"On the road leading 'back to God's country' and wife and babies."
I
The nearer the train drew toward La Crosse, the soberer the little group
of "vets" became. On the long way from New Orleans they had beguiled
tedium with jokes and friendly chaff; or with planning with elaborate
detail what they were going to do now, after the war. A long journey,
slowly, irregularly, yet persistently pushing northward. When they
entered on Wisconsin territory they gave a cheer, and another when they
reached Madison, but after that they sank into a dumb expectancy.
Comrades dropped off at one or two points beyond, until there were only
four or five left who were bound for La Crosse County.
Three of them were gaunt and brown, the fourth was gaunt and pale, with
signs of fever and ague upon him. One had a great scar down his temple,
one limped, and they all had unnaturally large, bright eyes, showing
emaciation. There were no bands greeting them at the stations, no banks
of gayly dressed ladies waving handkerchiefs and shouting "Bravo!" as
they came in on the caboose of a freight train into the towns that had
cheered and blared at them on their way to war. As they looked out or
stepped upon the platform for a moment, while the train stood at the
station, the loafers looked at them indifferently. Their blue coats,
dusty and grimy, were too familiar now to excite notice, much less a
friendly word. They were the last of the army to return, and the loafers
were surfeited with such sights.
The train jogged forward so slowly that it seemed likely to be midnight
before they should reach La Crosse. The little squad grumbled and swore,
but it was no use; the train would not hurry, and, as a matter of fact,
it was nearly two o'clock when the engine whistled "down brakes."
All of the group were farmers, living in districts several miles out of
the town, and all were poor.
"Now, boys," said Private Smith, he of the fever and ague, "we are
landed in La Crosse in the night. We've got to stay somewhere till
mornin'. Now I ain't got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I've got a
wife and children, so I'm goin' to roost on a bench and take the cost of
a bed out of my hide."
"Same here," put in one of the other men. "Hide'll grow on again,
dollars'll come hard. It's goin' to be mighty hot skirmishin' to find a
dollar these days."
"Don't think they'll be a deputation of citizens waitin' to 'scort us to
a hotel, eh?" said another. His sarcasm was too obvious to require an
answer.
Smith went on, "Then at daybreak we'll start for home--at least, I
will."
"Well, I'll be dummed if I'll take two dollars out o' my hide," one of
the younger men said. "I'm goin' to a hotel, ef I don't never lay up a
cent."
"That'll do f'r you," said Smith; "but if you had a wife an' three young
uns dependin' on yeh--"
"Which I ain't, thank the Lord! and don't intend havin' while the court
knows itself."
The station was deserted, chill, and dark, as they came into it at
exactly a quarter to two in the morning. Lit by the oil lamps that
flared a dull red light over the dingy benches, the waiting room was not
an inviting place. The younger man went off to look up a hotel, while
the rest remained and prepared to camp down on the floor and benches.
Smith was attended to tenderly by the other men, who spread their
blankets on the bench for him, and, by robbing themselves, made quite a
comfortable bed, though the narrowness of the bench made his sleeping
precarious.
It was chill, though August, and the two men, sitting with bowed heads,
grew stiff with cold and weariness, and were forced to rise now and
again and walk about to warm their stiffened limbs. It did not occur to
them, probably, to contrast their coming home with their going forth, or
with the coming home of the generals, colonels, or even captains--but to
Private Smith, at any rate, there came a sickness at heart almost deadly
as he lay there on his hard bed and went over his situation.
In the deep of the night, lying on a board in the town where he had
enlisted three years ago, all elation and enthusiasm gone out of him, he
faced the fact that with the joy of home-coming was already mingled the
bitter juice of care. He saw himself sick, worn out, taking up the work
on his half-cleared farm, the inevitable mortgage standing ready with
open jaw to swallow half his earnings. He had given three years of his
life for a mere pittance of pay, and now!--
Morning dawned at last, slowly, with a pale yellow dome of light rising
silently above the bluffs, which stand like some huge storm-devastated
castle, just east of the city. Out to the left the great river swept on
its massive yet silent way to the south. Bluejays called across the
water from hillside to hillside through the clear, beautiful air, and
hawks began to skim the tops of the hills. The older men were astir
early, but Private Smith had fallen at last into a sleep, and they went
out without waking him. He lay on his knapsack, his gaunt face turned
toward the ceiling, his hands clasped on his breast, with a curious
pathetic effect of weakness and appeal.
An engine switching near woke him at last, and he slowly sat up and
stared about. He looked out of the window and saw that the sun was
lightening the hills across the river. He rose and brushed his hair as
well as he could, folded his blankets up, and went out to find his
companions. They stood gazing silently at the river and at the hills.
"Looks natcher'l, don't it?" they said, as he came out.
"That's what it does," he replied. "An' it looks good. D 'yeh see that
peak?" He pointed at a beautiful symmetrical peak, rising like a
slightly truncated cone, so high that it seemed the very highest of them
all. It was touched by the morning sun and it glowed like a beacon, and
a light scarf of gray morning fog was rolling up its shadowed side.
"My farm's just beyond that. Now, if I can only ketch a ride, we'll be
home by dinner-time."
"I'm talkin' about breakfast," said one of the others.
"I guess it's one more meal o' hardtack f'r me," said Smith.
They foraged around, and finally found a restaurant with a sleepy old
German behind the counter, and procured some coffee, which they drank to
wash down their hardtack.
"Time'll come," said Smith, holding up a piece by the corner, "when
this'll be a curiosity."
"I hope to God it will! I bet I've chawed hardtack enough to shingle
every house in the coolly. I've chawed it when my lampers was down, and
when they wasn't. I've took it dry, soaked, and mashed. I've had it
wormy, musty, sour, and blue-mouldy. I've had it in little bits and big
bits; 'fore coffee an' after coffee. I'm ready f'r a change. I'd like t'
git holt jest about now o' some of the hot biscuits my wife c'n make
when she lays herself out f'r company."
"Well, if you set there gabblin', you'll never see yer wife."
"Come on," said Private Smith. "Wait a moment, boys; less take suthin'.
It's on me." He led them to the rusty tin dipper which hung on a nail
beside the wooden water-pail, and they grinned and drank. Then
shouldering their blankets and muskets, which they were "takin' home to
the boys," they struck out on their last march.
"They called that coffee Jayvy," grumbled one of them, "but it never
went by the road where government Jayvy resides. I reckon I know coffee
from peas."
They kept together on the road along the turnpike, and up the winding
road by the river, which they followed for some miles. The river was
very lovely, curving down along its sandy beds, pausing now and then
under broad basswood trees, or running in dark, swift, silent currents
under tangles of wild grapevines, and drooping alders, and haw trees.
At one of these lovely spots the three vets sat down on the thick green
sward to rest, "on Smith's account." The leaves of the trees were as
fresh and green as in June, the jays called cheery greetings to them,
and kingfishers darted to and fro with swooping, noiseless flight.
"I tell yeh, boys, this knocks the swamps of Loueesiana into kingdom
come."
"You bet. All they c'n raise down there is snakes, niggers, and
p'rticler hell."
"An' fightin' men," put in the older man.
"An' fightin' men. If I had a good hook an' line I'd sneak a pick'rel
out o' that pond. Say, remember that time I shot that alligator--"
"I guess we'd better be crawlin' along," interrupted Smith, rising and
shouldering his knapsack, with considerable effort, which he tried to
hide.
"Say, Smith, lemme give you a lift on that."
"I guess I c'n manage," said Smith, grimly.
"Course. But, yo' see, I may not have a chance right off to pay yeh back
for the times you've carried my gun and hull caboodle. Say, now, gimme
that gun, anyway."
"All right, if yeh feel like it, Jim," Smith replied, and they trudged
along doggedly in the sun, which was getting higher and hotter each
half-mile.
"Ain't it queer there ain't no teams comin' along," said Smith, after a
long silence.
"Well, no, seein's it's Sunday."
"By jinks, that's a fact! It is Sunday. I'll git home in time f'r
dinner, sure!" he exulted. "She don't hev dinner usially till about one
on Sundays." And he fell into a muse, in which he smiled.
"Well, I'll git home jest about six o'clock, jest about when the boys
are milkin' the cows," said old Jim Cranby. "I'll step into the barn,
an' then I'll say: 'Heah! why ain't this milkin' done before this time
o' day?' An' then won't they yell!" he added, slapping his thigh in
great glee.
Smith went on. "I'll jest go up the path. Old Rover'll come down the
road to meet me. He won't bark; he'll know me, an' he'll come down
waggin' his tail an' showin' his teeth. That's his way of laughin'. An'
so I'll walk up to the kitchen door, an' I'll say, 'Dinner f'r a hungry
man!' An' then she'll jump up, an'--"
He couldn't go on. His voice choked at the thought of it. Saunders, the
third man, hardly uttered a word, but walked silently behind the others.
He had lost his wife the first year he was in the army. She died of
pneumonia, caught in the autumn rains while working in the fields in his
place.
They plodded along till at last they came to a parting of the ways. To
the right the road continued up the main valley; to the left it went
over the big ridge.
"Well, boys," began Smith, as they grounded their muskets and looked
away up the valley, "here's where we shake hands. We've marched together
a good many miles, an' now I s'pose we're done."
"Yes, I don't think we'll do any more of it f'r a while. I don't want
to, I know."
"I hope I'll see yeh once in a while, boys, to talk over old times."
"Of course," said Saunders, whose voice trembled a little, too. "It
ain't exactly like dyin'." They all found it hard to look at each other.
"But we'd ought'r go home with you," said Cranby. "You'll never climb
that ridge with all them things on yer back."
"Oh, I'm all right! Don't worry about me. Every step takes me nearer
home, yeh see. Well, good-by, boys."