The Shades of the Wilderness | Page 5

at Harry with curiosity. He clapped his hands
when the Kentuckian opened his eyes.
"Now I know that you're not dead," he said. "When I woke up and
found you lying beside me I thought they had just put your body in here
for safekeeping. As that's not the case, kindly explain to me and at once
what you're doing in my wagon."
"I'm waking up just at present, but for an hour or two before that I was
sleeping."
"Hour or two? Hour or two? Hear him! An orderly who I know is no
liar told me that you got in here just after dawn. Now kindly lift that
canvasflap, look out and tell me what you see."

Harry did as he was told, and was amazed. The same rolling landscape
still met his eyes, and the sun was just about as high in the sky as it was
when he had climbed into the wagon. But it was in the west now
instead of the east.
"See and know, young man!" said Dalton, paternally. "The entire day
has elapsed and here you have lain in ignorant slumber, careless of
everything, reckless of what might happen to the army. For twelve
hours General Lee has been without your advice, and how, lacking it,
he has got this far, Heaven alone knows."
"It seems that he's pulled through, and, since I'm now awake, you can
hurry to him and tell him I'm ready to furnish the right plans to stop the
forthcoming Yankee invasion."
"They'll keep another day, but we've certainly had a good sleep, Harry."
"Yes, a provision or ammunition wagon isn't a bad place for a wornout
soldier. I remember I slept in another such as this in the Valley of
Virginia, when we were with Jackson."
He stopped suddenly and choked. He could not mention the name of
Jackson, until long afterward, without something rising in his throat.
The driver obscured a good deal of the front view, but he suddenly
turned a rubicund and smiling face upon them.
"Waked up, hev ye?" he exclaimed. "Wa'al it's about time. I've looked
back from time to time an' I wuzn't at all shore whether you two
gen'rals wuz alive or dead. Sometimes when the wagon slanted a lot
you would roll over each other, but it didn't seem to make no diffunce.
Pow'ful good sleepers you are."
"Yes," said Harry. "We're two of the original Seven Sleepers."
"I don't doubt that you are two, but they wuz more'n seven."
"How do you know?"

"'Cause at least seven thousand in this train have been sleepin' as hard
as you wuz. I guess you mean the 'rig'nal Seventy Thousand Sleepers."
Harry's spirits had returned after his long sleep. He was a lad again.
The weight of Gettysburg no longer rested upon him. The Army of
Northern Virginia had merely made a single failure. It would strike
again and again, as hard as ever.
"It's true that we've been slumbering," he said, "but we're as wide
awake now as ever, Mr. Driver."
"My name ain't Driver," said the man.
"Then what is it?"
"Jones, Dick Jones, which I hold to be a right proper name."
"Not romantic, but short, simple and satisfying."
"I reckon so. Leastways, I've never wanted to change it. I'm from No'th
Calliny, an' I've been followin' Bobby Lee a pow'ful long distance from
home. Fine country up here in Pennsylvany, but I'd ruther be back in
them No'th Calliny mountains. You two young gen'rals may think it's
an easy an' safe job drivin' a wagon loaded with ammunition. But s'pose
you have to drive it right under fire, as you most often have to do, an'
then if a shell or somethin' like it hits your wagon the whole thing goes
off kerplunk, an' whar are you?"
"It's a sudden an' easy death," said Dalton, philosophically.
"Too sudden an' too easy. I don't mind tellin' you that seein' men killed
an' wounded is a spo't that's beginnin' to pall on me. Reckon I've had
enough of it to last me for the next thousand years. I've forgot, if I ever
knowed, what this war wuz started about. Say, young fellers, I've got a
wife back thar, a high-steppin', fine-lookin' gal not more'n twenty years
old--I'm just twenty-five myself, an' we've got a year-old baby the
cutest that wuz ever born. Now, when I wuz lookin' at that charge of
Pickett's men, an' the whole world wuz blazin' with fire, an' all the skies

wuz rainin' steel and lead, an' whar grass growed before, nothin' but
bayonets wuz growin' then, do you know what I seed sometimes?"
"What was it?" asked Harry.
"Fur a secon' all that hell of fire an' smoke an' killin' would float away,
an' I seed our