Chip Shatto (Perry County Series) Page 2

  Two things did worry Robbie Shatto. The first was that because Chip had become a stranger who moved and dressed differently, the locals might attempt mean little games with him. What was natural and right for a mountain man could appear flamboyant and perhaps challenging to men raised in boiled shirts and work shoes. Those young men would be poorly prepared for the deadliness of a Chip Shatto's response.

  Of course Chip knew he was again in a land of law, but once unleashed, Rob feared Chip might chew an antagonist far beyond community tolerance. Still, if the Nace Myers taming was accurate. Chip had probably weathered the first confrontation reasonably well.

  The second problem was the damned war. Chip wanted to get in it. He had hinted around but hadn't come flat out and admitted it because he knew Rob wouldn't approve. Chip was his own man and he'd do what he wished, Rob supposed, but each day Chip kept out of uniform added to his chances of staying alive.

  For all their willingness to fight bare knuckles or long rifles, Shattos hadn't any tradition of soldiering.

  The first Rob Shatto damned near ignored both the French wars and the Revolution. It could be said that he was too busy burying hostile Indians, but others around him had served.

  In his own case, Robbie Shatto hadn't gone traipsing off to the Mexican fighting and now in his sixties, this war wouldn't be his either.

  He guessed he could understand Chip's hunger to share in a task he believed needed doing. That was the way a young man ought to feel, but lining up shoulder to shoulder while a drum beat your ranks into cannon, musket, and bayonet left too much to chance. Most men lacked real fighting skills and belonging to a regiment might suit them, but Chip could ride and shoot like a Sioux. He'd traveled wide and knew his way around. He could track a feather blowing through a boulder field and slip unseen between men talking together.

  To waste abilities like Chip's appeared downright ridiculous and Rob wasn't above telling his boy how he felt about it. It was alright to rant on the square about freeing slaves or argue federalism versus states' rights, but when some fool, appointed Colonel because he owned a popular tavern, waved you into a cannon's mouth, talk ceased and real bleeding started. Once committed, a man had to see it through.

  How much longer the war would go on was anyone's guess, but though the Union held Vicksburg and had routed Lee at Gettysburg, the guns kept thundering and the loads of broken men emptied at Harrisburg and diffused across the countryside. Chip could get caught up in it and end up maimed or dead without having changed anything a single whisker.

  There was movement down along the stream and Rob could tell that Chip was taking a rinse off in the hole above a rock dam they had put in when the boys were small. Over the years he'd had many a good dip there himself but it was usually too much bother getting his peg foot off and on again so he didn't go as often as he once had.

  Pretty soon Chip came striding up the path hopping nimbly around the accumulations of horse manure. He wore only his moccasins and a loin cloth and Rob could marvel at how he'd filled out with that meaty Shatto build that made muscle ripple with every movement.

  Chip was tanned all over it looked like. A lot of mountain men ended up wearing more layers of skins and robes in summer than most men did in winter. All patches and fur, they got to looking like half-rubbed grizzlies.

  A few of them, and Chip seemed to be one of them, followed Indian ways, and by summer heat they were down to about as few coverings as a man could tolerate.

  As he got closer, Rob could see the white weals of the scars that slanted across Chip's chest. They started high on the right and angled low to the left; four of them, one for each cardinal direction. When he was a boy, Shikee the Delaware had come home to die and he had panther slashes about as bad as Chip's scars.

  Well, Chip had more than evened the score and had the proof of it among his possibles. Lordy, if those boozers on the square knew that story they'd keep a lot of distance between Chip Shatto and themselves.

  Chip tossed his clothing onto the high porch and vaulted up to sit on the railing beside Rob's peg foot.

  "You still sight across that thing like you used to, Pap?"

  "Yup, guess I've shot up about everything on Middle Ridge."

  Rob looked at Chip, judging his mood, and decided to air a few thoughts. Might be wise to sort of sidle up to them just the same. Chip wasn't a boy to be told how things ought to go, and he'd been deciding for himself enough years not to enjoy a lot of directing.

  "Heard you had trouble with Nace Myers?" Rob let it hang as a question and watched Chip's smile light his face with the same reckless sort of grin he had always had.

  "Well, way it turned out, old Nace had the difficulty." He frowned a little in thought before continuing.

  "A man like that ought to be more careful with his words. It's a wonder someone hasn't spread him out like a coat of paint long before this, Pap."

  Rob nodded appreciation. "The law does it to 'em, Chip. A man finds he can talk about all he wants to as long as he doesn't get physical. The same law that lets their tongues run like downspouts keeps other men from thumping them or removing their innards. Then all of a sudden they run onto someone that don't give a hoot whether the sheriff comes calling or not and they've got to cut bait or crawl. Mostly they crawl; otherwise they get hurt badly or maybe die and some good man who just had enough cheap threatening has to head west on a fast horse."

  Chip took time to tell what really happened in town and Rob was glad to know the straight of it. When Chip finished, he grunted and shifted to a more comfortable position. He chuckled a little remembering, "You recall when you were little and I stuck my blade up a man's nose in the hotel bar? Seems like times never change. Shattos ride in and terrorize the community." They laughed together and Rob felt close enough to go on.

  "There'll always be a worthless crowd hangin' around the taverns, and now and then it's a man's duty to quiet 'em a little. If we Shattos don't get to it someone else will. Might even be the sheriff if it goes on long enough." That brought more amusement.

  "Fact is, Chip, the only problem I see looming bigger all the time is you and the war." Chip stirred a little and Rob hurried on.

  "I guess I was lucky not having a war come along while I was young and eager enough to go marching off. And I can understand your need to get in there to help out like a citizen's told he ought.

  "At the same time, I reckon you can appreciate your mother's and my fears about you signing up just to stand alongside some others and hope to heaven a minie ball doesn't choose your carcass to plow through.

  "Oh, it isn't that we think Shattos are above serving their country, Chip." He had to hesitate to get the words right and was pleased that Chip sat still waiting him out.

  "I think it's more that it would be a senseless waste of the skills you've got. Hell, Chip, you've been learning war of the wildest kind for all of your years in the west. You don't have to prove courage or your ability to face danger. If you've got to go to the fighting, what you have to do is use good sense and find a position where you can really be useful."

  "Well, that sounds fine to me, Pap, but from what little I've seen of the Army they're way too hidebound to be interested in one man's ability to go Injuning around."

  "You're right, son. They'd just sign you up, dress you like the others, and probably hand you a rifle that couldn't hit a wagon at decent range."

  Chip laughed a little at the description. "I don't mind the signing and the dressin', Pap, but that poor rifle doesn't sound too appealing."

  "Huh, you ever look at those army shoes, Chip? A man could put 'em on with the heels front and not be more miserable. As to the gun, from all I hear soldiers don't aim much anyway. They just load and shoot into the smoke clouds until someone tells 'em they've won or lost. 'Course, if you're dead it don't matter, but if you're captured they say the South's got prison camps worse than hell itself."

  Chip nodded grimly. "No one I've talked to claims the war's good, Pap, but that just ma
kes it more important that I do something." He added with a touching simplicity "It's my country too, Pap."

  Rob cleared his throat noisily and got to the heart of what he had to say. "Assuming you feel you have to go, we can at least take a stab or two at finding something worth risking over. You'd have no objections to that would you?"

  "I'm not going to just sit at a desk, Pap. That'd be as bad as staying home."

  "I'm not suggesting that kind of soldiering, and I'm not recommending buying a commission—which is still being done pretty regularly. I'm not claiming you ought to be an officer any more than you're suited for line infantry.

  "Maybe the Army has need of scouts out west or...."

  He caught Chip's scowl and reconsidered.

  "You're right. Chip, that isn't really the war either and I'm wasting both our times sittin' here speculating on something neither of us knows much about.

  "Well, we're in luck in having a friend who does know about such things and he's in position to help out if anyone is." Chip looked puzzled and Rob explained.

  "You remember George McClellan, don't you, Chip? Came by for his first horse when he was straight out of West Point. You and Ted picked him up over on Mahonoy Ridge and brought him on in."

  Chip nodded remembrance and then made the association." So he'd be General McClellan who commanded the whole danged Army a year or so back. Heard the name out west but until now I didn't make the connection."

  It was Rob's turn to nod." Yep, that's our Georgie McClellan. Fact is, they took his command away because he couldn't get his army moving the way they wanted. Good God, the way we've been losing right up to Gettysburg, he might have been right all along.

  "Anyway, George was retired but he landed on his feet alright and now he's gaining a lot of support to run against Lincoln for President."

  Rob paused to grin wryly. "Now I doubt George will get my vote, friend or not, but he's still the man who might have answers for us. He's in Washington, of course, and a man running for President won't be hard to locate."

  "He may not even remember us, Pap. That was a lot of years ago."

  "Huh, he's sittin' a Shatto horse right now, Chip, and it's his third. He lost the first in Mexico during that fighting and the second down on the peninsula early in the war.

  "When I took this animal down to him he howled like a panther about having to spend days learning the horse before I'd turn him over, but he did it. Then I told him to treat this one mighty careful or the next trip I'd bring him a mule. Oh, George remembers us alright."

  Chip could imagine the haughty George McClellan now a powerful political figure being required to spend long hours becoming a friend to his horse. Well, McClellan had been wise enough to seek out a Shatto horse when he was just a Lieutenant so at least he had stayed that smart.

  "How do you figure I should approach him, Pap?"

  "Well, I think we might ride down together and...."

  "Now, Pap, I can't go in there like a little boy with my father fixin' things for me. If I go I've got to do it alone."

  Rob quickly shifted his aim. "Hummphf! If it wouldn't wound me to go in askin' a favor, I doubt it'd pain you too much to take one. If you feel the need, go it alone, but I'm including a letter whether you like it or not. I'll give him greetings and a little news he'll find interesting. Then I'll tell him why I think he should find something sort of individual for you to do.

  "Hell, Chip, you can't very well walk in on the General do a rain dance, and tell him how terrible dangerous you are on a war trail. If a man goes spouting his own importance he only sounds like a fool—a Nace Myers, you might say. Somebody else has to do the bragging for you."

  Chip grinned, knowing it was true, and rose to stretch powerfully and gather up his bundle of clothing.

  "Ok, Pap, I reckon we're agreed." He looked at the sun judging the time. "I'm going in and get Ma to move supper along a little faster. I'm fair starving."

  "Maybe you'd better start skipping a few meals, Chip. Get you trimmed down and used to hard army living."

  Chip pretended to consider. "'Fraid not, Pap. It's so good to be home to Ma and Mrs. Oakes' cooking that I'll just have to report to the Army all fatted up like a fall grizzly. But Pap, fall grizzlies ain't nothing to fool with either, remember."

  Chapter 3

  To Chip's eyes, Washington was a steaming, stinking, human ant hill. Uniformed men scurried on countless missions, civilians crowded and bustled with sharp eyed importance, and women of all persuasions paraded and postured. Everyone sweated and humidity approached the intolerable. Built on a swamp, the youthful nation's Capital was ill prepared for the crush of war. Dig down a few feet and water filled the hole, even as dust rose from unpaved streets in choking clouds. Wagons and carriages ground noisily across the better cobblestone and brick streets with the proliferating horse droppings continually pulped beneath hoof and wheel to become an inseparable part of the charnel house stench. Sweat, both animal and human, mixed with the backhouse odors and rotting garbage that was often disposed of in the gutters along the roadways.

  Construction appeared underway in every block with artillery batteries or infantry bivouacked in empty lots. Once spacious lawns were crowded tent cities with armies of soldiers occupying themselves with camp chores or rifle drills while cavalry cantered about and practiced saber gleaming charges in meadows along the Potomac.

  Chip let his horse pick its way, turning it when needed by almost undetectable knee pressure. He adopted the deliberately expressionless visage used by plains Indians to disguise his feelings. If he hadn't, he was sure his mouth would have hung open like an unlettered bumpkin's. That so many could crowd so tightly and each be so urgently intent on his own probably insignificant task boggled belief. He wondered that someone high up didn't in desperation call out, "Halt! Now let's just start over and do it right!" Probably they had, but no one noticed.

  To a man accustomed to the loneliness of the western high country, even the valleys and towns of Perry County squeezed comfortably, but this.... Chip thought maybe the Tower of Babel might have looked a lot like Washington.

  It was no wonder the Confederacy had licked the Union for more than two years.

  Of course, he too made the scene a touch more strange.

  Old Rob had been insistent that he go in looking like a frontiersman. With his well-worn dragoon Colt pistol holstered on one hip and his hunting pouch balancing the other he figured he looked warlike enough, but Pap had handed over the old Rob Shatto pistol, insisting that Chip wear it in the small of his back as two earlier Shattos had.

  Of course not many wore Sioux-tanned skins and moccasins and, like most mountain men, he carried two rifles. Jack Elan's old black rifle with its big bore twin barrels remained his main gun but one of the new seven shot Spencer carbines replaced the Hawken rifle he had favored in the west.

  A big wild-looking man on an unusual spotted-rump horse, he turned heads more often than even the gaudily uniformed aides who pranced along the wide streets. Beneath the broad brimmed hat his face remained shadowed and even a mite threatening. Most men—secure in their unwrinkled suits, polished footgear, and tall hats—saw his passing with heightened senses. His appearance spoke of distant mountains and unexplored places. It followed that here rode a man not to be trifled with.

  The main arteries of the city led to the Capitol but Chip rode slowly, turning occasionally along side streets. Confusion increased the closer he came to the city's heart and only the ceaseless torment of clouds of annoying and often stinging flies remained constant. Breeding and nourished within the manure and refuse saturated streets, the flies apparently preferred horseflesh to all others.

  They swarmed among the tethered mounts causing continual head shaking, and tail flailing. Every animal wore its energies with repeated hide ripplings that only a horse can accomplish in desperate efforts to dislodge the biting tormentors.

  Chip thought again that without having to search very far a man could do a lot better
than live in such a dung heap.

  General George McClellan was easily found. A political figure of note, he occupied rooms in a prominent hotel near both Capitol and War Department. From there he maintained contacts within the military establishment and developed his political influence.

  Chip employed a pair of street waifs armed with horsetail flicks to keep flies from devouring his horse and crossed a high-ceilinged lobby to enter the General's ground floor offices.

  Within, a number of well-dressed individuals perched on straight backed chairs placed against a wall while a civilian clerk and a flamboyantly uniformed aide labored with paper and pens. The aide's eyes widened and his mouth, half hidden beneath a flaring cavalry mustache, popped slightly as Chip's leather clad body loomed like a small mountain above his desk.

  Resting a casual hand on the butt of his holstered Colt, Chip explained that he'd come a ways to see the General. The aide suggested he occupy the next seat along the waiting line of suited civilians and he would ask the General to see him when time was available.

  Chip thought about it a long moment, expecting he'd have a lengthy wait. Numbing his rump on a wooden seat wasn't appealing but when a man came asking a favor he couldn't very well knock down doors to gain attention.

  One of old Rob's favorite stories came to mind and he grinned inwardly while adjusting it to his own needs.

  When old Rob had needed help in Philadelphia, he had been refused admittance to wealthy James Cummens' presence. Above the clerk's displeasure Rob had hooted like an owl and. recognizing their old frontier signal. Cummens had come rushing out. Well, General George McClellan wouldn't answer to an owl hoot, but he might to something else.