great deal of information which they found to be true. Some of dis General Rosecrans gave me himself, for he is smart enough to know that if he wants his Secret Service men to succeed he must give them straight goods to carry to the enemy.
"I brought in exact statements of what divisions, brigades unt regiments were at this place unt that place, how many men was in them, who their commanders were, unt so on. General Rosecrans would have these given me. It helped him in his plans to know just what information was reaching the enemy, for he knew just how old Bragg would act when he had certain knowledge. If he knew that Sheridan with 6,000 men was at this place, with Tom Wood 10 miles away with 6,000 more, he would do a certain thing, unt Rosecrans would provide for it. The news that I brought in the rebels could test by256 the reports they got from others, unt they always found mine correct.
"My work pleased the rebel Generals so well that they made me a Captain in their army, transferred me from Brigade Headquarters to Division, unt then to Corps Headquarters. I was given command of squads of scouts. I can draw very well, unt I made good maps of the country unt the roads, with the positions of Yankee unt rebel forces. This was something that the other rebel spies could not do, unt it helped me lots. I was careful to make copies of all these maps, ............