The Biscuit Run
By
Darrel Bird
Copyright 2009 by Darrel Bird
The Biscuit Run
On that bright summer Arkansas morning in 1862, fifteen-year-old Jacob Banning walked out onto the porch, pulling on his suspenders. He looked down the dusty road toward the barn at old Fred, one of the two plough mules the family owned. He watched as Fred scratched the underside of his jaw on the rail fence. Old Fred shook his head and went back to look for corn that wasn’t there.
I swear; that mule checks his feed trough as if he thinks it will grow corn. The only food Fred liked more than corn was apples.
The early morning sun was warm on Jacob’s shoulders as he stood there, sleepily thinking about the new ground he had started putting the turning plough to yesterday. He thought of the time the land had lain dormant. Seven years was almost half his life; he was expecting a good crop of corn off that land. He looked at his hands, which had become strong from hard work. Yes, he looked forward to breaking and planting that field.
Jacob had grown tall. He had soft brown eyes; a kindly look about him, and he favored his mother. His shock of blonde hair was in striking contrast to his tanned face.
He thought about going through the kitchen and trying to snag a biscuit. Jacob had made many biscuit runs, and he was tempted now, to have a run at that kitchen. The middle bedroom of the house connected to the kitchen, which extended all the way across the back of the house. This meant you had to go through a bedroom to get from the living room to the kitchen. The kitchen had a back door, so if he was fast enough he could run all the way through the house and out the kitchen door, snagging a biscuit on the way, while dodging his mother’s long-handled cooking spoon. However, the thought of that spoon cracking atop his head cured him of such delusions. It took a certain amount of luck, and he didn’t feel up to the run. Besides, patience got the better of his stomach, and so he set himself to wait.
His mother frowned on anybody getting a biscuit before she called. He smiled as he remembered the runs he had made at that kitchen and come away victorious with a hot biscuit. He and his mother had played the game since he was six years old. She never failed to give him a withering look as she called him to breakfast, but he had caught her smiling more than once as he made it through the back door. Jacob could see the sparkle in his mother’s eyes, and it always made him feel good. Her put-on frown couldn’t mask the love for him that shone in her face.
Jacob’s mother was a kind and soft-spoken woman. She had taught him out of the Good Book since he was knee-high to a bantam rooster. Her voice often sounded to him like angels calling. Two years ago, his family had hooked the team to the wagon and went over to the Low Gap Church revival. Low Gap Church sat right in the saddle that gave Low Gap Mountain its name. It was a plain one-room building that had been constructed right by the side of the road, up against a stand of big pine and oak timber. Jacob had never understood the reason for it being built there, but it had been, and the people had decided to hold revival there that summer.
It was there he had accepted the Lord, and he had been baptized that night in a neighbor’s cow pond. He was fourteen at the time, and it had changed him somehow. Since then, he had gone to church whenever he could. The nearest church was ten miles away, over at a place called “the Colony.” He never did know why they called it that, as there was no colony there. It was just a church and a graveyard.
He knew his mother always prayed for him, because he could hear her. The only time his mother ever raised her voice was when she prayed. The past year he took to kneeling beside her during prayers. When his mother prayed, it would make the hair at the back of his neck stand up and send shivers up and down his spine, and the longer she prayed the louder she got. The Holy Spirit was so pervasive you had to either pray yourself or get clean away -- one or the other!
Jacob had heard her praying clear down to the barn a time or two after Pap cut out for Tennessee to join the Confederates. He remembered how his mother had clung to Pap as his Pap looked at him and said, “Boy, you got to take care of your ma.” Then he just got on his horse and rode off, and nobody had heard from him since. There had been word that some from a Tennessee company had been captured and taken north by rail. Some had died of wounds they received in a skirmish. They didn’t know if Pap was in either group, but Jacob knew Pap would have written by now if he could, so it didn’t look good.
Jacob would be the third generation of Bannings to make a living from this land. The Banning farm sat on three hundred acres of rich mountain land, and they owned the whole mountain. There were miles of forest between the nearest small town, Morgantown, and the mountain. The Morgantown Road was the only way back into their land.
Not many folks made the 15-mile trip from the town, so his eyes widened a bit as he noticed horses with riders coming around the bend in the road. When you looked down and saw folks down the road, you knew it had to be “comp’ny comin’.”
That’s what met his eyes on that early summer morning. He counted five horses, with riders, making their way up the road. He stood there as the men pulled the horses up to the front of the house. He could tell they were Confederate soldiers, although they wore only scraps of southern uniforms. The rest of their clothing was homespun. The men stopped their horses about five feet from the porch and eyed Jacob, as Jacob eyed them.
“Howdy,” Jacob spoke, and two of them nodded their heads.
They sure are a rough looking bunch, Jacob thought. The men all had rifles. They just sat saddle and looked around at the house and yard. The chickens paid no mind as they scratched and clucked in their never-ending search for whatever they were looking for. You couldn’t ever rightly tell what a chicken was looking for.
One of the men was really big, and Jacob thought he might be the leader. He had a full beard, wore a southern uniform coat, a Rebel cap, and homespun breeches. A long, wicked-looking knife in a leather sheath hung from his belt. He had ice-blue eyes that he laid on Jacob in a cold stare. His manner made Jacob’s skin crawl.
“You got anything to eat, boy?” He shifted in his saddle.
Then his mother walked out from the living room. Since the kitchen was in back of the house, Jacob knew she hadn’t heard them ride up. She tiredly wiped her worn hands on her apron and spoke in her soft voice, “You men are welcome to breakfast with us; we got biscuits and bacon if you want to get down and come in.”
His mother reached up to brush a wisp of hair back. Her hair was graying, and her beauty long since sacrificed to hard work on the farm. There was crow’s feet around her once-pretty eyes.
The big man with the skinning knife said, “No, we ain’t got time. We’re headed fer Pea Ridge. If you could just give us some of them biscuits and bacon, we’ll be on our way.”
Jacob’s mother turned and headed back through the house, toward the kitchen, as the men sat silently on their horses. After a few minutes, she came back through the door and handed them the pan of fluffy biscuits and some thick bacon. The men sat upon their horses and wolfed it down.
One of the men said, “Boy, they is a fight brewin’ up at Pea Ridge, and we could use some hep if you kin shoot a squirrel gun.” Jacob knew Pea Ridge was some 50 to 60 miles or so to the northeast of their farm, which meant the men planned to drop off the backside of the mountain and ford the Little Red River there.
They didn’t get much news about the war, although a few months back six Kansas raiders had appeared over at the little settlement of Morgantown. They tried their hand at shooting and pillaging, and been hanged for their trouble. People around here didn’t take too kindly to being shot at. All the same, the local men got their names be
fore they hanged them. Then they carved the names of the raiders on some flat rocks, and gave them a Christian burial in the local cemetery at the foot of Morgantown Hill. The story went that one of the men could barely give his name, and had watered his pants when he had seen his name being carved on that rock as he stood shaking and waiting to die.
Jacob stood there, thinking about the killing. As the men finished their biscuits, the big man said, “Boy, yer comin’ along with us, so you git that mule.” His mother looked horrified as every one of those men turned hard and mean-looking right before their eyes. One of the men