“Ef any uv you gentlemen will jes send a ’spatch to Ole Marster,” he said tremulously, “Ole Marster’ll be hyer toreckly. He’ll be hyer jes ez quick ez de kyars kin git him hyer. We ain’t got no money. But Ole Marster’ll pay fur de ’spatch jes ez soon ez he comes. Ole Marster’s rich. He’ll pay fur anything anybody do fur Mars Hugh, an’ be thankful ter do it. Ole Marster’ll come arter Mars Hugh jes ez quick ez I kin git him word. He’ll pay anybody fur evvything.”
The soldiers hardly knew what to do; perhaps they never considered that they could do anything but what they did: ride away and leave behind them the pair in the hut. Perhaps, poor fellows, there was nothing else they could do. Comfortable hospitals for Southern soldiers were scarce, and the Confederate soldier had little to give to any one, even to his sick comrade.
The negro, the guardian in this instance, was not anxious to have his charge moved. His whole concern was “to git word to Ole Marster.”
“I kin take kyeer uv him,” he insisted, “jes lak I bin doin’ ’twell Ole Marster come. Den he’ll know what to do. Mars Hugh ain’t fitten to move now. Ef twarn’t done jes right, he couldn’t stan’ it, case he’s too weakly. ’Twon’t do fur no strange folks to tech him nor ’sturb him, lessen dey knows how. Mars Hugh jes same ez er baby.”
They gave the negro the rations they had with them, and the whisky in their canteens--it was all they had to give except their scant clothes--and rode on to Culpeper Court-house, where one of them sent the despatch to “Ole Marster,” according to the directions Uncle Reuben had given. And our Florida party was “Ole Marster” and his wife, and poor Hugh Bailey’s young wife and her uncle.
It was well into the night after their arrival when four soldiers carried up to my room a stretcher holding a skeleton of a man. A gaunt, ragged old negro followed.
The next day the party started for home, but they never got poor Hugh as far as Florida. They stopped in Richmond at the Exchange, and there Hugh Bailey died the next day.
And now began for me the nursing in hospital wards that made up so large a part of our lives during the war.
“Jeter shot, perhaps fatally. Go to the hospital and see what you can do for him. I have telegraphed to his wife and mother.