Sometimes there were touching tales of trouble. Once he had been detailed to the “police” squad, and had to clean spittoons and do other menial work. This was a touch of reality that fairly opened his eyes to his abasement, and he wrote much more sadly than ever before, making me sad, too, to think how powerless I was to help him in any way. A few days later he sent a wail of real agony. While he had been out on drill, some scoundrel had broken into his satchel and had stolen all his papers,—his letters from his mother, her photograph, and those of his sister and his sweetheart, and all the bundle of affectionate epistles over which he had pored again and again in his desolation. The loss was absolutely heart-breaking and irreparable, and he had passed hours sitting on the rocks at the shore, pouring bitter tears into the Thames. This was a blow to me too. I knew that Dohna was of a simple mind, and utterly without resources within himself; but he was also of a simple heart, and one could only grieve over this last blow as over the sorrows of a helpless little child. However, I wrote all I could to encourage him, and was gratified, though a little surprised, to see how soon he became cheerful again, and how earnestly he seemed to have set about the work of becoming a really good soldier. After a time the captain of his company—still in New York and maintaining a lively interest in the poor fellow’s case—procured an order for him to go to Annapolis to be examined for promotion. He was already a sergeant, and a pretty good one. He stopped in New York a few days on his way through for some refitting,—again at my tailor’s. On his way back he stopped again to tell of his failure. I was delicate about questioning him too closely, but I learned enough to suppose that different ideas as to practical education are entertained by a board of army examiners and by a fond young mother in the remote castle of Schlodien; but I encouraged him to believe that a little more study would enable him to pass the second examination that had been promised him, and he rejoined his company.
In the general mustering-out Voisin had been set free and had joined me in New York, and had, naturally, participated in all my interest in the quondam Count. He gradually, as an adjutant should, assumed the correspondence, which was voluminous, and by the time we were informed that Dohna was detailed for recruiting duty in the city, neither he nor I was glad to know it. Something more than a feeling of regretful sympathy is necessary to the enjoyment of frequent companionship, and we both felt that the fact of having credit with a tailor was a dangerous element in the possible future combinations. However, Dohna’s arrival at our room followed close upon the announcement of the order. He was still simple in his way and of modest deportment, but he seemed to have accepted his new life almost too entirely, and he had come to look not very much out of place among his comrades. Their quarters were in a basement in Chambers Street, back of the City Hall, where we occasionally dropped in to see him. After a while he was always out when we called, and once when I stopped to give him a foreign letter, sent to my care, I was told that he had not been there for a week, but one of the men volunteered to find him. He came that night to the club for his letter, in civilian’s dress, and appeared much as he did when I first saw him, except that he had two beautiful false teeth, in the place of the defective ones. I gave him his letter, a long one from Berlin, from his father. He showed Voisin the postscript, in which it was stated that a box containing a breech-loading shot-gun, a dozen shirts, and a draft for five hundred thalers would be forwarded by the Hamburg line to my care. On the strength of this he hoped it would not inconvenience us to advance him a couple of hundred dollars. It was thus far inconvenient that we were obliged to decline, which gave him no offence, and he invited us to dine with him the following day at the Everett House.
At this point, in view of the extreme youth and inexperience of our friend, we took occasion to read him a short homily on the value of economy, and to urge him immediately to leave the Everett, return to his barracks in Chambers Street, and as he valued his future peace of mind to avoid running in debt; mildly hinting that, if found in the public streets without his uniform, he would be very likely to get himself into trouble. He begged that we would not expose him, and promised to return that very night. Then for some time we lost sight of him; his captain said that, so far as he knew, he was attentive to his duty with the recruiting squad, and he certainly kept out of our way. The box from Germany did not arrive. No more letters came, and we had no occasion to seek him out. It was evident that he was no longer unhappy, and so our interest in him, though still warm, remained inactive.
One night I was awakened, quite late, by Voisin, sitting on the side of my bed, big-eyed and excited, and with a wonderful story to tell. He had been, at the request of the counsel of the Prussian Consul, to the detectives’ rooms at police headquarters. Here he had been questioned as to his knowledge of one Adolph Danforth, alias Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, alias Fritz Stabenow, and had subsequently had an interview with that interesting youth in the lock-up.
The glory had all departed. He had been there forty-eight hours, was unwashed, uncombed, stolid, comfortable, and quite at home. There was no remnant left of the simple and modest demeanor of the well-bred aristocrat. It was hard to see a trace of likeness to the Kürassier officer with whose photograph we were familiar. The obligations of noblesse seemed to be entirely removed, and there was nothing left but plain, ignoble Fritz Stabenow. An examination of his pockets developed a singular folly. He had kept every scrap of paper on which a word had ever been written to him. Tailors’ bills, love-letters, duns, photographs of half a dozen different girls, all were huddled together. He had a package of the Count Dohna cards and the plate from which they had been printed,—made in Boston; a letter of credit from a banking-house in Berlin to its New York correspondent had the copperplate card of the firm on the paper, but the paper was ruled as a German banker’s paper never is, and the plate from which the card had been printed (also made in Boston) was in the envelope with it. A letter from plain father Stabenow enclosed photographs of still plainer mother and sister Stabenow, which were a sad contrast to the glory of the Countess Dohna’s picture. The father’s letter was full of kindly reproof and affectionate regret. “Ach! Fritz, ich hätte das von Dir nicht gedacht,”—“I never thought that of you”; but it was forgiving too, and promised the remittance, clothing, and gun I have spoken of before. The papers, for the loss of which such tears had been shed at Fort Trumbull, were all there in their well-worn companionship with a soiled paper-collar, and that badge of dawning civilization, a tooth-brush.
Here were also two photographs, one of the statue of Frederick the Great in Berlin on the card of a St. Louis photographer, and another of himself in Prussian uniform, on the card of a Berlin photographer. The pictures had been “lifted” and changed to the different cards. A more careful neglect of track-covering was never known. The evidence of all his deceptions had been studiously preserved.
Voisin had given him a dollar to buy some necessary articles, and had left him to his fate.
The disillusion was complete, and I saw that I had been swindled by a false count even more completely than I ever had been by real barons,—which is much to say.
Voisin had gathered from the Consul’s lawyer that this Stabenow, a valet of the veritable Count Dohna, had been one of a party who had robbed him and committed other serious crimes, and he had fled to this country, with his master’s uniform, a valuable wardrobe, and costly jewels. He had here undertaken to personify the Count, and had had on the whole not an unhappy time, especially since he came to New York in recruiting service. He had finally been arrested on the complaint of a lady, one of the many whom he had attempted to blackmail, by threatening exposure through letters they had written him in the kindest spirit. Fortunately this one had had the good sense to refer the matter to her husband, who brought the interesting career to a close. He had obtained several thousand dollars in this way from different persons, and had contracted considerable debts in all directions. The Everett House was an especial sufferer.
I felt that my claim was secured by the luggage at the express-office, and I called for it the next day. The gentlemanly clerk of the establishment blandly showed me my name, neatly written in a strange Teutonic hand, to a receipt for the property. Just then I had information that a box addressed to my care was lying at the Hoboken office of the German steamers. Indiscreetly mentioning this fact to the Prussian Consul’s lawyer, I was informed that it would be necessary to take the box in evidence, and I prudently refrained from making further efforts for its recovery.
It was with a chastened spirit that I paid a considerable bill at my tailor’s and ordered the overcoat sent to my address; and it was with only mitigated satisfaction that I heard of the sending in irons to his company in California of deserter Stabenow.
If the Herr Lieutenant Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien of the Gardecorps Kürassier is still living, I beg to inform him that his overcoat—the only memento of a grave Schwindelei—is now a comfortable wrap to a Rhode Island farmer, who hopes that its rightful owner is as snugly clad in his winter rides about Versailles.
TWO SCOUTS
In the desultory and sporadic warfare carried on in the Southwest, the scout—or “skeout,” according to the dialect of the region—was a very important element of our organization, and it is amusing now to recall the variety of odd-fish of every description who applied for the remunerative employment that this branch of the service afforded.
The interest of our life at Union City was not a little enhanced by two specimens of this genus with whom we had much to do,—Pat Dixon and “The Blind Preacher.”
One day the guard brought in a suspicious character from the picket-line. He was about twenty-five years old, long, lank, and dusky,—a sort of half-Indian, half-Irish looking fellow, with uncombed hair and an over-prominent quid of tobacco. He rode the usual “nag” of the country,—an animal with more blood than bone and more vice than beauty. He dismounted, passed his bridle over his arm, and “squatted,”—the usual posture of the country. “The Hun,” the professional bully of all our culprits, took this creature in hand, and presently came in with a suggestion that I had better see him alone. He followed me cautiously to one side, leading his horse with him, and squatted again when we had halted at a safe distance from curious ears.
“I’m Pat Dixon. I live down Troy way on the North Fork. Ye see, when this yer muss fust broke out I didn’t go to take no sides in it. But Merryweather’s men they come along a little ’fore sun-up, last month was a year, an’ they taken the only nag we had left. I’d had him hid out all summer, but some derned skunk done found him out. I heern the cusses a trampin’ roun’ an’ I was goin’ to take a crack at ’em for ‘good mornin’,’ but, you see, I knowed if I did they’d just burn the old woman out, an’ she don’t git along but porely, anyhow, so I didn’t. They conscripted the old man the year afore, an’ he hain’t been heern on sence. So I come to the conclushin that I wa’n’t agoin’ to stan’ no such treatmint as that—by King! an’ I jest took to the bresh, an’ I reckon I’ve pestered them ’uns right smart. I ain’t agoin’ afoot long as theys hosses in West Tannisy,—you bet! I was agoin’ to jine you Yanks, but thinks sez I: ’Old Pat, you kin do a heap better in the bresh nor what you kin in no army,’ and so I stuck to it. O, now, I’m squar’! Frank Moore can tell you all ’bout me; I ain’t no gum-game, I ain’t. If you want a skeout, I’m on hand, an’ I don’t want no pass, I kin git ’roun’ in this kentry.
“Which? hoss? Well, ’t ain’t much of a nag, but theys more on ’em roun’, an’ if this ’un tuckers out I’ll git somethin’ to ride. I ain’t goin’ afoot.—no, mam!”
This was very much the sort of talk “Mr.” Forrest’s emissaries used in seeking our services for his purposes; so, partly to secure ourselves on this point, and partly to give Dixon a good character should he go out from our camp in his professional capacity, he was sent for a few days to the guard-house, until Frank Moore should return from an expedition. I believe Frank knew most of the vagabonds of Obion County, and he at once certified that this was no other than Pat Dixon; that his story was true; and that, while his controlling motives were not perhaps such as one would most admire, his unconquerable hatred of Merryweather’s men and all their confederates might be relied on with implicit confidence; so Pat was engaged as an employé of our Secret Service Department, and sent outside the lines with a conspicuous assurance, as he left his fellow-prisoners, that if found again within our reach he would be hanged forthwith for a spy. I was riding on the road he took, and he gave me a leering wink as he departed,—with instructions to watch the movements of all guerilla bands in our front, and to bring speedily any information he might obtain.
During the remaining months of our stay he was almost ubiquitous. Every scouting-party that we sent out in any direction, though entirely without notice to him, was pretty sure to meet him with important information, just when information was most needed.
This part of his work was done perfectly, but he seemed to regard his relation with us as a warrant for unending private iniquities. After his own code of morals he was a strictly virtuous man, but his code was of an extremely loose and pliable character. It is probably safe to say that he never murdered a Union man, and that, unless sorely tempted by the difference in value of the animals, he never forcibly exchanged horses with a Union widow; neither, I believe, did he commit any offence against a known Rebel when there was a probability of his being found out and caught; but the complaints that came to us of the manner in which he vented his private wrongs and carried on the feuds of his ancestors gave us frequent annoyance. Sometimes it seemed necessary to recall his commission and declare him an outlaw, but just then there would transpire some particularly brilliant achievement that showed him invaluable for our purposes.
More than once, when our patrols reported the immediate presence of the enemy, Pat would turn up with the assurance that it was only so-and-so’s “band,” who had come into the neighborhood on a visiting or a marauding expedition, but with no intention of putting themselves in our way; and invariably we found his report to be correct. Indeed, so frequently did this happen that we became almost too confident in his assistance, and when an excitable picket shot at a donkey or a cow in the night-time, although the patrol of the guard went through the usual routine of investigation, we felt that there could be no serious attack or Dixon would have notified us.
How he obtained his information we could not guess, and his own account of the matter was never satisfactory; but I believe that no considerable force of the enemy ever crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad (the whole State’s width to the south of us) without our being speedily notified; and through this means we were several times enabled to telegraph to Columbus early information of contemplated raids,—information that was not always heeded, as the surprise of Paducah (on the Ohio River) several days after our warning sufficiently proved.
One ambition of this worthy man had to remain unsatisfied. How little this was due to the fact that we at the headquarters were all perfectly mounted, modesty makes it improper to state here; but in our frequent meetings as we rode outside the lines, he rarely failed to tell of some particularly fine horse belonging to some particularly bad man and especially virulent Rebel, which it would really be a virtue to “confisticate.” The worthy fellow was not satisfied with his own conspicuous appropriations; he would fain have mounted our regiments on the weedy screws which the Rebel impressments had left for the horsing of the crippled region of Western Tennessee. Possibly, too, he may have had some lurking fear that there was a suspicion of iniquity in his thefts, and longed for the reassurance of similar conduct on the part of true men like ourselves.
It was, of course, not long after the commencement of this active campaign against the rights of ownership, that we began to receive assurances on every hand that unless we could do something to repress Pat Dixon’s vagabondage an outraged people would take the law into their own hands, and avenge the wrongs he had inflicted. With a laudable desire to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, I told him one day of the state of feeling against him, urging him to be more circumspect and to conduct himself like a decent man, else he would be hanged the first time he was caught; intimating, too, that it would be improper for us to continue to employ him to such needless injury to an inoffensive people. His reply was characteristic.
“Inoffensive, which? Mebbe you know these people an’ mebbe you don’t. I do! and a dern’der lot of unhung cutthroats an’ hoss-thieves you can’t find nowheres. As for hangin’, you needn’t give yourself no worryment ’bout that. They’re safe enough to hang me if they ketch me, an’ I guess I sha’n’t hang no higher if I go right on my own gait. If you don’t want to employ me you needn’t; theys enough corn an’ bacon in th’ Obion bottom to keep me awhile yet, and money ain’t no ’count down here; but, by King! if I kin git a chance to tell you anything that them ’uns don’t want you to know, you bet your skin I’ll do it, an’ you kin trust me every time, for I ain’t goin’ to lie,—not to your side, not if I know it. Why, you talk to me about inikities. I don’t want to do no man any hurt; but my old dad he was conscripted, an’ me an’ my brother Jake had to take to the bresh to save ourselves, an’ then Jake he was shot in cold blood right afore my eyes, an’ I made up my mind then an’ there that I wouldn’t give no quarter to the whole State of West Tannisy till this war was over an’ ther’ was some stronger hand than mine to do jestis an’ to furnish revenge. That’s all I’ve got to say about it. You needn’t give yourself no oneasiness ’bout my doin’s, I’ll answer for the hull on ’em; an’ p’r’aps the last thing you’ll hear of Pat Dixon will be that he’s hangin’ to a tree somewheres down Troy way. I know I’m booked for that if I’m ketched, and till I am ketched I’m goin’ my own gait.”
We had become too much accustomed to this state of feeling among the scanty Union population of the Southwest to be so shocked by it as we ought to have been, and it was not without sympathy with Dixon’s wrongs that I let him go, with an earnest caution that he should mend his ways, if only for his own sake.
It remains only to say that he did go his own gait, and that he went it with a desperation and an élan that I have never known equalled; and that, months later, after our snug quarters at Union City had been turned over to a feeble band of home-guards, word came that they had been burned to the ground, and that Pat Dixon, betrayed at last into the hands of the enemy, had been hanged in the woods near Troy. We could find no fault with the retribution that had overtaken him; for, viewed with the eyes of his executioners, he had richly merited it: but we had learned to like him for his frank and generous qualities, and to make full allowance for the degree to which his rough, barbaric nature had been outraged and inflamed by the wrongs inflicted on his family.
A returning patrol one afternoon led to the parade-ground a sorry horse drawing an open wagon in which were a man and a woman. The woman had a cold-blooded, stolid look, and her eyes were filled with the overflowing hatred we so often inspired among her sex at the South. Her husband was dressed in black, and wore a rather scrupulously brushed but over-old silk hat. In his hand was a ponderous and bulging cotton umbrella.
They had been taken “under suspicious circumstances” at a house a few miles outside the lines,—the suspicion attaching only to the fact that they were not members of the family and seemed to have no particular business in that region. When asked for an explanation, the woman said she had nothing to say but that her husband was a blind clergyman intending to fulfil an engagement to preach, and that she had driven him, as was her habit. He said nothing. It was a rule of our system to follow Hoyle’s instructions, and “when in doubt to take the trick”: this pair were remanded to the guard-house.
As they turned away, the reverend gentleman said, in a feeble voice, that if he could see me alone later in the evening, when he had recovered from the shock of his capture, I might be willing to talk with him. In the evening the Hun repaired to the dismantled warehouse where the prisoners were lodged, to hold conversation with the new-comers. When he came to the clergyman he found him so low spoken that their talk fell almost to a whisper, but it was whispered that he was to be taken alone, and subsequent disclosures led to his being brought to headquarters. He there informed me that he was a minister of the Methodist church, Canadian by birth and education, but married to a lady of that region, and had been for some years engaged there in his capacity as a circuit preacher. He was quite blind, and found it impossible to make his rounds without being driven.
His sympathies were with the North, and he was burning to make himself useful in the only way left him by his infirmity. His wife was of a suspecting disposition, and their peaceful consorting required that she should always accompany him; but, unfortunately, she was a violent secessionist, and he had been compelled, in the interest of the peaceful consorting above named, to acknowledge sympathy with her views, and to join her in her revilings of the Union army.
All this made his position difficult, yet he believed that, if the opportunity were given him, he could hide his intention even from her, and could gather for us much useful information.
He was a welcome visitor at the houses of the faithful, far and near, and warmed their hearts with frequent and feeling exhortation, as he gathered his little meetings at his nightly stopping-places. He was now about starting for the southern circuit, and had appointments to preach and to pray at every town between us and Bolivar.
Evidently, if this man were honest in his intentions, he could be of great service, but I suggested the difficulty that having once started for an appointed round he could not return to bring us any information he might receive. To this he replied that his wife believed him to be in Forrest’s service, and that he could at any time come as a spy into our lines.
It seemed a very questionable case, but, after consultation with Voisin and the Hun, it was determined to give him a trial, to prevent his wife from seeing more than was necessary of our position, and to believe so much as we liked of the information he might give us. The conditions of the engagement were agreed upon, and after a severe public admonition, and threats especially appalling to his wife, he was sent outside the lines, with hints of the serious consequences that would follow his second capture.
We were never quite sure that his wife was wrong in crediting him with complicity with Forrest; but the worst that could be said of him (and this was very likely true) was that he was pre-eminently a man of peace, and if he gave information to both sides, it was always information in compliance with the injunctions of his sacred calling. The Rebel forces several times crossed into Tennessee, and came toward us in numbers that indicated foul intentions, but, from the time our pious friend first visited us, they invariably withdrew without an engagement. Frequently small expeditions of our own forces went scouting to the southward, and were checked and turned back by the reports of this benevolent man.
He may have kept us from the successful fulfilment of some bloody intentions, but we had occasion to know from other sources that he sometimes kept small detachments of our troops from falling in with overpowering numbers of the enemy. Be the theory what it may, from November until February there was no conflict of arms in all the counties we traversed, and neither side advanced to within deadly range of the other.
The processes of this emissary were hidden and curious. He was employed in a much more regulated manner than Dixon, and we generally knew his whereabouts. Every interview had with him, either within our own camp or when we were abroad, had to be so skilfully managed that no suspicion, even in the eyes of his catlike wife, should attach to him. He never came into our lines except as an unwilling prisoner, and was never sent without them without dire admonition as to the consequences of his return.
On one occasion Pat Dixon reported that a detachment of Forrest’s command, about three hundred strong, had crossed the railroad and was moving north in the direction of our camp. At this time the preacher was near us, and I had an interview with him. He doubted the report, but would investigate. I told him we would start the next day, with five hundred men, in the direction of Trenton,—where he was to hold a prayer-meeting at the house of one of Forrest’s captains. The meeting was held, and after it was over, the subject of the advance was talked over very freely by the officers present, he sitting in a rapt state of unconsciousness—his thoughts on higher things—at the chimney-corner. Pleading an early appointment at McKenzie’s Station for the following day, he left as soon as the moon was up, and drove to the house of a friend in the village. His wife supposed that he was coming with a false report to lead us into a trap laid for us.
We arrived at McKenzie’s at one o’clock in the morning, after a detestably cold, hard ride, and took up our quarters in a half-finished and half-furnished house, where we struggled the whole night through in the endeavor to get heat out of a fire of wet dead-wood. Early in the morning the Hun started out, in his fiercest mood, with a small escort, seeking for information and hunting up suspicious characters. At breakfast-time he came upon a large family comfortably seated at table, with our preacher and his wife as guests.
He was asked to “sit by.” “Thank you; I have come for more serious business. Who is at the head of this house? I should like to see you alone, sir.” The trembling, invalided paterfamilias was taken into an adjoining room, and put through the usual course of questions as to his age, place of birth, occupation, condition as to literacy, the number of negroes owned, the amount of land, what relatives in the Rebel army, to what extent a sympathizer with the Rebellion, when he had last seen any Rebel soldiers or scouts or guerillas or suspicious persons of any description, and so on, through the tortuous and aggravating list that only a lawyer could invent. Questions and answers were taken down in writing. The sterner questions were spoken in a voice audible to the terror-stricken family in the adjoining room. The man, of course, communicated nothing, and probably knew nothing, of the least consequence. He was sent to a third room and kept under guard. His case disposed of, his wife was examined in like manner, and then the other members of the family. Finally, the coast being clear, our emissary was sent for. He came into the room chuckling with delight over this skilful exercise of the art of deceit, in which he was himself such an adept, and laying his hand on the Hun’s arm, said, “My dear fellow, I respect you. This has been the most brilliant dodge I ever knew,—capital,—capital!” And he then went on to recount all that he had heard the evening before. A large detachment of Forrest’s command was advancing under Faulkner’s leadership, and they doubtless had by this time a full report of our position, for he had met acquaintance on the road who had reported it to him. If we were able to engage a body of three thousand men without artillery, we might find them that night in Trenton,—he was confident that that was about their number.
The family were now notified that they had been guilty of a great offence in harboring a known spy of the enemy; but they insisted that they knew him only as a devout and active minister, and had no suspicion, nor could they believe, that he had the least knowledge of or interest in either army. With due warning as to the consequences of a repetition of their crime, they were allowed to return to their breakfast, and their guest was brought under guard to headquarters.
Being satisfied, after a close examination of the report, that it would be imprudent to remain so far from our camp, which could be best reached from Trenton by another road, we left a party of observation, and returned to Union City, directing our scout to go to the vicinity of Trenton and bring to our detachment any information he might obtain. Twelve hours after our arrival home, the detachment returned with the news that Faulkner, with a large force, had moved toward Mayfield, Kentucky, and the event proved that every item of the intelligence we had received had been substantially correct.