Kincaids Battery

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Kincaid's Battery

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Title: Kincaid's Battery
Author: George W. Cable
Release Date: March 25, 2004 [eBook #11719]
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
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KINCAID'S BATTERY
BY
GEORGE W. CABLE
1908
ILLUSTRATED BY
ALONZO KIMBALL

[Illustration: "If anyone alive," he cried, "knows any cause why this thing should not be."]

To
E.C.S.C.

CONTENTS
I. Carrollton Gardens II. Carriage Company III. The General's Choice IV. Manoeuvres V. Hilary?--Yes, Uncle? VI. Messrs. Smellemout and Ketchem VII. By Starlight VIII. One Killed IX. Her Harpoon Strikes X. Sylvia Sighs XI. In Column of Platoons XII. Mandeville Bleeds XIII. Things Anna Could Not Write XIV. Flora Taps Grandma's Cheek XV. The Long Month of March XVI. Constance Tries to Help XVII. "Oh, Connie, Dear--Nothing--Go On" XVIII. Flora Tells the Truth! XIX. Flora Romances XX. The Fight for the Standard XXI. Constance Cross-Examines XXII. Same Story Slightly Warped XXIII. "Soldiers!" XXIV. A Parked Battery Can Raise a Dust XXV. "He Must Wait," Says Anna XXVI. Swift Going, Down Stream XXVII. Hard Going, Up Stream XXVIII. The Cup of Tantalus XXIX. A Castaway Rose XXX. Good-by, Kincaid's Battery XXXI. Virginia Girls and Louisiana Boys XXXII. Manassas XXXIII. Letters XXXIV. A Free-Gift Bazaar XXXV. The "Sisters of Kincaid's Battery" XXXVI. Thunder-Cloud and Sunburst XXXVII. "Till He Said, 'I'm Come Hame, My Love'" XXXVIII. Anna's Old Jewels XXXIX. Tight Pinch XL. The License, The Dagger XLI. For an Emergency XLII. "Victory! I Heard it as PI'--" XLIII. That Sabbath at Shiloh XLIV. "They Were all Four Together" XLV. Steve--Maxime--Charlie-- XLVI. The School of Suspense XLVII. From the Burial Squad XLVIII. Farragut XLIX. A City in Terror L. Anna Amazes Herself LI. The Callender Horses Enlist LII. Here They Come LIII. Ships, Shells, and Letters LIV. Same April Day Twice LV. In Darkest Dixie and Out LVI. Between the Millstones LVII. Gates of Hell and Glory LVIII. Arachne LIX. In a Labyrinth LX. Hilary's Ghost LXI. The Flag-of-Truce Boat LXII. Farewell, Jane! LXIII. The Iron-clad Oath LXIV. "Now, Mr. Brick-Mason--" LXV. Flora's Last Throw LXVI. "When I Hands in My Checks" LXVII. Mobile LXVIII. By the Dawn's Early Light LXIX. Southern Cross and Northern Star LXX. Gains and Losses LXXI. Soldiers of Peace

ILLUSTRATIONS
"If any one alive," he cried, "knows any cause why this thing should not be"
Anna
"'Tis good-by, Kincaid's Battery"
And the next instant she was in his arms
"No! not under this roof--nor in sight of these things."
"You 'ave no ri-ight to leave me! Ah, you shall not!"
She dropped into a seat, staring like one demented.

Kincaid's Battery
I
CARROLLTON GARDENS
For the scene of this narrative please take into mind a wide quarter-circle of country, such as any of the pretty women we are to know in it might have covered on the map with her half-opened fan.
Let its northernmost corner be Vicksburg, the famous, on the Mississippi. Let the easternmost be Mobile, and let the most southerly and by far the most important, that pivotal corner of the fan from which all its folds radiate and where the whole pictured thing opens and shuts, be New Orleans. Then let the grave moment that gently ushers us in be a long-ago afternoon in the Louisiana Delta.
Throughout that land of water and sky the willow clumps dotting the bosom of every sea-marsh and fringing every rush-rimmed lake were yellow and green in the full flush of a new year, the war year, 'Sixty-one.
Though rife with warm sunlight, the moist air gave distance and poetic charm to the nearest and humblest things. At the edges of the great timbered swamps thickets of young winter-bare cypresses were budding yet more vividly than the willows, while in the depths of those overflowed forests, near and far down their lofty gray colonnades, the dwarfed swamp-maple drooped the winged fruit of its limp bush in pink and flame-yellow and rose-red masses until it touched its own image in the still flood.
That which is now only the "sixth district" of greater New Orleans was then the small separate town of Carrollton. There the vast Mississippi, leaving the sugar and rice fields of St. Charles and St. John Baptist parishes and still seeking the Gulf of Mexico, turns from east to south before it sweeps northward and southeast again to give to the Creole capital its graceful surname of the "Crescent City." Mile-wide, brimful, head-on and boiling and writhing twenty fathoms deep, you