Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 Read Free Page B

whole heap different.”
                 “It’s
different with quite a few folks who change sides as quick as they change their
hats,” agreed Grimes.
                 “Cousin
Buck goes swelling around our farm the way you’d think it was his now,” went on
Barry, “and he sure enough has been getting a man’s work out of me every day,
and no pay except rough food and rough clothes.”
                 Grimes
pulled up at a small stream, and let the bay horse drink.
                 “Now
you’ve told me what made your cousin a Unionist,” he said, “what makes you a
Confederate? The Confederates grow thicker in South Missouri . Up here, most of the folks are solid for
the Union .” “Dad’s a Confederate soldier, and I want
to be one, too. Not because of slaves—we never owned any—but I’ll fight for
liberty.”
                 “Yes,”
nodded Grimes, tugging the reins to make the bay drink more slowly. “We fight
for liberty, the Yankees fight to free the slaves, and maybe both sides feel
they’re right. Everybody makes up his own mind.” His tone, as always, was calm
and cool and reasonable. “You know how I made up mine? I was a steamboat pilot,
and when the North and South started in to chew each other’s manes, they said I
had to take a Union loyalty oath. So three of us steam- boaters—Sam Bowen and
Sam Clemens and I—all went up to the office, ready to take it. But the officer
spoke up snippy-tongued to us, and we squabbled back to him, and then we walked
out of there and joined the rebels.”
                 “But
you did make up your mind, Captain.”
                 “Yes,
like your father, and like you. When folks like us make up our minds, we don’t
change back, do we?”
                 Grimes
started the horse and they splashed across the stream. Beyond, they gained
another road, and then Grimes found a trail more narrow and hidden than the
first.
                 “I
reckon you’d better stick with me for a while,” he said. “The
way you talk, if you try to go home now, that Cousin Buckalew of yours will
nail your hide to the barn.”
                 “He
sure will, Captain,” said Barry, feelingly.
                 “I’ve
a good friend who’ll put us up tonight,” said Grimes, “and tomorrow we’ll be in Troy . After that, on to Saint Louis , picking up more mail on
the way. Here,” and with
his heel he touched the carpetbag, “is about sixty pounds of mail for
Confederate soldiers.”
                 “We’re
going to Saint
Louis ?”
said Barry. “Isn’t it full of Yankees?”
                 “Yes,
but it’s full of my friends as well. It’s headquarters for the underground mail
route.”
                 “If
you go south, Captain, I want to go along.”
                 “Well
. . .” Grimes studied him carefully. “All right. I’ll
see you get down into Dixie . But if I help you, you help me. With the
mail, I mean.”
                 “Any
way I can, sir,” said Barry earnestly.
                 Grimes
smiled in his beard. “You’ve already helped me a lot. You know, Barry, I
wouldn’t be surprised if you might not make a jo-darter of a mail runner, if
you happened to choose the postal branch of the Confederate service.”
     

           II. The Underground Mail
     
                THAT night they stayed with a farmer
who fed them fried ham and biscuits and let them sleep in the haymow above the
stable. They were gone before sunrise, and next evening reached Troy , where another friend of Grimes gave them more letters and said soldiers watched the roads below
town. Again before sunrise of the following day, Grimes turned west toward Montgomery City . All the time, Barry listened eagerly to
his new friend’s tales of the underground mail service.
                “My