I said: “You know how you sound to me?”
“... All right, Mr. Cresap — tell me.”
“Like a man working three sides of the street — Reb side, Union side, and Cotton side, all at the same time.”
“I’m not running this war. What I propose is lawful.”
“And you realize I must report what you’ve said.”
She started, but he smiled, waited, and said: “I would expect you to; in fact I want you to, and realize that until you do you’ll not cooperate. So please — you go to your friend Captain Dorsey, tell him what I’ve told you — everything I’ve said, especially about Kirby Smith. When you come back, I think you’ll be ready to talk.”
She came over to me, not blazing her eyes any more, but mumbling her mouth to mine and whispering: “You’re going to, aren’t you? See Captain Dorsey? Hear what he has to say? And then line it up? So we make the million dollars? And have our house? And our carriage? And—”
“At any rate, I’ll see him.”
The Black Hawk, the headquarters Black Hawk that is, was tied up at Biossat’s again, all battered from shelling upriver, and the guard on her plank called Dan. I’d seen him since he got back, but only to say hello, and we spent a minute or two on the usual dumb questions, getting caught up with each other. Then he started to take me upstairs, but I suggested some place where we’d be alone, and he led on back to the fantail, where we had it with our elbows on the rail. He listened, and then filled me in on the fighting the Army had seen, and how it bore on what Mr. Landry had told me. “The thing to keep straight,” he said, “is that two battles were fought — one up in the woods, at what’s known as Sabine Crossroads, just this side of Mansfield. That battle we lost — I was there, and it was a shambles, with everything going wrong that possibly could go wrong. You’d think, after Caesar wrote up the folly of trying to fight with wagons up in your van, that we’d have heard about it, two thousand years later. But no — there the wagons were when the Rebs came piling at us, with the horses screaming and breaking, and the wagoners no great help. And there were the girls too, the colored ones that were brought by the boys to do their washing — whipping their mules to the rear and yelling: ‘Run! Run! Here come Old Massa — he gwine massacree everyone!’ Don’t let anyone tell you different, it was a rout! You know what they’re singing, don’t you?”
He leaned close, and buzzed into my ear:
“But,” he went on, “next day, at Pleasant Hill, when they tried to finish us up, we cut them to pieces, Bill. Don’t let anyone tell you different on that! And there’s the tragedy of it! This army’s not licked — how could it be when it won that Pleasant Hill fight? This headquarters is! Of backbiting, disloyalty, undercutting, and bickering you can take just so much. And that’s why we’re getting out. Not from defeat, from disunity! So, in regard to your friend Landry and what he thinks we’ll do next, he could be right. We could be going to Shreveport, in case this dam’s a bust, we could be doing just that — and we know all about it, Kirby Smith’s dispersal of Richard Taylor’s army. He sent Price with six thousand men to stop Steele, who’s supposed to be working with us, and that army is way the hell and gone up in Arkansas someplace, so it couldn’t be a factor. It’s quite true, I imagine, that there’s no effective force under the Reb command between this place and Shreveport.”
“All right, but what do I do?”
“Bill, I’ve told you: the goddam cotton is hooded. It’s the cause of all our trouble, the cause of the headquarters bickering, of the Navy’s being stuck. If they hadn’t gone upriver for this cotton Landry wants, they wouldn’t be where they are now. Stay out of it! Don’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”
“I can’t stay out of it. I’m already in.”
I told him about Sandy, the Navy receipt, and the rest. He whistled. “Well!” he said. “You certainly are in, all the way, with both feet... Then — a little more can’t make much difference. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“You mean let Mr. Landry go ahead?”
“What harm is it going to do?”
“That’s it! If we don’t go to Shreveport, Dan...?”
“Then we didn’t and he did. That’s all.”
“You’re sure I wouldn’t be disloyal, doing this?”
“Well? Lincoln wants it, doesn’t he?”
Chapter 25
Back in the flat i didn’t quite say yes, but they smelled I was going to, and she made herself so sweet butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. Next morning she came early, snuggling close to me, and whispering little jokes in between the kisses. She got my promise at last, and I went on down to see Hager and cancel my pass application, since if I was going to Shreveport it would head off all kinds of mix-ups if I reapplied up there to the new Provost Marshal, without still another request dangling in Alexandria. But he waved as soon as he saw me, there in the courthouse door, and left his desk to come over, stepping past doctors, orderlies, and wounded lying on stretchers. “Surprise for you, Cresap!” he roared as soon as he’d shaken hands. “You’re on your way out, you’re leaving! The Warner’s going tomorrow, and I’ve arranged to get you on board. And the style you’ll be going in! Two gunboats are taking her down — you’ll be like Mason and Slidell!”
“Fine!” I said. “Love to feel important!”
Because of course this couldn’t be turned down, just at the drop of a hat, without my making sure how Mr. Landry felt. On his own favorite principle of grabbing the bird in hand, he might want me to go. And even if outvoted, I could decline the honor later in the day. So I talked along, got the various details, like the leaving time of the boat, which was eight o’clock in the morning, and the probable space I’d have, which was half a stateroom. “But,” he warned, “this is for Cresap alone. It does not include a lady, or the lady’s courtly father.”
“That’s understood,” I told him.
“You board tonight. Get there first.”
“I’ll be there with bells, Captain.”
“I think they’ll be stopping at Cairo, and you can go to Springfield from there. But if they take you to Cincinnati, that’s not so far either.”
“Cincinnati’s perfect with me.”
And it was perfect with Mr. Landry, as I learned when I came charging in with my news — and not only with him but with her. Shreveport was entirely forgotten as both of them got all excited over definite action at last. “It’s the difference,” she said, “between a million up in the sky and one-twenty thousand there in the bank — sixty thousand for Father and sixty thousand for us. Who wouldn’t take what’s sure?” He told her: “Nothing’s sure, Daughter, especially in this war — but short of having the money, this is as sure as anything can be.” We talked of getting married, of going to Dr. Dow, the Episcopal rector there, and having it done at once, that same day, before I left. But she didn’t want to be married in Alexandria. “I was once,” she said, “and it didn’t turn out very well.” And also, I think, she was shy of marrying a bluebelly here, where everyone knew her, and starting a lot of talk. We checked their end of it over, and he said: “Don’t worry about us, Mr. Cresap — if, as I assume, the Union goes through to Shreveport, that’ll end the war in the West, and we’ll stay right where we are until navigation resumes and then join you in Springfield, if you care to have us come. If, on the other hand, they’re captured or manage to cut their way out, this place will be under the Rebs — but we’ve nothing to fear from them. We’ll leave as soon as we can, and be seeing you before very long.” Communication would be a problem, but we left it that they would write me in care of General Delivery at Springfield, and I would write them whichever way I could, in the light of the news as it broke. I asked: “Isn’t somebody sorry I’m going?”