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Stirring news from our armies comes pouring in. Sunday, Colonel Breaux told me of Wool's defeat, and the great number of prisoners, cannon, and the large supplies of stores and ammunition that we had captured. Then Tuesday we heard of three great battles in Maryland, the third one still continuing; but no particulars of any of them.
Larrabie Keller mavericks around on, durn his forsaken hide! And the man on it wore a polka-dot bandanna. So does Keller. He'll have to go some to explain away that. I reckon the others must be nesters from Bear Creek, too." "We've got 'em where the wool's short this time," Budd agreed. "They been shootin' around right promiscuous. If anybody's dead, then Keller has put a rope round his own neck."
Governor Johnson, being again appealed to, concluded to go to work regularly, and telegraphed me about the 1st of June to meet him at General Wool's headquarters at Benicia that night. I went up, and we met at the hotel where General Wool was boarding. Johnson had with him his Secretary of State.
This order, too, General Brown says he never received. Thinking it strange, he addressed a note to General Wool's assistant adjutant-general, respecting both these orders, which had thus strangely wandered out of the way.
I had heard of the arrival at the wharf of the Governor and party, and was expecting them at Wool's room, but, instead of stopping at the hotel where we were, they passed to another hotel on the block above.
But he assented at last, to the proposition to let the sloop John Adams drop down abreast of the city after certain repairs, to lie off there for moral effect, which afterward actually occurred. We then returned to Benicia, and Wool's first question was, "What luck?"
This was responded to with vigour, and grenadiers and volunteers, in response to brave Macdonell's repeated calls, charged fiercely on Wool's men, now huddled in disorder around the eighteen-pounder. Some of them started to run towards the river bank.
On the walls were hung large framed historical and scriptural scenes, worked in cross-stitch with wool's of the brightest hues, varied by a coloured print of a bird's-eye view of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, an almanac for the current year, and a large oleograph of a young lady und a dog wreathed in roses that put every flower in the garden to shame for size and brilliancy.
"I have turned from priest to merchant, brother. I ought to be at home now saying my prayers, instead of galloping about the country like a Pharaoh in his chariot. . . . Vanity!" "But it will mean a lot of pence!" "Oh, I dare say! More kicks than halfpence, and serve me right. The wool's not mine, but my son-in-law MikhailÕs!" "Why doesn't he go himself?"
I showed the Governor General Wool's letter to me, which he said was in effect the same as the one addressed to and received by him at Sacramento. He was so offended that he would not even call on General Wool, and said he would never again recognize him as an officer or gentleman.