Wreaths of Glory Read online

  WREATHS

  OF

  GLORY

  A Western Story

  WREATHS

  OF

  GLORY

  A Western Story

  JOHNNY D. BOGGS

  Copyright © 2013 by Johnny D. Boggs

  Published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Alenka Vdovič Linaschke

  Book design © 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover art © avatarknowmad; Kurt Holter / Adobe Stock. © ilolab, vadim.ivanchin / Shutterstock

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Library e-book ISBN: 978-1-4708-6154-4

  Trade e-book ISBN: 978-1-4708-6155-1

  CIP data for this book is available from

  the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  For the Rountree Family,

  Russ, Katie, Chelsea, and Ben

  “True, they tell us wreaths of glory,

  Evermore will deck his brow,

  But this soothes the anguish only,

  Sweeping o’er our heartstrings now.”

  From “The Vacant Chair”, 1861

  Lyrics by Henry S. Washburn. Music by George F. Root

  Missouri

  Chapter One

  Alistair Durant came down with a mighty bad case of bowel complaint two days before the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, which explains why he didn’t get to shoot any Yankees, how come he got captured, and the reason he found himself walking back to Clay County two weeks later with a parole in his pocket.

  “Hotter than the hinges of Hades,” Alistair’s pa would have told him—if, that is, Able Gideon Durant were still speaking to him—but that was to be expected. Late August. Missouri. “In this part of the country, these dog days could singe Lucifer’s horns, and melt his pitchfork.” That was another of Pa’s sayings.

  Now, why in thunderation do I keep thinking about Pa? Alistair said to himself, and found a shady spot underneath some oaks to study on that. Of course, he already knew the answer. Nothing perplexing about it at all. He just needed an excuse, is all, to get out of that sun, rest a spell, slake his thirst, and put off the inevitable, even though he had a long walk ahead of him before he ever reached home.

  Removing his battered slouch hat, he ran long fingers through wet brown hair, then found the canteen slung over his shoulder, about the only thing the Yanks let him keep. They had robbed him of what little money he carried, even took his venison jerky. Worst of all, they had taken his shotgun. Pa would raise Cain about losing that old 12-gauge. Then again, as tight as Pa appeared to be with bluebellies, maybe he could arrange to have that double-barrel returned. Alistair pulled out the canteen’s cork, sloshed around the liquid, thinking that might cool off the water a mite, at least make it taste better.

  It didn’t. Brackish and like to be boiling hot. Still, it seemed to cool once it traveled down his throat, and the shade certainly comforted him. He started to stretch out his long legs, but crossed the left instead, removed his brogan, and rubbed his foot. He didn’t have any socks, and both feet felt blisters coming along.

  How far is it home? he asked himself, recrossed his legs, and began massaging his right foot.

  Nigh two hundred miles, a Yankee corporal had told him before sending him along with that parole. Criminy, before joining the Missouri State Guard, other than that one trip to Independence Pa had let him come on three years back, Alistair figured that he had never seen anything of Missouri other than Centerville, his farm, and Watkins Mill. On the other hand, Greene County didn’t look a whole lot different than Clay County. Certainly not any better.

  “If I’m still in Greene County,” he said aloud, and began shoving a small, worn brogan back on his still-aching foot.

  “You ain’t.”

  The voice startled Alistair right off the stump he was using as a chair. Jumping up, spilling water on the front of his trousers so that it looked as if he’d just peed his pants, he dropped his hat and left shoe, and kicked off his right, and stared at a gangling boy with the greenest eyes Alistair had ever seen.

  The long-haired kid laughed, shaking his head and saying: “Didn’t mean to give you such a fright, fella.”

  Oh, he had meant that, though. Alistair could tell. “You didn’t.” Alistair tried to dry his britches, but gave up, sat down, and began collecting brogans and hat.

  “Pole,” the tall boy said.

  Alistair stared. Blinked. Finally said: “My name’s Durant. Alistair Durant. Glad to meet you, Pole.” He wasn’t, of course.

  The kid laughed again, almost doubled over, and slapped his thighs. “No. No. My name ain’t Pole. We’s in Pole County. That’s what I was sayin’. ’Bout five miles back, I met a gent on a mule, ridin’ south he was, and he tells me that Bolivar be ten miles up this road. Says it’s the county seat of Pole County. That Pole County was named after one of our Presidents, but I disremember that President’s first name.”

  Alistair corked his canteen, returned it over his shoulder, and studied on what he thought he had just heard.

  “Well …” The tall boy had done some mental work himself. “No. Ain’t our country no more. What I meant to say was that Pole County’s named after one of the Presidents of the United States, but not that Abolitionist, Southern-hatin’ Lincoln.” He punctuated that with a firm nod.

  “Name’s Beans Kimbrough.” He offered a bony right hand.

  Alistair shook it. Then said: “There’s never been a president named Pole, United States or Confederate.”

  “Well, it be somethin’ like that.”

  “Polk,” Alistair said. “James A. Polk.”

  “Poke. Right funny name for a politician.”

  “Polk.” He had to enunciate.

  Beans Kimbrough, however, had already lost interest. He pulled a flask from his trousers pocket, unscrewed the lid, and took a pull, smacking his lips. He offered the fancy-engraved pewter container to Alistair, who shook his head.

  “Corn liquor,” Beans said. “Aged thirty days. So the man on the mule told me. Traded him a plug of ’baccy for it.”

  “No,” Alistair said. “Still off my feed. Stomach’s not ready for any liquor.”

  “You get shot in the belly?” Beans asked.

  “No.” Alistair swallowed, and suddenly felt chilled. He remembered those boys and old men. Gut-shot. Baking in the broiling sun. Yankee sawbones wouldn’t even try to help them, or make them comfortable. Just left them outside baking in the sun. To die.

  Beans sat beside Alistair, took another swallow, then began rubbing his own feet. He was barefoot, and that got Alistair thinking. So he pulled off his brogans, and chucked them into the woods. Keep wearing those heavy things, and he’d be crippled long before he ever set foot in Clay County.

  “You comin’ up from Springfield way, Alice?”

  “Alistair,” he corrected, feeling his face flush before deciding that Beans hadn’t meant any insult. He was just dumb as the rotting stump they were sitting on.

  “Kill any Yanks?”

  “Never got a chance to even fire a gun,” Alistair said.

  “I did,” Beans said. “I mean, fire my musket.”

  That impressed Alistair. He recalled the din of battle all around him. Like the worst thunderstorm in the annals of Missouri history. Lying atop his blanket, he could feel the earth tremble from cannon a
nd musketry, the pounding of horses’ hoofs, the rumble of caisson and wagons. Remembered his own torn feelings—wishing he were taking part in that fighting, but at the same time relieved that he was in the hospital field, safe.

  Later, he’d wish he were anywhere but there—after the Federals had taken him and the other sick soldiers prisoner, once the wounded soldiers began being carted back. And the dead. He would have given anything short of his soul to be away from those horrible screams, the sickening smell of blood, and the ruined arms and legs being tossed out of the surgeon’s tent, into a wheelbarrow like garbage.

  He shut his mind to those images—him lying sick with the trots while arms and legs were being sawed off boys Northern and Southern—and tried to focus on what all Beans Kimbrough was saying.

  Something didn’t register, and, brow knotted, Alistair looked at the newcomer, asking: “Could you repeat that?”

  Beans stared at him as if he were an oaf. “I said,” Beans told him, slowing his already molasses drawl, “but … I … didn’t … shoot … at … no … bluebelly.” His usual cadence returned. “Drew me a bead on that no-account Sergeant McGarrity is what I done.”

  Beans picked up his flask, took another sip, and absently passed it to Alistair. This time, Alistair accepted it.

  The liquor went down like coal oil, even though Alistair had taken just a wee taste. He felt he might gag when that whiskey exploded in his belly, but his bowels didn’t loosen, nothing climbed up his throat except a slight cough, and he returned the flask to Beans Kimbrough.

  “Had him dead to rights, till, Hans Hagen, the sorry little Hun, calls out … ‘Look out, Sergeant, he aims to murder you!’” Beans said. “And McGarrity, lucky Irishman that he is, ducked, and all my ball did was knock off his bummer cap. So I decided I’d best foot it out of there. Dropped that musket, and run, I did. Hid in the woods, till the Yanks retreated back to Springfield and other parts. Till I heared that Price was takin’ our boys off toward Fort Scott. Figured they wasn’t gonna spare no soldiers to come lookin’ for me, so I decided to walk back home. Reckon I’m through with this war.”

  “Me, too,” Alistair said, the forty-rod already loosening his tongue.

  “Well,” Beans said. “I’m through with the Missouri State Guard, anyhows.”

  Suddenly what Beans Kimbrough had been saying, confessing, whatever you wanted to call it, registered with Alistair Durant.

  “You mean …?” He had to swallow to get his voice back. “You mean you shot at your own sergeant?”

  “Shot to kill.” Beans Kimbrough’s head bobbed with pride. “I warrant that Irishman was a Yankee spy. Tryin’ to torment all us boys in the guard.”

  “That’s …” Alistair stopped. He was about to say crazy, but Beans Kimbrough was staring at him, their faces so close Alistair could see the hairs of Beans’ peach-fuzz mustache, and his green eyes had turned colder than February sleet.

  “You quit, too?” Beans asked.

  “You mean desert?” Again, Alistair took the flask, swallowed another sip, and coughed, shaking his head, feeling his eyes water.

  “Not desert. I mean quit that fool army? Ain’t no way to fight no war, I tell you that. Sergeants tellin’ you to stand this way, walk this way, shoot when they tells you to shoot. Fancy paradin’. Follow orders like that, and you’ll wind up deader than that Federal general named Lyons us Rebs kilt.” Beans polished off the rest of the liquor, and slid the empty flask into his pocket as he stood.

  “So, you quit?” Beans asked.

  Alistair shook his head. “No, I got captured.”

  “You don’t say!” Beans extended his hand, and Alistair realized he meant to help him to his feet. He accepted, and that bony hand of Beans Kimbrough felt like a vise. “Then you escaped, eh?”

  His head shook, but he said nothing.

  “Well, then how come you’re out on this road?” Beans stared suspiciously down the road to Springfield, and into the woods. “Why ain’t you marchin’ to Kansas with Gen’ral Price?”

  “They paroled me.”

  Beans grinned. “You joshin’?”

  Alistair started to show Beans the parole paper, but decided that wasn’t necessary.

  “Mean to tell me them bluebellies just turned you loose?” Beans asked.

  His nod seemed shaky.

  “So, let me ask you again. How come you ain’t trottin’ after Gen’ral Price?”

  “Can’t. Swore not to take up arms against the Union.”

  “Huh?” Beans shook his head. “Dumbest thing I ever heard. Yankees ain’t no smarter than Confederates. Where you bound, Alvin?”

  “A-li-stair.”

  “Alistair.” Beans said it slowly, then repeated the name. “Funny name.”

  “‘Beans’ ain’t exactly ‘John’.” The corn whiskey had affected him, Alistair knew. Ma would have a cow if she heard him say ain’t, though she used it all the time.

  That got Beans Kimbrough hooting like a stuttering owl. That pinching right hand clamped on Alistair’s left shoulder, until it felt like that tall deserter would break his collar bone. “That’s right funny, Al-i-stair.” Beans finally released his grip to push back his straw hat. “I like you, Ally—I done forgot your last name.”

  “Durant.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Northeast of Centerville. That’s up in Clay County.”

  “I know.”

  “You heard of it?” Alistair couldn’t disguise his surprise. Beans Kimbrough didn’t even know President Polk’s name, yet he had heard of Centerville, which never impressed Alistair as much of a town, and Clay County, which was populated by—his father one prime exception—mostly slave-owning, Kentucky Baptists who had been preaching Secession long before this war had started.

  “Heard of it, even been there. I got an uncle at Blue Springs. That’s over in Jackson County, east of Independence. So I’d pay him a visit time to time … well, Pa’d send me there to work. Last summer, Uncle Morgan said I wasn’t no use to him on the plantation, so he practically indentured me to old man Watkins. Had to start cardin’ wool. That’ll age you. Imagine bein’ cooped up in a furnace. Ten times hotter than this.”

  “They just opened that mill last year,” Alistair said.

  “Wished they’d closed it a day later.”

  “You going back to the mill?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Independence?”

  “Nah. Reckon I wore out my welcome with Uncle Morgan. So I’m walkin’ home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Beans gestured. “Osceola. Want some company?” Expecting to be denied, Beans went on. “Osceola’s only thirty, forty miles north of Bolivar, and I warrant we’re only three, four miles from that town. But then you got another hundred miles or so to Independence from Bolivar. And Centerville’s a good day’s walk from Independence, though I reckon you could probably find some farmer to let you ride in his wagon. But I warrant my folks would feed you, and if there’s a bunch of State Guard boys hangin’ ’round the farm, lookin’ for me, might could be I’d join you. Got no hankerin’ to see the Guard no more. Had my fill of bein’ hung up by my thumbs.”

  “Sure. I’d enjoy the company.”

  Beans stared at Alistair’s feet, then looked over at the trunk of an elm. “You ain’t gonna wear them shoes?”

  “Hurt too bad. Too small, I think.”

  The tall boy looked again at Alistair’s feet. “Well, sir, if they don’t fit you, they sure ain’t gonna fit me. Might as well start walkin’.”

  Later Alistair Durant would wonder what would have happened had he declined the offer, and stuck around in the shade to rub his feet some more.

  The boy from Osceola was already heading toward the road, and as tall as he was, as fast as he walked, Alistair regretted agreeing to join him, even if only as far a
s Osceola. He hurried to catch up.

  Chapter Two

  By evening, they had made it about six miles north of Bolivar, having stopped in that burg just long enough to refill their canteens and Beans’ flask, all with water from the well on the square. Good water it was, too, cool and refreshing, and not salty or hard as if it had been cured with a rusty horseshoe. Worn to a frazzle, they made camp on the banks of a pond that drained off some branch. Beans had guessed that they might catch a fish for supper. Alistair had argued that it was too hot for the fish to bite, even after the sun set.

  “Only thing we’ll catch here”—Alistair had slapped at a mosquito—“is yellow fever.”

  Now, huddled by a fire made from green wood for smoke to keep those bloodsuckers away, Beans Kimbrough agreed that Alistair had been right.

  Next, Beans asked: “Got anything to eat?”

  Alistair shook his head sadly. His stomach echoed the rumbling in Beans’ belly. “Not even jerky.” Silently he damned those thieving Yankees who had captured him.

  With a sigh, Beans leaned closer to the fire, into smoke that seemed to follow Beans, and away from Alistair, who killed another mosquito. “Reckon we shoulda taken our sup back in Bolivar.”

  “With what?” Alistair snapped, his hunger shortening his patience and the usually long fuse to his temper. “Yankees stole what little money I had.”

  “Well, I coulda traded my flask for some crackers and cheese.” Beans leaned back, and grinned wickedly. “Or they’s other ways of gettin’ grub.”

  Muttering an oath, Alistair moved around the fire, and forced his way onto the stump where Beans sat, letting the smoke envelope him and relieve him from pesky bugs. For once, the smoke didn’t move away from him, perhaps, he thought, because it seemed to think Beans Kimbrough was a chimney. Tall enough for one, Alistair conceded.

  “We passed that farm about a quarter mile back,” Alistair said. When Beans didn’t comment, he continued. “Well, his corn crop looked good. Doubt if he’d begrudge us a few ears.”