Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 by Rebel Mail Runner (v1.1) Page B

“Colonel,
sir,” said Barry, “I came to enlist with your Missouri troops.”
                 Colonel
Cockrell looked at him levelly. “You want to stay in here and starve and fight
with us?”
                 “I
came to enlist,” Barry repeated stubbornly.
                 “I’ve
been thinking more and more about what Barry Mills might best do for the South,
sir,” put in Grimes, and the colonel looked at him.
                 “Yes,
Captain. I think I know what you mean.”
                 “I
have no doubt that he would make a brave, loyal infantry soldier,” went on
Grimes, “but all the way from Pike County in Missouri he’s been a smart, cool,
resourceful helper to the grapevine mail. And especially in this last
blockade-running try.”
                 “What
you mean,” summed up Colonel Cockrell, “is that he’d be more valuable in your
mail service. And I think the same.”
                 Barry
looked from one to the other of his companions. “You mean that, gentlemen? I
never thought of it. I was just helping the best I could, because I had the
chance to come down—”
                 “Don’t
you want to do what will be best for the Confederacy?” asked Colonel Cockrell.
                 “Of course, sir.”
                 “Then
I assign you to the staff of Captain Absalom Grimes. I’ll tell my adjutant to
make a note of it.” Grimes held his hand out to Barry across the table.
“Welcome, partner,” he said, smiling. “Now you can help me carry the mail out of Vicksburg .”
                 “Good,”
said Colonel Cockrell. “You must realize, Barry, that there’s a dead sameness
to this siege—no visitors, no steamers, no trains, no news. Just shells and
rifle pits. We hold the town, and the Yankees throw shells at us from land and
water. It gets to be—” The colonel hesitated. “Well, it gets to be a bore.”
                 There
was another deafening explosion.
                 “A
bore, sir?” repeated Barry, when his voice was able to emerge from his dry
throat.
                 “You
get used to anything,” amplified the colonel. “I started to keep a diary when
the siege started. Eight pages the first day, four the next. Then two, then one. Now I don’t write at all—every
day’s the same. Bombardment and trench duty. You see
why we need mail.”
                 “Yes,
I do,” said Barry. “And I guess I could be of most service by helping to carry
it.”
                 When
announcement was made to the Missouri troops that Grimes and his new assistant
would smuggle out a cargo of letters, there was a mighty stir through every
regimental camp. Billets, knapsacks, shops, were searched for paper, pencils,
pens, ink. Colonel Cockrell and other officers divided their own stocks of
writing materials. Sheets of paper were divided in halves, even in quarters.
                 That
afternoon, Grimes and Barry visited the reserve position where the main forces
of Missourians waited, ready for any emergency. On stumps and logs and rocks
sat soldiers, writing on bits of paper. Others hung over them, waiting for a
turn with pen or pencil. Barry and Grimes both wrote letters at the dictation
of men who confessed themselves unable to spell out even their own names.
                 Next
morning, the sheafs of envelopes were gathered by the
mail orderlies, and under Grimes’ supervision a Vicksburg tinsmith sealed them into the boxes. Then
Grimes drew Barry aside for a conference.
                 “This
time we’ll be heading up river, against the current,” he said. “We can’t do
that with an overturned boat. We’ll have to travel right side up.”
                 “In sight of the Union gunboats?”
                 “We’ll
wear blue uniforms. I’ve seen a lot of Yankees in