they're sent down below because they were too big fools to join the
cavalry.”
“Then, in heaven's name, why didn't you join the cavalry?” inquired Baker.
Dan looked at him a moment, and then threw the apple core at a water bucket
that stood upside down upon the grass. “Well, I couldn't go on my own
horse, you see,” he replied, “and I wouldn't go on the Government's. I
don't ride hacks.”
“So you came into the infantry to get court-martialled,” remarked Bland.
“The captain said down the valley, you'll remember, that if the war lasted
a month, you'd be court-martialled for disobedience on the thirtieth day.”
Dan growled under his breath. “Well, I didn't enter the army to be hectored
by any fool who comes along,” he returned. “Look at that fellow Jones, now.
He thinks because he happens to be Lieutenant that he's got a right to
forget that I'm a gentleman and he's not. Why, the day before we came up
here, he got after me at drill about being out of step, or some little
thing like that; and, by George, to hear him roar you'd have thought that
war wasn't anything but monkeying round with a musket. Why, the rascal came
from my part of the country, and his father before him wasn't fit to black
my boots.”
“Did you knock him down?” eagerly inquired Bland.
“I told him to take off his confounded finery and I would,” answered Dan.
“So when drill was over, we went off behind a tent, and I smashed his nose.
He's no coward, I'll say that for him, and when the Captain told him he
looked as if he'd been fighting, he laughed and said he had had 'a little
personal encounter with the enemy.'”
“Well, I'm willing enough to do battle for my country,” said Jack Powell,
“but I'll be blessed if I'm going to have my elbow jogged by the poor white
trash while I'm doing it.”
“He was scolding at us yesterday because when we were detailed to clean out
the camp, we gave the order to the servants,” put in Baker. “Clean out the
camp! Does he think my grandmother was a chambermaid?” He suddenly broke
off and helped himself to a drink of water from a dripping bucket that a
tall mountaineer was passing round the group.
“Been to the creek, Pinetop?” he asked good-humouredly.
The mountaineer, who had won his title from his great height, towering as
he did above every man in the company, nodded drowsily as he settled
himself upon the ground. He was lithe and hardy as a young hickory, and his
abundant hair was of the colour of ripe wheat. At the call to arms he had
come, with long strides, down from his bare little cabin in the Blue Ridge,
bringing with him a flintlock musket, a corncob pipe, and a stockingful of
Virginia tobacco. Since the day of his arrival, he had accepted the pointed
jokes of the mess into which he had drifted, with grave lips and a flicker
of his calm blue eyes. They had jeered him unmercifully, and he had
regarded them with serene and wondering attention. “I say, Pinetop, is it
raining up where you are?” a wit had put to him on the first day, and he
had looked down and answered placidly:--
“Naw, it's cl'ar.”
As he sat down in the group beside the woodpile, Bland tossed him the
latest paper, but carefully folding it into a square, he laid it aside, and
stretched himself upon the brown grass.
“This here's powerful weather for sweatin',” he pleasantly observed, as he
pulled a mullein leaf from the foot of the apple tree and placed it over
his eyes. Then he turned over and in a moment was sleeping as quietly as a
child.
Dan got down from the logs and stood thoughtfully staring in the direction
of the happy little town lying embosomed in green hills. That little town
gave to him, as he stood there in the noon heat, a memory of deep gardens
filled with fragrance, of open houses set in blue shadows, and of the
bright fluttering of Confederate flags. For a moment he looked toward it
down the hot road; then, with a sigh, he turned away and wandered off to
seek the outside shadow of a tent.
As he flung himself down in the strip of shade, his gaze went longingly to
the dim chain of mountains which showed like faint blue clouds against the
sky, while his thoughts returned, as a sick man's, to the clustered elm
boughs and the smooth lawn at Chericoke, and to Betty blooming like a
flower in a network of sun and shade.
The memory was so vivid that when he closed his eyes it was almost as if he
heard the tapping of the tree-tops against the roof, and felt the pleasant
breeze blowing over the sweet-smelling meadows. He looked, through his
closed eyes, into the dim old house, seeing the rustling grasses in the
great blue jar and their delicate shadow trembling on the pure white wall.
There was the tender hush about it that belongs to the memories of dead
friends or absent places; a hush that was reverent as a Sabbath calm. He
saw the shining swords of the Major and the Major's father; the rear door
with the microphylla roses nodding upon the lintel, and, high above all,
the shadowy bend of the staircase, with Betty standing there in her cool
blue gown.
He opened his eyes with a start, and pillowing his head on his arm, lay
looking off into the burning distance. A bee, straying from a field of
clover across the road, buzzed, for a moment, round his face, and then
knocked, with a flapping noise, against the canvas tent. Far away, beyond
the murmur of the camp, he heard a partridge whistling in a tangled meadow;
and at the same instant his own name called through the sunlight.
“I say, Beau, Beau, where are you?” He sat up, and shouted in response, and
Jack Powell came hurriedly round the tent to fling himself down upon the
beaten grass.
“Oh, you don't know what you missed!” he cried, chuckling. “You didn't stay
long enough to hear the joke on Bland.”
“I hope it's a fresh one,” was Dan's response. “If it's that old thing
about the mule and the darky, I may as well say in the beginning that I
heard it in the ark.”
“Oh, it's new, old man. He made the mistake of trying to get some fun out
of Pinetop, and he got more than he bargained for, that's all. He began to
tease him about those blue jean trousers he carries in his knapsack. You've
seen them, I reckon?”
Dan nodded as he chewed idly at a blade of grass. “I tried to get him to
throw them away yesterday,” he said, “and he did go so far as to haul them
out and look them over; but after meditating a half hour, he packed them
away again and declared there was 'a sight of wear left in them still.' He
told me if he ever made up his mind to get rid of them, and peace should
come next day, he'd never forgive himself.”
“Well, I warned Bland not to meddle with him,” pursued Jack, “but he got
bored and set in to make things lively. 'Look here, Pinetop,' he began,
'will you do me the favour to give me the name of the tailor who made your
blue jeans?' and, bless your life, Pinetop just took the mullein leaf from
his eyes, and sang out 'Maw.' That was what Bland wanted, of course, so,
without waiting for the danger signal, he plunged in again. 'Then if you
don't object I should be glad to have the pattern of them,' he went on, as
smooth as butter. 'I want them to wear when I go home again, you know. Why,
they're just the things to take a lady's eye--they have almost the fit of a
flour-sack--and the ladies are fond of flour, aren't they?' The whole crowd
was waiting, ready to howl at Pinetop's answer, and, sure enough, he raised
himself on his elbow, and drawled out in his sing-song tone: 'I say, Sonny,
ain't yo' Maw done put you into breeches yit?'”
“It serves him right,” said Dan sternly, “and that's what I like about
Pinetop, Jack, there's no ruffling him.” He brushed off the bee that had
fallen on his head, and dodged as it angrily flew back again.
“Some of the boys raised a row when he came into our mess,” returned Jack,
“but where every man's fighting for his country, we're all equal, say I.
What makes me dog-tired, though, is the airs some of these fool officers
put on; all this talk about an 'officer's mess' now, as if a man is too
good to eat with me who wouldn't dare to sit down to my table if he had on
civilian's clothes. It's all bosh, that's what it is.”
He got up and strolled off with his grievance, and Dan, stretching himself
upon the ground, looked across the hills, to the far mountains where the
shadows thickened.
II
THE DAY'S MARCH
In the gray dawn tents were struck, and five days' rations were issued with
the marching orders. As Dan packed his knapsack with trembling hands, he
saw men stalking back and forth like gigantic shadows, and heard the hoarse
shouting of the company officers through the thick fog which had rolled
down from the mountains. There was a persistent buzz in the air, as if a
great swarm of bees had settled over the misty valley. Each man was asking
unanswerable questions of his neighbour.
At a little distance Big Abel, with several of the company “darkies” was
struggling energetically over the property of the mess, storing the cooking
utensils into a stout camp chest, which the strength of several men would
lift, when filled, into the wagon. Bland, who had just tossed his overcoat
across to them, turned abruptly upon Dan, and demanded warmly “what had
become of his case of razors?”
“Where are we going?” was Dan's response, as he knelt down to roll up his
oilcloth and blanket. “By Jove, it looks as if we'd gobble up Patterson for
breakfast!”
“I say, where's my case of razors?” inquired Bland, with irritation. “They
were lying here a moment ago, and now they're gone. Dandy, have you got my
razors?”
“Look here, Beau, what are you going to leave behind?” asked Kemper over
Bland's shoulder.
“Leave behind? Why, dull care,” rejoined Dan gayly. “By the way, Pinetop,
why don't you save your appetite for Patterson's dainties?”
Pinetop, who was leisurely eating his breakfast of “hardtack” and bacon,
took a long draught from his tin cup, and replied, as he wiped his mouth on
his shirt sleeve, that he “reckoned thar wouldn't be any trouble about
finding room for them, too.” The general gayety was reflected in his face;
he laughed as he bit deeply into his half-cooked bacon.
Dan stood up and nervously strapped on his knapsack; then he swung his
canteen over his shoulder and carefully tightened his belt. His face was
flushed, and when he spoke his voice quivered with emotion. It seemed to
him that the delay of every instant was a reckless waste of time, and he
trembled at the thought that the enemy might be preparing to fall upon them
unawares; that while the camp was swarming like an ant's nest, Patterson
and his men might be making good use of the fleeting moments.
“Why the devil don't we move? We ought to move,” he said angrily, as he
glanced round the crowded field where the men were arraying themselves in
all the useless trappings of the Southern volunteer. Kemper was busily
placing his necessary toilet articles in his haversack, having thrown away
half his rations for the purpose; Jack Powell, completely dressed for the
march, was examining his heavy revolver, with the conscious pride a field
officer might have felt in his sword. As he stuck it into his belt, he
straightened himself with a laugh and jauntily set his small cap on his
curling hair; he was clean, comely, and smooth-shaven as if he had just
stepped from a hot bath and the hands of his barber.
“You may roll Dandy in the dust and he'll come out washed,” Baker had once
forcibly remarked.
“I say, boys, why don't we start?” persisted Dan impatiently, flicking with
his handkerchief at a grain of sand on his high boots. Then, as Big Abel
brought him a cup of coffee, he drank it standing, casting eager glances
over the rim of his cup. He had an odd feeling that it was all a great fox
hunt they were soon to start upon; that they were waiting only for the
calling of the hounds. The Major's fighting blood had stirred within his
grandson's veins, and generations of dead Lightfoots were scenting the
coming battle from the dust. When Dan thought now of the end to which he
should presently be marching, it suggested to him but a quickened
exhilaration of the pulses and an old engraving of “Waterloo,” which hung
on the dining-room wall at Chericoke. That was war; and he remembered
vividly the childish thrill with which he had first looked up at it. He saw
the prancing horses, the dramatic gestures of the generals with flowing
hair, the blur of waving flags and naked swords. It was like a page torn
from the eternal Romance; a page upon which he and his comrades should play
heroic parts; and it was white blood, indeed, that did not glow with the
hope of sharing in that picture; of hanging immortal in an engraving on the
wall.
The “fall in” of the sergeant was already sounding from the road, and, with
a last glance about the field, Dan ran down the gentle slope and across the
little stream to take his place in the ranks of the forming column. An
officer on a milk-white horse was making frantic gestures to the line, and
the young man followed him an instant with his eyes. Then, as he stood
there in the warm sunshine, he felt his impatience prick him like a needle.
He wanted to push forward the regiments in front of him, to start in any
direction--only to start. The suppressed excitement of the fox hunt was
upon him, and the hoarse voices of the officers thrilled him as if they
were the baying of the hounds. He heard the musical jingle of moving
cavalry, the hurried tread of feet in the soft dust, the smothered oaths of
men who stumbled over the scattered stones. And, at last, when the sun
stood high above, the long column swung off toward the south, leaving the
enemy and the north behind it.
“By God, we're running away,” said Bland in a whisper. With the words the
gayety passed suddenly from the army, and it moved slowly with the
dispirited tread of beaten men. The enemy lay to the north, and it was
marching to the south and home.
As it passed through the fragrant streets of Winchester, women, with
startled eyes, ran from open doors into the deep old gardens, and watched
it over the honeysuckle hedges. Under the fluttering flags, past the long
blue shadows, with the playing of the bands and the clatter of the
canteens--on it went into the white dust and the sunshine. From a wide
piazza, a group of schoolgirls pelted the troops with roses, and as Dan
went by he caught a white bud and stuck it into his cap. He looked back
laughing, to meet the flash of laughing eyes; then the gray line swept out
upon the turnpike and went down the broad road through the smooth green
fields, over which the sunlight lay like melted gold.
Dan, walking between Pinetop and Jack Powell, felt a sudden homesickness
for the abandoned camp, which they were leaving with the gay little town
and the red clay forts, naked to the enemy's guns. He saw the branching
apple tree, the burned-out fires, the silvery fringe of willows by the
stream; and he saw the men in blue already in possession of his woodpile,
broiling their bacon by the logs that Big Abel had cut.
At the end of three miles the brigades abruptly halted, and he listened,
looking at the ground, to an order, which was read by a slim young officer
who pulled nervously at his moustache. Down the column came a single
ringing cheer, and, without waiting for the command, the men pushed eagerly
forward along the road. What was a forced march of thirty miles to an army
that had never seen a battle?
As they went on a boyish merriment tripped lightly down the turnpike; jests
were shouted, a wit began to tease a mounted officer who was trying to
reach the front, and somebody with a tenor voice was singing “Dixie.” A
stray countryman, sitting upon the wall of loose stones, was greeted
affectionately by each passing company. He was a big, stupid-looking man,
with a gray fowl hanging, head downward, from his hand, and as he responded
“Howdy,” in an expressionless tone, the fowl craned its long neck upward
and pecked at the creeper on the wall.
“Howdy, Jim!” “Howdy, Peter!” “Howdy, Luke!” sang the first line. “How's
your wife?” “How's your wife's mother?” “How's your sister-in-law's uncle?”
inquired the next. The countryman spat into the ditch and stared solemnly
in reply, and the gray fowl, still craning its neck, pecked steadily at the
leaves upon the stones.
Dan looked up into the blue sky, across the open meadows to the far-off low
mountains, and then down the long turnpike where the dust hung in a yellow
cloud. In the bright sunshine he saw the flash of steel and the glitter of
gold braid, and the noise of tramping feet cheered him like music as he
walked on gayly, filled with visions. For was he not marching to his chosen
end--to victory, to Chericoke--to Betty? Or if the worst came to the
worst--well, a man had but one life, after all, and a life was a little
thing to give his country. Then, as always, his patriotism appealed to him
as a romance rather than a religion--the fine Southern ardour which had
sent him, at the first call, into the ranks, had sprung from an inward, not
an outward pressure. The sound of the bugle, the fluttering of the flags,
the flash of hot steel in the sunlight, the high old words that stirred
men's pulses--these things were his by blood and right of heritage. He
could no more have stifled the impulse that prompted him to take a side in
any fight than he could have kept his heart cool beneath the impassioned
voice of a Southern orator. The Major's blood ran warm through many
generations.
“I say, Beau, did you put a millstone in my knapsack?” inquired Bland
suddenly. His face was flushed, and there was a streak of wet dust across
his forehead. “If you did, it was a dirty joke,” he added irritably. Dan
laughed. “Now that's odd,” he replied, “because there's one in mine also,
and, moreover, somebody has stuck penknives in my boots. Was it you,
Pinetop?”
But the mountaineer shook his head in silence, and then, as they halted to
rest upon the roadside, he flung himself down beneath the shadow of a
sycamore, and raised his canteen to his lips. He had come leisurely at his
long strides, and as Dan looked at him lying upon the short grass by the
wall, he shook his own roughened hair, in impatient envy. “Why, you've
stood it like a Major, Pinetop,” he remarked.
Pinetop opened his eyes. “Stood what?” he drawled.
“Why, this heat, this dust, this whole confounded march. I don't believe
you've turned a hair, as Big Abel says.”
“Good Lord,” said Pinetop. “I don't reckon you've ever ploughed up hill
with a steer team.”
Without replying, Dan unstrapped his knapsack and threw it upon the
roadside. “What doesn't go in my haversack, doesn't go, that's all,” he
observed. “How about you, Dandy?”
“Oh, I threw mine away a mile after starting,” returned Jack Powell, “my
luxuries are with a girl I left behind me. I've sacrificed everything to
the cause except my toothbrush, and, by Jove, if the weight of that goes on
increasing, I shall be forced to dispense with it forever. I got rid of my
rations long ago. Pinetop says a man can't starve in blackberry season, and
I hope he's right. Anyway, the Lord will provide--or he won't, that's
certain.”
“Is this the reward of faith, I wonder?” said Dan, as he looked at a lame
old negro who wheeled a cider cart and a tray of green apple pies down a
red clay lane that branched off under thick locust trees. “This way, Uncle,
here's your man.”
The old negro slowly approached them to be instantly surrounded by the
thirsty regiment.
“Howdy, Marsters? howdy?” he began, pulling his grizzled hair. “Dese yer's
right nice pies, dat dey is, suh.”
“Look here, Uncle, weren't they made in the ark, now?” inquired Bland
jestingly, as he bit into a greasy crust.
“De ark? naw, suh; my Mehaley she des done bake 'em in de cabin over
yonder.” He lifted his shrivelled hand and pointed, with a tremulous
gesture, to a log hut showing among the distant trees.
“What? are you a free man, Uncle?”
“Free? Go 'way f'om yer! ain' you never hyearn tell er Marse Plunkett?”
“Plunkett?” gravely repeated Bland, filling his canteen with cider. “Look
here, stand back, boys, it's my turn now.--Plunkett--Plunkett--can I have a
long-lost friend named Plunkett? Where is he, Uncle? has he gone to fight?”
“Marse Plunkett? Naw, suh, he ain' fit nobody.”
“Well, you tell him from me that he'd better enlist at once,” put in Jack
Powell. “This isn't the time for skulkers, Uncle; he's on our side, isn't
he?” The old negro shook his head, looking uneasily at the froth that
dripped from the keg into the dust.
“Naw, suh, Marse Plunkett, he's fur de Un'on, but he's pow'ful feared er de
Yankees,” he returned.
Bland broke into a laugh. “Oh, come, that's downright treason,” he
protested merrily. “Your Marse Plunkett's a skulker sure enough, and you
may tell him so with my compliments. You're on the Yankee side, too, I
reckon, and there're bullets in these pies, sure as I live.”
The old man shuffled nervously on his bare feet.
“Go 'way, Marster, w'at I know 'bout 'sides'?” he replied, tilting his keg
to drain the last few drops into the canteen of a thirsty soldier. “I'se on
de Lawd's side, dat's whar I is.”
He fell back startled, for the call of “Column, forward!” was shouted down
the road, and in an instant the men had left the emptied cart, and were
marching on into the sunny distance.
As the afternoon lengthened the heat grew more oppressive. Straight ahead
there was dust and sunshine and the ceaseless tramp, and on either side the
fresh fields were scorched and whitened by a powdering of hot sand. Beyond
the rise and dip of the hills, the mountains burned like blue flames on the
horizon, and overhead the sky was hard as an inverted brazier.
Dan had begun to limp, for his stiff boots galled his feet. His senses were
blunted by the hot sand which filled his eyes and ears and nostrils, and
there was a shimmer over all the broad landscape. When he shook his hair
from his forehead, the dust floated slowly down and settled in a scorching
ring about his neck.
The day closed gradually, and as they neared the river, the mountains
emerged from obscure outlines into wooded heights upon which the trees
showed soft and gray in the sunset. A cool breath was blown through a strip
of damp woodland, where the pale bodies of the sycamores were festooned in
luxuriant vines, and from the twilight long shadows stretched across the
red clay road. Then, as they went down a rocky slope, a fringe of willows
appeared suddenly from the blur of green, and they saw the Shenandoah
running between falling banks, with the colours of the sunset floating like
pink flowers upon its breast.
With a shout the front line plunged into the stream, holding its heavy
muskets high above the current of the water, and filing upon the opposite
bank, into a rough road which wound amid the ferns.
Midway of the river, near the fording point, there was a little island
which lay like a feathery tree-top upon the tinted water; and as Dan went
by, he felt the brush of willows on his face and heard the soft lapping of
the small waves upon the shore. The keen smell of the sycamores drifted to
him from the bank that he had left, and straight up stream he saw a single
peaked blue hill upon which a white cloud rested. For a moment he lingered,
breathing in the fragrance, then the rear line pressed upon him, and,
crossing rapidly, he stood on the rocky edge, shaking the water from his
clothes. Out of the after-glow came the steady tramp of tired feet, and
with aching limbs, he turned and hastened with the column into the mountain
pass.
III
THE REIGN OF THE BRUTE
The noise of the guns rolled over the green hills into the little valley
where the regiment had halted before a wayside spring, which lay hidden
beneath a clump of rank pokeberry. As each company filled its canteens, it
filed across the sunny road, from which the dust rose like steam, and stood
resting in an open meadow that swept down into a hollow between two gently
rising hills. From the spring a thin stream trickled, bordered by short
grass, and the water, dashed from it by the thirsty men, gathered in
shining puddles in the red clay road. By one of these puddles a man had
knelt to wash his face, and as Dan passed, draining his canteen, he looked
up with a sprinkling of brown drops on his forehead. Near him, unharmed by
the tramping feet, a little purple flower was blooming in the mud.