Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Wilson a letter to send, with the envelope addressed in
her hand, to Bob Louden. Then he, too, departed, and did not come back.
                 The
days passed with maddening slowness. Barry felt guilty, lolling around the
house and eating and drinking. Mrs. Wilson told him to stay indoors by
daylight, for Joe had brought word that someone named Buckalew Mills had asked
the Saint
Louis police to look for a runaway “farm apprentice” and send him back to Pike County .
                 “I’ll
have to stop thinking of the farm as my home, now,” Barry said to Mrs. Wilson. “All the more reason for me to be a soldier.”
                Then, after noon dinner on May 12, Mrs. Wilson quietly bade
him prepare for the journey to Memphis . He packed his few possessions and went out
to the carriage house, where he crept into the rear seat of a carriage, ready
hitched to a chestnut horse. A few moments later, Joe mounted to the front and
drove them out and away.
                 “Relax yourself , Mr. Barry,” Joe advised him in an undertone.
“Sit back, like a gent’man enjoying the spring air. I’ll do the rest.”
                 They
drove riverward, through downtown Saint Louis , and Barry thought he had never seen so
many drays, barrows and horse cars. The crowds on the cobbled sidewalks were
liberally sprinkled with blue uniforms. Barry wondered if there weren’t enough
Union soldiers in Saint Louis alone to conquer the hard-pressed Confederacy. Then they were rolling
over heavy, hollow-sounding planks, and Barry saw wharfs and piled freight at
the water front. Beyond these flowed the broad, brown Mississippi , with high steamboat stacks jutting skyward
upon it.
                 “Sit
tight, Mr. Barry,” warned Joe again, and guided the chestnut through a maze of
piled kegs, boxes and bales. Just short of the final line of wharfs, Joe reined
in, glanced toward a lounging figure, and touched his old hat.
                 “This
gent’man’s looking for you, Cap’n Bowen,” he said.
                 “Get
out, son,” the stranger told Barry.
                 As
Barry did so, the stranger offered his gloved hand. He cut a tall, elegant
figure, in a beautifully tailored blue frock coat with shining buttons, a
diamond in his shirt front and a tall, cream-colored chimney of a hat. Brown
eyes smiled in a ruddy- moustached face.
                 “I’m
Captain Bart Bowen,” volunteered the magnificent one. “Joe, tell Mrs. Wilson
all’s well. Now come with me, son. What’s your name?”
                 “Barry
Mills, sir,” replied Barry as they turned toward the wharf front.
                 “Mm,”
murmured Captain Bowen thoughtfully. “I’ve heard that name—Yankee provosts are
looking for a lad named Barry Mills. Suppose you answer to George Jones a
while, eh? We might have the wrong sort of ears among the passengers aboard the Graham .”
                 They
approached a neat, middle-sized steamer, painted white, with landing stage in
place. Barry’s
                 heart beat faster than ever at the thought of capture by
police or soldiers. He had never sailed on a steamboat—he had only dreamed of
it.
                 “Go
ahead of me,” muttered his companion. “Head aft—rear of the boat. Go below, sit in the blacksmith shop till we start down river.
Then come up to the pilot house. If anybody asks you, you’re the new cub,
learning the river from my brother, Sam, the pilot. Understand?”
                 “Yes,
sir,” said Barry, keeping his own voice soft. He headed up the stage and on to
the deck of the Graham.
     
             

III. DIXIE
     

     
                 A
FULL hour later, Barry sat in the sooty blacksmith shop and heard the whistle’s
deep-throated howl. The Graham stirred and pulled away from the wharf. He gave