Read Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 for Free Online Page B

Confederates he had ever seen. They were a
shabby, hairy crew. He had expected that, for he knew that the South was short
on uniforms and razors. But, for all their lack of brass and boot polish, they
looked ready with their weapons.
                 Grimes was exchanging greetings with those he knew. “What’s
the news from down here?” he inquired.
                 “Big
news from Virginia , and some of it bad,” replied the
lieutenant. “Early this month, Lee’s army licked the Yankees somewhere—I think
it’s called Chancellorsville . But Stonewall Jackson was wounded, and
last week came the word that he’d died.”
                 Grimes’
face turned grave and worried, for the first time since Barry had known him.
“Losing Jackson ’s worse than losing a battle,” he said,
after a moment. “I always hoped they’d send Jackson out here to command in the west.” He
dropped the subject. “We hold Hernando below here all right?”
                 “We
hold Hernando a whole lot this week,” volunteered a soldier. “Just waitin’ for
some blue boys to come and try to take it away.”
                 The
lieutenant looked at Barry. “Who’s your young friend, Captain. A recruit? We can use him.”
                 “He’s
a Missourian, and he’s helping carry the mail down to where he can join up,”
said Grimes. “Where are the Missouri troops, still at Grenada ?”
                 The
lieutenant’s face turned darker than when he had told of Stonewall Jackson’s
death. “You haven’t heard?”
                 “Heard
what?” prompted Grimes.
                 “Your Missouri friends are at Vicksburg with Pemberton. And they’re bottled up
there—a big Union army cutting them off by land, and a big Union fleet cutting
them off by water. Not even a mouse could come and go to Vicksburg now.”
     

              
      
              

           IV. Blockade at VICKSBURG
     
                 BARRY
and Grimes were eating breakfast at a Yazoo City hotel.
                 They
had left their mule and buggy at Hernando, taken the railroad to Grenada , and then the little stern wheeler steamer Dew Drop down the Yallabusha River to Yazoo City . There, they had learned what they could of Vicksburg : 28,000 Confederates were penned there by
70,000 Federal troops under Ulysses S. Grant to north, east and south, while
the river at the west was patrolled by a fleet of ironclads, gunboats and
transports under Rear Admiral David Porter. Land batteries and ships’ guns
poured shot and shell into the town every day.
                 “How
will we get in,” demanded Barry, “if the Yankees have blockaded the place as
well as everybody says they have?”
                 “The
way blockade-runners do at Charleston and Wilmington ,” said Grimes decisively. “There are six
regiments of Missouri infantry and three batteries of Missouri artillery shut up in there, hungry for mail
from home. We’ll get through. When I woke up this morning, I went down to the
river and bought us some equipment. Finished? Then I’ll show you.”
                 Swallowing
the last drops of his parched-yam coffee, Barry followed Grimes out and down to
a ruinous old dock by the river. There a grizzled little man crouched by an
upturned dugout canoe, painting it a leaden gray.
                 “I
bought this boat for ten dollars in greenbacks,” Grimes told Barry. “We’ll load
it and ourselves on the supply steamer to Haines’ Bluff, where our troops hold
the Yazoo against the Yankees. From there we’ll be on
our own.”
                 “We
travel in this dugout?” cried Barry. “One shot from a Union gunboat would sink
us.”
                 “They’ll
have to see us before they fire, and I rather think we’ll be under water,”