“God send our commissary of purchases to live on fire-cake and water.”
Snow blanketed Valley Forge, dampened the lesser camp sounds and made
the crackling-cold air seem doubly severe. A cart, loaded with wood,
crept past the hut, drawn by ten or twelve men hitched to a rope; men
who moved with dreadful slowness, heads bent, feet slipping on the
ground. Here and there fires burned on the brigade street, surrounded
by the feeble and the ragged. An officer rode by--a queer sight with a
counterpane covering him from head to foot and a shawl, wrapped turban
fashion around his head. Alva Jukes stared at these scenes with somber
eyes, his hatchet-faced visage growing more and more pointed.
“What’s become o’ the fire I left burnin’?” he asked. “---- of a crew
you are to let it die!”
“There ain’t no more wood, Serg’nt,” croaked a remote voice. “I give
it the last lick an’ a promise, but it didn’t seem to help. Here’s a
letter fer you--come by the courier a small time back.”
“Hey, a letter?” muttered Jukes. “An’ who’d be writin’ to me?”
He crossed the threshold and met a man’s outstretched hand. Retreating
to the open, he broke the seal and spread the paper before puzzled eyes.
It took some time for him to decipher the illiterate, poorly formed
scrawl, for he had no more education than the common run; but at last he
mastered the sentences, face settling.
D’r son, you been gone 2 years now, ain’t it time to come
hame I ben worrit for y’r helth, the Neely boys went to
war for 3 months an come hame braggin fit to kill. Y’ve
did your share, pa is doin porely, seems he cant get his
wind back after the cold. I never eat but think you must
be starvin. Come hame, y’r lovein mother.
He folded the message and tucked it in his pocket. Some one coughed
spasmodically, ending with a strangled sigh.
“I don’t figger there’d be room left in the hospital er I’d go. Serg’nt,
you better look at Will Cordes; he ain’t answerin’ no questions lately.”
Jukes stepped around a body and knelt in a corner.
“Will, me lad, ’tis a poor time to be sleepin’.” There was no answer and
Jukes’ hand, crossing the man’s face, found it stone cold. “Will,” said
he, sharply, “you’ll be freezin’ unless you move about. Come now.”
He spoke to unheeding ears. His fingers, resting over the flat chest,
found no reassuring movement. He rested on his knees for a long period,
while a dismal silence pervaded the hut.
“I reckon,” said a husky voice, “he’s done passed out, eh, Serg’nt?”
Jukes rose.
“I’ll be gettin’ a buryin’ detail. ’Tis the third from this hut in a
month. Well, he was a strong lad or he’d gone earlier.”
Another voice broke in:
“Jukes, you heard anything ’bout them clothes supposed to be comin’?
Fella told me a ship was in from France with enough to supply the hull
army.”
“Huh,” said Jukes, retreating to the doorway. “All I heard was the
Congress had sent a committee down here to see why we ain’t satisfied.”
“---- the Congress! What’ve they ever done fer us? Yah, sendin’ a
committee! All they do is send committees! Washington could’ve won
this war by now if Congress was anything but a pack o’ shilly-shally
lawyers! Look at poor Will--the boy’d never died if the cursed
Congress had only kep’ us in clo’s an’ vittals. ---- the Congress
fer a pack o’ spineless, jealous rats! They talk fine but they ain’t
got spunk enough to take keer of the army. Better keep their noses
outen this camp or they’ll have no army.”
It was a white-hot indictment, spoken in half hysterical tones. All the
man’s fears, all his outraged emotions, unleashed by the death of a
comrade, went into the diatribe. At the end he was left with his breath
coming in gasps while the others of the hut muttered their approval. He
had spoken the almost unanimous opinion of the army, an army who daily
saw the carts wheeling a dozen bodies like that of the unfortunate Will
Cordes through the streets. Jukes, though possessed of tempestuous
emotions and a stern sense of justice, bridled his feelings with a
sardonic pressure of lips and retreated from the hut.
Turning up the street, he trudged toward the hospital tent, a long, thin
figure with the face and eyes of a malcontent. Nature in forming him had
done him injustice; for he was not as bad nor as ill-disciplined as the
sullenness of mouth and cheek would indicate. The expression was an
inheritance from Covenanting ancestors, people who had never found life
an easy affair. Nevertheless, men gave him the compliment of legends.
His taciturnity in camp and his profane frenzy in battle made him a
known figure throughout the brigade.
He reached the hospital hut, left a report of the dead man and retraced
his way through the snow, observing here and there footprints edged
with crimson. It made him all the more bitter-eyed and his sharp nose
sank nearer his chest. He passed several fires and came again to his
own cheerless hut. He tarried only long enough to take an ax leaning by
the door and went on, aiming for a stand of timber beyond the brigade
street.
A certain shapely tree drew him through a deep snowdrift. Getting a
position knee deep in the snow, he sank the bitt of the ax into the
bark and sent the chips flying.
“Guess paw must be doin’ poorly,” he muttered, between blows. “Else
why should maw be spendin’ money on a letter? That cussed Bige done
said he’d provide fer ’em while I was gone.”
But then Bige was only a shiftless cousin, too afraid of his own skin to
join the army, and perhaps two years’ providing for the family had set
him to grumbling. Born grumblers, all the Jukes. He balanced the ax and
measured the fall of the tree; he too, he decided, was a grumbler.
His labor was arrested by a sudden disturbance in the street. A
lieutenant strode along the line of huts shouting:
“Turn out, men! Turn out for grand parade! Turn out, Pennsylvania!”
Jukes stared at the graying sky and left the bitt of the ax buried in
the tree, determining to finish the chore when he had returned from
parade. Floundering through the drift, he reached the street, only to
be assailed by an entirely new and unexpected commotion. The men were
turning out, no doubt, of that; but they were coming not with muskets
and belts, nor in the usual lethargic manner. They emerged from the
huts bearing pots and pans, beating them together, sending a racket
toward the leaden sky and breaking into a chant that, started by one
voice, was immediately taken up by others until the camp rang with
it.
“No meat, no soldier! No bread, no parade! Poor Dick a-freezin’! No
meat, no soldier!”
The officer raised his arms futilely while the ragged soldiers made a
ring around him. At every instant fresh voices joined the chorus and
more pans swelled the tumult. Jukes, elbowing his way to the fore of
the circle, saw angry faces, sick faces, faces that were flushed and
faces that were ghastly white.
The whole affair had an undertone of desperation; they were not men
revolting from discipline; they were men who had very nearly reached
the limit of endurance. Ill, discouraged, and brooding over the
obvious injustices done to them, one man’s catch-phrase had set them
off. Jukes’ temper flamed in sympathy. He reached the center of the
throng in time to hear the lieutenant, an angry and puzzled man,
sing out:
“Stop it, men! D’you want to turn this camp upside down? ---- of an
example we’ll make for other regiments. Stop the infernal racket!”
He was too young to command influence and his words were drowned by the
redoubled cry:
“No meat, no soldier! No more fire-cake an’ water!”
One side of the ring parted precipitately and four horsemen, led by a
plump brigadier with ruddy cheeks, forced a path to the center. The
brigadier leaned over to catch the lieutenant’s words. And then as
suddenly as all this racket had begun it subsided, leaving the crowd
moving uneasily, some exhausted, others implacably rooted to their
places. The brigadier’s face was very solemn, and when he spoke it
was not in anger but with compassionate gravity.
“You do yourselves ill, gentlemen,” said he, “to create such a
disturbance. Must we win battles from the enemy and lose them among
ourselves? Fie that there should be such dissension! Come now, what’s
the root of all this?”
The silence was so heavy that the crackling of wood on a near-by fire
echoed like gunshots in the frosty air. A voice sang out--
“Jemmy Rice, you speak for us.”
Jukes waited several moments to hear the man’s voice. At last he turned
and sought through the crowd until his eyes fell upon Rice--a tumultuous
character of his own company who had the readiest tongue for grievances
in all the camp. But Jemmy Rice was silent now in face of the brigadier.
For this was akin to mutiny and he had no stomach to put himself up as a
ringleader to be shot.
Jukes, waiting further, closed his fist and took a pace forward where
the brigadier’s searching eyes might find him. The wild rush of feeling
that sprang upward, had it been allowed to escape, would have sent a
torrent of angry words upon the officer. Jukes checked it, lips turning
thin from the effort. His somber face met the brigadier not defiantly
but as an equal speaking to an equal.
“A man died in my hut this afternoon fer lack o’ food an’ lack o’
blankets. Died on the ground with nary a straw beneath him. There’s
four others in that hut an’ none fit to be abroad. _That’s_ what we
raise Cain about.”
The brigadier inclined his head.
“I am aware of the misfortunes of this camp. Every officer worth a
grain of salt is aware of them. Don’t you think we spend our days
trying to make conditions a little better? But what help d’you expect
by this conduct?”
Jukes, looking beyond the brigadier, caught sight of his captain, an
angry man indeed that one of his own company should be spokesman of
rebellion. He squared his shoulders and proceeded:
“We ain’t doubtin’ your efforts. But it don’t seem in the power o’
officers to help us, so we try raisin’ our own voices. We ain’t had meat
fer six days. Last rations o’ bread were plumb moldy. Clothes--well, we
don’t expect none, never havin’ had an issue since October. There’s half
o’ this company in the hospital an’ more waitin’ to get in when beds are
empty. As fer pay, I ain’t seen a scrap o’ money fer fourteen months.
Now we hear there’s a committee of the Congress comin’ down to see why
we ain’t satisfied. Well, sir, God grant they come to this company fer
information!”
The swelling echo behind him told Jukes he had spoken the brigade’s
mind. The captain’s face was black as thunder but the brigadier never
changed a whit.
“You are mild enough. Were I inclined I could add to that tale of
misfortune and make it darker still. Gentlemen, your grievances are
my own. But it will never do to break down like this. It only gives
our enemies a chance to strengthen their position. Nothing will ever
convince me you are the kind to sully your honor by sedition. I want
you all to disperse to your huts. Meanwhile I may tell you there is
at this moment wagon-trains bound for camp with warm clothes and
fresh beef. Now, gentlemen, retire to your quarters.”
The brigadier, looking over their thoughtful countenances, knew he had
broken the back of resistance. They had given his words attention and
that meant they were still reasonable. Being a kindly man, he clinched
his victory with mildness.
“Many of you are very weak. Considering that, we will omit grand parade
tonight. The guards will be posted informally.”
The men broke from the ring one by one, slowly returning to their huts.
The brigadier and his staff rode away. Jukes, profoundly affected,
trudged down the street, breasted the snow bank and caught the handle of
his ax. A dozen blows brought the tree down and he set to cutting off
branches and sections. Perhaps a half-hour passed at this occupation and
the gray dusk fell without warning while he meditated over the plight of
his comrades. His recent speech had made him aware of his own personal
troubles, too, and as he chopped at the log he thought again of his
folks at home.
“That Bige,” he muttered, “allus was a no-’count. As fer them braggin’
Neely boys, they never was worth powder to blow ’em up. Paw must be
doin’ poorly.”
He drove the ax into the log and loaded his arms with split wood.
Stumbling back to the hut, he began shaving a stick of kindling. He
built a teepee of the splinters and went to the adjoining fire for a
burning brand to start his own blaze. A flame shot upward and caught
the sticks. Some one in the hut called to him:
“That you, Jukes? Didn’t you see the notice?”
Jukes piled more wood on the fire.
“What notice?”
“Fella come down from captain’s quarters with a notice an’ posted it to
our hut while you was gone. Better see what it says.”
Jukes took up a flaming branch and carried it to the hut wall. There,
stuck to a log where the company orders were usually put, he found the
following announcement, written in the clerk’s bold hand:
From this day Jem Rice will be sergeant of the company,
taking place of Alva Jukes, returned to the ranks.
--Fleming, Captain.
He stood there for a long time, reading the notice thrice over, making
sure of its import. The captain’s dark, angry glance had borne fruit
and he, Alva Jukes, was to lose the tabard of authority he had won by
his own reckless effort. To lose it for speaking nothing but truth;
and, what was more unfair, to lose it to a man who had not the courage
of his beliefs.
The wild, Scotch-Irish rage gave power to his hand. The burning stick
smashed against the notice and sputtered, lighting and consuming the
paper.
“Let ’em fight their own war, then!” he cried, ducking into the hut.
“I’ve done my share!” He went to his corner of the gloomy place,
rolled together his bundle of belongings and took his rifle. Going
out, he stopped to add fresh fuel to the fire. “Better come an’ take
care o’ this now,” he called back.
Ploughing through the snow, he was swallowed by the night. But he hadn’t
gone twenty yards before he stopped, put down his rifle and bundle and
went back to the fallen tree. He collected another armful of wood and
packed it to the fire, grumbling--
“Ain’t a blessed one o’ them boys able to lift a stick.”
A moment later he had vanished again, turning his course to pass the
pickets, bound homeward, a deserter from Valley Forge.
The farther he traveled the more powerfully did the bitter resentment
affect him. At last he cried out to the black winter sky.
“May the Lord strike me dead if ever I see the army again. ---- the
Congress! Let ’em fight fer their own freedom if they’re so sot on it.
A pack o’ shilly-shally lawyers an’ argufyers!”
* * * * *
He was a tough, canny fellow, Alva Jukes, and capable of sustaining
himself through hard affairs. That night, a great deal later, he turned
off the road and slept in a barn. At the first crack of day he was away,
bearing in his pouch two ears of dried corn, which was his only food for
the next ten hours. His course led him northwesterly along a pike,
aiming straight for the backwoods part of the State, toward that land he
had left better than two years before.
As he traveled he kept good watch behind for patrols that swept the
environs of Valley Forge. He was not of a mind to be taken and marched
back before a summary court. And so it was that, when his eyes spied
horsemen coming along the road, he dropped into a stand of trees and
let them pass. They were a few officers on a reconnoitering party and
after they vanished around a bend he came from concealment.
At the joining of highways some distance farther along, he chose the
lesser used route and soon was slogging through drifts of snow. The sky
was lowering and beyond noon the flakes began to drift slantwise through
the air. It was about this time, too, that he considered himself removed
sufficiently from the army to abandon his precaution and to give all his
attention to the road ahead.
The fact that he had left camp without leave bothered his conscience
not at all. He was only doing what hundreds of others had done before
him. Indeed, members of that army regarded their enlistment agreements
as flexible contracts.
Active campaigning kept them together, but when winter set in and the
chance of battle was remote they sat before their fires and listened to
the call of the home people who needed their help. Then the brigades
dwindled. Jukes, bending against the drifts, defended his course with
arguments that seemed to him perfectly valid.
“Two years ’thout a single leave,” said he. “Ain’t that enough fer one
man? Let some o’ these proud fire-eaters at home try their luck. I done
my share.”
He was shrewd enough to know that there were many thousands of
able-bodied citizens who had never answered the call to colors and
who were perfectly content to let others do their share of fighting.
To men of Jukes’ nature, endowed with a keen sense of justice, this
was only an added argument as to the propriety of his act. He had
done far more than his share. Now let some other take his place.
Even so, his thoughts turned now and then, as the afternoon advanced
and he found himself in strange country, to that dark and miserable
hut where his comrades rested, all but helpless.
“I reckon there’ll be grand parade tonight,” he mused. “Well, there
won’t be many turnin’ out fer it. No they won’t. An’ I bet they let
the fire die again. As fer poor Will Cordes--the cussed Congress c’n
take the blame fer that.”
The graying shadows came again, flecked by softly falling snow. Here
and there, at wide intervals on the road, he passed farmhouses with
lights gleaming through the windows and sparks showering from chimneys.
He might have turned in and asked shelter, but a stubborn pride kept
him away. He was not a straggler, nor could he stomach the thought of
begging at doors. He trudged on, waiting for dark to come that he might
crawl into a barn overnight.
His keen ears caught the sound of hoofs and he turned to find a
solitary figure riding out of a side road and turning his way. Jukes
resumed his march, stolidly indifferent. Nor did he cast another
glance behind, although he heard the traveler coming nearer; instead,
he took the side of the highway, prepared to let the other pass. The
traveler came abreast and reined in, speaking courteously.
“A bad day to be afoot, sir.”
Jukes shifted his gun to the other shoulder and looked up to see a
plump, benign face. The man was of a quality, a country squire, well
dressed and bearing with him a pride of place. A pair of blue eyes
beamed from beneath bushy brows, singularly penetrating eyes. Jukes
felt the full weight of their scrutiny and was roused to sudden
watchfulness.
“I’ve marched in worse times,” said he, noncommittally, still holding
aside to let the man pass.
But the elderly gentleman was of a social nature.
“Doubtless you come from Valley Forge,” he suggested. “Going home,
possibly, on leave.”
“Take it that way,” assented Jukes, not entirely pleased at the
deception but considering it the better policy.
The elderly gentleman looked at the forbidding sky.
“It will snow heavily all night. You had better take shelter soon.
There’s a tavern a mile down the road. You’ll find it agreeable.”
“Tavern,” grunted Jukes. “Where’d you figger I’d get money to spend in a
tavern? I ain’t been paid in fourteen months.”
“But you most assuredly can’t sleep in the open,” protested the squire.
“It’s devilish cold these nights.”
Jukes looked at the man’s fine clothes with sudden resentment.
“I’ve slept in worse. An’ there’s plenty o’ barns along the way.”
“Nonsense. Let it not be said of Pennsylvania that she neglected her
soldiers. We’ll stop at the tavern and I shall have the fellow take
care of you overnight. Consider yourself as my guest.”
“And who,” demanded Jukes, “might you be?”
“I, sir, am St. Louis Cotton, of Cotton Hall and member of the
Pennsylvania Assembly.”
“A lawyer of the Congress?” demanded Jukes, flinging up his head.
“Not of the Continental Congress. I have not that honor. But of the
Pennsylvania Assembly.”
The distinction was not fine enough to check Jukes’ animosity. Here was
one of the gentry who debated and dallied and broke their promises and
appointed futile committees while the army starved.
“---- your hospitality!” he cried. “I take nothin’ from shilly-shally
lawyers. ’Tis your kind that makes misery fer the army. ’Tis you who
eat well an’ sleep warm while the rest o’ us go without!”
St. Louis Cotton, esquire, sat bolt upright in the saddle and blew
through his nose.
“That is cursed impertinence, sir. I offer you the gratitude of a State
and you answer it like a wagon-master. I see you are another of those
infested with disrespect for the people’s legislatures. There is some
sinister influence at work amongst you.”
“Influence o’ an empty belly,” retorted Jukes. “An’ what do you fine
gentlemen accomplish, I’d like to know? When we ask fer vittals an’
food we get smart promises. We starve an’ you tell us we eat too
much meat anyway. You’re a pack o’ scoundrels an’ the country’d be
better without you! ’Tis no credit due you General Washington wins
his battles!”
The squire held his peace and Jukes, looking upward through the fast
thickening dusk, could make out the ruddy face screwed to the point
of apoplexy.
“Fire away, old man,” he added contemptuously. “Give us some o’ them
pretty words you use so nice on committees.”