It was even as he said. Everybody, more or less, was drunk--especially the provisional speaker whom Mr. Randall had placed in the chair--and when we arrived and I was led a prisoner down the center aisle pandemonium broke loose.
They had all sorts of fun with me, such as it was. It was moved that I be fined the full amount of my mileage. Then a resolution was offered suspending my membership and sending me under guard to the old Capitol prison. Finally two or three of my friends rescued me and business was allowed to proceed. It was the last day of a very long session and those who were not drunk were worn out.
When I returned home there was a celebration in honor of the bet Wake Holman had won at my expense. Wake was the most attractive and lovable of men, by nature a hero, by profession a "filibuster" and soldier of fortune. At two and twenty he was a private in Col. Humphrey Marshall's Regiment of Kentucky Riflemen, which reached the scene of hostilities upon the Rio Grande in the midsummer of 1846. He had enlisted from Owen county--"Sweet Owen," as it used to be called--and came of good stock, his father, Col. Harry Holman, in the days of aboriginal fighting and journalism, a frontier celebrity. Wake's company, out on a scout, was picked off by the Mexicans, and the distinction between United States soldiers and Texan rebels not being yet clearly established, a drumhead court-martial ordered "the decimation."
This was a decree that one of every ten of the Yankee captives should be shot. There being a hundred of Marshall's men, one hundred beans--ninety white and ten black--were put in a hat. Then the company was mustered as on dress parade. Whoso drew a white bean was to be held prisoner of war; whoso drew a black bean was to die.
In the early part of the drawing Wake drew a white bean. Toward the close the turn of a neighbor and comrade from Owen county who had left a wife and baby at home was called. He and Wake were standing together, Holman brushed him aside, walked out in his place and drew his bean. It turned out to be a white one. Twice within the half hour death had looked him in the eye and found no blinking there.
I have seen quite a deal of hardihood, endurance, suffering, in both women and men; splendid courage on the field of action; perfect self-possession in the face of danger; but I rather think that Wake Holman's exploit that day--next to actually dying for a friend, what can be nobler than being willing to die for him?--is the bravest thing I know or have ever been told of mortal man.