Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1905

Chickamauga Creek had no place on the map until September, ’63. Then it ran blood and became history. For it takes blood to make history.

When Bragg went to pieces two months later, after the shambles of Missionary Ridge, Hooker’s Corps was the pack turned loose to harry him out of the valley. They rushed thoughtlessly—Hooker’s hounds always did—and the foremost quickly paid the tax which Rashness pays to Reason. Cleburne, the rebel general, who brought up the rear of Bragg’s army, turned, wolf-like, at a gap in the mountains and cut to pieces the hound that had outstripped the pack in its zeal to snap at harried haunches. The hound whimpered and fell back, but not before Cleburne had shingled the sides of the mountain with the dead of the Yankee army.

The General who claimed the cut-up regiment was mad, and as he rode, with his staff, to the front, he was swearing in a deep, jerky, guttural voice. He stopped to look at the bloody gap, the lusty, voiceless, blue-coated forms, lying so weirdly unnatural—as trees when the hurricane has passed: “Mountain gaps—they are little traps of hell,” he kept repeating, and he spurred on for a guide—to a cracker cabin higher up on the mountain side.

The General rode a clean-limbed, loosely-ribbed, long-back thoroughbred, fresh from a blue grass paddock in Middle Tennessee. For he was weak on horse-flesh, and had impressed this scion of a Derby winner before Rosecrans went North.

Two mountaineers stood in the cabin yard. One was middle-aged, sullen-eyed and stooped, but standing six feet with the stoop. He leaned on an unmounted axe-helm, and as he stood slouching, long armed, bowed in the legs, his hairy chest gleaming through open shirt front, he looked not unlike a great gorilla, brought to bay with uprooted club in his hands.

The other man was not much more than a boy, except in size. He was larger, bigger chested, bigger fisted, and his wonder-haunted, kindly face wore a smile instead of a scowl. Never before had he seen the flag which one of the officers carried. Never such a horse as the one ridden by the man in front—never such a horse, and how he did love horses!

But the thoroughbred shied at the sight of the bearded man and sprang sideways, snorting, and wheeled to run. The boy’s face broke over in a quizzical, familiar grin, and he drawled exultantly:

“Say, Mister, whut yo ridin’ there?” The man turned sullenly and knocked him down with the axe-helm. He went down helplessly and with a subdued surprise in his blue eyes. The man did not turn his body, but stood indifferently, watching him slowly arising, wiping the blood from his forehead and whimpering like a struck cub:

“Ef mammy hadn’t tuck an’ went an’ died—I promised mammy I’d nurver strike ye, dad.” He blew the blood from his nose and stood scratching one leg with the bare foot of the other, whimpering still, and dazed.

“Solomon Hosea Hanks, ye’re a blatherin’ yearlin’ an’ ’ll allers be one. Ain’t I knocked ye down often fur buttin’ in ye horns befo’ ye’re axed up to the trough?”

He was talking to the boy, but saying it for the men in front: “Gentlemen, ’light an’ look at yer saddles. I’m jes teachin’ the lad some manners—you hafter teach ’em to some folks with a club.”

The boy suddenly straightened up. Half defiantly, and with quick eagerness, he leaped across the path where sat the color-bearer. He stopped beneath the flag and began to fondle it as a child would—the pretty stars, the gold cord that fell from the eagle above: “Ye’ll nurver knock me down ag’in, Dad. Ye’re a g’erriller an’ ye know it, an’ ye wanter make me one, but I’ve seen my country’s colors to-day an’ I’m goin’ ter jine.”

He turned to the group: “I know whut you want, Mister-men, an’ I’ll lead you over the mount’in ef you’ll let me jine. ’Taint uverbody I’ll let knock me down”—he wagged his head at the man with whimpering apology—“promised mammy afo’ she tuck an’ went an’ died I’d nurver strike him”—

A rattling volley of shots rang out across the mountain, down in the next valley. They were echoed back, then shouts, and when the General wheeled, the boy had struck out toward the firing, his tough, bare feet crounching the gravel as he strode on in his shambling way. They followed him, but could not overtake the long, swinging trot in the crooked path amid the boulders and clay roots. On a projection beyond the ridge he stopped, calling back to the man:

“Far’well, Dad—you’ll nurver see me aga’in onless I hear you’ve beat little Dinah Mariah—then I’ll come back an’ forgit I urver had a mammy.” He shook his great fist at the man still standing immovable, then: “Come on, Mister-men—Bragg’s a good dog, but Holdfas’ is better.”

And that is how Solomon came into the camp of the Tenth.

He led them to the firing line, where the General suddenly found plenty to do. So much that he forgot Solomon until the brigade went into camp five miles further, on the trail of the retreating enemy. Then Solomon staggered in through the darkness to the camp fire carrying a half dead Confederate on his back. He laid the man down on a bed of leaves near the mess tent of the Tenth. He lifted the helpless head very tenderly and gave him water while the stricken one kept whispering, “Water—more water—for God’s sake—and death!”

The staff had been laughing and swearing before, with tin cups full of mountain whisky. For they were tired, and death had sprung up so often and so suddenly that day from batteries and trenches and mountain gorges; and from still, restful copses of silent woods, peaceful and inviting, until—Spit! Spit!—and the rattlesnake of sharp-shooting rifles spat out the virus which had put comrades and mess-mates to sleep. But now the silence and the night fell from the deep treetops together. That dying man in the camp, that strange, solemn giant of the woods—

The General, his tin cup half emptied, spoke first, in a voice strangely soft, the staff thought, for the old fighter:

“Any kin to you, Solomon—the man there?”

“He’s mighty nigh to me—mighty nigh.”

“Ah—sorry—sorry. And who is he?”

“Jes’ my brother, that’s all.”

“Oh, too bad—sorry—sorry”—and the staff muttered the echo.

Then the General put down his cup, went over and glanced at the man. He stepped back quickly and hastily drained the tin cup: “Nasty fix, Solomon—sorry—but we’ll do what we can for him. When did you see him last?”

“Nurver seed him befo’—but thar’s hund’erds of ’em—all our brothers, ’specially when we’ve shot ’em an’ they’re helpless an’ dyin’.”

The General winced and turned quickly to the fire. The staff went after another drink. Solomon’s eye fell on the mess table—the supper set forth and waiting; then Solomon fell on the supper. Between mouthfuls he growled out:

“You fellers orter be ashamed o’ yerselves to shoot a man’s innards out like that. I found him three miles beyant the mount’in whar you-uns fit thar this mornin’ an’ I fetch’t him over on my back.”

That reminded him. He picked up some hardtack and bacon and started toward the groaning man. Then he stopped, disappointed: “Whut’s the use—he’s got no whur to put it. You-uns done shot his innards out. The fust lickin’ Dad gin me was fur shootin’ a b’ar in ther innards.”

He sat down again and ate everything in sight. The General and staff got busy at something else. Solomon gave the dying man another drink and began looking around like a huge bear-dog for a spot to roll up on, and sleep. He found it in the General’s blanket, his huge feet sticking out, bunion covered and black. They thought he was asleep and coming quietly back one by one, sat down, and were eating in silence when a shock of hair blurred up out of the blanket:

“Say, Mister-men, but ain’t war hell sho’ nuff? But tell the boys not to shoot ther Innards out—’taint fair.” Then he slept.

The General waited till he heard him snoring: “Major, if you happen to lose him to-morrow in the first skirmish—really, I don’t think we need him, Major?” The Major was sure they did not—so were the others.

They made the dying man as comfortable as they could, the General sparing his own warm rain-coat for the limbs now rapidly chilling. But his groans kept them awake: “Water—water—oh, God—water and death—kill me, somebody!”

The cry fell out of the silence with the starlight, mingling strangely with the shivering wail of a screech owl—so uncannily mingling that they seemed as one.

It was nearly midnight when the General saw the foot withdrawn, the big form arise and slouch over to the dying man: “Water—water—and, oh, for God’s sake—have mercy and kill me.”

Solomon tenderly lifted the gasping lips to the canteen: “Do yo’ means it—want me to kill ye sho’ nuff, brother?”

The man’s eyes were beseeching as he gasped: “I——can’t——live——death every——minute——put me——out of misery—God will——reward you.”

Solomon’s eyes were wet with tears. His great pitying heart thumped loudly: “How, brother? Whut with?”

The dying man nodded at a bayonetted rifle near by: “That——push that——through my heart——quick!”

The General arose just in time. Solomon, with a strange sob in his throat, stood over the man, the gun poised, the bayonet’s point—