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.

Chapter XI


He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing
louder. Great brown clouds had floated to the still heights
of air before him. The noise, too, was approaching. The woods
filtered men and the fields became dotted.
As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was
now a crying mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving
tangle issued exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear
was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses
plunged and tugged. The white-topped wagons strained and
stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.
The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They
were all retreating. Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all.
He seated himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons.
They fled like soft, ungainly animals. All the roarers and lashers
served to help him to magnify the dangers and horrors of the
engagement that he might try to prove to himself that the thing
with which men could charge him was in truth a symmetrical
act. There was an amount of pleas-ure to him in watching the
wild march of this vindication.
Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry
appeared in the road. It came swiftly on. Avoiding the obstructions
gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent. The men
at the head butted mules with their musket stocks. They prodded
teamsters indifferent to all howls. The men forced their
way through parts of the dense mass by strength. The blunt
head of the column pushed. The raving team-sters swore many
strange oaths.
The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance
in them. The men were going forward to the heart of the
din. They were to confront the eager rush of the enemy. They
felt the pride of their onward movement when the remainder
of the army seemed trying to dribble down this road. They
tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it was no matter so
long as their column got to the front in time. This importance
made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the officers
were very rigid.
As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe
returned to him. He felt that he was regarding a procession of
chosen beings. The separation was as great to him as if they
had marched with weapons of flame and banners of sunlight.
He could never be like them. He could have wept in his longings.
He searched about in his mind for an ade-quate malediction
for the indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words
of final blame. It—whatever it was—was responsible for him,
he said. There lay the fault.
The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the
forlorn young man to be some-thing much finer than stout fighting.
Heroes, he thought, could find excuses in that long seething
lane. They could retire with perfect self-respect and make
excuses to the stars.
He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be
in such haste to force their way to grim chances of death. As
he watched his envy grew until he thought that he wished to
change lives with one of them. He would have liked to have
used a tremendous force, he said, throw off himself and become
a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself,
came to him—a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges
with one knee forward and a broken blade high—a blue, determined
figure standing before a crimson and steel assault,
getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all. He
thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.
These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire.
In his ears, he heard the ring of victory. He knew the
frenzy of a rapid successful charge. The music of the trampling
feet, the sharp voices, the clanking arms of the column
near him made him soar on the red wings of war. For a few
moments he was sublime.
He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed,
he saw a picture of himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting,
flying to the front at the proper moment to seize and throttle
the dark, leering witch of calamity.
Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He
hesitated, balancing awkwardly on one foot.
He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he
resentfully to his plan. Well, rifles could be had for the picking.
They were extraordinarily profuse.
Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his
regiment. Well, he could fight with any regiment.
He started forward slowly. He stepped as if he expected
to tread upon some explosive thing. Doubts and he were
struggling.
He would truly be a worm if any of his com-rades should
see him returning thus, the marks of his flight upon him. There
was a reply that the intent fighters did not care for what happened
rearward saving that no hostile bayonets ap-peared
there. In the battle-blur his face would, in a way be hidden,
like the face of a cowled man.
But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when
the strife lulled for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation.
In imagina-tion he felt the scrutiny of his companions as
he painfully labored through some lies.
Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections.
The debates drained him of his fire.
He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon
studying the affair carefully, he could not but admit that the
objections were very formidable.
Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out. In their
presence he could not persist in flying high with the wings of
war; they rendered it almost impossible for him to see him-self
in a heroic light. He tumbled headlong.
He discovered that he had a scorching thirst. His face was
so dry and grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle.
Each bone of his body had an ache in it, and seemingly threatened
to break with each movement. His feet were like two
sores. Also, his body was calling for food. It was more powerful
than a direct hunger. There was a dull, weight like feeling
in his stomach, and, when he tried to walk, his head swayed
and he tottered. He could not see with distinct-ness. Small
patches of green mist floated before his vision.
While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not
been aware of ailments. Now they beset him and made clamor.
As he was at last compelled to pay attention to them, his capacity
for self-hate was multiplied. In despair, he declared that
he was not like those others. He now conceded it to be impossible
that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven
loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned
from his heart and went staggering off.
A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity
of the battle. He had a great desire to see, and to get news. He
wished to know who was winning.
He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering, he
had never lost his greed for a victory, yet, he said, in a halfapologetic
manner to his conscience, he could not but know
that a defeat for the army this time might mean many favor
able things for him. The blows of the enemy would splinter
regiments into fragments. Thus, many men of courage, he considered,
would be obliged to desert the colors and scurry like
chickens. He would appear as one of them. They would be
sullen brothers in distress, and he could then easily believe he
had not run any farther or faster than they. And if he himself
could believe in his virtuous perfection, he con-ceived that there
would be small trouble in con-vincing all others.
He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the
army had encountered great defeats and in a few months had
shaken off all blood and tradition of them, emerging as bright
and valiant as a new one; thrusting out of sight the memory of
disaster, and appearing with the valor and confidence of unconquered
legions. The shrilling voices of the people at home
would pipe dismally for a time, but various generals were usually
compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no
compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could
not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could
center no direct sympathy upon him. The people were afar
and he did not conceive public opinion to be accurate at long
range. It was quite probable they would hit the wrong man
who, after he had recovered from his amazement would perhaps
spend the rest of his days in writ-ing replies to the songs
of his alleged failure. It would be very unfortunate, no doubt,
but in this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.
In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself.
He thought it would prove, in a manner, that he had fled
early because of his superior powers of perception. A serious
prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb
a tree. This would demon-strate that he was indeed a seer.
A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very
important thing. Without salve, he could not, he thought, wear
the sore badge of his dishonor through life. With his heart continually
assuring him that he was despicable, he could not exist
without making it, through his actions, apparent to all men.
If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost. If the
din meant that now his army’s flags were tilted forward he was
a condemned wretch. He would be compelled to doom himself
to isolation. If the men were advancing, their indifferent
feet were trampling upon his chances for a successful life.
As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned
upon them and tried to thrust them away. He denounced him
self as a villain. He said that he was the most unutterably selfish
man in existence. His mind pictured the soldiers who would
place their defiant bodies before the spear of the yelling battle
fiend, and as he saw their dripping corpses on an imagined
field, he said that he was their murderer.
Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed
that he envied a corpse. Thinking of the slain, he achieved a
great contempt for some of them, as if they were guilty for thus
becoming lifeless. They might have been killed by lucky chances,
he said, before they had had opportunities to flee or before they
had been really tested. Yet they would receive laurels from tradition.
He cried out bitterly that their crowns were stolen and
their robes of glori-ous memories were shams. However, he still
said that it was a great pity he was not as they.
A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of
escape from the consequences of his fall. He considered, now,
however, that it was useless to think of such a possibility. His
education had been that success for that mighty blue machine
was certain; that it would make victories as a contrivance turns
out buttons. He presently discarded all his speculations in the
other direction. He returned to the creed of soldiers.
When he perceived again that it was not possible for the
army to be defeated, he tried to bethink him of a fine tale
which he could take back to his regiment, and with it turn the
expected shafts of derision.
But, as he mortally feared these shafts, it became impossible
for him to invent a tale he felt he could trust. He experimented
with many schemes, but threw them aside one by one as flimsy.
He was quick to see vulnerable places in them all.
Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn
might lay him mentally low before he could raise his protecting
tale.
He imagined the whole regiment saying: “Where’s Henry
Fleming? He run, didn’t ‘e? Oh, my!” He recalled various persons
who would be quite sure to leave him no peace about it.
They would doubtless question him with sneers, and laugh at
his stammering hesi-tation. In the next engagement they would
try to keep watch of him to discover when he would run.
Wherever he went in camp, he would en-counter insolent
and lingeringly cruel stares. As he imagined himself passing
near a crowd of comrades, he could hear some one say, “There
he goes!”
Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the
faces were turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He
seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low
tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang
phrase.

Chapter XII


The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the
roadway was barely out of the youth’s sight before he saw
dark waves of men come sweeping out of the woods and
down through the fields. He knew at once that the steel fibers
had been washed from their hearts. They were bursting from
their coats and their equipments as from entanglements. They
charged down upon him like terrified buffaloes.
Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops,
and through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant
pink glare. The voices of the cannon were clamoring in
intermi-nable chorus.
The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement.
He forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe.
He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philosophy
of the retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.
The fight was lost. The dragons were com-ing with invincible
strides. The army, helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by
the over-hanging night, was going to be swallowed. War, the
red animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.
Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to
make a rallying speech, to sing a battle hymn, but he could
only get his tongue to call into the air: “Why—why—what—
what ‘s th’ matter?”
Soon he was in the midst of them. They were leaping and
scampering all about him. Their blanched faces shone in the
dusk. They seemed, for the most part, to be very burly men.
The youth turned from one to another of them as they galloped
along. His incoherent questions were lost. They were heedless
of his appeals. They did not seem to see him.
They sometimes gabbled insanely. One huge man was asking
of the sky: “Say, where de plank road? Where de plank
road!” It was as if he had lost a child. He wept in his pain
and dismay.
Presently, men were running hither and thither in all ways.
The artillery booming, forward, rearward, and on the flanks
made jumble of ideas of direction. Landmarks had vanished
into the gathered gloom. The youth began to imagine that he
had got into the center of the tremendous quarrel, and he could
perceive no way out of it. From the mouths of the fleeing men
came a thousand wild questions, but no one made answers.
The youth, after rushing about and throwing interrogations
at the heedless bands of retreating infantry, finally clutched a
man by the arm. They swung around face to face.
“Why—why—” stammered the youth strug-gling with his
balking tongue.
The man screamed: “Let go me! Let go me!” His face was
livid and his eyes were roll-ing uncontrolled. He was heaving
and panting. He still grasped his rifle, perhaps having for-gotten
to release his hold upon it. He tugged frantically, and the youth
being compelled to lean forward was dragged several paces.
“Let go me! Let go me!”
“Why—why—” stuttered the youth.
“Well, then!” bawled the man in a lurid rage. He adroitly and
fiercely swung his rifle. It crushed upon the youth’s head. The
man ran on.
The youth’s fingers had turned to paste upon the other’s
arm. The energy was smitten from his muscles. He saw the
flaming wings of light-ning flash before his vision. There was a
deaf-ening rumble of thunder within his head.
Suddenly his legs seemed to die. He sank writhing to the
ground. He tried to arise. In his efforts against the numbing
pain he was like a man wrestling with a creature of the air.
There was a sinister struggle.
Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect, battle
with the air for a moment, and then fall again, grabbing at the
grass. His face was of a clammy pallor. Deep groans were
wrenched from him.
At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and
knees, and from thence, like a babe trying to walk, to his feet.
Pressing his hands to his temples he went lurching over the grass.
He fought an intense battle with his body. His dulled senses
wished him to swoon and he opposed them stubbornly, his
mind portraying unknown dangers and mutilations if he should
fall upon the field. He went tall soldier fashion. He imagined
secluded spots where he could fall and be unmolested. To
search for one he strove against the tide of his pain.
Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly
touched the wound. The scratching pain of the contact made
him draw a long breath through his clinched teeth. His fingers
were dabbled with blood. He regarded them with a fixed stare.
Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as
the scurrying horses were lashed toward the front. Once, a
young officer on a besplashed charger nearly ran him down.
He turned and watched the mass of guns, men, and horses
sweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a fence. The officer
was making excited motions with a gauntleted hand. The guns
followed the teams with an air of unwillingness, of being dragged
by the heels.
Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing
like fishwives. Their scold-ing voices could be heard above
the din. Into the unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a
squadron of cavalry. The faded yellow of their facings shone
bravely. There was a mighty altercation.
The artillery were assembling as if for a con-ference.
The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of
forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the
western sky partly smothering the red.
As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns
suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage.
They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate.
The soft air was filled with the tremendous remon-strance.
With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning
to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange light illumine
the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings
in the far air. At times he thought he could see heaving
masses of men.
He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could
barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was
filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could
see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There
seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about
in the forest and in the fields.
The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned
wagons like sun-dried bowlders. The bed of the former
torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered
parts of war machines.
It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He
was afraid to move rapidly, how-ever, for a dread of disturbing
it. He held his head very still and took many precautions
against stumbling. He was filled with anxiety, and his face was
pinched and drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden
mistake of his feet in the gloom.
His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt. There
was a cool, liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving
slowly down under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a
size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.
The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The
little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp
were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By
them he believed that he could measure his plight. But when
they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined
ter-rible fingers that clutched into his brain.
Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions
of the past. He be-thought him of certain meals his
mother had cooked at home, in which those dishes of which
he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions.
He saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were
glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered
how he and his companions used to go from the school-house
to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly
array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the
fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging
maple rustled with melody in the wind of youth-ful summer.
He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness. His
head hung forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he
were bearing a great bundle. His feet shuffled along the ground.
He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie
down and sleep at some near spot, or force himself on until he
reached a certain haven. He often tried to dismiss the question,
but his body persisted in rebellion and his senses nagged
at him like pampered babies.
At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: “Yeh seem
t’ be in a pretty bad way, boy?”
The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue.
“Uh!”
The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm.
“Well,” he said, with a round laugh, “I’m goin’ your way. Th’
hull gang is goin’ your way. An’ I guess I kin give yeh a lift.”
They began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.
As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted
him with the replies like one manipulating the mind of a
child. Sometimes he interjected anecdotes. “What reg’ment
do yeh b’long teh? Eh? What’s that? Th’ 304th N’ York?
Why, what corps is that in? Oh, it is? Why, I thought they
wasn’t engaged t’-day—they ‘re ‘way over in th’ center. Oh,
they was, eh? Well, pretty nearly everybody got their share ‘a
fightin’ t’-day. By dad, I give myself up fer dead any number
‘a times. There was shootin’ here an’ shootin’ there, an’
hollerin’ here an’ hollerin’ there, in th’ damn’ darkness, until I
couldn’t tell t’ save m’ soul which side I was on. Sometimes I
thought I was sure ‘nough from Ohier, an’ other times I could
‘a swore I was from th’ bitter end of Florida. It was th’ most
mixed up dern thing I ever see. An’ these here hull woods is a
reg’lar mess. It’ll be a miracle if we find our reg’ments t’-night.
Pretty soon, though, we ‘ll meet a-plenty of guards an’ provost-
guards, an’ one thing an’ another. Ho! there they go with
an off’cer, I guess. Look at his hand a-draggin’. He ‘s got all
th’ war he wants, I bet. He won’t be talkin’ so big about his
reputation an’ all when they go t’ sawin’ off his leg. Poor feller!
My brother ‘s got whiskers jest like that. How did yeh git
‘way over here, anyhow? Your reg’ment is a long way from
here, ain’t it? Well, I guess we can find it. Yeh know there was
a boy killed in my comp’ny t’-day that I thought th’ world an’
all of. Jack was a nice feller. By ginger, it hurt like thunder t’
see ol’ Jack jest git knocked flat. We was a-standin’ purty
peaceable fer a spell, ‘though there was men runnin’ ev’ry
way all ‘round us, an’ while we was a-standin’ like that, ‘long
come a big fat feller. He began t’ peck at Jack’s elbow, an’ he
ses: ‘Say, where ‘s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ An’ Jack, he never
paid no attention, an’ th’ feller kept on a-peckin’ at his elbow
an’ sayin’: ‘Say, where ‘s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ Jack was alookin’
ahead all th’ time tryin’ t’ see th’ Johnnies comin’
through th’ woods, an’ he never paid no attention t’ this big fat
feller fer a long time, but at last he turned ‘round an’ he ses:
‘Ah, go t’ hell an’ find th’ road t’ th’ river!’ An’ jest then a shot
slapped him bang on th’ side th’ head. He was a sergeant, too.
Them was his last words. Thunder, I wish we was sure ‘a
findin’ our reg’ments t’-night. It ‘s goin’ t’ be long huntin’. But
I guess we kin do it.”
In the search which followed, the man of the cheery voice
seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He
threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune.
In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the
keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles
fell before him and became of assistance. The youth, with his
chin still on his breast, stood woodenly by while his companion
beat ways and means out of sullen things.
The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic
circles, but the cheery man con-ducted the youth without
mistakes, until at last he began to chuckle with glee and selfsatisfaction.
“Ah, there yeh are! See that fire?”
The youth nodded stupidly.
“Well, there ‘s where your reg’ment is. An’ now, good-by,
ol’ boy, good luck t’ yeh.”
A warm and strong hand clasped the youth’s languid fingers
for an instant, and then he heard a cheerful and audacious
whistling as the man strode away. As he who had so befriended
him was thus passing out of his life, it suddenly oc-curred to
the youth that he had not once seen his face.

Chapter XIII


The youth went slowly toward the fire in-dicated by his
departed friend. As he reeled, he bethought him of the welcome
his comrades would give him. He had a conviction that
he would soon feel in his sore heart the barbed missiles of
ridicule. He had no strength to in-vent a tale; he would be a
soft target.
He made vague plans to go off into the deeper darkness and
hide, but they were all destroyed by the voices of exhaustion
and pain from his body. His ailments, clamoring, forced him to
seek the place of food and rest, at whatever cost.
He swung unsteadily toward the fire. He could see the forms
of men throwing black shadows in the red light, and as he
went nearer it became known to him in some way that the
ground was strewn with sleeping men.
Of a sudden he confronted a black and monstrous figure. A
rifle barrel caught some glinting beams. “Halt! halt!” He was
dismayed for a moment, but he presently thought that he recognized
the nervous voice. As he stood tottering before the
rifle barrel, he called out: “Why, hello, Wilson, you—you here?”
The rifle was lowered to a position of caution and the loud
soldier came slowly forward. He peered into the youth’s face.
“That you, Henry?”
“Yes, it’s—it’s me.”
“Well, well, ol’ boy,” said the other, “by ginger, I’m glad t’
see yeh! I give yeh up fer a goner. I thought yeh was dead sure
enough.” There was husky emotion in his voice.
The youth found that now he could barely stand upon his
feet. There was a sudden sinking of his forces. He thought he
must hasten to pro-duce his tale to protect him from the missiles
already at the lips of his redoubtable comrades. So, staggering
before the loud soldier, he began: “Yes, yes. I’ve—I’ve
had an awful time. I’ve been all over. Way over on th’ right.
Ter’ble fightin’ over there. I had an awful time. I got separated
from th’ reg’ment. Over on th’ right, I got shot. In th’ head. I
never see sech fightin’. Awful time. I don’t see how I could ‘a
got separated from th’ reg’ment. I got shot, too.” His friend
had stepped forward quickly. “What? Got shot? Why didn’t
yeh say so first? Poor ol’ boy, we must—hol’ on a minnit;
what am I doin’. I’ll call Simpson.”
Another figure at that moment loomed in the gloom. They
could see that it was the corporal. “Who yeh talkin’ to, Wilson?”
he demanded. His voice was anger-toned. “Who yeh
talkin’ to? Yeh th’ derndest sentinel—why—hello, Henry, you
here? Why, I thought you was dead four hours ago! Great
Jerusalem, they keep turnin’ up every ten minutes or so! We
thought we’d lost forty-two men by straight count, but if they
keep on a-comin’ this way, we’ll git th’ comp’ny all back by
mornin’ yit. Where was yeh?”
“Over on th’ right. I got separated”—began the youth with
considerable glibness.
But his friend had interrupted hastily. “Yes, an’ he got shot in
th’ head an’ he’s in a fix, an’ we must see t’ him right away.”
He rested his rifle in the hollow of his left arm and his right
around the youth’s shoulder.
“Gee, it must hurt like thunder!” he said.
The youth leaned heavily upon his friend. “Yes, it hurts—hurts
a good deal,” he replied. There was a faltering in his voice.
“Oh,” said the corporal. He linked his arm in the youth’s and
drew him forward. “Come on, Henry. I’ll take keer ‘a yeh.”
As they went on together the loud private called out after
them: “Put ‘im t’ sleep in my blanket, Simpson. An’—hol’ on
a minnit—here’s my canteen. It’s full ‘a coffee. Look at his
head by th’ fire an’ see how it looks. Maybe it’s a pretty bad
un. When I git relieved in a couple ‘a minnits, I’ll be over an’
see t’ him.”
The youth’s senses were so deadened that his friend’s voice
sounded from afar and he could scarcely feel the pressure of
the corporal’s arm. He submitted passively to the latter’s directing
strength. His head was in the old manner hang-ing forward
upon his breast. His knees wobbled.
The corporal led him into the glare of the fire. “Now, Henry,”
he said, “let’s have look at yer ol’ head.”
The youth sat down obediently and the cor-poral, laying
aside his rifle, began to fumble in the bushy hair of his comrade.
He was obliged to turn the other’s head so that the full
flush of the fire light would beam upon it. He puckered his
mouth with a critical air. He drew back his lips and whistled
through his teeth when his fingers came in contact with the
splashed blood and the rare wound.
“Ah, here we are!” he said. He awkwardly made further
investigations. “Jest as I thought,” he added, presently. “Yeh’ve
been grazed by a ball. It’s raised a queer lump jest as if some
feller had lammed yeh on th’ head with a club. It stopped ableedin’
long time ago. Th’ most about it is that in th’ mornin’
yeh’ll feel that a number ten hat wouldn’t fit yeh. An’ your
head’ll be all het up an’ feel as dry as burnt pork. An’ yeh may
git a lot ‘a other sicknesses, too, by mornin’. Yeh can’t never
tell. Still, I don’t much think so. It’s jest a damn’ good belt on
th’ head, an’ nothin’ more. Now, you jest sit here an’ don’t
move, while I go rout out th’ relief. Then I’ll send Wilson t’
take keer ‘a yeh.”
The corporal went away. The youth re-mained on the ground
like a parcel. He stared with a vacant look into the fire.
After a time he aroused, for some part, and the things about
him began to take form. He saw that the ground in the deep
shadows was cluttered with men, sprawling in every conceivable
posture. Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness,
he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed
pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow. These faces
expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers.
They made them appear like men drunk with wine. This bit of
forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene
of the result of some frightful debauch.
On the other side of the fire the youth observed an officer
asleep, seated bolt upright, with his back against a tree. There
was some-thing perilous in his position. Badgered by dreams,
perhaps, he swayed with little bounces and starts, like an old
toddy-stricken grandfather in a chimney corner. Dust and stains
were upon his face. His lower jaw hung down as if lacking
strength to assume its normal position. He was the picture of
an exhausted soldier after a feast of war.
He had evidently gone to sleep with his sword in his arms.
These two had slumbered in an embrace, but the weapon had
been allowed in time to fall unheeded to the ground. The brassmounted
hilt lay in contact with some parts of the fire.
Within the gleam of rose and orange light from the burning
sticks were other soldiers, snoring and heaving, or lying deathlike
in slumber. A few pairs of legs were stuck forth, rigid and
straight. The shoes displayed the mud or dust of marches and
bits of rounded trousers, protruding from the blankets, showed
rents and tears from hurried pitchings through the dense brambles.
The fire crackled musically. From it swelled light smoke.
Overhead the foliage moved softly. The leaves, with their faces
turned toward the blaze, were colored shifting hues of silver,
often edged with red. Far off to the right, through a window in
the forest could be seen a handful of stars lying, like glittering
pebbles, on the black level of the night.
Occasionally, in this low-arched hall, a soldier would arouse
and turn his body to a new posi-tion, the experience of his
sleep having taught him of uneven and objectionable places
upon the ground under him. Or, perhaps, he would lift himself
to a sitting posture, blink at the fire for an unintelligent moment,
throw a swift glance at his prostrate companion, and then cuddle
down again with a grunt of sleepy content.
The youth sat in a forlorn heap until his friend the loud young
soldier came, swinging two canteens by their light strings. “Well,
now, Henry, ol’ boy,” said the latter, “we’ll have yeh fixed up
in jest about a minnit.”
He had the bustling ways of an amateur nurse. He fussed
around the fire and stirred the sticks to brilliant exertions. He
made his patient drink largely from the canteen that contained
the coffee. It was to the youth a delicious draught. He tilted his
head afar back and held the canteen long to his lips. The cool
mixture went caress-ingly down his blistered throat. Having
finished, he sighed with comfortable delight.
The loud young soldier watched his comrade with an air of
satisfaction. He later produced an extensive handkerchief from
his pocket. He folded it into a manner of bandage and soused
water from the other canteen upon the middle of it. This crude
arrangement he bound over the youth’s head, tying the ends in
a queer knot at the back of the neck.
“There,” he said, moving off and surveying his deed, “yeh
look like th’ devil, but I bet yeh feel better.”
The youth contemplated his friend with grate-ful eyes. Upon
his aching and swelling head the cold cloth was like a tender
woman’s hand.
“Yeh don’t holler ner say nothin’,” remarked his friend approvingly.
“I know I’m a black-smith at takin’ keer ‘a sick
folks, an’ yeh never squeaked. Yer a good un, Henry. Most ‘a
men would a’ been in th’ hospital long ago. A shot in th’ head
ain’t foolin’ business.”
The youth made no reply, but began to fumble with the buttons
of his jacket.
“Well, come, now,” continued his friend, “come on. I must
put yeh t’ bed an’ see that yeh git a good night’s rest.”
The other got carefully erect, and the loud young soldier led
him among the sleeping forms lying in groups and rows. Presently
he stooped and picked up his blankets. He spread the
rubber one upon the ground and placed the woolen one about
the youth’s shoulders.
“There now,” he said, “lie down an’ git some sleep.”
The youth, with his manner of doglike obe-dience, got carefully
down like a crone stoop-ing. He stretched out with a
murmur of relief and comfort. The ground felt like the softest
couch.
But of a sudden he ejaculated: “Hol’ on a minnit! Where you
goin’ t’ sleep?”
His friend waved his hand impatiently. “Right down there by
yeh.”
“Well, but hol’ on a minnit,” continued the youth. “What yeh
goin’ t’ sleep in? I’ve got your—”
The loud young soldier snarled: “Shet up an’ go on t’ sleep.
Don’t be makin’ a damn’ fool ‘a yerself,” he said severely.
After the reproof the youth said no more. An exquisite
drowsiness had spread through him. The warm comfort of the
blanket enveloped him and made a gentle languor. His head
fell for-ward on his crooked arm and his weighted lids went
softly down over his eyes. Hearing a splatter of musketry from
the distance, he wondered indifferently if those men sometimes
slept. He gave a long sigh, snuggled down into his blanket,
and in a moment was like his com-rades.

Chapter XIV


When the youth awoke it seemed to him that he had been
asleep for a thousand years, and he felt sure that he opened his
eyes upon an unex-pected world. Gray mists were slowly shifting
before the first efforts of the sun rays. An im-pending splendor
could be seen in the eastern sky. An icy dew had chilled
his face, and im-mediately upon arousing he curled farther down
into his blanket. He stared for a while at the leaves overhead,
moving in a heraldic wind of the day.
The distance was splintering and blaring with the noise of
fighting. There was in the sound an expression of a deadly
persistency, as if it had not begun and was not to cease.
About him were the rows and groups of men that he had
dimly seen the previous night. They were getting a last draught
of sleep before the awakening. The gaunt, careworn features
and dusty figures were made plain by this quaint light at the
dawning, but it dressed the skin of the men in corpselike hues
and made the tangled limbs appear pulseless and dead. The
youth started up with a little cry when his eyes first swept over
this motionless mass of men, thick-spread upon the ground,
pallid, and in strange postures. His disordered mind interpreted
the hall of the forest as a charnel place. He believed for an
instant that he was in the house of the dead, and he did not
dare to move lest these corpses start up, squalling and squawking.
In a second, however, he achieved his proper mind. He
swore a complicated oath at himself. He saw that this somber
picture was not a fact of the present, but a mere prophecy.
He heard then the noise of a fire crackling briskly in the cold
air, and, turning his head, he saw his friend pottering busily
about a small blaze. A few other figures moved in the fog, and
he heard the hard cracking of axe blows.
Suddenly there was a hollow rumble of drums. A distant
bugle sang faintly. Similar sounds, varying in strength, came
from near and far over the forest. The bugles called to each
other like brazen gamecocks. The near thunder of the regimental
drums rolled.
The body of men in the woods rustled. There was a general
uplifting of heads. A murmuring of voices broke upon the air.
In it there was much bass of grumbling oaths. Strange gods
were addressed in condemnation of the early hours necessary
to correct war. An officer’s peremptory tenor rang out and
quickened the stiffened movement of the men. The tangled
limbs unraveled. The corpse-hued faces were hidden behind
fists that twisted slowly in the eye sockets.
The youth sat up and gave vent to an enormous yawn. “Thunder!”
he remarked petulantly. He rubbed his eyes, and then putting
up his hand felt carefully of the bandage over his wound. His
friend, perceiving him to be awake, came from the fire. “Well,
Henry, ol’ man, how do yeh feel this mornin’?” he demanded.
The youth yawned again. Then he puckered his mouth to a
little pucker. His head, in truth, felt precisely like a melon, and
there was an un-pleasant sensation at his stomach.
“Oh, Lord, I feel pretty bad,” he said.
“Thunder!” exclaimed the other. “I hoped ye’d feel all right
this mornin’. Let’s see th’ bandage—I guess it’s slipped.” He
began to tinker at the wound in rather a clumsy way until the
youth exploded.
“Gosh-dern it!” he said in sharp irritation; “you’re the
hangdest man I ever saw! You wear muffs on your hands.
Why in good thunderation can’t you be more easy? I’d rather
you’d stand off an’ throw guns at it. Now, go slow, an’ don’t
act as if you was nailing down carpet.”
He glared with insolent command at his friend, but the latter
answered soothingly. “Well, well, come now, an’ git some grub,”
he said. “Then, maybe, yeh’ll feel better.”
At the fireside the loud young soldier watched over his
comrade’s wants with tender-ness and care. He was very busy
marshaling the little black vagabonds of tin cups and pour-ing
into them the streaming, iron colored mixture from a small and
sooty tin pail. He had some fresh meat, which he roasted hurriedly
upon a stick. He sat down then and contemplated the
youth’s appetite with glee.
The youth took note of a remarkable change in his comrade
since those days of camp life upon the river bank. He seemed
no more to be con-tinually regarding the proportions of his
personal prowess. He was not furious at small words that
pricked his conceits. He was no more a loud young soldier.
There was about him now a fine reliance. He showed a quiet
belief in his purposes and his abilities. And this in-ward confidence
evidently enabled him to be indifferent to little words of
other men aimed at him.
The youth reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade
as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexpe
rience, thought-less, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel
courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his
own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born
these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery
that there were many men who would refuse to be
subjected by him. Apparently, the other had now climbed a
peak of wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a
very wee thing. And the youth saw that ever after it would be
easier to live in his friend’s neighborhood.
His comrade balanced his ebony coffee-cup on his knee.
“Well, Henry,” he said, “what d’yeh think th’ chances are?
D’yeh think we’ll wal-lop ‘em?”
The youth considered for a moment. “Day-b’fore-yesterday,”
he finally replied, with boldness, “you would ‘a’ bet you’d
lick the hull kit-an’-boodle all by yourself.”
His friend looked a trifle amazed. “Would I?” he asked. He
pondered. “Well, perhaps I would,” he decided at last. He
stared humbly at the fire.
The youth was quite disconcerted at this sur-prising reception
of his remarks. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t either,” he said,
hastily trying to re-trace.
But the other made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, yeh needn’t
mind, Henry,” he said. “I be-lieve I was a pretty big fool in
those days.” He spoke as after a lapse of years.
There was a little pause.
“All th’ officers say we’ve got th’ rebs in a pretty tight box,”
said the friend, clearing his throat in a commonplace way. “They
all seem t’ think we’ve got ‘em jest where we want ‘em.”
“I don’t know about that,” the youth replied. “What I seen
over on th’ right makes me think it was th’ other way about.
From where I was, it looked as if we was gettin’ a good
poundin’ yestirday.”
“D’yeh think so?” inquired the friend. “I thought we handled
‘em pretty rough yestir-day.”
“Not a bit,” said the youth. “Why, lord, man, you didn’t see
nothing of the fight. Why!” Then a sudden thought came to
him. “Oh! Jim Conklin’s dead.”
His friend started. “What? Is he? Jim Conklin?”
The youth spoke slowly. “Yes. He’s dead. Shot in th’ side.”
“Yeh don’t say so. Jim Conklin. . . . poor cuss!”
All about them were other small fires sur-rounded by men
with their little black utensils. From one of these near came
sudden sharp voices in a row. It appeared that two light-footed
soldiers had been teasing a huge, bearded man, causing him to
spill coffee upon his blue knees. The man had gone into a rage
and had sworn comprehensively. Stung by his language, his tormentors
had immediately bristled at him with a great show of
resenting unjust oaths. Possibly there was going to be a fight.
The friend arose and went over to them, mak-ing pacific
motions with his arms. “Oh, here, now, boys, what’s th’ use?”
he said. “We’ll be at th’ rebs in less’n an hour. What’s th’
good fightin’ ‘mong ourselves?”
One of the light-footed soldiers turned upon him red-faced
and violent. “Yeh needn’t come around here with yer preachin’.
I s’pose yeh don’t approve ‘a fightin’ since Charley Morgan
licked yeh; but I don’t see what business this here is ‘a yours
or anybody else.”
“Well, it ain’t,” said the friend mildly. “Still I hate t’ see—”
There was a tangled argument.
“Well, he—,” said the two, indicating their opponent with
accusative forefingers.
The huge soldier was quite purple with rage. He pointed at the
two soldiers with his great hand, extended clawlike. “Well, they—”
But during this argumentative time the de-sire to deal blows
seemed to pass, although they said much to each other. Finally
the friend re-turned to his old seat. In a short while the three
antagonists could be seen together in an amiable bunch.
“Jimmie Rogers ses I’ll have t’ fight him after th’ battle t’-
day,” announced the friend as he again seated himself. “He ses
he don’t allow no interferin’ in his business. I hate t’ see th’
boys fightin’ ‘mong themselves.”
The youth laughed. “Yer changed a good bit. Yeh ain’t at all
like yeh was. I remember when you an’ that Irish feller—” He
stopped and laughed again.
“No, I didn’t use t’ be that way,” said his friend thoughtfully.
“That’s true ‘nough.”
“Well, I didn’t mean—” began the youth.
The friend made another deprecatory gesture. “Oh, yeh
needn’t mind, Henry.”
There was another little pause.
“Th’ reg’ment lost over half th’ men yestir-day,” remarked
the friend eventually. “I thought a course they was all dead,
but, laws, they kep’ a-comin’ back last night until it seems,
after all, we didn’t lose but a few. They’d been scattered all
over, wanderin’ around in th’ woods, fightin’ with other
reg’ments, an’ everything. Jest like you done.”
“So?” said the youth.

Chapter XV


The regiment was standing at order arms at the side of a lane,
waiting for the command to march, when suddenly the youth
remembered the little packet enwrapped in a faded yellow
envelope which the loud young soldier with lugu-brious words
had intrusted to him. It made him start. He uttered an exclamation
and turned toward his comrade.
“Wilson!”
“What?”
His friend, at his side in the ranks, was thought-fully staring
down the road. From some cause his expression was at that
moment very meek. The youth, regarding him with sidelong
glances, felt impelled to change his purpose. “Oh, noth-ing,”
he said.
His friend turned his head in some surprise, “Why, what was
yeh goin’ t’ say?”
“Oh, nothing,” repeated the youth.
He resolved not to deal the little blow. It was sufficient that
the fact made him glad. It was not necessary to knock his
friend on the head with the misguided packet.
He had been possessed of much fear of his friend, for he
saw how easily questionings could make holes in his feelings.
Lately, he had as-sured himself that the altered comrade would
not tantalize him with a persistent curiosity, but he felt certain
that during the first period of leisure his friend would ask him
to relate his adventures of the previous day.
He now rejoiced in the possession of a small weapon with
which he could prostrate his com-rade at the first signs of a
cross-examination. He was master. It would now be he who
could laugh and shoot the shafts of derision.
The friend had, in a weak hour, spoken with sobs of his own
death. He had delivered a mel-ancholy oration previous to his
funeral, and had doubtless in the packet of letters, presented
vari-ous keepsakes to relatives. But he had not died, and thus
he had delivered himself into the hands of the youth.
The latter felt immensely superior to his friend, but he inclined
to condescension. He adopted toward him an air of
patronizing good humor.
His self-pride was now entirely restored. In the shade of
its flourishing growth he stood with braced and self-confident
legs, and since nothing could now be discovered he did
not shrink from an encounter with the eyes of judges, and
allowed no thoughts of his own to keep him from an attitude
of manfulness. He had performed his mistakes in the dark,
so he was still a man.
Indeed, when he remembered his fortunes of yesterday, and
looked at them from a distance he began to see something fine
there. He had license to be pompous and veteranlike.
His panting agonies of the past he put out of his sight.
In the present, he declared to himself that it was only the
doomed and the damned who roared with sincerity at circumstance.
Few but they ever did it. A man with a full stomach
and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about
anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the
universe, or even with the ways of society. Let the unfortunates
rail; the others may play marbles.
He did not give a great deal of thought to these battles that
lay directly before him. It was not essential that he should plan
his ways in regard to them. He had been taught that many
obligations of a life were easily avoided. The lessons of yesterday
had been that retribution was a laggard and blind. With
these facts before him he did not deem it necessary that he
should become feverish over the possibilities of the ensuing
twenty-four hours. He could leave much to chance. Besides, a
faith in himself had secretly blossomed. There was a little flower
of confidence growing within him. He was now a man of experience.
He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he
assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined
them. Also, they were inaccurate; they did not sting with
precision. A stout heart often defied, and defying, escaped.
And, furthermore, how could they kill him who was the chosen
of gods and doomed to greatness?
He remembered how some of the men had run from the
battle. As he recalled their terror-struck faces he felt a scorn
for them. They had surely been more fleet and more wild than
was absolutely necessary. They were weak mortals. As for
himself, he had fled with discretion and dignity.
He was aroused from this reverie by his friend, who, having
hitched about nervously and blinked at the trees for a time,
suddenly coughed in an introductory way, and spoke.
“Fleming!”
“What?”
The friend put his hand up to his mouth and coughed again.
He fidgeted in his jacket.
“Well,” he gulped, at last, “I guess yeh might as well give me
back them letters.” Dark, prick-ling blood had flushed into his
cheeks and brow.
“All right, Wilson,” said the youth. He loosened two buttons of
his coat, thrust in his hand, and brought forth the packet. As he
ex-tended it to his friend the latter’s face was turned from him.
He had been slow in the act of producing the packet because
during it he had been trying to invent a remarkable comment
upon the affair. He could conjure nothing of sufficient
point. He was compelled to allow his friend to escape unmolested
with his packet. And for this he took unto himself considerable
credit. It was a generous thing.
His friend at his side seemed suffering great shame. As he
contemplated him, the youth felt his heart grow more strong
and stout. He had never been compelled to blush in such manner
for his acts; he was an individual of extraordi-nary virtues.
He reflected, with condescending pity: “Too bad! Too bad!
The poor devil, it makes him feel tough!”
After this incident, and as he reviewed the battle pictures he
had seen, he felt quite com-petent to return home and make
the hearts of the people glow with stories of war. He could see
himself in a room of warm tints telling tales to listeners. He
could exhibit laurels. They were insignificant; still, in a district
where laurels were infrequent, they might shine.
He saw his gaping audience picturing him as the central figure
in blazing scenes. And he imagined the consternation and
the ejaculations of his mother and the young lady at the seminary
as they drank his recitals. Their vague feminine formula
for beloved ones doing brave deeds on the field of battle without
risk of life would be destroyed.

Chapter XVI


A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later,
the cannon had entered the dis-pute. In the fog-filled air their
voices made a thudding sound. The reverberations were continued.
This part of the world led a strange, battleful existence.
The youth’s regiment was marched to relieve a command
that had lain long in some damp trenches. The men took positions
behind a curv-ing line of rifle pits that had been turned
up, like a large furrow, along the line of woods. Before them
was a level stretch, peopled with short, deformed stumps. From
the woods beyond came the dull popping of the skirmishers
and pickets, firing in the fog. From the right came the noise of
a terrific fracas.
The men cuddled behind the small embank-ment and sat in
easy attitudes awaiting their turn. Many had their backs to the
firing. The youth’s friend lay down, buried his face in his arms,
and almost instantly, it seemed, he was in a deep sleep.
The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered
over at the woods and up and down the line. Curtains of trees
interfered with his ways of vision. He could see the low line of
trenches but for a short distance. A few idle flags were perched
on the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a
few heads sticking curiously over the top.
Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on
the front and left, and the din on the right had grown to frightful
proportions. The guns were roaring without an instant’s pause
for breath. It seemed that the cannon had come from all parts
and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle. It became impossible
to make a sen-tence heard.
The youth wished to launch a joke—a quota-tion from newspapers.
He desired to say, “All quiet on the Rappahannock,”
but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their
uproar. He never successfully concluded the sentence. But at
last the guns stopped, and among the men in the rifle pits rumors
again flew, like birds, but they were now for the most
part black creatures who flapped their wings drearily near to
the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope. The
men’s faces grew doleful from the interpreting of omens. Tales
of hesitation and uncertainty on the part of those high in place
and responsibility came to their ears. Stories of disaster were
borne into their minds with many proofs. This din of musketry
on the right, grow-ing like a released genie of sound, expressed
and emphasized the army’s plight.
The men were disheartened and began to mutter. They made
gestures expressive of the sentence: “Ah, what more can we
do?” And it could always be seen that they were bewildered
by the alleged news and could not fully compre-hend a defeat.
Before the gray mists had been totally ob-literated by the sun
rays, the regiment was march-ing in a spread column that was
retiring carefully through the woods. The disordered, hurrying
lines of the enemy could sometimes be seen down through the
groves and little fields. They were yelling, shrill and exultant.
At this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and became
greatly enraged. He ex-ploded in loud sentences.
“B’jiminey, we’re generaled by a lot ‘a lunkheads.”
“More than one feller has said that t’-day,” observed a man.
His friend, recently aroused, was still very drowsy. He looked
behind him until his mind took in the meaning of the movement.
Then he sighed. “Oh, well, I s’pose we got licked,” he remarked
sadly.
The youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for
him to freely condemn other men. He made an attempt to re
strain himself, but the words upon his tongue were too bitter.
He presently began a long and intricate denunciation of the
commander of the forces.
“Mebbe, it wa’n’t all his fault—not all to-gether. He did th’
best he knowed. It’s our luck t’ git licked often,” said his friend
in a weary tone. He was trudging along with stooped shoulders
and shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and
kicked.
“Well, don’t we fight like the devil? Don’t we do all that men
can?” demanded the youth loudly.
He was secretly dumfounded at this sentiment when it came
from his lips. For a moment his face lost its valor and he looked
guiltily about him. But no one questioned his right to deal in
such words, and presently he recovered his air of courage. He
went on to repeat a statement he had heard going from group
to group at the camp that morning. “The brigadier said he never
saw a new reg’ment fight the way we fought yestirday, didn’t
he? And we didn’t do better than many another reg’ment, did
we? Well, then, you can’t say it’s th’ army’s fault, can you?”
In his reply, the friend’s voice was stern. “‘A course not,” he
said. “No man dare say we don’t fight like th’ devil. No man
will ever dare say it. Th’ boys fight like hell-roosters. But still—
still, we don’t have no luck.”
“Well, then, if we fight like the devil an’ don’t ever whip, it
must be the general’s fault,” said the youth grandly and decisively.
“And I don’t see any sense in fighting and fighting and
fighting, yet always losing through some derned old lunkhead
of a general.”
A sarcastic man who was tramping at the youth’s side, then
spoke lazily. “Mebbe yeh think yeh fit th’ hull battle yestirday,
Fleming,” he remarked.
The speech pierced the youth. Inwardly he was reduced to
an abject pulp by these chance words. His legs quaked privately.
He cast a frightened glance at the sarcastic man.
“Why, no,” he hastened to say in a concili-ating voice, “I
don’t think I fought the whole battle yesterday.”
But the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning. Apparently,
he had no information. It was merely his habit. “Oh!”
he replied in the same tone of calm derision.
The youth, nevertheless, felt a threat. His mind shrank from
going near to the danger, and thereafter he was silent. The
significance of the sarcastic man’s words took from him all
loud moods that would make him appear prominent. He became
suddenly a modest person.
There was low-toned talk among the troops. The officers
were impatient and snappy, their countenances clouded with
the tales of misfor-tune. The troops, sifting through the forest,
were sullen. In the youth’s company once a man’s laugh rang
out. A dozen soldiers turned their faces quickly toward him
and frowned with vague displeasure.
The noise of firing dogged their footsteps. Sometimes, it
seemed to be driven a little way, but it always returned again
with increased insolence. The men muttered and cursed, throwing
black looks in its direction.
In a clear space the troops were at last halted. Regiments
and brigades, broken and detached through their encounters
with thickets, grew together again and lines were faced toward
the pursuing bark of the enemy’s infantry.
This noise, following like the yellings of eager, metallic hounds,
increased to a loud and joyous burst, and then, as the sun
went serenely up the sky, throwing illuminating rays into the
gloomy thickets, it broke forth into prolonged pealings. The
woods began to crackle as if afire.
“Whoop-a-dadee,” said a man, “here we are! Everybody
fightin’. Blood an’ destruction.”
“I was willin’ t’ bet they’d attack as soon as th’ sun got fairly
up,” savagely asserted the lieutenant who commanded the
youth’s company. He jerked without mercy at his little mustache.
He strode to and fro with dark dignity in the rear of his
men, who were lying down behind whatever protection they
had collected.
A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was
thoughtfully shelling the distance. The regiment, unmolested as
yet, awaited the moment when the gray shadows of the woods
before them should be slashed by the lines of flame. There
was much growling and swearing.
“Good Gawd,” the youth grumbled, “we’re always being
chased around like rats! It makes me sick. Nobody seems to
know where we go or why we go. We just get fired around
from pillar to post and get licked here and get licked there,
and nobody knows what it’s done for. It makes a man feel like
a damn’ kitten in a bag. Now, I’d like to know what the eternal
thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow,
unless it was to give the rebs a regular pot shot at us. We came
in here and got our legs all tangled up in these cussed briers, and
then we begin to fight and the rebs had an easy time of it. Don’t
tell me it’s just luck! I know better. It’s this derned old—”
The friend seemed jaded, but he interrupted his comrade
with a voice of calm confidence. “It’ll turn out all right in th’
end,” he said.
“Oh, the devil it will! You always talk like a dog-hanged
parson. Don’t tell me! I know—”
At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded
lieutenant, who was obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction
upon his men. “You boys shut right up! There no need ‘a
your wastin’ your breath in long-winded arguments about this
an’ that an’ th’ other. You’ve been jawin’ like a lot ‘a old hens.
All you’ve got t’ do is to fight, an’ you’ll get plenty ‘a that t’ do
in about ten minutes. Less talkin’ an’ more fightin’ is what’s best
for you boys. I never saw sech gabbling jackasses.”
He paused, ready to pounce upon any man who might have
the temerity to reply. No words being said, he resumed his
dignified pacing.
“There’s too much chin music an’ too little fightin’ in this war,
anyhow,” he said to them, turning his head for a final remark.
The day had grown more white, until the sun shed his full
radiance upon the thronged forest. A sort of a gust of battle
came sweeping toward that part of the line where lay the youth’s
regi-ment. The front shifted a trifle to meet it square-ly. There
was a wait. In this part of the field there passed slowly the
intense moments that pre-cede the tempest.
A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment. In an
instant it was joined by many others. There was a mighty song
of clashes and crashes that went sweeping through the woods.
The guns in the rear, aroused and enraged by shells that had
been thrown burlike at them, suddenly involved themselves in a
hideous alter-cation with another band of guns. The battle roar
settled to a rolling thunder, which was a single, long explosion.
In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted
in the attitudes of the men. They were worn, exhausted,
having slept but lit-tle and labored much. They rolled their eyes
toward the advancing battle as they stood await-ing the shock.
Some shrank and flinched. They stood as men tied to stakes.

Chapter XVII


This advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth like a
ruthless hunting. He began to fume with rage and exasperation.
He beat his foot upon the ground, and scowled with hate
at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phan-tom
flood. There was a maddening quality in this seeming resolution
of the foe to give him no rest, to give him no time to sit
down and think. Yesterday he had fought and had fled rapidly.
There had been many adventures. For to-day he felt that he
had earned opportunities for contem-plative repose. He could
have enjoyed portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes
at which he had been a witness or ably discussing the processes
of war with other proved men. Too it was important
that he should have time for physical recuperation. He was
sore and stiff from his ex-periences. He had received his fill of
all exer-tions, and he wished to rest.
But those other men seemed never to grow weary; they were
fighting with their old speed.
He had a wild hate for the relentless foe. Yester-day, when
he had imagined the universe to be against him, he had hated
it, little gods and big gods; to-day he hated the army of the foe
with the same great hatred. He was not going to be badgered
of his life, like a kitten chased by boys, he said. It was not well
to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all
develop teeth and claws.
He leaned and spoke into his friend’s ear. He menaced the
woods with a gesture. “If they keep on chasing us, by Gawd,
they’d better watch out. Can’t stand TOO much.”
The friend twisted his head and made a calm reply. “If they
keep on a-chasin’ us they’ll drive us all inteh th’ river.”
The youth cried out savagely at this state-ment. He crouched
behind a little tree, with his eyes burning hatefully and his teeth
set in a cur-like snarl. The awkward bandage was still about
his head, and upon it, over his wound, there was a spot of dry
blood. His hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling,
moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward
his forehead. His jacket and shirt were open at the throat,
and exposed his young bronzed neck. There could be seen
spasmodic gulpings at his throat.
His fingers twined nervously about his rifle. He wished that it
was an engine of annihilating power. He felt that he and his
companions were being taunted and derided from sincere
convic-tions that they were poor and puny. His knowl-edge of
his inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a dark
and stormy specter, that pos-sessed him and made him dream
of abominable cruelties. The tormentors were flies sucking insolently
at his blood, and he thought that he would have given
his life for a revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights.
The winds of battle had swept all about the regiment, until
the one rifle, instantly followed by others, flashed in its front. A
moment later the regiment roared forth its sudden and valiant
retort. A dense wall of smoke settled slowly down. It was
furiously slit and slashed by the knifelike fire from the rifles.
To the youth the fighters resembled animals tossed for a death
struggle into a dark pit. There was a sensation that he and his
fellows, at bay, were pushing back, always pushing fierce onslaughts
of creatures who were slippery. Their beams of crimson
seemed to get no purchase upon the bodies of their foes;
the latter seemed to evade them with ease, and come through,
between, around, and about with unopposed skill.
When, in a dream, it occurred to the youth that his rifle was
an impotent stick, he lost sense of everything but his hate, his
desire to smash into pulp the glittering smile of victory which
he could feel upon the faces of his enemies.
The blue smoke-swallowed line curled and writhed like a
snake stepped upon. It swung its ends to and fro in an agony
of fear and rage.
The youth was not conscious that he was erect upon his
feet. He did not know the direction of the ground. Indeed,
once he even lost the habit of balance and fell heavily. He was
up again immediately. One thought went through the chaos of
his brain at the time. He wondered if he had fallen because he
had been shot. But the suspicion flew away at once. He did
not think more of it.
He had taken up a first position behind the lit-tle tree, with a
direct determination to hold it against the world. He had not
deemed it possi-ble that his army could that day succeed, and
from this he felt the ability to fight harder. But the throng had
surged in all ways, until he lost directions and locations, save
that he knew where lay the enemy.
The flames bit him, and the hot smoke broiled his skin. His
rifle barrel grew so hot that ordi-narily he could not have borne
it upon his palms; but he kept on stuffing cartridges into it, and
pounding them with his clanking, bending ram-rod. If he aimed
at some changing form through the smoke, he pulled his trigger
with a fierce grunt, as if he were dealing a blow of the fist with
all his strength.
When the enemy seemed falling back before him and his
fellows, he went instantly forward, like a dog who, seeing his
foes lagging, turns and insists upon being pursued. And when
he was compelled to retire again, he did it slowly, sul-lenly,
taking steps of wrathful despair.
Once he, in his intent hate, was almost alone, and was firing,
when all those near him had ceased. He was so engrossed in
his occupation that he was not aware of a lull.
He was recalled by a hoarse laugh and a sen-tence that came
to his ears in a voice of contempt and amazement. “Yeh infernal
fool, don’t yeh know enough t’ quit when there ain’t anything
t’ shoot at? Good Gawd!”
He turned then and, pausing with his rifle thrown half into position,
looked at the blue line of his comrades. During this moment
of leisure they seemed all to be engaged in staring with
astonishment at him. They had become specta-tors. Turning to
the front again he saw, under the lifted smoke, a deserted ground.
He looked bewildered for a moment. Then there appeared
upon the glazed vacancy of his eyes a diamond point of intelligence.
“Oh,” he said, comprehending.
He returned to his comrades and threw him-self upon the
ground. He sprawled like a man who had been thrashed. His
flesh seemed strange-ly on fire, and the sounds of the battle
continued in his ears. He groped blindly for his canteen.
The lieutenant was crowing. He seemed drunk with fighting.
He called out to the youth: “By heavens, if I had ten thousand
wild cats like you I could tear th’ stomach outa this war in less’n
a week!” He puffed out his chest with large dignity as he said it.
Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awestruck
ways. It was plain that as he had gone on loading and
firing and cursing without the proper intermission, they had
found time to regard him. And they now looked upon him as a
war devil.
The friend came staggering to him. There was some fright and
dismay in his voice. “Are yeh all right, Fleming? Do yeh feel all
right? There ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with yeh, Henry, is there?”
“No,” said the youth with difficulty. His throat seemed full of
knobs and burs.
These incidents made the youth ponder. It was revealed to
him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like
a pagan who de-fends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it
was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He had been a tremendous
figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome
obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains. They had
fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he called a
hero. And he had not been aware of the pro-cess. He had
slept and, awakening, found him-self a knight.
He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his comrades.
Their faces were varied in de-grees of blackness from the
burned powder. Some were utterly smudged. They were reeking
with perspiration, and their breaths came hard and wheezing.
And from these soiled ex-panses they peered at him.
“Hot work! Hot work!” cried the lieu-tenant deliriously. He
walked up and down, restless and eager. Sometimes his voice
could be heard in a wild, incomprehensible laugh.
When he had a particularly profound thought upon the science
of war he always unconsciously addressed himself to the youth.
There was some grim rejoicing by the men. “By thunder, I bet
this army’ll never see another new reg’ment like us!” “You bet!”
“A dog, a woman, an’ a walnut tree, Th’ more yeh beat
‘em, th’ better they be!
That’s like us.”
“Lost a piler men, they did. If an’ ol’ woman swep’ up th’
woods she’d git a dustpanful.”
“Yes, an’ if she’ll come around ag’in in ‘bout an’ hour she’ll
git a pile more.”
The forest still bore its burden of clamor. From off under the
trees came the rolling clatter of the musketry. Each distant
thicket seemed a strange porcupine with quills of flame. A
cloud of dark smoke, as from smoldering ruins, went up toward
the sun now bright and gay in the blue, enameled sky.

Chapter XVIII


The ragged line had respite for some min-utes, but during its
pause the struggle in the forest became magnified until the trees
seemed to quiver from the firing and the ground to shake from
the rushing of the men. The voices of the cannon were mingled
in a long and interminable row. It seemed difficult to live in
such an atmos-phere. The chests of the men strained for a bit
of freshness, and their throats craved water.
There was one shot through the body, who raised a cry of
bitter lamentation when came this lull. Perhaps he had been
calling out during the fighting also, but at that time no one had
heard him. But now the men turned at the woe-ful complaints
of him upon the ground.
“Who is it? Who is it?”
“It’s Jimmie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers.”
When their eyes first encountered him there was a sudden
halt, as if they feared to go near. He was thrashing about in the
grass, twisting his shuddering body into many strange postures.
He was screaming loudly. This instant’s hesita-tion
seemed to fill him with a tremendous, fantas-tic contempt, and
he damned them in shrieked sentences.
The youth’s friend had a geographical illusion concerning a
stream, and he obtained permission to go for some water.
Immediately canteens were showered upon him. “Fill mine,
will yeh?” “Bring me some, too.” “And me, too.” He departed,
ladened. The youth went with his friend, feeling a desire to
throw his heated body onto the stream and, soaking there,
drink quarts.
They made a hurried search for the supposed stream, but
did not find it. “No water here,” said the youth. They turned
without delay and began to retrace their steps.
From their position as they again faced to-ward the place of
the fighting, they could of course comprehend a greater amount
of the bat-tle than when their visions had been blurred by the
hurling smoke of the line. They could see dark stretches winding
along the land, and on one cleared space there was a row
of guns mak-ing gray clouds, which were filled with large flashes
of orange-colored flame. Over some foli-age they could see
the roof of a house. One win-dow, glowing a deep murder
red, shone squarely through the leaves. From the edifice a tall
lean-ing tower of smoke went far into the sky.
Looking over their own troops, they saw mixed masses
slowly getting into regular form. The sunlight made twinkling
points of the bright steel. To the rear there was a glimpse of a
dis-tant roadway as it curved over a slope. It was crowded
with retreating infantry. From all the interwoven forest arose
the smoke and bluster of the battle. The air was always occupied
by a blaring.
Near where they stood shells were flip-flap-ping and hooting.
Occasional bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree
trunks. Wounded men and other stragglers were slinking
through the woods.
Looking down an aisle of the grove, the youth and his companion
saw a jangling general and his staff almost ride upon a
wounded man, who was crawling on his hands and knees.
The general reined strongly at his charger’s opened and foamy
mouth and guided it with dexterous horsemanship past the man.
The latter scram-bled in wild and torturing haste. His strength
evidently failed him as he reached a place of safety. One of his
arms suddenly weakened, and he fell, sliding over upon his
back. He lay stretched out, breathing gently.
A moment later the small, creaking cavalcade was directly
in front of the two soldiers. An-other officer, riding with the
skillful abandon of a cowboy, galloped his horse to a position
directly before the general. The two unnoticed foot sol-diers
made a little show of going on, but they lingered near in the
desire to overhear the con-versation. Perhaps, they thought,
some great inner historical things would be said.
The general, whom the boys knew as the com-mander of
their division, looked at the other officer and spoke coolly, as
if he were criticising his clothes. “Th’ enemy’s formin’ over
there for another charge,” he said. “It’ll be directed against
Whiterside, an’ I fear they’ll break through there unless we
work like thunder t’ stop them.”
The other swore at his restive horse, and then cleared his
throat. He made a gesture toward his cap. “It’ll be hell t’ pay
stoppin’ them,” he said shortly.
“I presume so,” remarked the general. Then he began to
talk rapidly and in a lower tone. He frequently illustrated his
words with a pointing finger. The two infantrymen could hear
nothing until finally he asked: “What troops can you spare?”
The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant.
“Well,” he said, “I had to order in th’ 12th to help th’ 76th, an’
I haven’t really got any. But there’s th’ 304th. They fight like a
lot ‘a mule drivers. I can spare them best of any.”
The youth and his friend exchanged glances of astonishment.
The general spoke sharply. “Get ‘em ready, then. I’ll watch
developments from here, an’ send you word when t’ start them.
It’ll happen in five minutes.”
As the other officer tossed his fingers toward his cap and
wheeling his horse, started away, the general called out to him
in a sober voice: “I don’t believe many of your mule drivers
will get back.”
The other shouted something in reply. He smiled.
With scared faces, the youth and his compan-ion hurried
back to the line.
These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time,
yet the youth felt that in them he had been made aged. New
eyes were given to him. And the most startling thing was to
learn sud-denly that he was very insignificant. The officer spoke
of the regiment as if he referred to a broom. Some part of the
woods needed sweep-ing, perhaps, and he merely indicated a
broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate. It was war, no
doubt, but it appeared strange.
As the two boys approached the line, the lieu-tenant perceived
them and swelled with wrath. “Fleming—Wilson—how long does
it take yeh to git water, anyhow—where yeh been to.”
But his oration ceased as he saw their eyes, which were
large with great tales. “We’re goin’ t’ charge—we’re goin’ t’
charge!” cried the youth’s friend, hastening with his news.
“Charge?” said the lieutenant. “Charge? Well, b’Gawd! Now,
this is real fightin’.” Over his soiled countenance there went a
boastful smile. “Charge? Well, b’Gawd!”
A little group of soldiers surrounded the two youths. “Are
we, sure ‘nough? Well, I’ll be derned! Charge? What fer?
What at? Wilson, you’re lyin’.”
“I hope to die,” said the youth, pitching his tones to the key
of angry remonstrance. “Sure as shooting, I tell you.”
And his friend spoke in re-enforcement. “Not by a blame
sight, he ain’t lyin’. We heard ‘em talkin’.”
They caught sight of two mounted figures a short distance
from them. One was the colonel of the regiment and the other
was the officer who had received orders from the commander
of the division. They were gesticulating at each other. The soldier,
pointing at them, interpreted the scene.
One man had a final objection: “How could yeh hear ‘em
talkin’?” But the men, for a large part, nodded, admitting that
previously the two friends had spoken truth.
They settled back into reposeful attitudes with airs of having
accepted the matter. And they mused upon it, with a hundred
varieties of expression. It was an engrossing thing to think about.
Many tightened their belts carefully and hitched at their trousers.
A moment later the officers began to bustle among the men,
pushing them into a more com-pact mass and into a better
alignment. They chased those that straggled and fumed at a
few men who seemed to show by their attitudes that they had
decided to remain at that spot. They were like critical shepherds
struggling with sheep.
Presently, the regiment seemed to draw itself up and heave a
deep breath. None of the men’s faces were mirrors of large
thoughts. The sol-diers were bended and stooped like sprinters
be-fore a signal. Many pairs of glinting eyes peered from the grimy
faces toward the curtains of the deeper woods. They seemed to
be engaged in deep calculations of time and distance.
They were surrounded by the noises of the monstrous altercation
between the two armies. The world was fully interested
in other matters. Apparently, the regiment had its small affair
to itself.
The youth, turning, shot a quick, inquiring glance at his friend.
The latter returned to him the same manner of look. They were
the only ones who possessed an inner knowledge. “Mule drivers—
hell t’ pay—don’t believe many will get back.” It was an
ironical secret. Still, they saw no hesitation in each other’s faces,
and they nod-ded a mute and unprotesting assent when a shaggy
man near them said in a meek voice: “We’ll git swallowed.”

Chapter XIX


The youth stared at the land in front of him. Its foliages now
seemed to veil powers and hor-rors. He was unaware of the
machinery of orders that started the charge, although from the
cor-ners of his eyes he saw an officer, who looked like a boy
a-horseback, come galloping, waving his hat. Suddenly he felt
a straining and heaving among the men. The line fell slowly
forward like a toppling wall, and, with a convulsive gasp that
was intended for a cheer, the regiment began its journey. The
youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood
the move-ment at all, but directly he lunged ahead and
began to run.
He fixed his eye upon a distant and promi-nent clump of
trees where he had concluded the enemy were to be met, and
he ran toward it as toward a goal. He had believed throughout
that it was a mere question of getting over an unpleas-ant matter
as quickly as possible, and he ran desperately, as if pursued
for a murder. His face was drawn hard and tight with the
stress of his endeavor. His eyes were fixed in a lurid glare.
And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and inflamed
features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood,
his wildly swinging rifle and banging accouterments, he looked
to be an insane soldier.
As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared
space the woods and thickets be-fore it awakened. Yellow
flames leaped toward it from many directions. The forest made
a tre-mendous objection.
The line lurched straight for a moment. Then the right wing
swung forward; it in turn was surpassed by the left. Afterward
the center careered to the front until the regiment was a wedgeshaped
mass, but an instant later the opposition of the bushes,
trees, and uneven places on the ground split the command and
scattered it into detached clusters.
The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance. His
eyes still kept note of the clump of trees. From all places near
it the clannish yell of the enemy could be heard. The little flames
of rifles leaped from it. The song of the bullets was in the air
and shells snarled among the tree-tops. One tumbled directly
into the middle of a hurrying group and exploded in crimson
fury. There was an instant’s spectacle of a man, almost over it,
throwing up his hands to shield his eyes.
Other men, punched by bullets, fell in gro-tesque agonies.
The regiment left a coherent trail of bodies.
They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an
effect like a revelation in the new appearance of the landscape.
Some men work-ing madly at a battery were plain to them,
and the opposing infantry’s lines were defined by the gray walls
and fringes of smoke.
It seemed to the youth that he saw every-thing. Each blade
of the green grass was bold and clear. He thought that he was
aware of every change in the thin, transparent vapor that floated
idly in sheets. The brown or gray trunks of the trees showed
each roughness of their sur-faces. And the men of the regiment,
with their starting eyes and sweating faces, running madly,
or falling, as if thrown headlong, to queer, heaped-up corpses—
all were comprehended. His mind took a mechanical but firm
impression, so that afterward everything was pictured and explained
to him, save why he himself was there.
But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush. The men,
pitching forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike
and barbaric, but tuned in strange keys that can arouse the
dullard and the stoic. It made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed,
would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass.
There was the deli-rium that encounters despair and death,
and is heedless and blind to the odds. It is a temporary but
sublime absence of selfishness. And because it was of this
order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered, afterward,
what reasons he could have had for being there.
Presently the straining pace ate up the ener-gies of the men.
As if by agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed.
The volleys di-rected against them had had a seeming windlike
effect. The regiment snorted and blew. Among some stolid
trees it began to falter and hesitate. The men, staring intently,
began to wait for some of the distant walls of smoke to move
and dis-close to them the scene. Since much of their strength
and their breath had vanished, they re-turned to caution. They
were become men again.
The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he
thought, in a way, that he was now in some new and unknown
land.
The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting
splutter of musketry became a steadied roar. Long and accurate
fringes of smoke spread out. From the top of a small hill
came level belchings of yellow flame that caused an inhuman
whistling in the air.
The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades
dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot,
still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles
slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They
appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze
them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly
at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to
face. It was a strange pause, and a strange silence.
Then, above the sounds of the outside commo-tion, arose
the roar of the lieutenant. He strode suddenly forth, his infantile
features black with rage.
“Come on, yeh fools!” he bellowed. “Come on! Yeh can’t
stay here. Yeh must come on.” He said more, but much of it
could not be under-stood.
He started rapidly forward, with his head turned toward the
men. “Come on,” he was shouting. The men stared with blank
and yokel-like eyes at him. He was obliged to halt and retrace
his steps. He stood then with his back to the enemy and delivered
gigantic curses into the faces of the men. His body vibrated
from the weight and force of his imprecations. And he could
string oaths with the facility of a maiden who strings beads.
The friend of the youth aroused. Lurching suddenly forward
and dropping to his knees, he fired an angry shot at the persistent
woods. This action awakened the men. They huddled no
more like sheep. They seemed suddenly to be-think them of
their weapons, and at once com-menced firing. Belabored by
their officers, they began to move forward. The regiment, involved
like a cart involved in mud and muddle, started unevenly
with many jolts and jerks. The men stopped now every
few paces to fire and load, and in this manner moved slowly
on from trees to trees.
The flaming opposition in their front grew with their advance
until it seemed that all for-ward ways were barred by the thin
leaping tongues, and off to the right an ominous demon-stration
could sometimes be dimly discerned. The smoke lately generated
was in confusing clouds that made it difficult for the regiment
to proceed with intelligence. As he passed through each
curling mass the youth wondered what would confront him on
the farther side.
The command went painfully forward until an open space
interposed between them and the lurid lines. Here, crouching
and cowering be-hind some trees, the men clung with desperation,
as if threatened by a wave. They looked wild-eyed,
and as if amazed at this furious disturbance they had stirred. In
the storm there was an ironical expression of their importance.
The faces of the men, too, showed a lack of a certain feeling of
responsibility for being there. It was as if they had been driven.
It was the dominant animal failing to remember in the supreme
mo-ments the forceful causes of various superficial qualities.
The whole affair seemed incompre-hensible to many of them.
As they halted thus the lieutenant again be-gan to bellow
profanely. Regardless of the vin-dictive threats of the bullets,
he went about coaxing, berating, and bedamning. His lips, that
were habitually in a soft and childlike curve, were now writhed
into unholy contortions. He swore by all possible deities.
Once he grabbed the youth by the arm. “Come on, yeh
lunkhead!” he roared. “Come on! We’ll all git killed if we stay
here. We’ve on’y got t’ go across that lot. An’ then”—the
remainder of his idea disappeared in a blue haze of curses.
The youth stretched forth his arm. “Cross there?” His mouth
was puckered in doubt and awe.
“Certainly. Jest ‘cross th’ lot! We can’t stay here,” screamed
the lieutenant. He poked his face close to the youth and waved
his ban-daged hand. “Come on!” Presently he grap-pled with
him as if for a wrestling bout. It was as if he planned to drag
the youth by the ear on to the assault.
The private felt a sudden unspeakable indig-nation against
his officer. He wrenched fiercely and shook him off.
“Come on herself, then,” he yelled. There was a bitter challenge
in his voice.
They galloped together down the regimental front. The friend
scrambled after them. In front of the colors the three men began
to bawl: “Come on! come on!” They danced and gy-rated
like tortured savages.
The flag, obedient to these appeals, bended its glittering form
and swept toward them. The men wavered in indecision for a
moment, and then with a long, wailful cry the dilapidated regiment
surged forward and began its new journey.
Over the field went the scurrying mass. It was a handful of
men splattered into the faces of the enemy. Toward it instantly
sprang the yel-low tongues. A vast quantity of blue smoke
hung before them. A mighty banging made ears valueless.
The youth ran like a madman to reach the woods before a
bullet could discover him. He ducked his head low, like a football
player. In his haste his eyes almost closed, and the scene
was a wild blur. Pulsating saliva stood at the corners of his
mouth.
Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a
despairing fondness for this flag which was near him. It was a
creation of beauty and invulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant,
that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It
was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him
with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to it
he en-dowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a
saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind.
In the mad scramble he was aware that the color sergeant
flinched suddenly, as if struck by a bludgeon. He faltered, and
then became motion-less, save for his quivering knees.
He made a spring and a clutch at the pole. At the same
instant his friend grabbed it from the other side. They jerked at
it, stout and furious, but the color sergeant was dead, and the
corpse would not relinquish its trust. For a moment there was
a grim encounter. The dead man, swinging with bended back,
seemed to be obsti-nately tugging, in ludicrous and awful ways,
for the possession of the flag.
It was past in an instant of time. They wrenched the flag
furiously from the dead man, and, as they turned again, the
corpse swayed for-ward with bowed head. One arm swung
high, and the curved hand fell with heavy protest on the friend’s
unheeding shoulder.

Chapter XX


When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that
much of the regiment had crum-bled away, and the dejected
remnant was coming slowly back. The men, having hurled themselves
in projectile fashion, had presently expended their forces.
They slowly retreated, with their faces still toward the spluttering
woods, and their hot rifles still replying to the din. Several
officers were giving orders, their voices keyed to screams.
“Where in hell yeh goin’?” the lieutenant was asking in a
sarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of
triple brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: “Shoot
into ‘em! Shoot into ‘em, Gawd damn their souls!” There was
a melee of screeches, in which the men were ordered to do
conflicting and impossible things.
The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag.
“Give it t’ me!” “No, let me keep it!” Each felt satisfied with
the other’s pos-session of it, but each felt bound to declare,
by an offer to carry the emblem, his willingness to further risk
himself. The youth roughly pushed his friend away.
The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted for
a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal
upon its track. Presently it resumed its march again, curving
among the tree trunks. By the time the depleted regiment had
again reached the first open space they were receiving a fast
and merciless fire. There seemed to be mobs all about them.
The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn
by the turmoil, acted as if stunned. They accepted the pelting
of the bul-lets with bowed and weary heads. It was of no
purpose to strive against walls. It was of no use to batter themselves
against granite. And from this consciousness that they
had attempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed
to arise a feeling that they had been betrayed. They glowered
with bent brows, but danger-ously, upon some of the officers,
more particu-larly upon the red-bearded one with the voice of
triple brass.
However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men,
who continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes. They
seemed resolved to make every trouble. The youthful lieutenant
was per-haps the last man in the disordered mass. His
forgotten back was toward the enemy. He had been shot in
the arm. It hung straight and rigid. Occasionally he would cease
to remember it, and be about to emphasize an oath with a
sweeping gesture. The multiplied pain caused him to swear
with incredible power.
The youth went along with slipping, uncertain feet. He kept
watchful eyes rearward. A scowl of mortification and rage
was upon his face. He had thought of a fine revenge upon the
officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers.
But he saw that it could not come to pass. His dreams had
collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered
and hes-itated on the little clearing, and then had recoiled.
And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of
shame to him.
A dagger-pointed gaze from without his black-ened face
was held toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted
upon the man, who, not knowing him, had called him a mule
driver.
When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do
anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a
kind of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of
the baf-fled to possess him. This cold officer upon a monument,
who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be
finer as a dead man, he thought. So grievous did he think it that
he could never possess the secret right to taunt truly in answer.
He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. “We ARE
mule drivers, are we?” And now he was compelled to throw
them away.
He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and
kept the flag erect. He ha-rangued his fellows, pushing against
their chests with his free hand. To those he knew well he made
frantic appeals, beseeching them by name. Between him and
the lieutenant, scolding and near to losing his mind with rage,
there was felt a subtle fellowship and equality. They supported
each other in all manner of hoarse, howling pro-tests.
But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men
babbled at a forceless thing. The soldiers who had heart to go
slowly were con-tinually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge
that comrades were slipping with speed back to the lines.
It was difficult to think of reputation when others were thinking
of skins. Wounded men were left crying on this black journey.
The smoke fringes and flames blustered al-ways. The youth,
peering once through a sud-den rift in a cloud, saw a brown
mass of troops, interwoven and magnified until they appeared
to be thousands. A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.
Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged,
the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and
a hundred flames jetted toward the retreating band. A rolling
gray cloud again interposed as the regiment dog-gedly replied.
The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears,
which were trembling and buzzing from the melee of musketry
and yells.
The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became
panicstricken with the thought that the regiment had lost its
path, and was proceed-ing in a perilous direction. Once the
men who headed the wild procession turned and came pushing
back against their comrades, screaming that they were being
fired upon from points which they had considered to be toward
their own lines. At this cry a hysterical fear and dismay
beset the troops. A soldier, who heretofore had been ambitious
to make the regiment into a wise little band that would
proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly
sank down and buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing
to a doom. From another a shrill lamentation rang out filled
with profane allusions to a general. Men ran hither and thither,
seeking with their eyes roads of escape. With serene regularity,
as if controlled by a schedule, bullets buffed into men.
The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and
with his flag in his hands took a stand as if he expected an
attempt to push him to the ground. He unconsciously assumed
the atti-tude of the color bearer in the fight of the pre-ceding
day. He passed over his brow a hand that trembled. His breath
did not come freely. He was choking during this small wait for
the crisis.
His friend came to him. “Well, Henry, I guess this is goodby—
John.”
“Oh, shut up, you damned fool!” replied the youth, and he
would not look at the other.
The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a
proper circle to face the men-aces. The ground was uneven
and torn. The men curled into depressions and fitted themselves
snugly behind whatever would frustrate a bullet.
The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was
standing mutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the
manner of a cane. The youth wondered what had happened to
his vocal organs that he no more cursed.
There was something curious in this little in-tent pause of the
lieutenant. He was like a babe which, having wept its fill, raises
its eyes and fixes upon a distant toy. He was engrossed in this
contemplation, and the soft under lip quivered from self-whispered
words.
Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding
from the bullets, waited anx-iously for it to lift and disclose
the plight of the regiment.
The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of
the youthful lieutenant bawling out: “Here they come! Right
onto us, b’Gawd!” His further words were lost in a roar of
wicked thunder from the men’s rifles.
The youth’s eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated
by the awakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had
seen the haze of treachery disclosing a body of soldiers of the
enemy. They were so near that he could see their features.
There was a recognition as he looked at the types of faces.
Also he perceived with dim amazement that their uniforms were
rather gay in effect, being light gray, accented with a brillianthued
facing. Too, the clothes seemed new.
These troops had apparently been going for-ward with caution,
their rifles held in readiness, when the youthful lieutenant
had discovered them and their movement had been interrupted
by the volley from the blue regiment. From the moment’s
glimpse, it was derived that they had been unaware of the
proximity of their dark-suited foes or had mistaken the direction.
Al-most instantly they were shut utterly from the youth’s
sight by the smoke from the energetic rifles of his companions.
He strained his vision to learn the accomplishment of the volley,
but the smoke hung before him.
The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of
a pair of boxers. The fast angry firings went back and forth.
The men in blue were intent with the despair of their circumstances
and they seized upon the revenge to be had at close
range. Their thunder swelled loud and valiant. Their curving
front bristled with flashes and the place resounded with the
clangor of their ramrods. The youth ducked and dodged for a
time and achieved a few unsatisfactory views of the enemy.
There appeared to be many of them and they were replying
swiftly. They seemed moving toward the blue regiment, step
by step. He seated himself gloomily on the ground with his flag
between his knees.
As he noted the vicious, wolflike temper of his comrades he
had a sweet thought that if the enemy was about to swallow
the regimental broom as a large prisoner, it could at least have
the consolation of going down with bristles for-ward.
But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak.
Fewer bullets ripped the air, and finally, when the men slackened
to learn of the fight, they could see only dark, floating
smoke. The regiment lay still and gazed. Pres-ently some
chance whim came to the pestering blur, and it began to coil
heavily away. The men saw a ground vacant of fighters. It would
have been an empty stage if it were not for a few corpses that
lay thrown and twisted into fantastic shapes upon the sward.
At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from
behind their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy. Their
eyes burned and a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their
dry lips.
It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to
prove that they were impotent. These little battles had evidently
endeavored to demon-strate that the men could not
fight well. When on the verge of submission to these opinions,
the small duel had showed them that the propor-tions were
not impossible, and by it they had revenged themselves upon
their misgivings and upon the foe.
The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about
them with looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim,
always confident weapons in their hands. And they were men.

Chapter 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.

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.