The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1886-04-22
fCcPYRIGHr 1867
CHAPTER XII.

D.,
Churn Creek, whittier the Kunnel had been
ordered by his suferiors, who were offended al
his failure.
The associations into which / was forced
Were such as could not help being frightfully
Injurious so an impossible and active-minded
young Mule in the Springtime of life. hold
that no one can associate with an army mule
driver without grave damage to his morals.
state only wel-recognized fact when I assert
that the teamsters on the rebel side were much
worse than those on the Union, and know
that Yallerhammer Atkins was as much worse
than the worst of them as the eggs which have
spent their month Of probation in the corner
grocery are worse than those which the woman
from the country has just brought in. A lin
tied amount of brief authority and an unlimited
amount Of bad whisky, with abundant leisure
in which to drink it, had developed ali the
passive badness in the fellows nature into the
active form, and dashed whatever had been
active before into malignancy. His ontbursts
of profanity became as customary sound about
the corral of the camp as the song of the catbird
used to be about Sourmash Place in Summer
time
During all his waking hours he was busy
dealing out hurts, wherever he dared hurt.
When drunk he beat and kicked horses, mules
and men merely to show that he was set in au-
thority over them. When he was occasionally
sober he kicked, dubbed and whipped. because
he wanted every living thing around him to
be as miserable as he was.
Me- however he spared most of these little
attentions. After / had resented some of his
abuse of Jimson by catching his shock of lank
hair in My teeth and nearly scalpng him, he
began to realize that | was nearly as dangerous
at one end as the other, and thereafter his
ill-treatment of Me was mainly confined to
voliies of oaths and clubs hurled from beyond
the range of My heels and teeth.
My chief sorrow was for Jimson. He was
shooting up through that hobbledeEoy period
OF life, when he was made up mainly of hands,
feet, mouth, appetite, and unlimited clumsi-
ness. All these were so many ways by which
Atkins could make him miserable, and My one
true friend was continually under the harrow
of adversely.
So long as the breath of life continues to dis
tend My lungs, shall remember with shudder
the miseries of that Winter ,encampment of the
rebels at Postum Shout. The camp was located
in q grove of pines, on a hill which was swept
around the base by stream Of water. It's po-
siticn was admirable from o defensive point of
view, and this is the only one that it can be
praised from.
Did you ever have the chill hand of wretched-
ness impress upon you the somber misery there
can be in a camp in Winter time among the
pines on top of a Kentucky mountain?
No?
to you, and you can bless yourself that you
have escaped one haunting memory of sorrow.
Even in its best aspects there is nothing in q
pine forest of the genial kindness of groves of
the noble hardwoods. Tho pines drop no nu-
tr1tlOus acorns u flch-meated nuts. No
pleasant fruits ripen among their stiff sharp
needles. They shower no soft and fragrant
leaves to make russell coat for Mother Earth.
TIE soil at their feet is not the rich mold that
wrauS the roots of tha Oat hickory haaoh nd
chestnut, but a sterile, inhospitable sand. There
Is nothing about them like that which has
made groves of hardWOOds agreeable themes for
the poet and the painter and the romance
teller. l am sure that there never could be an
"As You Like 1t" or "a Midsummer Nights
Dream" enacted among the pines. They show
nOagreeabe alienation of sunlight and shadow
have no rustling leaves, nor fragrant under
growth; no squirrels dance along their resinous
boughs, nor cotton-tailed rabbit run in palpi-
tating fear from covert to covert. There are
only rigid trunks and dense masses of unlovely
green, through which, here and there, protrude
dead limbs, whose nakedness has sickoning
likeness to skeletons. Through these the wind
signs with soul-depressing sadness, if it be
low, or shrieks like lost spirits
I" Horsed On the sightless couriers of the air.
If it be high.
Summer or Winter the pines give none of the
kindly shelter to be found under the branches
of the hardwood trees but seem to shed the
rain and the sieet more directly upon the I'M
happy creatures crouchng below them. Camp
fires built of the hardwoods send up stimu-
lating, grateful odor that peases the nostrils of
all who come within smelling distance of the
camp. The blazing g-heaps throw out
strong, steady heat, and burn down into masses
OF glowing Goals that would almost melt iron.
Campfres of pine logs diffuse weak, uncer-
tain warmth; they struggle feebly with the
wind and the rain, and their weak Goals fall
quickly into ashes as light and insubstantial
as flower pollen. Who that ever camped among
the pines fails to remember the sickish, pene-
trating, turpentiny odor of the fires which
seemed part and parcel of all the discomforts
that he experienced?
have seen much of camp life, but nothing
has burned itself SO intellectually into My mind
as the memory Of the degradation and wretch
edness of that Winter camp at Postum Shout.
NO matter what comes to Me, there are few
days that 60 by without something recalling
that wallow of misery. / recall the gaunt,
longhaired, ungainly soldiery, made still more
unattractlve by their coarse, illfitting clothing
and the absence OF all desire for personal clean
illness. recall their shiftless attempts to make
shelters Tor themselves out of such rude mate
rails as were at hand, in marked contrast with
the ingenuity displayed by Union soldiers I'M
der like circumstances; / recall their coarse
cookery of their rations of cornmeal and bacon
In clumsy castiron skiliets and spiders; re-
call their lazy lounging around the fires, day
and night, until the SCOT covered all the visible
parts OF their faces and bodies with thick
coating of lampblack; / recall the vernin that
infested them; / recall their witless jokes and
clownish horse-play; their brutal fights among
themselves; their bestia1izing themselves at
every opportunity with fiery new whisky;
their dying Off like sheep with the rot, from
measles, whooping cough, mumps and other
diseases Of childhood recall the forays they
used to make on the surrounding country, re-
turning with prisoners, plumber, and whisky,
when the succeeding nights would be made
hideous with yelling, fighting, drunken orgies,
which always sent more corpses to the dismal
little graveyard on the side Of the hill, where
the dead were thrust underground without
ceremony, and without anything more than
piece of rail or a bit of box-lid to mark the
resting place of what had once been a man.
have overheard many people lamentng
over My sad condition since / have been en-
gagged as propelling medium for a bob-tail
passenger Car. admit that it is descent in
life from the high ideal of My youthful days,
but for the sake of comparison will say that
the most comfortless street-car stables / was
ever forced into were lady's boudoir compared
to the camp at Postum Shout, and the most
brutal driver that ever knocked down" |
fare, or beat mule with the car-hook, was !