The question must be settled now in this war.

But I don’t know how long I should have studied this matter over in my lonely benightedness, if I had not seen Virginia one night at a war meeting that I sneaked into in the Centre, with a young man dressed in store clothes whom I afterward knew as Will Lockwood, the principal of the Monterey Centre school, who seemingly was going forward to put his name down as enlisted.  I jumped in ahead of him, so as to show Virginia that her fellow was not the only patriot, and beat him to it.

“So you are going to fight Kaintucky?” said she to me as if I had engaged to ruin everything she held dear.

“We must save the Union,” I said.  “I didn’t think of you being on the other side!”

“Mr. Lockwood,” said she, “this is Teunis Vandemark, an old friend of mine.  He’s going to fight my friends, too.”

In two or three minutes I found that he was from Herkimer County, had lived along the Erie Canal, and was actually the son of my old teacher Lockwood, to whom I had gone when I was wintering with Mrs. Fogg in the old canalling days.  He was my best friend during all my service as a soldier—­which you will soon see was not long.  We left him on the field at Shiloh.

4

The recruiting officer got us uniforms—­or somebody did; and during the nice weather—­it was October when I enlisted—­our company did some drilling.  We had no arms, but used shotguns, squirrel rifles, and even sticks.  Will Lockwood tried to drill us, but made a bad mess of it.  Then one day Buckner Gowdy, who had also enlisted, took charge of a squad of men and in ten minutes showed that he knew more about drill than any one else in the county.  He had been educated at a military school in Virginia.

All the skill in drill that we ever got, we owed to him.  The sharp word of command; the quick swing to the proper position; the snappy step; everything that we knew more than a lot of yokels might be expected to know, we got from Buck Gowdy.  Magnus admitted it, even; but he turned pale whenever he was in a squad under Gowdy’s command.  It was gall and wormwood for me, and worse for him; but when it came to electing a captain of our company, I voted for Gowdy, and under the same conditions would do it again.  It was better to have a real captain who was a scoundrel, than a man who knew nothing but kept the Commandments.  War is hell in more than one respect.  I felt that Gowdy would be more likely to bring us safe out of any bad hole in which we might find ourselves, than any one else.  But I was glad, sometimes, when he was rawhiding us into shape, that Magnus Thorkelson was drilling with a wooden gun.  I wondered how the new captain himself felt about this.

Governor Wade gave us a great entertainment at his farm just before we marched—­still without guns—­to the railroad to take the cars for Dubuque, where boats were supposed to be waiting to take us down the river—­if we could make it before navigation was closed by the ice.  His great barns were cleared out for tables, and the house was open, and there were flags and transparencies expressing the heroism of those who were willing to do anything to get us into the fight.