Title: The Little Regiment, and Other Episodes of the American Civil War
Author: Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900
Language: English
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THE LITTLE REGIMENT

AND OTHER EPISODES OF THE

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

By

STEPHEN CRANE



CONTENTS


THE LITTLE REGIMENT

THREE MIRACULOUS SOLDIERS

A MYSTERY OF HEROISM

AN INDIANA CAMPAIGN

A GREY SLEEVE

THE VETERAN



THE LITTLE REGIMENT

I


The fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seem
of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a
new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have
been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one
part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick
ranks, and blended in an undertoned roar, which was the voice of the
column.

The town on the southern shore of the little river loomed spectrally, a
faint etching upon the grey cloud-masses which were shifting with oily
languor. A long row of guns upon the northern bank had been pitiless in
their hatred, but a little battered belfry could be dimly seen still
pointing with invincible resolution toward the heavens.

The enclouded air vibrated with noises made by hidden colossal things.
The infantry tramplings, the heavy rumbling of the artillery, made the
earth speak of gigantic preparation. Guns on distant heights thundered
from time to time with sudden, nervous roar, as if unable to endure in
silence a knowledge of hostile troops massing, other guns going to
position. These sounds, near and remote, defined an immense
battle-ground, described the tremendous width of the stage of the
prospective drama. The voices of the guns, slightly casual, unexcited
in their challenges and warnings, could not destroy the unutterable
eloquence of the word in the air, a meaning of impending struggle which
made the breath halt at the lips.

The column in the roadway was ankle-deep in mud. The men swore piously
at the rain which drizzled upon them, compelling them to stand always
very erect in fear of the drops that would sweep in under their
coat-collars. The fog was as cold as wet cloths. The men stuffed their
hands deep in their pockets, and huddled their muskets in their arms.
The machinery of orders had rooted these soldiers deeply into the mud,
precisely as almighty nature roots mullein stalks.

They listened and speculated when a tumult of fighting came from the
dim town across the river. When the noise lulled for a time they
resumed their descriptions of the mud and graphically exaggerated the
number of hours they had been kept waiting. The general commanding
their division rode along the ranks, and they cheered admiringly,
affectionately, crying out to him gleeful prophecies of the coming
battle. Each man scanned him with a peculiarly keen personal interest,
and afterward spoke of him with unquestioning devotion and confidence,
narrating anecdotes which were mainly untrue.

When the jokers lifted the shrill voices which invariably belonged to
them, flinging witticisms at their comrades, a loud laugh would sweep
from rank to rank, and soldiers who had not heard would lean forward
and demand repetition. When were borne past them some wounded men with
grey and blood-smeared faces, and eyes that rolled in that helpless
beseeching for assistance from the sky which comes with supreme pain,
the soldiers in the mud watched intently, and from time to time asked
of the bearers an account of the affair. Frequently they bragged of
their corps, their division, their brigade, their regiment. Anon they
referred to the mud and the cold drizzle. Upon this threshold of a wild
scene of death they, in short, defied the proportion of events with
that splendour of heedlessness which belongs only to veterans.

"Like a lot of wooden soldiers," swore Billie Dempster, moving his feet
in the thick mass, and casting a vindictive glance indefinitely:
"standing in the mud for a hundred years."

"Oh, shut up!" murmured his brother Dan. The manner of his words
implied that this fraternal voice near him was an indescribable bore.

"Why should I shut up?" demanded Billie.

"Because you're a fool," cried Dan, taking no time to debate it; "the
biggest fool in the regiment."

There was but one man between them, and he was habituated. These
insults from brother to brother had swept across his chest, flown past
his face, many times during two long campaigns. Upon this occasion he
simply grinned first at one, then at the other.

The way of these brothers was not an unknown topic in regimental
gossip. They had enlisted simultaneously, with each sneering loudly at
the other for doing it. They left their little town, and went forward
with the flag, exchanging protestations of undying suspicion. In the
camp life they so openly despised each other that, when entertaining
quarrels were lacking, their companions often contrived situations
calculated to bring forth display of this fraternal dislike.

Both were large-limbed, strong young men, and often fought with friends
in camp unless one was near to interfere with the other. This latter
happened rather frequently, because Dan, preposterously willing for any
manner of combat, had a very great horror of seeing Billie in a fight;
and Billie, almost odiously ready himself, simply refused to see Dan
stripped to his shirt and with his fists aloft. This sat queerly upon
them, and made them the objects of plots.

When Dan jumped through a ring of eager soldiers and dragged forth his
raving brother by the arm, a thing often predicted would almost come to
pass. When Billie performed the same office for Dan, the prediction
would again miss fulfilment by an inch. But indeed they never fought
together, although they were perpetually upon the verge.

They expressed longing for such conflict. As a matter of truth, they
had at one time made full arrangement for it, but even with the
encouragement and interest of half of the regiment they somehow failed
to achieve collision.

If Dan became a victim of police duty, no jeering was so destructive to
the feelings as Billie's comment. If Billie got a call to appear at the
headquarters, none would so genially prophesy his complete undoing as
Dan. Small misfortunes to one were, in truth, invariably greeted with
hilarity by the other, who seemed to see in them great re-enforcement
of his opinion.

As soldiers, they expressed each for each a scorn intense and blasting.
After a certain battle, Billie was promoted to corporal. When Dan was
told of it, he seemed smitten dumb with astonishment and patriotic
indignation. He stared in silence, while the dark blood rushed to
Billie's forehead, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Dan at
last found his tongue, and said: "Well, I'm durned!" If he had heard
that an army mule had been appointed to the post of corps commander,
his tone could not have had more derision in it. Afterward, he adopted
a fervid insubordination, an almost religious reluctance to obey the
new corporal's orders, which came near to developing the desired strife.

It is here finally to be recorded also that Dan, most ferociously
profane in speech, very rarely swore in the presence of his brother;
and that Billie, whose oaths came from his lips with the grace of
falling pebbles, was seldom known to express himself in this manner
when near his brother Dan.

At last the afternoon contained a suggestion of evening. Metallic cries
rang suddenly from end to end of the column. They inspired at once a
quick, business-like adjustment. The long thing stirred in the mud. The
men had hushed, and were looking across the river. A moment later the
shadowy mass of pale blue figures was moving steadily toward the
stream. There could be heard from the town a clash of swift fighting
and cheering. The noise of the shooting coming through the heavy air
had its sharpness taken from it, and sounded in thuds.

There was a halt upon the bank above the pontoons. When the column went
winding down the incline, and streamed out upon the bridge, the fog had
faded to a great degree, and in the clearer dusk the guns on a distant
ridge were enabled to perceive the crossing. The long whirling outcries
of the shells came into the air above the men. An occasional solid shot
struck the surface of the river, and dashed into view a sudden vertical
jet. The distance was subtly illuminated by the lightning from the
deep-booming guns. One by one the batteries on the northern shore
aroused, the innumerable guns bellowing in angry oration at the distant
ridge. The rolling thunder crashed and reverberated as a wild surf
sounds on a still night, and to this music the column marched across
the pontoons.

The waters of the grim river curled away in a smile from the ends of
the great boats, and slid swiftly beneath the planking. The dark,
riddled walls of the town upreared before the troops, and from a region
hidden by these hammered and tumbled houses came incessantly the yells
and firings of a prolonged and close skirmish.

When Dan had called his brother a fool, his voice had been so decisive,
so brightly assured, that many men had laughed, considering it to be
great humour under the circumstances. The incident happened to rankle
deep in Billie. It was not any strange thing that his brother had
called him a fool. In fact, he often called him a fool with exactly the
same amount of cheerful and prompt conviction, and before large
audiences, too. Billie wondered in his own mind why he took such
profound offence in this case; but, at any rate, as he slid down the
bank and on to the bridge with his regiment, he was searching his
knowledge for something that would pierce Dan's blithesome spirit. But
he could contrive nothing at this time, and his impotency made the
glance which he was once able to give his brother still more malignant.

The guns far and near were roaring a fearful and grand introduction for
this column which was marching upon the stage of death. Billie felt it,
but only in a numb way. His heart was cased in that curious dissonant
metal which covers a man's emotions at such times. The terrible voices
from the hills told him that in this wide conflict his life was an
insignificant fact, and that his death would be an insignificant fact.
They portended the whirlwind to which he would be as necessary as a
butterfly's waved wing. The solemnity, the sadness of it came near
enough to make him wonder why he was neither solemn nor sad. When his
mind vaguely adjusted events according to their importance to him, it
appeared that the uppermost thing was the fact that upon the eve of
battle, and before many comrades, his brother had called him a fool.

Dan was in a particularly happy mood. "Hurray! Look at 'em shoot," he
said, when the long witches' croon of the shells came into the air. It
enraged Billie when he felt the little thorn in him, and saw at the
same time that his brother had completely forgotten it.

The column went from the bridge into more mud. At this southern end
there was a chaos of hoarse directions and commands. Darkness was
coming upon the earth, and regiments were being hurried up the slippery
bank. As Billie floundered in the black mud, amid the swearing, sliding
crowd, he suddenly resolved that, in the absence of other means of
hurting Dan, he would avoid looking at him, refrain from speaking to
him, pay absolutely no heed to his existence; and this done skilfully
would, he imagined, soon reduce his brother to a poignant sensitiveness.

At the top of the bank the column again halted and rearranged itself,
as a man after a climb rearranges his clothing. Presently the great
steel-backed brigade, an infinitely graceful thing in the rhythm and
ease of its veteran movement, swung up a little narrow, slanting street.

Evening had come so swiftly that the fighting on the remote borders of
the town was indicated by thin flashes of flame. Some building was on
fire, and its reflection upon the clouds was an oval of delicate pink.



II


All demeanour of rural serenity had been wrenched violently from the
little town by the guns and by the waves of men which had surged
through it. The hand of war laid upon this village had in an instant
changed it to a thing of remnants. It resembled the place of a
monstrous shaking of the earth itself. The windows, now mere unsightly
holes, made the tumbled and blackened dwellings seem skeletons. Doors
lay splintered to fragments. Chimneys had flung their bricks
everywhere. The artillery fire had not neglected the rows of gentle
shade-trees which had lined the streets. Branches and heavy trunks
cluttered the mud in driftwood tangles, while a few shattered forms had
contrived to remain dejectedly, mournfully upright. They expressed an
innocence, a helplessness, which perforce created a pity for their
happening into this caldron of battle. Furthermore, there was under
foot a vast collection of odd things reminiscent of the charge, the
fight, the retreat. There were boxes and barrels filled with earth,
behind which riflemen had lain snugly, and in these little trenches
were the dead in blue with the dead in grey, the poses eloquent of the
struggles for possession of the town, until the history of the whole
conflict was written plainly in the streets.

And yet the spirit of this little city, its quaint individuality,
poised in the air above the ruins, defying the guns, the sweeping
volleys; holding in contempt those avaricious blazes which had attacked
many dwellings. The hard earthen sidewalks proclaimed the games that
had been played there during long lazy days, in the careful, shadows of
the trees. "General Merchandise," in faint letters upon a long board,
had to be read with a slanted glance, for the sign dangled by one end;
but the porch of the old store was a palpable legend of wide-hatted
men, smoking.

This subtle essence, this soul of the life that had been, brushed like
invisible wings the thoughts of the men in the swift columns that came
up from the river.

In the darkness a loud and endless humming arose from the great blue
crowds bivouacked in the streets. From time to time a sharp spatter of
firing from far picket lines entered this bass chorus. The smell from
the smouldering ruins floated on the cold night breeze.

Dan, seated ruefully upon the doorstep of a shot-pierced house, was
proclaiming the campaign badly managed. Orders had been issued
forbidding camp-fires.

Suddenly he ceased his oration, and scanning the group of his comrades,
said: "Where's Billie? Do you know?"

"Gone on picket."

"Get out! Has he?" said Dan. "No business to go on picket. Why don't
some of them other corporals take their turn?"

A bearded private was smoking his pipe of confiscated tobacco, seated
comfortably upon a horse-hair trunk which he had dragged from the
house. He observed: "Was his turn."

"No such thing," cried Dan. He and the man on the horse-hair trunk held
discussion in which Dan stoutly maintained that if his brother had been
sent on picket it was an injustice. He ceased his argument when another
soldier, upon whose arms could faintly be seen the two stripes of a
corporal, entered the circle. "Humph," said Dan, "where you been?"

The corporal made no answer. Presently Dan said: "Billie, where you
been?"

His brother did not seem to hear these inquiries. He glanced at the
house which towered above them, and remarked casually to the man on the
horse-hair trunk: "Funny, ain't it? After the pelting this town got,
you'd think there wouldn't be one brick left on another."

"Oh," said Dan, glowering at his brother's back. "Getting mighty smart,
ain't you?"

The absence of camp-fires allowed the evening to make apparent its
quality of faint silver light in which the blue clothes of the throng
became black, and the faces became white expanses, void of expression.
There was considerable excitement a short distance from the group
around the doorstep. A soldier had chanced upon a hoop-skirt, and
arrayed in it he was performing a dance amid the applause of his
companions. Billie and a greater part of the men immediately poured
over there to witness the exhibition.

"What's the matter with Billie?" demanded Dan of the man upon the
horse-hair trunk.

"How do I know?" rejoined the other in mild resentment. He arose and
walked away. When he returned he said briefly, in a weather-wise tone,
that it would rain during the night.

Dan took a seat upon one end of the horse-hair trunk. He was facing the
crowd around the dancer, which in its hilarity swung this way and that
way. At times he imagined that he could recognise his brother's face.

He and the man on the other end of the trunk thoughtfully talked of the
army's position. To their minds, infantry and artillery were in a most
precarious jumble in the streets of the town; but they did not grow
nervous over it, for they were used to having the army appear in a
precarious jumble to their minds. They had learned to accept such
puzzling situations as a consequence of their position in the ranks,
and were now usually in possession of a simple but perfectly immovable
faith that somebody understood the jumble. Even if they had been
convinced that the army was a headless monster, they would merely have
nodded with the veteran's singular cynicism. It was none of their
business as soldiers. Their duty was to grab sleep and food when
occasion permitted, and cheerfully fight wherever their feet were
planted until more orders came. This was a task sufficiently absorbing.

They spoke of other corps, and this talk being confidential, their
voices dropped to tones of awe. "The Ninth"--"The First"--"The
Fifth"--"The Sixth"--"The Third"--the simple numerals rang with
eloquence, each having a meaning which was to float through many years
as no intangible arithmetical mist, but as pregnant with individuality
as the names of cities.

Of their own corps they spoke with a deep veneration, an idolatry, a
supreme confidence which apparently would not blanch to see it match
against everything.

It was as if their respect for other corps was due partly to a wonder
that organisations not blessed with their own famous numeral could take
such an interest in war. They could prove that their division was the
best in the corps, and that their brigade was the best in the division.
And their regiment--it was plain that no fortune of life was equal to
the chance which caused a man to be born, so to speak, into this
command, the keystone of the defending arch.

At times Dan covered with insults the character of a vague, unnamed
general to whose petulance and busy-body spirit he ascribed the order
which made hot coffee impossible.

Dan said that victory was certain in the coming battle. The other man
seemed rather dubious. He remarked upon the fortified line of hills,
which had impressed him even from the other side of the river.
"Shucks," said Dan. "Why, we----" He pictured a splendid overflowing of
these hills by the sea of men in blue. During the period of this
conversation Dan's glance searched the merry throng about the dancer.
Above the babble of voices in the street a far-away thunder could
sometimes be heard--evidently from the very edge of the horizon--the
boom-boom of restless guns.



III


Ultimately the night deepened to the tone of black velvet. The outlines
of the fireless camp were like the faint drawings upon ancient
tapestry. The glint of a rifle, the shine of a button, might have been
of threads of silver and gold sewn upon the fabric of the night. There
was little presented to the vision, but to a sense more subtle there
was discernible in the atmosphere something like a pulse; a mystic
beating which would have told a stranger of the presence of a giant
thing--the slumbering mass of regiments and batteries.

With tires forbidden, the floor of a dry old kitchen was thought to be
a good exchange for the cold earth of December, even if a shell had
exploded in it, and knocked it so out of shape that when a man lay
curled in his blanket his last waking thought was likely to be of the
wall that bellied out above him, as if strongly anxious to topple upon
the score of soldiers.

Billie looked at the bricks ever about to descend in a shower upon his
face, listened to the industrious pickets plying their rifles on the
border of the town, imagined some measure of the din of the coming
battle, thought of Dan and Dan's chagrin, and rolling over in his
blanket went to sleep with satisfaction.

At an unknown hour he was aroused by the creaking of boards. Lifting
himself upon his elbow, he saw a sergeant prowling among the sleeping
forms. The sergeant carried a candle in an old brass candlestick. He
would have resembled some old farmer on an unusual midnight tour if it
were not for the significance of his gleaming buttons and striped
sleeves.

Billie blinked stupidly at the light until his mind returned from the
journeys of slumber. The sergeant stooped among the unconscious
soldiers, holding the candle close, and peering into each face.

"Hello, Haines," said Billie. "Relief?"

"Hello, Billie," said the sergeant. "Special duty."

"Dan got to go?"

"Jameson, Hunter, McCormack, D. Dempster. Yes. Where is he?"

"Over there by the winder," said Billie, gesturing. "What is it for,
Haines?"

"You don't think I know, do you?" demanded the sergeant. He began to
pipe sharply but cheerily at men upon the floor. "Come, Mac, get up
here. Here's a special for you. Wake up, Jameson. Come along, Dannie,
me boy."

Each man at once took this call to duty as a personal affront. They
pulled themselves out of their blankets, rubbed their eyes, and swore
at whoever was responsible. "Them's orders," cried the sergeant. "Come!
Get out of here." An undetailed head with dishevelled hair thrust out
from a blanket, and a sleepy voice said: "Shut up, Haines, and go home."

When the detail clanked out of the kitchen, all but one of the
remaining men seemed to be again asleep. Billie, leaning on his elbow,
was gazing into darkness. When the footsteps died to silence, he curled
himself into his blanket.

At the first cool lavender lights of daybreak he aroused again, and
scanned his recumbent companions. Seeing a wakeful one he asked: "Is
Dan back yet?"

The man said: "Hain't seen 'im."

Billie put both hands behind his head, and scowled into the air. "Can't
see the use of these cussed details in the night-time," he muttered in
his most unreasonable tones. "Darn nuisances. Why can't they----" He
grumbled at length and graphically.

When Dan entered with the squad, however, Billie was convincingly
asleep.



IV


The regiment trotted in double time along the street, and the colonel
seemed to quarrel over the right of way with many artillery officers.
Batteries were waiting in the mud, and the men of them, exasperated by
the bustle of this ambitious infantry, shook their fists from saddle
and caisson, exchanging all manner of taunts and jests. The slanted
guns continued to look reflectively at the ground.

On the outskirts of the crumbled town a fringe of blue figures were
firing into the fog. The regiment swung out into skirmish lines, and
the fringe of blue figures departed, turning their backs and going
joyfully around the flank.

The bullets began a low moan off toward a ridge which loomed faintly in
the heavy mist. When the swift crescendo had reached its climax, the
missiles zipped just overhead, as if piercing an invisible curtain. A
battery on the hill was crashing with such tumult that it was as if the
guns had quarrelled and had fallen pell-mell and snarling upon each
other. The shells howled on their journey toward the town. From
short-range distance there came a spatter of musketry, sweeping along
an invisible line, and making faint sheets of orange light.

Some in the new skirmish lines were beginning to fire at various
shadows discerned in the vapour, forms of men suddenly revealed by some
humour of the laggard masses of clouds. The crackle of musketry began
to dominate the purring of the hostile bullets. Dan, in the front rank,
held his rifle poised, and looked into the fog keenly, coldly, with the
air of a sportsman. His nerves were so steady that it was as if they
had been drawn from his body, leaving him merely a muscular machine;
but his numb heart was somehow beating to the pealing march of the
fight.

The waving skirmish line went backward and forward, ran this way and
that way. Men got lost in the fog, and men were found again. Once they
got too close to the formidable ridge, and the thing burst out as if
repulsing a general attack. Once another blue regiment was apprehended
on the very edge of firing into them. Once a friendly battery began an
elaborate and scientific process of extermination. Always as busy as
brokers, the men slid here and there over the plain, fighting their
foes, escaping from their friends, leaving a history of many movements
in the wet yellow turf, cursing the atmosphere, blazing away every time
they could identify the enemy.

In one mystic changing of the fog as if the fingers of spirits were
drawing aside these draperies, a small group of the grey skirmishers,
silent, statuesque, were suddenly disclosed to Dan and those about him.
So vivid and near were they that there was something uncanny in the
revelation.

There might have been a second of mutual staring. Then each rifle in
each group was at the shoulder. As Dan's glance flashed along the
barrel of his weapon, the figure of a man suddenly loomed as if the
musket had been a telescope. The short black beard, the slouch hat, the
pose of the man as he sighted to shoot, made a quick picture in Dan's
mind. The same moment, it would seem, he pulled his own trigger, and
the man, smitten, lurched forward, while his exploding rifle made a
slanting crimson streak in the air, and the slouch hat fell before the
body. The billows of the fog, governed by singular impulses, rolled
between.

"You got that feller sure enough," said a comrade to Dan. Dan looked at
him absent-mindedly.



V


When the next morning calmly displayed another fog, the men of the
regiment exchanged eloquent comments; but they did not abuse it at
length, because the streets of the town now contained enough galloping
aides to make three troops of cavalry, and they knew that they had come
to the verge of the great fight.

Dan conversed with the man who had once possessed a horse-hair trunk;
but they did not mention the line of hills which had furnished them in
more careless moments with an agreeable topic. They avoided it now as
condemned men do the subject of death, and yet the thought of it stayed
in their eyes as they looked at each other and talked gravely of other
things.

The expectant regiment heaved a long sigh of relief when the sharp
call: "Fall in," repeated indefinitely, arose in the streets. It was
inevitable that a bloody battle was to be fought, and they wanted to
get it off their minds. They were, however, doomed again to spend a
long period planted firmly in the mud. They craned their necks, and
wondered where some of the other regiments were going.

At last the mists rolled carelessly away. Nature made at this time all
provisions to enable foes to see each other, and immediately the roar
of guns resounded from every hill. The endless cracking of the
skirmishers swelled to rolling crashes of musketry. Shells screamed
with panther-like noises at the houses. Dan looked at the man of the
horse-hair trunk, and the man said: "Well, here she comes!"

The tenor voices of younger officers and the deep and hoarse voices of
the older ones rang in the streets. These cries pricked like spurs. The
masses of men vibrated from the suddenness with which they were plunged
into the situation of troops about to fight. That the orders were
long-expected did not concern the emotion.

Simultaneous movement was imparted to all these thick bodies of men and
horses that lay in the town. Regiment after regiment swung rapidly into
the streets that faced the sinister ridge.

This exodus was theatrical. The little sober-hued village had been like
the cloak which disguises the king of drama. It was now put aside, and
an army, splendid thing of steel and blue, stood forth in the sunlight.

Even the soldiers in the heavy columns drew deep breaths at the sight,
more majestic than they had dreamed. The heights of the enemy's
position were crowded with men who resembled people come to witness
some mighty pageant. But as the column moved steadily to their
positions, the guns, matter-of-fact warriors, doubled their number, and
shells burst with red thrilling tumult on the crowded plain. One came
into the ranks of the regiment, and after the smoke and the wrath of it
had faded, leaving motionless figures, every one stormed according to
the limits of his vocabulary, for veterans detest being killed when
they are not busy.

The regiment sometimes looked sideways at its brigade companions
composed of men who had never been in battle; but no frozen blood could
withstand the heat of the splendour of this army before the eyes on the
plain, these lines so long that the flanks were little streaks, this
mass of men of one intention. The recruits carried themselves
heedlessly. At the rear was an idle battery, and three artillerymen in
a foolish row on a caisson nudged each other and grinned at the
recruits. "You'll catch it pretty soon," they called out. They were
impersonally gleeful, as if they themselves were not also likely to
catch it pretty soon. But with this picture of an army in their hearts,
the new men perhaps felt the devotion which the drops may feel for the
wave; they were of its power and glory; they smiled jauntily at the
foolish row of gunners, and told them to go to blazes.

The column trotted across some little bridges, and spread quickly into
lines of battle. Before them was a bit of plain, and back of the plain
was the ridge. There was no time left for considerations. The men were
staring at the plain, mightily wondering how it would feel to be out
there, when a brigade in advance yelled and charged. The hill was all
grey smoke and fire-points.

That fierce elation in the terrors of war, catching a man's heart and
making it burn with such ardour that he becomes capable of dying,
flashed in the faces of the men like coloured lights, and made them
resemble leashed animals, eager, ferocious, daunting at nothing. The
line was really in its first leap before the wild, hoarse crying of the
orders.

The greed for close quarters, which is the emotion of a bayonet charge,
came then into the minds of the men and developed until it was a
madness. The field, with its faded grass of a Southern winter, seemed
to this fury miles in width.

High, slow-moving masses of smoke, with an odour of burning cotton,
engulfed the line until the men might have been swimmers. Before them
the ridge, the shore of this grey sea, was outlined, crossed, and
recrossed by sheets of flame. The howl of the battle arose to the noise
of innumerable wind demons.

The line, galloping, scrambling, plunging like a herd of wounded
horses, went over a field that was sown with corpses, the records of
other charges.

Directly in front of the black-faced, whooping Dan, carousing in this
onward sweep like a new kind of fiend, a wounded man appeared, raising
his shattered body, and staring at this rush of men down upon him. It
seemed to occur to him that he was to be trampled; he made a desperate,
piteous effort to escape; then finally huddled in a waiting heap. Dan
and the soldier near him widened the interval between them without
looking down, without appearing to heed the wounded man. This little
clump of blue seemed to reel past them as boulders reel past a train.

Bursting through a smoke-wave, the scampering, unformed bunches came
upon the wreck of the brigade that had preceded them, a floundering
mass stopped afar from the hill by the swirling volleys.

It was as if a necromancer had suddenly shown them a picture of the
fate which awaited them; but the line with muscular spasm hurled itself
over this wreckage and onward, until men were stumbling amid the relics
of other assaults, the point where the fire from the ridge consumed.

The men, panting, perspiring, with crazed faces, tried to push against
it; but it was as if they had come to a wall. The wave halted,
shuddered in an agony from the quick struggle of its two desires, then
toppled, and broke into a fragmentary thing which has no name.

Veterans could now at last be distinguished from recruits. The new
regiments were instantly gone, lost, scattered, as if they never had
been. But the sweeping failure of the charge, the battle, could not
make the veterans forget their business. With a last throe, the band of
maniacs drew itself up and blazed a volley at the hill, insignificant
to those iron entrenchments, but nevertheless expressing that singular
final despair which enables men coolly to defy the walls of a city of
death.

After this episode the men renamed their command. They called it the
Little Regiment.



VI


"I seen Dan shoot a feller yesterday. Yes, sir. I'm sure it was him
that done it. And maybe he thinks about that feller now, and wonders if
he tumbled down just about the same way. Them things come up in a man's
mind."

Bivouac fires upon the sidewalks, in the streets, in the yards, threw
high their wavering reflections, which examined, like slim, red
fingers, the dingy, scarred walls and the piles of tumbled brick. The
droning of voices again arose from great blue crowds.

The odour of frying bacon, the fragrance from countless little
coffee-pails floated among the ruins. The rifles, stacked in the
shadows, emitted flashes of steely light. Wherever a flag lay
horizontally from one stack to another was the bed of an eagle which
had led men into the mystic smoke.

The men about a particular fire were engaged in holding in check their
jovial spirits. They moved whispering around the blaze, although they
looked at it with a certain fine contentment, like labourers after a
day's hard work.

There was one who sat apart. They did not address him save in tones
suddenly changed. They did not regard him directly, but always in
little sidelong glances.

At last a soldier from a distant fire came into this circle of light.
He studied for a time the man who sat apart. Then he hesitatingly
stepped closer, and said: "Got any news, Dan?"

"No," said Dan.

The new-comer shifted his feet. He looked at the fire, at the sky, at
the other men, at Dan. His face expressed a curious despair; his tongue
was plainly in rebellion. Finally, however, he contrived to say: "Well,
there's some chance yet, Dan. Lots of the wounded are still lying out
there, you know. There's some chance yet."

"Yes," said Dan.

The soldier shifted his feet again, and looked miserably into the air.
After another struggle he said: "Well, there's some chance yet, Dan."
He moved hastily away.

One of the men of the squad, perhaps encouraged by this example, now
approached the still figure. "No news yet, hey?" he said, after
coughing behind his hand.

"No," said Dan.

"Well," said the man, "I've been thinking of how he was fretting about
you the night you went on special duty. You recollect? Well, sir, I was
surprised. He couldn't say enough about it. I swan, I don't believe he
slep' a wink after you left, but just lay awake cussing special duty
and worrying. I was surprised. But there he lay cussing. He----"

Dan made a curious sound, as if a stone had wedged in his throat. He
said: "Shut up, will you?"

Afterward the men would not allow this moody contemplation of the fire
to be interrupted.

"Oh, let him alone, can't you?"

"Come away from there, Casey!"

"Say, can't you leave him be?"

They moved with reverence about the immovable figure, with its
countenance of mask-like invulnerability.



VII


After the red round eye of the sun had stared long at the little plain
and its burden, darkness, a sable mercy, came heavily upon it, and the
wan hands of the dead were no longer seen in strange frozen gestures.

The heights in front of the plain shone with tiny camp-fires, and from
the town in the rear, small shimmerings ascended from the blazes of the
bivouac. The plain was a black expanse upon which, from time to time,
dots of light, lanterns, floated slowly here and there. These fields
were long steeped in grim mystery.

Suddenly, upon one dark spot, there was a resurrection. A strange thing
had been groaning there, prostrate. Then it suddenly dragged itself to
a sitting posture, and became a man.

The man stared stupidly for a moment at the lights on the hill, then
turned and contemplated the faint colouring over the town. For some
moments he remained thus, staring with dull eyes, his face unemotional,
wooden.

Finally he looked around him at the corpses dimly to be seen. No change
flashed into his face upon viewing these men. They seemed to suggest
merely that his information concerning himself was not too complete. He
ran his fingers over his arms and chest, bearing always the air of an
idiot upon a bench at an almshouse door.

Finding no wound in his arms nor in his chest, he raised his hand to
his head, and the fingers came away with some dark liquid upon them.
Holding these fingers close to his eyes, he scanned them in the same
stupid fashion, while his body gently swayed.

The soldier rolled his eyes again toward the town. When he arose, his
clothing peeled from the frozen ground like wet paper. Hearing the
sound of it, he seemed to see reason for deliberation. He paused and
looked at the ground, then at his trousers, then at the ground.

Finally he went slowly off toward the faint reflection, holding his
hands palm outward before him, and walking in the manner of a blind man.



VIII


The immovable Dan again sat unaddressed in the midst of comrades, who
did not joke aloud. The dampness of the usual morning fog seemed to
make the little camp-fires furious.

Suddenly a cry arose in the streets, a shout of amazement and delight.
The men making breakfast at the fire looked up quickly. They broke
forth in clamorous exclamation: "Well! Of all things! Dan! Dan! Look
who's coming! Oh, Dan!"

Dan the silent raised his eyes and saw a man, with a bandage of the
size of a helmet about his head, receiving a furious demonstration from
the company. He was shaking hands, and explaining, and haranguing to a
high degree.

Dan started. His face of bronze flushed to his temples. He seemed about
to leap from the ground, but then suddenly he sank back, and resumed
his impassive gazing.

The men were in a flurry. They looked from one to the other. "Dan!
Look! See who's coming!" some cried again. "Dan! Look!"

He scowled at last, and moved his shoulders sullenly. "Well, don't I
know it?"

But they could not be convinced that his eyes were in service. "Dan,
why can't you look! See who's coming!"

He made a gesture then of irritation and rage. "Curse it! Don't I know
it?"

The man with a bandage of the size of a helmet moved forward, always
shaking hands and explaining. At times his glance wandered to Dan, who
saw with his eyes riveted.

After a series of shiftings, it occurred naturally that the man with
the bandage was very near to the man who saw the flames. He paused, and
there was a little silence. Finally he said: "Hello, Dan."

"Hello, Billie."



THREE MIRACULOUS SOLDIERS

I


The girl was in the front room on the second floor, peering through the
blinds. It was the "best room." There was a very new rag carpet on the
floor. The edges of it had been dyed with alternate stripes of red and
green. Upon the wooden mantel there were two little puffy figures in
clay--a shepherd and a shepherdess probably. A triangle of pink and
white wool hung carefully over the edge of this shelf. Upon the bureau
there was nothing at all save a spread newspaper, with edges folded to
make it into a mat. The quilts and sheets had been removed from the bed
and were stacked upon a chair. The pillows and the great feather
mattress were muffled and tumbled until they resembled great dumplings.
The picture of a man terribly leaden in complexion hung in an oval
frame on one white wall and steadily confronted the bureau.

From between the slats of the blinds she had a view of the road as it
wended across the meadow to the woods, and again where it reappeared
crossing the hill, half a mile away. It lay yellow and warm in the
summer sunshine. From the long grasses of the meadow came the rhythmic
click of the insects. Occasional frogs in the hidden brook made a
peculiar chug-chug sound, as if somebody throttled them. The leaves of
the wood swung in gentle winds. Through the dark-green branches of the
pines that grew in the front yard could be seen the mountains, far to
the south-east, and inexpressibly blue.

Mary's eyes were fastened upon the little streak of road that appeared
on the distant hill. Her face was flushed with excitement, and the hand
which stretched in a strained pose on the sill trembled because of the
nervous shaking of the wrist. The pines whisked their green needles
with a soft, hissing sound against the house.

At last the girl turned from the window and went to the head of the
stairs. "Well, I just know they're coming, anyhow," she cried
argumentatively to the depths.

A voice from below called to her angrily: "They ain't. We've never seen
one yet. They never come into this neighbourhood. You just come down
here and 'tend to your work insteader watching for soldiers."

"Well, ma, I just know they're coming."

A voice retorted with the shrillness and mechanical violence of
occasional housewives. The girl swished her skirts defiantly and
returned to the window.

Upon the yellow streak of road that lay across the hillside there now
was a handful of black dots--horsemen. A cloud of dust floated away.
The girl flew to the head of the stairs and whirled down into the
kitchen.

"They're coming! They're coming!"

It was as if she had cried "Fire!" Her mother had been peeling potatoes
while seated comfortably at the table. She sprang to her feet. "No--it
can't be--how you know it's them--where?" The stubby knife fell from
her hand, and two or three curls of potato skin dropped from her apron
to the floor.

The girl turned and dashed upstairs. Her mother followed, gasping for
breath, and yet contriving to fill the air with questions, reproach,
and remonstrance. The girl was already at the window, eagerly pointing.
"There! There! See 'em! See 'em!"

Rushing to the window, the mother scanned for an instant the road on
the hill. She crouched back with a groan. "It's them, sure as the
world! It's them!" She waved her hands in despairing gestures.

The black dots vanished into the wood. The girl at the window was
quivering and her eyes were shining like water when the sun flashes.
"Hush! They're in the woods! They'll be here directly." She bent down
and intently watched the green archway whence the road emerged. "Hush!
I hear 'em coming," she swiftly whispered to her mother, for the elder
woman had dropped dolefully upon the mattress and was sobbing. And,
indeed, the girl could hear the quick, dull trample of horses. She
stepped aside with sudden apprehension, but she bent her head forward
in order to still scan the road.

"Here they are!"

There was something very theatrical in the sudden appearance of these
men to the eyes of the girl. It was as if a scene had been shifted. The
forest suddenly disclosed them--a dozen brown-faced troopers in
blue--galloping.

"Oh, look!" breathed the girl. Her mouth was puckered into an
expression of strange fascination, as if she had expected to see the
troopers change into demons and gloat at her. She was at last looking
upon those curious beings who rode down from the North--those men of
legend and colossal tale--they who were possessed of such marvellous
hallucinations.

The little troop rode in silence. At its head was a youthful fellow
with some dim yellow stripes upon his arm. In his right hand he held
his carbine, slanting upward, with the stock resting upon his knee. He
was absorbed in a scrutiny of the country before him.

At the heels of the sergeant the rest of the squad rode in thin column,
with creak of leather and tinkle of steel and tin. The girl scanned the
faces of the horsemen, seeming astonished vaguely to find them of the
type she knew.

The lad at the head of the troop comprehended the house and its
environments in two glances. He did not check the long, swinging stride
of his horse. The troopers glanced for a moment like casual tourists,
and then returned to their study of the region in front. The heavy
thudding of the hoofs became a small noise. The dust, hanging in
sheets, slowly sank.

The sobs of the woman on the bed took form in words which, while strong
in their note of calamity, yet expressed a querulous mental reaching
for some near thing to blame. "And it'll be lucky fer us if we ain't
both butchered in our sleep--plundering and running off horses--old
Santo's gone--you see if he ain't--plundering--"

"But, ma," said the girl, perplexed and terrified in the same moment,
"they've gone."

"Oh, but they'll come back!" cried the mother, without pausing her
wail. "They'll come back--trust them for that--running off horses. O
John, John! why did you, why did you?" She suddenly lifted herself and
sat rigid, staring at her daughter. "Mary," she said in tragic whisper,
"the kitchen door isn't locked!" Already she was bended forward to
listen, her mouth agape, her eyes fixed upon her daughter.

"Mother," faltered the girl.

Her mother again whispered, "The kitchen door isn't locked."

Motionless and mute they stared into each other's eyes.

At last the girl quavered, "We better--we better go and lock it." The
mother nodded. Hanging arm in arm they stole across the floor toward
the head of the stairs. A board of the floor creaked. They halted and
exchanged a look of dumb agony.

At last they reached the head of the stairs. From the kitchen came the
bass humming of the kettle and frequent sputterings and cracklings from
the fire. These sounds were sinister. The mother and the girl stood
incapable of movement. "There's somebody down there!" whispered the
elder woman.

Finally, the girl made a gesture of resolution. She twisted her arm
from her mother's hands and went two steps downward. She addressed the
kitchen: "Who's there?" Her tone was intended to be dauntless. It rang
so dramatically in the silence that a sudden new panic seized them as
if the suspected presence in the kitchen had cried out to them. But the
girl ventured again: "Is there anybody there?" No reply was made save
by the kettle and the fire.

With a stealthy tread the girl continued her journey. As she neared the
last step the fire crackled explosively and the girl screamed. But the
mystic presence had not swept around the corner to grab her, so she
dropped to a seat on the step and laughed. "It was--was only the--the
fire," she said, stammering hysterically.

Then she arose with sudden fortitude and cried: "Why, there isn't
anybody there! I know there isn't." She marched down into the kitchen.
In her face was dread, as if she half expected to confront something,
but the room was empty. She cried joyously: "There's nobody here! Come
on down, ma." She ran to the kitchen door and locked it.

The mother came down to the kitchen. "Oh, dear, what a fright I've had!
It's given me the sick headache. I know it has."

"Oh, ma," said the girl.

"I know it has--I know it. Oh, if your father was only here! He'd
settle those Yankees mighty quick--he'd settle 'em! Two poor helpless
women--"

"Why, ma, what makes you act so? The Yankees haven't--"

"Oh, they'll be back--they'll be back. Two poor helpless women! Your
father and your uncle Asa and Bill off galavanting around and fighting
when they ought to be protecting their home! That's the kind of men
they are. Didn't I say to your father just before he left--"

"Ma," said the girl, coming suddenly from the window, "the barn door is
open. I wonder if they took old Santo?"

"Oh, of course they have--of course--Mary, I don't see what we are
going to do--I don't see what we are going to do."

The girl said, "Ma, I'm going to see if they took old Santo."

"Mary," cried the mother, "don't you dare!"

"But think of poor old Sant, ma."

"Never you mind old Santo. We're lucky to be safe ourselves, I tell
you. Never mind old Santo. Don't you dare to go out there, Mary--Mary!"

The girl had unlocked the door and stepped out upon the porch. The
mother cried in despair, "Mary!"

"Why, there isn't anybody out here," the girl called in response. She
stood for a moment with a curious smile upon her face as of gleeful
satisfaction at her daring.

The breeze was waving the boughs of the apple trees. A rooster with an
air importantly courteous was conducting three hens upon a foraging
tour. On the hillside at the rear of the grey old barn the red leaves
of a creeper flamed amid the summer foliage. High in the sky clouds
rolled toward the north. The girl swung impulsively from the little
stoop and ran toward the barn.

The great door was open, and the carved peg which usually performed the
office of a catch lay on the ground. The girl could not see into the
barn because of the heavy shadows. She paused in a listening attitude
and heard a horse munching placidly. She gave a cry of delight and
sprang across the threshold. Then she suddenly shrank back and gasped.
She had confronted three men in grey seated upon the floor with their
legs stretched out and their backs against Santo's manger. Their
dust-covered countenances were expanded in grins.



II


As Mary sprang backward and screamed, one of the calm men in grey,
still grinning, announced, "I knowed you'd holler." Sitting there
comfortably the three surveyed her with amusement.

Mary caught her breath, throwing her hand up to her throat. "Oh!" she
said, "you--you frightened me!"

"We're sorry, lady, but couldn't help it no way," cheerfully responded
another. "I knowed you'd holler when I seen you coming yere, but I
raikoned we couldn't help it no way. We hain't a-troubling this yere
barn, I don't guess. We been doing some mighty tall sleeping yere. We
done woke when them Yanks loped past."

"Where did you come from? Did--did you escape from the--the Yankees?"
The girl still stammered and trembled.

The three soldiers laughed. "No, m'm. No, m'm. They never cotch us. We
was in a muss down the road yere about two mile. And Bill yere they gin
it to him in the arm, kehplunk. And they pasted me thar, too. Curious,
And Sim yere, he didn't get nothing, but they chased us all quite a
little piece, and we done lose track of our boys."

"Was it--was it those who passed here just now? Did they chase you?"

The men in grey laughed again. "What--them? No, indeedee! There was a
mighty big swarm of Yanks and a mighty big swarm of our boys, too.
What--that little passel? No, m'm."

She became calm enough to scan them more attentively. They were much
begrimed and very dusty. Their grey clothes were tattered. Splashed mud
had dried upon them in reddish spots. It appeared, too, that the men
had not shaved in many days. In the hats there was a singular
diversity. One soldier wore the little blue cap of the Northern
infantry, with corps emblem and regimental number; one wore a great
slouch hat with a wide hole in the crown; and the other wore no hat at
all. The left sleeve of one man and the right sleeve of another had
been slit, and the arms were neatly bandaged with clean cloths. "These
hain't no more than two little cuts," explained one. "We stopped up
yere to Mis' Leavitts--she said her name was--and she bind them for us.
Bill yere, he had the thirst come on him. And the fever too. We----"

"Did you ever see my father in the army?" asked Mary. "John
Hinckson--his name is."

The three soldiers grinned again, but they replied kindly: "No, m'm.
No, m'm, we hain't never. What is he--in the cavalry?"

"No," said the girl. "He and my uncle Asa and my cousin--his name is
Bill Parker--they are all with Longstreet--they call him."

"Oh," said the soldiers. "Longstreet? Oh, they're a good smart ways
from yere. 'Way off up nawtheast. There hain't nothing but cavalry down
yere. They're in the infantry, probably."

"We haven't heard anything from them for days and days," said Mary.

"Oh, they're all right in the infantry," said one man, to be consoling.
"The infantry don't do much fighting. They go bellering out in a big
swarm and only a few of 'em get hurt. But if they was in the
cavalry--the cavalry--"

Mary interrupted him without intention. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

The soldiers looked at each other, struck by some sudden and singular
shame. They hung their heads. "No, m'm," replied one at last.

Santo, in his stall, was tranquilly chewing and chewing. Sometimes he
looked benevolently over at them. He was an old horse, and there was
something about his eyes and his forelock which created the impression
that he wore spectacles. Mary went and patted his nose. "Well, if you
are hungry, I can get you something," she told the men. "Or you might
come to the house."

"We wouldn't dast go to the house," said one. "That passel of Yanks was
only a scouting crowd, most like. Just an advance. More coming, likely."

"Well, I can bring you something," cried the girl eagerly. "Won't you
let me bring you something?"

"Well," said a soldier with embarrassment, "we hain't had much. If you
could bring us a little snack--like--just a snack--we'd--"

Without waiting for him to cease, the girl turned toward the door. But
before she had reached it she stopped abruptly. "Listen!" she
whispered. Her form was bent forward, her head turned and lowered, her
hand extended toward the men, in a command for silence.

They could faintly hear the thudding of many hoofs, the clank of arms,
and frequent calling voices.

"By cracky, it's the Yanks!" The soldiers scrambled to their feet and
came toward the door. "I knowed that first crowd was only an advance."

The girl and the three men peered from the shadows of the barn. The
view of the road was intersected by tree trunks and a little henhouse.
However, they could see many horsemen streaming down the road. The
horsemen were in blue. "Oh, hide--hide--hide!" cried the girl, with a
sob in her voice.

"Wait a minute," whispered a grey soldier excitedly. "Maybe they're
going along by. No, by thunder, they hain't! They're halting. Scoot,
boys!"

They made a noiseless dash into the dark end of the barn. The girl,
standing by the door, heard them break forth an instant later in
clamorous whispers. "Where'll we hide? Where'll we hide? There hain't a
place to hide!" The girl turned and glanced wildly about the barn. It
seemed true. The stock of hay had grown low under Santo's endless
munching, and from occasional levyings by passing troopers in grey. The
poles of the mow were barely covered, save in one corner where there
was a little bunch.

The girl espied the great feed-box. She ran to it and lifted the lid.
"Here! here!" she called. "Get in here."

They had been tearing noiselessly around the rear part of the barn. At
her low call they came and plunged at the box. They did not all get in
at the same moment without a good deal of a tangle. The wounded men
gasped and muttered, but they at last were flopped down on the layer of
feed which covered the bottom. Swiftly and softly the girl lowered the
lid and then turned like a flash toward the door.

No one appeared there, so she went close to survey the situation. The
troopers had dismounted, and stood in silence by their horses.

A grey-bearded man, whose red cheeks and nose shone vividly above the
whiskers, was strolling about with two or three others. They wore
double-breasted coats, and faded yellow sashes were wound under their
black leather sword-belts. The grey-bearded soldier was apparently
giving orders, pointing here and there.

Mary tiptoed to the feed-box. "They've all got off their horses," she
said to it. A finger projected from a knot-hole near the top, and said
to her very plainly, "Come closer." She obeyed, and then a muffled
voice could be heard: "Scoot for the house, lady, and if we don't see
you again, why, much obliged for what you done."

"Good-bye," she said to the feed-box.

She made two attempts to walk dauntlessly from the barn, but each time
she faltered and failed just before she reached the point where she
could have been seen by the blue-coated troopers. At last, however, she
made a sort of a rush forward and went out into the bright sunshine.

The group of men in double-breasted coats wheeled in her direction at
the instant. The grey-bearded officer forgot to lower his arm which had
been stretched forth in giving an order.

She felt that her feet were touching the ground in a most unnatural
manner. Her bearing, she believed, was suddenly grown awkward and
ungainly. Upon her face she thought that this sentence was plainly
written: "There are three men hidden in the feed-box."

The grey-bearded soldier came toward her. She stopped; she seemed about
to run away. But the soldier doffed his little blue cap and looked
amiable. "You live here, I presume?" he said.

"Yes," she answered.

"Well, we are obliged to camp here for the night, and as we've got two
wounded men with us I don't suppose you'd mind if we put them in the
barn."

"In--in the barn?"

He became aware that she was agitated. He smiled assuringly. "You
needn't be frightened. We won't hurt anything around here. You'll all
be safe enough."

The girl balanced on one foot and swung the other to and fro in the
grass. She was looking down at it. "But--but I don't think ma would
like it if--if you took the barn."

The old officer laughed. "Wouldn't she?" said he. "That's so. Maybe she
wouldn't." He reflected for a time and then decided cheerfully: "Well,
we will have to go ask her, anyhow. Where is she? In the house?"

"Yes," replied the girl, "she's in the house. She--she'll be scared to
death when she sees you!"

"Well, you go and ask her then," said the soldier, always wearing a
benign smile. "You go ask her and then come and tell me."

When the girl pushed open the door and entered the kitchen, she found
it empty. "Ma!" she called softly. There was no answer. The kettle
still was humming its low song. The knife and the curl of potato-skin
lay on the floor.

She went to her mother's room and entered timidly. The new, lonely
aspect of the house shook her nerves. Upon the bed was a confusion of
coverings. "Ma!" called the girl, quaking in fear that her mother was
not there to reply. But there was a sudden turmoil of the quilts, and
her mother's head was thrust forth. "Mary!" she cried, in what seemed
to be a supreme astonishment, "I thought--I thought----"

"Oh, ma," blurted the girl, "there's over a thousand Yankees in the
yard, and I've hidden three of our men in the feed-box!"

The elder woman, however, upon the appearance of her daughter had begun
to thrash hysterically about on the bed and wail.

"Ma!" the girl exclaimed, "and now they want to use the barn--and our
men in the feed-box! What shall I do, ma? What shall I do?"

Her mother did not seem to hear, so absorbed was she in her grievous
flounderings and tears. "Ma!" appealed the girl. "Ma!"

For a moment Mary stood silently debating, her lips apart, her eyes
fixed. Then she went to the kitchen window and peeked.

The old officer and the others were staring up the road. She went to
another window in order to get a proper view of the road, and saw that
they were gazing at a small body of horsemen approaching at a trot and
raising much dust. Presently she recognised them as the squad that had
passed the house earlier, for the young man with the dim yellow chevron
still rode at their head. An unarmed horseman in grey was receiving
their close attention.

As they came very near to the house she darted to the first window
again. The grey-bearded officer was smiling a fine broad smile of
satisfaction. "So you got him?" he called out. The young sergeant
sprang from his horse and his brown hand moved in a salute. The girl
could not hear his reply. She saw the unarmed horseman in grey stroking
a very black moustache and looking about him coolly and with an
interested air. He appeared so indifferent that she did not understand
he was a prisoner until she heard the grey-beard call out: "Well, put
him in the barn. He'll be safe there, I guess." A party of troopers
moved with the prisoner toward the barn.

The girl made a sudden gesture of horror, remembering the three men in
the feed-box.



III


The busy troopers in blue scurried about the long lines of stamping
horses. Men crooked their backs and perspired in order to rub with
cloths or bunches of grass these slim equine legs, upon whose splendid
machinery they depended so greatly. The lips of the horses were still
wet and frothy from the steel bars which had wrenched at their mouths
all day. Over their backs and about their noses sped the talk of the
men.

"Moind where yer plug is steppin', Finerty! Keep 'im aff me!"

"An ould elephant! He shtrides like a school-house."

"Bill's little mar'--she was plum beat when she come in with Crawford's
crowd."

"Crawford's the hardest-ridin' cavalryman in the army. An' he don't use
up a horse, neither--much. They stay fresh when the others are most
a-droppin'."

"Finerty, will yeh moind that cow a yours?"

Amid a bustle of gossip and banter, the horses retained their air of
solemn rumination, twisting their lower jaws from side to side and
sometimes rubbing noses dreamfully.

Over in front of the barn three troopers sat talking comfortably. Their
carbines were leaned against the wall. At their side and outlined in
the black of the open door stood a sentry, his weapon resting in the
hollow of his arm. Four horses, saddled and accoutred, were conferring
with their heads close together. The four bridle-reins were flung over
a post.

Upon the calm green of the land, typical in every way of peace, the
hues of war brought thither by the troops shone strangely. Mary, gazing
curiously, did not feel that she was contemplating a familiar scene. It
was no longer the home acres. The new blue, steel, and faded yellow
thoroughly dominated the old green and brown. She could hear the voices
of the men, and it seemed from their tone that they had camped there
for years. Everything with them was usual. They had taken possession of
the landscape in such a way that even the old marks appeared strange
and formidable to the girl.

Mary had intended to go and tell the commander in blue that her mother
did not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when she
heard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that it
mattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection by
her or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct the
prisoner in grey into the barn, and for a long time she watched the
three chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind in
desolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the feed-box.

It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty to
be a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding-school
in Pennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such
difficulties, invariably did hair-breadth things. True, they were
usually bent upon rescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the
calm man in grey, nor any of the three in the feed-box, was lover of
hers, but then a real heroine would not pause over this minor question.
Plainly a heroine would take measures to rescue the four men. If she
did not at least make the attempt, she would be false to those
carefully constructed ideals which were the accumulation of years of
dreaming.

But the situation puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door,
and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with
his back to the rest of the world, engaged, no doubt, in a steadfast
contemplation of the calm man, and incidentally, of the feed-box. She
knew, too, that even if she should open the kitchen door, three heads,
and perhaps four, would turn casually in her direction. Their ears were
real ears.

Heroines, she knew, conducted these matters with infinite precision and
despatch. They severed the hero's bonds, cried a dramatic sentence, and
stood between him and his enemies until he had run far enough away. She
saw well, however, that even should she achieve all things up to the
point where she might take glorious stand between the escaping and the
pursuers, those grim troopers in blue would not pause. They would run
around her, make a circuit. One by one she saw the gorgeous
contrivances and expedients of fiction fall before the plain, homely
difficulties of this situation. They were of no service. Sadly,
ruefully, she thought of the calm man and of the contents of the
feed-box.

The sum of her invention was that she could sally forth to the
commander of the blue cavalry, and confessing to him that there were
three of her friends and his enemies secreted in the feed-box, pray him
to let them depart unmolested. But she was beginning to believe the old
greybeard to be a bear. It was hardly probable that he would give this
plan his support. It was more probable that he and some of his men
would at once descend upon the feed-box and confiscate her three
friends. The difficulty with her idea was that she could not learn its
value without trying it, and then in case of failure it would be too
late for remedies and other plans. She reflected that war made men very
unreasonable.

All that she could do was to stand at the window and mournfully regard
the barn. She admitted this to herself with a sense of deep
humiliation. She was not, then, made of that fine stuff, that mental
satin, which enabled some other beings to be of such mighty service to
the distressed. She was defeated by a barn with one door, by four men
with eight eyes and eight ears--trivialities that would not impede the
real heroine.

The vivid white light of broad day began slowly to fade. Tones of grey
came upon the fields, and the shadows were of lead. In this more sombre
atmosphere the fires built by the troops down in the far end of the
orchard grew more brilliant, becoming spots of crimson colour in the
dark grove.

The girl heard a fretting voice from her mother's room. "Mary!" She
hastily obeyed the call. She perceived that she had quite forgotten her
mother's existence in this time of excitement.

The elder woman still lay upon the bed. Her face was flushed and
perspiration stood amid new wrinkles upon her forehead. Weaving wild
glances from side to side, she began to whimper. "Oh, I'm just
sick--I'm just sick! Have those men gone yet? Have they gone?"

The girl smoothed a pillow carefully for her mother's head. "No, ma.
They're here yet. But they haven't hurt anything--it doesn't seem. Will
I get you something to eat?"

Her mother gestured her away with the impatience of the ill.
"No--no--just don't bother me. My head is splitting, and you know very
well that nothing can be done for me when I get one of these spells.
It's trouble--that's what makes them. When are those men going? Look
here, don't you go 'way. You stick close to the house now."

"I'll stay right here," said the girl. She sat in the gloom and
listened to her mother's incessant moaning. When she attempted to move,
her mother cried out at her. When she desired to ask if she might try
to alleviate the pain, she was interrupted shortly. Somehow her sitting
in passive silence within hearing of this illness seemed to contribute
to her mother's relief. She assumed a posture of submission. Sometimes
her mother projected questions concerning the local condition, and
although she laboured to be graphic and at the same time soothing,
unalarming, her form of reply was always displeasing to the sick woman,
and brought forth ejaculations of angry impatience.

Eventually the woman slept in the manner of one worn from terrible
labour. The girl went slowly and softly to the kitchen. When she looked
from the window, she saw the four soldiers still at the barn door. In
the west, the sky was yellow. Some tree-trunks intersecting it appeared
black as streaks of ink. Soldiers hovered in blue clouds about the
bright splendour of the fires in the orchard. There were glimmers of
steel.

The girl sat in the new gloom of the kitchen and watched. The soldiers
lit a lantern and hung it in the barn. Its rays made the form of the
sentry seem gigantic. Horses whinnied from the orchard. There was a low
hum of human voices. Sometimes small detachments of troopers rode past
the front of the house. The girl heard the abrupt calls of sentries.
She fetched some food and ate it from her hand, standing by the window.
She was so afraid that something would occur that she barely left her
post for an instant.

A picture of the interior of the barn hung vividly in her mind. She
recalled the knot-holes in the boards at the rear, but she admitted
that the prisoners could not escape through them. She remembered some
inadequacies of the roof, but these also counted for nothing. When
confronting the problem, she felt her ambitions, her ideals tumbling
headlong like cottages of straw.

Once she felt that she had decided to reconnoitre at any rate. It was
night; the lantern at the barn and the camp fires made everything
without their circle into masses of heavy mystic blackness. She took
two steps toward the door. But there she paused. Innumerable
possibilities of danger had assailed her mind. She returned to the
window and stood wavering. At last, she went swiftly to the door,
opened it, and slid noiselessly into the darkness.

For a moment she regarded the shadows. Down in the orchard the camp
fires of the troops appeared precisely like a great painting, all in
reds upon a black cloth. The voices of the troopers still hummed. The
girl started slowly off in the opposite direction. Her eyes were fixed
in a stare; she studied the darkness in front for a moment, before she
ventured upon a forward step. Unconsciously, her throat was arranged
for a sudden shrill scream. High in the tree-branches she could hear
the voice of the wind, a melody of the night, low and sad, the plaint
of an endless, incommunicable sorrow. Her own distress, the plight of
the men in grey--these near matters as well as all she had known or
imagined of grief--everything was expressed in this soft mourning of
the wind in the trees. At first she felt like weeping. This sound told
her of human impotency and doom. Then later the trees and the wind
breathed strength to her, sang of sacrifice, of dauntless effort, of
hard carven faces that did not blanch when Duty came at midnight or at
noon.

She turned often to scan the shadowy figures that moved from time to
time in the light at the barn door. Once she trod upon a stick, and it
flopped, crackling in the intolerable manner of all sticks. At this
noise, however, the guards at the barn made no sign. Finally, she was
where she could see the knot-holes in the rear of the structure
gleaming like pieces of metal from the effect of the light within.
Scarcely breathing in her excitement she glided close and applied an
eye to a knot-hole. She had barely achieved one glance at the interior
before she sprang back shuddering.

For the unconscious and cheerful sentry at the door was swearing away
in flaming sentences, heaping one gorgeous oath upon another, making a
conflagration of his description of his troop-horse. "Why," he was
declaring to the calm prisoner in grey, "you ain't got a horse in your
hull ---- army that can run forty rod with that there little mar'!"

As in the outer darkness Mary cautiously returned to the knot-hole, the
three guards in front suddenly called in low tones: "S-s-s-h!" "Quit,
Pete; here comes the lieutenant." The sentry had apparently been about
to resume his declamation, but at these warnings he suddenly posed in a
soldierly manner.

A tall and lean officer with a smooth face entered the barn. The sentry
saluted primly. The officer flashed a comprehensive glance about him.
"Everything all right?"

"All right, sir."

This officer had eyes like the points of stilettos. The lines from his
nose to the corners of his mouth were deep, and gave him a slightly
disagreeable aspect, but somewhere in his face there was a quality of
singular thoughtfulness, as of the absorbed student dealing in
generalities, which was utterly in opposition to the rapacious keenness
of the eyes which saw everything.

Suddenly he lifted a long finger and pointed. "What's that?"

"That? That's a feed-box, I suppose."

"What's in it?"

"I don't know. I--"

"You ought to know," said the officer sharply. He walked over to the
feed-box and flung up the lid. With a sweeping gesture he reached down
and scooped a handful of feed. "You ought to know what's in everything
when you have prisoners in your care," he added, scowling.

During the time of this incident, the girl had nearly swooned. Her
hands searched weakly over the boards for something to which to cling.
With the pallor of the dying she had watched the downward sweep of the
officer's arm, which after all had only brought forth a handful of
feed. The result was a stupefaction of her mind. She was astonished out
of her senses at this spectacle of three large men metamorphosed into a
handful of feed.



IV


It is perhaps a singular thing that this absence of the three men from
the feed-box at the time of the sharp lieutenant's investigation should
terrify the girl more than it should joy her. That for which she had
prayed had come to pass. Apparently the escape of these men in the face
of every improbability had been granted her, but her dominating emotion
was fright. The feed-box was a mystic and terrible machine, like some
dark magician's trap. She felt it almost possible that she should see
the three weird man floating spectrally away through the air. She
glanced with swift apprehension behind her, and when the dazzle from
the lantern's light had left her eyes, saw only the dim hillside
stretched in solemn silence.

The interior of the barn possessed for her another fascination because
it was now uncanny. It contained that extraordinary feed-box. When she
peeped again at the knot-hole, the calm, grey prisoner was seated upon
the feed-box, thumping it with his dangling, careless heels as if it
were in nowise his conception of a remarkable feed-box. The sentry also
stood facing it. His carbine he held in the hollow of his arm. His legs
were spread apart, and he mused. From without came the low mumble of
the three other troopers. The sharp lieutenant had vanished.

The trembling yellow light of the lantern caused the figures of the men
to cast monstrous wavering shadows. There were spaces of gloom which
shrouded ordinary things in impressive garb. The roof presented an
inscrutable blackness, save where small rifts in the shingles glowed
phosphorescently. Frequently old Santo put down a thunderous hoof. The
heels of the prisoner made a sound like the booming of a wild kind of
drum. When the men moved their heads, their eyes shone with ghoulish
whiteness, and their complexions were always waxen and unreal. And
there was that profoundly strange feed-box, imperturbable with its
burden of fantastic mystery.

Suddenly from down near her feet the girl heard a crunching sound, a
sort of a nibbling, as if some silent and very discreet terrier was at
work upon the turf. She faltered back; here was no doubt another
grotesque detail of this most unnatural episode. She did not run,
because physically she was in the power of these events. Her feet
chained her to the ground in submission to this march of terror after
terror. As she stared at the spot from which this sound seemed to come,
there floated through her mind a vague, sweet vision--a vision of her
safe little room, in which at this hour she usually was sleeping.

The scratching continued faintly and with frequent pauses, as if the
terrier was then listening. When the girl first removed her eyes from
the knot-hole the scene appeared of one velvet blackness; then
gradually objects loomed with a dim lustre. She could see now where the
tops of the trees joined the sky and the form of the barn was before
her dyed in heavy purple. She was ever about to shriek, but no sound
came from her constricted throat. She gazed at the ground with the
expression of countenance of one who watches the sinister-moving grass
where a serpent approaches.

Dimly she saw a piece of sod wrenched free and drawn under the great
foundation-beam of the barn. Once she imagined that she saw human
hands, not outlined at all, but sufficient, in colour, form, or
movement to make subtle suggestion.

Then suddenly a thought that illuminated the entire situation flashed
in her mind like a light. The three men, late of the feed-box, were
beneath the floor of the barn and were now scraping their way under
this beam. She did not consider for a moment how they could come there.
They were marvellous creatures. The supernatural was to be expected of
them. She no longer trembled, for she was possessed upon this instant
of the most unchangeable species of conviction. The evidence before her
amounted to no evidence at all, but nevertheless her opinion grew in an
instant from an irresponsible acorn to a rooted and immovable tree. It
was as if she was on a jury.

She stooped down hastily and scanned the ground. There she indeed saw a
pair of hands hauling at the dirt where the sod had been displaced.
Softly, in a whisper like a breath, she said, "Hey!"

The dim hands were drawn hastily under the barn. The girl reflected for
a moment. Then she stooped and whispered: "Hey! It's me!"

After a time there was a resumption of the digging. The ghostly hands
began once more their cautious mining. She waited. In hollow
reverberations from the interior of the barn came the frequent sounds
of old Santo's lazy movements. The sentry conversed with the prisoner.

At last the girl saw a head thrust slowly from under the beam. She
perceived the face of one of the miraculous soldiers from the feed-box.
A pair of eyes glintered and wavered, then finally settled upon her, a
pale statue of a girl. The eyes became lit with a kind of humorous
greeting. An arm gestured at her.

Stooping, she breathed, "All right." The man drew himself silently back
under the beam. A moment later the pair of hands resumed their cautious
task. Ultimately the head and arms of the man were thrust strangely
from the earth. He was lying on his back. The girl thought of the dirt
in his hair. Wriggling slowly and pushing at the beam above him he
forced his way out of the curious little passage. He twisted his body
and raised himself upon his hands. He grinned at the girl and drew his
feet carefully from under the beam. When he at last stood erect beside
her, he at once began mechanically to brush the dirt from his clothes
with his hands. In the barn the sentry and his prisoner were evidently
engaged in an argument.

The girl and the first miraculous soldier signalled warily. It seemed
that they feared that their arms would make noises in passing through
the air. Their lips moved, conveying dim meanings.

In this sign-language the girl described the situation in the barn.
With guarded motions, she told him of the importance of absolute
stillness. He nodded, and then in the same manner he told her of his
two companions under the barn floor. He informed her again of their
wounded state, and wagged his head to express his despair. He contorted
his face, to tell how sore were their arms; and jabbed the air
mournfully, to express their remote geographical position.

This signalling was interrupted by the sound of a body being dragged or
dragging itself with slow, swishing sound under the barn. The sound was
too loud for safety. They rushed to the hole and began to semaphore
until a shaggy head appeared with rolling eyes and quick grin.

With frantic downward motions of their arms they suppressed this grin
and with it the swishing noise. In dramatic pantomime they informed
this head of the terrible consequences of so much noise. The head
nodded, and painfully, but with extreme care, the second man pushed and
pulled himself from the hole.

In a faint whisper the first man said, "Where's Sim?"

The second man made low reply: "He's right here." He motioned
reassuringly toward the hole.

When the third head appeared, a soft smile of glee came upon each face,
and the mute group exchanged expressive glances.

When they all stood together, free from this tragic barn, they breathed
a long sigh that was contemporaneous with another smile and another
exchange of glances.

One of the men tiptoed to a knot-hole and peered into the barn. The
sentry was at that moment speaking. "Yes, we know 'em all. There isn't
a house in this region that we don't know who is in it most of the
time. We collar 'em once in a while--like we did you. Now, that house
out yonder, we----"

The man suddenly left the knot-hole and returned to the others. Upon
his face, dimly discerned, there was an indication that he had made an
astonishing discovery. The others questioned him with their eyes, but
he simply waved an arm to express his inability to speak at that spot.
He led them back toward the hill, prowling carefully. At a safe
distance from the barn he halted, and as they grouped eagerly about
him, he exploded in an intense undertone: "Why, that--that's Cap'n
Sawyer they got in yonder."

"Cap'n Sawyer!" incredulously whispered the other men.

But the girl had something to ask. "How did you get out of that
feed-box?" He smiled. "Well, when you put us in there, we was just in a
minute when we allowed it wasn't a mighty safe place, and we allowed
we'd get out. And we did. We skedaddled 'round and 'round until it
'peared like we was going to get cotched, and then we flung ourselves
down in the cow-stalls where it's low-like--just dirt floor--and then
we just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks
come. And we didn't know Cap'n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard 'im
discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn't
know that it was him. No, m'm."

These three men, so recently from a situation of peril, seemed suddenly
to have dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at
the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of
more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown
calamity.

"How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?" one whispered mournfully.

"I don't know," replied another in the same tone.

Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the
methods of Fate: "Oh, hell!"

The three men started then as if simultaneously stung, and gazed at the
young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to
make agitated apology: "Pardon, miss! 'Pon my soul, I clean forgot you
was by. 'Deed, and I wouldn't swear like that if I had knowed. 'Deed, I
wouldn't."

The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn.
Suddenly she turned and whispered, "Who is he?"

"He's Cap'n Sawyer, m'm," they told her sorrowfully. "He's our own
cap'n. He's been in command of us yere since a long time. He's got
folks about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting."

She was still for a time, and then, awed, she said: "Will they--will
they hang him?"

"No, m'm. Oh no, m'm. Don't raikon no such thing. No, m'm."

The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no
one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and
turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped
from the barn were now advancing toward it.



V


The girl, waiting in the darkness, expected to hear the sudden crash
and uproar of a fight as soon as the three creeping men should reach
the barn. She reflected in an agony upon the swift disaster that would
befall any enterprise so desperate. She had an impulse to beg them to
come away. The grass rustled in silken movements as she sped toward the
barn.

When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were
gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing,
but she could see nothing.

Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great
stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to
see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knot-hole. The sentry
had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The
prisoner still sat on the feed-box, moodily staring at the floor. The
girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax.
She started when the old horse put down an echoing hoof. She wished the
men would speak; their silence re-enforced the strange aspect. They
might have been two dead men.

The girl felt impelled to look at the corner of the interior where were
the cow-stalls. There was no light there save the appearance of
peculiar grey haze which marked the track of the dimming rays of the
lantern. All else was sombre shadow. At last she saw something move
there. It might have been as small as a rat, or it might have been a
part of something as large as a man. At any rate, it proclaimed that
something in that spot was alive. At one time she saw it plainly, and
at other times it vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her
occasionally to greatly tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and
faint lights. At last, however, she perceived a human head. It was
monstrously dishevelled and wild. It moved slowly forward until its
glance could fall upon the prisoner and then upon the sentry. The
wandering rays caused the eyes to glitter like silver. The girl's heart
pounded so that she put her hand over it.

The sentry and the prisoner remained immovably waxen, and over in the
gloom the head thrust from the floor watched them with its silver eyes.

Finally, the prisoner slipped from the feed-box, and raising his arms,
yawned at great length. "Oh, well," he remarked, "you boys will get a
good licking if you fool around here much longer. That's some
satisfaction, anyhow, even if you did bag me. You'll get a good
walloping." He reflected for a moment, and decided: "I'm sort of
willing to be captured if you fellows only get a d----d good licking
for being so smart."

The sentry looked up and smiled a superior smile. "Licking, hey?
Nixey!" He winked exasperatingly at the prisoner. "You fellows are not
fast enough, my boy. Why didn't you lick us at ----? and at ----? and
at ----?" He named some of the great battles.

To this the captive officer blurted in angry astonishment: "Why, we
did!"

The sentry winked again in profound irony. "Yes, I know you did. Of
course. You whipped us, didn't you? Fine kind of whipping that was!
Why, we----"

He suddenly ceased, smitten mute by a sound that broke the stillness of
the night. It was the sharp crack of a distant shot that made wild
echoes among the hills. It was instantly followed by the hoarse cry of
a human voice, a far-away yell of warning, singing of surprise, peril,
fear of death. A moment later there was a distant, fierce spattering of
shots. The sentry and the prisoner stood facing each other, their lips
apart, listening.

The orchard at that instant awoke to sudden tumult. There were the thud
and scramble and scamper of feet, the mellow, swift clash of arms,
men's voices in question, oath, command, hurried and unhurried,
resolute and frantic. A horse sped along the road at a raging gallop. A
loud voice shouted, "What is it, Ferguson?" Another voice yelled
something incoherent. There was a sharp, discordant chorus of command.
An uproarious volley suddenly rang from the orchard. The prisoner in
grey moved from his intent, listening attitude. Instantly the eyes of
the sentry blazed, and he said with a new and terrible sternness:
"Stand where you are!"

The prisoner trembled in his excitement. Expressions of delight and
triumph bubbled to his lips. "A surprise, by Gawd! Now--now, you'll
see!"

The sentry stolidly swung his carbine to his shoulder. He sighted
carefully along the barrel until it pointed at the prisoner's head,
about at his nose. "Well, I've got you, anyhow. Remember that! Don't
move!"

The prisoner could not keep his arms from nervously gesturing. "I
won't; but----"

"And shut your mouth!"

The three comrades of the sentry flung themselves into view.
"Pete--devil of a row!--can you----"

"I've got him," said the sentry calmly and without moving. It was as if
the barrel of the carbine rested on piers of stone. The three comrades
turned and plunged into the darkness.

In the orchard it seemed as if two gigantic animals were engaged in a
mad, floundering encounter, snarling, howling in a whirling chaos of
noise and motion. In the barn the prisoner and his guard faced each
other in silence.

As for the girl at the knot-hole, the sky had fallen at the beginning
of this clamour. She would not have been astonished to see the stars
swinging from their abodes, and the vegetation, the barn, all blow
away. It was the end of everything, the grand universal murder. When
two of the three miraculous soldiers who formed the original feed-box
corps emerged in detail from the hole under the beam, and slid away
into the darkness, she did no more than glance at them.

Suddenly she recollected the head with silver eyes. She started forward
and again applied her eyes to the knot-hole. Even with the din
resounding from the orchard, from up the road and down the road, from
the heavens and from the deep earth, the central fascination was this
mystic head. There, to her, was the dark god of the tragedy.

The prisoner in grey at this moment burst into a laugh that was no more
than a hysterical gurgle. "Well, you can't hold that gun out for ever!
Pretty soon you'll have to lower it."

The sentry's voice sounded slightly muffled, for his cheek was pressed
against the weapon. "I won't be tired for some time yet."

The girl saw the head slowly rise, the eyes fixed upon the sentry's
face. A tall, black figure slunk across the cow-stalls and vanished
back of old Santo's quarters. She knew what was to come to pass. She
knew this grim thing was upon a terrible mission, and that it would
reappear again at the head of the little passage between Santo's stall
and the wall, almost at the sentry's elbow; and yet when she saw a
faint indication as of a form crouching there, a scream from an utterly
new alarm almost escaped her.

The sentry's arms, after all, were not of granite. He moved restively.
At last he spoke in his even, unchanging tone: "Well, I guess you'll
have to climb into that feed-box. Step back and lift the lid."

"Why, you don't mean----"

"Step back!"

The girl felt a cry of warning arising to her lips as she gazed at this
sentry. She noted every detail of his facial expression. She saw,
moreover, his mass of brown hair bunching disgracefully about his ears,
his clear eyes lit now with a hard, cold light, his forehead puckered
in a mighty scowl, the ring upon the third finger of the left hand.
"Oh, they won't kill him! Surely they won't kill him!" The noise of the
fight in the orchard was the loud music, the thunder and lightning, the
rioting of the tempest which people love during the critical scene of a
tragedy.

When the prisoner moved back in reluctant obedience, he faced for an
instant the entrance of the little passage, and what he saw there must
have been written swiftly, graphically in his eyes. And the sentry read
it and knew then that he was upon the threshold of his death. In a
fraction of time, certain information went from the grim thing in the
passage to the prisoner, and from the prisoner to the sentry. But at
that instant the black formidable figure arose, towered, and made its
leap. A new shadow flashed across the floor when the blow was struck.

As for the girl at the knot-hole, when she returned to sense she found
herself standing with clenched hands and screaming with her might.

As if her reason had again departed from her, she ran around the barn,
in at the door, and flung herself sobbing beside the body of the
soldier in blue.

The uproar of the fight became at last coherent, inasmuch as one party
was giving shouts of supreme exultation. The firing no longer sounded
in crashes; it was now expressed in spiteful crackles, the last words
of the combat, spoken with feminine vindictiveness.

Presently there was a thud of flying feet. A grimy, panting, red-faced
mob of troopers in blue plunged into the barn, became instantly frozen
to attitudes of amazement and rage, and then roared in one great
chorus: "He's gone!"

The girl who knelt beside the body upon the floor turned toward them
her lamenting eyes and cried: "He's not dead, is he? He can't be dead?"

They thronged forward. The sharp lieutenant who had been so particular
about the feed-box knelt by the side of the girl, and laid his head
against the chest of the prostrate soldier. "Why, no," he said, rising
and looking at the man. "He's all right. Some of you boys throw some
water on him."

"Are you sure?" demanded the girl feverishly.

"Of course! He'll be better after awhile."

"Oh!" said she softly, and then looked down at the sentry. She started
to arise, and the lieutenant reached down and hoisted rather awkwardly
at her arm.

"Don't you worry about him. He's all right."

She turned her face with its curving lips and shining eyes once more
toward the unconscious soldier upon the floor. The troopers made a lane
to the door, the lieutenant bowed, the girl vanished.

"Queer," said a young officer. "Girl very clearly worst kind of rebel,
and yet she falls to weeping and wailing like mad over one of her
enemies. Be around in the morning with all sorts of doctoring--you see
if she ain't. Queer."

The sharp lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. After reflection he
shrugged his shoulders again. He said: "War changes many things; but it
doesn't change everything, thank God!"



A MYSTERY OF HEROISM


The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the
incessant wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a
part of the clay bank which shielded them from the shells. On the top
of the hill a battery was arguing in tremendous roars with some other
guns, and to the eye of the infantry, the artillerymen, the guns, the
caissons, the horses, were distinctly outlined upon the blue sky. When
a piece was fired, a red streak as round as a log flashed low in the
heavens, like a monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of the battery
wore white duck trousers, which somehow emphasised their legs: and when
they ran and crowded in little groups at the bidding of the shouting
officers, it was more impressive than usual to the infantry.

Fred Collins, of A Company, was saying: "Thunder, I wisht I had a
drink. Ain't there any water round here?" Then, somebody yelled: "There
goes th' bugler!"

As the eyes of half the regiment swept in one machine-like movement,
there was an instant's picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of
a death-wound and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread
fingers before his face. On the ground was the crimson terror of an
exploding shell, with fibres of flame that seemed like lances. A
glittering bugle swung clear of the rider's back as fell headlong the
horse and the man. In the air was an odour as from a conflagration.

Sometimes they of the infantry looked down at a fair little meadow
which spread at their feet. Its long, green grass was rippling gently
in a breeze. Beyond it was the grey form of a house half torn to pieces
by shells and by the busy axes of soldiers who had pursued firewood.
The line of an old fence was now dimly marked by long weeds and by an
occasional post. A shell had blown the well-house to fragments. Little
lines of grey smoke ribboning upward from some embers indicated the
place where had stood the barn.

From beyond a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some
stupendous scuffle, as if two animals of the size of islands were
fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of
swift-moving men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the crashing of
infantry volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied cheers. In the
midst of it all Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company, were
engaged in a heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions
of the national existence.

The battery on the hill presently engaged in a frightful duel. The
white legs of the gunners scampered this way and that way, and the
officers redoubled their shouts. The guns, with their demeanours of
stolidity and courage, were typical of something infinitely
self-possessed in this clamour of death that swirled around the hill.

One of a "swing" team was suddenly smitten quivering to the ground, and
his maddened brethren dragged his torn body in their struggle to escape
from this turmoil and danger. A young soldier astride one of the
leaders swore and fumed in his saddle, and furiously jerked at the
bridle. An officer screamed out an order so violently that his voice
broke and ended the sentence in a falsetto shriek.

The leading company of the infantry regiment was somewhat exposed, and
the colonel ordered it moved more fully under the shelter of the hill.
There was the clank of steel against steel.

A lieutenant of the battery rode down and passed them, holding his
right arm carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not
at all a part of him, but belonged to another man. His sober and
reflective charger went slowly. The officer's face was grimy and
perspiring, and his uniform was tousled as if he had been in direct
grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared at him. He
turned his horse toward the meadow.

Collins, of A Company, said: "I wisht I had a drink. I bet there's
water in that there ol' well yonder!"

"Yes; but how you goin' to git it?"

For the little meadow which intervened was now suffering a terrible
onslaught of shells. Its green and beautiful calm had vanished utterly.
Brown earth was being flung in monstrous handfuls. And there was a
massacre of the young blades of grass. They were being torn, burned,
obliterated. Some curious fortune of the battle had made this gentle
little meadow the object of the red hate of the shells, and each one as
it exploded seemed like an imprecation in the face of a maiden.

The wounded officer who was riding across this expanse said to himself:
"Why, they couldn't shoot any harder if the whole army was massed here!"

A shell struck the grey ruins of the house, and as, after the roar, the
shattered wall fell in fragments, there was a noise which resembled the
flapping of shutters during a wild gale of winter. Indeed, the infantry
paused in the shelter of the bank appeared as men standing upon a shore
contemplating a madness of the sea. The angel of calamity had under its
glance the battery upon the hill. Fewer white-legged men laboured about
the guns. A shell had smitten one of the pieces, and after the flare,
the smoke, the dust, the wrath of this blow were gone, it was possible
to see white lugs stretched horizontally upon the ground. And at that
interval to the rear, where it is the business of battery horses to
stand with their noses to the fight awaiting the command to drag their
guns out of the destruction, or into it, or wheresoever these
incomprehensible humans demanded with whip and spur--in this line of
passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let
them forget the iron laws of man's control of them--in this rank of
brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the
ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could
see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and
turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward the sky.

Some comrades joked Collins about his thirst. "Well, if yeh want a
drink so bad, why don't yeh go git it?"

"Well, I will in a minnet, if yeh don't shut up!"

A lieutenant of artillery floundered his horse straight down the hill
with as little concern as if it were level ground. As he galloped past
the colonel of the infantry, he threw up his hand in swift salute.
"We've got to get out of that," he roared angrily. He was a
black-bearded officer, and his eyes, which resembled beads, sparkled
like those of an insane man. His jumping horse sped along the column of
infantry.

The fat major, standing carelessly with his sword held horizontally
behind him and with his legs far apart, looked after the receding
horseman and laughed. "He wants to get back with orders pretty quick,
or there'll be no batt'ry left," he observed.

The wise young captain of the second company hazarded to the
lieutenant-colonel that the enemy's infantry would probably soon attack
the hill, and the lieutenant-colonel snubbed him.

A private in one of the rear companies looked out over the meadow, and
then turned to a companion and said, "Look there, Jim!" It was the
wounded officer from the battery, who some time before had started to
ride across the meadow, supporting his right arm carefully with his
left hand. This man had encountered a shell apparently at a time when
no one perceived him, and he could now be seen lying face downward with
a stirruped foot stretched across the body of his dead horse. A leg of
the charger extended slantingly upward precisely as stiff as a stake.
Around this motionless pair the shells still howled.

There was a quarrel in A Company. Collins was shaking his fist in the
faces of some laughing comrades. "Dern yeh! I ain't afraid t' go. If
yeh say much, I will go!"

"Of course, yeh will! You'll run through that there medder, won't yeh?"

Collins said, in a terrible voice: "You see now!" At this ominous
threat his comrades broke into renewed jeers.

Collins gave them a dark scowl, and went to find his captain. The
latter was conversing with the colonel of the regiment.

"Captain," said Collins, saluting and standing at attention--in those
days all trousers bagged at the knees--"Captain, I wan't t' get
permission to go git some water from that there well over yonder!"

The colonel and the captain swung about simultaneously and stared
across the meadow. The captain laughed. "You must be pretty thirsty,
Collins?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"Well--ah," said the captain. After a moment, he asked, "Can't you
wait?"

"No, sir."

The colonel was watching Collins's face. "Look here, my lad," he said,
in a pious sort of a voice--"Look here, my lad"--Collins was not a
lad--"don't you think that's taking pretty big risks for a little drink
of water."

"I dunno," said Collins uncomfortably. Some of the resentment toward
his companions, which perhaps had forced him into this affair, was
beginning to fade. "I dunno wether 'tis."

The colonel and the captain contemplated him for a time.

"Well," said the captain finally.

"Well," said the colonel, "if you want to go, why, go."

Collins saluted. "Much obliged t' yeh."

As he moved away the colonel called after him. "Take some of the other
boys' canteens with you an' hurry back now."

"Yes, sir, I will."

The colonel and the captain looked at each other then, for it had
suddenly occurred that they could not for the life of them tell whether
Collins wanted to go or whether he did not.

They turned to regard Collins, and as they perceived him surrounded by
gesticulating comrades, the colonel said: "Well, by thunder! I guess
he's going."

Collins appeared as a man dreaming. In the midst of the questions, the
advice, the warnings, all the excited talk of his company mates, he
maintained a curious silence.

They were very busy in preparing him for his ordeal. When they
inspected him carefully, it was somewhat like the examination that
grooms give a horse before a race; and they were amazed, staggered by
the whole affair. Their astonishment found vent in strange repetitions.

"Are yeh sure a-goin'?" they demanded again and again.

"Certainly I am," cried Collins at last furiously.

He strode sullenly away from them. He was swinging five or six canteens
by their cords. It seemed that his cap would not remain firmly on his
head, and often he reached and pulled it down over his brow.

There was a general movement in the compact column. The long
animal-like thing moved slightly. Its four hundred eyes were turned
upon the figure of Collins.

"Well, sir, if that ain't th' derndest thing! I never thought Fred
Collins had the blood in him for that kind of business."

"What's he goin' to do, anyhow?"

"He's goin' to that well there after water."

"We ain't dyin' of thirst, are we? That's foolishness."

"Well, somebody put him up to it, an' he's doin' it."

"Say, he must be a desperate cuss."

When Collins faced the meadow and walked away from the regiment, he was
vaguely conscious that a chasm, the deep valley of all prides, was
suddenly between him and his comrades. It was provisional, but the
provision was that he return as a victor. He had blindly been led by
quaint emotions, and laid himself under an obligation to walk squarely
up to the face of death.

But he was not sure that he wished to make a retraction, even if he
could do so without shame. As a matter of truth, he was sure of very
little. He was mainly surprised.

It seemed to him supernaturally strange that he had allowed his mind to
manoeuvre his body into such a situation. He understood that it might
be called dramatically great.

However, he had no full appreciation of anything, excepting that he was
actually conscious of being dazed. He could feel his dulled mid groping
after the form and colour of this incident. He wondered why he did not
feel some keen agony of fear cutting his sense like a knife. He
wondered at this, because human expression had said loudly for
centuries that men should feel afraid of certain things, and that all
men who did not feel this fear were phenomena--heroes.

He was, then, a hero. He suffered that disappointment which we would
all have if we discovered that we were ourselves capable of those deeds
which we most admire in history and legend. This, then, was a hero.
After all, heroes were not much.

No, it could not be true. He was not a hero. Heroes had no shames in
their lives, and, as for him, he remembered borrowing fifteen dollars
from a friend and promising to pay it back the next day, and then
avoiding that friend for ten months. When at home his mother had
aroused him for the early labour of his life on the farm, it had often
been his fashion to be irritable, childish, diabolical; and his mother
had died since he had come to the war.

He saw that, in this matter of the well, the canteens, the shells, he
was an intruder in the land of fine deeds.

He was now about thirty paces from his comrades. The regiment had just
turned its many faces toward him.

From the forest of terrific noises there suddenly emerged a little
uneven line of men. They fired fiercely and rapidly at distant foliage
on which appeared little puffs of white smoke. The spatter of skirmish
firing was added to the thunder of the guns on the hill. The little
line of men ran forward. A colour-sergeant fell flat with his flag as
if he had slipped on ice. There was hoarse cheering from this distant
field.

Collins suddenly felt that two demon fingers were pressed into his
ears. He could see nothing but flying arrows, flaming red. He lurched
from the shock of this explosion, but he made a mad rush for the house,
which he viewed as a man submerged to the neck in a boiling surf might
view the shore. In the air, little pieces of shell howled and the
earthquake explosions drove him insane with the menace of their roar.
As he ran the canteens knocked together with a rhythmical tinkling.

As he neared the house, each detail of the scene became vivid to him.
He was aware of some bricks of the vanished chimney lying on the sod.
There was a door which hung by one hinge.

Rifle bullets called forth by the insistent skirmishers came from the
far-off bank of foliage. They mingled with the shells and the pieces of
shells until the air was torn in all directions by hootings, yells,
howls. The sky was full of fiends who directed all their wild rage at
his head.

When he came to the well, he flung himself face downward and peered
into its darkness. There were furtive silver glintings some feet from
the surface. He grabbed one of the canteens, and, unfastening its cap,
swung it down by the cord. The water flowed slowly in with an indolent
gurgle.

And now as he lay with his face turned away he was suddenly smitten
with the terror. It came upon his heart like the grasp of claws. All
the power faded from his muscles. For an instant he was no more than a
dead man.

The canteen filled with a maddening slowness, in the manner of all
bottles. Presently he recovered his strength and addressed a screaming
oath to it. He leaned over until it seemed as if he intended to try to
push water into it with his hands. His eyes as he gazed down into the
well shone like two pieces of metal, and in their expression was a
great appeal and a great curse. The stupid water derided him.

There was the blaring thunder of a shell. Crimson light shone through
the swift-boiling smoke, and made a pink reflection on part of the wall
of the well. Collins jerked out his arm and canteen with the same
motion that a man would use in withdrawing his head from a furnace.

He scrambled erect and glared and hesitated. On the ground near him lay
the old well bucket, with a length of rusty chain. He lowered it
swiftly into the well. The bucket struck the water and then, turning
lazily over, sank. When, with hand reaching tremblingly over hand, he
hauled it out, it knocked often against the walls of the well and
spilled some of its contents.

In running with a filled bucket, a man can adopt but one kind of gait.
So through this terrible field, over which screamed practical angels of
death, Collins ran in the manner of a farmer chased out of a dairy by a
bull.

His face went staring white with anticipation--anticipation of a blow
that would whirl him around and down. He would fall as he had seen
other men fall, the life knocked out of them so suddenly that their
knees were no more quick to touch the ground than their heads. He saw
the long blue line of the regiment, but his comrades were standing
looking at him from the edge of an impossible star. He was aware of
some deep wheel-ruts and hoof-prints in the sod beneath his feet.

The artillery officer who had fallen in this meadow had been making
groans in the teeth of the tempest of sound. These futile cries,
wrenched from him by his agony, were heard only by shells, bullets.
When wild-eyed Collins came running, this officer raised himself. His
face contorted and blanched from pain, he was about to utter some great
beseeching cry. But suddenly his face straightened and he called:

"Say, young man, give me a drink of water, will you?"

Collins had no room amid his emotions for surprise. He was mad from the
threats of destruction.

"I can't!" he screamed, and in his reply was a full description of his
quaking apprehension. His cap was gone and his hair was riotous. His
clothes made it appear that he had been dragged over the ground by the
heels. He ran on.

The officer's head sank down, and one elbow crooked. His foot in its
brass-bound stirrup still stretched over the body of his horse, and the
other leg was under the steed.

But Collins turned. He came dashing back. His face had now turned grey,
and in his eyes was all terror. "Here it is! here it is!"

The officer was as a man gone in drink. His arm bent like a twig. His
head drooped as if his neck were of willow. He was sinking to the
ground, to lie face downward.

Collins grabbed him by the shoulder. "Here it is. Here's your drink.
Turn over. Turn over, man, for God's sake!"

With Collins hauling at his shoulder, the officer twisted his body and
fell with his face turned toward that region where lived the
unspeakable noises of the swirling missiles. There was the faintest
shadow of a smile on his lips as he looked at Collins. He gave a sigh,
a little primitive breath like that from a child.

Collins tried to hold the bucket steadily, but his shaking hands caused
the water to splash all over the face of the dying man. Then he jerked
it away and ran on.

The regiment gave him a welcoming roar. The grimed faces were wrinkled
in laughter.

His captain waved the bucket away. "Give it to the men!"

The two genial, skylarking young lieutenants were the first to gain
possession of it. They played over it in their fashion.

When one tried to drink the other teasingly knocked his elbow. "Don't,
Billie! You'll make me spill it," said the one. The other laughed.

Suddenly there was an oath, the thud of wood on the ground, and a swift
murmur of astonishment among the ranks. The two lieutenants glared at
each other. The bucket lay on the ground empty.



AN INDIANA CAMPAIGN

I


When the able-bodied citizens of the village formed a company and
marched away to the war, Major Tom Boldin assumed in a manner the
burden of the village cares. Everybody ran to him when they felt
obliged to discuss their affairs. The sorrows of the town were dragged
before him. His little bench at the sunny side of Migglesville tavern
became a sort of an open court where people came to speak resentfully
of their grievances. He accepted his position and struggled manfully
under the load. It behoved him, as a man who had seen the sky red over
the quaint, low cities of Mexico, and the compact Northern bayonets
gleaming on the narrow roads.

One warm summer day the major sat asleep on his little bench. There was
a lull in the tempest of discussion which usually enveloped him. His
cane, by use of which he could make the most tremendous and impressive
gestures, reposed beside him. His hat lay upon the bench, and his old
bald head had swung far forward until his nose actually touched the
first button of his waistcoat.

The sparrows wrangled desperately in the road, defying perspiration.
Once a team went jangling and creaking past, raising a yellow blur of
dust before the soft tones of the field and sky. In the long grass of
the meadow across the road the insects chirped and clacked eternally.

Suddenly a frouzy-headed boy appeared in the roadway, his bare feet
pattering rapidly. He was extremely excited. He gave a shrill whoop as
he discovered the sleeping major and rushed toward him. He created a
terrific panic among some chickens who had been scratching intently
near the major's feet. They clamoured in an insanity of fear, and
rushed hither and thither seeking a way of escape, whereas in reality
all ways lay plainly open to them.

This tumult caused the major to arouse with a sudden little jump of
amazement and apprehension. He rubbed his eyes and gazed about him.
Meanwhile, some clever chicken had discovered a passage to safety, and
led the flock into the garden, where they squawked in sustained alarm.

Panting from his run and choked with terror, the little boy stood
before the major, struggling with a tale that was ever upon the tip of
his tongue.

"Major--now--major----"

The old man, roused from a delicious slumber, glared impatiently at the
little boy. "Come, come! What's th' matter with yeh?" he demanded.
"What's th' matter? Don't stand there shaking! Speak up!"

"Lots is th' matter!" the little boy shouted valiantly, with a courage
born of the importance of his tale. "My ma's chickens 'uz all stole,
an'--now--he's over in th' woods!"

"Who is? Who is over in the woods? Go ahead!"

"Now--th' rebel is!"

"What?" roared the major.

"Th' rebel!" cried the little boy, with the last of his breath.

The major pounced from his bench in tempestuous excitement. He seized
the little boy by the collar and gave him a great jerk. "Where? Are yeh
sure? Who saw 'im? How long ago? Where is he now? Did you see 'im?"

The little boy, frightened at the major's fury, began to sob. After a
moment he managed to stammer: "He--now--he's in the woods. I saw 'im.
He looks uglier'n anythin'."

The major released his hold upon the boy, and pausing for a time,
indulged in a glorious dream. Then he said: "By thunder! we'll ketch
th' cuss. You wait here," he told the boy, "and don't say a word t'
anybody. Do you hear?"

The boy, still weeping, nodded, and the major hurriedly entered the
inn. He took down from its pegs an awkward smooth-bore rifle and
carefully examined the enormous percussion cap that was fitted over the
nipple. Mistrusting the cap, he removed it and replaced it with a new
one. He scrutinised the gun keenly, as if he could judge in this manner
of the condition of the load. All his movements were deliberate and
deadly.

When he arrived upon the porch of the tavern he beheld the yard filled
with people. Peter Witheby, sooty-faced and grinning, was in the van.
He looked at the major. "Well?" he said.

"Well?" returned the major, bridling.

"Well, what's 'che got?" said old Peter.

"'Got?' Got a rebel over in th' woods!" roared the major.

At this sentence the women and boys, who had gathered eagerly about
him, gave vent to startled cries. The women had come from adjacent
houses, but the little boys represented the entire village. They had
miraculously heard the first whisper of rumour, and they performed
wonders in getting to the spot. They clustered around the important
figure of the major and gazed in silent awe. The women, however, burst
forth. At the word "rebel," which represented to them all terrible
things, they deluged the major with questions which were obviously
unanswerable.

He shook them off with violent impatience. Meanwhile Peter Witheby was
trying to force exasperating interrogations through the tumult to the
major's ears. "What? No! Yes! How d' I know?" the maddened veteran
snarled as he struggled with his friends. "No! Yes! What? How in
thunder d' I know?" Upon the steps of the tavern the landlady sat,
weeping forlornly.

At last the major burst through the crowd, and went to the roadway.
There, as they all streamed after him, he turned and faced them. "Now,
look a' here, I don't know any more about this than you do," he told
them forcibly. "All that I know is that there's a rebel over in Smith's
woods, an' all I know is that I'm agoin' after 'im."

"But hol' on a minnet," said old Peter. "How do yeh know he's a rebel?"

"I know he is!" cried the major. "Don't yeh think I know what a rebel
is?"

Then, with a gesture of disdain at the babbling crowd, he marched
determinedly away, his rifle held in the hollow of his arm. At this
heroic moment a new clamour arose, half admiration, half dismay. Old
Peter hobbled after the major, continually repeating, "Hol' on a
minnet."

The little boy who had given the alarm was the centre of a throng of
lads who gazed with envy and awe, discovering in him a new quality. He
held forth to them eloquently. The women stared after the figure of the
major and old Peter, his pursuer. Jerozel Bronson, a half-witted lad
who comprehended nothing save an occasional genial word, leaned against
the fence and grinned like a skull. The major and the pursuer passed
out of view around the turn in the road where the great maples lazily
shook the dust that lay on their leaves.

For a moment the little group of women listened intently as if they
expected to hear a sudden shot and cries from the distance. They looked
at each other, their lips a little way apart. The trees sighed softly
in the heat of the summer sun. The insects in the meadow continued
their monotonous humming, and, somewhere, a hen had been stricken with
fear and was cackling loudly.

Finally, Mrs. Goodwin said: "Well, I'm goin' up to th' turn a' th'
road, anyhow." Mrs. Willets and Mrs. Joe Peterson, her particular
friends, cried out at this temerity, but she said: "Well, I'm goin',
anyhow."

She called Bronson. "Come on, Jerozel. You're a man, an' if he should
chase us, why, you mus' pitch inteh 'im. Hey?"

Bronson always obeyed everybody. He grinned an assent, and went with
her down the road.

A little boy attempted to follow them, but a shrill scream from his
mother made him halt.

The remaining women stood motionless, their eyes fixed upon Mrs.
Goodwin and Jerozel. Then at last one gave a laugh of triumph at her
conquest of caution and fear, and cried: "Well, I'm goin' too!"

Another instantly said, "So am I." There began a general movement. Some
of the little boys had already ventured a hundred feet away from the
main body, and at this unanimous advance they spread out ahead in
little groups. Some recounted terrible stories of rebel ferocity. Their
eyes were large with excitement. The whole thing, with its possible
dangers, had for them a delicious element. Johnnie Peterson, who could
whip any boy present, explained what he would do in case the enemy
should happen to pounce out at him.

The familiar scene suddenly assumed a new aspect. The field of corn,
which met the road upon the left, was no longer a mere field of corn.
It was a darkly mystic place whose recesses could contain all manner of
dangers. The long green leaves, waving in the breeze, rustled from the
passing of men. In the song of the insects there were now omens,
threats.

There was a warning in the enamel blue of the sky, in the stretch of
yellow road, in the very atmosphere. Above the tops of the corn loomed
the distant foliage of Smith's woods, curtaining the silent action of a
tragedy whose horrors they imagined.

The women and the little boys came to a halt, overwhelmed by the
impressiveness of the landscape. They waited silently.

Mrs. Goodwin suddenly said: "I'm goin' back." The others, who all
wished to return, cried at once disdainfully:

"Well, go back, if yeh want to!"

A cricket at the roadside exploded suddenly in his shrill song, and a
woman, who had been standing near, shrieked in startled terror. An
electric movement went through the group of women. They jumped and gave
vent to sudden screams. With the fears still upon their agitated faces,
they turned to berate the one who had shrieked. "My! what a goose you
are, Sallie! Why, it took my breath away. Goodness sakes, don't holler
like that again!"



II


"Hol' on a minnet!" Peter Witheby was crying to the major, as the
latter, full of the importance and dignity of his position as protector
of Migglesville, paced forward swiftly. The veteran already felt upon
his brow a wreath formed of the flowers of gratitude, and as he strode
he was absorbed in planning a calm and self-contained manner of wearing
it. "Hol' on a minnet!" piped old Peter in the rear.

At last the major, aroused from his dream of triumph, turned about
wrathfully. "Well, what?"

"Now, look a' here," said Peter. "What 'che goin' t' do?"

The major, with a gesture of supreme exasperation, wheeled again and
went on. When he arrived at the cornfield he halted and waited for
Peter. He had suddenly felt that indefinable menace in the landscape.

"Well?" demanded Peter, panting.

The major's eyes wavered a trifle. "Well," he repeated--"well, I'm
goin' in there an' bring out that there rebel."

They both paused and studied the gently swaying masses of corn, and
behind them the looming woods, sinister with possible secrets.

"Well," said old Peter.

The major moved uneasily and put his hand to his brow. Peter waited in
obvious expectation.

The major crossed through the grass at the roadside and climbed the
fence. He put both legs over the topmost rail and then sat perched
there, facing the woods. Once he turned his head and asked, "What?"

"I hain't said anythin'," answered Peter.

The major clambered down from the fence and went slowly into the corn,
his gun held in readiness. Peter stood in the road.

Presently the major returned and said, in a cautious whisper: "If yeh
hear anythin', you come a-runnin', will yeh?"

"Well, I hain't got no gun nor nuthin'," said Peter, in the same low
tone; "what good 'ud I do?"

"Well, yeh might come along with me an' watch," said the major. "Four
eyes is better'n two."

"If I had a gun--" began Peter.

"Oh, yeh don't need no gun," interrupted the major, waving his hand:
"All I'm afraid of is that I won't find 'im. My eyes ain't so good as
they was."

"Well--"

"Come along," whispered the major. "Yeh hain't afraid, are yeh?"

"No, but--"

"Well, come along, then. What's th' matter with yeh?"

Peter climbed the fence. He paused on the top rail and took a prolonged
stare at the inscrutable woods. When he joined the major in the
cornfield he said, with a touch of anger:

"Well, you got the gun. Remember that. If he comes for me, I hain't got
a blame thing!"

"Shucks!" answered the major. "He ain't agoin' t' come for yeh."

The two then began a wary journey through the corn. One by one the long
aisles between the rows appeared. As they glanced along each of them it
seemed as if some gruesome thing had just previously vacated it. Old
Peter halted once and whispered: "Say, look a' here;
supposin'--supposin'--"

"Supposin' what?" demanded the major.

"Supposin'--" said Peter. "Well, remember you got th' gun, an' I hain't
got anythin'."

"Thunder!" said the major.

When they got to where the stalks were very short because of the shade
cast by the trees of the wood, they halted again. The leaves were
gently swishing in the breeze. Before them stretched the mystic green
wall of the forest, and there seemed to be in it eyes which followed
each of their movements.

Peter at last said, "I don't believe there's anybody in there."

"Yes, there is, too," said the major. "I'll bet anythin' he's in there."

"How d' yeh know?" asked Peter. "I'll bet he ain't within a mile o'
here."

The major suddenly ejaculated, "Listen!"

They bent forward, scarce breathing, their mouths agape, their eyes
glinting. Finally, the major turned his head. "Did yeh hear that?" he
said hoarsely.

"No," said Peter in a low voice. "What was it?"

The major listened for a moment. Then he turned again. "I thought I
heerd somebody holler!" he explained cautiously.

They both bent forward and listened once more. Peter, in the intentness
of his attitude, lost his balance, and was obliged to lift his foot
hastily and with noise. "S-s-sh!" hissed the major.

After a minute Peter spoke quite loudly: "Oh, shucks! I don't believe
yeh heerd anythin'."

The major made a frantic downward gesture with his hand. "Shet up, will
yeh!" he said in an angry undertone.

Peter became silent for a moment, but presently he said again: "Oh, yeh
didn't hear anythin'."

The major turned to glare at his companion in despair and wrath.

"What's th' matter with yeh? Can't yeh shet up?"

"Oh, this here ain't no use. If you're goin' in after 'im, why don't
yeh go in after 'im?"

"Well, gimme time, can't yeh?" said the major in a growl. And, as if to
add more to this reproach, he climbed the fence that compassed the
woods, looking resentfully back at his companion.

"Well," said Peter, when the major paused.

The major stepped down upon the thick carpet of brown leaves that
stretched under the trees. He turned then to whisper: "You wait here,
will yeh?" His face was red with determination.

"Well, hol' on a minnet!" said Peter. "You--I--we'd better--"

"No," said the major. "You wait here."

He went stealthily into the thickets. Peter watched him until he grew
to be a vague, slow-moving shadow. From time to time he could hear the
leaves crackle and twigs snap under the major's awkward tread. Peter,
intent, breathless, waited for the peal of sudden tragedy. Finally, the
woods grew silent in a solemn and impressive hush that caused Peter to
feel the thumping of his heart. He began to look about him to make sure
that nothing should spring upon him from the sombre shadows. He
scrutinised this cool gloom before him, and at times he thought he
could perceive the moving of swift silent shapes. He concluded that he
had better go back and try to muster some assistance to the major.

As Peter came through the corn, the women in the road caught sight of
the glittering figure and screamed. Many of them began to run. The
little boys, with all their valour, scurried away in clouds. Mrs. Joe
Peterson, however, cast a glance over her shoulders as she, with her
skirts gathered up, was running as best she could. She instantly
stopped and, in tones of deepest scorn, called out to the others, "Why,
it's on'y Pete Witheby!" They came faltering back then, those who had
been naturally swiftest in the race avoiding the eyes of those whose
limbs had enabled them to flee a short distance.

Peter came rapidly, appreciating the glances of vivid interest in the
eyes of the women. To their lightning-like questions, which hit all
sides of the episode, he opposed a new tranquillity, gained from his
sudden ascent in importance. He made no answer to their clamour. When
he had reached the top of the fence he called out commandingly: "Here
you, Johnnie, you and George, run an' git my gun! It's hangin' on th'
pegs over th' bench in th' shop."

At this terrible sentence, a shuddering cry broke from the women. The
boys named sped down the road, accompanied by a retinue of envious
companions.

Peter swung his legs over the rail and faced the woods again. He
twisted his head once to say: "Keep still, can't yeh? Quit scufflin'
aroun'!" They could see by his manner that this was a supreme moment.
The group became motionless and still. Later, Peter turned to say,
"S-s-sh!" to a restless boy, and the air with which he said it smote
them all with awe.

The little boys who had gone after the gun came pattering along
hurriedly, the weapon borne in the midst of them. Each was anxious to
share in the honour. The one who had been delegated to bring it was
bullying and directing his comrades.

Peter said, "S-s-sh!" He took the gun and poised it in readiness to
sweep the cornfield. He scowled at the boys and whispered angrily: "Why
didn't yeh bring th' powder-horn an' th' thing with th' bullets in? I
told yeh t' bring 'em. I'll send somebody else next time."

"Yeh didn't tell us!" cried the two boys shrilly.

"S-s-sh! Quit yeh noise," said Peter, with a violent gesture.

However, this reproof enabled other boys to recover that peace of mind
which they had lost when seeing their friends loaded with honours.

The women had cautiously approached the fence, and, from time to time,
whispered feverish questions; but Peter repulsed them savagely, with an
air of being infinitely bothered by their interference in his intent
watch. They were forced to listen again in silence to the weird and
prophetic chanting of the insects and the mystic silken rustling of the
corn.

At last the thud of hurrying feet in the soft soil of the field came to
their ears. A dark form sped toward them. A wave of a mighty fear swept
over the group, and the screams of the women came hoarsely from their
choked throats. Peter swung madly from his perch, and turned to use the
fence as a rampart.

But it was the major. His face was inflamed and his eyes were glaring.
He clutched his rifle by the middle and swung it wildly. He was
bounding at a great speed for his fat, short body.

"It's all right! it's all right!" he began to yell some distance away.
"It's all right! It's on'y ol' Milt' Jacoby!"

When he arrived at the top of the fence he paused, and mopped his brow.

"What?" they thundered, in an agony of sudden, unreasoning
disappointment.

Mrs. Joe Peterson, who was a distant connection of Milton Jacoby,
thought to forestall any damage to her social position by saying at
once disdainfully, "Drunk, I s'pose!"

"Yep," said the major, still on the fence, and mopping his brow. "Drunk
as a fool. Thunder! I was surprised. I--I--thought it was a rebel,
sure."

The thoughts of all these women wavered for a time. They were at a loss
for precise expression of their emotion. At last, however, they hurled
this superior sentence at the major:

"Well, yeh might have known."



A GREY SLEEVE

I


"It looks as if it might rain this afternoon," remarked the lieutenant
of artillery.

"So it does," the infantry captain assented. He glanced casually at the
sky. When his eyes had lowered to the green-shadowed landscape before
him, he said fretfully: "I wish those fellows out yonder would quit
pelting at us. They've been at it since noon."

At the edge of a grove of maples, across wide fields, there
occasionally appeared little puffs of smoke of a dull hue in this gloom
of sky which expressed an impending rain. The long wave of blue and
steel in the field moved uneasily at the eternal barking of the
far-away sharpshooters, and the men, leaning upon their rifles, stared
at the grove of maples. Once a private turned to borrow some tobacco
from a comrade in the rear rank, but, with his hand still stretched
out, he continued to twist his head and glance at the distant trees. He
was afraid the enemy would shoot him at a time when he was not looking.

Suddenly the artillery officer said: "See what's coming!"

Along the rear of the brigade of infantry a column of cavalry was
sweeping at a hard gallop. A lieutenant, riding some yards to the right
of the column, bawled furiously at the four troopers just at the rear
of the colours. They had lost distance and made a little gap, but at
the shouts of the lieutenant they urged their horses forward. The
bugler, careering along behind the captain of the troop, fought and
tugged like a wrestler to keep his frantic animal from bolting far
ahead of the column.

On the springy turf the innumerable hoofs thundered in a swift storm of
sound. In the brown faces of the troopers their eyes were set like bits
of flashing steel.

The long line of the infantry regiments standing at ease underwent a
sudden movement at the rush of the passing squadron. The foot soldiers
turned their heads to gaze at the torrent of horses and men.

The yellow folds of the flag fluttered back in silken, shuddering
waves, as if it were a reluctant thing. Occasionally a giant spring of
a charger would rear the firm and sturdy figure of a soldier suddenly
head and shoulders above his comrades. Over the noise of the scudding
hoofs could be heard the creaking of leather trappings, the jingle and
clank of steel, and the tense, low-toned commands or appeals of the men
to their horses; and the horses were mad with the headlong sweep of
this movement. Powerful under jaws bent back and straightened, so that
the bits were clamped as rigidly as vices upon the teeth, and
glistening necks arched in desperate resistance to the hands at the
bridles. Swinging their heads in rage at the granite laws of their
lives, which compelled even their angers and their ardours to chosen
directions and chosen faces, their flight was as a flight of harnessed
demons.

The captain's bay kept its pace at the head of the squadron with the
lithe bounds of a thoroughbred, and this horse was proud as a chief at
the roaring trample of his fellows behind him. The captain's glance was
calmly upon the grove of maples whence the sharpshooters of the enemy
had been picking at the blue line. He seemed to be reflecting. He
stolidly rose and fell with the plunges of his horse in all the
indifference of a deacon's figure seated plumply in church. And it
occurred to many of the watching infantry to wonder why this officer
could remain imperturbable and reflective when his squadron was
thundering and swarming behind him like the rushing of a flood.

The column swung in a sabre-curve toward a break in a fence, and dashed
into a roadway. Once a little plank bridge was encountered, and the
sound of the hoofs upon it was like the long roll of many drums. An old
captain in the infantry turned to his first lieutenant and made a
remark, which was a compound of bitter disparagement of cavalry in
general and soldierly admiration of this particular troop.

Suddenly the bugle sounded, and the column halted with a jolting
upheaval amid sharp, brief cries. A moment later the men had tumbled
from their horses, and, carbines in hand, were running in a swarm
toward the grove of maples. In the road one of every four of the
troopers was standing with braced legs, and pulling and hauling at the
bridles of four frenzied horses.

The captain was running awkwardly in his boots. He held his sabre low,
so that the point often threatened to catch in the turf. His yellow
hair ruffled out from under his faded cap. "Go in hard now!" he roared,
in a voice of hoarse fury. His face was violently red.

The troopers threw themselves upon the grove like wolves upon a great
animal. Along the whole front of woods there was the dry crackling of
musketry, with bitter, swift flashes and smoke that writhed like stung
phantoms. The troopers yelled shrilly and spanged bullets low into the
foliage.

For a moment, when near the woods, the line almost halted. The men
struggled and fought for a time like swimmers encountering a powerful
current. Then with a supreme effort they went on again. They dashed
madly at the grove, whose foliage from the high light of the field was
as inscrutable as a wall.

Then suddenly each detail of the calm trees became apparent, and with a
few more frantic leaps the men were in the cool gloom of the woods.
There was a heavy odour as from burned paper. Wisps of grey smoke wound
upward. The men halted and, grimy, perspiring, and puffing, they
searched the recesses of the woods with eager, fierce glances. Figures
could be seen flitting afar off. A dozen carbines rattled at them in an
angry volley.

During this pause the captain strode along the line, his face lit with
a broad smile of contentment. "When he sends this crowd to do anything,
I guess he'll find we do it pretty sharp," he said to the grinning
lieutenant.

"Say, they didn't stand that rush a minute, did they?" said the
subaltern. Both officers were profoundly dusty in their uniforms, and
their faces were soiled like those of two urchins.

Out in the grass behind them were three tumbled and silent forms.

Presently the line moved forward again. The men went from tree to tree
like hunters stalking game. Some at the left of the line fired
occasionally, and those at the right gazed curiously in that direction.
The men still breathed heavily from their scramble across the field.

Of a sudden a trooper halted and said: "Hello! there's a house!" Every
one paused. The men turned to look at their leader.

The captain stretched his neck and swung his head from side to side.
"By George, it is a house!" he said.

Through the wealth of leaves there vaguely loomed the form of a large
white house. These troopers, brown-faced from many days of campaigning,
each feature of them telling of their placid confidence and courage,
were stopped abruptly by the appearance of this house. There was some
subtle suggestion--some tale of an unknown thing--which watched them
from they knew not what part of it.

A rail fence girded a wide lawn of tangled grass. Seven pines stood
along a drive-way which led from two distant posts of a vanished gate.
The blue-clothed troopers moved forward until they stood at the fence
peering over it.

The captain put one hand on the top rail and seemed to be about to
climb the fence, when suddenly he hesitated, and said in a low voice:
"Watson, what do you think of it?"

The lieutenant stared at the house. "Derned if I know!" he replied.

The captain pondered. It happened that the whole company had turned a
gaze of profound awe and doubt upon this edifice which confronted them.
The men were very silent.

At last the captain swore and said: "We are certainly a pack of fools.
Derned old deserted house halting a company of Union cavalry, and
making us gape like babies!"

"Yes, but there's something--something----" insisted the subaltern in a
half stammer.

"Well, if there's 'something--something' in there, I'll get it out,"
said the captain. "Send Sharpe clean around to the other side with
about twelve men, so we will sure bag your 'something--something,' and
I'll take a few of the boys and find out what's in the d----d old
thing!"

He chose the nearest eight men for his "storming party," as the
lieutenant called it. After he had waited some minutes for the others
to get into position, he said "Come ahead" to his eight men, and
climbed the fence.

The brighter light of the tangled lawn made him suddenly feel
tremendously apparent, and he wondered if there could be some mystic
thing in the house which was regarding this approach. His men trudged
silently at his back. They stared at the windows and lost themselves in
deep speculations as to the probability of there being, perhaps, eyes
behind the blinds--malignant eyes, piercing eyes.

Suddenly a corporal in the party gave vent to a startled exclamation,
and half threw his carbine into position. The captain turned quickly,
and the corporal said: "I saw an arm move the blinds--an arm with a
grey sleeve!"

"Don't be a fool, Jones, now," said the captain sharply.

"I swear t'--" began the corporal, but the captain silenced him.

When they arrived at the front of the house, the troopers paused, while
the captain went softly up the front steps. He stood before the large
front door and studied it. Some crickets chirped in the long grass, and
the nearest pine could be heard in its endless sighs. One of the
privates moved uneasily, and his foot crunched the gravel. Suddenly the
captain swore angrily and kicked the door with a loud crash. It flew
open.



II


The bright lights of the day flashed into the old house when the
captain angrily kicked open the door. He was aware of a wide hallway,
carpeted with matting and extending deep into the dwelling. There was
also an old walnut hat-rack and a little marble-topped table with a
vase and two books upon it. Farther back was a great, venerable
fireplace containing dreary ashes.

But directly in front of the captain was a young girl. The flying open
of the door had obviously been an utter astonishment to her, and she
remained transfixed there in the middle of the floor, staring at the
captain with wide eyes.

She was like a child caught at the time of a raid upon the cake. She
wavered to and fro upon her feet, and held her hands behind her. There
were two little points of terror in her eyes, as she gazed up at the
young captain in dusty blue, with his reddish, bronze complexion, his
yellow hair, his bright sabre held threateningly.

These two remained motionless and silent, simply staring at each other
for some moments.

The captain felt his rage fade out of him and leave his mind limp. He
had been violently angry, because this house had made him feel
hesitant, wary. He did not like to be wary. He liked to feel confident,
sure. So he had kicked the door open, and had been prepared, to march
in like a soldier of wrath.

But now he began, for one thing, to wonder if his uniform was so dusty
and old in appearance. Moreover, he had a feeling that his face was
covered with a compound of dust, grime, and perspiration. He took a
step forward and said: "I didn't mean to frighten you." But his voice
was coarse from his battle-howling. It seemed to him to have hempen
fibres in it.

The girl's breath came in little, quick gasps, and she looked at him as
she would have looked at a serpent.

"I didn't mean to frighten you," he said again.

The girl, still with her hands behind her, began to back away.

"Is there any one else in the house?" he went on, while slowly
following her. "I don't wish to disturb you, but we had a fight with
some rebel skirmishers in the woods, and I thought maybe some of them
might have come in here. In fact, I was pretty sure of it. Are there
any of them here?"

The girl looked at him and said, "No!" He wondered why extreme
agitation made the eyes of some women so limpid and bright.

"Who is here besides yourself?"

By this time his pursuit had driven her to the end of the hall, and she
remained there with her back to the wall and her hands still behind
her. When she answered this question, she did not look at him but down
at the floor. She cleared her voice and then said: "There is no one
here."

"No one?"

She lifted her eyes to him in that appeal that the human being must
make even to falling trees, crashing boulders, the sea in a storm, and
said, "No, no, there is no one here." He could plainly see her tremble.

Of a sudden he bethought him that she continually kept her hands behind
her. As he recalled her air when first discovered, he remembered she
appeared precisely as a child detected at one of the crimes of
childhood. Moreover, she had always backed away from him. He thought
now that she was concealing something which was an evidence of the
presence of the enemy in the house.

"What are you holding behind you?" he said suddenly.

She gave a little quick moan, as if some grim hand had throttled her.

"What are you holding behind you?"

"Oh, nothing--please. I am not holding anything behind me; indeed I'm
not."

"Very well. Hold your hands out in front of you, then."

"Oh, indeed, I'm not holding anything behind me. Indeed I'm not."

"Well," he began. Then he paused, and remained for a moment dubious.
Finally, he laughed. "Well, I shall have my men search the house,
anyhow. I'm sorry to trouble you, but I feel sure that there is some
one here whom we want." He turned to the corporal, who with the other
men was gaping quietly in at the door, and said: "Jones, go through the
house."

As for himself, he remained planted in front of the girl, for she
evidently did not dare to move and allow him to see what she held so
carefully behind her back. So she was his prisoner.

The men rummaged around on the ground floor of the house. Sometimes the
captain called to them, "Try that closet," "Is there any cellar?" But
they found no one, and at last they went trooping toward the stairs
which led to the second floor.

But at this movement on the part of the men the girl uttered a cry--a
cry of such fright and appeal that the men paused. "Oh, don't go up
there! Please don't go up there!--ple-ease! There is no one there!
Indeed--indeed there is not! Oh, ple-ease!"

"Go on, Jones," said the captain calmly.

The obedient corporal made a preliminary step, and the girl bounded
toward the stairs with another cry.

As she passed him, the captain caught sight of that which she had
concealed behind her back, and which she had forgotten in this supreme
moment. It was a pistol.

She ran to the first step, and standing there, faced the men, one hand
extended with perpendicular palm, and the other holding the pistol at
her side. "Oh, please, don't go up there! Nobody is there--indeed,
there is not! P-l-e-a-s-e!" Then suddenly she sank swiftly down upon
the step, and, huddling forlornly, began to weep in the agony and with
the convulsive tremors of an infant. The pistol fell from her fingers
and rattled down to the floor.

The astonished troopers looked at their astonished captain. There was a
short silence.

Finally, the captain stooped and picked up the pistol. It was a heavy
weapon of the army pattern. He ascertained that it was empty.

He leaned toward the shaking girl, and said gently: "Will you tell me
what you were going to do with this pistol?"

He had to repeat the question a number of times, but at last a muffled
voice said, "Nothing."

"Nothing!" He insisted quietly upon a further answer. At the tender
tones of the captain's voice, the phlegmatic corporal turned and winked
gravely at the man next to him.

"Won't you tell me?"

The girl shook her head.

"Please tell me!"

The silent privates were moving their feet uneasily and wondering how
long they were to wait.

The captain said: "Please, won't you tell me?"

Then this girl's voice began in stricken tones half coherent, and amid
violent sobbing: "It was grandpa's. He--he--he said he was going to
shoot anybody who came in here--he didn't care if there were thousands
of 'em. And--and I know he would, and I was afraid they'd kill him. And
so--and--so I stole away his pistol--and I was going to hide it when
you--you--you kicked open the door."

The men straightened up and looked at each other. The girl began to
weep again.

The captain mopped his brow. He peered down at the girl. He mopped his
brow again. Suddenly he said: "Ah, don't cry like that."

He moved restlessly and looked down at his boots. He mopped his brow
again.

Then he gripped the corporal by the arm and dragged him some yards back
from the others. "Jones," he said, in an intensely earnest voice, "will
you tell me what in the devil I am going to do?"

The corporal's countenance became illuminated with satisfaction at
being thus requested to advise his superior officer. He adopted an air
of great thought, and finally said: "Well, of course, the feller with
the grey sleeve must be upstairs, and we must get past the girl and up
there somehow. Suppose I take her by the arm and lead her--"

"What!" interrupted the captain from between his clinched teeth. As he
turned away from the corporal, he said fiercely over his shoulder: "You
touch that girl and I'll split your skull!"



III


The corporal looked after his captain with an expression of mingled
amazement, grief, and philosophy. He seemed to be saying to himself
that there unfortunately were times, after all, when one could not rely
upon the most reliable of men. When he returned to the group he found
the captain bending over the girl and saying: "Why is it that you don't
want us to search upstairs?"

The girl's head was buried in her crossed arms. Locks of her hair had
escaped from their fastenings, and these fell upon her shoulder.

"Won't you tell me?"

The corporal here winked again at the man next to him.

"Because," the girl moaned--"because--there isn't anybody up there."

The captain at last said timidly: "Well, I'm afraid--I'm afraid we'll
have to----"

The girl sprang to her feet again, and implored him with her hands. She
looked deep into his eyes with her glance, which was at this time like
that of the fawn when it says to the hunter, "Have mercy upon me!"

These two stood regarding each other. The captain's foot was on the
bottom step, but he seemed to be shrinking. He wore an air of being
deeply wretched and ashamed. There was a silence!

Suddenly the corporal said in a quick, low tone: "Look out, captain!"

All turned their eyes swiftly toward the head of the stairs. There had
appeared there a youth in a grey uniform. He stood looking coolly down
at them. No word was said by the troopers. The girl gave vent to a
little wail of desolation, "O Harry!"

He began slowly to descend the stairs. His right arm was in a white
sling, and there were some fresh blood-stains upon the cloth. His face
was rigid and deathly pale, but his eyes flashed like lights. The girl
was again moaning in an utterly dreary fashion, as the youth came
slowly down toward the silent men in blue.

Six steps from the bottom of the flight he halted and said: "I reckon
it's me you're looking for."

The troopers had crowded forward a trifle and, posed in lithe, nervous
attitudes, were watching him like cats. The captain remained unmoved.
At the youth's question he merely nodded his head and said, "Yes."

The young man in grey looked down at the girl, and then, in the same
even tone which now, however, seemed to vibrate with suppressed fury,
he said: "And is that any reason why you should insult my sister?"

At this sentence, the girl intervened, desperately, between the young
man in grey and the officer in blue. "Oh, don't, Harry, don't! He was
good to me! He was good to me, Harry--indeed he was!"

The youth came on in his quiet, erect fashion, until the girl could
have touched either of the men with her hand, for the captain still
remained with his foot upon the first step. She continually repeated:
"O Harry! O Harry!"

The youth in grey manoeuvred to glare into the captain's face, first
over one shoulder of the girl and then over the other. In a voice that
rang like metal, he said: "You are armed and unwounded, while I have no
weapons and am wounded; but--"

The captain had stepped back and sheathed his sabre. The eyes of these
two men were gleaming fire, but otherwise the captain's countenance was
imperturbable. He said: "You are mistaken. You have no reason to--"

"You lie!"

All save the captain and the youth in grey started in an electric
movement. These two words crackled in the air like shattered glass.
There was a breathless silence.

The captain cleared his throat. His look at the youth contained a
quality of singular and terrible ferocity, but he said in his stolid
tone: "I don't suppose you mean what you say now."

Upon his arm he had felt the pressure of some unconscious little
fingers. The girl was leaning against the wall as if she no longer knew
how to keep her balance, but those fingers--he held his arm very still.
She murmured: "O Harry, don't! He was good to me--indeed he was!"

The corporal had come forward until he in a measure confronted the
youth in grey, for he saw those fingers upon the captain's arm, and he
knew that sometimes very strong men were not able to move hand nor foot
under such conditions.

The youth had suddenly seemed to become weak. He breathed heavily and
clung to the rail. He was glaring at the captain, and apparently
summoning all his will power to combat his weakness. The corporal
addressed him with profound straightforwardness: "Don't you be a derned
fool!" The youth turned toward him so fiercely that the corporal threw
up a knee and an elbow like a boy who expects to be cuffed.

The girl pleaded with the captain. "You won't hurt him, will you? He
don't know what he's saying. He's wounded, you know. Please don't mind
him!"

"I won't touch him," said the captain, with rather extraordinary
earnestness; "don't you worry about him at all. I won't touch him!"

Then he looked at her, and the girl suddenly withdrew her fingers from
his arm.

The corporal contemplated the top of the stairs, and remarked without
surprise: "There's another of 'em coming!"

An old man was clambering down the stairs with much speed. He waved a
cane wildly. "Get out of my house, you thieves! Get out! I won't have
you cross my threshold! Get out!" He mumbled and wagged his head in an
old man's fury. It was plainly his intention to assault them.

And so it occurred that a young girl became engaged in protecting a
stalwart captain, fully armed, and with eight grim troopers at his
back, from the attack of an old man with a walking-stick!

A blush passed over the temples and brow of the captain, and he looked
particularly savage and weary. Despite the girl's efforts, he suddenly
faced the old man.

"Look here," he said distinctly, "we came in because we had been
fighting in the woods yonder, and we concluded that some of the enemy
were in this house, especially when we saw a grey sleeve at the window.
But this young man is wounded, and I have nothing to say to him. I will
even take it for granted that there are no others like him upstairs. We
will go away, leaving your d---d old house just as we found it! And we
are no more thieves and rascals than you are!"

The old man simply roared: "I haven't got a cow nor a pig nor a chicken
on the place! Your soldiers have stolen everything they could carry
away. They have torn down half my fences for firewood. This afternoon
some of your accursed bullets even broke my window panes!"

The girl had been faltering: "Grandpa! O grandpa!"

The captain looked at the girl. She returned his glance from the shadow
of the old man's shoulder. After studying her face a moment, he said:
"Well, we will go now." He strode toward the door, and his men clanked
docilely after him.

At this time there was the sound of harsh cries and rushing footsteps
from without. The door flew open, and a whirlwind composed of
blue-coated troopers came in with a swoop. It was headed by the
lieutenant. "Oh, here you are!" he cried, catching his breath. "We
thought----Oh, look at the girl!"

The captain said intensely: "Shut up, you fool!"

The men settled to a halt with a clash and a bang. There could be heard
the dulled sound of many hoofs outside of the house.

"Did you order up the horses?" inquired the captain.

"Yes. We thought----"

"Well, then, let's get out of here," interrupted the captain morosely.

The men began to filter out into the open air. The youth in grey had
been hanging dismally to the railing of the stairway. He now was
climbing slowly up to the second floor. The old man was addressing
himself directly to the serene corporal.

"Not a chicken on the place!" he cried.

"Well, I didn't take your chickens, did I?"

"No, maybe you didn't, but----"

The captain crossed the hall and stood before the girl in rather a
culprit's fashion. "You are not angry at me, are you?" he asked timidly.

"No," she said. She hesitated a moment, and then suddenly held out her
hand. "You were good to me--and I'm--much obliged."

The captain took her hand, and then he blushed, for he found himself
unable to formulate a sentence that applied in any way to the situation.

She did not seem to heed that hand for a time.

He loosened his grasp presently, for he was ashamed to hold it so long
without saying anything clever. At last, with an air of charging an
intrenched brigade, he contrived to say: "I would rather do anything
than frighten or trouble you."

His brow was warmly perspiring. He had a sense of being hideous in his
dusty uniform and with his grimy face.

She said, "Oh, I'm so glad it was you instead of somebody who might
have--might have hurt brother Harry and grandpa!"

He told her, "I wouldn't have hurt em for anything!"

There was a little silence.

"Well, good-bye!" he said at last.

"Good-bye!"

He walked toward the door past the old man, who was scolding at the
vanishing figure of the corporal. The captain looked back. She had
remained there watching him.

At the bugle's order, the troopers standing beside their horses swung
briskly into the saddle. The lieutenant said to the first sergeant:

"Williams, did they ever meet before?"

"Hanged if I know!"

"Well, say---"

The captain saw a curtain move at one of the windows. He cantered from
his position at the head of the column and steered his horse between
two flower-beds.

"Well, good-bye!"

The squadron trampled slowly past.

"Good-bye!"

They shook hands.

He evidently had something enormously important to say to her, but it
seems that he could not manage it. He struggled heroically. The bay
charger, with his great mystically solemn eyes, looked around the
corner of his shoulder at the girl.

The captain studied a pine tree. The girl inspected the grass beneath
the window. The captain said hoarsely: "I don't suppose--I don't
suppose--I'll ever see you again!"

She looked at him affrightedly and shrank back from the window. He
seemed to have woefully expected a reception of this kind for his
question. He gave her instantly a glance of appeal.

She said: "Why, no, I don't suppose you will."

"Never?"

"Why, no, 'tain't possible. You--you are a--Yankee!"

"Oh, I know it, but----" Eventually he continued: "Well, some day, you
know, when there's no more fighting, we might----" He observed that she
had again withdrawn suddenly into the shadow, so he said: "Well,
good-bye!"

When he held her fingers she bowed her head, and he saw a pink blush
steal over the curves of her cheek and neck.

"Am I never going to see you again?"

She made no reply.

"Never?" he repeated.

After a long time, he bent over to hear a faint reply: "Sometimes--when
there are no troops in the neighbourhood--grandpa don't mind if I--walk
over as far as that old oak tree yonder--in the afternoons."

It appeared that the captain's grip was very strong, for she uttered an
exclamation and looked at her fingers as if she expected to find them
mere fragments. He rode away.

The bay horse leaped a flower-bed. They were almost to the drive, when
the girl uttered a panic-stricken cry.

The captain wheeled his horse violently, and upon his return journey
went straight through a flower-bed.

The girl had clasped her hands. She beseeched him wildly with her eyes.
"Oh, please, don't believe it! I never walk to the old oak tree. Indeed
I don't! I never--never--never walk there."

The bridle drooped on the bay charger's neck. The captain's figure
seemed limp. With an expression of profound dejection and gloom he
stared off at where the leaden sky met the dark green line of the
woods. The long-impending rain began to fall with a mournful patter,
drop and drop. There was a silence.

At last a low voice said, "Well--I might--sometimes I
might--perhaps--but only once in a great while--I might walk to the old
tree--in the afternoons."



THE VETERAN


Out of the low window could be seen three hickory trees placed
irregularly in a meadow that was resplendent in spring-time green.
Farther away, the old, dismal belfry of the village church loomed over
the pines. A horse, meditating in the shade of one of the hickories,
lazily swished his tail. The warm sunshine made an oblong of vivid
yellow on the floor of the grocery.

"Could you see the whites of their eyes?" said the man, who was seated
on a soap box.

"Nothing of the kind," replied old Henry warmly. "Just a lot of
flitting figures, and I let go at where they 'peared to be the
thickest. Bang!"

"Mr. Fleming," said the grocer--his deferential voice expressed somehow
the old man's exact social weight--"Mr. Fleming, you never was
frightened much in them battles, was you?"

The veteran looked down and grinned. Observing his manner, the entire
group tittered. "Well, I guess I was," he answered finally. "Pretty
well scared, sometimes. Why, in my first battle I thought the sky was
falling down. I thought the world was coming to an end. You bet I was
scared."

Every one laughed. Perhaps it seemed strange and rather wonderful to
them that a man should admit the thing, and in the tone of their
laughter there was probably more admiration than if old Fleming had
declared that he had always been a lion. Moreover, they knew that he
had ranked as an orderly sergeant, and so their opinion of his heroism
was fixed. None, to be sure, knew how an orderly sergeant ranked, but
then it was understood to be somewhere just shy of a major-general's
stars. So, when old Henry admitted that he had been frightened, there
was a laugh.

"The trouble was," said the old man, "I thought they were all shooting
at me. Yes, sir, I thought every man in the other army was aiming at me
in particular, and only me. And it seemed so darned unreasonable, you
know. I wanted to explain to 'em what an almighty good fellow I was,
because I thought then they might quit all trying to hit me. But I
couldn't explain, and they kept on being unreasonable--blim!--blam!
bang! So I run!"

Two little triangles of wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes.
Evidently he appreciated some comedy in this recital. Down near his
feet, however, little Jim, his grandson, was visibly horror-stricken.
His hands were clasped nervously, and his eyes were wide with
astonishment at this terrible scandal, his most magnificent grandfather
telling such a thing.

"That was at Chancellorsville. Of course, afterward I got kind of used
to it. A man does. Lots of men, though, seem to feel all right from the
start. I did, as soon as I 'got on to it,' as they say now; but at
first I was pretty well flustered. Now, there was young Jim Conklin,
old Si Conklin's son--that used to keep the tannery--you none of you
recollect him--well, he went into it from the start just as if he was
born to it. But with me it was different. I had to get used to it."

When little Jim walked with his grandfather he was in the habit of
skipping along on the stone pavement, in front of the three stores and
the hotel of the town, and betting that he could avoid the cracks. But
upon this day he walked soberly, with his hand gripping two of his
grandfather's fingers. Sometimes he kicked abstractedly at dandelions
that curved over the walk. Any one could see that he was much troubled.

"There's Sickles's colt over in the medder, Jimmie," said the old man.
"Don't you wish you owned one like him?"

"Um," said the boy, with a strange lack of interest. He continued his
reflections. Then finally he ventured: "Grandpa--now--was that true
what you was telling those men?"

"What?" asked the grandfather. "What was I telling them?"

"Oh, about your running."

"Why, yes, that was true enough, Jimmie. It was my first fight, and
there was an awful lot of noise, you know."

Jimmie seemed dazed that this idol, of its own will, should so totter.
His stout boyish idealism was injured.

Presently the grandfather said: "Sickles's colt is going for a drink.
Don't you wish you owned Sickles's colt, Jimmie?"

The boy merely answered: "He ain't as nice as our'n." He lapsed then
into another moody silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the hired men, a Swede, desired to drive to the county seat for
purposes of his own. The old man loaned a horse and an unwashed buggy.
It appeared later that one of the purposes of the Swede was to get
drunk.

After quelling some boisterous frolic of the farm hands and boys in the
garret, the old man had that night gone peacefully to sleep, when he
was aroused by clamouring at the kitchen door. He grabbed his trousers,
and they waved out behind as he dashed forward. He could hear the voice
of the Swede, screaming and blubbering. He pushed the wooden button,
and, as the door flew open, the Swede, a maniac, stumbled inward,
chattering, weeping, still screaming: "De barn fire! Fire! Fire! De
barn fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!"

There was a swift and indescribable change in the old man. His face
ceased instantly to be a face; it became a mask, a grey thing, with
horror written about the mouth and eyes. He hoarsely shouted at the
foot of the little rickety stairs, and immediately, it seemed, there
came down an avalanche of men. No one knew that during this time the
old lady had been standing in her night-clothes at the bedroom door,
yelling: "What's th' matter? What's th' matter? What's th' matter?"

When they dashed toward the barn it presented to their eyes its usual
appearance, solemn, rather mystic in the black night. The Swede's
lantern was overturned at a point some yards in front of the barn
doors. It contained a wild little conflagration of its own, and even in
their excitement some of those who ran felt a gentle secondary
vibration of the thrifty part of their minds at sight of this
overturned lantern. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a
calamity.

But the cattle in the barn were trampling, trampling, trampling, and
above this noise could be heard a humming like the song of innumerable
bees. The old man hurled aside the great doors, and a yellow flame
leaped out at one corner and sped and wavered frantically up the old
grey wall. It was glad, terrible, this single flame, like the wild
banner of deadly and triumphant foes.

The motley crowd from the garret had come with all the pails of the
farm. They flung themselves upon the well. It was a leisurely old
machine, long dwelling in indolence. It was in the habit of giving out
water with a sort of reluctance. The men stormed at it, cursed it; but
it continued to allow the buckets to be filled only after the wheezy
windlass had howled many protests at the mad-handed men.

With his opened knife in his hand old Fleming himself had gone headlong
into the barn, where the stifling smoke swirled with the air currents,
and where could be heard in its fulness the terrible chorus of the
flames, laden with tones of hate and death, a hymn of wonderful
ferocity.

He flung a blanket over an old mare's head, cut the halter close to the
manger, led the mare to the door, and fairly kicked her out to safety.
He returned with the same blanket, and rescued one of the work horses.
He took five horses out, and then came out himself, with his clothes
bravely on fire. He had no whiskers, and very little hair on his head.
They soused five pailfuls of water on him. His eldest son made a clean
miss with the sixth pailful, because the old man had turned and was
running down the decline and around to the basement of the barn, where
were the stanchions of the cows. Some one noticed at the time that he
ran very lamely, as if one of the frenzied horses had smashed his hip.

The cows, with their heads held in the heavy stanchions, had thrown
themselves, strangled themselves, tangled themselves--done everything
which the ingenuity of their exuberant fear could suggest to them.

Here, as at the well, the same thing happened to every man save one.
Their hands went mad. They became incapable of everything save the
power to rush into dangerous situations.

The old man released the cow nearest the door, and she, blind drunk
with terror, crashed into the Swede. The Swede had been running to and
fro babbling. He carried an empty milk-pail, to which he clung with an
unconscious, fierce enthusiasm. He shrieked like one lost as he went
under the cow's hoofs, and the milk-pail, rolling across the floor,
made a flash of silver in the gloom.

Old Fleming took a fork, beat off the cow, and dragged the paralysed
Swede to the open air. When they had rescued all the cows save one,
which had so fastened herself that she could not be moved an inch, they
returned to the front of the barn, and stood sadly, breathing like men
who had reached the final point of human effort.

Many people had come running. Some one had even gone to the church, and
now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was
a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate
as to the whereabouts of the fire.

The long flames sang their drumming chorus in voices of the heaviest
bass. The wind whirled clouds of smoke and cinders into the faces of
the spectators. The form of the old barn was outlined in black amid
these masses of orange-hued flames.

And then came this Swede again, crying as one who is the weapon of the
sinister fates: "De colts! De colts! You have forgot de colts!"

Old Fleming staggered. It was true: they had forgotten the two colts in
the box-stalls at the back of the barn. "Boys," he said, "I must try to
get 'em out." They clamoured about him then, afraid for him, afraid of
what they should see. Then they talked wildly each to each. "Why, it's
sure death!" "He would never get out!" "Why, it's suicide for a man to
go in there!" Old Fleming stared absent-mindedly at the open doors.
"The poor little things!" he said. He rushed into the barn.

When the roof fell in, a great funnel of smoke swarmed toward the sky,
as if the old man's mighty spirit, released from its body--a little
bottle--had swelled like the genie of fable. The smoke was tinted
rose-hue from the flames, and perhaps the unutterable midnights of the
universe will have no power to daunt the colour of this soul.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Little Regiment, and Other Episodes of the American Civil War" ***

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