Chapter 11


He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder.


Great blown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him.


The noise,

too,

was approaching.


The woods filtered men and the fields became dotted.


As he rounded a hillock,

he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of wagons,

teams,

and men.


From the heaving tangle issued exhortations,

commands,

imprecations.


Fear was sweeping it all along.


The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged.


The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.


The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight.


They were all retreating.


Perhaps,

then,

he was not so bad after all.


He seated himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons.


They fled like soft,

ungainly animals.


All the roarers and lashers served to help him to magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in truth a symmetrical act.


There was an amount of pleasure to him in watching the wild march of this vindication.


Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared in the road.


It came swiftly on.


Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent.


The men at the head butted mules with their musket stocks.


They prodded teamsters indifferent to all howls.


The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by strength.


The blunt head of the column pushed.


The raving teamsters swore many strange oaths.


The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them.


The men were going forward to the heart of the din.


They were to confront the eager rush of the enemy.


They felt the pride of their onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble down this road.


They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time.


This importance made their faces grave and stern.


And the backs of the officers were very rigid.


As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to him.


He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings.


The separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of flame and banners of sunlight.


He could never be like them.


He could have wept in his longings.


He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the indefinite cause,

the thing upon which men turn the words of final blame.


It --whatever it was --was responsible for him,

he said.


There lay the fault.


The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young man to be something much finer than stout fighting.


Heroes,

he thought,

could find excuses in that long seething lane.


They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.


He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste to force their way to grim chances of death.


As he watched his envy grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.


He would have liked to have used a tremendous force,

he said,

throw off himself and become a better.


Swift pictures of himself,

apart,

yet in himself,

came to him --a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high --a blue,

determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault,

getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all.


He thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.


These thoughts uplifted him.


He felt the quiver of war desire.


In his ears,

he heard the ring of victory.


He knew the frenzy of a rapid successful charge.


The music of the trampling feet,

the sharp voices,

the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings of war.


For a few moments he was sublime.


He thought that he was about to start for the front.


Indeed,

he saw a picture of himself,

dust-stained,

haggard,

panting,

flying to the front at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark,

leering witch of calamity.


Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him.


He hesitated,

balancing awkwardly on one foot.


He had no rifle;


he could not fight with his hands,

said he resentfully to his plan.


Well,

rifles could be had for the picking.


They were extraordinarily profuse.


Also,

he continued,

it would be a miracle if he found his regiment.


Well,

he could fight with any regiment.


He started forward slowly.


He stepped as if he expected to tread upon some explosive thing.


Doubts and he were struggling.


He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him returning thus,

the marks of his flight upon him.


There was a reply that the intent fighters did not care for what happened rearward saving that no hostile bayonets appeared there.


In the battle-blur his face would,

in a way,

be hidden,

like the face of a cowled man.


But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth,

when the strife lulled for a moment,

a man to ask of him an explanation.


In imagination he felt the scrutiny of his companions as he painfully labored through some lies.


Eventually,

his courage expended itself upon these objections.


The debates drained him of his fire.


He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan,

for,

upon studying the affair carefully,

he could not but admit that the objections were very formidable.


Furthermore,

various ailments had begun to cry out.


In their presence he could not persist in flying high with the wings of war;


they rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light.


He tumbled headlong.


He discovered that he had a scorching thirst.


His face was so dry and grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle.


Each bone of his body had an ache in it,

and seemingly threatened to break with each movement.


His feet were like two sores.


Also,

his body was calling for food.


It was more powerful than a direct hunger.


There was a dull,

weight-like feeling in his stomach,

and,

when he tried to walk,

his head swayed and he tottered.


He could not see with distinctness.


Small patches of green mist floated before his vision.


While he had been tossed by many emotions,

he had not been aware of ailments.


Now the beset him and made clamor.


As he was at last compelled to pay attention to them,

his capacity for self-hate was multiplied.


In despair,

he declared that he was not like those others.


He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero.


He was a craven loon.


Those pictures of glory were piteous things.


He groaned from his heart and went staggering off.


A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the battle.


He had a great desire to see,

and to get news.


He wished to know who was winning.


He told himself that,

despite his unprecedented suffering,

he had never lost his greed for a victory,

yet,

he said,

in a half-apologetic manner to his conscience,

he could not but know that a defeat for the army this time might mean many favorable things for him.


The blows of the enemy would splinter regiments into fragments.


Thus,

many men of courage,

he considered,

would be obliged to desert the colors and scurry like chickens.


He would appear as one of them.


They would be sullen brothers in distress,

and he could then easily believe he had not run any farther or faster than they.


And if he himself could believe in his virtuous perfection,

he conceived that there would be small trouble in convincing all others.


He said,

as if in excuse for this hope,

that previously the army had encountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood and tradition of them,

emerging as bright and valiant as a new one;


thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster,

and appearing with the valor and confidence of unconquered legions.


The shrilling voices of the people at home would pipe dismally for a time,

but various general were usually compelled to listen to these ditties.


He of course felt no compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice.


He could not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be,

so he could center no direct sympathy upon him.


The people were afar and he did not conceive public opinion to be accurate at long range.


It was quite probable they would hit the wrong man who,

after he had recovered from his amazement would perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of his alleged failure.


It would be very unfortunate,

no doubt,

but in this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.


In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself.


He thought it would prove,

in a manner,

that he had fled early because of his superior powers of perception.


A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree.


This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.


A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important thing.


Without salve,

he could not,

he though,

were the sore badge of his dishonor through life.


With his heart continually assuring him that he was despicable,

he could not exist without making it,

through his actions,

apparent to all men.


If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost.


If the din meant that now his army's flags were tilted forward he was a condemned wretch.


He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation.


If the men were advancing,

their indifferent feet were trampling upon his chances for a successful life.


As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind,

he turned upon them and tried to thrust them away.


He denounced himself as a villain.


He said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence.


His mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before the spear of the yelling battle fiend,

and as he saw their dripping corpses on an imagined field,

he said that he was their murderer.


Again he thought that he wished he was dead.


He believed that he envied a corpse.


Thinking of the slain,

he achieved a great contempt for some of them,

as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless.


They might have been killed by lucky chances,

he said,

before they had had opportunities to flee or before they had been really tested.


Yet they would receive laurels from tradition.


He cried out bitterly that their crowns were stolen and their robes of glorious memories were shams.


However,

he still said that it was a great pity he was not as they.


A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape from the consequences of his fall.


He considered,

now,

however,

that it was useless to think of such a possibility.


His education had been that success for that might blue machine was certain;


that it would make victories as a contrivance turns out buttons.


He presently discarded all his speculations in the other direction.


He returned to the creed of soldiers.


When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be defeated,

he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take back to his regiment,

and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.


But,

as he mortally feared these shafts,

it became impossible for him to invent a tale he felt he could trust.


He experimented with many schemes,

but threw them aside one by one as flimsy.


He was quick to see vulnerable places in them all.


Furthermore,

he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him mentally low before he could raise his protecting tale.


He imagined the whole regiment saying:

"Where's Henry Fleming?


He run,

didn't

'e?


Oh,

my!"

He recalled various persons who would be quite sure to leave him no peace about it.


They would doubtless question him with sneers,

and laugh at his stammering hesitation.


In the next engagement they would try to keep watch of him to discover when he would run.


Wherever he went in camp,

he would encounter insolent and lingeringly cruel stares.


As he imagined himself passing near a crowd of comrades,

he could hear one say,

"There he goes!"


Then,

as if the heads were moved by one muscle,

all the faces were turned toward him with wide,

derisive grins.


He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone.


At it the others all crowed and cackled.


He was a slang phrase.



Chapter 12


The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the roadway was barely out of the youth's sight before he saw dark waves of men come sweeping out of the woods and down through the fields.


He knew at once that the steel fibers had been washed from their hearts.


They were bursting from their coats and their equipments as from entanglements.


They charged down upon him like terrified buffaloes.


Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops,

and through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant pink glare.


The voices of the cannon were clamoring in interminable chorus.


The youth was horrorstricken.


He stared in agony and amazement.


He forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe.


He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philosophy of the retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.


The fight was lost.


The dragons were coming with invincible strides.


The army,

helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the overhanging night,

was going to be swallowed.


War,

the red animal,

war,

the blood-swollen god,

would have bloated fill.


Within him something bade to cry out.


He had the impulse to make a rallying speech,

to sing a battle hymn,

but he could only get his tongue to call into the air:

"Why --why --what --what

's th' matter?"


Soon he was in the midst of them.


They were leaping and scampering all about him.


Their blanched faces shone in the dusk.


They seemed,

for the most part,

to be very burly men.


The youth turned from one to another of them as they galloped along.


His incoherent questions were lost.


They were heedless of his appeals.


They did not seem to see him.


They sometimes gabbled insanely.


One huge man was asking of the sky:

"Say,

where de plank road?


Where de plank road!"

It was as if he had lost a child.


He wept in his pain and dismay.


Presently,

men were running hither and thither in all ways.


The artillery booming,

forward,

rearward,

and on the flanks made jumble of ideas of direction.


Landmarks had vanished into the gathered gloom.


The youth began to imagine that he had got into the center of the tremendous quarrel,

and he could perceive no way out of it.


From the mouths of the fleeing men came a thousand wild questions,

but no one made answers.


The youth,

after rushing about and throwing interrogations at the heedless bands of retreating infantry,

finally clutched a man by the arm.


They swung around face to face.


"Why --why --" stammered the youth struggling with his balking tongue.


The man screamed:

"Let go me!

Let go me!"

His face was livid and his eyes were rolling uncontrolled.


He was heaving and panting.


He still grasped his rifle,

perhaps having forgotten to release his hold upon it.


He tugged frantically,

and the youth being compelled to lean forward was dragged several paces.


"Let go me!

Let go me!"


"Why --why --" stuttered the youth.


"Well,

then!"

bawled the man in a lurid rage.


He adroitly and fiercely swung his rifle.


It crushed upon the youth's head.


The man ran on.


The youth's fingers had turned to paste upon the other's arm.


The energy was smitten from his muscles.


He saw the flaming wings of lightning flash before his vision.


There was a deafening rumble of thunder within his head.


Suddenly his legs seemed to die.


He sank writhing to the ground.


He tried to arise.


In his efforts against the numbing pain he was like a man wrestling with a creature of the air.


There was a sinister struggle.


Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect,

battle with the air for a moment,

and then fall again,

grabbing at the grass.


His face was of a clammy pallor.


Deep groans were wrenched from him.


At last,

with a twisting movement,

he got upon his hands and knees,

and from thence,

like a babe trying to walk,

to his feet.


Pressing his hands to his temples he went lurching over the grass.


He fought an intense battle with his body.


His dulled senses wished him to swoon and he opposed them stubbornly,

his mind portraying unknown dangers and mutilations if he should fall upon the field.


He went tall soldier fashion.


He imagined secluded spots where he could fall and be unmolested.


To search for one he strove against the tide of pain.


Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly touched the wound.


The scratching pain of the contact made him draw a long breath through his clinched teeth.


His fingers were dabbled with blood.


He regarded them with a fixed stare.


Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the scurrying horses were lashed toward the front.


Once,

a young officer on a besplashed charger nearly ran him down.


He turned and watched the mass of guns,

men,

and horses sweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a fence.


The officer was making excited motions with a gauntleted hand.


The guns followed the teams with an air of unwillingness,

of being dragged by the heels.


Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing like fishwives.


Their scolding voices could be heard above the din.


Into the unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron of cavalry.


The faded yellow of their facings shone bravely.


There was a mighty altercation.


The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.


The blue haze of evening was upon the field.


The lines of forest were long purple shadows.


One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red.


As the youth left the scene behind him,

he heard the guns suddenly roar out.


He imagined them shaking in black rage.


They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate.


The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance.


With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry.


Turning to look behind him,

he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance.


There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air.


At times he thought he could see heaving masses of men.


He hurried on in the dusk.


The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet.


The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered.


Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky.


There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields.


The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless.


There were overturned wagons like sun-dried bowlders.


The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts of war machines.


It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little.


He was afraid to move rapidly,

however,

for a dread of disturbing it.


He held his head very still and took many precautions against stumbling.


He was filled with anxiety,

and his face was pinched and drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden mistake of his feet in the gloom.


His thoughts,

as he walked,

fixed intently upon his hurt.


There was a cool,

liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down under his hair.


His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.


The new silence of his wound made much worriment.


The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were,

he thought,

definite in their expression of danger.


By them he believed he could measure his plight.


But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched into his brain.


Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past.


He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at home,

in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions.


He saw the spread table.


The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove.


Too,

he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool.


He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank.


He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body.


The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of youthful summer.


He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness.


His head hung forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing a great bundle.


His feet shuffled along the ground.


He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down and sleep at some near spot,

or force himself on until he reached a certain haven.


He often tried to dismiss the question,

but his body persisted in rebellion and his senses nagged at him like pampered babies.


At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder:

"Yeh seem t' be in a pretty bad way,

boy?"


The youth did not look up,

but he assented with thick tongue.


"Uh!"


The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm.


"Well,"

he said,

with a round laugh,

"I'm goin' your way.


Th' hull gang is goin' your way.


An' I guess I kin give yeh a lift."


They began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.


As they went along,

the man questioned the youth and assisted him with the replies like one manipulating the mind of a child.


Sometimes he interjected anecdotes.


"What reg'ment do yeh b'long teh?


Eh?


What

's that?


Th' 304th N' York?


Why,

what corps is that in?


Oh,

it is?


Why,

I thought they wasn't engaged t'-day-they

're

'way over in th' center.


Oh,

they was,

eh?


Well pretty nearly everybody got their share

'a fightin' t'-day.


By dad,

I give myself up fer dead any number

'a times.


There was shootin' here an' shootin' there,

an' hollerin' here an' hollerin' there,

in th' damn' darkness,

until I couldn't tell t' save m' soul which side I was on.


Sometimes I thought I was sure

'nough from Ohier,

an' other times I could

'a swore I was from th' bitter end of Florida.


It was th' most mixed up dern thing I ever see.


An' these here hull woods is a reg'lar mess.


It

'll be a miracle if we find our reg'ments t'-night.


Pretty soon,

though,

we

'll meet a-plenty of guards an' provost-guards,

an' one thing an' another.


Ho!

there they go with an off'cer,

I guess.


Look at his hand a-draggin'.


He

's got all th' war he wants,

I bet.


He won't be talkin' so big about his reputation an' all when they go t' sawin' off his leg.


Poor feller!

My brother

's got whiskers jest like that.


How did yeh git

'way over here,

anyhow?


Your reg'ment is a long way from here,

ain't it?


Well,

I guess we can find it.


Yeh know there was a boy killed in my comp'ny t'-day that I thought th' world an' all of.


Jack was a nice feller.


By ginger,

it hurt like thunder t' see ol' Jack jest git knocked flat.


We was a-standin' purty peaceable fer a spell,

'though there was men runnin' ev'ry way all

'round us,

an' while we was a-standin' like that,

'long come a big fat feller.


He began t' peck at Jack's elbow,

an' he ses:

'Say,

where

's th' road t' th' river?'

An' Jack,

he never paid no attention,

an' th' feller kept on a-peckin' at his elbow an' sayin':

'Say,

where

's th' road t' th' river?'

Jack was a-lookin' ahead all th' time tryin' t' see th' Johnnies comin' through th' woods,

an' he never paid no attention t' this big fat feller fer a long time,

but at last he turned

'round an' he ses:

'Ah,

go t' hell an' find th' road t' th' river!'

An' jest then a shot slapped him bang on th' side th' head.


He was a sergeant,

too.


Them was his last words.


Thunder,

I wish we was sure

'a findin' our reg'ments t'-night.


It

's goin' t' be long huntin'.


But I guess we kin do it."


In the search which followed,

the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind.


He threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune.


In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin.


Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance.


The youth,

with his chin still on his breast,

stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out of sullen things.


The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic circles,

but the cheery man conducted the youth without mistakes,

until at last he began to chuckle with glee and self-satisfaction.


"Ah,

there yeh are!

See that fire?"


The youth nodded stupidly.


"Well,

there

's where your reg'ment is.


An' now,

good-by,

ol' boy,

good luck t' yeh."


A warm and strong hand clasped the youth's languid fingers for an instant,

and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as the man strode away.


As he who had so befriended him was thus passing out of his life,

it suddenly occurred to the youth that he had not once seen his face.



Chapter 13


The youth went slowly toward the fire indicated by his departed friend.


As he reeled,

he bethought him of the welcome his comrades would give him.


He had a conviction that he would soon feel in his sore heart the barbed missiles of ridicule.


He had no strength to invent a tale;


he would be a soft target.


He made vague plans to go off into the deeper darkness and hide,

but they were all destroyed by the voices of exhaustion and pain from his body.


His ailments,

clamoring,

forced him to seek the place of food and rest,

at whatever cost.


He swung unsteadily toward the fire.


He could see the forms of men throwing black shadows in the red light,

and as he went nearer it became known to him in some way that the ground was strewn with sleeping men.


Of a sudden he confronted a black and monstrous figure.


A rifle barrel caught some glinting beams.


"Halt!

halt!"

He was dismayed for a moment,

but he presently thought that he recognized the nervous voice.


As he stood tottering before the rifle barrel,

he called out:

"Why,

hello,

Wilson,

you --you here?"


The rifle was lowered to a position of caution and the loud soldier came slowly forward.


He peered into the youth's face.


"That you,

Henry?"


"Yes,

it's --it's me."


"Well,

well,

ol' boy,"

said the other,

"by ginger,

I'm glad t' see yeh!

I give yeh up fer a goner.


I thought yeh was dead sure enough."


There was husky emotion in his voice.


The youth found that now he could barely stand upon his feet.


There was a sudden sinking of his forces.


He thought he must hasten to produce his tale to protect him from the missiles already on the lips of his redoubtable comrades.


So,

staggering before the loud soldier,

he began:

"Yes,

yes.


I've --I've had an awful time.


I've been all over.


Way over on th' right.


Ter'ble fightin' over there.


I had an awful time.


I got separated from the reg'ment.


Over on th' right,

I got shot.


In th' head.


I never see sech fightin'.


Awful time.


I don't see how I could a' got separated from th' reg'ment.


I got shot,

too."


His friend had stepped forward quickly.


"What?


Got shot?


Why didn't yeh say so first?


Poor ol' boy,

we must --hol' on a minnit;


what am I doin'.


I'll call Simpson."


Another figure at that moment loomed in the gloom.


They could see that it was the corporal.


"Who yeh talkin' to,

Wilson?"

he demanded.


His voice was anger-toned.


"Who yeh talkin' to?


Yeh th' derndest sentinel --why --hello,

Henry,

you here?


Why,

I thought you was dead four hours ago!

Great Jerusalem,

they keep turnin' up every ten minutes or so!

We thought we'd lost forty-two men by straight count,

but if they keep on a-comin' this way,

we'll git th' comp'ny all back by mornin' yit.


Where was yeh?"


"Over on th' right.


I got separated" --began the youth with considerable glibness.


But his friend had interrupted hastily.


"Yes,

an' he got shot in th' head an' he's in a fix,

an' we must see t' him right away."


He rested his rifle in the hollow of his left arm and his right around the youth's shoulder.


"Gee,

it must hurt like thunder!"

he said.


The youth leaned heavily upon his friend.


"Yes,

it hurts --hurts a good deal,"

he replied.


There was a faltering in his voice.


"Oh,"

said the corporal.


He linked his arm in the youth's and drew him forward.


"Come on,

Henry.


I'll take keer

'a yeh."


As they went on together the loud private called out after them:

"Put

'im t' sleep in my blanket,

Simpson.


An' --hol' on a minnit --here's my canteen.


It's full

'a coffee.


Look at his head by th' fire an' see how it looks.


Maybe it's a pretty bad un.


When I git relieved in a couple

'a minnits,

I'll be over an' see t' him."


The youth's senses were so deadened that his friend's voice sounded from afar and he could scarcely feel the pressure of the corporal's arm.


He submitted passively to the latter's directing strength.


His head was in the old manner hanging forward upon his breast.


His knees wobbled.


The corporal led him into the glare of the fire.


"Now,

Henry,"

he said,

"let's have look at yer ol' head."


The youth sat obediently and the corporal,

laying aside his rifle,

began to fumble in the bushy hair of his comrade.


He was obliged to turn the other's head so that the full flush of the fire light would beam upon it.


He puckered his mouth with a critical air.


He drew back his lips and whistled through his teeth when his fingers came in contact with the splashed blood and the rare wound.


"Ah,

here we are!"

he said.


He awkwardly made further investigations.


"Jest as I thought,"

he added,

presently.


"Yeh've been grazed by a ball.


It's raised a queer lump jest as if some feller had lammed yeh on th' head with a club.


It stopped a-bleedin' long time ago.


Th' most about it is that in th' mornin' yeh'll fell that a number ten hat wouldn't fit yeh.


An' your head'll be all het up an' feel as dry as burnt pork.


An' yeh may git a lot

'a other sicknesses,

too,

by mornin'.


Yeh can't never tell.


Still,

I don't much think so.


It's jest a damn' good belt on th' head,

an' nothin' more.


Now,

you jest sit here an' don't move,

while I go rout out th' relief.


Then I'll send Wilson t' take keer

'a yeh."


The corporal went away.


The youth remained on the ground like a parcel.


He stared with a vacant look into the fire.


After a time he aroused,

for some part,

and the things about him began to take form.


He saw that the ground in the deep shadows was cluttered with men,

sprawling in every conceivable posture.


Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness,

he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid and ghostly,

lit with a phosphorescent glow.


These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers.


They made them appear like men drunk with wine.


This bit of forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene of the result of some frightful debauch.


On the other side of the fire the youth observed an officer asleep,

seated bolt upright,

with his back against a tree.


There was something perilous in his position.


Badgered by dreams,

perhaps,

he swayed with little bounces and starts,

like an old,

toddy-stricken grandfather in a chimney corner.


Dust and stains were upon his face.


His lower jaw hung down as if lacking strength to assume its normal position.


He was the picture of an exhausted soldier after a feast of war.


He had evidently gone to sleep with his sword in his arms.


These two had slumbered in an embrace,

but the weapon had been allowed in time to fall unheeded to the ground.


The brass-mounted hilt lay in contact with some parts of the fire.


Within the gleam of rose and orange light from the burning sticks were other soldiers,

snoring and heaving,

or lying deathlike in slumber.


A few pairs of legs were stuck forth,

rigid and straight.


The shoes displayed the mud or dust of marches and bits of rounded trousers,

protruding from the blankets,

showed rents and tears from hurried pitchings through the dense brambles.


The fire cackled musically.


From it swelled light smoke.


Overhead the foliage moved softly.


The leaves,

with their faces turned toward the blaze,

were colored shifting hues of silver,

often edged with red.


Far off to the right,

through a window in the forest could be seen a handful of stars lying,

like glittering pebbles,

on the black level of the night.


Occasionally,

in this low-arched hall,

a soldier would arouse and turn his body to a new position,

the experience of his sleep having taught him of uneven and objectionable places upon the ground under him.


Or,

perhaps,

he would lift himself to a sitting posture,

blink at the fire for an unintelligent moment,

throw a swift glance at his prostrate companion,

and then cuddle down again with a grunt of sleepy content.


The youth sat in a forlorn heap until his friend the loud young soldier came,

swinging two canteens by their light strings.


"Well,

now,

Henry,

ol' boy,"

said the latter,

"we'll have yeh fixed up in jest about a minnit."


He had the bustling ways of an amateur nurse.


He fussed around the fire and stirred the sticks to brilliant exertions.


He made his patient drink largely from the canteen that contained the coffee.


It was to the youth a delicious draught.


He tilted his head afar back and held the canteen long to his lips.


The cool mixture went caressingly down his blistered throat.


Having finished,

he sighed with comfortable delight.


The loud young soldier watched his comrade with an air of satisfaction.


He later produced an extensive handkerchief from his pocket.


He folded it into a manner of bandage and soused water from the other canteen upon the middle of it.


This crude arrangement he bound over the youth's head,

tying the ends in a queer knot at the back of the neck.


"There,"

he said,

moving off and surveying his deed,

"yeh look like th' devil,

but I bet yeh feel better."


The youth contemplated his friend with grateful eyes.


Upon his aching and swelling head the cold cloth was like a tender woman's hand.


"Yeh don't holler ner say nothin',"

remarked his friend approvingly.


"I know I'm a blacksmith at takin' keer

'a sick folks,

an' yeh never squeaked.


Yer a good un,

Henry.


Most

'a men would a' been in th' hospital long ago.


A shot in th' head ain't foolin' business."


The youth made no reply,

but began to fumble with the buttons of his jacket.


"Well,

come,

now,"

continued his friend,

"come on.


I must put yeh t' bed an' see that yeh git a good night's rest."


The other got carefully erect,

and the loud young soldier led him among the sleeping forms lying in groups and rows.


Presently he stooped and picked up his blankets.


He spread the rubber one upon the ground and placed the woolen one about the youth's shoulders.


"There now,"

he said,

"lie down an' git some sleep."


The youth,

with his manner of doglike obedience,

got carefully down like a crone stooping.


He stretched out with a murmur of relief and comfort.


The ground felt like the softest couch.


But of a sudden he ejaculated:

"Hol' on a minnit!

Where you goin' t' sleep?"


His friend waved his hand impatiently.


"Right down there by yeh."


"Well,

but hol' on a minnit,"

continued the youth.


"What yeh goin' t' sleep in?


I've got your --"


The loud young soldier snarled:

"Shet up an' go on t' sleep.


Don't be makin' a damn' fool

'a yerself,"

he said severely.


After the reproof the youth said no more.


An exquisite drowsiness had spread through him.


The warm comfort of the blanket enveloped him and made a gentle langour.


His head fell forward on his crooked arm and his weighted lids went softly down over his eyes.


Hearing a splatter of musketry from the distance,

he wondered indifferently if those men sometimes slept.


He gave a long sigh,

snuggled down into his blanket,

and in a moment was like his comrades.



Chapter 14


When the youth awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep for a thousand years,

and he felt sure that he opened his eyes upon an unexpected world.


Gray mists were slowly shifting before the first efforts of the sun rays.


An impending splendor could be seen in the eastern sky.


An icy dew had chilled his face,

and immediately upon arousing he curled farther down into his blanket.


He stared for a while at the leaves overhead,

moving in a heraldic wind of the day.


The distance was splintering and blaring with the noise of fighting.


There was in the sound an expression of a deadly persistency,

as if it had not began and was not to cease.


About him were the rows and groups of men that he had dimly seen the previous night.


They were getting a last draught of sleep before the awakening.


The gaunt,

careworn features and dusty figures were made plain by this quaint light at the dawning,

but it dressed the skin of the men in corpse-like hues and made the tangled limbs appear pulseless and dead.


The youth started up with a little cry when his eyes first swept over this motionless mass of men,

thick-spread upon the ground,

pallid,

and in strange postures.


His disordered mind interpreted the hall of the forest as a charnel place.


He believed for an instant that he was in the house of the dead,

and he did not dare to move lest these corpses start up,

squalling and squawking.


In a second,

however,

he achieved his proper mind.


He swore a complicated oath at himself.


He saw that this somber picture was not a fact of the present,

but a mere prophecy.


He heard then the noise of a fire crackling briskly in the cold air,

and,

turning his head,

he saw his friend pottering busily about a small blaze.


A few other figures moved in the fog,

and he heard the hard cracking of axe blows.


Suddenly there was a hollow rumble of drums.


A distant bugle sang faintly.


Similar sounds,

varying in strength,

came from near and far over the forest.


The bugles called to each other like brazen gamecocks.


The near thunder of the regimental drums rolled.


The body of men in the woods rustled.


There was a general uplifting of heads.


A murmuring of voices broke upon the air.


In it there was much bass of grumbling oaths.


Strange gods were addressed in condemnation of the early hours necessary to correct war.


An officer's peremptory tenor rang out and quickened the stiffened movement of the men.


The tangled limbs unraveled.


The corpse-hued faces were hidden behind fists that twisted slowly in the eye sockets.


The youth sat up and gave vent to an enormous yawn.


"Thunder!"

he remarked petulantly.


He rubbed his eyes,

and then putting up his hand felt carefully the bandage over his wound.


His friend,

perceiving him to be awake,

came from the fire.


"Well,

Henry,

ol' man,

how do yeh feel this mornin'?"

he demanded.


The youth yawned again.


Then he puckered his mouth to a little pucker.


His head,

in truth,

felt precisely like a melon,

and there was an unpleasant sensation at his stomach.


"Oh,

Lord,

I feel pretty bad,"

he said.


"Thunder!"

exclaimed the other.


"I hoped ye'd feel all right this mornin'.


Let's see th' bandage --I guess it's slipped."


He began to tinker at the wound in rather a clumsy way until the youth exploded.


"Gosh-dern it!"

he said in sharp irritation;


"you're the hangdest man I ever saw!

You wear muffs on your hands.


Why in good thunderation can't you be more easy?


I'd rather you'd stand off an' throw guns at it.


Now,

go slow,

an' don't act as if you was nailing down carpet."


He glared with insolent command at his friend,

but the latter answered soothingly.


"Well,

well,

come now,

an' git some grub,"

he said.


"Then,

maybe,

yeh'll feel better."


At the fireside the loud young soldier watched over his comrade's wants with tenderness and care.


He was very busy marshaling the little black vagabonds of tin cups and pouring into them the streaming iron colored mixture from a small and sooty tin pail.


He had some fresh meat,

which he roasted hurriedly on a stick.


He sat down then and contemplated the youth's appetite with glee.


The youth took note of a remarkable change in his comrade since those days of camp life upon the river bank.


He seemed no more to be continually regarding the proportions of his personal prowess.


He was not furious at small words that pricked his conceits.


He was no more a loud young soldier.


There was about him now a fine reliance.


He showed a quiet belief in his purposes and his abilities.


And this inward confidence evidently enabled him to be indifferent to little words of other men aimed at him.


The youth reflected.


He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience,

thoughtless,

headstrong,

jealous,

and filled with a tinsel courage.


A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard.


The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes;


when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be subjected by him.


Apparently,

the other had now climbed a peak of wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a very wee thing.


And the youth saw that ever after it would be easier to live in his friend's neighborhood.


His comrade balanced his ebony coffee-cup on his knee.


"Well,

Henry,"

he said,

"what d'yeh think th' chances are?


D'yeh think we'll wallop

'em?"


The youth considered for a moment.


"Day-b'fore-yesterday,"

he finally replied,

with boldness,

"you would

'a' bet you'd lick the hull kit-an'-boodle all by yourself."


His friend looked a trifle amazed.


"Would I?"

he asked.


He pondered.


"Well,

perhaps I would,"

he decided at last.


He stared humbly at the fire.


The youth was quite disconcerted at this surprising reception of his remarks.


"Oh,

no,

you wouldn't either,"

he said,

hastily trying to retrace.


But the other made a deprecating gesture.


"Oh,

yeh needn't mind,

Henry,"

he said.


"I believe I was a pretty big fool in those days."


He spoke as after a lapse of years.


There was a little pause.


"All th' officers say we've got th' rebs in a pretty tight box,"

said the friend,

clearing his throat in a commonplace way.


"They all seem t' think we've got

'em jest where we want

'em."


"I don't know about that,"

the youth replied.


"What I seen over on th' right makes me think it was th' other way about.


From where I was,

it looked as if we was gettin' a good poundin' yestirday."


"D'yeh think so?"

inquired the friend.


"I thought we handled

'em pretty rough yestirday."


"Not a bit,"

said the youth.


"Why,

lord,

man,

you didn't see nothing of the fight.


Why!"

Then a sudden thought came to him.


"Oh!

Jim Conklin's dead."


His friend started.


"What?


Is he?


Jim Conklin?"


The youth spoke slowly.


"Yes.


He's dead.


Shot in th' side."


"Yeh don't say so.


Jim Conklin ...poor cuss!"


All about them were other small fires surrounded by men with their little black utensils.


From one of these near came sudden sharp voices in a row.


It appeared that two light-footed soldiers had been teasing a huge,

bearded man,

causing him to spill coffee upon his blue knees.


The man had gone into a rage and had sworn comprehensively.


Stung by his language,

his tormentors had immediately bristled at him with a great show of resenting unjust oaths.


Possibly there was going to be a fight.


The friend arose and went over to them,

making pacific motions with his arms.


"Oh,

here,

now,

boys,

what's th' use?"

he said.


"We'll be at th' rebs in less'n an hour.


What's th' good fightin'

'mong ourselves?"


One of the light-footed soldiers turned upon him red-faced and violent.


"Yeh needn't come around here with yer preachin'.


I s'pose yeh don't approve

'a fightin' since Charley Morgan licked yeh;


but I don't see what business this here is

'a yours or anybody else."


"Well,

it ain't,"

said the friend mildly.


"Still I hate t' see --"


There was a tangled argument.


"Well,

he --,"

said the two,

indicating their opponent with accusative forefingers.


The huge soldier was quite purple with rage.


He pointed at the two soldiers with his great hand,

extended clawlike.


"Well,

they --"


But during this argumentative time the desire to deal blows seemed to pass,

although they said much to each other.


Finally the friend returned to his old seat.


In a short while the three antagonists could be seen together in an amiable bunch.


"Jimmie Rogers ses I'll have t' fight him after th' battle t'-day,"

announced the friend as he again seated himself.


"He ses he don't allow no interferin' in his business.


I hate t' see th' boys fightin'

'mong themselves."


The youth laughed.


"Yer changed a good bit.


Yeh ain't at all like yeh was.


I remember when you an' that Irish feller --" He stopped and laughed again.


"No,

I didn't use t' be that way,"

said his friend thoughtfully.


"That's true

'nough."


"Well,

I didn't mean --" began the youth.


The friend made another deprecatory gesture.


"Oh,

yeh needn't mind,

Henry."


There was another little pause.


"Th' reg'ment lost over half th' men yestirday,"

remarked the friend eventually.


"I thought

'a course they was all dead,

but,

laws,

they kep' a-comin' back last night until it seems,

after all,

we didn't lose but a few.


They'd been scattered all over,

wanderin' around in th' woods,

fightin' with other reg'ments,

an' everything.


Jest like you done."


"So?"

said the youth.



Chapter 15


The regiment was standing at order arms at the side of a lane,

waiting for the command to march,

when suddenly the youth remembered the little packet enwrapped in a faded yellow envelope which the loud young soldier with lugubrious words had intrusted to him.


It made him start.


He uttered an exclamation and turned toward his comrade.


"Wilson!"


"What?"


His friend,

at his side in the ranks,

was thoughtfully staring down the road.


From some cause his expression was at that moment very meek.


The youth,

regarding him with sidelong glances,

felt impelled to change his purpose.


"Oh,

nothing,"

he said.


His friend turned his head in some surprise,

"Why,

what was yeh goin' t' say?"


"Oh,

nothing,"

repeated the youth.


He resolved not to deal the little blow.


It was sufficient that the fact made him glad.


It was not necessary to knock his friend on the head with the misguided packet.


He had been possessed of much fear of his friend,

for he saw how easily questionings could make holes in his feelings.


Lately,

he had assured himself that the altered comrade would not tantalize him with a persistent curiosity,

but he felt certain that during the first period of leisure his friend would ask him to relate his adventures of the previous day.


He now rejoiced in the possession of a small weapon with which he could prostrate his comrade at the first signs of a cross-examination.


He was master.


It would now be he who could laugh and shoot the shafts of derision.


The friend had,

in a weak hour,

spoken with sobs of his own death.


He had delivered a melancholy oration previous to his funeral,

and had doubtless in the packet of letters,

presented various keepsakes to relatives.


But he had not died,

and thus he had delivered himself into the hands of the youth.


The latter felt immensely superior to his friend,

but he inclined to condescension.


He adopted toward him an air of patronizing good humor.


His self-pride was now entirely restored.


In the shade of its flourishing growth he stood with braced and self-confident legs,

and since nothing could now be discovered he did not shrink from an encounter with the eyes of judges,

and allowed no thoughts of his own to keep him from an attitude of manfulness.


He had performed his mistakes in the dark,

so he was still a man.


Indeed,

when he remembered his fortunes of yesterday,

and looked at them from a distance he began to see something fine there.


He had license to be pompous and veteranlike.


His panting agonies of the past he put out of his sight.


In the present,

he declared to himself that it was only the doomed and the damned who roared with sincerity at circumstance.


Few but they ever did it.


A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe,

or even with the ways of society.


Let the unfortunates rail;


the others may play marbles.


He did not give a great deal of thought to these battles that lay directly before him.


It was not essential that he should plan his ways in regard to them.


He had been taught that many obligations of a life were easily avoided.


The lessons of yesterday had been that retribution was a laggard and blind.


With these facts before him he did not deem it necessary that he should become feverish over the possibilities of the ensuing twenty-four hours.


He could leave much to chance.


Besides,

a faith in himself had secretly blossomed.


There was a little flower of confidence growing within him.


He was now a man of experience.


He had been out among the dragons,

he said,

and he assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined them.


Also,

they were inaccurate;


they did not sting with precision.


A stout heart often defied,

and defying,

escaped.


And,

furthermore,

how could they kill him who was the chosen of gods and doomed to greatness?


He remembered how some of the men had run from the battle.


As he recalled their terror-struck faces he felt a scorn for them.


They had surely been more fleet and more wild than was absolutely necessary.


They were weak mortals.


As for himself,

he had fled with discretion and dignity.


He was aroused from this reverie by his friend,

who,

having hitched about nervously and blinked at the trees for a time,

suddenly coughed in an introductory way,

and spoke.


"Fleming!"


"What?"


The friend put his hand up to his mouth and coughed again.


He fidgeted in his jacket.


"Well,"

he gulped at last,

"I guess yeh might as well give me back them letters."


Dark,

prickling blood had flushed into his cheeks and brow.


"All right,

Wilson,"

said the youth.


He loosened two buttons of his coat,

thrust in his hand,

and brought forth the packet.


As he extended it to his friend the latter's face was turned from him.


He had been slow in the act of producing the packet because during it he had been trying to invent a remarkable comment on the affair.


He could conjure up nothing of sufficient point.


He was compelled to allow his friend to escape unmolested with his packet.


And for this he took unto himself considerable credit.


It was a generous thing.


His friend at his side seemed suffering great shame.


As he contemplated him,

the youth felt his heart grow more strong and stout.


He had never been compelled to blush in such manner for his acts;


he was an individual of extraordinary virtues.


He reflected,

with condescending pity:

"Too bad!

Too bad!

The poor devil,

it makes him feel tough!"


After this incident,

and as he reviewed the battle pictures he had seen,

he felt quite competent to return home and make the hearts of the people glow with stories of war.


He could see himself in a room of warm tints telling tales to listener.


He could exhibit laurels.


They were insignificant;


still,

in a district where laurels were infrequent,

they might shine.


He saw his gaping audience picturing him as the central figure in blazing scenes.


And he imagined the consternation and the ejaculations of his mother and the young lady at the seminary as they drank his recitals.


Their vague feminine formula for beloved ones doing brave deeds on the field of battle without risk of life would be destroyed.



Chapter 16


A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard.


Later,

the cannon had entered the dispute.


In the fog-filled air their voices made a thudding sound.


The reverberations were continual.


This part of the world led a strange,

battleful existence.


The youth's regiment was marched to relieve a command that had lain long in some damp trenches.


The men took positions behind a curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up,

like a large furrow,

along the line of woods.


Before them was a level stretch,

peopled with short,

deformed stumps.


From the woods beyond came the dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets,

firing in the fog.


From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas.


The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy attitudes awaiting their turn.


Many had their backs to the firing.


The youth's friend lay down,

buried his face in his arms,

and almost instantly,

it seemed,

he was in a deep sleep.


The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered over at the woods and up and down the line.


Curtains of trees interfered with his ways of vision.


He could see the low line of trenches but for a short distance.


A few idle flags were perched on the dirt hills.


Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a few heads sticking curiously over the top.


Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the front and left,

and the din on the right had grown to frightful proportions.


The guns were roaring without an instant's pause for breath.


It seemed that the cannon had come from all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle.


It became impossible to make a sentence heard.


The youth wished to launch a joke --a quotation from newspapers.


He desired to say,

"All quiet on the Rappahannock,"

but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar.


He never successfully concluded the sentence.


But at last the guns stopped,

and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew,

like birds,

but they were now for the most part black creatures who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope.


The men's faces grew doleful from the interpreting of omens.


Tales of hesitation and uncertainty on the part of those high in place and responsibility came to their ears.


Stories of disaster were borne into their minds with many proofs.


This din of musketry on the right,

growing like a released genie of sound,

expressed and emphasized the army's plight.


The men were disheartened and began to mutter.


They made gestures expressive of the sentence:

"Ah,

what more can we do?"

And it could always be seen that they were bewildered by the alleged news and could not fully comprehend a defeat.


Before the gray mists had been totally obliterated by the sun rays,

the regiment was marching in a spread column that was retiring carefully through the woods.


The disordered,

hurrying lines of the enemy could sometimes be seen down through the groves and little fields.


They were yelling,

shrill and exultant.


At this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and became greatly enraged.


He exploded in loud sentences.


"B'jiminey,

we're generaled by a lot

'a lunkheads."


"More than one feller has said that t'-day,"

observed a man.


His friend,

recently aroused,

was still very drowsy.


He looked behind him until his mind took in the meaning of the movement.


Then he sighed.


"Oh,

well,

I s'pose we got licked,"

he remarked sadly.


The youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for him to freely condemn other men.


He made an attempt to restrain himself,

but the words upon his tongue were too bitter.


He presently began a long and intricate denunciation of the commander of the forces.


"Mebbe,

it wa'n't all his fault --not all together.


He did th' best he knowed.


It's our luck t' git licked often,"

said his friend in a weary tone.


He was trudging along with stooped shoulders and shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and kicked.


"Well,

don't we fight like the devil?


Don't we do all that men can?"

demanded the youth loudly.


He was secretly dumfounded at this sentiment when it came from his lips.


For a moment his face lost its valor and he looked guiltily about him.


But no one questioned his right to deal in such words,

and presently he recovered his air of courage.


He went on to repeat a statement he had heard going from group to group at the camp that morning.


"The brigadier said he never saw a new reg'ment fight the way we fought yestirday,

didn't he?


And we didn't do better than many another reg'ment,

did we?


Well,

then,

you can't say it's th' army's fault,

can you?"


In his reply,

the friend's voice was stern.


"'A course not,"

he said.


"No man dare say we don't fight like th' devil.


No man will ever dare say it.


Th' boys fight like hell-roosters.


But still --still,

we don't have no luck."


"Well,

then,

if we fight like the devil an' don't ever whip,

it must be the general's fault,"

said the youth grandly and decisively.


"And I don't see any sense in fighting and fighting and fighting,

yet always losing through some derned old lunkhead of a general."


A sarcastic man who was tramping at the youth's side,

then spoke lazily.


"Mebbe yeh think yeh fit th' hull battle yestirday,

Fleming,"

he remarked.


The speech pierced the youth.


Inwardly he was reduced to an abject pulp by these chance words.


His legs quaked privately.


He cast a frightened glance at the sarcastic man.


"Why,

no,"

he hastened to say in a conciliating voice "I don't think I fought the whole battle yesterday."


But the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning.


Apparently,

he had no information.


It was merely his habit.


"Oh!"

he replied in the same tone of calm derision.


The youth,

nevertheless,

felt a threat.


His mind shrank from going near to the danger,

and thereafter he was silent.


The significance of the sarcastic man's words took from him all loud moods that would make him appear prominent.


He became suddenly a modest person.


There was low-toned talk among the troops.


The officers were impatient and snappy,

their countenances clouded with the tales of misfortune.


The troops,

sifting through the forest,

were sullen.


In the youth's company once a man's laugh rang out.


A dozen soldiers turned their faces quickly toward him and frowned with vague displeasure.


The noise of firing dogged their footsteps.


Sometimes,

it seemed to be driven a little way,

but it always returned again with increased insolence.


The men muttered and cursed,

throwing black looks in its direction.


In a clear space the troops were at last halted.


Regiments and brigades,

broken and detached through their encounters with thickets,

grew together again and lines were faced toward the pursuing bark of the enemy's infantry.


This noise,

following like the yelpings of eager,

metallic hounds,

increased to a loud and joyous burst,

and then,

as the sun went serenely up the sky,

throwing illuminating rays into the gloomy thickets,

it broke forth into prolonged pealings.


The woods began to crackle as if afire.


"Whoop-a-dadee,"

said a man,

"here we are!

Everybody fightin'.


Blood an' destruction."


"I was willin' t' bet they'd attack as soon as th' sun got fairly up,"

savagely asserted the lieutenant who commanded the youth's company.


He jerked without mercy at his little mustache.


He strode to and fro with dark dignity in the rear of his men,

who were lying down behind whatever protection they had collected.


A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was thoughtfully shelling the distance.


The regiment,

unmolested as yet,

awaited the moment when the gray shadows of the woods before them should be slashed by the lines of flame.


There was much growling and swearing.


"Good Gawd,"

the youth grumbled,

"we're always being chased around like rats!

It makes me sick.


Nobody seems to know where we go or why we go.


We just get fired around from pillar to post and get licked here and get licked there,

and nobody knows what it's done for.


It makes a man feel like a damn' kitten in a bag.


Now,

I'd like to know what the eternal thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow,

unless it was to give the rebs a regular pot shot at us.


We came in here and got our legs all tangled up in these cussed briers,

and then we begin to fight and the rebs had an easy time of it.


Don't tell me it's just luck!

I know better.


It's this derned old --"


The friend seemed jaded,

but he interrupted his comrade with a voice of calm confidence.


"It'll turn out all right in th' end,"

he said.


"Oh,

the devil it will!

You always talk like a dog-hanged parson.


Don't tell me!

I know --"


At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded lieutenant,

who was obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction upon his men.


"You boys shut right up!

There no need

'a your wastin' your breath in long-winded arguments about this an' that an' th' other.


You've been jawin' like a lot

'a old hens.


All you've got t' do is to fight,

an' you'll get plenty

'a that t' do in about ten minutes.


Less talkin' an' more fightin' is what's best for you boys.


I never saw sech gabbling jackasses."


He paused,

ready to pounce upon any man who might have the temerity to reply.


No words being said,

he resumed his dignified pacing.


"There's too much chin music an' too little fightin' in this war,

anyhow,"

he said to them,

turning his head for a final remark.


The day had grown more white,

until the sun shed his full radiance upon the thronged forest.


A sort of a gust of battle came sweeping toward that part of the line where lay the youth's regiment.


The front shifted a trifle to meet it squarely.


There was a wait.


In this part of the field there passed slowly the intense moments that precede the tempest.


A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment.


In an instant it was joined by many others.


There was a mighty song of clashes and crashes that went sweeping through the woods.


The guns in the rear,

aroused and enraged by shells that had been thrown burr-like at them,

suddenly involved themselves in a hideous altercation with another band of guns.


The battle roar settled to a rolling thunder,

which was a single,

long explosion.


In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted in the attitudes of the men.


They were worn,

exhausted,

having slept but little and labored much.


They rolled their eyes toward the advancing battle as they stood awaiting the shock.


Some shrank and flinched.


They stood as men tied to stakes.



Chapter 17


This advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth like a ruthless hunting.


He began to fume with rage and exasperation.


He beat his foot upon the ground,

and scowled with hate at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phantom flood.


There was a maddening quality in this seeming resolution of the foe to give him no rest,

to give him no time to sit down and think.


Yesterday he had fought and had fled rapidly.


There had been many adventures.


For to-day he felt that he had earned opportunities for contemplative repose.


He could have enjoyed portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes at which he had been a witness or ably discussing the processes of war with other proved men.


Too it was important that he should have time for physical recuperation.


He was sore and stiff from his experiences.


He had received his fill of all exertions,

and he wished to rest.


But those other men seemed never to grow weary;


they were fighting with their old speed.


He had a wild hate for the relentless foe.


Yesterday,

when he had imagined the universe to be against him,

he had hated it,

little gods and big gods;


to-day he hated the army of the foe with the same great hatred.


He was not going to be badgered of his life,

like a kitten chased by boys,

he said.


It was not well to drive men into final corners;


at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.


He leaned and spoke into his friend's ear.


He menaced the woods with a gesture.


"If they keep on chasing us,

by Gawd,

they'd better watch out.


Can't stand TOO much."


The friend twisted his head and made a calm reply.


"If they keep on a-chasin' us they'll drive us all inteh th' river."


The youth cried out savagely at this statement.


He crouched behind a little tree,

with his eyes burning hatefully and his teeth set in a curlike snarl.


The awkward bandage was still about his head,

and upon it,

over his wound,

there was a spot of dry blood.


His hair was wondrously tousled,

and some straggling,

moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead.


His jacket and shirt were open at the throat,

and exposed his young bronzed neck.


There could be seen spasmodic gulpings at his throat.


His fingers twined nervously about his rifle.


He wished that it was an engine of annihilating power.


He felt that he and his companions were being taunted and derided from sincere convictions that they were poor and puny.


His knowledge of his inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a dark and stormy specter,

that possessed him and made him dream of abominable cruelties.


The tormentors were flies sucking insolently at his blood,

and he thought that he would have given his life for a revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights.


The winds of battle had swept all about the regiment,

until the one rifle,

instantly followed by others,

flashed in its front.


A moment later the regiment roared forth its sudden and valiant retort.


A dense wall of smoke settled down.


It was furiously slit and slashed by the knifelike fire from the rifles.


To the youth the fighters resembled animals tossed for a death struggle into a dark pit.


There was a sensation that he and his fellows,

at bay,

were pushing back,

always pushing fierce onslaughts of creatures who were slippery.


Their beams of crimson seemed to get no purchase upon the bodies of their foes;


the latter seemed to evade them with ease,

and come through,

between,

around,

and about with unopposed skill.


When,

in a dream,

it occurred to the youth that his rifle was an impotent stick,

he lost sense of everything but his hate,

his desire to smash into pulp the glittering smile of victory which he could feel upon the faces of his enemies.


The blue smoke-swallowed line curled and writhed like a snake stepped upon.


It swung its ends to and fro in an agony of fear and rage.


The youth was not conscious that he was erect upon his feet.


He did not know the direction of the ground.


Indeed,

once he even lost the habit of balance and fell heavily.


He was up again immediately.


One thought went through the chaos of his brain at the time.


He wondered if he had fallen because he had been shot.


But the suspicion flew away at once.


He did not think more of it.


He had taken up a first position behind the little tree,

with a direct determination to hold it against the world.


He had not deemed it possible that his army could that day succeed,

and from this he felt the ability to fight harder.


But the throng had surged in all ways,

until he lost directions and locations,

save that he knew where lay the enemy.


The flames bit him,

and the hot smoke broiled his skin.


His rifle barrel grew so hot that ordinarily he could not have borne it upon his palms;


but he kept on stuffing cartridges into it,

and pounding them with his clanking,

bending ramrod.


If he aimed at some changing form through the smoke,

he pulled the trigger with a fierce grunt,

as if he were dealing a blow of the fist with all his strength.


When the enemy seemed falling back before him and his fellows,

he went instantly forward,

like a dog who,

seeing his foes lagging,

turns and insists upon being pursued.


And when he was compelled to retire again,

he did it slowly,

sullenly,

taking steps of wrathful despair.


Once he,

in his intent hate,

was almost alone,

and was firing,

when all those near him had ceased.


He was so engrossed in his occupation that he was not aware of a lull.


He was recalled by a hoarse laugh and a sentence that came to his ears in a voice of contempt and amazement.


"Yeh infernal fool,

don't yeh know enough t' quit when there ain't anything t' shoot at?


Good Gawd!"


He turned then and,

pausing with his rifle thrown half into position,

looked at the blue line of his comrades.


During this moment of leisure they seemed all to be engaged in staring with astonishment at him.


They had become spectators.


Turning to the front again he saw,

under the lifted smoke,

a deserted ground.


He looked bewildered for a moment.


Then there appeared upon the glazed vacancy of his eyes a diamond point of intelligence.


"Oh,"

he said,

comprehending.


He returned to his comrades and threw himself upon the ground.


He sprawled like a man who had been thrashed.


His flesh seemed strangely on fire,

and the sounds of the battle continued in his ears.


He groped blindly for his canteen.


The lieutenant was crowing.


He seemed drunk with fighting.


He called out to the youth:

"By heavens,

if I had ten thousand wild cats like you I could tear th' stomach outa this war in less'n a week!"

He puffed out his chest with large dignity as he said it.


Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awestruck ways.


It was plain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing without proper intermission,

they had found time to regard him.


And they now looked upon him as a war devil.


The friend came staggering to him.


There was some fright and dismay in his voice.


"Are yeh all right,

Fleming?


Do yeh feel all right?


There ain't nothin' th' matter with yeh,

Henry,

is there?"


"No,"

said the youth with difficulty.


His throat seemed full of knobs and burrs.


These incidents made the youth ponder.


It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian,

a beast.


He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion.


Regarding it,

he saw that it was fine,

wild,

and,

in some ways,

easy.


He had been a tremendous figure,

no doubt.


By this struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains.


They had fallen like paper peaks,

and he was now what he called a hero.


And he had not been aware of the process.


He had slept,

and,

awakening,

found himself a knight.


He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his comrades.


Their faces were varied in degrees of blackness from the burned powder.


Some were utterly smudged.


They were reeking with perspiration,

and their breaths came hard and wheezing.


And from these soiled expanses they peered at him.


"Hot work!

Hot work!"

cried the lieutenant deliriously.


He walked up and down,

restless and eager.


Sometimes his voice could be heard in a wild,

incomprehensible laugh.


When he had a particularly profound thought upon the science of war he always unconsciously addressed himself to the youth.


There was some grim rejoicing by the men.


"By thunder,

I bet this army'll never see another new reg'ment like us!"


"You bet!"


"A dog,

a woman,

an' a walnut tree Th' more yeh beat

'em,

th' better they be!


That's like us."


"Lost a piler men,

they did.


If an ol' woman swep' up th' woods she'd git a dustpanful."


"Yes,

an' if she'll come around ag'in in

'bout an hour she'll get a pile more."


The forest still bore its burden of clamor.


From off under the trees came the rolling clatter of the musketry.


Each distant thicket seemed a strange porcupine with quills of flame.


A cloud of dark smoke,

as from smoldering ruins,

went up toward the sun now bright and gay in the blue,

enameled sky.



Chapter 18


The ragged line had respite for some minutes,

but during its pause the struggle in the forest became magnified until the trees seemed to quiver from the firing and the ground to shake from the rushing of men.


The voices of the cannon were mingled in a long and interminable row.


It seemed difficult to live in such an atmosphere.


The chests of the men strained for a bit of freshness,

and their throats craved water.


There was one shot through the body,

who raised a cry of bitter lamentation when came this lull.


Perhaps he had been calling out during the fighting also,

but at that time no one had heard him.


But now the men turned at the woeful complaints of him upon the ground.


"Who is it?


Who is it?"


"Its Jimmie Rogers.


Jimmie Rogers."


When their eyes first encountered him there was a sudden halt,

as if they feared to go near.


He was thrashing about in the grass,

twisting his shuddering body into many strange postures.


He was screaming loudly.


This instant's hesitation seemed to fill him with a tremendous,

fantastic contempt,

and he damned them in shrieked sentences.


The youth's friend had a geographical illusion concerning a stream,

and he obtained permission to go for some water.


Immediately canteens were showered upon him.


"Fill mine,

will yeh?"

"Bring me some,

too."


"And me,

too."


He departed,

ladened.


The youth went with his friend,

feeling a desire to throw his heated body into the stream and,

soaking there,

drink quarts.


They made a hurried search for the supposed stream,

but did not find it.


"No water here,"

said the youth.


They turned without delay and began to retrace their steps.


From their position as they again faced toward the place of the fighting,

they could of comprehend a greater amount of the battle than when their visions had been blurred by the hurling smoke of the line.


They could see dark stretches winding along the land,

and on one cleared space there was a row of guns making gray clouds,

which were filled with large flashes of orange-colored flame.


Over some foliage they could see the roof of a house.


One window,

glowing a deep murder red,

shone squarely through the leaves.


From the edifice a tall leaning tower of smoke went far into the sky.


Looking over their own troops,

they saw mixed masses slowly getting into regular form.


The sunlight made twinkling points of the bright steel.


To the rear there was a glimpse of a distant roadway as it curved over a slope.


It was crowded with retreating infantry.


From all the interwoven forest arose the smoke and bluster of the battle.


The air was always occupied by a blaring.


Near where they stood shells were flip-flapping and hooting.


Occasional bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree trunks.


Wounded men and other stragglers were slinking through the woods.


Looking down an aisle of the grove,

the youth and his companion saw a jangling general and his staff almost ride upon a wounded man,

who was crawling on his hands and knees.


The general reined strongly at his charger's opened and foamy mouth and guided it with dexterous horsemanship past the man.


The latter scrambled in wild and torturing haste.


His strength evidently failed him as he reached a place of safety.


One of his arms suddenly weakened,

and he fell,

sliding over upon his back.


He lay stretched out,

breathing gently.


A moment later the small,

creaking cavalcade was directly in front of the two soldiers.


Another officer,

riding with the skillful abandon of a cowboy,

galloped his horse to a position directly before the general.


The two unnoticed foot soldiers made a little show of going on,

but they lingered near in the desire to overhear the conversation.


Perhaps,

they thought,

some great inner historical things would be said.


The general,

whom the boys knew as the commander of their division,

looked at the other officer and spoke coolly,

as if he were criticising his clothes.


"Th' enemy's formin' over there for another charge,"

he said.


"It'll be directed against Whiterside,

an' I fear they'll break through unless we work like thunder t' stop them."


The other swore at his restive horse,

and then cleared his throat.


He made a gesture toward his cap.


"It'll be hell t' pay stoppin' them,"

he said shortly.


"I presume so,"

remarked the general.


Then he began to talk rapidly and in a lower tone.


He frequently illustrated his words with a pointing finger.


The two infantrymen could hear nothing until finally he asked:

"What troops can you spare?"


The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant.


"Well,"

he said,

"I had to order in th' 12th to help th' 76th,

an' I haven't really got any.


But there's th' 304th.


They fight like a lot

'a mule drivers.


I can spare them best of any."


The youth and his friend exchanged glances of astonishment.


The general spoke sharply.


"Get

'em ready,

then.


I'll watch developments from here,

an' send you word when t' start them.


It'll happen in five minutes."


As the other officer tossed his fingers toward his cap and wheeling his horse,

started away,

the general called out to him in a sober voice:

"I don't believe many of your mule drivers will get back."


The other shouted something in reply.


He smiled.


With scared faces,

the youth and his companion hurried back to the line.


These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time,

yet the youth felt that in them he had been made aged.


New eyes were given to him.


And the most startling thing was to learn suddenly that he was very insignificant.


The officer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to a broom.


Some part of the woods needed sweeping,

perhaps,

and he merely indicated a broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate.


It was war,

no doubt,

but it appeared strange.


As the two boys approached the line,

the lieutenant perceived them and swelled with wrath.


"Fleming --Wilson --how long does it take yeh to git water,

anyhow --where yeh been to."


But his oration ceased as he saw their eyes,

which were large with great tales.


"We're goin' t' charge --we're goin' t' charge!"

cried the youth's friend,

hastening with his news.


"Charge?"

said the lieutenant.


"Charge?


Well,

b'Gawd!

Now,

this is real fightin'."


Over his soiled countenance there went a boastful smile.


"Charge?


Well,

b'Gawd!"


A little group of soldiers surrounded the two youths.


"Are we,

sure

'nough?


Well,

I'll be derned!

Charge?


What fer?


What at?


Wilson,

you're lyin'."


"I hope to die,"

said the youth,

pitching his tones to the key of angry remonstrance.


"Sure as shooting,

I tell you."


And his friend spoke in re-enforcement.


"Not by a blame sight,

he ain't lyin'.


We heard

'em talkin'."


They caught sight of two mounted figures a short distance from them.


One was the colonel of the regiment and the other was the officer who had received orders from the commander of the division.


They were gesticulating at each other.


The soldier,

pointing at them,

interpreted the scene.


One man had a final objection:

"How could yeh hear

'em talkin'?"

But the men,

for a large part,

nodded,

admitting that previously the two friends had spoken truth.


They settled back into reposeful attitudes with airs of having accepted the matter.


And they mused upon it,

with a hundred varieties of expression.


It was an engrossing thing to think about.


Many tightened their belts carefully and hitched at their trousers.


A moment later the officers began to bustle among the men,

pushing them into a more compact mass and into a better alignment.


They chased those that straggled and fumed at a few men who seemed to show by their attitudes that they had decided to remain at that spot.


They were like critical shepherds,

struggling with sheep.


Presently,

the regiment seemed to draw itself up and heave a deep breath.


None of the men's faces were mirrors of large thoughts.


The soldiers were bended and stooped like sprinters before a signal.


Many pairs of glinting eyes peered from the grimy faces toward the curtains of the deeper woods.


They seemed to be engaged in deep calculations of time and distance.


They were surrounded by the noises of the monstrous altercation between the two armies.


The world was fully interested in other matters.


Apparently,

the regiment had its small affair to itself.


The youth,

turning,

shot a quick,

inquiring glance at his friend.


The latter returned to him the same manner of look.


They were the only ones who possessed an inner knowledge.


"Mule drivers --hell t' pay --don't believe many will get back."


It was an ironical secret.


Still,

they saw no hesitation in each other's faces,

and they nodded a mute and unprotesting assent when a shaggy man near them said in a meek voice:

"We'll git swallowed."



Chapter 19


The youth stared at the land in front of him.


Its foliages now seemed to veil powers and horrors.


He was unaware of the machinery of orders that started the charge,

although from the corners of his eyes he saw an officer,

who looked like a boy a-horseback,

come galloping,

waving his hat.


Suddenly he felt a straining and heaving among the men.


The line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall,

and,

with a convulsive gasp that was intended for a cheer,

the regiment began its journey.


The youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood the movement at all,

but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.


He fixed his eye upon a distant and prominent clump of trees where he had concluded the enemy were to be met,

and he ran toward it as toward a goal.


He had believed throughout that it was a mere question of getting over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible,

and he ran desperately,

as if pursued for a murder.


His face was drawn hard and tight with the stress of his endeavor.


His eyes were fixed in a lurid glare.


And with his soiled and disordered dress,

his red and inflamed features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood,

his wildly swinging rifle,

and banging accouterments,

he looked to be an insane soldier.


As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the woods and thickets before it awakened.


Yellow flames leaped toward it from many directions.


The forest made a tremendous objection.


The line lurched straight for a moment.


Then the right wing swung forward;


it in turn was surpassed by the left.


Afterward the center careered to the front until the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass,

but an instant later the opposition of the bushes,

trees,

and uneven places on the ground split the command and scattered it into detached clusters.


The youth,

light-footed,

was unconsciously in advance.


His eyes still kept note of the clump of trees.


From all places near it the clannish yell of the enemy could be heard.


The little flames of rifles leaped from it.


The song of the bullets was in the air and shells snarled among the treetops.


One tumbled directly into the middle of a hurrying group and exploded in crimson fury.


There was an instant spectacle of a man,

almost over it,

throwing up his hands to shield his eyes.


Other men,

punched by bullets,

fell in grotesque agonies.


The regiment left a coherent trail of bodies.


They had passed into a clearer atmosphere.


There was an effect like a revelation in the new appearance of the landscape.


Some men working madly at a battery were plain to them,

and the opposing infantry's lines were defined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.


It seemed to the youth that he saw everything.


Each blade of the green grass was bold and clear.


He thought that he was aware of every change in the thin,

transparent vapor that floated idly in sheets.


The brown or gray trunks of the trees showed each roughness of their surfaces.


And the men of the regiment,

with their starting eyes and sweating faces,

running madly,

or falling,

as if thrown headlong,

to queer,

heaped-up corpses --all were comprehended.


His mind took a mechanical but firm impression,

so that afterward everything was pictured and explained to him,

save why he himself was there.


But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush.


The men,

pitching forward insanely,

had burst into cheerings,

moblike and barbaric,

but tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic.


It made a mad enthusiasm that,

it seemed,

would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass.


There was the delirium that encounters despair and death,

and is heedless and blind to the odds.


It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness.


And because it was of this order was the reason,

perhaps,

why the youth wondered,

afterward,

what reasons he could have had for being there.


Presently the straining pace ate up the energies of the men.


As if by agreement,

the leaders began to slacken their speed.


The volleys directed against them had had a seeming windlike effect.


The regiment snorted and blew.


Among some stolid trees it began to falter and hesitate.


The men,

staring intently,

began to wait for some of the distant walls to smoke to move and disclose to them the scene.


Since much of their strength and their breath had vanished,

they returned to caution.


They were become men again.


The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles,

and he thought,

in a way,

that he was now in some new and unknown land.


The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of musketry became a steadied roar.


Long and accurate fringes of smoke spread out.


From the top of a small hill came level belchings of yellow flame that caused an inhuman whistling in the air.


The men,

halted,

had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks.


A few lay under foot,

still or wailing.


And now for an instant the men stood,

their rifles slack in their hands,

and watched the regiment dwindle.


They appeared dazed and stupid.


This spectacle seemed to paralyze them,

overcome them with a fatal fascination.


They stared woodenly at the sights,

and,

lowering their eyes,

looked from face to face.


It was a strange pause,

and a strange silence.


Then,

above the sounds of the outside commotion,

arose the roar of the lieutenant.


He strode suddenly forth,

his infantile features black with rage.


"Come on,

yeh fools!"

he bellowed.


"Come on!

Yeh can't stay here.


Yeh must come on."


He said more,

but much of it could not be understood.


He started rapidly forward,

with his head turned toward the men,

"Come on,"

he was shouting.


The men stared with blank and yokel-like eyes at him.


He was obliged to halt and retrace his steps.


He stood then with his back to the enemy and delivered gigantic curses into the faces of the men.


His body vibrated from the weight and force of his imprecations.


And he could string oaths with the facility of a maiden who strings beads.


The friend of the youth aroused.


Lurching suddenly forward and dropping to his knees,

he fired an angry shot at the persistent woods.


This action awakened the men.


They huddled no more like sheep.


They seemed suddenly to bethink themselves of their weapons,

and at once commenced firing.


Belabored by their officers,

they began to move forward.


The regiment,

involved like a cart involved in mud and muddle,

started unevenly with many jolts and jerks.


The men stopped now every few paces to fire and load,

and in this manner moved slowly on from trees to trees.


The flaming opposition in their front grew with their advance until it seemed that all forward ways were barred by the thin leaping tongues,

and off to the right an ominous demonstration could sometimes be dimly discerned.


The smoke lately generated was in confusing clouds that made it difficult for the regiment to proceed with intelligence.


As he passed through each curling mass the youth wondered what would confront him on the farther side.


The command went painfully forward until an open space interposed between them and the lurid lines.


Here,

crouching and cowering behind some trees,

the men clung with desperation,

as if threatened by a wave.


They looked wild-eyed,

and as if amazed at this furious disturbance they had stirred.


In the storm there was an ironical expression of their importance.


The faces of the men,

too,

showed a lack of a certain feeling of responsibility for being there.


It was as if they had been driven.


It was the dominant animal failing to remember in the supreme moments the forceful causes of various superficial qualities.


The whole affair seemed incomprehensible to many of them.


As they halted thus the lieutenant again began to bellow profanely.


Regardless of the vindictive threats of the bullets,

he went about coaxing,

berating,

and bedamning.


His lips,

that were habitually in a soft and childlike curve,

were now writhed into unholy contortions.


He swore by all possible deities.


Once he grabbed the youth by the arm.


"Come on,

yeh lunkhead!"

he roared.


"Come one!

We'll all git killed if we stay here.


We've on'y got t' go across that lot.


An' then" --the remainder of his idea disappeared in a blue haze of curses.


The youth stretched forth his arm.


"Cross there?"

His mouth was puckered in doubt and awe.


"Certainly.


Jest

'cross th' lot!

We can't stay here,"

screamed the lieutenant.


He poked his face close to the youth and waved his bandaged hand.


"Come on!"

Presently he grappled with him as if for a wrestling bout.


It was as if he planned to drag the youth by the ear on to the assault.


The private felt a sudden unspeakable indignation against his officer.


He wrenched fiercely and shook him off.


"Come on yerself,

then,"

he yelled.


There was a bitter challenge in his voice.


They galloped together down the regimental front.


The friend scrambled after them.


In front of the colors the three men began to bawl:

"Come on!

come on!"

They danced and gyrated like tortured savages.


The flag,

obedient to these appeals,

bended its glittering form and swept toward them.


The men wavered in indecision for a moment,

and then with a long,

wailful cry the dilapidated regiment surged forward and began its new journey.


Over the field went the scurrying mass.


It was a handful of men splattered into the faces of the enemy.


Toward it instantly sprang the yellow tongues.


A vast quantity of blue smoke hung before them.


A mighty banging made ears valueless.


The youth ran like a madman to reach the woods before a bullet could discover him.


He ducked his head low,

like a football player.


In his haste his eyes almost closed,

and the scene was a wild blur.


Pulsating saliva stood at the corners of his mouth.


Within him,

as he hurled himself forward,

was born a love,

a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him.


It was a creation of beauty and invulnerability.


It was a goddess,

radiant,

that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him.


It was a woman,

red and white,

hating and loving,

that called him with the voice of his hopes.


Because no harm could come to it he endowed it with power.


He kept near,

as if it could be a saver of lives,

and an imploring cry went from his mind.


In the mad scramble he was aware that the color sergeant flinched suddenly,

as if struck by a bludgeon.


He faltered,

and then became motionless,

save for his quivering knees.


He made a spring and a clutch at the pole.


At the same instant his friend grabbed it from the other side.


They jerked at it,

stout and furious,

but the color sergeant was dead,

and the corpse would not relinquish its trust.


For a moment there was a grim encounter.


The dead man,

swinging with bended back,

seemed to be obstinately tugging,

in ludicrous and awful ways,

for the possession of the flag.


It was past in an instant of time.


They wrenched the flag furiously from the dead man,

and,

as they turned again,

the corpse swayed forward with bowed head.


One arm swung high,

and the curved hand fell with heavy protest on the friend's unheeding shoulder.



Chapter 20


When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment had crumbled away,

and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back.


The men,

having hurled themselves in projectile fashion,

had presently expended their forces.


They slowly retreated,

with their faces still toward the spluttering woods,

and their hot rifles still replying to the din.


Several officers were giving orders,

their voices keyed to screams.


"Where in hell yeh goin'?"

the lieutenant was asking in a sarcastic howl.


And a red-bearded officer,

whose voice of triple brass could plainly be heard,

was commanding:

"Shoot into

'em!

Shoot into

'em,

Gawd damn their souls!"

There was a melee of screeches,

in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things.


The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag.


"Give it t' me!"

"No,

let me keep it!"

Each felt satisfied with the other's possession of it,

but each felt bound to declare,

by an offer to carry the emblem,

his willingness to further risk himself.


The youth roughly pushed his friend away.


The regiment fell back to the stolid trees.


There it halted for a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon its track.


Presently it resumed its march again,

curving among the tree trunks.


By the time the depleted regiment had again reached the first open space they were receiving a fast and merciless fire.


There seemed to be mobs all about them.


The greater part of the men,

discouraged,

their spirits worn by the turmoil,

acted as if stunned.


They accepted the pelting of the bullets with bowed and weary heads.


It was of no purpose to strive against walls.


It was of no use to batter themselves against granite.


And from this consciousness that they had attempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feeling that they had been betrayed.


They glowered with bent brows,

but dangerously,

upon some of the officers,

more particularly upon the red-bearded one with the voice of triple brass.


However,

the rear of the regiment was fringed with men,

who continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes.


They seemed resolved to make every trouble.


The youthful lieutenant was perhaps the last man in the disordered mass.


His forgotten back was toward the enemy.


He had been shot in the arm.


It hung straight and rigid.


Occasionally he would cease to remember it,

and be about to emphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture.


The multiplied pain caused him to swear with incredible power.


The youth went along with slipping uncertain feet.


He kept watchful eyes rearward.


A scowl of mortification and rage was upon his face.


He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers.


But he saw that it could not come to pass.


His dreams had collapsed when the mule drivers,

dwindling rapidly,

had wavered and hesitated on the little clearing,

and then had recoiled.


And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame to him.


A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held toward the enemy,

but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man,

who,

not knowing him,

had called him a mule driver.


When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse upon the officer,

the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess him.


This cold officer upon a monument,

who dropped epithets unconcernedly down,

would be finer as a dead man,

he thought.


So grievous did he think it that he could never possess the secret right to taunt truly in answer.


He had pictured red letters of curious revenge.


"We ARE mule drivers,

are we?"

And now he was compelled to throw them away.


He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept the flag erect.


He harangued his fellows,

pushing against their chests with his free hand.


To those he knew well he made frantic appeals,

beseeching them by name.


Between him and the lieutenant,

scolding and near to losing his mind with rage,

there was felt a subtle fellowship and equality.


They supported each other in all manner of hoarse,

howling protests.


But the regiment was a machine run down.


The two men babbled at a forceless thing.


The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades were slipping with speed back to the lines.


It was difficult to think of reputation when others were thinking of skins.


Wounded men were left crying on this black journey.


The smoke fringes and flames blustered always.


The youth,

peering once through a sudden rift in a cloud,

saw a brown mass of troops,

interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be thousands.


A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.


Immediately,

as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged,

the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell,

and a hundred flames jetted toward the retreating band.


A rolling gray cloud again interposed as the regiment doggedly replied.


The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears,

which were trembling and buzzing from the melee of musketry and yells.


The way seemed eternal.


In the clouded haze men became panic-stricken with the thought that the regiment had lost its path,

and was proceeding in a perilous direction.


Once the men who headed the wild procession turned and came pushing back against their comrades,

screaming that they were being fired upon from points which they had considered to be toward their own lines.


At this cry a hysterical fear and dismay beset the troops.


A soldier,

who heretofore had been ambitious to make the regiment into a wise little band that would proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties,

suddenly sank down and buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom.


From another a shrill lamentation rang out filled with profane allusions to a general.


Men ran hither and thither,

seeking with their eyes roads of escape.


With serene regularity,

as if controlled by a schedule,

bullets buffed into men.


The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob,

and with his flag in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to push him to the ground.


He unconsciously assumed the attitude of the color bearer in the fight of the preceding day.


He passed over his brow a hand that trembled.


His breath did not come freely.


He was choking during this small wait for the crisis.


His friend came to him.


"Well,

Henry,

I guess this is good-by-John."


"Oh,

shut up,

you damned fool!"

replied the youth,

and he would not look at the other.


The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a proper circle to face the menaces.


The ground was uneven and torn.


The men curled into depressions and fitted themselves snugly behind whatever would frustrate a bullet.


The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was standing mutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the manner of a cane.


The youth wondered what had happened to his vocal organs that he no more cursed.


There was something curious in this little intent pause of the lieutenant.


He was like a babe which,

having wept its fill,

raises its eyes and fixes upon a distant toy.


He was engrossed in this contemplation,

and the soft under lip quivered from self-whispered words.


Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly.


The men,

hiding from the bullets,

waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the plight of the regiment.


The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of the youthful lieutenant bawling out:

"Here they come!

Right onto us,

b'Gawd!"

His further words were lost in a roar of wicked thunder from the men's rifles.


The youth's eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated by the awakened and agitated lieutenant,

and he had seen the haze of treachery disclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy.


They were so near that he could see their features.


There was a recognition as he looked at the types of faces.


Also he perceived with dim amazement that their uniforms were rather gay in effect,

being light gray,

accented with a brilliant-hued facing.


Too,

the clothes seemed new.


These troops had apparently been going forward with caution,

their rifles held in readiness,

when the youthful lieutenant had discovered them and their movement had been interrupted by the volley from the blue regiment.


From the moment's glimpse,

it was derived that they had been unaware of the proximity of their dark-suited foes or had mistaken the direction.


Almost instantly they were shut utterly from the youth's sight by the smoke from the energetic rifles of his companions.


He strained his vision to learn the accomplishment of the volley,

but the smoke hung before him.


The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a pair of boxers.


The fast angry firings went back and forth.


The men in blue were intent with the despair of their circumstances and they seized upon the revenge to be had at close range.


Their thunder swelled loud and valiant.


Their curving front bristled with flashes and the place resounded with the clangor of their ramrods.


The youth ducked and dodged for a time and achieved a few unsatisfactory views of the enemy.


There appeared to be many of them and they were replying swiftly.


They seemed moving toward the blue regiment,

step by step.


He seated himself gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees.


As he noted the vicious,

wolflike temper of his comrades he had a sweet thought that if the enemy was about to swallow the regimental broom as a large prisoner,

it could at least have the consolation of going down with bristles forward.


But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak.


Fewer bullets ripped the air,

and finally,

when the men slackened to learn of the fight,

they could see only dark,

floating smoke.


The regiment lay still and gazed.


Presently some chance whim came to the pestering blur,

and it began to coil heavily away.


The men saw a ground vacant of fighters.


It would have been an empty stage if it were not for a few corpses that lay thrown and twisted into fantastic shapes upon the sward.


At sight of this tableau,

many of the men in blue sprang from behind their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy.


Their eyes burned and a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their dry lips.


It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove that they were impotent.


These little battles had evidently endeavored to demonstrate that the men could not fight well.


When on the verge of submission to these opinions,

the small duel had showed them that the proportions were not impossible,

and by it they had revenged themselves upon their misgivings and upon the foe.


The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again.


They gazed about them with looks of uplifted pride,

feeling new trust in the grim,

always confident weapons in their hands.


And they were men.



Chapter 21


Presently they knew that no firing threatened them.


All ways seemed once more opened to them.


The dusty blue lines of their friends were disclosed a short distance away.


In the distance there were many colossal noises,

but in all this part of the field there was a sudden stillness.


They perceived that they were free.


The depleted band drew a long breath of relief and gathered itself into a bunch to complete its trip.


In this last length of journey the men began to show strange emotions.


They hurried with nervous fear.


Some who had been dark and unfaltering in the grimmest moments now could not conceal an anxiety that made them frantic.


It was perhaps that they dreaded to be killed in insignificant ways after the times for proper military deaths had passed.


Or,

perhaps,

they thought it would be too ironical to get killed at the portals of safety.


With backward looks of perturbation,

they hastened.


As they approached their own lines there was some sarcasm exhibited on the part of a gaunt and bronzed regiment that lay resting in the shade of the trees.


Questions were wafted to them.


"Where th' hell yeh been?"


"What yeh comin' back fer?"


"Why didn't yeh stay there?"


"Was it warm out there,

sonny?"


"Goin' home now,

boys?"


One shouted in taunting mimicry:

"Oh,

mother,

come quick an' look at th' sojers!"


There was no reply from the bruised and battered regiment,

save that one man made broadcast challenges to fist fights and the red-bearded officer walked rather near and glared in great swashbuckler style at a tall captain in the other regiment.


But the lieutenant suppressed the man who wished to fist fight,

and the tall captain,

flushing at the little fanfare of the red-bearded one,

was obliged to look intently at some trees.


The youth's tender flesh was deeply stung by these remarks.


From under his creased brows he glowered with hate at the mockers.


He meditated upon a few revenges.


Still,

many in the regiment hung their heads in criminal fashion,

so that it came to pass that the men trudged with sudden heaviness,

as if they bore upon their bended shoulders the coffin of their honor.


And the youthful lieutenant,

recollecting himself,

began to mutter softly in black curses.


They turned when they arrived at their old position to regard the ground over which they had charged.


The youth in this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment.


He discovered that the distances,

as compared with the brilliant measurings of his mind,

were trivial and ridiculous.


The stolid trees,

where much had taken place,

seemed incredibly near.


The time,

too,

now that he reflected,

he saw to have been short.


He wondered at the number of emotions and events that had been crowded into such little spaces.


Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated and enlarged everything,

he said.


It seemed,

then,

that there was bitter justice in the speeches of the gaunt and bronzed veterans.


He veiled a glance of disdain at his fellows who strewed the ground,

choking with dust,

red from perspiration,

misty-eyed,

disheveled.


They were gulping at their canteens,

fierce to wring every mite of water from them,

and they polished at their swollen and watery features with coat sleeves and bunches of grass.


However,

to the youth there was a considerable joy in musing upon his performances during the charge.


He had had very little time previously in which to appreciate himself,

so that there was now much satisfaction in quietly thinking of his actions.


He recalled bits of color that in the flurry had stamped themselves unawares upon his engaged senses.


As the regiment lay heaving from its hot exertions the officer who had named them as mule drivers came galloping along the line.


He had lost his cap.


His tousled hair streamed wildly,

and his face was dark with vexation and wrath.


His temper was displayed with more clearness by the way in which he managed his horse.


He jerked and wrenched savagely at his bridle,

stopping the hard-breathing animal with a furious pull near the colonel of the regiment.


He immediately exploded in reproaches which came unbidden to the ears of the men.


They were suddenly alert,

being always curious about black words between officers.


"Oh,

thunder,

MacChesnay,

what an awful bull you made of this thing!"

began the officer.


He attempted low tones,

but his indignation caused certain of the men to learn the sense of his words.


"What an awful mess you made!

Good Lord,

man,

you stopped about a hundred feet this side of a very pretty success!

If your men had gone a hundred feet farther you would have made a great charge,

but as it is --what a lot of mud diggers you've got anyway!"


The men,

listening with bated breath,

now turned their curious eyes upon the colonel.


They had a ragamuffin interest in this affair.


The colonel was seen to straighten his form and put one hand forth in oratorical fashion.


He wore an injured air;


it was as if a deacon had been accused of stealing.


The men were wiggling in an ecstasy of excitement.


But of a sudden the colonel's manner changed from that of a deacon to that of a Frenchman.


He shrugged his shoulders.


"Oh,

well,

general,

we went as far as we could,"

he said calmly.


"As far as you could?


Did you,

b'Gawd?"

snorted the other.


"Well,

that wasn't very far,

was it?"

he added,

with a glance of cold contempt into the other's eyes.


"Not very far,

I think.


You were intended to make a diversion in favor of Whiterside.


How well you succeeded your own ears can now tell you."


He wheeled his horse and rode stiffly away.


The colonel,

bidden to hear the jarring noises of an engagement in the woods to the left,

broke out in vague damnations.


The lieutenant,

who had listened with an air of impotent rage to the interview,

spoke suddenly in firm and undaunted tones.


"I don't care what a man is --whether he is a general or what --if he says th' boys didn't put up a good fight out there he's a damned fool."


"Lieutenant,"

began the colonel,

severely,

"this is my own affair,

and I'll trouble you --"


The lieutenant made an obedient gesture.


"All right,

colonel,

all right,"

he said.


He sat down with an air of being content with himself.


The news that the regiment had been reproached went along the line.


For a time the men were bewildered by it.


"Good thunder!"

they ejaculated,

staring at the vanishing form of the general.


They conceived it to be a huge mistake.


Presently,

however,

they began to believe that in truth their efforts had been called light.


The youth could see this conviction weight upon the entire regiment until the men were like cuffed and cursed animals,

but withal rebellious.


The friend,

with a grievance in his eye,

went to the youth.


"I wonder what he does want,"

he said.


"He must think we went out there an' played marbles!

I never see sech a man!"


The youth developed a tranquil philosophy for these moments of irritation.


"Oh,

well,"

he rejoined,

"he probably didn't see nothing of it at all and god mad as blazes,

and concluded we were a lot of sheep,

just because we didn't do what he wanted done.


It's a pity old Grandpa Henderson got killed yestirday --he'd have known that we did our best and fought good.


It's just our awful luck,

that's what."


"I should say so,"

replied the friend.


He seemed to be deeply wounded at an injustice.


"I should say we did have awful luck!

There's no fun in fightin' fer people when everything yeh do --no matter what --ain't done right.


I have a notion t' stay behind next time an' let

'em take their ol' charge an' go t' th' devil with it."


The youth spoke soothingly to his comrade.


"Well,

we both did good.


I'd like to see the fool what'd say we both didn't do as good as we could!"


"Of course we did,"

declared the friend stoutly.


"An' I'd break th' feller's neck if he was as big as a church.


But we're all right,

anyhow,

for I heard one feller say that we two fit th' best in th' reg'ment,

an' they had a great argument

'bout it.


Another feller,

'a course,

he had t' up an' say it was a lie --he seen all what was goin' on an' he never seen us from th' beginnin' t' th' end.


An' a lot more stuck in an' ses it wasn't a lie --we did fight like thunder,

an' they give us quite a sendoff.


But this is what I can't stand --these everlastin' ol' soldiers,

titterin' an' laughin',

an then that general,

he's crazy."


The youth exclaimed with sudden exasperation:

"He's a lunkhead!

He makes me mad.


I wish he'd come along next time.


We'd show

'im what --"


He ceased because several men had come hurrying up.


Their faces expressed a bringing of great news.


"O Flem,

yeh jest oughta heard!"

cried one,

eagerly.


"Heard what?"

said the youth.


"Yeh jest oughta heard!"

repeated the other,

and he arranged himself to tell his tidings.


The others made an excited circle.


"Well,

sir,

th' colonel met your lieutenant right by us --it was damnedest thing I ever heard --an' he ses:

'Ahem!

ahem!'

he ses.


'Mr. Hasbrouck!'

he ses,

'by th' way,

who was that lad what carried th' flag?'

he ses.


There,

Flemin',

what d' yeh think

'a that?

'Who was th' lad what carried th' flag?'

he ses,

an' th' lieutenant,

he speaks up right away:

'That's Flemin',

an' he's a jimhickey,'

he ses,

right away.


What?


I say he did.


'A jimhickey,'

he ses --those

'r his words.


He did,

too.


I say he did.


If you kin tell this story better than I kin,

go ahead an' tell it.


Well,

then,

keep yer mouth shet.


Th' lieutenant,

he ses:

'He's a jimhickey,'

and th' colonel,

he ses:

'Ahem!

ahem!

he is,

indeed,

a very good man t' have,

ahem!

He kep' th' flag

'way t' th' front.


I saw

'im.


He's a good un,'

ses th' colonel.


'You bet,'

ses th' lieutenant,

'he an' a feller named Wilson was at th' head

'a th' charge,

an' howlin' like Indians all th' time,'

he ses.


'Head

'a th' charge all th' time,'

he ses.


'A feller named Wilson,'

he ses.


There,

Wilson,

m'boy,

put that in a letter an' send it hum t' yer mother,

hay?

'A feller named Wilson,'

he ses.


An' th' colonel,

he ses:

'Were they,

indeed?


Ahem!

ahem!

My sakes!'

he ses.


'At th' head

'a th' reg'ment?'

he ses.


'They were,'

ses th' lieutenant.


'My sakes!'

ses th' colonel.


He ses:

'Well,

well,

well,'

he ses.


'They deserve t' be major-generals.'"


The youth and his friend had said:

"Huh!"

"Yer lyin' Thompson."


"Oh,

go t' blazes!"

"He never sed it."


"Oh,

what a lie!"

"Huh!"

But despite these youthful scoffings and embarrassments,

they knew that their faces were deeply flushing from thrills of pleasure.


They exchanged a secret glance of joy and congratulation.


They speedily forgot many things.


The past held no pictures of error and disappointment.


They were very happy,

and their hearts swelled with grateful affection for the colonel and the youthful lieutenant.



Chapter 22


When the woods again began to pour forth the dark-hued masses of the enemy the youth felt serene self-confidence.


He smiled briefly when he saw men dodge and duck at the long screechings of shells that were thrown in giant handfuls over them.


He stood,

erect and tranquil,

watching the attack begin against apart of the line that made a blue curve along the side of an adjacent hill.


His vision being unmolested by smoke from the rifles of his companions,

he had opportunities to see parts of the hard fight.


It was a relief to perceive at last from whence came some of these noises which had been roared into his ears.


Off a short way he saw two regiments fighting a little separate battle with two other regiments.


It was in a cleared space,

wearing a set-apart look.


They were blazing as if upon a wager,

giving and taking tremendous blows.


The firings were incredibly fierce and rapid.


These intent regiments apparently were oblivious of all larger purposes of war,

and were slugging each other as if at a matched game.


In another direction he saw a magnificent brigade going with the evident intention of driving the enemy from a wood.


They passed in out of sight and presently there was a most awe-inspiring racket in the wood.


The noise was unspeakable.


Having stirred this prodigious uproar,

and,

apparently,

finding it too prodigious,

the brigade,

after a little time,

came marching airily out again with its fine formation in nowise disturbed.


There were no traces of speed in its movements.


The brigade was jaunty and seemed to point a proud thumb at the yelling wood.


On a slope to the left there was a long row of guns,

gruff and maddened,

denouncing the enemy,

who,

down through the woods,

were forming for another attack in the pitiless monotony of conflicts.


The round red discharges from the guns made a crimson flare and a high,

thick smoke.


Occasional glimpses could be caught of groups of the toiling artillerymen.


In the rear of this row of guns stood a house,

calm and white,

amid bursting shells.


A congregation of horses,

tied to a long railing,

were tugging frenziedly at their bridles.


Men were running hither and thither.


The detached battle between the four regiments lasted for some time.


There chanced to be no interference,

and they settled their dispute by themselves.


They struck savagely and powerfully at each other for a period of minutes,

and then the lighter-hued regiments faltered and drew back,

leaving the dark-blue lines shouting.


The youth could see the two flags shaking with laughter amid the smoke remnants.


Presently there was a stillness,

pregnant with meaning.


The blue lines shifted and changed a trifle and stared expectantly at the silent woods and fields before them.


The hush was solemn and churchlike,

save for a distant battery that,

evidently unable to remain quiet,

sent a faint rolling thunder over the ground.


It irritated,

like the noises of unimpressed boys.


The men imagined that it would prevent their perched ears from hearing the first words of the new battle.


Of a sudden the guns on the slope roared out a message of warning.


A spluttering sound had begun in the woods.


It swelled with amazing speed to a profound clamor that involved the earth in noises.


The splitting crashes swept along the lines until an interminable roar was developed.


To those in the midst of it it became a din fitted to the universe.


It was the whirring and thumping of gigantic machinery,

complications among the smaller stars.


The youth's ears were filled cups.


They were incapable of hearing more.


On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and desperate rushes of men perpetually backward and forward in riotous surges.


These parts of the opposing armies were two long waves that pitched upon each other madly at dictated points.


To and fro they swelled.


Sometimes,

one side by its yells and cheers would proclaim decisive blows,

but a moment later the other side would be all yells and cheers.


Once the youth saw a spray of light forms go in houndlike leaps toward the waving blue lines.


There was much howling,

and presently it went away with a vast mouthful of prisoners.


Again,

he saw a blue wave dash with such thunderous force against a gray obstruction that it seemed to clear the earth of it and leave nothing but trampled sod.


And always in their swift and deadly rushes to and fro the men screamed and yelled like maniacs.


Particular pieces of fence or secure positions behind collections of trees were wrangled over,

as gold thrones or pearl bedsteads.


There were desperate lunges at these chosen spots seemingly every instant,

and most of them were bandied like light toys between the contending forces.


The youth could not tell from the battle flags flying like crimson foam in many directions which color of cloth was winning.


His emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished fierceness when its time came.


When assaulted again by bullets,

the men burst out in a barbaric cry of rage and pain.


They bent their heads in aims of intent hatred behind the projected hammers of their guns.


Their ramrods clanged loud with fury as their eager arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels.


The front of the regiment was a smoke-wall penetrated by the flashing points of yellow and red.


Wallowing in the fight,

they were in an astonishingly short time resmudged.


They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous appearances.


Moving to and fro with strained exertion,

jabbering all the while,

they were,

with their swaying bodies,

black faces,

and glowing eyes,

like strange and ugly fiends jigging heavily in the smoke.


The lieutenant,

returning from a tour after a bandage,

produced from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency.


Strings of expletives he swung lashlike over the backs of his men,

and it was evident that his previous efforts had in nowise impaired his resources.


The youth,

still the bearer of the colors,

did not feel his idleness.


He was deeply absorbed as a spectator.


The crash and swing of the great drama made him lean forward,

intent-eyed,

his face working in small contortions.


Sometimes he prattled,

words coming unconsciously from him in grotesque exclamations.


He did not know that he breathed;


that the flag hung silently over him,

so absorbed was he.


A formidable line of the enemy came within dangerous range.


They could be seen plainly --tall,

gaunt men with excited faces running with long strides toward a wandering fence.


At sight of this danger the men suddenly ceased their cursing monotone.


There was an instant of strained silence before they threw up their rifles and fired a plumping volley at the foes.


There had been no order given;


the men,

upon recognizing the menace,

had immediately let drive their flock of bullets without waiting for word of command.


But the enemy were quick to gain the protection of the wandering line of fence.


They slid down behind it with remarkable celerity,

and from this position they began briskly to slice up the blue men.


These latter braced their energies for a great struggle.


Often,

white clinched teeth shone from the dusky faces.


Many heads surged to and fro,

floating upon a pale sea of smoke.


Those behind the fence frequently shouted and yelped in taunts and gibelike cries,

but the regiment maintained a stressed silence.


Perhaps,

at this new assault the men recalled the fact that they had been named mud diggers,

and it made their situation thrice bitter.


They were breathlessly intent upon keeping the ground and thrusting away the rejoicing body of the enemy.


They fought swiftly and with a despairing savageness denoted in their expressions.


The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen.


Some arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred.


It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying,

torn and gluttering,

upon the field.


This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said "mule drivers,"

and later "mud diggers,"

for in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly.


And it was his idea,

vaguely formulated,

that his corpse would be for those eyes a great and salt reproach.


The regiment bled extravagantly.


Grunting bundles of blue began to drop.


The orderly sergeant of the youth's company was shot through the cheeks.


Its supports being injured,

his jaw hung afar down,

disclosing in the wide cavern of his mouth a pulsing mass of blood and teeth.


And with it all he made attempts to cry out.


In his endeavor there was a dreadful earnestness,

as if he conceived that one great shriek would make him well.


The youth saw him presently go rearward.


His strength seemed in nowise impaired.


He ran swiftly,

casting wild glances for succor.


Others fell down about the feet of their companions.


Some of the wounded crawled out and away,

but many lay still,

their bodies twisted into impossible shapes.


The youth looked once for his friend.


He saw a vehement young man,

powder-smeared and frowzled,

whom he knew to be him.


The lieutenant,

also,

was unscathed in his position at the rear.


He had continued to curse,

but it was now with the air of a man who was using his last box of oaths.


For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip.


The robust voice,

that had come strangely from the thin ranks,

was growing rapidly weak.



Chapter 23


The colonel came running along the back of the line.


There were other officers following him.


"We must charge'm!"

they shouted.


"We must charge'm!"

they cried with resentful voices,

as if anticipating a rebellion against this plan by the men.


The youth,

upon hearing the shouts,

began to study the distance between him and the enemy.


He made vague calculations.


He saw that to be firm soldiers they must go forward.


It would be death to stay in the present place,

and with all the circumstances to go backward would exalt too many others.


Their hope was to push the galling foes away from the fence.


He expected that his companions,

weary and stiffened,

would have to be driven to this assault,

but as he turned toward them he perceived with a certain surprise that they were giving quick and unqualified expressions of assent.


There was an ominous,

clanging overture to the charge when the shafts of the bayonets rattled upon the rifle barrels.


At the yelled words of command the soldiers sprang forward in eager leaps.


There was new and unexpected force in the movement of the regiment.


A knowledge of its faded and jaded condition made the charge appear like a paroxysm,

a display of the strength that comes before a final feebleness.


The men scampered in insane fever of haste,

racing as if to achieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should leave them.


It was a blind and despairing rush by the collection of men in dusty and tattered blue,

over a green sward and under a sapphire sky,

toward a fence,

dimly outlined in smoke,

from behind which sputtered the fierce rifles of enemies.


The youth kept the bright colors to the front.


He was waving his free arm in furious circles,

the while shrieking mad calls and appeals,

urging on those that did not need to be urged,

for it seemed that the mob of blue men hurling themselves on the dangerous group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild with an enthusiasm of unselfishness.


From the many firings starting toward them,

it looked as if they would merely succeed in making a great sprinkling of corpses on the grass between their former position and the fence.


But they were in a state of frenzy,

perhaps because of forgotten vanities,

and it made an exhibition of sublime recklessness.


There was no obvious questioning,

nor figurings,

nor diagrams.


There was,

apparently,

no considered loopholes.


It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.


He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage,

religion-mad.


He was capable of profound sacrifices,

a tremendous death.


He had no time for dissections,

but he knew that he thought of the bullets only as things that could prevent him from reaching the place of his endeavor.


There were subtle flashings of joy within him that thus should be his mind.


He strained all his strength.


His eyesight was shaken and dazzled by the tension of thought and muscle.


He did not see anything excepting the mist of smoke gashed by the little knives of fire,

but he knew that in it lay the aged fence of a vanished farmer protecting the snuggled bodies of the gray men.


As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his mind.


He expected a great concussion when the two bodies of troops crashed together.


This became a part of his wild battle madness.


He could feel the onward swing of the regiment about him and he conceived of a thunderous,

crushing blow that would prostrate the resistance and spread consternation and amazement for miles.


The flying regiment was going to have a catapultian effect.


This dream made him run faster among his comrades,

who were giving vent to hoarse and frantic cheers.


But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did not intend to abide the blow.


The smoke,

rolling,

disclosed men who ran,

their faces still turned.


These grew to a crowd,

who retired stubbornly.


Individuals wheeled frequently to send a bullet at the blue wave.


But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate group that made no movement.


They were settled firmly down behind posts and rails.


A flag,

ruffled and fierce,

waved over them and their rifles dinned fiercely.


The blue whirl of men got very near,

until it seemed that in truth there would be a close and frightful scuffle.


There was an expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group,

that changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue.


They became yells of wrath,

directed,

personal.


The cries of the two parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.


They in blue showed their teeth;


their eyes shone all white.


They launched themselves as at the throats of those who stood resisting.


The space between dwindled to an insignificant distance.


The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag.


Its possession would be high pride.


It would express bloody minglings,

near blows.


He had a gigantic hatred for those who made great difficulties and complications.


They caused it to be as a craved treasure of mythology,

hung amid tasks and contrivances of danger.


He plunged like a mad horse at it.


He was resolved it should not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it.


His own emblem,

quivering and aflare,

was winging toward the other.


It seemed there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks and claws,

as of eagles.


The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and disastrous range and roared a swift volley.


The group in gray was split and broken by this fire,

but its riddled body still fought.


The men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.


The youth,

in his leapings,

saw,

as through a mist,

a picture of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky.


Tottering among them was the rival color bearer,

whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last formidable volley.


He perceived this man fighting a last struggle,

the struggle of one whose legs are grasped by demons.


It was a ghastly battle.


Over his face was the bleach of death,

but set upon it was the dark and hard lines of desperate purpose.


With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged his precious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering in his design to go the way that led to safety for it.


But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded,

held,

and he fought a grim fight,

as with invisible ghouls fastened greedily upon his limbs.


Those in advance of the scampering blue men,

howling cheers,

leaped at the fence.


The despair of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back at them.


The youth's friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap and sprang at the flag as a panther at prey.


He pulled at it and,

wrenching it free,

swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry of exultation even as the color bearer,

gasping,

lurched over in a final throe and,

stiffening convulsively,

turned his dead face to the ground.


There was much blood upon the grass blades.


At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers.


The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy.


When they spoke it was as if they considered their listener to be a mile away.


What hats and caps were left to them they often slung high in the air.


At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon,

and they now sat as prisoners.


Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious circle.


The soldiers had trapped strange birds,

and there was an examination.


A flurry of fast questions was in the air.


One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot.


He cuddled it,

baby-wise,

but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors.


He consigned them to red regions;


he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods.


And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war.


It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege,

his duty,

to use deep,

resentful oaths.


Another,

who was a boy in years,

took his plight with great calmness and apparent good nature.


He conversed with the men in blue,

studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes.


They spoke of battles and conditions.


There was an acute interest in all their faces during this exchange of view points.


It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had been darkness and speculation.


The third captive sat with a morose countenance.


He preserved a stoical and cold attitude.


To all advances he made one reply without variation,

"Ah,

go t' hell!"


The last of the four was always silent and,

for the most part,

kept his face turned in unmolested directions.


From the views the youth received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection.


Shame was upon him,

and with it profound regret that he was,

perhaps,

no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows.


The youth could detect no expression that would allow him to believe that the other was giving a thought to his narrowed future,

the pictured dungeons,

perhaps,

and starvations and brutalities,

liable to the imagination.


All to be seen was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize.


After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down behind the old rail fence,

on the opposite side to the one from which their foes had been driven.


A few shot perfunctorily at distant marks.


There was some long grass.


The youth nestled in it and rested,

making a convenient rail support the flag.


His friend,

jubilant and glorified,

holding his treasure with vanity,

came to him there.


They sat side by side and congratulated each other.



Chapter 24


The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across the face of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker.


The stentorian speeches of the artillery continued in some distant encounter,

but the crashes of the musketry had almost ceased.


The youth and his friend of a sudden looked up,

feeling a deadened form of distress at the waning of these noises,

which had become a part of life.


They could see changes going on among the troops.


There were marchings this way and that way.


A battery wheeled leisurely.


On the crest of a small hill was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.


The youth arose.


"Well,

what now,

I wonder?"

he said.


By his tone he seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in the way of dins and smashes.


He shaded his eyes with his grimy hand and gazed over the field.


His friend also arose and stared.


"I bet we're goin' t' git along out of this an' back over th' river,"

said he.


"Well,

I swan!"

said the youth.


They waited,

watching.


Within a little while the regiment received orders to retrace its way.


The men got up grunting from the grass,

regretting the soft repose.


They jerked their stiffened legs,

and stretched their arms over their heads.


One man swore as he rubbed his eyes.


They all groaned "O Lord!"

They had as many objections to this change as they would have had to a proposal for a new battle.


They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had run in a mad scamper.


The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows.


The reformed brigade,

in column,

aimed through a wood at the road.


Directly they were in a mass of dust-covered troops,

and were trudging along in a way parallel to the enemy's lines as these had been defined by the previous turmoil.


They passed within view of a stolid white house,

and saw in front of it groups of their comrades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork.


A row of guns were booming at a distant enemy.


Shells thrown in reply were raising clouds of dust and splinters.


Horsemen dashed along the line of intrenchments.


At this point of its march the division curved away from the field and went winding off in the direction of the river.


When the significance of this movement had impressed itself upon the youth he turned his head and looked over his shoulder toward the trampled and debris-strewed ground.


He breathed a breath of new satisfaction.


He finally nudged his friend.


"Well,

it's all over,"

he said to him.


His friend gazed backward.


"B'Gawd,

it is,"

he assented.


They mused.


For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and uncertain way.


His mind was undergoing a subtle change.


It took moments for it to cast off its battleful ways and resume its accustomed course of thought.


Gradually his brain emerged from the clogged clouds,

and at last he was enabled to more closely comprehend himself and circumstance.


He understood then that the existence of shot and countershot was in the past.


He had dwelt in a land of strange,

squalling upheavals and had come forth.


He had been where there was red of blood and black of passion,

and he was escaped.


His first thoughts were given to rejoicings at this fact.


Later he began to study his deeds,

his failures,

and his achievements.


Thus,

fresh from scenes where many of his usual machines of reflection had been idle,

from where he had proceeded sheeplike,

he struggled to marshal all his acts.


At last they marched before him clearly.


From this present view point he was enabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and criticise them with some correctness,

for his new condition had already defeated certain sympathies.


Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and unregretting,

for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and shining prominence.


Those performances which had been witnessed by his fellows marched now in wide purple and gold,

having various deflections.


They went gayly with music.


It was pleasure to watch these things.


He spent delightful minutes viewing the gilded images of memory.


He saw that he was good.


He recalled with a thrill of joy the respectful comments of his fellows upon his conduct.


Nevertheless,

the ghost of his flight from the first engagement appeared to him and danced.


There were small shoutings in his brain about these matters.


For a moment he blushed,

and the light of his soul flickered with shame.


A specter of reproach came to him.


There loomed the dogging memory of the tattered soldier --he who,

gored by bullets and faint of blood,

had fretted concerning an imagined wound in another;


he who had loaned his last of strength and intellect for the tall soldier;


he who,

blind with weariness and pain,

had been deserted in the field.


For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the thought that he might be detected in the thing.


As he stood persistently before his vision,

he gave vent to a cry of sharp irritation and agony.


His friend turned.


"What's the matter,

Henry?"

he demanded.


The youth's reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.


As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his prattling companions this vision of cruelty brooded over him.


It clung near him always and darkened his view of these deeds in purple and gold.


Whichever way his thoughts turned they were followed by the somber phantom of the desertion in the fields.


He looked stealthily at his companions,

feeling sure that they must discern in his face evidences of this pursuit.


But they were plodding in ragged array,

discussing with quick tongues the accomplishments of the late battle.


"Oh,

if a man should come up an' ask me,

I'd say we got a dum good lickin'."


"Lickin' --in yer eye!

We ain't licked,

sonny.


We're goin' down here aways,

swing aroun',

an' come in behint

'em."


"Oh,

hush,

with your comin' in behint

'em.


I've seen all

'a that I wanta.


Don't tell me about comin' in behint --"


"Bill Smithers,

he ses he'd rather been in ten hundred battles than been in that heluva hospital.


He ses they got shootin' in th' nighttime,

an' shells dropped plum among

'em in th' hospital.


He ses sech hollerin' he never see."


"Hasbrouck?


He's th' best off'cer in this here reg'ment.


He's a whale."


"Didn't I tell yeh we'd come aroun' in behint

'em?


Didn't I tell yeh so?


We --"


"Oh,

shet yeh mouth!"


For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all elation from the youth's veins.


He saw his vivid error,

and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life.


He took no share in the chatter of his comrades,

nor did he look at them or know them,

save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the tattered soldier.


Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.


And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways.


He found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly.


He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised them.


With this conviction came a store of assurance.


He felt a quiet manhood,

nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood.


He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point.


He had been to touch the great death,

and found that,

after all,

it was but the great death.


He was a man.


So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed.


He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly,

and it was as if hot plowshares were not.


Scars faded as flowers.


It rained.


The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train,

despondent and muttering,

marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low,

wretched sky.


Yet the youth smiled,

for he saw that the world was a world for him,

though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks.


He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle.


The sultry nightmare was in the past.


He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war.


He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies,

fresh meadows,

cool brooks --an existence of soft and eternal peace.


Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.


THE END.