Luck's Wild. G. Russell Peterman

      

      Luck's Wild

      A Civil War Story

      by

      G. Russell Peterman

      Copyright 2011 G. Russell Peterman,

      All rights reserved.

      Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com

       http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0266-6

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

      PREFACE

      In life there are many moments that confront us that looking back do turn out to be turning points. At these times we make choices. Which of these choices we take determines our future. We live our choices. If we had made different choices our lives would not have been the lived as we did. The young seldom view life this way. They just plow ahead taking much too often the easier alternative and are often later unhappy about it. Sometimes, they take the choice friends or parents or grandparents want them to take, not the one they want. If they do this someone else decides their life. In former-friends and family friction cases some even take the opposite choice and live a life of spite. How else can we understand the lives of children that are so different than their friends or family; this difference can be for better or worse?

      Often we have heard it said, "Play the cards you're dealt," as if life were a card game, a hand of poker. Consider the cards dealt and choices made by Collin Dymond, all diamonds in the card game of life if you like, a young Missourian off to seek gold, a family man, a drunk, a Civil War soldier promoted from private to Captain for bravery, avenging hunter of a friend’s murderer, and suitor. You can decide if Collin makes good choices or not. We both agree, don’t we, that you will make better choices when your cards are dealt.

      In telling Collin Dymond’s story I tried to be faithful to the records of the Second Kansas wherever possible. During research I found Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 by Jay Monaghan especially valuable. Civil War in the east has numerous histories and fictional stories about the conflict. Yet, strangely thin is the number of factual and fictional writings about bloody Kansas and the Civil War west of the Mississippi River. This story tries to cover the achievements of the Second Kansas Calvary in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and one action in Oklahoma

      G. Russell Peterman

      M.A. American History

      Vanderbilt University

      CHAPTER ONE: GOLD

      Two men pick rocks in the rain. Any unknowing passerby would think that strange, but no one passed by. When both Dymond men pause without a word to catch a breath they each glance repeatedly toward a fresh muddy mounded grave under a twisted white oak tree. A passing in any family means change.

      Dark low clouds dumping a steady rain come rushing out of the east, cross over scrub white oaks and rocks on Pea Ridge, and create a gray and black wet late spring day. Low gray clouds slowly float over leafless trees and unpainted rough sawn oak and log buildings soaked black by rain. Some locals jokingly call this place Flint Ridge for the hardness of its plentiful rocks. Dark clouds pushed by a moderate southeast wind drip down a steady cold rain. It is the second day of a soaker, as people in the Ozarks call any slow steady rain, and they are pleased with the gentleness of this passing gentle rainstorm. Everyone in Wright County, Missouri knows that any east wind means a bad storm or at least unsettled weather. Instead, this gentle eastern storm has proven a blessing—a steady soaker in an unusually warm and dry late spring. A year of drought followed by a winter lacking normal snow cover or rain had been followed by a cold windy dry spring. All winter the rocky clay ground had been so dry that cracks appeared before this soaker. It is almost unheard of to have cracks in the ground in the spring, creeks in pool stage, new grass turning brown on rocky hills, and farmers selling stock as the last hay stacks fed out. This soaker is delivering a blessing. Bowed heads before every meal these last two days gave thanks. Though to tell the truth, a few will admit before the assembled family and friends that this blessing has been a little slow in coming. After every meal, pleased eyes look out at their blessing from dark porches and glass windows and feel hope again.

      It is hard to see a blessing or feel hope on the Dymond Farm. Rainwater runs off the soft red rocky clay of a new grave and off red clay from between the plentiful rocks on their farm, sixty hardscrabble acres. Quickly, rainwater turns milky tan and then dark cloudy reddish brown from absorbed red clay.

      On this rocky ridge farm south-southwest of Hartville, Hansel Dymond often laughed in good times, "I plow by rolling rocks around, and harvest wheat or corn that sneaks up between the rocks." The gleam in his eye told others of his pride in making a crop on his poor ground. Neighbors with a sense of humor along the Pea Ridge Road laugh about their soil and call it “gritty.” Scrub white oak split into rails and cedar fence posts keep a Jersey milk cow, calf, and two mules from wandering off to hunt better grass. Times had been thin and extra cash-money came from skidding logs out of the woods in winter for farmers, hauling them to sawmill, and sometimes hauling wagonloads of freight from Dennis to Hartville. Whenever Jeb Collet had more than his two wagons could handle, the Dymonds had work. The chance to haul freight, even on a sometimes basis, made a loan to purchase a second mule necessary. Then, with the loan only half paid the illness of his wife Marthie would not let Hansel be away from home. It cost him his freighting job. His debt remained unpaid and the bank had demanded payment by the end of the month.

      Beyond the end of the barnyard fence stands the remains of less than half of a small haystack, this winter's last, on north side of the small half log and rough-sawn-oak barn. On the barn’s west side away from a small one-room and loft log cabin is a manure pile. Both unpainted buildings are soaked black from rain under a second day of dull gray overcast skies, racing black clouds, and blowing rain.

      Back toward the farmyard’s lone old white oak tree, a tree to twisted and stunted to make good fence posts that Hansel left standing for shade, a pair of mules pull a stone-boat. An A-frame made from two chopped flat on the top and bottom cedar logs with cross-pieces of white oak three-inch thick planking oak pegged, and topped with an inch thick oak bed. Two tall gaunt bearded men cross the yard behind the stone-boat dressed in old homemade knee-length deer-hide coats with large hand-sawn and whittled wooden buttons held on by leather loops. Their blackened by rain coats have a dull shine and both men wear wet floppy-brimmed black hats. Each man walks along side a full load of rocks heaped on their stone-boat not caring about the muddy gouge the dragged A-frame plows across the rocky mud of the yard.

      "Whoa!" yells Hansel Dymond, the father. His long white beard with the point cut straight across just above the first large wooden button drips rainwater. Whether Hansel stands or walks it is with a hunch in his shoulders from years of hard work. As he yells, the old man pulls back on the long reins roughly to stop his team of mules. The younger man, Collin Dymond, Hansel’s only living son, is not yet old enough to grow a good thick set of black whiskers. His beard grows mostly along his jawbones and a poor crop under a long pointed nose. Collin bends over and lifts the first rock from the A-frame without being told to do so.

      With the team of mules stopped beside the muddy mound of a fresh grave, neither man speaks. Both tall thin men work at the task of placing a layer of rocks over the new grave, empty the stone-boat, return to the hillside to load another heaping load, and return to work at a second layer. Beside the new rock-covered grave stands two small headboards newly replaced last winter for Collin’s younger brother and sister. These mark the sorrowful passing of two other Dymond children, Alex 2 and Lizzie 27 days. Neither was able to reach adulthood. Their short lives brought untold joy, anguish, and grief to the Dymond family. Quietly, rock after rock moves to the muddy grave for both want to be sure no man or beast ever disturbs this grave. From time-to-time, one will rest a moment and