soldier, now that the work was about actually to begin. A little more
soberness was apparent. Everyone was still simple, natural,
matter-of-fact. But that night, doubtless, each man dreamed his dream.
The West Point stripling saw in his empty shoulder-straps a single bar,
as the man above him saw two tiny bars where he had been so proud of
one. The Captain led a battalion, the Major charged at the head of a
thousand strong; the Colonel plucked a star, and the Brigadier heard the
tramp of hosts behind him. And who knows how many bold spirits leaped at
once that night from acorns to stars; and if there was not more than one
who saw himself the war-god of the anxious nation behind--saw, maybe,
even the doors of the White House swing open at the conquering sound of
his coming feet. And, through the dreams of all, waved aimlessly the
mighty wand of the blind master--Fate--giving death to a passion for
glory here; disappointment bitter as death to a noble ambition there;
and there giving unsought fame where was indifference to death; and
then, to lend substance to the phantom of just deserts, giving a mortal
here and there the exact fulfilment of his dream.
Two toasts were drunk that night--one by the men who were to lead the
Rough Riders of the West.
"May the war last till each man meets death, wears a wound, or wins
himself better spurs."
And, in the hold of the same ship, another in whiskey from a tin cup
between two comrades:
"Bunkie," said Blackford, to a dare-devil like himself, "welcome to the
Spanish bullet that knocks for entrance here"--tapping his heart. Basil
struck the cup from his hand, and Blackford swore, laughed, and put his
arm around the boy.
X
Already now, the first little fight was going on, and Grafton, the last
newspaper man ashore, was making for the front--with Bob close at his
heels. It was hot, very hot, but the road was a good, hard path of clean
sand, and now and then a breeze stirred, or a light, cool rain twinkled
in the air. On each side lay marsh, swamp, pool, and tropical
jungle--and, to Grafton's Northern imagination, strange diseases lurked
like monsters everywhere. Every strange, hot odour made him uneasy and,
at times, he found himself turning his head and holding his breath, as
he always did when he passed a pest-house in his childhood. About him
were strange plants, strange flowers, strange trees, the music of
strange birds, with nothing to see that was familiar except sky,
mountain, running water, and sand; nothing home-like to hear but the
twitter of swallows and the whistle of quail.
That path was no road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and
then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous
things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus--spiders
with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs,
and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and
hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and
watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the
bushes. Moreover, he was following the trail of an army by the
uncheerful signs in its wake--the _débris_ of the last night's
camp--empty cans, bits of hardtack, crackers, bad odours, and, by and
by, odds and ends that the soldiers discarded as the sun got warm and
their packs heavy--drawers, undershirts, coats, blankets, knapsacks, an
occasional gauntlet or legging, bits of fat bacon, canned meats,
hardtack--and a swarm of buzzards in the path, in the trees, and
wheeling in the air--and smiling Cubans picking up everything they could
eat or wear.
An hour later, he met a soldier, who told him there had been a fight.
Still, an hour later, rumours came thick, but so conflicting and wild
that Grafton began to hope there had been no fight at all. Proof met
him, then, in the road--a white man, on foot, with his arm in a bloody
sling. Then, on a litter, a negro trooper with a shattered leg; then
another with a bullet through his throat; and another wounded man, and
another. On horseback rode a Sergeant with a bandage around his
brow--Grafton could see him smiling broadly fifty yards ahead--and the
furrow of a Mauser bullet across his temple, and just under his skin.
"Still nutty," said Grafton to himself.
Further on was a camp of insurgents--little, thin, brown fellows,
ragged, dirty, shoeless--each with a sugar-loaf straw hat, a Remington
rifle of the pattern of 1882, or a brand new Krag-Jorgensen donated by
Uncle Sam, and the inevitable and ever ready machéte swinging in a case
of embossed leather on the left hip. Very young they were, and very old;
and wiry, quick-eyed, intelligent, for the most part and, in
countenance, vivacious and rather gentle. There was a little creek next,
and, climbing the bank of the other side, Grafton stopped short, with a
start, in the road. To the right and on a sloping bank lay eight gray
shapes, muffled from head to foot, and Grafton would have known that all
of them were in their last sleep, but one, who lay with his left knee
bent and upright, his left elbow thrust from his blanket, and his hand
on his heart. He slept like a child.
Beyond was the camp of the regulars who had taken part in the fight. On
one side stood a Colonel, who himself had aimed a Hotchkiss gun in the
last battle--covered with grime and sweat, and with the passion of
battle not quite gone from his eyes; and across the road soldiers were
digging one long grave. Grafton pushed on a little further, and on the
top of the ridge and on the grassy sunlit knoll was the camp of the
Riders, just beyond the rifle-pits from which they had driven the
Spaniards. Under a tree to the right lay another row of muffled shapes,
and at once Grafton walked with the Colonel to the hospital, a quarter
of a mile away. The path, thickly shaded and dappled with sunshine, ran
along the ridge through the battlefield, and it was as pretty, peaceful,
and romantic as a lovers' walk in a garden. Here and there, the tall
grass along the path was pressed flat where a wounded man had lain. In
one place, the grass was matted and dark red; nearby was a blood-stained
hat marked with the initials "E. L." Here was the spot where the first
victim of the fight fell. A passing soldier, who reluctantly gave his
name as Blackford, bared his left arm and showed the newspaper man three
places between his wrist and elbow where the skin had been merely
blistered by three separate bullets as he lay fighting unseen enemies.
Further on, lay a dead Spaniard, with covered face.
"There's one," said the Colonel, with a careless gesture. A huge buzzard
flapped from the tree over the dead man as they passed beneath. Beyond
was the open-air hospital, where two more rigid human figures, and where
the wounded lay--white, quiet, uncomplaining.
And there a surgeon told him how the wounded had lain there during the
fight singing:
"My Country, 'tis of thee!"
And Grafton beat his hands together, while his throat was full and his
eyes were full of tears. To think what he had missed--to think what he
had missed!
He knew that national interest would centre in this regiment of Rough
Riders; for every State in the Union had a son in its ranks, and the
sons represented every social element in the national life. Never was
there a more representative body of men, nor a body of more varied
elements standing all on one and the same basis of American manhood. He
recalled how, at Tampa, he had stood with the Colonel while the regiment
filed past, the Colonel, meanwhile, telling him about the men--the
strong men, who made strong stories for Wister and strong pictures for
Remington. And the Colonel had pointed with especial pride and affection
to two boy troopers, who marched at the head of his column--a Puritan
from Massachusetts and a Cavalier through Virginia blood from Kentucky;
one the son of a Confederate General, the other the son of a Union
General--both beardless "bunkies," brothers in arms, and fast becoming
brothers at heart--Robert Sumner and Basil Crittenden. The Colonel waved
his hand toward the wild Westerners who followed them.
"It's odd to think it--but those two boys are the fathers of the
regiment."
And now that Grafton looked around and thought of it again--they were.
The fathers of the regiment had planted Plymouth and Jamestown; had
wrenched life and liberty and civilization from the granite of New
England, the fastnesses of the Cumberland, and the wildernesses of the
rich valleys beyond; while the sires of these very Westerners had gone
on with the same trinity through the barren wastes of plains. And, now,
having conquered the New World, Puritan and Cavalier, and the children
of both were come together again on the same old mission of freedom, but
this time the freedom of others; carrying the fruits of their own
struggle back to the old land from which they came, with the sword in
one hand, if there was need, but with the torch of liberty in the
other--held high, and, as God's finger pointed, lighting the way.
To think what he had missed!
As Grafton walked slowly back, an officer was calling the roll of his
company under the quiet, sunny hill, and he stopped to listen. Now and
then there was no answer, and he went on--thrilled and saddened. The
play was ended--this was war.
Outside the camp the road was full of half-angry, bitterly disappointed
infantry--Chaffee's men. When he reached the camp of the cavalry at the
foot of the hill again, a soldier called his name as he passed--a grimy
soldier--and Grafton stopped in his tracks.
"Well, by God!"
It was Crittenden, who smiled when he saw Grafton's bewildered face.
Then the Kentuckian, too, stared in utter amazement at a black face
grinning over Grafton's shoulder.
"Bob!" he said, sharply.
"Yessuh," said Bob humbly.
"Whar are you doing here?"
"Nothin', Ole Cap'n--jes doin' nothin'," said Bob, with the _naïveté_ of
a child. "Jes lookin' for you."
"Is that your negro?" A sarcastic Lieutenant was asking the question.
"He's my servant, sir."
"Well, we don't allow soldiers to take their valets to the field."
"My servant at home, sir, I meant. He came of his own accord."
[Illustration: "Nothin', Ole Cap'n--jes doin' nothin'--jes lookin' for
you."]
"Go find Basil," Crittenden said to Bob, "and if you can't find him," he
added in a lower tone, "and want anything, come back here to me."
"Yessuh," said Bob, loath to go, but, seeing the Lieutenant scowling, he
moved on down the road.
"I thought you were a Captain," said Grafton. Crittenden laughed.
"Not exactly."
"Forward," shouted the Lieutenant, "march!"
Grafton looked Crittenden over.
"Well, I swear," he said heartily, and, as Crittenden moved forward,
Grafton stood looking after him. "A regular--I do be damned!"
That night Basil wrote home. He had not fired his musket a single time.
He saw nothing to shoot at, and he saw no use shooting until he did have
something to shoot at. It was terrible to see men dead and wounded, but
the fight itself was stupid--blundering through a jungle, bullets
zipping about, and the Spaniards too far away and invisible. He wanted
to be closer.
"General Carter has sent for me to take my place on his staff. I don't
want to go, but the Colonel says I ought. I don't believe I would, if
the General hadn't been father's friend and if my 'bunkie' weren't
wounded. He's all right, but he'll have to go back. I'd like to have
his wound, but I'd hate to have to go back. The Colonel says he's sorry
to lose me. He meant to make me a corporal, he says. I don't know what
for--but Hooray!
"Brother was not in the fight, I suppose. Don't worry about me--please
don't worry.
"P. S.--I have often wondered what it would be like to be on the eve of
a battle. It's no different from anything else."
Abe Long and Crittenden were bunkies now. Abe's comrade, the boy
Sanders, had been wounded and sent to the rear. Reynolds, too, was shot
through the shoulder, and, despite his protests, was ordered back to the
coast.
"Oh, I'll be on hand for the next scrap," he said.
Abe and Crittenden had been side by side in the fight. It was no
surprise to Crittenden that any man was brave. By his code, a man would
be better dead than alive a coward. He believed cowardice exceptional
and the brave man the rule, but he was not prepared for Abe's coolness
and his humour. Never did the Westerner's voice change, and never did
the grim half-smile leave his eyes or his mouth. Once during the fight
he took off his hat.
"How's my hair parted?" he asked, quietly.
A Mauser bullet had mowed a path through Abe's thick, upright hair,
scraping the skin for three inches, and leaving a trail of tiny, red
drops. Crittenden turned to look and laugh, and a bullet cut through the
open flap of his shirt, just over his heart. He pointed to it.
"See the good turn you did me."
While the two were cooking supper, the old Sergeant came up.
"If you don't obey orders next time," he said to Crittenden, sternly,
for Abe was present, "I'll report you to the Captain." Crittenden had
declined to take shelter during the fight--it was a racial inheritance
that both the North and the South learned to correct in the old war.
"That's right, Governor," said Abe.
"The Colonel himself wanted to know what damn fool that was standing out
in the road. He meant you."
"All right, Sergeant," Crittenden said.
When he came in from guard duty, late that night, he learned that Basil
was safe. He lay down with a grateful heart, and his thoughts, like the
thoughts of every man in that tropical forest, took flight for home.
Life was getting very simple now for him--death, too, and duty. Already
he was beginning to wonder at his old self and, with a shock, it came to
him that there were but three women in the world to him--Phyllis and his
mother--and Judith. He thought of the night of the parting, and it
flashed for the first time upon him that Judith might have taken the
shame that he felt reddening his face as shame for her, and not for
himself: and a pain shot through him so keen that he groaned aloud.
Above him was a clear sky, a quarter moon, an enveloping mist of stars,
and the very peace of heaven. But there was little sleep--and that
battle-haunted--for any: and for him none at all.
* * * * *
And none at all during that night of agony for Judith, nor Phyllis, nor
the mother at Canewood, though there was a reaction of joy, next
morning, when the name of neither Crittenden was among the wounded or
the dead.
Nothing had been heard, so far, of the elder brother but, as they sat in
the porch, a negro boy brought the town paper, and Mrs. Crittenden found
a paragraph about a soldier springing into the sea in full uniform at
Siboney to rescue a drowning comrade, who had fallen into the surf while
trying to land, and had been sunk to the bottom by his arms and
ammunition. And the rescuer's name was Crittenden. The writer went on to
tell who he was, and how he had given up his commission to a younger
brother and had gone as a private in the regular army--how he had been
offered another after he reached Cuba, and had declined that,
too--having entered with his comrades, he would stay with them to the
end. Whereat the mother's face burned with a proud fire, as did
Phyllis's, when Mrs. Crittenden read on about this Crittenden's young
brother, who, while waiting for his commission, had gone as a Rough
Rider, and who, after gallant conduct during the first fight, had taken
his place on General Carter's staff. Phyllis clapped her hands, softly,
with a long sigh of pride--and relief.
"I can eat strawberries, now." And she blushed again. Phyllis had been
living on bacon and corn-bread, she confessed shamefacedly, because
Trooper Basil was living on bacon and hardtack--little dreaming that the
food she forced upon herself in this sacrificial way was being swallowed
by that hearty youngster with a relish that he would not have known at
home for fried chicken and hot rolls.
"Yes," laughed Mrs. Crittenden. "You can eat strawberries now. You can
balance them against his cocoanuts."
Phyllis picked up the paper then, with a cry of surprise--the name
signed to the article was Grafton, whom she had seen at the recruiting
camp. And then she read the last paragraph that the mother had not read
aloud, and she turned sharply away and stooped to a pink-bed, as though
she would pick one, and the mother saw her shoulders shaking with silent
sobs, and she took the child in her arms.
There was to be a decisive fight in a few days--the attack on
Santiago--that was what Phyllis had read. The Spaniard had a good
muster-roll of regulars and aid from Cervera's fleet; was well armed,
and had plenty of time to intrench and otherwise prepare himself for a
bloody fight in the last ditch.
So that, each day there was a relief to the night agony, which, every
morning, began straightway with the thought that the fight might be
going on at that very hour. Not once did Judith come near. She had been
ill, to be sure, but one day Mrs. Crittenden met her on the way to town
and stopped her in the road; but the girl had spoken so strangely that
the mother drove on, at loss to understand and much hurt. Next day she
learned that Judith, despite her ill health and her father's protests,
had gone to nurse the sick and the wounded--what Phyllis plead in vain
to do. The following day a letter came from Mrs. Crittenden's elder son.
He was well, and the mother must not worry about either him or Basil. He
did not think there would be much fighting and, anyhow, the great risk
was from disease, and he feared very little from that. Basil would be
much safer as an aid on a General's staff. He would get plenty to eat,
would be less exposed to weather, have no long marches--as he would be
mounted--and no guard duty at all hours of day and night. And, moreover,
he would probably be less constantly exposed to bullets. So she must not
worry about him. Not one word was there about Judith--not even to ask
how she was, which was strange. He had said nothing about the girl when
he told his mother good-by; and when she broached the subject, he
answered sadly:
"Don't, mother; I can't say a word--not a word."
In his letter he had outlined Basil's advantages, not one of which was
his--and sitting on the porch of the old homestead at sunset of the last
rich day in June, the mother was following her eldest born through the
transport life, the fiery marches, the night watches on lonely outposts,
the hard food, the drenching rains, steaming heat, laden with the breath
of terrible disease, not realizing how little he minded it all and how
much good it was doing him. She did know, however, that it had been but
play thus far to what must follow. Perhaps, even now, she thought, the
deadly work was beginning, while she sat in the shrine of peace--even
now.
And it was. Almost at that hour the troops were breaking camp and
moving forward along the one narrow jungle-road--choked with wagon,
pack-mule, and soldier--through a haze of dust, and, turning to the
right at the first crossing beyond corps head-quarters--under
Chaffee--for Caney. Now and then a piece of artillery, with its flashes
of crimson, would pass through the advancing columns amid the waving of
hats and a great cheering to take position against the stone fort at
Caney or at El Poso, to be trained on the block-house at San Juan. And
through the sunset and the dusk the columns marched, and, after night
fell, the dark, silent masses of slouch hats, shoulders, and gun-muzzles
kept on marching past the smoke and flare of the deserted camp-fires
that lighted thicket and grassy plot along the trail. And after the
flames had died down to cinders--in the same black terrible silence, the
hosts were marching still.
That night a last good-by to all womankind, but wife, mother, sister,
sweetheart. The world was to be a man's world next day, and the man a
coarse, dirty, sweaty, swearing, good-natured, grimly humorous, cruel,
kindly soldier, feverish for a fight and as primitive in passion as a
cave-dweller fighting his kind for food. The great little fight was at
hand.
XI
Before dawn again--everything in war begins at dawn--and the thickets
around a certain little gray stone fort alive with slouch hat, blue
blouse, and Krag-Jorgensen, slipping through the brush, building no
fires, and talking in low tones for fear the timorous enemy would see,
or hear, and run before the American sharpshooter could get a chance to
try his marksmanship; wondering, eight hours later, if the timorous
enemy were ever going to run. Eastward and on a high knoll stripped of
bushes, four 3.2 guns unlimbered and thrown into position against that
fort and a certain little red-roofed town to the left of it. This was
Caney.
Eastward still, three miles across an uneven expanse of green, jungle
and jungle-road alive with men, bivouacing fearlessly around and under
four more 3.2 guns planted on another high-stripped knoll--El Poso--and
trained on a little pagoda-like block-house, which sat like a Christmas
toy on top of a green little, steep little hill from the base of which
curved an orchard-like valley back to sweeping curve of the jungle. This
was San Juan.
Nature loves sudden effects in the tropics. While Chaffee fretted in
valley-shadows around Caney and Lawton strode like a yellow lion past
the guns on the hill and, eastward, gunner on the other hill at El Poso
and soldier in the jungle below listened westward, a red light ran like
a flame over the east, the tops of the mountains shot suddenly upward
and it was day--flashing day, with dripping dew and birds singing and a
freshness of light and air that gave way suddenly when the sun quickly
pushed an arc of fire over the green shoulder of a hill and smote the
soldiers over and under the low trees like rays from an open furnace.
It smote Reynolds as he sat by the creek under the guns before San Juan,
idly watching water bubble into three canteens, and it opened his lips
for an oath that he was too lazy to speak; it smote Abe Long cooking
coffee on the bank some ten yards away, and made him raise from the fire
and draw first one long forearm and then the other across his
heat-wrinkled brow; but, unheeded, it smote Crittenden--who stood near,
leaning against a palm-tree--full in his uplifted face. Perhaps that was
the last sunrise on earth for him. He was watching it in Cuba, but his
spirit was hovering around home. He could feel the air from the woods in
front of Canewood; could hear the darkies going to work and Aunt Keziah
singing in the kitchen. He could see his mother's shutter open, could
see her a moment later, smiling at him from her door. And Judith--where
was she, and what was she doing? Could she be thinking of him? The sound
of his own name coming down through the hot air made him start, and,
looking up toward the Rough Riders, who were gathered about a little
stuccoed farm-house just behind the guns on the hill, he saw Blackford
waving at him. At the same moment hoofs beat the dirt-road behind
him--familiar hoof-beats--and he turned to see Basil and Raincrow--for
Crittenden's Colonel was sick with fever and Basil had Raincrow now--on
their way with a message to Chaffee at Caney. Crittenden saluted
gravely, as did Basil, though the boy turned in his saddle, and with an
affectionate smile waved back at him.
Crittenden's lips moved.
"God bless him."
* * * * *
"Fire!"
Over on the hill, before Caney, a man with a lanyard gave a quick jerk.
There was a cap explosion at the butt of the gun and a bulging white
cloud from the muzzle; the trail bounced from its shallow trench, the
wheels whirled back twice on the rebound, and the shell was hissing
through the air as iron hisses when a blacksmith thrusts it red-hot into
cold water. Basil could hear that awful hiss so plainly that he seemed
to be following the shell with his naked eye; he could hear it above the
reverberating roar of the gun up and down the coast-mountain; hear it
until, six seconds later, a puff of smoke answered beyond the Spanish
column where the shell burst. Then in eight seconds--for the shell
travelled that much faster than sound--the muffled report of its
bursting struck his ears, and all that was left of the first shot that
started the great little fight was the thick, sunlit smoke sweeping away
from the muzzle of the gun and the little mist-cloud of the shell rising
slowly upward beyond the stone fort, which seemed not to know any harm
was possible or near.
* * * * *
Again Crittenden, leaning against the palm, heard his name called. Again
it was Blackford who was opening his mouth to shout some message
when--Ah! The shout died on Blackford's lips, and every man on the hill
and in the woods, at that instant, stayed his foot and his hand--even a
man standing with a gray horse against the blue wall--he, too, stopped
to listen. It really sounded too dull and muffled for a shell; but, a
few seconds later, there was a roar against the big walls of living
green behind Caney.
The first shot!
"Ready!"
Even with the cry at El Poso came another sullen, low boom and another
aggressive roar from Caney: then a great crackling in the air, as though
thousands of schoolboys were letting off fire-crackers, pack after pack.
"Fire!"