Chapter I


The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring
fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the
landscape changed from brown to green, the army awak-ened,
and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It
cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long
troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-
tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s
feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful
blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of
hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.
Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely
to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving
his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had
heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful
cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother,
one of the order-lies at division headquarters. He adopted the
important air of a herald in red and gold. “We’re goin’ t’ move
t’ morrah—sure,” he said pompously to a group in the company
street. “We’re goin’ ‘way up the river, cut across, an’
come around in behint ‘em.”
To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan
of a very brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blueclothed
men scattered into small arguing groups between the
rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been
dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement
of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down.
Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chim-neys.
“It’s a lie! that’s all it is—a thunderin’ lie!” said another private
loudly. His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were
thrust sulkily into his trousers’ pockets. He took the matter as
an affront to him. “I don’t believe the derned old army’s ever
going to move. We’re set. I’ve got ready to move eight times
in the last two weeks, and we ain’t moved yet.”
The tall soldier felt called upon to defend the truth of a rumor
he himself had intro-duced. He and the loud one came near to
fight-ing over it.
A corporal began to swear before the assem-blage. He had
just put a costly board floor in his house, he said. During the
early spring he had refrained from adding extensively to the
comfort of his environment because he had felt that the army
might start on the march at any moment. Of late, however, he
had been im-pressed that they were in a sort of eternal camp.
Many of the men engaged in a spirited debate. One outlined
in a peculiarly lucid manner all the plans of the commanding
general. He was op-posed by men who advocated that there
were other plans of campaign. They clamored at each other,
numbers making futile bids for the pop-ular attention. Meanwhile,
the soldier who had fetched the rumor bustled about with
much importance. He was continually assailed by questions.
“What’s up, Jim?”
“Th’ army’s goin’ t’ move.”
“Ah, what yeh talkin’ about? How yeh know it is?”
“Well, yeh kin b’lieve me er not, jest as yeh like. I don’t care
a hang.”
There was much food for thought in the man-ner in which he
replied. He came near to con-vincing them by disdaining to
produce proofs. They grew excited over it.
There was a youthful private who listened with eager ears to
the words of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his
comrades. After receiving a fill of discussions concerning
marches and attacks, he went to his hut and crawled through
an intricate hole that served it as a door. He wished to be
alone with some new thoughts that had lately come to him.
He lay down on a wide bank that stretched across the end
of the room. In the other end, cracker boxes were made to
serve as furniture. They were grouped about the fireplace. A
pic-ture from an illustrated weekly was upon the log walls,
and three rifles were paralleled on pegs. Equipments hunt on
handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon a small pile of
firewood. A folded tent was serving as a roof. The sunlight,
without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade. A
small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the
cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the
clay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney
of clay and sticks made end-less threats to set ablaze the
whole establishment.
The youth was in a little trance of astonish-ment. So they
were at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would
be a battle, and he would be in it. For a time he was obliged to
labor to make himself believe. He could not accept with assurance
an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those
great affairs of the earth.
He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life—of vague
and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and
fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles. He had
imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess.
But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches
on the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the
bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high
castles. There was a portion of the world’s history which he
had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, had been
long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever.
From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in
his own country with distrust. It must be some sort of a play
affair. He had long despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle.
Such would be no more, he had said. Men were better, or
more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the
throat-grappling in-stinct, or else firm finance held in check the
passions.
He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements
shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric,
but there seemed to be much glory in them. He had read of
marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all. His
busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color,
lurid with breathless deeds.
But his mother had discouraged him. She had affected to
look with some contempt upon the quality of his war ardor
and patriotism. She could calmly seat herself and with no apparent
difficulty give him many hundreds of reasons why he
was of vastly more importance on the farm than on the field of
battle. She had had certain ways of expression that told him
that her statements on the subject came from a deep conviction.
Moreover, on her side, was his belief that her ethical
motive in the argument was impregnable.
At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this
yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions. The newspapers,
the gossip of the village, his own picturings had aroused
him to an uncheckable degree. They were in truth fighting finely
down there. Almost every day the newspapers printed accounts
of a decisive victory.
One night, as he lay in bed, the winds had carried to him
the clangoring of the church bell as some enthusiast jerked
the rope frantically to tell the twisted news of a great battle.
This voice of the people rejoicing in the night had made him
shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of ex-citement. Later, he had
gone down to his mother’s room and had spoken thus: “Ma,
I’m going to enlist.”
“Henry, don’t you be a fool,” his mother had replied. She
had then covered her face with the quilt. There was an end to
the matter for that night.
Nevertheless, the next morning he had gone to a town that
was near his mother’s farm and had enlisted in a company that
was forming there. When he had returned home his mother
was milking the brindle cow. Four others stood waiting. “Ma,
I’ve enlisted,” he had said to her diffidently. There was a short
silence. “The Lord’s will be done, Henry,” she had finally replied,
and had then continued to milk the brindle cow.
When he had stood in the doorway with his soldier’s clothes
on his back, and with the light of excitement and expectancy
in his eyes almost defeating the glow of regret for the home
bonds, he had seen two tears leaving their trails on his
mother’s scarred cheeks.
Still, she had disappointed him by saying nothing whatever
about returning with his shield or on it. He had privately primed
himself for a beautiful scene. He had prepared certain sentences
which he thought could be used with touching effect.
But her words destroyed his plans. She had doggedly peeled
potatoes and addressed him as follows: “You watch out, Henry,
an’ take good care of yerself in this here fighting business—
you watch out, an’ take good care of yerself. Don’t go athinkin’
you can lick the hull rebel army at the start, because
yeh can’t. Yer jest one little feller amongst a hull lot of others,
and yeh’ve got to keep quiet an’ do what they tell yeh. I know
how you are, Henry.
“I’ve knet yeh eight pair of socks, Henry, and I’ve put in all
yer best shirts, because I want my boy to be jest as warm and
comf’able as anybody in the army. Whenever they get holes in
‘em, I want yeh to send ‘em right-away back to me, so’s I kin
dern ‘em.
“An’ allus be careful an’ choose yer comp’ny. There’s lots
of bad men in the army, Henry. The army makes ‘em wild, and
they like nothing better than the job of leading off a young
feller like you, as ain’t never been away from home much and
has allus had a mother, an’ a-learning ‘em to drink and swear.
Keep clear of them folks, Henry. I don’t want yeh to ever do
any-thing, Henry, that yeh would be ‘shamed to let me know
about. Jest think as if I was a-watchin’ yeh. If yeh keep that in
yer mind allus, I guess yeh’ll come out about right.
“Yeh must allus remember yer father, too, child, an’ remember
he never drunk a drop of licker in his life, and seldom
swore a cross oath.
“I don’t know what else to tell yeh, Henry, excepting that
yeh must never do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be
a time comes when yeh have to be kilt or do a mean thing,
why, Henry, don’t think of anything ‘cept what’s right, because
there’s many a woman has to bear up ‘ginst sech things
these times, and the Lord ‘ll take keer of us all.
“Don’t forgit about the socks and the shirts, child; and I’ve
put a cup of blackberry jam with yer bundle, because I know
yeh like it above all things. Good-by, Henry. Watch out, and
be a good boy.”
He had, of course, been impatient under the ordeal of this
speech. It had not been quite what he expected, and he had
borne it with an air of irritation. He departed feeling vague
relief.
Still, when he had looked back from the gate, he had seen
his mother kneeling among the po-tato parings. Her brown
face, upraised, was stained with tears, and her spare form was
quivering. He bowed his head and went on, feeling suddenly
ashamed of his purposes.
From his home he had gone to the seminary to bid adieu to
many schoolmates. They had thronged about him with wonder
and admiration. He had felt the gulf now between them
and had swelled with calm pride. He and some of his fellows
who had donned blue were quite over-whelmed with privileges
for all of one afternoon, and it had been a very delicious
thing. They had strutted.
A certain light-haired girl had made vivacious fun at his martial
spirit, but there was another and darker girl whom he had
gazed at steadfastly, and he thought she grew demure and sad
at sight of his blue and brass. As he had walked down the path
between the rows of oaks, he had turned his head and detected
her at a window watching his departure. As he perceived
her, she had im-mediately begun to stare up through
the high tree branches at the sky. He had seen a good deal of
flurry and haste in her movement as she changed her attitude.
He often thought of it.
On the way to Washington his spirit had soared. The regiment
was fed and caressed at station after station until the
youth had believed that he must be a hero. There was a lavish
ex-penditure of bread and cold meats, coffee, and pickles and
cheese. As he basked in the smiles of the girls and was patted
and complimented by the old men, he had felt growing within
him the strength to do mighty deeds of arms.
After complicated journeyings with many pauses, there had
come months of monotonous life in a camp. He had had the
belief that real war was a series of death struggles with small
time in between for sleep and meals; but since his regiment
had come to the field the army had done little but sit still and
try to keep warm.
He was brought then gradually back to his old ideas.
Greeklike struggles would be no more. Men were better, or
more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the
throat-grap-pling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the
passions.
He had grown to regard himself merely as a part of a vast
blue demonstration. His province was to look out, as far as he
could, for his per-sonal comfort. For recreation he could
twiddle his thumbs and speculate on the thoughts which must
agitate the minds of the generals. Also, he was drilled and
drilled and reviewed, and drilled and drilled and reviewed.
The only foes he had seen were some pickets along the river
bank. They were a sun-tanned, philosophical lot, who sometimes
shot reflectively at the blue pickets. When reproached
for this afterward, they usually expressed sorrow, and swore
by their gods that the guns had exploded without their permission.
The youth, on guard duty one night, conversed across the
stream with one of them. He was a slightly ragged man, who
spat skillfully between his shoes and possessed a great fund of
bland and infantile assurance. The youth liked him personally.
“Yank,” the other had informed him, “yer a right dum good
feller.” This sentiment, floating to him upon the still air, had
made him tempo-rarily regret war.
Various veterans had told him tales. Some talked of gray,
bewhiskered hordes who were advancing with relentless curses
and chewing tobacco with unspeakable valor; tremendous
bodies of fierce soldiery who were sweeping along like the
Huns. Others spoke of tattered and eternally hungry men who
fired despondent powders. “They’ll charge through hell’s fire
an’ brimstone t’ git a holt on a haversack, an’ sech stomachs
ain’t a-lastin’ long,” he was told. From the stories, the youth
imagined the red, live bones sticking out through slits in the
faded uniforms.
Still, he could not put a whole faith in veter-ans’ tales, for
recruits were their prey. They talked much of smoke, fire, and
blood, but he could not tell how much might be lies. They
persistently yelled “Fresh fish!” at him, and were in no wise to
be trusted.
However, he perceived now that it did not greatly matter what
kind of soldiers he was going to fight, so long as they fought,
which fact no one disputed. There was a more serious problem.
He lay in his bunk pondering upon it. He tried to mathematically
prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.
Previously he had never felt obliged to wrestle too seriously
with this question. In his life he had taken certain things for granted,
never challeng-ing his belief in ultimate success, and bothering
little about means and roads. But here he was confronted with a
thing of moment. It had sud-denly appeared to him that perhaps
in a battle he might run. He was forced to admit that as far as
war was concerned he knew nothing of himself.
A sufficient time before he would have allowed the problem
to kick its heels at the outer portals of his mind, but now he felt
compelled to give serious attention to it.
A little panic-fear grew in his mind. As his imagination went
forward to a fight, he saw hide-ous possibilities. He contemplated
the lurking menaces of the future, and failed in an effort
to see himself standing stoutly in the midst of them. He recalled
his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of the
impending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures.
He sprang from the bunk and began to pace nervously to
and fro. “Good Lord, what’s th’ matter with me?” he said
aloud.
He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever
he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an
unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to
experi-ment as he had in early youth. He must accumu-late
information of himself, and meanwhile he re-solved to remain
close upon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew
nothing should ever-lastingly disgrace him. “Good Lord!” he
re-peated in dismay.
After a time the tall soldier slid dexterously through the hole.
The loud private followed. They were wrangling.
“That’s all right,” said the tall soldier as he entered. He waved
his hand expressively. “You can believe me or not, jest as you
like. All you got to do is to sit down and wait as quiet as you
can. Then pretty soon you’ll find out I was right.”
His comrade grunted stubbornly. For a mo-ment he seemed
to be searching for a formidable reply. Finally he said: “Well,
you don’t know everything in the world, do you?”
“Didn’t say I knew everything in the world,” retorted the
other sharply. He began to stow various articles snugly into his
knapsack.
The youth, pausing in his nervous walk, looked down at the
busy figure. “Going to be a battle, sure, is there, Jim?” he asked.
“Of course there is,” replied the tall soldier. “Of course there
is. You jest wait ‘til to-morrow, and you’ll see one of the biggest
battles ever was. You jest wait.”
“Thunder!der!” said the youth.
“Oh, you’ll see fighting this time, my boy, what’ll be regular
out-and-out fighting,” added the tall soldier, with the air of a
man who is about to exhibit a battle for the benefit of his friends.
“Huh!” said the loud one from a corner.
“Well,” remarked the youth, “like as not this story’ll turn out
jest like them others did.”
“Not much it won’t,” replied the tall soldier, exasperated.
“Not much it won’t. Didn’t the cavalry all start this morning?”
He glared about him. No one denied his statement. “The cavalry
started this morning,” he continued. “They say there ain’t
hardly any cavalry left in camp. They’re going to Richmond,
or some place, while we fight all the Johnnies. It’s some dodge
like that. The regiment’s got orders, too. A feller what seen
‘em go to headquarters told me a little while ago. And they’re
raising blazes all over camp—anybody can see that.”
“Shucks!” said the loud one.
The youth remained silent for a time. At last he spoke to the
tall soldier. “Jim!”
“What?”
“How do you think the reg’ment ‘ll do?”
“Oh, they’ll fight all right, I guess, after they once get into it,”
said the other with cold judg-ment. He made a fine use of the
third person. “There’s been heaps of fun poked at ‘em because
they’re new, of course, and all that; but they’ll fight all
right, I guess.”
“Think any of the boys ‘ll run?” persisted the youth.
“Oh, there may be a few of ‘em run, but there’s them kind in
every regiment, ‘specially when they first goes under fire,” said
the other in a tolerant way. “Of course it might happen that the
hull kit-and-boodle might start and run, if some big fighting
came first-off, and then again they might stay and fight like fun.
But you can’t bet on nothing. Of course they ain’t never been
under fire yet, and it ain’t likely they’ll lick the hull rebel army allto-
oncet the first time; but I think they’ll fight better than some, if
worse than others. That’s the way I figger. They call the reg’ment
‘Fresh fish’ and everything; but the boys come of good stock,
and most of ‘em ‘ll fight like sin after they oncet git shootin’,” he
added, with a mighty emphasis on the last four words.
“Oh, you think you know—” began the loud soldier with
scorn.
The other turned savagely upon him. They had a rapid altercation,
in which they fastened upon each other various
strange epithets.
The youth at last interrupted them. “Did you ever think you
might run yourself, Jim?” he asked. On concluding the sentence
he laughed as if he had meant to aim a joke. The loud
soldier also giggled.
The tall private waved his hand. “Well,” said he profoundly,
“I’ve thought it might get too hot for Jim Conklin in some of
them scrimmages, and if a whole lot of boys started and run,
why, I s’pose I’d start and run. And if I once started to run,
I’d run like the devil, and no mistake. But if everybody was astanding
and a-fighting, why, I’d stand and fight. Be jiminey, I
would. I’ll bet on it.”
“Huh!” said the loud one.
The youth of this tale felt gratitude for these words of his
comrade. He had feared that all of the untried men possessed
a great and correct confidence. He now was in a measure
reassured.

Chapter II


The next morning the youth discovered that his tall comrade
had been the fast-flying messen-ger of a mistake. There was
much scoffing at the latter by those who had yesterday been
firm adherents of his views, and there was even a lit-tle sneering
by men who had never believed the rumor. The tall one fought
with a man from Chatfield Corners and beat him severely.
The youth felt, however, that his problem was in no wise lifted
from him. There was, on the contrary, an irritating prolongation.
The tale had created in him a great concern for himself. Now,
with the newborn question in his mind, he was compelled to
sink back into his old place as part of a blue demonstration.
For days he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all
wondrously unsatisfactory. He found that he could establish
nothing. He final-ly concluded that the only way to prove himself
was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to
18 watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. He reluctantly
admitted that he could not sit still and with a mental
slate and pencil derive an answer. To gain it, he must have
blaze, blood, and danger, even as a chemist requires this, that,
and the other. So he fretted for an opportunity.
Meanwhile he continually tried to measure himself by his
comrades. The tall soldier, for one, gave him some assurance.
This man’s se-rene unconcern dealt him a measure of confidence,
for he had known him since childhood, and from his
intimate knowledge he did not see how he could be capable of
anything that was beyond him, the youth. Still, he thought that
his comrade might be mistaken about himself. Or, on the other
hand, he might be a man here-tofore doomed to peace and
obscurity, but, in reality, made to shine in war.
The youth would have liked to have discov-ered another
who suspected himself. A sympa-thetic comparison of mental
notes would have been a joy to him.
He occasionally tried to fathom a comrade with seductive
sentences. He looked about to find men in the proper mood.
All attempts failed to bring forth any statement which looked
in any way like a confession to those doubts which he privately
acknowledged in himself. He was afraid to make an
open declaration of his concern, because he dreaded to place
some unscrupulous confidant upon the high plane of the unconfessed
from which elevation he could be derided.
In regard to his companions his mind wa-vered between
two opinions, according to his mood. Sometimes he inclined
to believing them all heroes. In fact, he usually admitted in
secret the superior development of the higher qualities in others.
He could conceive of men going very insignificantly about
the world bearing a load of courage unseen, and although he
had known many of his comrades through boyhood, he began
to fear that his judgment of them had been blind. Then, in
other moments, he flouted these theories, and assured himself
that his fellows were all privately wondering and quaking.
His emotions made him feel strange in the presence of men
who talked excitedly of a pro-spective battle as of a drama
they were about to witness, with nothing but eagerness and
curiosity apparent in their faces. It was often that he sus-pected
them to be liars.
He did not pass such thoughts without severe condemnation
of himself. He dinned reproaches at times. He was convicted by
himself of many shameful crimes against the gods of traditions.
In his great anxiety his heart was continually clamoring at
what he considered the intolerable slowness of the generals.
They seemed content to perch tranquilly on the river bank,
and leave him bowed down by the weight of a great prob-lem.
He wanted it settled forthwith. He could not long bear such a
load, he said. Sometimes his anger at the commanders reached
an acute stage, and he grumbled about the camp like a veteran.
One morning, however, he found himself in the ranks of his
prepared regiment. The men were whispering speculations and
recounting the old rumors. In the gloom before the break of
the day their uniforms glowed a deep purple hue. From across
the river the red eyes were still peering. In the eastern sky
there was a yel-low patch like a rug laid for the feet of the
com-ing sun; and against it, black and patternlike, loomed the
gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantic horse.
From off in the darkness came the trampling of feet. The
youth could occasionally see dark shadows that moved like
monsters. The regi-ment stood at rest for what seemed a long
time. The youth grew impatient. It was unendurable the way
these affairs were managed. He won-dered how long they were
to be kept waiting.
As he looked all about him and pondered upon the mystic
gloom, he began to believe that at any moment the ominous
distance might be aflare, and the rolling crashes of an engagement
come to his ears. Staring once at the red eyes across the
river, he conceived them to be grow-ing larger, as the orbs of a
row of dragons ad-vancing. He turned toward the colonel and
saw him lift his gigantic arm and calmly stroke his mustache.
At last he heard from along the road at the foot of the hill the
clatter of a horse’s galloping hoofs. It must be the coming of
orders. He bent forward, scarce breathing. The exciting
clickety-click, as it grew louder and louder, seemed to be beating
upon his soul. Presently a horseman with jangling equipment
drew rein be-fore the colonel of the regiment. The two
held a short, sharp-worded conversation. The men in the foremost
ranks craned their necks.
As the horseman wheeled his animal and gal-loped away he
turned to shout over his shoulder, “Don’t forget that box of
cigars!” The colonel mumbled in reply. The youth wondered
what a box of cigars had to do with war.
A moment later the regiment went swinging off into the darkness.
It was now like one of those moving monsters wending
with many feet. The air was heavy, and cold with dew. A mass
of wet grass, marched upon, rustled like silk.
There was an occasional flash and glimmer of steel from the
backs of all these huge crawl-ing reptiles. From the road came
creakings and grumblings as some surly guns were dragged away.
The men stumbled along still muttering specu-lations. There
was a subdued debate. Once a man fell down, and as he
reached for his rifle a comrade, unseeing, trod upon his hand.
He of the injured fingers swore bitterly and aloud. A low, tittering
laugh went among his fellows.
Presently they passed into a roadway and marched forward
with easy strides. A dark regiment moved before them, and
from behind also came the tinkle of equipments on the bodies
of marching men.
The rushing yellow of the developing day went on behind
their backs. When the sunrays at last struck full and mellowingly
upon the earth, the youth saw that the landscape was streaked
with two long, thin, black columns which disappeared on the
brow of a hill in front and rearward vanished in a wood. They
were like two serpents crawling from the cavern of the night.
The river was not in view. The tall soldier burst into praises
of what he thought to be his powers of perception.
Some of the tall one’s companions cried with emphasis that
they, too, had evolved the same thing, and they congratulated
themselves upon it. But there were others who said that the tall
one’s plan was not the true one at all. They per-sisted with
other theories. There was a vigorous discussion.
The youth took no part in them. As he walked along in
careless line he was engaged with his own eternal debate.
He could not hin-der himself from dwelling upon it. He was
de-spondent and sullen, and threw shifting glances about him.
He looked ahead, often expecting to hear from the advance
the rattle of firing.
But the long serpents crawled slowly from hill to hill without
bluster of smoke. A dun-col-ored cloud of dust floated away
to the right. The sky overhead was of a fairy blue.
The youth studied the faces of his compan-ions, ever on the
watch to detect kindred emo-tions. He suffered disappointment.
Some ardor of the air which was causing the veteran
com-mands to move with glee—almost with song—had infected
the new regiment. The men began to speak of victory
as of a thing they knew. Also, the tall soldier received his vindication.
They were certainly going to come around in behind
the enemy. They expressed commisera-tion for that part of the
army which had been left upon the river bank, felicitating them
selves upon being a part of a blasting host.
The youth, considering himself as separated from the others,
was saddened by the blithe and merry speeches that went
from rank to rank. The company wags all made their best
endeav-ors. The regiment tramped to the tune of laughter.
The blatant soldier often convulsed whole files by his biting
sarcasms aimed at the tall one.
And it was not long before all the men seemed to forget
their mission. Whole brigades grinned in unison, and regiments
laughed.
A rather fat soldier attempted to pilfer a horse from a
dooryard. He planned to load his knap-sack upon it. He was
escaping with his prize when a young girl rushed from the house
and grabbed the animal’s mane. There followed a wrangle.
The young girl, with pink cheeks and shining eyes, stood like a
dauntless statue.
The observant regiment, standing at rest in the roadway,
whooped at once, and entered whole-souled upon the side of
the maiden. The men became so engrossed in this affair that
they entirely ceased to remember their own large war. They
jeered the piratical private, and called attention to various defects
in his personal ap-pearance; and they were wildly enthusiastic
in support of the young girl.
To her, from some distance, came bold advice. “Hit him
with a stick.”
There were crows and catcalls showered upon him when
he retreated without the horse. The regiment rejoiced at his
downfall. Loud and vociferous congratulations were showered
upon the maiden, who stood panting and regard-ing the
troops with defiance.
At nightfall the column broke into regimental pieces, and
the fragments went into the fields to camp. Tents sprang up
like strange plants. Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms,
dotted the night.
The youth kept from intercourse with his companions as much
as circumstances would allow him. In the evening he wandered
a few paces into the gloom. From this little distance the
many fires, with the black forms of men pass-ing to and fro
before the crimson rays, made weird and satanic effects.
He lay down in the grass. The blades pressed tenderly against
his cheek. The moon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop.
The liquid stillness of the night enveloping him made him
feel vast pity for himself. There was a caress in the soft winds;
and the whole mood of the darkness, he thought, was one of
sympathy for himself in his distress.
He wished, without reserve, that he was at home again making
the endless rounds from the house to the barn, from the barn
to the fields, from the fields to the barn, from the barn to the
house. He remembered he had often cursed the brindle cow
and her mates, and had sometimes flung milking stools. But,
from his present point of view, there was a halo of happiness
about each of their heads, and he would have sacrificed all the
brass buttons on the continent to have been enabled to return to
them. He told himself that he was not formed for a soldier. And
he mused seriously upon the radical differences between himself
and those men who were dodging imp-like around the fires.
As he mused thus he heard the rustle of grass, and, upon
turning his head, discovered the loud soldier. He called out,
“Oh, Wilson!”
The latter approached and looked down. “Why, hello, Henry;
is it you? What you do-ing here?”
“Oh, thinking,” said the youth.
The other sat down and carefully lighted his pipe. “You’re
getting blue, my boy. You’re looking thundering peeked. What
the dickens is wrong with you?”
“Oh, nothing,” said the youth.
The loud soldier launched then into the sub-ject of the anticipated
fight. “Oh, we’ve got ‘em now!” As he spoke his
boyish face was wreathed in a gleeful smile, and his voice had
an exultant ring. “We’ve got ‘em now. At last, by the eternal
thunders, we’ll lick ‘em good!”
“If the truth was known,” he added, more soberly, “They’ve
licked us about every clip up to now; but this time—this time—
we’ll lick ‘em good!”
“I thought you was objecting to this march a little while ago,”
said the youth coldly.
“Oh, it wasn’t that,” explained the other. “I don’t mind marching,
if there’s going to be fight-ing at the end of it. What I hate
is this getting moved here and moved there, with no good coming
of it, as far as I can see, excepting sore feet and damned
short rations.”
“Well, Jim Conklin says we’ll get a plenty of fighting this time.”
“He’s right for once, I guess, though I can’t see how it come.
This time we’re in for a big battle, and we’ve got the best end
of it, certain sure. Gee rod! how we will thump ‘em!”
He arose and began to pace to and fro excit-edly. The thrill
of his enthusiasm made him walk with an elastic step. He was
sprightly, vigorous, fiery in his belief in success. He looked into
the future with clear, proud eye, and he swore with the air of
an old soldier.
The youth watched him for a moment in silence. When he
finally spoke his voice was as bitter as dregs. “Oh, you’re
going to do great things, I s’pose!”
The loud soldier blew a thoughtful cloud of smoke from his
pipe. “Oh, I don’t know,” he remarked with dignity; “I don’t
know. I s’pose I’ll do as well as the rest. I’m going to try like
thunder.” He evidently complimented himself upon the modesty
of this statement.
“How do you know you won’t run when the time comes?”
asked the youth.
“Run?” said the loud one; “run?—of course not!” He laughed.
“Well,” continued the youth, “lots of good-a-’nough men
have thought they was going to do great things before the fight,
but when the time come they skedaddled.”
“Oh, that’s all true, I s’pose,” replied the other; “but I’m not
going to skedaddle. The man that bets on my running will lose
his money, that’s all.” He nodded confidently.
“Oh, shucks!” said the youth. “You ain’t the bravest man in
the world, are you?”
“No, I ain’t,” exclaimed the loud soldier in-dignantly; “and I
didn’t say I was the bravest man in the world, neither. I said I
was going to do my share of fighting—that’s what I said. And
I am, too. Who are you, anyhow. You talk as if you thought
you was Napoleon Bonaparte.” He glared at the youth for a
moment, and then strode away.
The youth called in a savage voice after his comrade: “Well,
you needn’t git mad about it!” But the other continued on his
way and made no reply.
He felt alone in space when his injured com-rade had disappeared.
His failure to discover any mite of resemblance in their
view points made him more miserable than before. No one
seemed to be wrestling with such a terrific per-sonal problem.
He was a mental outcast.
He went slowly to his tent and stretched him-self on a blanket
by the side of the snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he
saw visions of a thou-sand-tongued fear that would babble at
his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly
about their country’s business. He admit-ted that he would
not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve
in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other
men would remain stolid and deaf.
And as he sweated with the pain of these thoughts, he could
hear low, serene sentences. “I’ll bid five.” “Make it six.”
“Seven.” “Seven goes.”
He stared at the red, shivering reflection of a fire on the
white wall of his tent until, ex-hausted and ill from the monotony
of his suf-fering, he fell asleep.

Chapter III


When another night came the columns, changed to purple
streaks, filed across two pon-toon bridges. A glaring fire winetinted
the waters of the river. Its rays, shining upon the moving
masses of troops, brought forth here and there sudden gleams
of silver or gold. Upon the other shore a dark and mysterious
range of hills was curved against the sky. The insect voices of
the night sang solemnly.
After this crossing the youth assured himself that at any moment
they might be suddenly and fearfully assaulted from the
caves of the lowering woods. He kept his eyes watchfully upon
the darkness.
But his regiment went unmolested to a camp-ing place, and
its soldiers slept the brave sleep of wearied men. In the morning
they were routed out with early energy, and hustled along a
narrow road that led deep into the forest.
It was during this rapid march that the regiment lost many of
the marks of a new com-mand.
The men had begun to count the miles upon their fingers,
and they grew tired. “Sore feet an’ damned short rations, that’s
all,” said the loud soldier. There was perspiration and grum-blings.
After a time they began to shed their knapsacks. Some tossed
them unconcernedly down; others hid them carefully, asserting
their plans to return for them at some convenient time. Men extricated
themselves from thick shirts. Presently few carried anything
but their necessary clothing, blankets, haversacks, canteens, and
arms and ammunition. “You can now eat and shoot,” said the tall
soldier to the youth. “That’s all you want to do.”
There was sudden change from the ponderous infantry of
theory to the light and speedy infantry of practice. The regiment,
relieved of a burden, received a new impetus. But there
was much loss of valuable knapsacks, and, on the whole, very
good shirts.
But the regiment was not yet veteranlike in appearance. Veteran
regiments in the army were likely to be very small aggregations
of men. Once, when the command had first come to
the field, some perambulating veterans, noting the length of
their column, had accosted them thus: “Hey, fellers, what brigade
is that?” And when the men had replied that they formed
a regiment and not a brigade, the older soldiers had laughed,
and said, “O Gawd!”
Also, there was too great a similarity in the hats. The hats of
a regiment should properly represent the history of headgear
for a period of years. And, moreover, there were no letters of
faded gold speaking from the colors. They were new and beautiful,
and the color bearer habitu-ally oiled the pole.
Presently the army again sat down to think. The odor of the
peaceful pines was in the men’s nostrils. The sound of monotonous
axe blows rang through the forest, and the insects,
nodding upon their perches, crooned like old women. The
youth returned to his theory of a blue dem-onstration.
One gray dawn, however, he was kicked in the leg by the
tall soldier, and then, before he was entirely awake, he found
himself running down a wood road in the midst of men who
were panting from the first effects of speed. His can-teen
banged rhythmically upon his thigh, and his haversack bobbed
softly. His musket bounced a trifle from his shoulder at each
stride and made his cap feel uncertain upon his head.
He could hear the men whisper jerky sen-tences: “Say—
what’s all this—about?” “What th’ thunder—we—skedaddlin’
this way fer?” “Billie—keep off m’ feet. Yeh run—like a cow.”
And the loud soldier’s shrill voice could be heard: “What th’
devil they in sich a hurry for?”
The youth thought the damp fog of early morning moved
from the rush of a great body of troops. From the distance
came a sudden spatter of firing.
He was bewildered. As he ran with his com-rades he strenuously
tried to think, but all he knew was that if he fell down
those coming behind would tread upon him. All his faculties
seemed to be needed to guide him over and past obstructions.
He felt carried along by a mob.
The sun spread disclosing rays, and, one by one, regiments
burst into view like armed men just born of the earth. The
youth perceived that the time had come. He was about to be
measured. For a moment he felt in the face of his great trial like
a babe, and the flesh over his heart seemed very thin. He seized
time to look about him calculatingly.
But he instantly saw that it would be impossi-ble for him to
escape from the regiment. It in-closed him. And there were
iron laws of tradi-tion and law on four sides. He was in a
moving box.
As he perceived this fact it occurred to him that he had never
wished to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will.
He had been dragged by the merciless government. And now
they were taking him out to be slaughtered.
The regiment slid down a bank and wallowed across a
little stream. The mournful current moved slowly on, and from
the water, shaded black, some white bubble eyes looked at
the men.
As they climbed the hill on the farther side artillery began to
boom. Here the youth forgot many things as he felt a sudden
impulse of curi-osity. He scrambled up the bank with a speed
that could not be exceeded by a bloodthirsty man.
He expected a battle scene.
There were some little fields girted and squeezed by a forest.
Spread over the grass and in among the tree trunks, he
could see knots and waving lines of skirmishers who were
running hither and thither and firing at the landscape. A dark
battle line lay upon a sunstruck clearing that gleamed orange
color. A flag fluttered.
Other regiments floundered up the bank. The brigade was
formed in line of battle, and after a pause started slowly through
the woods in the rear of the receding skirmishers, who were
con-tinually melting into the scene to appear again farther on.
They were always busy as bees, deeply absorbed in their little
combats.
The youth tried to observe everything. He did not use care
to avoid trees and branches, and his forgotten feet were constantly
knocking against stones or getting entangled in briers.
He was aware that these battalions with their commotions were
woven red and startling into the gentle fabric of softened greens
and browns. It looked to be a wrong place for a battle field.
The skirmishers in advance fascinated him. Their shots into
thickets and at distant and prominent trees spoke to him of
tragedies—hid-den, mysterious, solemn.
Once the line encountered the body of a dead soldier. He
lay upon his back staring at the sky. He was dressed in an
awkward suit of yellowish brown. The youth could see that
the soles of his shoes had been worn to the thinness of writing
paper, and from a great rent in one the dead foot projected
piteously. And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In
death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he
had perhaps concealed from his friends.
The ranks opened covertly to avoid the corpse. The invulnerable
dead man forced a way for him-self. The youth looked
keenly at the ashen face. The wind raised the tawny beard. It
moved as if a hand were stroking it. He vaguely desired to walk
around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living
to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.
During the march the ardor which the youth had acquired when
out of view of the field rapidly faded to nothing. His curiosity
was quite easily satisfied. If an intense scene had caught him
with its wild swing as he came to the top of the bank, he might
have gone roaring on. This advance upon Nature was too calm.
He had opportunity to reflect. He had time in which to wonder
about himself and to attempt to probe his sensa-tions.
Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did
not relish the landscape. It threatened him. A coldness swept
over his back, and it is true that his trousers felt to him that they
were no fit for his legs at all.
A house standing placidly in distant fields had to him an ominous
look. The shadows of the woods were formidable. He
was certain that in this vista there lurked fierce-eyed hosts.
The swift thought came to him that the generals did not know
what they were about. It was all a trap. Suddenly those close
forests would bristle with rifle barrels. Ironlike brigades would
ap-pear in the rear. They were all going to be sacrificed. The
generals were stupids. The enemy would presently swallow
the whole com-mand. He glared about him, expecting to see
the stealthy approach of his death.
He thought that he must break from the ranks and harangue
his comrades. They must not all be killed like pigs; and he was
sure it would come to pass unless they were informed of these
dangers. The generals were idiots to send them marching into
a regular pen. There was but one pair of eyes in the corps. He
would step forth and make a speech. Shrill and passionate
words came to his lips.
The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, went
calmly on through fields and woods. The youth looked at the
men nearest him, and saw, for the most part, expressions of
deep inter-est, as if they were investigating something that had
fascinated them. One or two stepped with overvaliant airs as if
they were already plunged into war. Others walked as upon
thin ice. The greater part of the untested men appeared quiet
and absorbed. They were going to look at war, the red animal—
war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed
in this march.
As he looked the youth gripped his outcry at his throat. He
saw that even if the men were tottering with fear they would
laugh at his warn-ing. They would jeer him, and, if practicable,
pelt him with missiles. Admitting that he might be wrong, a
frenzied declamation of the kind would turn him into a worm.
He assumed, then, the demeanor of one who knows that he
is doomed alone to unwritten re-sponsibilities. He lagged, with
tragic glances at the sky.
He was surprised presently by the young lieu-tenant of his
company, who began heartily to beat him with a sword, calling
out in a loud and insolent voice: “Come, young man, get up
into ranks there. No skulking’ll do here.” He mend-ed his pace
with suitable haste. And he hated the lieutenant, who had no
appreciation of fine minds. He was a mere brute.
After a time the brigade was halted in the cathedral light of a
forest. The busy skirmish-ers were still popping. Through the
aisles of the wood could be seen the floating smoke from their
rifles. Sometimes it went up in little balls, white and compact.
During this halt many men in the regiment began erecting tiny
hills in front of them. They used stones, sticks, earth, and anything
they thought might turn a bullet. Some built com-paratively
large ones, while others seemed con-tent with little ones.
This procedure caused a discussion among the men. Some
wished to fight like duelists, believ-ing it to be correct to stand
erect and be, from their feet to their foreheads, a mark. They
said they scorned the devices of the cautious. But the others
scoffed in reply, and pointed to the veterans on the flanks who
were digging at the ground like terriers. In a short time there
was quite a barricade along the regimental fronts. Directly,
however, they were ordered to with-draw from that place.
This astounded the youth. He forgot his stewing over the
advance movement. “Well, then, what did they march us out
here for?” he demanded of the tall soldier. The latter with calm
faith began a heavy explanation, although he had been compelled
to leave a little protection of stones and dirt to which he
had devoted much care and skill.
When the regiment was aligned in another position each man’s
regard for his safety caused another line of small intrenchments.
They ate their noon meal behind a third one. They were moved
from this one also. They were marched from place to place
with apparent aimlessness.
The youth had been taught that a man be-came another thing
in a battle. He saw his sal-vation in such a change. Hence this
waiting was an ordeal to him. He was in a fever of im-patience.
He considered that there was denoted a lack of purpose
on the part of the generals. He began to complain to the
tall soldier. “I can’t stand this much longer,” he cried. “I don’t
see what good it does to make us wear out our legs for nothin’.”
He wished to return to camp, knowing that this affair was a
blue demonstration; or else to go into a battle and discover
that he had been a fool in his doubts, and was, in truth, a man
of traditional courage. The strain of present circumstances he
felt to be intolerable.
The philosophical tall soldier measured a sand-wich of
cracker and pork and swallowed it in a nonchalant manner.
“Oh, I suppose we must go reconnoitering around the country
jest to keep ‘em from getting too close, or to develop ‘em, or
something.”
“Huh!” said the loud soldier.
“Well,” cried the youth, still fidgeting, “I’d rather do anything
‘most than go tramping ‘round the country all day doing no
good to nobody and jest tiring ourselves out.”
“So would I,” said the loud soldier. “It ain’t right. I tell you if
anybody with any sense was a-runnin’ this army it—”
“Oh, shut up!” roared the tall private. “You little fool. You
little damn’ cuss. You ain’t had that there coat and them pants
on for six months, and yet you talk as if—”
“Well, I wanta do some fighting anyway,” interrupted the
other. “I didn’t come here to walk. I could ‘ave walked to
home—’round an’ ‘round the barn, if I jest wanted to walk.”
The tall one, red-faced, swallowed another sandwich as if
taking poison in despair.
But gradually, as he chewed, his face became again quiet and
contented. He could not rage in fierce argument in the presence
of such sand-wiches. During his meals he always wore an air of
blissful contemplation of the food he had swal-lowed. His spirit
seemed then to be communing with the viands.
He accepted new environment and circum-stance with great
coolness, eating from his haver-sack at every opportunity. On
the march he went along with the stride of a hunter, object-ing to
neither gait nor distance. And he had not raised his voice when
he had been ordered away from three little protective piles of
earth and stone, each of which had been an engineer-ing feat
worthy of being made sacred to the name of his grandmother.
In the afternoon the regiment went out over the same ground
it had taken in the morn-ing. The landscape then ceased to
threaten the youth. He had been close to it and become familiar
with it.
When, however, they began to pass into a new region, his
old fears of stupidity and in-competence reassailed him, but
this time he dog-gedly let them babble. He was occupied with
his problem, and in his desperation he concluded that the stupidity
did not greatly matter.
Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to
get killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out
of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be noth-ing but rest,
and he was filled with a momen-tary astonishment that he should
have made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter
of getting killed. He would die; he would go to some place where
he would be understood. It was useless to expect appreciation
of his pro-found and fine senses from such men as the lieutenant.
He must look to the grave for compre-hension.
The skirmish fire increased to a long chatter-ing sound. With
it was mingled far-away cheer-ing. A battery spoke.
Directly the youth would see the skirmishers running. They
were pursued by the sound of musketry fire. After a time the
hot, dangerous flashes of the rifles were visible. Smoke clouds
went slowly and insolently across the fields like observant
phantoms. The din became crescendo, like the roar of an
oncoming train.
A brigade ahead of them and on the right went into action
with a rending roar. It was as if it had exploded. And thereafter
it lay stretched in the distance behind a long gray wall, that one
was obliged to look twice at to make sure that it was smoke.
The youth, forgetting his neat plan of getting killed, gazed
spell bound. His eyes grew wide and busy with the action of
the scene. His mouth was a little ways open.
Of a sudden he felt a heavy and sad hand laid upon his shoulder.
Awakening from his trance of observation he turned and
beheld the loud soldier.
“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” said the latter, with intense
gloom. He was quite pale and his girlish lip was trembling.
“Eh?” murmured the youth in great aston-ishment.
“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” continued the loud
soldier. “Something tells me—”
“What?”
“I’m a gone coon this first time and—and I w-want you to
take these here things—to—my—folks.” He ended in a quavering
sob of pity for himself. He handed the youth a little
packet done up in a yellow envelope.
“Why, what the devil—” began the youth again.
But the other gave him a glance as from the depths of a
tomb, and raised his limp hand in a prophetic manner and turned
away.

Chapter IV


The brigade was halted in the fringe of a grove. The men
crouched among the trees and pointed their restless guns out
at the fields. They tried to look beyond the smoke.
Out of this haze they could see running men. Some shouted
information and gestured as they hurried.
The men of the new regiment watched and listened eagerly,
while their tongues ran on in gossip of the battle. They mouthed
rumors that had flown like birds out of the unknown.
“They say Perry has been driven in with big loss.”
“Yes, Carrott went t’ th’ hospital. He said he was sick. That
smart lieutenant is commanding ‘G’ Company. Th’ boys say
they won’t be under Carrott no more if they all have t’ desert.
They allus knew he was a—”
“Hannises’ batt’ry is took.”
“It ain’t either. I saw Hannises’ batt’ry off on th’ left not
more’n fifteen minutes ago.”
“Well—”
“Th’ general, he ses he is goin’ t’ take th’ hull cammand of
th’ 304th when we go inteh action, an’ then he ses we’ll do
sech fightin’ as never another one reg’ment done.”
“They say we’re catchin’ it over on th’ left. They say th’
enemy driv’ our line inteh a devil of a swamp an’ took Hannises’
batt’ry.”
“No sech thing. Hannises’ batt’ry was ‘long here ‘bout a
minute ago.”
“That young Hasbrouck, he makes a good off’cer. He ain’t
afraid ‘a nothin’.”
“I met one of th’ 148th Maine boys an’ he ses his brigade fit
th’ hull rebel army fer four hours over on th’ turnpike road an’
killed about five thousand of ‘em. He ses one more sech fight
as that an’ th’ war ‘ll be over.”
“Bill wasn’t scared either. No, sir! It wasn’t that. Bill ain’t agittin’
scared easy. He was jest mad, that’s what he was. When
that feller trod on his hand, he up an’ sed that he was willin’ t’
give his hand t’ his country, but he be dumbed if he was goin’
t’ have every dumb bushwhacker in th’ kentry walkin’ ‘round
on it. Se he went t’ th’ hospital disregardless of th’ fight. Three
fingers was crunched. Th’ dern doctor wanted t’ amputate
‘m, an’ Bill, he raised a heluva row, I hear. He’s a funny feller.”
The din in front swelled to a tremendous chorus. The youth
and his fellows were frozen to silence. They could see a flag
that tossed in the smoke angrily. Near it were the blurred and
agitated forms of troops. There came a turbulent stream of
men across the fields. A battery chang-ing position at a frantic
gallop scattered the stragglers right and left.
A shell screaming like a storm banshee went over the huddled
heads of the reserves. It landed in the grove, and exploding
redly flung the brown earth. There was a little shower of pine
needles.
Bullets began to whistle among the branches and nip at the
trees. Twigs and leaves came sailing down. It was as if a thousand
axes, wee and invisible, were being wielded. Many of
the men were constantly dodging and ducking their heads.
The lieutenant of the youth’s company was shot in the hand.
He began to swear so won-drously that a nervous laugh went
along the regi-mental line. The officer’s profanity sounded conventional.
It relieved the tightened senses of the new men. It
was as if he had hit his fingers with a tack hammer at home.
He held the wounded member carefully away from his side
so that the blood would not drip upon his trousers.
The captain of the company, tucking his sword under his
arm, produced a handkerchief and began to bind with it the
lieutenant’s wound. And they disputed as to how the binding
should be done.
The battle flag in the distance jerked about madly. It seemed
to be struggling to free itself from an agony. The billowing smoke
was filled with horizontal flashes.
Men running swiftly emerged from it. They grew in numbers
until it was seen that the whole command was fleeing. The flag
suddenly sank down as if dying. Its motion as it fell was a
gesture of despair.
Wild yells came from behind the walls of smoke. A sketch in
gray and red dissolved into a moblike body of men who galloped
like wild horses.
The veteran regiments on the right and left of the 304th immediately
began to jeer. With the passionate song of the bullets
and the banshee shrieks of shells were mingled loud catcalls
and bits of facetious advice concerning places of safety.
But the new regiment was breathless with hor-ror. “Gawd!
Saunders’s got crushed!” whis-pered the man at the youth’s
elbow. They shrank back and crouched as if compelled to
await a flood.
The youth shot a swift glance along the blue ranks of the
regiment. The profiles were motion-less, carven; and afterward
he remembered that the color sergeant was standing with
his legs apart, as if he expected to be pushed to the ground.
The following throng went whirling around the flank. Here
and there were officers carried along on the stream like exasperated
chips. They were striking about them with their swords
and with their left fists, punching every head they could reach.
They cursed like highway-men.
A mounted officer displayed the furious anger of a spoiled
child. He raged with his head, his arms, and his legs.
Another, the commander of the brigade, was galloping about
bawling. His hat was gone and his clothes were awry. He resembled
a man who has come from bed to go to a fire. The
hoofs of his horse often threatened the heads of the running
men, but they scampered with sin-gular fortune. In this rush
they were apparently all deaf and blind. They heeded not the
largest and longest of the oaths that were thrown at them from
all directions.
Frequently over this tumult could be heard the grim jokes of
the critical veterans; but the retreating men apparently were
not even con-scious of the presence of an audience.
The battle reflection that shone for an instant in the faces on
the mad current made the youth feel that forceful hands from
heaven would not have been able to have held him in place if
he could have got intelligent control of his legs.
There was an appalling imprint upon these faces. The struggle
in the smoke had pictured an exaggeration of itself on the
bleached cheeks and in the eyes wild with one desire.
The sight of this stampede exerted a floodlike force that
seemed able to drag sticks and stones and men from the ground.
They of the reserves had to hold on. They grew pale and firm,
and red and quaking.
The youth achieved one little thought in the midst of this chaos.
The composite monster which had caused the other troops to
flee had not then appeared. He resolved to get a view of it,
and then, he thought he might very likely run better than the
best of them.

Chapter V


There were moments of waiting. The youth thought of the
village street at home before the arrival of the circus parade on
a day in the spring. He remembered how he had stood, a
small, thrillful boy, prepared to follow the dingy lady upon the
white horse, or the band in its faded chariot. He saw the yellow
road, the lines of expectant people, and the sober houses.
He particularly remembered an old fellow who used to sit upon
a cracker box in front of the store and feign to despise such
exhibitions. A thousand details of color and form surged in his
mind. The old fellow upon the cracker box ap-peared in middle
prominence.
Some one cried, “Here they come!”
There was rustling and muttering among the men. They displayed
a feverish desire to have every possible cartridge ready
to their hands. The boxes were pulled around into various positions,
and adjusted with great care. It was as if seven hundred
new bonnets were being tried on.
The tall soldier, having prepared his rifle, pro-duced a red
handkerchief of some kind. He was engaged in knitting it about
his throat with ex-quisite attention to its position, when the cry
was repeated up and down the line in a muffled roar of sound.
“Here they come! Here they come!” Gun locks clicked.
Across the smoke-infested fields came a brown swarm of
running men who were giving shrill yells. They came on, stooping
and swinging their rifles at all angles. A flag, tilted forward,
sped near the front.
As he caught sight of them the youth was momentarily startled
by a thought that perhaps his gun was not loaded. He stood
trying to rally his faltering intellect so that he might rec-ollect
the moment when he had loaded, but he could not.
A hatless general pulled his dripping horse to a stand near
the colonel of the 304th. He shook his fist in the other’s face.
“You ‘ve got to hold ‘em back!” he shouted, savagely; “you
‘ve got to hold ‘em back!”
In his agitation the colonel began to stammer. “A-all r-right,
General, all right, by Gawd! We-we’ll do our—we-we’ll d-ddo—
do our best, Gen-eral.” The general made a passionate
gesture and galloped away. The colonel, perchance to relieve
his feelings, began to scold like a wet parrot. The youth, turning
swiftly to make sure that the rear was unmolested, saw the
com-mander regarding his men in a highly regretful manner, as
if he regretted above everything his association with them.
The man at the youth’s elbow was mumbling, as if to himself:
“Oh, we ‘re in for it now! oh, we ‘re in for it now!”
The captain of the company had been pacing excitedly to
and fro in the rear. He coaxed in schoolmistress fashion, as to
a congregation of boys with primers. His talk was an endless
repetition. “Reserve your fire, boys—don’t shoot till I tell you—
save your fire—wait till they get close up—don’t be damned
fools—”
Perspiration streamed down the youth’s face, which was
soiled like that of a weeping urchin. He frequently, with a nervous
movement, wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. His mouth
was still a little ways open.
He got the one glance at the foe-swarming field in front of
him, and instantly ceased to de-bate the question of his piece
being loaded. Be-fore he was ready to begin—before he had
an-nounced to himself that he was about to fight—he threw
the obedient, well-balanced rifle into position and fired a first
wild shot. Directly he was working at his weapon like an automatic
affair.
He suddenly lost concern for himself, and for-got to look at
a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member. He felt
that something of which he was a part—a regiment, an army, a
cause, or a country—was in a crisis. He was welded into a
common personality which was dominated by a single desire.
For some mo-ments he could not flee no more than a little
finger can commit a revolution from a hand.
If he had thought the regiment was about to be annihilated
perhaps he could have amputated himself from it. But
its noise gave him assur-ance. The regiment was like a firework
that, once ignited, proceeds superior to circumstances
until its blazing vitality fades. It wheezed and banged with a
mighty power. He pictured the ground before it as strewn
with the discom-fited.
There was a consciousness always of the pres-ence of his
comrades about him. He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more
potent even than the cause for which they were fighting. It was
a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and dan-ger of death.
He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made
many boxes, making still another box, only there was furious
haste in his move-ments. He, in his thought, was careering off
in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles
and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon.
And these jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward,
but remained a mass of blurred shapes.
Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere—
a blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to
crack like hot stones. A burning roar filled his ears.
Following this came a red rage. He devel-oped the acute
exasperation of a pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried
by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle, which
could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush
forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that
would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush
all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage
into that of a driven beast.
Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed
not so much against the men whom he knew were rushing
toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which were
choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched
throat. He fought frantically for respite for his senses, for air,
as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly blankets.
There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain
expression of intentness on all faces. Many of the men were
making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these subdued
cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric
song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and
chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. The
man at the youth’s elbow was babbling. In it there was something
soft and tender like the monologue of a babe. The tall
soldier was swearing in a loud voice. From his lips came a
black procession of curious oaths. Of a sudden another broke
out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat.
“Well, why don’t they support us? Why don’t they send supports?
Do they think—”
The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes
hears.
There was a singular absence of heroic poses. The men bending
and surging in their haste and rage were in every impossible
attitude. The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant
din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle
barrels. The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened,
and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The rifles, once
loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent
aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shift-ing
forms which upon the field before the regi-ment had been growing
larger and larger like puppets under a magician’s hand.
The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neg-lected to stand
in picturesque attitudes. They were bobbing to and fro roaring
directions and encouragements. The dimensions of their howls
were extraordinary. They expended their lungs with prodigal
wills. And often they nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety
to observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.
The lieutenant of the youth’s company had en-countered a
soldier who had fled screaming at the first volley of his comrades.
Behind the lines these two were acting a little isolated
scene. The man was blubbering and staring with sheeplike eyes
at the lieutenant, who had seized him by the collar and was
pommeling him. He drove him back into the ranks with many
blows. The sol-dier went mechanically, dully, with his animallike
eyes upon the officer. Perhaps there was to him a divinity
expressed in the voice of the other —stern, hard, with no reflection
of fear in it. He tried to reload his gun, but his shaking
hands pre-vented. The lieutenant was obliged to assist him.
The men dropped here and there like bundles. The captain
of the youth’s company had been killed in an early part of the
action. His body lay stretched out in the position of a tired man
resting, but upon his face there was an astonished and sorrowful
look, as if he thought some friend had done him an ill
turn. The babbling man was grazed by a shot that made the
blood stream widely down his face. He clapped both hands to
his head. “Oh!” he said, and ran. Another grunted suddenly as
if he had been struck by a club in the stomach. He sat down
and gazed ruefully. In his eyes there was mute, indefinite reproach.
Farther up the line a man, standing behind a tree, had
had his knee joint splintered by a ball. Immediately he had
dropped his rifle and gripped the tree with both arms. And
there he remained, clinging desperately and crying for assistance
that he might withdraw his hold upon the tree.
At last an exultant yell went along the quiver-ing line. The
firing dwindled from an uproar to a last vindictive popping. As
the smoke slowly eddied away, the youth saw that the charge
had been repulsed. The enemy were scattered into reluctant
groups. He saw a man climb to the top of the fence, straddle
the rail, and fire a part-ing shot. The waves had receded, leav
ing bits of dark debris upon the ground.
Some in the regiment began to whoop fren-ziedly. Many
were silent. Apparently they were trying to contemplate themselves.
After the fever had left his veins, the youth thought that at
last he was going to suffocate. He became aware of the foul
atmosphere in which he had been struggling. He was grimy
and dripping like a laborer in a foundry. He grasped his canteen
and took a long swallow of the warmed water.
A sentence with variations went up and down the line. “Well,
we ‘ve helt ‘em back. We ‘ve helt ‘em back; derned if we
haven’t.” The men said it blissfully, leering at each other with
dirty smiles.
The youth turned to look behind him and off to the right and
off to the left. He experienced the joy of a man who at last
finds leisure in which to look about him.
Under foot there were a few ghastly forms motionless. They lay
twisted in fantastic contor-tions. Arms were bent and heads were
turned in incredible ways. It seemed that the dead men must have
fallen from some great height to get into such positions. They looked
to be dumped out upon the ground from the sky.
From a position in the rear of the grove a bat-tery was throwing
shells over it. The flash of the guns startled the youth at
first. He thought they were aimed directly at him. Through the
trees he watched the black figures of the gunners as they
worked swiftly and intently. Their labor seemed a complicated
thing. He wondered how they could remember its formula in
the midst of confusion.
The guns squatted in a row like savage chiefs. They argued
with abrupt violence. It was a grim pow-wow. Their busy servants
ran hither and thither.
A small procession of wounded men were go-ing drearily
toward the rear. It was a flow of blood from the torn body of
the brigade.
To the right and to the left were the dark lines of other troops.
Far in front he thought he could see lighter masses protruding
in points from the forest. They were suggestive of un-numbered
thousands.
Once he saw a tiny battery go dashing along the line of the
horizon. The tiny riders were beating the tiny horses.
From a sloping hill came the sound of cheer-ings and clashes.
Smoke welled slowly through the leaves.
Batteries were speaking with thunderous ora-torical effort.
Here and there were flags, the red in the stripes dominating.
They splashed bits of warm color upon the dark lines of troops.
The youth felt the old thrill at the sight of the emblem. They
were like beautiful birds strangely undaunted in a storm.
As he listened to the din from the hillside, to a deep pulsating
thunder that came from afar to the left, and to the lesser clamors
which came from many directions, it occurred to him that
they were fighting, too, over there, and over there, and over
there. Heretofore he had sup-posed that all the battle was
directly under his nose.
As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment
at the blue, pure sky and the sun gleamings on the trees
and fields. It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on
with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment.

Chapter VI


The youth awakened slowly. He came grad-ually back to a
position from which he could re-gard himself. For moments he
had been scruti-nizing his person in a dazed way as if he had
never before seen himself. Then he picked up his cap from the
ground. He wriggled in his jacket to make a more comfortable
fit, and kneel-ing relaced his shoe. He thoughtfully mopped his
reeking features.
So it was all over at last! The supreme trial had been passed.
The red, formidable difficulties of war had been vanquished.
He went into an ecstasy of self-satisfaction. He had the most
delightful sensations of his life. Standing as if apart from himself,
he viewed that last scene. He perceived that the man who
had fought thus was magnificent.
He felt that he was a fine fellow. He saw himself even with
those ideals which he had con-sidered as far beyond him. He
smiled in deep gratification.
Upon his fellows he beamed tenderness and good will. “Gee!
ain’t it hot, hey?” he said affably to a man who was polishing
his stream-ing face with his coat sleeves.
“You bet!” said the other, grinning sociably. “I never seen
sech dumb hotness.” He sprawled out luxuriously on the
ground. “Gee, yes! An’ I hope we don’t have no more fightin’
till a week from Monday.”
There were some handshakings and deep speeches with men
whose features were familiar, but with whom the youth now
felt the bonds of tied hearts. He helped a cursing comrade to
bind up a wound of the shin.
But, of a sudden, cries of amazement broke out along the
ranks of the new regiment. “Here they come ag’in! Here they
come ag’in!” The man who had sprawled upon the ground
started up and said, “Gosh!”
The youth turned quick eyes upon the field. He discerned
forms begin to swell in masses out of a distant wood. He again
saw the tilted flag speeding forward.
The shells, which had ceased to trouble the regiment for a
time, came swirling again, and ex-ploded in the grass or among
the leaves of the trees. They looked to be strange war flowers
bursting into fierce bloom.
The men groaned. The luster faded from their eyes. Their
smudged countenances now expressed a profound dejection.
They moved their stiffened bodies slowly, and watched in sullen
mood the frantic approach of the enemy. The slaves toiling in
the temple of this god began to feel rebellion at his harsh tasks.
They fretted and complained each to each. “Oh, say, this
is too much of a good thing! Why can’t somebody send us
supports?”
“We ain’t never goin’ to stand this second banging. I didn’t
come here to fight the hull damn’ rebel army.”
There was one who raised a doleful cry. “I wish Bill Smithers
had trod on my hand, in-steader me treddin’ on his’n.” The
sore joints of the regiment creaked as it painfully floundered
into position to repulse.
The youth stared. Surely, he thought, this impossible thing
was not about to happen. He waited as if he expected the
enemy to suddenly stop, apologize, and retire bowing. It was
all a mistake.
But the firing began somewhere on the regi-mental line and
ripped along in both directions. The level sheets of flame developed
great clouds of smoke that tumbled and tossed in the
mild wind near the ground for a moment, and then rolled through
the ranks as through a gate. The clouds were tinged an earthlike
yellow in the sunrays and in the shadow were a sorry blue.
The flag was sometimes eaten and lost in this mass of vapor,
but more often it projected, sun-touched, resplendent.
Into the youth’s eyes there came a look that one can see in
the orbs of a jaded horse. His neck was quivering with nervous
weakness and the muscles of his arms felt numb and
bloodless. His hands, too, seemed large and awkward as if he
was wearing invisible mittens. And there was a great uncertainty
about his knee joints.
The words that comrades had uttered previous to the firing
began to recur to him. “Oh, say, this is too much of a good
thing! What do they take us for—why don’t they send supports?
I didn’t come here to fight the hull damned rebel army.”
He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the
valor of those who were coming. Himself reeling from exhaustion,
he was aston-ished beyond measure at such persistency.
They must be machines of steel. It was very gloomy struggling
against such affairs, wound up perhaps to fight until sundown.
He slowly lifted his rifle and catching a glimpse of the
thickspread field he blazed at a cantering cluster. He stopped
then and began to peer as best he could through the smoke.
He caught changing views of the ground covered with men
who were all running like pursued imps, and yelling.
To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubt-able dragons. He
became like the man who lost his legs at the approach of the red
and green monster. He waited in a sort of a horrified, listening
attitude. He seemed to shut his eyes and wait to be gobbled.
A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly
at his rifle suddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad
whose face had borne an expression of exalted courage, the
majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at an instant, smitten
abject. He blanched like one who has come to the edge of
a cliff at midnight and is sud-denly made aware. There was a
revelation. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was
no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.
Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The
youth turned his head, shaken from his trance by this movement
as if the regiment was leaving him behind. He saw the
few fleeting forms.
He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in
the great clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the
direction of safety. Destruction threatened him from all points.
Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps.
His rifle and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the
wind. The flap of his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his
canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. On his face
was all the horror of those things which he imagined.
The lieutenant sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his
features wrathfully red, and saw him make a dab with his
sword. His one thought of the incident was that the lieutenant
was a pecul-iar creature to feel interested in such matters
upon this occasion.
He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down.
Once he knocked his shoulder so heavily against a tree that he
went headlong.
Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had
been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between
the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death
about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it
later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the
appalling than to be merely within hearing. The noises of the
battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be crushed.
As he ran he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his
right and on his left, and he heard footsteps behind him. He
thought that all the regiment was fleeing, pursued by these
ominous crashes.
In his flight the sound of these following foot-steps gave him
his one meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a
first choice of the men who were nearest; the initial morsels for
the dragons would be then those who were fol-lowing him. So
he displayed the zeal of an insane sprinter in his purpose to
keep them in the rear. There was a race.
As he, leading, went across a little field, he found himself in a
region of shells. They hurtled over his head with long wild
screams. As he listened he imagined them to have rows of
cruel teeth that grinned at him. Once one lit before him and the
livid lightning of the explosion effectually barred the way in his
chosen direc-tion. He groveled on the ground and then springing
up went careering off through some bushes.
He experienced a thrill of amazement when he came within
view of a battery in action. The men there seemed to be in
conventional moods, altogether unaware of the impending
annihila-tion. The battery was disputing with a distant antagonist
and the gunners were wrapped in admiration of their shoot
ing. They were con-tinually bending in coaxing postures over
the guns. They seemed to be patting them on the back and
encouraging them with words. The guns, stolid and undaunted,
spoke with dogged valor.
The precise gunners were coolly enthusiastic. They lifted their
eyes every chance to the smoke-wreathed hillock from whence
the hostile battery addressed them. The youth pitied them as
he ran. Methodical idiots! Machine-like fools! The refined joy
of planting shells in the midst of the other battery’s formation
would appear a little thing when the infantry came swooping
out of the woods.
The face of a youthful rider, who was jerking his frantic horse
with an abandon of temper he might display in a placid barnyard,
was im-pressed deeply upon his mind. He knew that he
looked upon a man who would presently be dead.
Too, he felt a pity for the guns, standing, six good comrades,
in a bold row.
He saw a brigade going to the relief of its pes-tered fellows.
He scrambled upon a wee hill and watched it sweeping finely,
keeping formation in difficult places. The blue of the line was
crusted with steel color, and the brilliant flags projected. Officers
were shouting.
This sight also filled him with wonder. The brigade was hurrying
briskly to be gulped into the infernal mouths of the war
god. What man-ner of men were they, anyhow? Ah, it was
some wondrous breed! Or else they didn’t compre-hend—
the fools.
A furious order caused commotion in the artil-lery. An officer
on a bounding horse made mani-acal motions with his
arms. The teams went swinging up from the rear, the guns
were whirled about, and the battery scampered away. The
cannon with their noses poked slantingly at the ground grunted
and grumbled like stout men, brave but with objections to hurry.
The youth went on, moderating his pace since he had left the
place of noises.
Later he came upon a general of division seated upon a horse
that pricked its ears in an interested way at the battle. There
was a great gleaming of yellow and patent leather about the
saddle and bridle. The quiet man astride looked mouse-colored
upon such a splen-did charger.
A jingling staff was galloping hither and thither. Sometimes
the general was surrounded by horsemen and at other times
he was quite alone. He looked to be much harassed. He had
the appearance of a business man whose market is swinging
up and down.
The youth went slinking around this spot. He went as near
as he dared trying to overhear words. Perhaps the general,
unable to compre-hend chaos, might call upon him for information.
And he could tell him. He knew all concerning it. Of a
surety the force was in a fix, and any fool could see that if they
did not retreat while they had opportunity—why—
He felt that he would like to thrash the gen-eral, or at least
approach and tell him in plain words exactly what he thought
him to be. It was criminal to stay calmly in one spot and make
no effort to stay destruction. He loitered in a fever of eagerness
for the division commander to apply to him.
As he warily moved about, he heard the gen-eral call out irritably:
“Tompkins, go over an’ see Taylor, an’ tell him not t’ be in
such an all-fired hurry; tell him t’ halt his brigade in th’ edge of
th’ woods; tell him t’ detach a reg’ment —say I think th’ center
‘ll break if we don’t help it out some; tell him t’ hurry up.”
A slim youth on a fine chestnut horse caught these swift words
from the mouth of his superior. He made his horse bound into
a gallop almost from a walk in his haste to go upon his mission.
There was a cloud of dust.
A moment later the youth saw the general bounce excitedly
in his saddle.
“Yes, by heavens, they have!” The officer leaned forward.
His face was aflame with excite-ment. “Yes, by heavens, they
‘ve held ‘im! They ‘ve held ‘im!”
He began to blithely roar at his staff: “We ‘ll wallop ‘im now.
We ‘ll wallop ‘im now. We ‘ve got ‘em sure.” He turned suddenly
upon an aid: “Here—you—Jones—quick—ride after
Tompkins —see Taylor—tell him t’ go in—everlastingly—like
blazes—anything.”
As another officer sped his horse after the first messenger,
the general beamed upon the earth like a sun. In his eyes was
a desire to chant a paean. He kept repeating, “They ‘ve held
‘em, by heavens!”
His excitement made his horse plunge, and he merrily kicked
and swore at it. He held a little carnival of joy on horseback.

Chapter VII


The youth cringed as if discovered in a crime. By heavens,
they had won after all! The im-becile line had remained and
become victors. He could hear cheering.
He lifted himself upon his toes and looked in the direction of
the fight. A yellow fog lay wal-lowing on the treetops. From
beneath it came the clatter of musketry. Hoarse cries told of
an advance.
He turned away amazed and angry. He felt that he had been
wronged.
He had fled, he told himself, because annihila-tion approached.
He had done a good part in saving himself, who
was a little piece of the army. He had considered the time, he
said, to be one in which it was the duty of every little piece to
res-cue itself if possible. Later the officers could fit the little
pieces together again, and make a battle front. If none of the
little pieces were wise enough to save themselves from the
flurry of death at such a time, why, then, where would be the
army? It was all plain that he had proceeded according to very
correct and commendable rules. His ac-tions had been sagacious
things. They had been full of strategy. They were the
work of a mas-ter’s legs.
Thoughts of his comrades came to him. The brittle blue line
had withstood the blows and won. He grew bitter over it. It
seemed that the blind ignorance and stupidity of those little
pieces had betrayed him. He had been overturned and crushed
by their lack of sense in holding the po-sition, when intelligent
deliberation would have convinced them that it was impossible.
He, the enlightened man who looks afar in the dark, had
fled because of his superior perceptions and knowledge. He
felt a great anger against his comrades. He knew it could be
proved that they had been fools.
He wondered what they would remark when later he appeared
in camp. His mind heard howls of derision. Their density would
not en-able them to understand his sharper point of view.
He began to pity himself acutely. He was ill used. He was
trodden beneath the feet of an iron injustice. He had proceeded
with wisdom and from the most righteous motives under
heaven’s blue only to be frustrated by hateful circumstances.
A dull, animal-like rebellion against his fel-lows, war in the
abstract, and fate grew within him. He shambled along with
bowed head, his brain in a tumult of agony and despair. When
he looked loweringly up, quivering at each sound, his eyes had
the expression of those of a criminal who thinks his guilt and
his pun-ishment great, and knows that he can find no words.
He went from the fields into a thick woods, as if resolved to
bury himself. He wished to get out of hearing of the crackling
shots which were to him like voices.
The ground was cluttered with vines and bushes, and the
trees grew close and spread out like bouquets. He was obliged
to force his way with much noise. The creepers, catching against
his legs, cried out harshly as their sprays were torn from the
barks of trees. The swishing sap-lings tried to make known his
presence to the world. He could not conciliate the forest. As
he made his way, it was always calling out prot-estations. When
he separated embraces of trees and vines the disturbed foliages
waved their arms and turned their face leaves toward
him. He dreaded lest these noisy motions and cries should
bring men to look at him. So he went far, seek-ing dark and
intricate places.
After a time the sound of musketry grew faint and the cannon
boomed in the distance. The sun, suddenly apparent, blazed
among the trees. The insects were making rhythmical noises.
They seemed to be grinding their teeth in unison. A woodpecker
stuck his impudent head around the side of a tree. A
bird flew on lighthearted wing.
Off was the rumble of death. It seemed now that Nature had
no ears.
This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life.
It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were
compelled to see blood. He conceived Nature to be a woman
with a deep aversion to tragedy.
He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with
chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his
head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an
air of trepi-dation.
The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the
law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately
upon rec-ognizing danger, had taken to his legs without
ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile,
and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens.
On the con-trary, he had fled as fast as his legs could
carry him; and he was but an ordinary squirrel, too—doubt
less no philosopher of his race. The youth wended, feeling that
Nature was of his mind. She re-enforced his argument with
proofs that lived where the sun shone.
Once he found himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged
to walk upon bog tufts and watch his feet to keep from the oily
mire. Paus-ing at one time to look about him he saw, out at
some black water, a small animal pounce in and emerge directly
with a gleaming fish.
The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed
branches made a noise that drowned the sounds of cannon.
He walked on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater
obscurity.
At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs
made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and
entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was
a reli-gious half light.
Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight
of a thing.
He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated
with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed
in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a
mel-ancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth,
had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead
fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling
yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was
trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip.
The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was
for moments turned to stone be-fore it. He remained staring
into the liquid-look-ing eyes. The dead man and the living man
ex-changed a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one
hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon
this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the
thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring
up and stealthily pursue him.
The branches, pushing against him, threat-ened to throw him
over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in
brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to
touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered
profoundly.
At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the
spot and fled, unheeding the under-brush. He was pursued by
a sight of the black ants swarming greedily upon the gray face
and venturing horribly near to the eyes.
After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened.
He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead
throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.
The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in
a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

Chapter VIII


The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twi-light. The sun
sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest. There was a
lull in the noises of insects as if they had bowed their beaks
and were making a devotional pause. There was silence save
for the chanted chorus of the trees.
Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous
clangor of sounds. A crimson roar came from the distance.
The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley
of all noises. It was as if worlds were being rended. There
was the rip-ping sound of musketry and the breaking crash
of the artillery.
His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies
to be at each other panther fashion. He listened for a time.
Then he began to run in the direction of the battle. He saw that
it was an ironical thing for him to be run-ning thus toward that
which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance,
to him-self that if the earth and the moon were about to
clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the
roofs to witness the collision.
As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its
music, as if at last becoming capable of hearing the foreign
sounds. The trees hushed and stood motionless. Everything
seemed to be listening to the crackle and clatter and ear-shaking
thunder. The chorus pealed over the still earth.
It suddenly occurred to the youth that the fight in which he
had been was, after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing
of this present din he was doubtful if he had seen real battle
scenes. This uproar explained a celes-tial battle; it was tumbling
hordes a-struggle in the air.
Reflecting, he saw a sort of a humor in the point of view of
himself and his fellows during the late encounter. They had
taken themselves and the enemy very seriously and had imagined
that they were deciding the war. Individuals must have
supposed that they were cutting the letters of their names
deep into everlasting tablets of brass, or enshrining their reputations
forever in the hearts of their countrymen, while, as to
fact, the affair would appear in printed reports under a meek
and immaterial title. But he saw that it was good, else, he
said, in battle every one would surely run save forlorn hopes
and their ilk.
He went rapidly on. He wished to come to the edge of the
forest that he might peer out.
As he hastened, there passed through his mind pictures of
stupendous conflicts. His accumulated thought upon such subjects
was used to form scenes. The noise was as the voice of
an eloquent being, describing.
Sometimes the brambles formed chains and tried to hold
him back. Trees, confronting him, stretched out their arms and
forbade him to pass. After its previous hostility this new resistance
of the forest filled him with a fine bitterness. It seemed
that Nature could not be quite ready to kill him.
But he obstinately took roundabout ways, and presently he
was where he could see long gray walls of vapor where lay
battle lines. The voices of cannon shook him. The musketry
sounded in long irregular surges that played havoc with his
ears. He stood regardant for a moment. His eyes had an awestruck
expression. He gawked in the direction of the fight.
Presently he proceeded again on his forward way. The battle
was like the grinding of an immense and terrible machine to
him. Its com-plexities and powers, its grim processes, fascinated
him. He must go close and see it produce corpses.
He came to a fence and clambered over it. On the far side,
the ground was littered with clothes and guns. A newspaper,
folded up, lay in the dirt. A dead soldier was stretched with his
face hidden in his arm. Farther off there was a group of four or
five corpses keeping mournful company. A hot sun had blazed
upon the spot.
In this place the youth felt that he was an invader. This forgotten
part of the battle ground was owned by the dead men,
and he hurried, in the vague apprehension that one of the swollen
forms would rise and tell him to begone.
He came finally to a road from which he could see in the
distance dark and agitated bodies of troops, smoke-fringed.
In the lane was a blood-stained crowd streaming to the rear.
The wounded men were cursing, groaning, and wailing. In the
air, always, was a mighty swell of sound that it seemed could
sway the earth. With the courageous words of the artillery and
the spiteful sentences of the musketry mingled red cheers. And
from this region of noises came the steady current of the
maimed.
One of the wounded men had a shoeful of blood. He hopped
like a schoolboy in a game. He was laughing hysterically.
One was swearing that he had been shot in the arm through
the commanding general’s misman-agement of the army. One
was marching with an air imitative of some sublime drum major.
Upon his features was an unholy mixture of merriment and
agony. As he marched he sang a bit of doggerel in a high and
quavering voice:
“Sing a song ‘a vic’try,
A pocketful ‘a bullets,
Five an’ twenty dead men
Baked in a—pie.”
Parts of the procession limped and staggered to this tune.
Another had the gray seal of death already upon his face.
His lips were curled in hard lines and his teeth were clinched.
His hands were bloody from where he had pressed them upon
his wound. He seemed to be awaiting the moment when he
should pitch headlong. He stalked like the specter of a soldier,
his eyes burning with the power of a stare into the unknown.
There were some who proceeded sullenly, full of anger at their
wounds, and ready to turn upon anything as an obscure cause.
An officer was carried along by two privates. He was peevish.
“Don’t joggle so, Johnson, yeh fool,” he cried. “Think m’
leg is made of iron? If yeh can’t carry me decent, put me down
an’ let some one else do it.”
He bellowed at the tottering crowd who blocked the quick
march of his bearers. “Say, make way there, can’t yeh? Make
way, dickens take it all.”
They sulkily parted and went to the road-sides. As he was
carried past they made pert remarks to him. When he raged in
reply and threatened them, they told him to be damned.
The shoulder of one of the tramping bearers knocked heavily
against the spectral soldier who was staring into the unknown.
The youth joined this crowd and marched along with it. The
torn bodies expressed the awful machinery in which the men
had been entangled.
Orderlies and couriers occasionally broke through the throng
in the roadway, scattering wounded men right and left, galloping
on fol-lowed by howls. The melancholy march was continually
disturbed by the messengers, and sometimes by bustling
batteries that came swing-ing and thumping down upon
them, the officers shouting orders to clear the way.
There was a tattered man, fouled with dust, blood and powder
stain from hair to shoes, who trudged quietly at the youth’s
side. He was lis-tening with eagerness and much humility to
the lurid descriptions of a bearded sergeant. His lean features
wore an expression of awe and ad-miration. He was like a
listener in a country store to wondrous tales told among the
sugar barrels. He eyed the story-teller with unspeak-able wonder.
His mouth was agape in yokel fashion.
The sergeant, taking note of this, gave pause to his elaborate
history while he administered a sardonic comment. “Be keerful,
honey, you ‘ll be a-ketchin’ flies,” he said.
The tattered man shrank back abashed.
After a time he began to sidle near to the youth, and in a
different way try to make him a friend. His voice was gentle as
a girl’s voice and his eyes were pleading. The youth saw with
surprise that the soldier had two wounds, one in the head,
bound with a blood-soaked rag, and the other in the arm,
making that member dangle like a broken bough.
After they had walked together for some time the tattered
man mustered sufficient courage to speak. “Was pretty good
fight, wa’n’t it?” he timidly said. The youth, deep in thought,
glanced up at the bloody and grim figure with its lamblike eyes.
“What?”
“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?
“Yes,” said the youth shortly. He quick-ened his pace.
But the other hobbled industriously after him. There was an
air of apology in his manner, but he evidently thought that he
needed only to talk for a time, and the youth would perceive
that he was a good fellow.
“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?” he began in a small voice,
and then he achieved the forti-tude to continue. “Dern me if I
ever see fellers fight so. Laws, how they did fight! I knowed
th’ boys ‘d like when they onct got square at it. Th’ boys ain’t
had no fair chanct up t’ now, but this time they showed what
they was. I knowed it ‘d turn out this way. Yeh can’t lick them
boys. No, sir! They’re fighters, they be.”
He breathed a deep breath of humble ad-miration. He had
looked at the youth for en-couragement several times. He received
none, but gradually he seemed to get absorbed in his
subject.
“I was talkin’ ‘cross pickets with a boy from Georgie, onct,
an’ that boy, he ses, ‘Your fellers ‘ll all run like hell when they
onct hearn a gun,’ he ses. ‘Mebbe they will,’ I ses, ‘but I don’t
b’lieve none of it,’ I ses; ‘an’ b’jiminey,’ I ses back t’ ‘um,
‘mebbe your fellers ‘ll all run like hell when they onct hearn a
gun,’ I ses. He larfed. Well, they didn’t run t’ day, did they,
hey? No, sir! They fit, an’ fit, an’ fit.”
His homely face was suffused with a light of love for the
army which was to him all things beautiful and powerful.
After a time he turned to the youth. “Where yeh hit, ol’ boy?”
he asked in a brotherly tone.
The youth felt instant panic at this question, although at first
its full import was not borne in upon him.
“What?” he asked.
“Where yeh hit?” repeated the tattered man.
“Why,” began the youth, “I—I—that is—why—I—”
He turned away suddenly and slid through the crowd. His
brow was heavily flushed, and his fingers were picking nervously
at one of his buttons. He bent his head and fastened his
eyes studiously upon the button as if it were a little problem.
The tattered man looked after him in aston-ishment.

Chapter IX


The youth fell back in the procession until the tattered soldier
was not in sight. Then he started to walk on with the others.
But he was amid wounds. The mob of men was bleeding.
Because of the tattered soldier’s question he now felt that his
shame could be viewed. He was continually casting sidelong
glances to see if the men were contemplating the letters of guilt
he felt burned into his brow.
At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious
way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly
happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red
badge of courage.
The spectral soldier was at his side like a stalking reproach.
The man’s eyes were still fixed in a stare into the unknown.
His gray, appalling face had attracted attention in the crowd,
and men, slowing to his dreary pace, were walking with him.
They were discussing his plight, questioning him and giving
him advice.
In a dogged way he repelled them, signing to them to go on
and leave him alone. The shadows of his face were deepening
and his tight lips seemed holding in check the moan of great
despair. There could be seen a certain stiffness in the movements
of his body, as if he were taking infinite care not to arouse
the passion of his wounds. As he went on, he seemed always
look-ing for a place, like one who goes to choose a grave.
Something in the gesture of the man as he waved the bloody
and pitying soldiers away made the youth start as if bitten. He
yelled in horror. Tottering forward he laid a quivering hand
upon the man’s arm. As the latter slowly turned his waxlike
features toward him, the youth screamed:
“Gawd! Jim Conklin!”
The tall soldier made a little commonplace smile. “Hello,
Henry,” he said.
The youth swayed on his legs and glared strangely. He stuttered
and stammered. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh, Jim—”
The tall soldier held out his gory hand. There was a curious
red and black combination of new blood and old blood upon
it. “Where yeh been, Henry?” he asked. He continued in a
monoto-nous voice, “I thought mebbe yeh got keeled over.
There ‘s been thunder t’ pay t’-day. I was worryin’ about it a
good deal.”
The youth still lamented. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim —oh, Jim—”
“Yeh know,” said the tall soldier, “I was out there.” He made
a careful gesture. “An’, Lord, what a circus! An’, b’jiminey, I
got shot—I got shot. Yes, b’jiminey, I got shot.” He reiterated
this fact in a bewildered way, as if he did not know how it
came about.
The youth put forth anxious arms to assist him, but the tall
soldier went firmly on as if pro-pelled. Since the youth’s arrival
as a guardian for his friend, the other wounded men had
ceased to display much interest. They occupied them-selves
again in dragging their own tragedies toward the rear.
Suddenly, as the two friends marched on, the tall soldier
seemed to be overcome by a terror. His face turned to a semblance
of gray paste. He clutched the youth’s arm and looked
all about him, as if dreading to be overheard. Then he began to
speak in a shaking whisper:
“I tell yeh what I’m ‘fraid of, Henry—I ‘ll tell yeh what I ‘m
‘fraid of. I ‘m ‘fraid I ‘ll fall down —an’ then yeh know—them
damned artillery wagons—they like as not ‘ll run over me.
That ‘s what I ‘m ‘fraid of—”
The youth cried out to him hysterically: “I ‘ll take care of
yeh, Jim! I’ll take care of yeh! I swear t’ Gawd I will!”
“Sure—will yeh, Henry?” the tall soldier beseeched.
“Yes—yes—I tell yeh—I’ll take care of yeh, Jim!” protested
the youth. He could not speak accurately because of the
gulpings in his throat.
But the tall soldier continued to beg in a lowly way. He now
hung babelike to the youth’s arm. His eyes rolled in the wildness
of his terror. “I was allus a good friend t’ yeh, wa’n’t I,
Henry? I ‘ve allus been a pretty good feller, ain’t I? An’ it ain’t
much t’ ask, is it? Jest t’ pull me along outer th’ road? I ‘d do
it fer you, Wouldn’t I, Henry?”
He paused in piteous anxiety to await his friend’s reply.
The youth had reached an anguish where the sobs scorched
him. He strove to express his loyalty, but he could only make
fantastic gestures.
However, the tall soldier seemed suddenly to forget all those
fears. He became again the grim, stalking specter of a soldier.
He went stonily forward. The youth wished his friend to lean
upon him, but the other always shook his head and strangely
protested. “No—no—no—leave me be—leave me be—”
His look was fixed again upon the unknown. He moved with
mysterious purpose, and all of the youth’s offers he brushed
aside. “No—no—leave me be—leave me be—”
The youth had to follow.
Presently the latter heard a voice talking softly near his shoulders.
Turning he saw that it belonged to the tattered soldier.
“Ye ‘d better take ‘im outa th’ road, pardner. There ‘s a batt’ry
comin’ helitywhoop down th’ road an’ he ‘ll git runned over.
He ‘s a goner anyhow in about five minutes—yeh kin see that.
Ye ‘d better take ‘im outa th’ road. Where th’ blazes does he
git his stren’th from?”
“Lord knows!” cried the youth. He was shaking his hands
helplessly.
He ran forward presently and grasped the tall soldier by the
arm. “Jim! Jim!” he coaxed, “come with me.”
The tall soldier weakly tried to wrench himself free. “Huh,” he
said vacantly. He stared at the youth for a moment. At last he
spoke as if dimly comprehending. “Oh! Inteh th’ fields? Oh!”
He started blindly through the grass.
The youth turned once to look at the lashing riders and jouncing
guns of the battery. He was startled from this view by a
shrill outcry from the tattered man.
“Gawd! He’s runnin’!”
Turning his head swiftly, the youth saw his friend running in a
staggering and stumbling way toward a little clump of bushes.
His heart seemed to wrench itself almost free from his body at
this sight. He made a noise of pain. He and the tattered man
began a pursuit. There was a singular race.
When he overtook the tall soldier he began to plead with all
the words he could find. “Jim —Jim—what are you doing—
what makes you do this way—you ‘ll hurt yerself.”
The same purpose was in the tall soldier’s face. He protested
in a dulled way, keeping his eyes fastened on the mystic
place of his intentions. “No—no—don’t tech me—leave me
be—leave me be—”
The youth, aghast and filled with wonder at the tall soldier,
began quaveringly to question him. “Where yeh goin’, Jim?
What you thinking about? Where you going? Tell me, won’t
you, Jim?”
The tall soldier faced about as upon relentless pursuers. In
his eyes there was a great appeal. “Leave me be, can’t yeh?
Leave me be fer a minnit.”
The youth recoiled. “Why, Jim,” he said, in a dazed way,
“what’s the matter with you?”
The tall soldier turned and, lurching danger-ously, went on.
The youth and the tattered soldier followed, sneaking as if
whipped, feeling unable to face the stricken man if he should
again confront them. They began to have thoughts of a solemn
ceremony. There was something rite-like in these movements
of the doomed soldier. And there was a resemblance in him to
a devotee of a mad religion, blood-sucking, muscle-wrenching,
bone-crushing. They were awed and afraid. They hung
back lest he have at command a dreadful weapon.
At last, they saw him stop and stand motion-less. Hastening
up, they perceived that his face wore an expression telling that
he had at last found the place for which he had struggled. His
spare figure was erect; his bloody hands were quietly at his
side. He was waiting with patience for something that he had
come to meet. He was at the rendezvous. They paused and
stood, ex-pectant.
There was a silence.
Finally, the chest of the doomed soldier began to heave
with a strained motion. It increased in violence until it was
as if an animal was within and was kicking and tumbling
furiously to be free.
This spectacle of gradual strangulation made the youth writhe,
and once as his friend rolled his eyes, he saw something in
them that made him sink wailing to the ground. He raised his
voice in a last supreme call.
“Jim—Jim—Jim—”
The tall soldier opened his lips and spoke. He made a gesture.
“Leave me be—don’t tech me—leave me be—”
There was another silence while he waited.
Suddenly, his form stiffened and straightened. Then it was
shaken by a prolonged ague. He stared into space. To the two
watchers there was a curious and profound dignity in the firm
lines of his awful face.
He was invaded by a creeping strangeness that slowly enveloped
him. For a moment the tremor of his legs caused him
to dance a sort of hideous hornpipe. His arms beat wildly about
his head in expression of implike enthusiasm.
His tall figure stretched itself to its full height. There was a
slight rending sound. Then it began to swing forward, slow
and straight, in the man-ner of a falling tree. A swift muscular
contortion made the left shoulder strike the ground first.
The body seemed to bounce a little way from the earth.
“God!” said the tattered soldier.
The youth had watched, spellbound, this ceremony at the
place of meeting. His face had been twisted into an expression
of every agony he had imagined for his friend.
He now sprang to his feet and, going closer, gazed upon the
pastelike face. The mouth was open and the teeth showed in a
laugh.
As the flap of the blue jacket fell away from the body, he
could see that the side looked as if it had been chewed by
wolves.
The youth turned, with sudden, livid rage, toward the battlefield.
He shook his fist. He seemed about to deliver a philippic.
“Hell—”
The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.

Chapter X


The tattered man stood musing.
“Well, he was reg’lar jim-dandy fer nerve, wa’n’t he,” said
he finally in a little awestruck voice. “A reg’lar jim-dandy.” He
thoughtfully poked one of the docile hands with his foot. “I
wonner where he got ‘is stren’th from? I never seen a man do
like that before. It was a funny thing. Well, he was a reg’lar
jim-dandy.”
The youth desired to screech out his grief. He was stabbed,
but his tongue lay dead in the tomb of his mouth. He threw
himself again upon the ground and began to brood.
The tattered man stood musing.
“Look-a-here, pardner,” he said, after a time. He regarded
the corpse as he spoke. “He ‘s up an’ gone, ain’t ‘e, an’ we
might as well begin t’ look out fer ol’ number one. This here
thing is all over. He ‘s up an’ gone, ain’t ‘e? An’ he ‘s all right
here. Nobody won’t bother ‘im. An’ I must say I ain’t enjoying
any great health m’self these days.”
The youth, awakened by the tattered soldier’s tone, looked
quickly up. He saw that he was swinging uncertainly on his
legs and that his face had turned to a shade of blue.
“Good Lord!” he cried, “you ain’t goin’ t’—not you, too.”
The tattered man waved his hand. “Nary die,” he said. “All
I want is some pea soup an’ a good bed. Some pea soup,” he
repeated dreamfully.
The youth arose from the ground. “I wonder where he came
from. I left him over there.” He pointed. “And now I find ‘im
here. And he was coming from over there, too.” He in-dicated
a new direction. They both turned toward the body as if to ask
of it a question.
“Well,” at length spoke the tattered man, “there ain’t no use
in our stayin’ here an’ tryin’ t’ ask him anything.”
The youth nodded an assent wearily. They both turned to
gaze for a moment at the corpse.
The youth murmured something.
“Well, he was a jim-dandy, wa’n’t ‘e?” said the tattered man
as if in response.
They turned their backs upon it and started away. For a time
they stole softly, treading with their toes. It remained laughing
there in the grass.
“I’m commencin’ t’ feel pretty bad,” said the tattered man,
suddenly breaking one of his little silences. “I’m commencin’
t’ feel pretty damn’ bad.”
The youth groaned. “O Lord!” He won-dered if he was to
be the tortured witness of another grim encounter.
But his companion waved his hand reassur-ingly. “Oh, I’m
not goin’ t’ die yit! There too much dependin’ on me fer me t’
die yit. No, sir! Nary die! I can’t! Ye’d oughta see th’ swad a’
chil’ren I’ve got, an’ all like that.”
The youth glancing at his companion could see by the shadow
of a smile that he was making some kind of fun.
As they plodded on the tattered soldier con-tinued to talk.
“Besides, if I died, I wouldn’t die th’ way that feller did. That
was th’ funniest thing. I’d jest flop down, I would. I never seen
a feller die th’ way that feller did.
“Yeh know Tom Jamison, he lives next door t’ me up home.
He’s a nice feller, he is, an’ we was allus good friends. Smart,
too. Smart as a steel trap. Well, when we was a-fightin’ this
atternoon, all-of-a-sudden he begin t’ rip up an’ cuss an’ beller
at me. ‘Yer shot, yeh blamed infernal!’—he swear horrible—
he ses t’ me. I put up m’ hand t’ m’ head an’ when I looked at
m’ fingers, I seen, sure ‘nough, I was shot. I give a holler an’
begin t’ run, but b’fore I could git away another one hit me in
th’ arm an’ whirl’ me clean ‘round. I got skeared when they
was all a-shootin’ b’hind me an’ I run t’ beat all, but I cotch it
pretty bad. I’ve an idee I’d a’ been fightin’ yit, if t’was n’t fer
Tom Jami-son.”
Then he made a calm announcement: “There’s two of ‘em—
little ones—but they ‘re beginnin’ t’ have fun with me now. I
don’t b’lieve I kin walk much furder.”
They went slowly on in silence. “Yeh look pretty peek-ed
yerself,” said the tattered man at last. “I bet yeh ‘ve got a
worser one than yeh think. Ye’d better take keer of yer hurt. It
don’t do t’ let sech things go. It might be inside mostly, an’
them plays thunder. Where is it located?” But he continued his
harangue with-out waiting for a reply. “I see ‘a feller git hit
plum in th’ head when my reg’ment was a-standin’ at ease
onct. An’ everybody yelled out to ‘im: Hurt, John? Are yeh
hurt much? ‘No,” ses he. He looked kinder surprised, an’ he
went on tellin’ ‘em how he felt. He sed he didn’t feel nothin’.
But, by dad, th’ first thing that feller knowed he was dead.
Yes, he was dead—stone dead. So, yeh wanta watch out.
Yeh might have some queer kind ‘a hurt yerself. Yeh can’t
never tell. Where is your’n located?”
The youth had been wriggling since the intro-duction of this
topic. He now gave a cry of ex-asperation and made a furious
motion with his hand. “Oh, don’t bother me!” he said. He was
enraged against the tattered man, and could have strangled him.
His companions seemed ever to play intolerable parts. They
were ever uprais-ing the ghost of shame on the stick of their
curiosity. He turned toward the tattered man as one at bay. “Now,
don’t bother me,” he re-peated with desperate menace.
“Well, Lord knows I don’t wanta bother any-body,” said
the other. There was a little accent of despair in his voice as he
replied, “Lord knows I ‘ve gota ‘nough m’ own t’ tend to.”
The youth, who had been holding a bitter de-bate with himself
and casting glances of hatred and contempt at the tattered
man, here spoke in a hard voice. “Good-by,” he said.
The tattered man looked at him in gaping amazement.
“Why—why, pardner, where yeh goin’?” he asked unsteadily.
The youth looking at him, could see that he, too, like that other
one, was beginning to act dumb and animal-like. His thoughts
seemed to be floundering about in his head. “Now—now—
look—a—here, you Tom Jamison—now—I won’t have this—
this here won’t do. Where—where yeh goin’?”
The youth pointed vaguely. “Over there,” he replied.
“Well, now look—a—here—now,” said the tattered man,
rambling on in idiot fashion. His head was hanging forward
and his words were slurred. “This thing won’t do, now, Tom
Jami-son. It won’t do. I know yeh, yeh pig-headed devil. Yeh
wanta go trompin’ off with a bad hurt. It ain’t right—now—
Tom Jamison—it ain’t. Yeh wanta leave me take keer of yeh,
Tom Jami-son. It ain’t—right—it ain’t—fer yeh t’ go—trompin’
off—with a bad hurt—it ain’t—ain’t—ain’t right—it ain’t.”
In reply the youth climbed a fence and started away. He
could hear the tattered man bleating plaintively.
Once he faced about angrily. “What?”
“Look—a—here, now, Tom Jamison—now—it ain’t—”
The youth went on. Turning at a distance he saw the tattered
man wandering about helplessly in the field.
He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed
that he envied those men whose bodies lay strewn over the
grass of the fields and on the fallen leaves of the forest.
The simple questions of the tattered man had been knife
thrusts to him. They asserted a society that probes pitilessly at
secrets until all is apparent. His late companion’s chance persist-
ency made him feel that he could not keep his crime concealed
in his bosom. It was sure to be brought plain by one of
those arrows which cloud the air and are constantly pricking,
dis-covering, proclaiming those things which are willed to be
forever hidden. He admitted that he could not defend himself
against this agency. It was not within the power of vigilance.