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Updated: May 20, 2025
In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern, on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman.
"Whom the gods love die young" you must be sixty years old now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they say he has how shall we phrase it? gone to his reward? Let us hope not. But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
But we loved Ferry for loving each and every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider.
He was lost to us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes calling "Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!" Gholson brought the mulatress.
Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy, dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the bravest of the brave.
It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the desperation to speak directly to my point.
I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and left with oaths and curses "Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming!
I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin without the brigade to wait with the others" his smile broadened. "Captain," I swallowed a lump "what others?" "Well, all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm, Squire Wall, Mrs.
The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character. Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's horse?" "Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!" At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs." I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General smiled.
Yes, Smith, well, what then?" I resumed, but in a minute "Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr. Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of camp.
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