Part of Tom Cutters instructions to his men:

"We will have something original on this drive. Out artist, Artie Cohn, has painted a map all the way to Abilene on the chuck wagon canvas. He'll be painting our progress each day all the way to our destination as well as incidents that may happen along the way."

On the other side of the wagon he has painted another map for our trip back home. Check with them to know where we are, how far we've gone and how far we have to go."

THE MAP ON THE CHUCK WAGON CANVAS

By Tom Davy

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Tom Davy
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-4918-2

Chapter One

Corporal Art Cohn set his tin coffee cup on a large, flat rock and sat down next to it. He leaned back against an adjacent tree keeping the cup within easy reach. With his belly full and his seat fairly comfortable, his coffee seemed to be the proper finishing touch to his lunch. Cohn decided to relax and maybe draw another picture. That was his job, to draw historical pictures of the War.

As far as camps went, Cohn observed, this one was quiet and serene, carefully selected in a wooded area that created large blotches of shade next to a clear, fast-running stream. It was so hidden by surrounding woods and hills the camp would be difficult to see from very far away. Even the heavy campfire smoke was being diffused by heavy leaf cover, and that too would soon die down now that the noon meal was complete.

The Army tents were in neat double rows facing each other, spacing trees where needed and fanning out from the centrally located cooking fires. The horses were pastured in a grassy meadow just beyond the tents, but still close by and handy. It was a good place to rest-up and lick their wounds, ideal in fact. Nobody else knew they were there; in fact, they weren't real sure where they were either.

The sun was shining and the early spring warmth of the South was comforting and spirit-lifting for all the troopers. That was something the unit needed after their last skirmishes with the Yankee patrols as they made their move to get out of Georgia in a roundabout way and into Tennessee. They'd had to cut through the western part of South Carolina first, but that was no problem.

April showers had made travel and fighting dismal affairs as they rode, ate and slept in the rain. They had fought in mud and slop most of the way just to get where they were, but the men all knew that and accepted the weather as soldiers. They would probably have to continue their struggle to reach a still unknown destination in Tennessee. Maybe they were already in Tennessee, Cohn thought. He knew they were somewhere close to the border if they were not already there. It really made no difference; neither place was safe.

Across the campfire from Cohn was Major Thomas T. Cutter, C.S.A., 96th Cavalry, Company R, who was conferring with fellow officers. Cohn studied the man with his artist's eye as he had done many times before. He watched his lifelong friend—once a fun-loving cowboy who now looked a gaunt and tired leader of men, which he was. The weight of his command was taking its toll on the man, Cohn realized.

Cohn thought back to the day that General Longstreet had called Cutter to his field tent. Cutter was infantry then, he remembered. What Longstreet wanted, as Cohn later found out, was a cavalry unit like the one Lee had in JEB Stuart. He wanted and needed a unit that could keep an eye on the Union's strategy, but also one that could harass and raise havoc with the Union's daily routine just to simply slow them down. He wanted a man from Texas who knew horses and could ride like a cowboy. He had sent for Thomas T. Cutter.

Longstreet laid out his plans for Cutter. What he needed, he said, was for Tom to lead cavalry in a prescribed manner that grew from the imagination of the general. He then told Tom he would immediately be assigned the rank of captain, and he was to pick his own fifty men as long as all of them were good horsemen. For some reason, Longstreet insisted on that.

Tom would be assigned a captured, well-stocked bread wagon along with a driver and a team. The last thing Longstreet said to Cutter as he stroked his long brown beard was "We have no horses to spare. After you get your men together, you'll have to steal mounts from the Union cavalry. How you do that is up to you. While you're sneaking around their camps, pick up any information you can on the Yanks and report it to me along with where they are headed. I'll try to get word to you whenever we move camp and where it is that you'll report with your information."

"Whenever you find extra `qualified' men," he said, "just show these orders to their commanding officers and add them to your cavalry of renegades." Longstreet stopped his orders, smoothed his long, full beard with his hands again and smiled. "Because you won't know if you are `up or down,' being out there all alone, I have taken the liberty to name your group the 96th Cavalry because you can turn the number upside down and it still reads the 96th ." Cohn had always tried to find some kind of hidden meaning to Longstreet's statement but it never came to him. It was Longstreet's own, private little joke to Cutter as he smiled explaining it, but the name stuck, besides, they had to call it something.

Then Longstreet added, "You'll be Company R for Renegade. Your company will be a 'hell-bent-for-leather' kind of outfit, so don't let it grow to more than two hundred troopers." Longstreet leaned back in his chair and laughed out loud at the thought of his newly reorganized patrol, already proud of it. One of the few times the officer had any reason to laugh, feeble as it was at the time.

Getting serious again, Longstreet moved forward in his chair and emphasized the importance of Cutter's new command. That part was no joke, they needed that cavalry. Then he dismissed the new captain and returned to his study of maps, orders, thoughts and strategies for his Army.

Captain Thomas T. Cutter's first recruit was Artie Cohn. Artie was proud of that; it also gave him one more stripe on his uniform's sleeve; now he had two. The two men put their heads together to decide their first step in recruiting others. They found the other Texans from their previous unit who they knew to be cowboys. Later, they learned there were some fine horsemen from Virginia whose families owned horse farms. That spurred them on to find other horsemen from Kentucky and Tennessee who were fighting for the South. There were twenty-eight in all and to a man were anxious to join the new 96th, jumping at a chance to ride instead of marching everywhere. Ten days later, Cutter had his fifty men and marched out on their first horse-stealing mission.

All of the men decided among themselves to steal only officers' horses, or maybe others that were of good quality. To do that, they knew they would take others and move them to a faraway place in order to have more time to pick and choose. Other Confederate units could have the mounts that were left over; they definitely did not want the Union cavalry to have them. Later, they decided to run off all the Yankee horses they could just to put the Yankee cavalry afoot. What was a cavalry without horses?

Anticipation for action rose from day one; it was infectious, the new recruits picked up on it immediately. They could feel the pride of being in the 96th; they rode tall and straight in the saddle, anxious to make their mark. It was to nobody's surprise when Cutter's Renegades gained well-deserved reputations by both the Blue and the Gray. They became a force to be reckoned with by the North.

At first, the 96th worked their craft only at night. They grew bold and looked for dangerous missions to test their mettle. Sometimes in the beginning, they would sneak between and past pickets to take only officers' horses that were kept separate from the enlisted men's mounts. They were not hard to find, or to pick out. There were times when they could boldly lead them right out of Yankee camps without being challenged or detected, but that was before the 96th became well known. Sometimes they would stampede the horses and round them up after they ran from the camp, but that was after they all were riding stolen mounts. It became a dare-devil game for the 96th. Morale remained high for the growing cavalry unit.

Often the troopers would laugh at how easy it was to steal Yankee horses; other times after sneaking into Union camps they had to shoot their way out. There were nights when they had to jump the pickets to get to the horses and escape with them any way they could. Most of the time, however, they could sneak through the dark, undetected by the rest of the camp. That was when the Yankees started doubling and even tripling their pickets, but by then the 96th had just about all the horses they needed, but they continued their hit-and-run raids to slow down Yankee maneuvers. They became very selective for the horses they stole and no one was shy about upgrading their mounts. Soon the 96th became well-known and new precautions were needed. Union patrols began looking for them. Cutter too sent out extra scouts and civilian dressed men to find locations of nearby cavalry and infantry.

During the day, looking for quality mounts, the 96th would study a unit's horses from cover a short way off. In particular, they looked for those animals with very little white for markings. They decided to have no grays or white horses and paints were definitely out, but then they saw none of those. Paints were hardly ever used as military mounts because they were not uniform in color. Solid-colored horses were usually the mode of the day.

It took only a month to get the 96th Cavalry, Company R, mounted and on patrol. They were all inexperienced cavalry, but as soldiers, they had all seen battlefield action and were, simply, under a new command with new tactics. Pride and anticipation had grown rapidly through the unit. They soon doubled in size and over the next six months they had grown to two hundred men.

Sneaking through Yankee camps, the men heard the Union cavalry talking about where they thought they were headed, what they had done and what they wanted to do if they caught up with the 96th. They gave the bits and pieces to Cutter, who pieced information together for his reports to Longstreet. It was no secret to the 96th that the Union troopers were concerned about being raided by the unit as comments were heard often. The Renegades had become a feared cavalry that kept the Union on their toes when they were in the 96th territory. The Union soon knew for sure when they were in the Renegade domain when the raids started in earnest.

There was the time they scattered a cavalry's horses and had the Yanks running after them. While they were chasing down their mounts another group of renegades hooked ropes on two cannons and pulled them out of the Yankee camp.

When Cutter had orders to meet with Longstreet in the western Georgia border town of Plantation City, Tom delivered the cannons to Longstreet and his artillery units. Cutter found the big guns cumbersome to move and had no real use for them. Longstreet needed the cannons and was glad to get them; they were a bonus he had not counted on. He smiled at Cutter's success at stealing and at building a formidable force. At that meeting, Longstreet gave Cutter his orders to move on to Tennessee and what his mission was when he got there, but first he made the man a major. After that Major Cutter made Artie a sergeant.

Major Tom was paying a price to run his mounted units and Cohn made a mental note of that. Cutter no longer had the youthful glitter to his eyes, but instead they were now dark and hard. He had seen too much death and destruction and had grown to a point where he could leave battlefields of dead men, mutilated horses and farmland devastation by simply turning his back and riding away, seemingly without remorse. Artie, however, knew the man better than that. He knew the carnage did bother their leader and he rode away just to distance himself from the scene. Artie knew those visions would eat at the man and keep him awake nights for a long time to come. Nightmares had become a nighttime malady for Cutter.

Remaining vigilant for his men's safety and welfare, Cutter in his first battles was hell-on-wheels on the battlefield just like Stuart, Picket and Custer, who had set the standard. His actions created a situation that gave his men the courage and idea that they would follow this man anywhere just to fight alongside of him. The man who, because of his ability to lead others, had been given that field commission by General Longstreet himself, which, along with everything else, had made Cohn's friend a loner. Artie missed their long-time, daily camaraderie.

When, a couple years back, Cutter received news from his neighbor, Bob Moline, that Tom's parents had died of cholera, Cohn had seen a coldness develop in Cutter's eyes that didn't go away. His temper grew short and he would often explode, ready to fight at the slightest provocation or adversity. He was not a man to fool with and all his men knew it. Nobody wanted to be on his down side, but it seemed strange to Cohn as an officer all his men worshipped him; maybe they were just glad to be with him and not against him.

When Cutter saw his casualty list from his reckless charges he quickly started to change his fighting tactics with his cavalry. He had learned some lessons fighting Indians back in Texas and applied some Indian tactics from them to his own attacks. His favorite tactic was to dismount his cavalry and move his horses back away from his ambush area. Then, when the Yankees marched toward his unit, the 96th would open fire from ambush, creating devastating blows to the unsuspecting Union troops. When the Yanks ran for cover and had their backsides to Cutter's men, the 96th would slip away and back to their horses where they would ride off doing their best to scatter the Yankee horses. They mustered only a few casualties in their own ranks using those tactics. They inflicted heavy casualties to the Union troops.

His other ideas of Indian type attacks seemed to work so well that in a short time Cutter had built the reputation of the 96th to enormous proportions. Cutter became a man wanted by the Union Army. They actually put rewards out for him, dead or alive, not caring if it was legal or not, but wanting to do anything to get the thorn from their side.

* * *

In further study of the man from his rock position, Cohn watched Cutter lean on the field table with both hands and pore over the maps unrolled there. Two of his lieutenants and Sergeant Cooper looked over the captain's shoulder all in deep study of the paper terrain.

"Artie," as the men called him, saw a plan forming on Cutter's face, indicated by his wry smile. He ended it all with a slap of his hand on the map and pointed out something to the others. Artie saw them all smile at Cutter's idea. Cutter then rolled up the maps and took them and the coffee pot with him to the campfire where he poured himself a cupful and then he walked toward his rock table. He sat down to join Cohn, leaning his back in tired resignation against the rock.

Chapter Two

Artie Cohn reached down for his ever-present drawing pad. He had been hired by a New York magazine to be an artistic correspondent, an unusual assignment for a Confederate soldier, but then, Artie was a well-known artist before the War. His new assignment was to draw what he saw on the battlefields and in rebel camps. When finished with a tablet of drawings, and he drew on both sides of the pages to save paper, he would make sure all of them were signed, dated and described what the drawing was about in a carefully lettered caption across the bottom of the page. Artie was good at his job; fast, accurate and prolific. He turned out several drawings every day. The drawings were sent to his magazine with rapid regularity, but not so fast that the Union could use them to locate the 96th. Besides, the Yankees did not know he was with the 96th. They moved too fast and too far for that. Drawing was Artie's passion and he never grew tired of it. He lived with a pencil in his hand and a drawing pad on his lap.

Checks and praises for Artie's work were sent by the magazines to his parents' Texas ranch. Artie knew the mail system was working because of two letters he had from home. The letters told of the checks and even all of his unused drawings that were sent back to the ranch after the magazine decided which drawings for their publications. The publishers were even printing a book of his historical drawings. The company also sent copies of the magazines to his home, the newly renamed town of Rimfire, Texas. Artie's parents could keep track of the War and Artie from the drawings and articles in the magazines. They also knew he was alive as long as the drawings were being delivered to the ranch. His checks were sizeable; his parents told him in their letters that they were being deposited in his savings account.

As soon as "Major Tom" sat down, Artie began to draw his friend's portrait. Tom knew what his artist friend was doing; he had done it many times before. Tom started their conversation after he made himself comfortable against the rock.

"Hear anything from home, Artie?" Tom asked, wanting to hear about news from No Name, Texas, which was the name Artie and Tom knew it by when they'd left home.

"Well, Tom," Artie said. "We're no longer from No Name, Texas. They've renamed the place Rimfire now." Tom nodded his head as he approved of the name and took a sip of coffee.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE MAP ON THE CHUCK WAGON CANVASby Tom Davy Copyright © 2010 by Tom Davy . Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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