The smoke and spiteful crackle of the pickets' fusilade had risen
to one unbroken crash, solidly accented by the report of field guns.
Ambulances were everywhere driving to the rear at a gallop past the
centre and left sections of McDunn's Battery, which, unlimbered,
was standing in a cotton field, the guns pointed southward across
the smoke rising below.
Claymore's staff, dismounted, stood near. The young general
himself, jacket over one arm, was seated astride the trail of the
sixth gun talking eagerly to McDunn, when across the rolling ground
came a lancer at full speed, plunging and bucketing in his saddle,
the scarlet rags of the lance pennon whipping the wind. The
trooper reined in his excited horse beside Claymore, saluted, and
handed him a message; and the youthful general, glancing at it, got
onto his feet in a hurry, and tossed his yellow-edged jacket of a
private to an orderly. Then he faced the lancer:
"Tell Colonel Craig to hold his position no matter what it costs!"
he exclaimed sharply. "Tell Colonel Arran that I expect him to
stand by the right section of the 10th battery until it is safely
and properly brought off!" He swung around on Captain McDunn.
"Limber your battery to the rear, sir! Follow headquarters!" he
snapped, and threw himself into his saddle, giving his mount rein
and heel with a reckless nod to his staff.
McDunn, superbly mounted, scarcely raised his clear, penetrating
voice: "Cannoneers mount gun-carriages; caissons follow; drivers,
put spur and whip to horses--forward--march!" he said.
"Trot out!" rang the bugles; the horses broke into a swinging lope
across the dry ridges of the cotton field, whips whistled, the
cannoneers bounced about on the chests, guns, limbers and caissons
thumped, leaped, jolted, rose up, all wheels in the air at once,
swayed almost to overturning, and thundered on in a tornado of
dust, leaders, swing team, wheel team straining into a frantic
gallop.
The powerful horses bounded forward into a magnificent stride;
general and staff tore on ahead toward the turnpike. Suddenly,
right past them came a driving storm of stampeding cavalry,
panic-stricken, riding like damned men, tearing off and hurling
from them carbines, canteens, belts; and McDunn, white with rage,
whipped out his revolver and fired into them as they rushed by in a
torrent of red dust. From his distorted mouth vile epithets
poured; he cursed and damned their cowardice, and, standing up in
his stirrups, riding like a cossack at full speed, attempted to use
his sabre on the fugitives from the front. But there was no
stopping them, for the poor fellows had been sent into fire
ignorant how to use the carbines issued the day before.
Into a sandy field all spouting with exploding shells and bullets
the drivers galloped and steered the plunging guns. The driver of
the lead team, fifth caisson, was shot clear out of his saddle, all
the wheels going over him and grinding him to pulp; piece and
limber whirled into a lane on a dead run, and Arthur Wye, driving
the swing team, clinging to the harness and crawling out along the
traces, gained the saddle of the lead-horse.
"Bully for you!" shouted McDunn. "I hope to God that cowardly
monkey cavalry saw you!"
The left section swung on the centre to get its position; limber
after limber dashed up, clashing and clanking, to drop its gun;
caisson after caisson rounded to under partial cover in the farm
lane to the right.
The roar of the conflict along the river had become terrific; to
the east a New Jersey battery, obscured in flame-shot clouds, was
retiring by its twenty-eight-foot prolonges, using cannister; the
remains of a New Hampshire infantry regiment supported the retreat;
between the two batteries Claymore in his shirt, sleeves rolled to
his elbows, heavy revolver swinging in his blackened fist, was
giving a tongue lashing to the stream of fugitives from the river
woods.
"Where are you going! Hey! Scouting? Well scout to the front,
damn you! . . . Where are _you_ going, young man? For ammunition?
Go back to the front or I'll shoot you! Get along there you
malingerers! or, by God, I'll have a squadron of Arran's
pig-stickers ride you down and punch your skins full of holes!
Orderly! Ask Colonel Arran if he can spare me a squad of his
lancers for a few minutes----"
The orderly saluted, coughed up a stream of blood, fell backward
off his horse, scrambled to his feet, terror-stricken, both hands
pressed convulsively over his stomach!
"Damn them! They've got me. General!" he gasped--"they've g-got
me this time! There's a piece of shell inside me as big----"
He leaned weakly against his mild-eyed horse, nauseated; but it was
only a spent ball on his belt plate after all, and a few moments
later, swaying and sickly, he forced his horse into a trot across
the hill.
A major of Claymore's staff galloped with orders to the Zouaves;
but, as he opened his mouth to speak a shell burst behind him, and
he pitched forward on his face, his shattered arm doubling under
him.
"Drag me behind that tree. Colonel Craig!" he said coolly. "I'll
finish my orders in a moment." Major Lent and Colonel Craig got
him behind the tree; and the officer's superb will never faltered.
"Your new position must cover that bridge," he whispered faintly.
"The left section of McDunn's battery is already ordered to your
support. . . . How is it with you, Colonel? Speak louder----"
Colonel Craig, pallid and worn under the powder smears and sweat,
wiped the glistening grime from his eye-glasses.
"We are holding on," he said. "It's all right, Major. I'll get
word through to the General," and he signalled to some drummer boys
lying quietly in the bushes to bring up a stretcher, just as the
left section of McDunn's battery burst into view on a dead run,
swung into action, and began to pour level sheets of flame into the
woods, where, already, the high-pitched rebel yell was beginning
again.
A solid shot struck No. 5 gun on the hub, killing Cannoneer No. 2,
who was thumbing the vent, and filling No. 1 gunner with splinters
of iron, whirling him into eternity amid a fountain of dirt and
flying hub-tires. Then a shell blew a gun-team into fragments,
plastering the men's faces with bloody shreds of flesh; and the
boyish lieutenant, spitting out filth, coolly ordered up the
limbers, and brought his section around into the road with a
beautiful display of driving and horsemanship that drew raucous
cheers from the Zouaves, where they lay, half stifled, firing at
the gray line of battle gathering along the edges of the woods.
And now the shrill, startling battle cry swelled to the hysterical
pack yell, and, gathering depth and volume, burst out into a
frantic treble roar. A long gray line detached itself from the
woods; mounted officers, sashed and debonaire, trotted jauntily out
in front of it; the beautiful battle flags slanted forward; there
came a superb, long, low-swinging gleam of steel; and the Southland
was afoot once more, gallant, magnificent, sweeping recklessly on
into the red gloom of the Northern guns.
Berkley, his face bandaged, covered with sweat and dust, sat his
worn, cowhide saddle in the ranks, long lance couched, watching,
expectant. Every trooper who could ride a horse was needed now;
hospitals had given up their invalids; convalescents and sick men
gathered bridle with shaking fingers; hollow-eyed youngsters
tightened the cheek-straps of their forage caps and waited, lance
in rest.
In the furious smoke below them they could see the Zouaves running
about like red devils in the pit; McDunn's guns continued to pour
solid columns of flame across the creek; far away to the west the
unseen Union line of battle had buried itself in smoke. Through it
the Southern battle flags still advanced, halted, tossed wildly,
moved forward in jerks, swung to the fierce cheering, moved on
haltingly, went down, up again, wavered, disappeared in the cannon
fog.
Colonel Arran, his naked sabre point lowered, sat his saddle, gray
and erect. The Major never stirred in his saddle; only the troop
captains from time to time turned their heads as some stricken
horse lashed out, or the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting
living flesh broke the intense silence of the ranks.
Hallam, at the head of his troop, stroked his handsome moustache
continually, and at moments spoke angrily to his restive horse. He
was beginning to have a good deal of trouble with his horse, which
apparently wished to bolt, and he had just managed to drag the
fretting animal back into position, when, without warning, the
volunteer infantry posted on the right delivered a ragged volley,
sagged back, broke, and began running. Almost on their very heels
a dust-covered Confederate flying battery dropped its blackened
guns and sent charge after charge ripping through them, while out
of the fringing woods trotted the gray infantry, driving in
skirmishers, leaping fences, brush piles, and ditches, like lean
hounds on the trail.
Instantly a squadron of the Lancers trampled forward, facing to the
west; but down on their unprotected flank thundered the Confederate
cavalry, and from the beginning it had been too late for a
counter-charge.
A whirlwind of lancers and gray riders drove madly down the slope,
inextricably mixed, shooting, sabering, stabbing with tip and
ferrule.
A sabre stroke severed Berkley's cheek-strap, sheering through
visor and button; and he swung his lance and drove it backward into
a man's face.
In the terrible confusion and tangle of men and horses he could
scarcely use his lance at all, or avoid the twirling lances of his
comrades, or understand what his officers were shouting. It was
all a nightmare--a horror of snorting horses, panting, sweating
riders, the swift downward glitter of sabre strokes, thickening
like sheeted rain.
His horse's feet were now entangled in brush heaps; a crowding,
cursing mass of cavalrymen floundered into a half demolished snake
fence, which fell outward, rolling mounts and riders into a wet
gully, where they continued fighting like wild cats in a pit.
Yelling exultantly, the bulk of Confederate riders passed through
the Lancers, leaving them to the infantry to finish, and rode at
the flying Federal infantry. Everywhere bayonets began to glimmer
through the smoke and dust, as the disorganised squadrons rallied
and galloped eastward, seeking vainly for shelter to reform.
Down in the hollow an entire troop of Lancers, fairly intact, had
become entangled among the brush and young saplings, and the
Confederate infantry, springing over the fence, began to bayonet
them and pull them from their horses, while the half-stunned
cavalrymen scattered through the bushes, riding hither and thither
looking vainly for some road to lead them out of the bushy trap.
They could not go back; the fence was too solid to ride down, too
high to leap; the carbineers faced about, trying to make a stand,
firing from their saddles; Colonel Arran, confused but cool, turned
his brier-torn horse and rode forward, swinging his heavy sabre,
just as Hallam and Berkley galloped up through the bushes, followed
by forty or more bewildered troopers, and halted fo'r orders. But
there was no way out.
Then Berkley leaned from his saddle, touched the visor of his cap,
and, looking Arran straight in the eyes, said quietly:
"With your permission, sir, I think I can tear down enough of that
fence to let you and the others through! May I try?"
Colonel Arran said, quietly: "No man can ride to that fence and
live. Their infantry hold it."
"Two men may get there." He turned and looked at Hallam. "We're
not going to surrender; we'll all die here anyway. Shall we try
the fence together?"
For a second the silence resounded with the racket of the
Confederate rifles; three men dropped from their saddles; then
Hallam turned ghastly white, opened his jaws to speak; but no sound
came. Suddenly he swung his horse, and spurred straight toward the
open brush in the rear, whipping out his handkerchief and holding
it fluttering above his head.
Colonel Arran shouted at him, jerked his revolver free, and fired
at him. A carbineer also fired after him from the saddle, but
Hallam rode on unscathed in his half-crazed night, leaving his
deserted men gazing after him, astounded. In the smoke of another
volley, two more cavalrymen pitched out of their saddles.
Then Berkley drove his horse blindly into the powder fog ahead; a
dozen brilliant little jets of flame pricked the gloom; his horse
reared, and went down in a piteous heap, but Berkley landed on all
fours, crawled hurriedly up under the smoke, jerked a board loose,
tore another free, rose to his knees and ripped away board after
board, shouting to his comrades to come on and cut their way out.
They came, cheering, spurring their jaded horses through the gap,
crowding out across the road, striking wildly with their sabres,
forcing their way up the bank, into a stubble field, and forward at
a stiff trot toward the swirling smoke of a Union battery behind
which they could see shattered squadrons reforming.
Berkley ran with them on foot, one hand grasping a friendly
stirrup, until the horse he clung to halted abruptly, quivering all
over; then sank down by the buttocks with a shuddering scream. And
Berkley saw Colonel Arran rising from the ground, saw him glance at
his horse, turn and look behind him where the Confederate
skirmishers were following on a run, kneeling to fire occasionally,
then springing to their feet and trotting forward, rifles
glittering in the sun.
A horse with an empty saddle, its off foreleg entangled in its
bridle, was hobbling around in circles, stumbling, neighing,
tripping, scrambling to its feet again, and trying frantically to
go on. Berkley caught the bridle, freed it, and hanging to the
terrified animal's head, shouted to Colonel Arran:
"You had better hurry, sir. Their skirmishers are coming up fast!"
Colonel Arran stood quietly gazing at him. Suddenly he reeled and
stumbled forward against the horse's flank, catching at the mane.
"Are you badly hurt, sir?"
The Colonel turned his dazed eyes on him, then slid forward along
the horse's flank. His hands relaxed their hold on the mane, and
he fell flat on his face; and, Berkley, still hanging to the bit,
dragged the prostrate man over on his back and stared into his
deathly features.
"Where did they hit you, sir?"
"Through the liver," he gasped. "It's all right, Berkley. . . .
Don't wait any longer-----"
"I'm not going to leave you."
"You must . . . I'm ended. . . . You haven't a--moment--to
lose----"
"Can you put your arms around my neck?"
"There's no time to waste! I tell you to mount and run for
it! . . . And--thank you----"
"Put both arms around my neck. . . . Quick! . . . Can you lock
your fingers? . . . This damned horse won't stand! Hold fast to
me. I'll raise you easily. . . . Get the other leg over the
saddle. Lean forward. Now I'll walk him at first--hold
tight! . . . Can you hang on, Colonel?"
"Yes--_my son_"
A wild thrill ran through the boy's veins, stopping breath and
pulse for a second. Then the hot blood rushed stinging into his
face; he threw one arm around the drooping figure in the saddle,
and, controlling the bridle with a grip of steel, started the horse
off across the field.
All around them the dry soil was bursting into little dusty
fountains where the bullets were striking; ahead, dark smoke hung
heavily. Farther on some blue-capped soldiers shouted to them from
their shallow rifle pits.
Farther on still they passed an entire battalion of regular
infantry, calmly seated on the grass in line of battle; and behind
these troops Berkley saw a stretcher on the grass and two men of
the hospital corps squatted beside it, chewing grass stems.
They came readily enough when they learned the name and rank of the
wounded officer. Berkley, almost exhausted, walked beside the
stretcher, leading the horse and looking down at the stricken man
who lay with eyes closed and clothing disordered where a hasty
search for the wound had disclosed the small round blue hole just
over the seat of the liver.
They turned into a road which had been terribly cut up by the
wheels of artillery. It was already thronged with the debris of
the battle, skulkers, wounded men hobbling, pallid malingerers
edging their furtive way out of fire. Then ahead arose a terrible
clamour, the wailing of wounded, frightened cries, the angry shouts
of cavalrymen, where a Provost Guard of the 20th Dragoons was
riding, recklessly into the fugitives, roughly sorting the goats
from the sheep, and keeping the way clear for the ambulances now
arriving along a cross-road at a gallop.
Berkley heard his name called out, and, looking up, saw Casson,
astride a huge horse, signalling him eagerly from his saddle.
"Who in hell have you got there?" he asked, pushing his horse up to
the litter. "By God, it's Colonel Arran," he added in a modified
voice. "Is he very bad, Berkley?"
"I don't know. Can't you stop one of those ambulances, Jack? I
want to get him to the surgeons as soon as possible----"
"You bet!" said Casson, wheeling his horse and displaying the new
chevrons of a sergeant. "Hey, you black offspring of a yellow
whippet!" he bellowed to a driver, "back out there and be damn
quick about it!" And he leaned from his saddle, and seizing the
leaders by the head, swung them around with a volley of profanity.
Then, grinning amiably at Berkley, he motioned the stretcher
bearers forward and sat on his horse, garrulously superintending
the transfer of the injured man.
"There's an emergency hospital just beyond that clump of trees," he
said. "You'd better take him there. Golly! but he's hard hit. I
guess that bullet found its billet. There's not much hope when
it's a belly-whopper. Too bad, ain't it? He was a bully old boy
of a colonel; we all said so in the dragoons. Only--to hell with
those lances of yours, Berkley! What cursed good are they
alongside a gun? And I notice your regiment has its carbineers,
too--which proves that your lances are no good or you wouldn't have
twelve carbines to the troop. Eh? Oh, you bet your boots, sonny.
Don't talk lance to me! It's all on account of those Frenchmen on
Little Mac's staff----"
"For God's sake shut up!" said Berkley nervously. "I can't stand
any more just now."
"Oh!" said Casson, taken aback, "I didn't know you were such
cronies with your Colonel. Sorry, my dear fellow; didn't mean to
seem indifferent. Poor old gentleman. I guess he will pull
through. There are nurses at the front--nice little things. God
bless 'em! Say, don't you want to climb up with the driver?"
Berkley hesitated. "Do you know where my regiment is? I ought to
go back--if there's anybody to look after Colonel Arran----"
"Is that your horse?"
"No--some staff officer's, I guess."
"Where's yours?"
"Dead," said Berkley briefly. He thought a moment, then tied his
horse to the tail-board and climbed up beside the driver.
"Go on," he said; "drive carefully", and he nodded his thanks to
Casson as the team swung north.
The Provost Guard, filing along, carbines on thigh, opened to let
him through; and he saw them turning in their saddles to peer
curiously into the straw as the ambulance passed.
It was slow going, for the road was blocked with artillery and
infantry and other ambulances, but the driver found a lane between
guns and caissons and through the dusty blue columns plodding
forward toward the firing line; and at last a white hospital tent
glimmered under the trees, and the slow mule team turned into a
leafy lane and halted in the rear of a line of ambulances which
were all busily discharging their mangled burdens. The cries of
the wounded were terrible.
Operating tables stood under the trees in the open air; assistants
sponged the blood from them continually; the overworked surgeons,
stripped to their undershirts, smeared with blood, worked coolly
and rapidly in the shade of the oak-trees, seldom raising their
voices, never impatient. Orderlies brought water in artillery
buckets; ward-masters passed swiftly to and fro; a soldier stood by
a pile of severed limbs passing out bandages to assistants who
swarmed around, scurrying hither and thither under the quiet orders
of the medical directors.
A stretcher was brought; Colonel Arran opened his heavy lids as
they placed him in it. His eyes summoned Berkley.
"It's all right," he said in the ghost of a voice. "Whichever way
it turns put, it's all right. . . I've tried to live
lawfully. . . . It is better to live mercifully. I think--she--would
forgive. . . . Will you?"
"Yes."
He bent and took the wounded man's hand, in his.
"If I knew--if I _knew_--" he said, and his burning eyes searched
the bloodless face beneath him.
"God?" he whispered--"if it were true----"
A surgeon shouldered him aside, glanced sharply at the patient,
motioned the bearers forward.
Berkley sat down by the roadside, bridle in hand, head bowed in his
arms. Beside him his horse fed quietly on the weeds. In his ears
rang the cries of the wounded; all around him he was conscious of
people passing to and fro; and he sat there, face covered, deadly
tired, already exhausted to a stolidity that verged on stupor.
He must have slept, too, because when he sat up and opened his eyes
again it was nearly sundown, and somebody had stolen his horse.
A zouave with a badly sprained ankle, lying on a blanket near him,
offered him bread and meat that stank; and Berkley ate it, striving
to collect his deadened thoughts. After he had eaten he filled the
zouave's canteen at a little rivulet where hundreds of soldiers
were kneeling to drink or dip up the cool, clear water.
"What's your reg'ment, friend?" asked the man.
"Eighth New York Lancers."
"Lord A'mighty! You boys did get cut up some, didn't you?"
"I guess so. Are you Colonel Craig's regiment?"
"Yes. We got it, too. Holy Mother--we got it f'r fair!"
"Is your Colonel all right?"
"Yes. Steve--his son--corporal, 10th Company--was hit."
"What!"
"Yes, sir. Plumb through the collar-bone. He was one of the first
to get it. I was turrible sorry for his father--fine old boy!--and
he looked like he'd drop dead hisself--but, by gosh, friend, when
the stretcher took Steve to the rear the old man jest sot them
clean-cut jaws o' his'n, an' kep' his gold-wired gig-lamps to the
front. An' when the time come, he sez in his ca'm, pleasant way:
'Boys,' sez he, 'we're agoin' in. It's a part of the job,' sez he,
'that has got to be done thorough. So,' sez he, 'we'll jest mosey
along kind o' quick steppin' now, and we'll do our part like we
al'us does do it. For'rd--mar-r-rch!'"
Berkley sat still, hands clasped over his knees, thinking of
Stephen, and of Celia, and of the father out yonder somewhere amid
the smoke.
"Gawd," said the zouave, "you got a dirty jab on your cocanut,
didn't you?"
The bandage had slipped, displaying the black scab of the scarcely
healed wound; and Berkley absently replaced it.
"That'll ketch the girls," observed the zouave with conviction.
"Damn it, I've only got a sprained ankle to show my girl."
"The war's not over," said Berkley indifferently. Then he got up,
painfully, from the grass, exchanged adieux with the zouave, and
wandered off toward the hospital to seek for news of Colonel Arran.
It appeared that the surgeons had operated, and had sent the
Colonel a mile farther to the rear, where a temporary hospital had
been established in a young ladies' seminary. And toward this
Berkley set out across the fields, the sound of the battle dinning
heavily in his aching cars.
As he walked he kept a sullen eye out for his stolen horse, never
expecting to see him, and it was with a savage mixture of surprise
and satisfaction that he beheld him, bestridden by two dirty
malingerers from a New York infantry regiment who rode on the
snaffle with difficulty and objurgations and reproached each other
for their mutual discomfort.
How they had escaped the Provost he did not know; how they escaped
absolute annihilation they did not comprehend; for Berkley seized
the bridle, swung the horse sharply, turning them both out of the
saddle; then, delivering a swift kick apiece, as they lay cursing,
he mounted and rode forward amid enthusiastic approval from the
drivers of passing army waggons.
Long since the towering smoke in the west had veiled the sun; and
now the sky had become gray and thick, and already a fine drizzling
rain was falling, turning the red dust to grease.
Slipping, floundering, his horse bore him on under darkening skies;
rain fell heavily now; he bared his hot head to it; raised his
face, masked with grime, and let the drops fall on the dark scar
that burned under the shifting bandage.
In the gathering gloom eastward he saw the horizon redden and
darken and redden with the cannon flashes; the immense battle
rumour filled his ears and brain, throbbing, throbbing.
"Which way, friend?" demanded a patrol, carelessly throwing his
horse across Berkley's path.
"Orderly to Colonel Arran, 8th New York Lancers, wounded. Is that
the hospital, yonder?"
"Them school buildin's," nodded the patrol. "Say, is your colonel
very bad? I'm 20th New York, doin' provost. We seen you fellers
at White Oak. Jesus! what a wallop they did give us----"
He broke off grimly, turned his horse, and rode out into a soggy
field where some men were dodging behind a row of shaggy hedge
bushes. And far behind Berkley heard his loud, bullying voice:
"Git! you duck-legged, egg-suckin', skunk-backed loafers! Go on,
there! Aw, don't yer talk back to me 'r I'll let m' horse bite yer
pants off! Back yer go! Forrard! Hump! Hump! Scoot!"
Through the heavily falling rain he saw the lighted school
buildings looming among the trees; turned into the drive, accounted
for himself, gave his horse to a negro with orders to care for it,
and followed a ward-master into an open-faced shed where a kettle
was boiling over a sheet-iron stove.
The ward-master returned presently, threading his way through a
mass of parked ambulances to the shed where Berkley sat on a broken
cracker box.
"Colonel Arran is very low. I guess you'd better not bother him
to-night."
"Is he--mortally hurt?"
"I've seen worse."
"He may get well?"
"I've seen 'em get well," said the non-committal ward-master.
Then, looking Berkley over: "You're pretty dirty, ain't you? Are
you--" he raised his eyebrows significantly.
"I'm clean," said Berkley with the indifference habituated to filth.
"All right. They'll fix you up a cot somewhere. If Colonel Arran
comes out all right I'll call you. He's full of opium now."
"Did they get the bullet?"
"Oh, yes. I ain't a surgeon, my friend, but I hear a lot of
surgeon talk. It's the shock--in a man of his age. The wound's
clean, so far--not a thread in it, I hear. Shock--and
gangrene--that's what we look out for. . . . What's the news down
by the river?"
"I don't know," said Berkley.
"Don't you know if you got licked?"
"I don't think we did. You'd hear the firing out here much
plainer."
"You're the 8th Cavalry, ain't you?"
"Yes."
"They say you got cut up."
"Some."
"And how about the Zouaves?"
"Oh, they're there yet," said Berkley listlessly. Fatigue was
overpowering him; he was aware, presently, that a negro, carrying a
lantern, was guiding his stumbling steps into a small building
where, amid piles of boxes, an army cot stood covered by a blanket.
Berkley gave him a crumpled mess of paper money, and he almost
expired.
Later the same negro rolled a wooden tub into the room, half filled
it with steaming water, and stood in profound admiration of his
work, grinning at Berkley.
"Is you-all gwine bresh up, suh?" he inquired.
Berkley straightened his shoulders with an effort, unbuckled his
belt, and slowly began to take off his wet uniform.
The negro aided him respectfully; that wet wad of dollars had done
its work profoundly.
"Yo' is de adjetant ob dis here Gin'ral ob de Lancers, suh? De po'
ole Gin'ral! He done git shot dreffle bad, suh. . . . Jess you
lay on de flo', suh, t'will I gits yo' boots off'n yo' laigs! Dar!
Now jess set down in de tub, suh. I gwine scrub you wif de
saddle-soap--Lor', Gord-a-mighty! Who done bang you on de haid
dat-a-way?"--scrubbing vigorously with the saddle-soap all the
while. "Spec' you is lame an' so' all over, is you? Now I'se
gwine rub you haid, suh; an' now I'se gwine dry you haid." He
chuckled and rubbed and manipulated, yet became tender as a woman
in drying the clipped hair and the scarred temple. And, before
Berkley was aware of what he was about, the negro lifted him and
laid him on the cot.
"Now," he chuckled, "I'se gwine shave you." And he fished out a
razor from the rear pocket of his striped drill overalls, rubbed
the weapon of his race with a proud thumb, spread more soap over
Berkley's upturned face, and fell deftly to work, wiping off the
accumulated lather on the seat of his own trousers.
Berkley remembered seeing him do it twice; then remembered no more.
A blessed sense of rest soothed every bone; in the heavenly
stillness and surcease from noise he drifted gently into slumber,
into a deep dreamless sleep.
The old negro looked at him, aged face wrinkled in compassion.
"Po' li'l sodger boy," he muttered. "Done gib me fo' dollahs.
Lor' Gor' a'mighty! Spec' Mars Linkum's men is all richer'n ole
Miss."
He cast another glance at the sleeping man, then picked up the
worn, muddy boots, threw the soiled jacket and breeches over his
arm, and shuffled off, shaking his grizzled head.