Also, he and his hunting-shirt men are getting farther and farther from anything that might be termed a base of supplies. At last, many a pathless mile through wood and swamp, and many an unbridged river, lie between the nearest barrel of flour and their stomachs clamorous for food.
The military stomach is the first great base of every military operation. The war-wise Frederick had it for his aphorism, that an army is so much like a snake it can move forward only on its belly. The General is made painfully aware of this truism when he and his hunting-shirt men find themselves penned up with starvation at Fort Strother. In the teeth of his troubles, however, he makes shift to send home an orphaned papoose for the blooming Rachel to raise.
Famine takes command at Fort Strother, and the General writes: “He is an enemy I dread more than hostile Creeks--I mean the meager monster, Famine!” There is murmuring among the hunting-shirt men, who have, with the appetite common to bordermen, that contempt of discipline which belongs to their rude caste. They are reduced to roots and berries, with an occasional pigeon or squirrel, which latter diminutive deer no one waits to cook, but devours raw. One day a backwoods boy, whose appetite is even with his effrontery, waylays the General on his rounds and demands food.
“Here is what I was saving for supper,” says the General; “you may have that.” And he tosses the hungry one a double handful of acorns.
The starving hunting-shirt men mutiny; they draw themselves up preparatory to marching north, to find that home-fatness which waits for them on the Cumberland. At this the General changes his manner. Heretofore he has been the symbol of fatherly sympathy and toleration. He can make excuses for the grumbling of hungry men, and makes them. But this goes beyond grumbling, which, when all is in, comes to be no more than a healthful blowing off of angry steam; this is desertion by wholesale.
As the lean-flanked, rancorous ones line up to begin their homeward march, the General, haggard and emaciated by those Benton wounds and a want of food, rides out in front. Halting forty yards from the foremost mutineers, he swings from the saddle. In his right hand he carries a long eight-square rifle. This, since he has no left hand to support his aim, he runs across the empty saddle. Being ready, he calls on the hunting-shirt men to give the order to march, if they dare.