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Veteran foruma
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Variety is the spice of life

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Chapter XXI


Presently they knew that no firing threat-ened them. All
ways seemed once more opened to them. The dusty blue lines
of their friends were disclosed a short distance away. In the
distance there were many colossal noises, but in all this part of
the field there was a sudden stillness.
They perceived that they were free. The depleted band drew
a long breath of relief and gathered itself into a bunch to complete
its trip.
In this last length of journey the men began to show strange
emotions. They hurried with nervous fear. Some who had been
dark and un-faltering in the grimmest moments now could not
conceal an anxiety that made them frantic. It was perhaps that
they dreaded to be killed in insignificant ways after the times
for proper military deaths had passed. Or, perhaps, they thought
it would be too ironical to get killed at the portals of safety.
With backward looks of perturbation, they hastened.
As they approached their own lines there was some sarcasm
exhibited on the part of a gaunt and bronzed regiment that lay
resting in the shade of trees. Questions were wafted to them.
“Where th’ hell yeh been?”
“What yeh comin’ back fer?”
“Why didn’t yeh stay there?”
“Was it warm out there, sonny?”
“Goin’ home now, boys?”
One shouted in taunting mimicry: “Oh, mother, come quick
an’ look at th’ sojers!”
There was no reply from the bruised and bat-tered regiment,
save that one man made broad-cast challenges to fist
fights and the red-bearded officer walked rather near and glared
in great swashbuckler style at a tall captain in the other regiment.
But the lieutenant suppressed the man who wished to
fist fight, and the tall cap-tain, flushing at the little fanfare of the
red-bearded one, was obliged to look intently at some trees.
The youth’s tender flesh was deeply stung by these remarks.
From under his creased brows he glowered with hate at the
mockers. He meditated upon a few revenges. Still, many in
the regiment hung their heads in criminal fashion, so that it came
to pass that the men trudged with sudden heaviness, as if they
bore upon their bended shoulders the coffin of their honor.
And the youthful lieutenant, recollecting himself, be-gan to
mutter softly in black curses.
They turned when they arrived at their old position to regard
the ground over which they had charged.
The youth in this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment.
He discovered that the distances, as compared with
the brilliant measurings of his mind, were trivial and ridicu-lous.
The stolid trees, where much had taken place, seemed incredibly
near. The time, too, now that he reflected, he saw to have
been short. He wondered at the number of emotions and events
that had been crowded into such little spaces. Elfin thoughts
must have exaggerated and enlarged everything, he said.
It seemed, then, that there was bitter justice in the speeches
of the gaunt and bronzed vet-erans. He veiled a glance of disdain
at his fel-lows who strewed the ground, choking with
dust, red from perspiration, misty-eyed, disheveled.
They were gulping at their canteens, fierce to wring every
mite of water from them, and they polished at their swollen
and watery features with coat sleeves and bunches of grass.
However, to the youth there was a consider-able joy in musing
upon his performances during the charge. He had had very
little time pre-viously in which to appreciate himself, so that
there was now much satisfaction in quietly think-ing of his actions.
He recalled bits of color that in the flurry had stamped
themselves unawares upon his engaged senses.
As the regiment lay heaving from its hot exer-tions the officer
who had named them as mule drivers came galloping
along the line. He had lost his cap. His tousled hair streamed
wildly, and his face was dark with vexation and wrath. His
temper was displayed with more clearness by the way in which
he managed his horse. He jerked and wrenched savagely at
his bridle, stop-ping the hard-breathing animal with a furious
pull near the colonel of the regiment. He im-mediately exploded
in reproaches which came unbidden to the ears of the men.
They were suddenly alert, being always curious about black
words between officers.
“Oh, thunder, MacChesnay, what an awful bull you made of
this thing!” began the officer. He attempted low tones, but his
indignation caused certain of the men to learn the sense of his
words. “What an awful mess you made! Good Lord, man,
you stopped about a hun-dred feet this side of a very pretty
success! If your men had gone a hundred feet farther you would
have made a great charge, but as it is —what a lot of mud
diggers you’ve got any-way!”
The men, listening with bated breath, now turned their curious
eyes upon the colonel. They had a ragamuffin interest in
this affair.
The colonel was seen to straighten his form and put one
hand forth in oratorical fashion. He wore an injured air; it was
as if a deacon had been accused of stealing. The men were
wiggling in an ecstasy of excitement.
But of a sudden the colonel’s manner changed from that of a
deacon to that of a Frenchman. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, well, general, we went as far as we could,” he said calmly.
“As far as you could? Did you, b’Gawd?” snorted the other.
“Well, that wasn’t very far, was it?” he added, with a glance of
cold con-tempt into the other’s eyes. “Not very far, I think.
You were intended to make a diversion in favor of Whiterside.
How well you succeeded your own ears can now tell you.”
He wheeled his horse and rode stiffly away.
The colonel, bidden to hear the jarring noises of an engagement
in the woods to the left, broke out in vague damnations.
The lieutenant, who had listened with an air of impotent rage
to the interview, spoke suddenly in firm and undaunted tones.
“I don’t care what a man is—whether he is a general or what—
if he says th’ boys didn’t put up a good fight out there he’s a
damned fool.”
“Lieutenant,” began the colonel, severely, “this is my own
affair, and I’ll trouble you—”
The lieutenant made an obedient gesture. “All right, colonel,
all right,” he said. He sat down with an air of being content
with himself.
The news that the regiment had been re-proached went along
the line. For a time the men were bewildered by it. “Good
thunder!” they ejaculated, staring at the vanishing form of the
general. They conceived it to be a huge mistake.
Presently, however, they began to believe that in truth their
efforts had been called light. The youth could see this conviction
weigh upon the entire regiment until the men were like
cuffed and cursed animals, but withal rebellious.
The friend, with a grievance in his eye, went to the youth. “I
wonder what he does want,” he said. “He must think we went
out there an’ played marbles! I never see sech a man!”
The youth developed a tranquil philosophy for these moments
of irritation. “Oh, well,” he rejoined, “he probably didn’t
see nothing of it at all and got mad as blazes, and concluded
we were a lot of sheep, just because we didn’t do what he
wanted done. It’s a pity old Grandpa Hender-son got killed
yestirday—he’d have known that we did our best and fought
good. It’s just our awful luck, that’s what.”
“I should say so,” replied the friend. He seemed to be deeply
wounded at an injustice. “I should say we did have awful luck!
There’s no fun in fightin’ fer people when everything yeh do—
no matter what—ain’t done right. I have a notion t’ stay behind
next time an’ let ‘em take their ol’ charge an’ go t’ th’
devil with it.”
The youth spoke soothingly to his comrade. “Well, we both
did good. I’d like to see the fool what’d say we both didn’t do
as good as we could!”
“Of course we did,” declared the friend stoutly. “An’ I’d
break th’ feller’s neck if he was as big as a church. But we’re
all right, anyhow, for I heard one feller say that we two fit th’
best in th’ reg’ment, an’ they had a great argument ‘bout it.
Another feller, ‘a course, he had t’ up an’ say it was a lie—he
seen all what was goin’ on an’ he never seen us from th’
beginnin’ t’ th’ end. An’ a lot more struck in an’ ses it wasn’t
a lie—we did fight like thunder, an’ they give us quite a sendoff.
But this is what I can’t stand—these everlastin’ ol’ soldiers,
titterin’ an’ laughin’, an’ then that general, he’s crazy.”
The youth exclaimed with sudden exaspera-tion: “He’s a
lunkhead! He makes me mad. I wish he’d come along next
time. We’d show ‘im what—”
He ceased because several men had come hurrying up. Their
faces expressed a bringing of great news.
“O Flem, yeh jest oughta heard!” cried one, eagerly.
“Heard what?” said the youth.
“Yeh jest oughta heard!” repeated the other, and he arranged
himself to tell his tidings. The others made an excited circle.
“Well, sir, th’ colonel met your lieutenant right by us—it was
damnedest thing I ever heard—an’ he ses: ‘Ahem! ahem!’ he
ses. ‘Mr. Hasbrouck!’ he ses, ‘by th’ way, who was that lad
what carried th’ flag?’ he ses. There, Flemin’, what d’ yeh
think ‘a that? ‘Who was th’ lad what carried th’ flag?’ he ses,
an’ th’ lieutenant, he speaks up right away: ‘That’s Flemin’,
an’ he’s a jimhickey,’ he ses, right away. What? I say he did.
‘A jim-hickey,’ he ses—those ‘r his words. He did, too. I say
he did. If you kin tell this story better than I kin, go ahead an’
tell it. Well, then, keep yer mouth shet. Th’ lieutenant, he ses:
‘He’s a jimhickey,’ an’ th’ colonel, he ses: ‘Ahem! ahem! he
is, indeed, a very good man t’ have, ahem! He kep’ th’ flag
‘way t’ th’ front. I saw ‘im. He’s a good un,’ ses th’ colonel.
‘You bet,’ ses th’ lieu-tenant, ‘he an’ a feller named Wilson
was at th’ head ‘a th’ charge, an’ howlin’ like Indians all th’
time,’ he ses. ‘Head ‘a th’ charge all th’ time,’ he ses. ‘A feller
named Wilson,’ he ses. There, Wilson, m’boy, put that in a
letter an’ send it hum t’ yer mother, hay? ‘A feller named Wilson,’
he ses. An’ th’ colonel, he ses: ‘Were they, indeed? Ahem!
ahem! My sakes!’ he ses. ‘At th’ head ‘a th’ reg’ment?’ he
ses. ‘They were,’ ses th’ lieutenant. ‘My sakes!’ ses th’ colonel.
He ses: ‘Well, well, well,’ he ses, ‘those two babies?’
‘They were,’ ses th’ lieutenant. ‘Well, well,’ ses th’ colonel,
‘they deserve t’ be major generals,’ he ses. ‘They deserve t’
be major-generals.’
The youth and his friend had said: “Huh!” “Yer lyin’, Thompson.”
“Oh, go t’ blazes!” “He never sed it.” “Oh, what a lie!”
“Huh!” But despite these youthful scoffings and embar-rassments,
they knew that their faces were deeply flushing from thrills of pleasure.
They ex-changed a secret glance of joy and congratulation.
They speedily forgot many things. The past held no pictures
of error and disappointment. They were very happy, and their
hearts swelled with grateful affection for the colonel and the
youthful lieutenant.
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Variety is the spice of life

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Chapter XXII


When the woods again began to pour forth the dark-hued
masses of the enemy the youth felt serene self-confidence. He
smiled briefly when he saw men dodge and duck at the long
screech-ings of shells that were thrown in giant handfuls over
them. He stood, erect and tranquil, watch-ing the attack begin
against a part of the line that made a blue curve along the side
of an adja-cent hill. His vision being unmolested by smoke
from the rifles of his companions, he had oppor-tunities to see
parts of the hard fight. It was a relief to perceive at last from
whence came some of these noises which had been roared
into his ears.
Off a short way he saw two regiments fight-ing a little separate
battle with two other regi-ments. It was in a cleared space,
wearing a set-apart look. They were blazing as if upon a wager,
giving and taking tremendous blows. The firings were incredibly
fierce and rapid.
These intent regiments apparently were oblivious of all larger
purposes of war, and were slugging each other as if at a matched
game.
In another direction he saw a magnificent brigade going with
the evident intention of driv-ing the enemy from a wood. They
passed in out of sight and presently there was a most awe-inspiring
racket in the wood. The noise was un-speakable. Having
stirred this prodigious up-roar, and, apparently, finding it too
prodigious, the brigade, after a little time, came marching airily
out again with its fine formation in nowise disturbed. There
were no traces of speed in its movements. The brigade was
jaunty and seemed to point a proud thumb at the yelling wood.
On a slope to the left there was a long row of guns, gruff and
maddened, denouncing the enemy, who, down through the
woods, were forming for another attack in the pitiless monotony
of conflicts. The round red discharges from the guns
made a crimson flare and a high, thick smoke. Occasional
glimpses could be caught of groups of the toiling artillerymen.
In the rear of this row of guns stood a house, calm and white,
amid bursting shells. A congregation of horses, tied to a long
railing, were tugging frenziedly at their bridles. Men were running
hither and thither.
The detached battle between the four regi-ments lasted for
some time. There chanced to be no interference, and they
settled their dispute by themselves. They struck savagely and
pow-erfully at each other for a period of minutes, and then the
lighter-hued regiments faltered and drew back, leaving the
dark-blue lines shouting. The youth could see the two flags
shaking with laughter amid the smoke remnants.
Presently there was a stillness, pregnant with meaning. The
blue lines shifted and changed a trifle and stared expectantly at
the silent woods and fields before them. The hush was solemn
and churchlike, save for a distant battery that, evidently unable
to remain quiet, sent a faint rolling thunder over the ground. It
irritated, like the noises of unimpressed boys. The men imagined
that it would prevent their perched ears from hearing the
first words of the new battle.
Of a sudden the guns on the slope roared out a message of
warning. A spluttering sound had begun in the woods. It swelled
with amazing speed to a profound clamor that involved the
earth in noises. The splitting crashes swept along the lines until
an interminable roar was developed. To those in the midst of it
it became a din fitted to the universe. It was the whirring and
thumping of gigantic machinery, complica-tions among the
smaller stars. The youth’s ears were filled up. They were incapable
of hearing more.
On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and
desperate rushes of men perpet-ually backward and forward
in riotous surges. These parts of the opposing armies were
two long waves that pitched upon each other madly at dictated
points. To and fro they swelled. Sometimes, one side
by its yells and cheers would proclaim decisive blows, but a
moment later the other side would be all yells and cheers.
Once the youth saw a spray of light forms go in houndlike
leaps toward the waving blue lines. There was much howling,
and presently it went away with a vast mouthful of prisoners.
Again, he saw a blue wave dash with such thunderous
force against a gray obstruction that it seemed to clear the
earth of it and leave nothing but trampled sod. And always in
their swift and deadly rushes to and fro the men screamed
and yelled like maniacs.
Particular pieces of fence or secure positions behind collections
of trees were wrangled over, as gold thrones or pearl
bedsteads. There were desperate lunges at these chosen spots
seemingly every instant, and most of them were bandied like
light toys between the contending forces. The youth could not
tell from the battle flags flying like crimson foam in many directions
which color of cloth was winning.
His emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished
fierceness when its time came. When assaulted again by bullets,
the men burst out in a barbaric cry of rage and pain. They
bent their heads in aims of intent hatred behind the projected
hammers of their guns. Their ramrods clanged loud with fury
as their eager arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels.
The front of the regiment was a smoke-wall penetrated
by the flashing points of yellow and red.
Wallowing in the fight, they were in an astonishingly short
time resmudged. They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous
ap-pearances. Moving to and fro with strained exertion,
jabbering the while, they were, with their swaying bodies, black
faces, and glowing eyes, like strange and ugly friends jigging
heavily in the smoke.
The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced
from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous
oaths suited to the emergency. Strings of expletives he
swung lashlike over the backs of his men, and it was evident
that his previous efforts had in nowise impaired his resources.
The youth, still the bearer of the colors, did not feel his idleness.
He was deeply absorbed as a spectator. The crash and
swing of the great drama made him lean forward, intent-eyed,
his face working in small contortions. Sometimes he prattled,
words coming unconsciously from him in grotesque exclamations.
He did not know that he breathed; that the flag hung
silently over him, so absorbed was he.
A formidable line of the enemy came within dangerous range.
They could be seen plainly—tall, gaunt men with excited faces
running with long strides toward a wandering fence.
At sight of this danger the men suddenly ceased their cursing
monotone. There was an instant of strained silence before they
threw up their rifles and fired a plumping volley at the foes.
There had been no order given; the men, upon recognizing the
menace, had immedi-ately let drive their flock of bullets without
wait-ing for word of command.
But the enemy were quick to gain the protec-tion of the
wandering line of fence. They slid down behind it with remarkable
celerity, and from this position they began briskly to
slice up the blue men.
These latter braced their energies for a great struggle. Often,
white clinched teeth shone from the dusky faces. Many heads
surged to and fro, floating upon a pale sea of smoke. Those
behind the fence frequently shouted and yelped in taunts and
gibelike cries, but the regi-ment maintained a stressed silence.
Perhaps, at this new assault the men recalled the fact that they
had been named mud diggers, and it made their situation thrice
bitter. They were breath-lessly intent upon keeping the ground
and thrust-ing away the rejoicing body of the enemy. They
fought swiftly and with a despairing savageness denoted in
their expressions.
The youth had resolved not to budge what-ever should happen.
Some arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his
heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred. It was
clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be
achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the
field. This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer
who had said “mule drivers,” and later “mud diggers,” for in all
the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his
sufferings and commo-tions he always seized upon the man
who had dubbed him wrongly. And it was his idea, vaguely
formulated, that his corpse would be for those eyes a great
and salt reproach.
The regiment bled extravagantly. Grunting bundles of blue
began to drop. The orderly sergeant of the youth’s company
was shot through the cheeks. Its supports being injured, his
jaw hung afar down, disclosing in the wide cavern of his mouth
a pulsing mass of blood and teeth. And with it all he made
attempts to cry out. In his endeavor there was a dreadful earnestness,
as if he conceived that one great shriek would make
him well.
The youth saw him presently go rearward. His strength
seemed in nowise impaired. He ran swiftly, casting wild glances
for succor.
Others fell down about the feet of their com-panions. Some
of the wounded crawled out and away, but many lay still, their
bodies twisted into impossible shapes.
The youth looked once for his friend. He saw a vehement
young man, powder-smeared and frowzled, whom he knew
to be him. The lieu-tenant, also, was unscathed in his position
at the rear. He had continued to curse, but it was now with the
air of a man who was using his last box of oaths.
For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip. The
robust voice, that had come strangely from the thin ranks, was
growing rapidly weak.
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Variety is the spice of life

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Chapter XXIII


The colonel came running along back of the line. There were
other officers following him. “We must charge’m!” they shouted.
“We must charge’m!” they cried with resentful voices, as if
anticipating a rebellion against this plan by the men.
The youth, upon hearing the shouts, began to study the distance
between him and the enemy. He made vague calculations.
He saw that to be firm soldiers they must go forward. It
would be death to stay in the present place, and with all the
circumstances to go backward would exalt too many others.
Their hope was to push the galling foes away from the fence.
He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened, would
have to be driven to this assault, but as he turned toward them
he perceived with a certain surprise that they were giving quick
and unqualified expressions of assent. There was an ominous,
clanging overture to the charge when the shafts of the bayonets
rattled upon the rifle barrels. At the yelled words of command
the soldiers sprang forward in eager leaps. There was
new and unexpected force in the movement of the regiment. A
knowledge of its faded and jaded condition made the charge
ap-pear like a paroxysm, a display of the strength that comes
before a final feebleness. The men scampered in insane fever
of haste, racing as if to achieve a sudden success before an
exhilarating fluid should leave them. It was a blind and despairing
rush by the collection of men in dusty and tattered
blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire sky, toward a
fence, dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which spluttered
the fierce rifles of enemies.
The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving
his free arm in furious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and
appeals, urging on those that did not need to be urged, for it
seemed that the mob of blue men hurling them-selves on the
dangerous group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild with
an enthusiasm of unselfishness. From the many firings starting
toward them, it looked as if they would merely succeed in
making a great sprinkling of corpses on the grass between
their former position and the fence. But they were in a state of
frenzy, perhaps because of forgotten vanities, and it made an
exhibition of sublime recklessness. There was no obvious questioning,
nor figurings, nor dia-grams. There was, apparently,
no considered loopholes. It appeared that the swift wings of
their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the
impossible.
He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage religion mad. He
was capable of profound sacri-fices, a tremendous death. He
had no time for dissections, but he knew that he thought of the
bullets only as things that could prevent him from reaching the
place of his endeavor. There were subtle flashings of joy within
him that thus should be his mind.
He strained all his strength. His eyesight was shaken and
dazzled by the tension of thought and muscle. He did not see
anything excepting the mist of smoke gashed by the little knives
of fire, but he knew that in it lay the aged fence of a vanished
farmer protecting the snuggled bodies of the gray men.
As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his
mind. He expected a great con-cussion when the two bodies
of troops crashed together. This became a part of his wild
battle madness. He could feel the onward swing of the regiment
about him and he conceived of a thun-derous, crushing
blow that would prostrate the resistance and spread consternation
and amaze-ment for miles. The flying regiment was going
to have a catapultian effect. This dream made him run faster
among his comrades, who were giving vent to hoarse and frantic
cheers.
But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did
not intend to abide the blow. The smoke, rolling, disclosed
men who ran, their faces still turned. These grew to a crowd,
who retired stubbornly. Individuals wheeled fre-quently to send
a bullet at the blue wave.
But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate
group that made no movement. They were settled firmly down
behind posts and rails. A flag, ruffled and fierce, waved over
them and their rifles dinned fiercely.
The blue whirl of men got very near, until it seemed that in
truth there would be a close and frightful scuffle. There was an
expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group, that
changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue. They
became yells of wrath, directed, personal. The cries of the two
parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.
They in blue showed their teeth; their eyes shone all white.
They launched themselves as at the throats of those who
stood resisting. The space between dwindled to an insignificant
dis-tance.
The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other
flag. Its possession would be high pride. It would express
bloody minglings, near blows. He had a gigantic hatred for
those who made great difficulties and complications. They
caused it to be as a craved treasure of my-thology, hung amid
tasks and contrivances of danger.
He plunged like a mad horse at it. He was resolved it should
not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it.
His own em-blem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward
the other. It seemed there would shortly be an encounter of
strange beaks and claws, as of eagles.
The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at
close and disastrous range and roared a swift volley. The group
in gray was split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body
still fought. The men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.
The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture
of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon
their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by
bolts from the sky. Tottering among them was the rival color
bearer, whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the
bullets of the last formidable volley. He perceived this man
fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose legs are
grasped by demons. It was a ghastly battle. Over his face was
the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines
of desperate purpose. With this terrible grin of resolution he
hugged his precious flag to him and was stum-bling and staggering
in his design to go the way that led to safety for it.
But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded,
held, and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls
fastened greedily upon his limbs. Those in advance of the scampering
blue men, howling cheers, leaped at the fence. The despair
of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back at them.
The youth’s friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling
heap and sprang at the flag as a panther at prey. He pulled at it
and, wrench-ing it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad
cry of exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched
over in a final throe and, stiff-ening convulsively, turned his
dead face to the ground. There was much blood upon the
grass blades.
At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of
cheers. The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy. When
they spoke it was as if they considered their listener to be a
mile away. What hats and caps were left to them they often
slung high in the air.
At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon,
and they now sat as prisoners. Some blue men were about
them in an eager and curious circle. The soldiers had trapped
strange birds, and there was an examination. A flurry of fast
questions was in the air.
One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the
foot. He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often
to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses
of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called
upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he
was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the
con-duct of prisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had
trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his
duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.
Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great
calmness and apparent good nature. He conversed with the
men in blue, studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes.
They spoke of battles and conditions. There was an acute
interest in all their faces dur-ing this exchange of view points. It
seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had
been darkness and speculation.
The third captive sat with a morose counte-nance. He preserved
a stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he made
one reply without varia-tion, “Ah, go t’ hell!”
The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part,
kept his face turned in un-molested directions. From the views
the youth received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection.
Shame was upon him, and with it profound regret that he
was, perhaps, no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows.
The youth could detect no expression that would allow him to
believe that the other was giving a thought to his narrowed future,
the pictured dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutalities,
liable to the imagination. All to be seen was shame for captivity
and regret for the right to antagonize.
After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down
behind the old rail fence, on the opposite side to the one from
which their foes had been driven. A few shot perfunctorily at
distant marks.
There was some long grass. The youth nestled in it and rested,
making a convenient rail support the flag. His friend, jubilant
and glori-fied, holding his treasure with vanity, came to him
there. They sat side by side and congratu-lated each other.
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Chapter XXIV


The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across
the face of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker.
The stentorian speeches of the artillery continued in some distant
encounter, but the crashes of the musketry had almost
ceased. The youth and his friend of a sudden looked up, feeling
a deadened form of distress at the waning of these noises,
which had become a part of life. They could see changes going
on among the troops. There were march-ings this way and
that way. A battery wheeled leisurely. On the crest of a small
hill was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.
The youth arose. “Well, what now, I won-der?” he said. By
his tone he seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity
in the way of dins and smashes. He shaded his eyes
with his grimy hand and gazed over the field.
His friend also arose and stared. “I bet
226 we’re goin’ t’ git along out of this an’ back over th’
river,” said he.
“Well, I swan!” said the youth.
They waited, watching. Within a little while the regiment received
orders to retrace its way. The men got up grunting from
the grass, regret-ting the soft repose. They jerked their stiffened
legs, and stretched their arms over their heads. One man
swore as he rubbed his eyes. They all groaned “O Lord!”
They had as many objec-tions to this change as they would
have had to a proposal for a new battle.
They trampled slowly back over the field across which they
had run in a mad scamper.
The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows. The
reformed brigade, in column, aimed through a wood at the
road. Directly they were in a mass of dust-covered troops,
and were trudging along in a way parallel to the enemy’s lines
as these had been defined by the previous turmoil.
They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in
front of it groups of their com-rades lying in wait behind a neat
breastwork. A row of guns were booming at a distant enemy.
Shells thrown in reply were raising clouds of dust and splinters.
Horsemen dashed along the line of intrenchments.
At this point of its march the division curved away from the
field and went winding off in the direction of the river. When
the significance of this movement had impressed itself upon
the youth he turned his head and looked over his shoulder
toward the trampled and debris-strewed ground. He breathed
a breath of new satisfac-tion. He finally nudged his friend. “Well,
it’s all over,” he said to him.
His friend gazed backward. “B’Gawd, it is,” he assented.
They mused.
For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and
uncertain way. His mind was undergoing a subtle change. It
took moments for it to cast off its battleful ways and resume its
accustomed course of thought. Gradually his brain emerged
from the clogged clouds, and at last he was enabled to more
closely compre-hend himself and circumstance.
He understood then that the existence of shot and countershot
was in the past. He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling
upheavals and had come forth. He had been where there
was red of blood and black of passion, and he was es-caped.
His first thoughts were given to rejoic-ings at this fact.
Later he began to study his deeds, his fail-ures, and his
achievements. Thus, fresh from scenes where many of his usual
machines of re-flection had been idle, from where he had proceeded
sheeplike, he struggled to marshal all his acts.
At last they marched before him clearly. From this present
view point he was enabled to look upon them in spectator
fashion and to criticise them with some correctness, for his
new condition had already defeated certain sym-pathies.
Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and
unregretting, for in it his public deeds were paraded in great
and shining prominence. Those performances which had been
witnessed by his fellows marched now in wide purple and gold,
having various deflections. They went gayly with music. It was
pleasure to watch these things. He spent delightful minutes viewing
the gilded images of memory.
He saw that he was good. He recalled with a thrill of joy the
respectful comments of his fel-lows upon his conduct.
Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first engagement
appeared to him and danced. There were small shoutings
in his brain about these matters. For a moment he blushed,
and the light of his soul flickered with shame.
A specter of reproach came to him. There loomed the dogging
memory of the tattered soldier—he who, gored by bullets
and faint for blood, had fretted concerning an imagined wound
in another; he who had loaned his last of strength and intellect
for the tall soldier; he who, blind with weariness and pain, had
been deserted in the field.
For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the
thought that he might be detected in the thing. As he stood
persistently before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp
irritation and agony.
His friend turned. “What’s the matter, Henry?” he demanded.
The youth’s reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.
As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among
his prattling companions this vision of cruelty brooded over
him. It clung near him always and darkened his view of these
deeds in purple and gold. Whichever way his thoughts turned
they were followed by the somber phantom of the desertion in
the fields. He looked stealthily at his companions, feeling sure
that they must discern in his face evidences of this pursuit. But
they were plodding in ragged array, discussing with quick
tongues the accomplishments of the late battle.
“Oh, if a man should come up an’ ask me, I’d say we got a
dum good lickin’.”
“Lickin’—in yer eye! We ain’t licked, sonny. We’re goin’
down here aways, swing aroun’, an’ come in behint ‘em.”
“Oh, hush, with your comin’ in behint ‘em. I’ve seen all ‘a
that I wanta. Don’t tell me about comin’ in behint—”
“Bill Smithers, he ses he’d rather been in ten hundred battles
than been in that heluva hospital. He ses they got shootin’ in
th’ night-time, an’ shells dropped plum among ‘em in th’ hospital.
He ses sech hollerin’ he never see.”
“Hasbrouck? He’s th’ best off’cer in this here reg’ment. He’s
a whale.”
“Didn’t I tell yeh we’d come aroun’ in behint ‘em? Didn’t I
tell yeh so? We—”
“Oh, shet yeh mouth!”
For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took
all elation from the youth’s veins. He saw his vivid error, and
he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life. He
took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look
at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that
they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of
the scene with the tattered soldier.
Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.
And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He
found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of
his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful when he
discovered that he now despised them.
With this conviction came a store of assur-ance. He felt a
quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood.
He knew that he would no more quail before his guides
wher-ever they should point. He had been to touch the great
death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death.
He was a man.
So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of
blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares
to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot
plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers.
It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled
train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning
effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched
sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a
world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths
and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of
battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an
animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He
turned now with a lover’s thirst to images of tranquil skies,
fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal
peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of
leaden rain clouds.

The End
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