The damned Yankees took everything I ever had in my life. My family, my friends... they were all killed in the war of Northern Aggression, slaughtered in the battles, torched by Sherman when he burned Atlanta and Georgia, or starved by the hard times during the occupation. I was a messenger for the Confederates, back in sixty-three when we were still fighting hard and invading the oppressor north. Trouble is, I wasn't even knocked out of the war by one of those Yankee bastards. I got shot in the leg by a Confederate turncoat the day before Gettysburg.
It was a bloody ugly shot, breaking bones and everything else that got in front of that goddamned traitor's bullet. I passed out in that mud, falling off my horse and breaking the leg even worse. My eyesight is terrible, so the only thing I really saw was that traitor's Confederate gray coat, and his dirty black hair flying in the wind, without the cap that most of us rebels wore. I wish that I'd had spectacles so I could have seen his face and loathed it for the rest of my life. Getting captured wasn't what really made me furious though.
I hadn't ever told anyone else in the world, because of the shame of it, but I had been carrying the plans that good General Lee had drawn up for the battle the next day. That traitor hadn't just damned me to a charity hospital in Pennsylvania, but had lost the war for ol' Dixie, cause next thing that happened, a Union patrol found me and gave the battle plans to General Meade. Lee got crushed because of that, even though he never said anything about it. Sir Robert E. was not one to shuffle blame to others.
The war just finished a couple days ago, but I'd known it was just a matter of time ever since our boys fled south and Sherman went through my beloved Atlanta. There just wasn't the same life to Dixie after that defeat and that idiot speech of Lincoln's. Lincoln's another bastard this world could do without.
So now I'm still laying in this charity hospital, next to some crazy old coot with bandages all over his face and eyes, and his arm wrapped up for good measure. The bloody Yanks found him next to me in the mud that day. He says he was shot down defending Dixie, but me and Doc Davy think he was just drunk and managed to shoot himself twice somehow. The old guy asks me constantly if I had heard of the condition of the soldier who had been carrying Lee's battle plans, but I just said no, because I didn't want to admit it had been me to him anymore than I wanted to tell anyone else. After two years learning how much I hated the north, Doc Davy (who had confided in me that he shared my sentiments about Lincoln and all the rest of the northern aggressors, being a good Virginian himself), said that I could leave in just a couple days because my leg was almost healed up for good, even though I would always have a limp.
It was funny, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'd been in the army since I was fifteen, and before that I just did what my Pa told me for the most part, doing odds and ends around the town to pick up a few dollars. All I knew was that Doc Davy and I would be getting together to discuss a little revival of the spirit of Dixie. So I left the hospital after two years wearing the same old tattered uniform I'd been wearing when I was shot, minus the hat which had been lost somewhere along the way in the hospital.
Crazy as it sounds, it was the old guy in the bed next to me that gave me a clue what to do. Having been impressed by my stories about the army, he pressed a small hunk of metal with glowing lights into my hand. He said that if I just whispered to it, it would take me to any place or time. Then he told me that he hadn't been able to save Dixie with it, but maybe I still could. You must think I'm insane, but once I got outside the hospital I figured that I didn't have anything to lose, and told that piece of metal where I wanted to go. There was only one place in all of history I would want to be, and that was at Gettysburg again so I could shoot that son of a bitch who betrayed the south, shot me and lost the war for the Confederacy. God bless Dixie, but it worked just like that daffy old fool said! In a blink, after I said where I wanted to be, I was there without a sound or any kind of warning. I closed my eyes outside that hospital and opened them at Gettysburg. The scattered crack of rifles, the harsh smell of powder, the thunder of cannon! By God, I was back at the day before Gettysburg, before I was shot and Dixie fell!
I knew exactly where I was, about a half mile from where that traitor had shot me down. It was a bit hazy because I'd lost some of the memory of it from my injuries and the passage of time, but I could remember enough to make a difference. Picking up a rifle from the nearest dead man, I ran as fast as my limp would allow me.
Cresting a hill, I stood above a muddy little vale where the bastard had ambushed me. I saw a gray-uniformed soldier kneeling beside one of a few bodies sprawled in the mud. He picked up a hat and pulled it onto his head and then slung a pack over his shoulders before moving to a nearby horse. Rage pounded in my ears when I realized that this must be the traitor who had shot me, flowing black hair covered by a hat, leaving my body in the mud to steal my horse, my hat, and the plans that would win or lose the war for Dixie.
Without hesitation, I kneeled and shot at the traitor. I missed him though, because my eyes were so weak that they blurred when I tried to aim. My second shot struck him in the leg though, fittingly enough the same one he had shot me in. The worthless bastard crumpled to the ground with a scream. I limped down the hill to him, intending to take my pack back and deliver it to General Lee's cavalry commander, but a shot rang out behind me from where I had just fired at the traitor. As I had no time to lose, I grabbed as many papers as I could from the pack and dove into the bushes just as I heard another shot and felt horrible fire burst through my left arm. I knelt there, too tortured with pain to move and barely able to contain the howl building up inside of me.
No more shots rang out, but I figured whatever Yankee bastard had shot at me must have just run out of bullets and was watching if I would poke my head out. Checking the chamber of the repeater rifle, I realized that I only had three shots left, and I would have to make them count. My patience was rewarded when soon I saw between the branches of the bush that a figure was making his way into the vale towards me, holding his arm in obvious pain. I was gonna give him a little more of that when I got the chance.
He searched through the pile of papers within the pack for several minutes before I worked up the will to move my ravaged arm enough to get a clear shot. As he stood and picked up my pack that still lay in the mud, I shot him, although he was mostly obscured by the shadows of the trees around us. His head snapped back with a grotesque scream and I saw that he too was clothed in a faded Confederate uniform. The wound was horrible, and it seemed as if my shot had grazed off most of his face, and yet he lived somehow.
I shook my head in bewilderment at how many traitors were running around unbeknownst to anyone. As I stood to leave the bushes and retrieve my pack, I noticed that I was being enclosed by a half circle of Union troops throughout the vale. They hadn't yet seen me but were already in the clearing where the pack was sitting next to the two traitors. A few minutes earlier and I would have been safe, but now I was in grave danger, any movement would be fatal as the screen of troops moved closer. Without any other option I told the chunk of metal I wanted back to 1865, outside the charity hospital I had just left. At least now I could save part of the plans I had just grabbed from the Union.
Back at the hospital now, I rushed inside to talk to Doc Davy who was surprised to see me, especially with a bullet hole in my arm and a rifle in hand. I was eager to see if the Confederacy had been saved, but Doc Davy just looked at me as if I was crazy and asked if I had shot myself with the rifle I had inexplicably acquired in the last three minutes.
It took several minutes of arguing with Doc Davy before it dawned on me that the plans I had taken must not have been enough to avert the Union victory. The hatred was flowing through me again as I thought of the other traitor in Confederate uniform who had kept me from stealing back the rest of the papers and saving Dixie. If I could get back a few minutes earlier, I would be able to stop the other traitor as well and take the pack to Lee's cavalry commander.
Saying nothing else to Doc Davy, I marched outside and told the old man's piece of metal to take me back again to Gettysburg just before I had been shot in the arm by the other traitor. Once again I was standing upon the crest of the hill above the fatal vale, and below I saw the second traitor searching through my pack, which the first traitor had dropped. There had to have been some mistake, I expected for him to be right in front of me here on the crest, but the hunk of metal wasn't too smart I guess. Otherwise it would have brought me back right as the bastard was about to shoot me from here.
Without time to think, I shrugged aside the metal's foolishness and fired, hoping I might still have time to grab the rest of the plans from my pack. There were only two bullets left in my rifle and so I aimed as precisely as I could with my blurry vision and pulled the trigger. The shot flew wide and the second traitor leapt up, grabbing some papers from the pack as my second bullet struck him in the arm. Before I could rush down to tackle him, the bastard jumped into the bushes.
I contemplated my situation. My left arm was crippled and I was out of bullets. But I knew from the previous visit that a Yankee patrol was only minutes away. I waited warily for what seemed like a lifetime, waiting for the bastard to show himself in those bushes, but there was no sign of the cretin. I climbed down to my pack to gather the plans for delivery to the cavalry commander. Just as I stood up with Dixie's salvation in my hands, an incredible hammer slammed into my skull. Crying with a shriek of a mind overwhelmed, I realized I had been shot in the face and fell to the mud writhing in pain. There was movement from the bushes from which the shot came but that vanished as the sound of a closing Yankee patrol moved in. Darkness enveloped me and I faded away into the misery and nightmares, knowing that the Yanks were going to get the plans after all.
I woke a few days later in a Yankee charity hospital next to some soldier that had been found near me on the battle field. My face was bandaged over completely, but Doc Davy here, (of course he doesn't know that he knows me yet), says that in a year or two he'll take off the bandages to find out if I can still see. My arm still aches in a wickedly painful sling Doc Davy rigged up for it. The soldier next to me had something wrong with his leg that he never wanted to talk about and would always get defensive when I asked him if he had heard about the soldier caught by the Yanks with Lee's plans. Can't blame a man for wanting to know if he's alive.
I gave up after a while because I'm pretty sure that he thought me a little crazy. In my pocket I still kept the piece of metal with lights on it that the crazy fellow gave me. There wasn't much point in using it when I couldn't see anyway.
Two years have rolled by now and I just gave the piece of metal to the young guy in the bed next to me since he's leaving the ward now and seems awfully loyal to Dixie. I said what it could do for him, and told him to go help old Dixie with it since I hadn't been able to. Doc told me that no sooner had the young guy left then he walked back in with an arm ripped up from a bullet. We had a good laugh at that, but I really hope he was able to help Dixie anyway.
A couple days after the young guy left, Doc Davy cut off the bandages and let me leave. Since then me and him got together a couple of times and came up with a few ideas of how to bring back old Dixie again. Tomorrow night, I'm going to the theater to see the President.
It was a bloody ugly shot, breaking bones and everything else that got in front of that goddamned traitor's bullet. I passed out in that mud, falling off my horse and breaking the leg even worse. My eyesight is terrible, so the only thing I really saw was that traitor's Confederate gray coat, and his dirty black hair flying in the wind, without the cap that most of us rebels wore. I wish that I'd had spectacles so I could have seen his face and loathed it for the rest of my life. Getting captured wasn't what really made me furious though.
I hadn't ever told anyone else in the world, because of the shame of it, but I had been carrying the plans that good General Lee had drawn up for the battle the next day. That traitor hadn't just damned me to a charity hospital in Pennsylvania, but had lost the war for ol' Dixie, cause next thing that happened, a Union patrol found me and gave the battle plans to General Meade. Lee got crushed because of that, even though he never said anything about it. Sir Robert E. was not one to shuffle blame to others.
The war just finished a couple days ago, but I'd known it was just a matter of time ever since our boys fled south and Sherman went through my beloved Atlanta. There just wasn't the same life to Dixie after that defeat and that idiot speech of Lincoln's. Lincoln's another bastard this world could do without.
So now I'm still laying in this charity hospital, next to some crazy old coot with bandages all over his face and eyes, and his arm wrapped up for good measure. The bloody Yanks found him next to me in the mud that day. He says he was shot down defending Dixie, but me and Doc Davy think he was just drunk and managed to shoot himself twice somehow. The old guy asks me constantly if I had heard of the condition of the soldier who had been carrying Lee's battle plans, but I just said no, because I didn't want to admit it had been me to him anymore than I wanted to tell anyone else. After two years learning how much I hated the north, Doc Davy (who had confided in me that he shared my sentiments about Lincoln and all the rest of the northern aggressors, being a good Virginian himself), said that I could leave in just a couple days because my leg was almost healed up for good, even though I would always have a limp.
It was funny, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'd been in the army since I was fifteen, and before that I just did what my Pa told me for the most part, doing odds and ends around the town to pick up a few dollars. All I knew was that Doc Davy and I would be getting together to discuss a little revival of the spirit of Dixie. So I left the hospital after two years wearing the same old tattered uniform I'd been wearing when I was shot, minus the hat which had been lost somewhere along the way in the hospital.
Crazy as it sounds, it was the old guy in the bed next to me that gave me a clue what to do. Having been impressed by my stories about the army, he pressed a small hunk of metal with glowing lights into my hand. He said that if I just whispered to it, it would take me to any place or time. Then he told me that he hadn't been able to save Dixie with it, but maybe I still could. You must think I'm insane, but once I got outside the hospital I figured that I didn't have anything to lose, and told that piece of metal where I wanted to go. There was only one place in all of history I would want to be, and that was at Gettysburg again so I could shoot that son of a bitch who betrayed the south, shot me and lost the war for the Confederacy. God bless Dixie, but it worked just like that daffy old fool said! In a blink, after I said where I wanted to be, I was there without a sound or any kind of warning. I closed my eyes outside that hospital and opened them at Gettysburg. The scattered crack of rifles, the harsh smell of powder, the thunder of cannon! By God, I was back at the day before Gettysburg, before I was shot and Dixie fell!
I knew exactly where I was, about a half mile from where that traitor had shot me down. It was a bit hazy because I'd lost some of the memory of it from my injuries and the passage of time, but I could remember enough to make a difference. Picking up a rifle from the nearest dead man, I ran as fast as my limp would allow me.
Cresting a hill, I stood above a muddy little vale where the bastard had ambushed me. I saw a gray-uniformed soldier kneeling beside one of a few bodies sprawled in the mud. He picked up a hat and pulled it onto his head and then slung a pack over his shoulders before moving to a nearby horse. Rage pounded in my ears when I realized that this must be the traitor who had shot me, flowing black hair covered by a hat, leaving my body in the mud to steal my horse, my hat, and the plans that would win or lose the war for Dixie.
Without hesitation, I kneeled and shot at the traitor. I missed him though, because my eyes were so weak that they blurred when I tried to aim. My second shot struck him in the leg though, fittingly enough the same one he had shot me in. The worthless bastard crumpled to the ground with a scream. I limped down the hill to him, intending to take my pack back and deliver it to General Lee's cavalry commander, but a shot rang out behind me from where I had just fired at the traitor. As I had no time to lose, I grabbed as many papers as I could from the pack and dove into the bushes just as I heard another shot and felt horrible fire burst through my left arm. I knelt there, too tortured with pain to move and barely able to contain the howl building up inside of me.
No more shots rang out, but I figured whatever Yankee bastard had shot at me must have just run out of bullets and was watching if I would poke my head out. Checking the chamber of the repeater rifle, I realized that I only had three shots left, and I would have to make them count. My patience was rewarded when soon I saw between the branches of the bush that a figure was making his way into the vale towards me, holding his arm in obvious pain. I was gonna give him a little more of that when I got the chance.
He searched through the pile of papers within the pack for several minutes before I worked up the will to move my ravaged arm enough to get a clear shot. As he stood and picked up my pack that still lay in the mud, I shot him, although he was mostly obscured by the shadows of the trees around us. His head snapped back with a grotesque scream and I saw that he too was clothed in a faded Confederate uniform. The wound was horrible, and it seemed as if my shot had grazed off most of his face, and yet he lived somehow.
I shook my head in bewilderment at how many traitors were running around unbeknownst to anyone. As I stood to leave the bushes and retrieve my pack, I noticed that I was being enclosed by a half circle of Union troops throughout the vale. They hadn't yet seen me but were already in the clearing where the pack was sitting next to the two traitors. A few minutes earlier and I would have been safe, but now I was in grave danger, any movement would be fatal as the screen of troops moved closer. Without any other option I told the chunk of metal I wanted back to 1865, outside the charity hospital I had just left. At least now I could save part of the plans I had just grabbed from the Union.
Back at the hospital now, I rushed inside to talk to Doc Davy who was surprised to see me, especially with a bullet hole in my arm and a rifle in hand. I was eager to see if the Confederacy had been saved, but Doc Davy just looked at me as if I was crazy and asked if I had shot myself with the rifle I had inexplicably acquired in the last three minutes.
It took several minutes of arguing with Doc Davy before it dawned on me that the plans I had taken must not have been enough to avert the Union victory. The hatred was flowing through me again as I thought of the other traitor in Confederate uniform who had kept me from stealing back the rest of the papers and saving Dixie. If I could get back a few minutes earlier, I would be able to stop the other traitor as well and take the pack to Lee's cavalry commander.
Saying nothing else to Doc Davy, I marched outside and told the old man's piece of metal to take me back again to Gettysburg just before I had been shot in the arm by the other traitor. Once again I was standing upon the crest of the hill above the fatal vale, and below I saw the second traitor searching through my pack, which the first traitor had dropped. There had to have been some mistake, I expected for him to be right in front of me here on the crest, but the hunk of metal wasn't too smart I guess. Otherwise it would have brought me back right as the bastard was about to shoot me from here.
Without time to think, I shrugged aside the metal's foolishness and fired, hoping I might still have time to grab the rest of the plans from my pack. There were only two bullets left in my rifle and so I aimed as precisely as I could with my blurry vision and pulled the trigger. The shot flew wide and the second traitor leapt up, grabbing some papers from the pack as my second bullet struck him in the arm. Before I could rush down to tackle him, the bastard jumped into the bushes.
I contemplated my situation. My left arm was crippled and I was out of bullets. But I knew from the previous visit that a Yankee patrol was only minutes away. I waited warily for what seemed like a lifetime, waiting for the bastard to show himself in those bushes, but there was no sign of the cretin. I climbed down to my pack to gather the plans for delivery to the cavalry commander. Just as I stood up with Dixie's salvation in my hands, an incredible hammer slammed into my skull. Crying with a shriek of a mind overwhelmed, I realized I had been shot in the face and fell to the mud writhing in pain. There was movement from the bushes from which the shot came but that vanished as the sound of a closing Yankee patrol moved in. Darkness enveloped me and I faded away into the misery and nightmares, knowing that the Yanks were going to get the plans after all.
I woke a few days later in a Yankee charity hospital next to some soldier that had been found near me on the battle field. My face was bandaged over completely, but Doc Davy here, (of course he doesn't know that he knows me yet), says that in a year or two he'll take off the bandages to find out if I can still see. My arm still aches in a wickedly painful sling Doc Davy rigged up for it. The soldier next to me had something wrong with his leg that he never wanted to talk about and would always get defensive when I asked him if he had heard about the soldier caught by the Yanks with Lee's plans. Can't blame a man for wanting to know if he's alive.
I gave up after a while because I'm pretty sure that he thought me a little crazy. In my pocket I still kept the piece of metal with lights on it that the crazy fellow gave me. There wasn't much point in using it when I couldn't see anyway.
Two years have rolled by now and I just gave the piece of metal to the young guy in the bed next to me since he's leaving the ward now and seems awfully loyal to Dixie. I said what it could do for him, and told him to go help old Dixie with it since I hadn't been able to. Doc told me that no sooner had the young guy left then he walked back in with an arm ripped up from a bullet. We had a good laugh at that, but I really hope he was able to help Dixie anyway.
A couple days after the young guy left, Doc Davy cut off the bandages and let me leave. Since then me and him got together a couple of times and came up with a few ideas of how to bring back old Dixie again. Tomorrow night, I'm going to the theater to see the President.
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