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Updated: June 27, 2025
Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but the Colonel smiled once more: "I've heard that at one time you said, or implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little private war.
I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him "take the upper fork." So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry?
"Matter enough for you to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent. Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just at this time?" I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me. "Charlie Toliver?"
Brigadier-General Chalmers, with thirty-five hundred men, was at Pontotoc, but failed to come to Gholson's aid, though ordered to.
Why, Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a conscience!
'If he wants to fight! Do you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow. Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion forbids him." "O oh!" groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, "'Hark from the tombs'!" "Ah!" said Ferry, "he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who does?
And thereupon the wave of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.
The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. Did you see that Yankee lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend yonder gave him that and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?"
I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. "Understand, you and I are friends, hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology, and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you." The reply began with a vindictive gleam. "You needn't; I ain't got any more use for it than for him.
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