"Same to you. Lemme know how you find things at home."
"Good-by."
"Good-by."
He turned once before they passed out of sight, and waved his cap, and
they did the same, and all yelled. Then all marched away with their
long, steady, loping, veteran step. The solitary climber in blue walked
on for a time, with his mind filled with the kindness of his comrades,
and musing upon the many wonderful days they had had together in camp
and field.
He thought of his chum, Billy Tripp. Poor Billy! A "minie" ball fell
into his breast one day, fell wailing like a cat, and tore a great
ragged hole in his heart. He looked forward to a sad scene with Billy's
mother and sweetheart. They would want to know all about it. He tried to
recall all that Billy had said, and the particulars of it, but there was
little to remember, just that wild wailing sound high in the air, a dull
slap, a short, quick, expulsive groan, and the boy lay with his face in
the dirt in the ploughed field they were marching across.
That was all. But all the scenes he had since been through had not
dimmed the horror, the terror of that moment, when his boy comrade fell,
with only a breath between a laugh and a death-groan. Poor handsome
Billy! Worth millions of dollars was his young life.
These sombre recollections gave way at length to more cheerful feelings
as he began to approach his home coolly. The fields and houses grew
familiar, and in one or two he was greeted by people seated in the
doorway. But he was in no mood to talk, and pushed on steadily, though
he stopped and accepted a drink of milk once at the well-side of a
neighbor.
The sun was getting hot on that slope, and his step grew slower, in
spite of his iron resolution. He sat down several times to rest. Slowly
he crawled up the rough, reddish-brown road, which wound along the
hillside, under great trees, through dense groves of jack oaks, with
tree-tops far below him on his left hand, and the hills far above him on
his right. He crawled along like some minute, wingless variety of fly.
He ate some hardtack, sauced with wild berries, when he reached the
summit of the ridge, and sat there for some time, looking down into his
home coolly.
Sombre, pathetic figure! His wide, round, gray eyes gazing down into the
beautiful valley, seeing and not seeing, the splendid cloud-shadows
sweeping over the western hills and across the green and yellow wheat
far below. His head drooped forward on his palm, his shoulders took on a
tired stoop, his cheek-bones showed painfully. An observer might have
said, "He is looking down upon his own grave."