Marse Robert! an' we'll whip the earth in our bar' feet befo' breakfast.”
“All the same I wish old Stonewall was along,” muttered Pinetop. “If I
could jest see old Stonewall or his ghost ahead, I'd know thar was an open
road somewhere that Sheridan ain't got his eye on.”
As the sun rose high, refugees from Richmond flocked after them to shout
that the town had been fired by the citizens, who had moved, with their
families, to the Capitol Square as the flames spread from the great tobacco
warehouses. Men who had wives and children in the city groaned as they
marched farther from the ashes of their homes, and more than one staggered
back into the ranks and went onward under a heavier burden.
“Wall, I reckon things are fur the best--or they ain't.” remarked Pinetop,
in a cheerful tone. “Thar's no goin' agin that, you bet. What's the row
back thar, I wonder?”
The hovering enemy, grown bolder, had fallen upon the flank, and the
stragglers and the rear guard were beating off the cavalry, when a regiment
was sent back to relieve the pressure. Returning, Pinetop, who was of the
attacking party, fell gravely to moralizing upon the scarcity of food.
“I've tasted every plagued thing that grows in this country except dirt,”
he observed, “an' I'm goin' to kneel down presently and take a good square
mouthful of that.”
“That's one thing we shan't run short of,” replied Dan, stepping round a
mud hole. “By George, we've got to march in a square again across this
open. I believe when I set out for heaven, I'll find some of those
confounded Yankee troopers watching the road.”
Forming in battle line they advanced cautiously across the clearing, while
the skirmishing grew brisker at the front. That night they halted but once
upon the way, standing to meet attack against a strip of pines, watching
with drawn breath while the enemy crept closer. They heard him in the
woods, felt him in the air, saw him in the darkness--like a gigantic coil
he approached inch by inch for the last struggle. Now and then a shot rang
out, and the little band thrilled to a soldier, and waited breathlessly for
the last charge that might end it all.
“There's only one thing worse than starvation, and it's defeat!” cried Dan
aloud; then the column swung on and the cry of “Close up, there! close up!”
mingled in his ears with the steady tramp upon the road.
In the early morning the shots grew faster, and as the column stopped in
the cover of a wood, the bullets came singing among the tree-tops, from the
left flank where the skirmishers had struck the enemy. During the short
rest Dan slept leaning against a twisted aspen, and when Pinetop shook him,
he awoke with a dizziness in his head that sent the flat earth slamming
against the sky.
“I believe I'm starving, Pinetop,” he said, and his voice rang like a bell
in his ears. “I can't see where to put my feet, the ground slips about so.”
For answer Pinetop felt in his pocket and brought out a slice of fat bacon,
which he gave to him uncooked.
“Wait till I git a light,” he commanded. “A woman up the road gave me a
hunk, and I've had my share.”
“You've had your share,” repeated Dan, greedily, his eyes on the meat,
though he knew that Pinetop was lying.
The mountaineer struck a match and lighted a bit of pine, holding the bacon
to the flame until it scorched.
“You'd better git it all in yo' mouth quick,” he advised, “for if the smell
once starts on the breeze the whole brigade will be on the scent in a
minute.”
Dan ate it to the last morsel and licked the warm juice from his fingers.
“You lied, Pinetop,” he said, “but, by God, you saved my life. What place
is this, I wonder. Isn't there any hope of our cutting through Grant's
lines to-day?”
Pinetop glanced about him.
“Somebody said we were comin' on to Sailor's Creek,” he answered, “and it's
about as God-forsaken country as I care to see. Hello! what's that?”
In the road there was an abandoned battery, cut down and left to rot into
the earth, and as they swept past it at “double quick,” they heard the
sound of rapid firing across the little stream.
“It's a fight, thank God!” yelled Pinetop, and at the words a tumultuous
joy urged Dan through the water and over the sharp stones. After all the
hunger and the intolerable waiting, a chance was come for him to use his
musket once again.
As they passed through an open meadow, a rabbit, starting suddenly from a
clump of sumach, went bounding through the long grass before the thin gray
line. With ears erect and short white tail bobbing among the broom-sedge,
the little quivering creature darted straight toward the low brow of a
hill, where a squadron of cavalry made a blue patch on the green.
“Geriminy! thar goes a good dinner,” Pinetop gasped, smacking his lips.
“An' I've got to save this here load for a Yankee I can't eat.”
With a long flying leap the rabbit led the charge straight into the enemy's
ranks, and as the squirrel rifles rang out behind it, a blue horseman was
swept from every saddle upon the hill.
“By God, I'm glad I didn't eat that rabbit!” yelled Pinetop, as he reloaded
and raised his musket to his shoulder.
Back and forth before the line, the general of the brigade was riding
bareheaded and frantic with delight. As he passed he made sweeping gestures
with his left hand, and his long gray hair floated like a banner upon the
wind.
“They're coming, men!” he cried. “Get behind that fence and have your
muskets ready to pick your man. When you see the whites of his eyes fire,
and give the bayonet. They're coming! Here they are!”
The old “worm” fence went down, and as Dan piled up some loose rails before
him, a creeping brier tore his fingers until the blood spurted upon his
sleeve. Then, kneeling on the ground, he raised his musket and fired at one
of the skirmishers advancing briskly through the broom-sedge. In an instant
the meadow and the hill beyond were blue with swarming infantry, and the
little gray band fell back, step by step, loading and firing as it went
across the field. As the road behind it closed, Dan turned to battle on his
own account, and entering a thinned growth of pines, he dodged from tree to
tree and aimed above the brushwood. Near him the colour bearer of the
regiment was fighting with his flagstaff for a weapon, and out in the
meadow a member of the glee club, crouching behind a clump of sassafras as
he loaded, was singing in a cracked voice:--
“Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again!”
Then a bullet went with a soft thud into the singer's breast, and the
cracked voice was choked out beneath the bushes.
Gripped by a sudden pity for the helpless flag he had loved and followed
for four years, Dan made an impetuous dash from out the pines, and tearing
the colours from the pole, tossed them over his arm as he retreated rapidly
to cover. At the instant he held his life as nothing beside the faded strip
of silk that wrapped about his body. The cause for which he had fought, the
great captain he had followed, the devotion to a single end which had kept
him struggling in the ranks, the daily sacrifice, the very poverty and cold
and hunger, all these were bound up and made one with the tattered flag
upon his arm. Through the belt of pines, down the muddy road, across the
creek and up the long hill, he fell back breathlessly, loading and firing
as he went, with his face turned toward the enemy. At the end he became
like a fox before the hunters, dashing madly over the rough ground, with
the colours blown out behind him, and the quick shots ringing in his ears.
Then, as if by a single stroke, Lee's army vanished from the trampled
broom-sedge and the strip of pines. The blue brigades closed upon the
landscape and when they opened there were only a group of sullen prisoners
and the sound of stray shots from the scattered soldiers who had fought
their way beyond the stream.
IX
IN THE HOUR OF DEFEAT
As the dusk fell Dan found himself on the road with a little company of
stragglers, flying from the pursuing cavalry that drew off slowly as the
darkness gathered. He had lost his regiment, and, as he went on, he began
calling out familiar names, listening with strained ears for an answer that
would tell of a friend's escape. At last he caught the outlines of a
gigantic figure relieved on a hillock against the pale green west, and,
with a shout, he hurried through the swarm of fugitives, and overtook
Pinetop, who had stooped to tie his shoe on with a leather strap.
“Thank God, old man!” he cried. “Where are the others?”
Pinetop, panting yet imperturbable, held out a steady hand.
“The Lord knows,” he replied. “Some of 'em air here an' some ain't. I was
goin' back agin to git the flag, when I saw you chased like a fox across
the creek with it hangin' on yo' back. Then I kinder thought it wouldn't do
for none of the regiment to answer when Marse Robert called, so I came
along right fast and kep' hopin' you would follow.”
“Here I am,” responded Dan, “and here are the colours.” He twined the silk
more closely about his arm, gloating over his treasure in the twilight.
Pinetop stretched out his great rough hand and touched the flag as gently
as if it were a woman.
“I've fought under this here thing goin' on four years now,” he said, “and
I reckon when they take it prisoner, they take me along with it.”
“And me,” added Dan; “poor Granger went down, you know, just as I took it
from him. He fell fighting with the pole.”
“Wall, it's a better way than most,” Pinetop replied, “an' when the angel
begins to foot up my account on Jedgment Day, I shouldn't mind his cappin'
the whole list with 'he lost his life, but he didn't lose his flag.' To
make a blamed good fight is what the Lord wants of us, I reckon, or he
wouldn't have made our hands itch so when they touch a musket.”
Then they trudged on silently, weak from hunger, sickened by defeat. When,
at last, the disorganized column halted, and the men fell to the ground
upon their rifles, Dan kindled a fire and parched his corn above the coals.
After it was eaten they lay down side by side and slept peacefully on the
edge of an old field.
For three days they marched steadily onward, securing meagre rations in a
little town where they rested for a while, and pausing from time to time,
to beat off a feigned attack. Pinetop, cheerful, strong, undaunted by any
hardship, set his face unflinchingly toward the battle that must clear a
road for them through Grant's lines. Had he met alone a squadron of cavalry
in the field, he would, probably, have taken his stand against a pine, and
aimed his musket as coolly as if a squirrel were the mark. With his sunny
temper, and his gloomy gospel of predestination, his heart could swell with
hope even while he fought single-handed in the face of big battalions. What
concerned him, after all, was not so much the chance of an ultimate victory
for the cause, as the determination in his own mind to fight it out as long
as he had a cartridge remaining in his box. As his fathers had kept the
frontier, so he meant, on his own account, to keep Virginia.
On the afternoon of the third day, as the little company drew near to
Appomattox Court House, it found the road blocked with abandoned guns, and
lined by exhausted stragglers, who had gone down at the last halting place.
As it filed into an open field beyond a wooded level, where a few campfires
glimmered, a group of Federal horsemen clattered across the front, and, as
if by instinct, the column formed into battle line, and the hand of every
man was on the trigger of his musket.
“Don't fire, you fools!” called an officer behind them, in a voice sharp
with irritation. “The army has surrendered!”
“What! Grant surrendered?” thundered the line, with muskets at a trail as
it rushed into the open.
“No, you blasted fools--we've surrendered,” shouted the voice, rising
hoarsely in a gasping indignation.
“Surrendered, the deuce!” scoffed the men, as they fell back into ranks.
“I'd like to know what General Lee will think of your surrender?”
A little Colonel, with his hand at his sword hilt, strutted up and down
before a tangle of dead thistles.
“I don't know what he thinks of it, he did it,” he shrieked, without
pausing in his walk.
“It's a damn lie!” cried Dan, in a white heat. Then he threw his musket on
the ground, and fell to sobbing the dry tearless sobs of a man who feels
his heart crushed by a sudden blow.
There were tears on all the faces round him, and Pinetop was digging his
great fists into his eyes, as a child does who has been punished before his
playmates. Beside him a man with an untrimmed shaggy beard hid his
distorted features in shaking hands.
“I ain't blubberin' fur myself,” he said defiantly, “but--O Lord, boys--I'm
cryin' fur Marse Robert.”
Over the field the beaten soldiers, in ragged gray uniforms, were lying
beneath little bushes of sassafras and sumach, and to the right a few
campfires were burning in a shady thicket. The struggle was over, and each
man had fallen where he stood, hopeless for the first time in four long
years. Up and down the road groups of Federal horsemen trotted with
cheerful unconcern, and now and then a private paused to make a remark in
friendly tones; but the men beneath the bushes only stared with hollow eyes
in answer--the blank stare of the defeated who have put their whole
strength into the fight.
Taking out his jack-knife, Dan unfastened the flag from the hickory pole on
which he had placed it, and began cutting it into little pieces, which he
passed to each man who had fought beneath its folds. The last bit he put
into his own pocket, and trembling like one gone suddenly palsied, passed
from the midst of his silent comrades to a pine stump on the border of the
woods. Here he sat down and looked hopelessly upon the scene before
him--upon the littered roads and the great blue lines encircling the
horizon.
So this was the end, he told himself, with a bitterness that choked him
like a grip upon the throat, this the end of his boyish ardour, his dream
of fame upon the battle-field, his four years of daily sacrifice and
suffering. This was the end of the flag for which he was ready to give his
life three days ago. With his youth, his strength, his very bread thrown
into the scale, he sat now with wrecked body and blighted mind, and saw his
future turn to decay before his manhood was well begun. Where was the old
buoyant spirit he had brought with him into the fight? Gone forever, and in
its place he found his maimed and trembling hands, and limbs weakened by
starvation as by long fever. His virile youth was wasted in the slow
struggle, his energy was sapped drop by drop; and at the last he saw
himself burned out like the battle-fields, where the armies had closed and
opened, leaving an impoverished and ruined soil. He had given himself for
four years, and yet when the end came he had not earned so much as an empty
title to take home for his reward. The consciousness of a hard-fought fight
was but the common portion of them all, from the greatest to the humblest
on either side. As for him he had but done his duty like his comrades in
the ranks, and by what right of merit should he have raised himself above
their heads? Yes, this was the end, and he meant to face it standing with
his back against the wall.
Down the road a line of Federal privates came driving an ox before them,
and he eyed them gravely, wondering in a dazed way if the taste of victory
had gone to their heads. Then he turned slowly, for a voice was speaking at
his side, and a tall man in a long blue coat was building a little fire
hard by.
“Your stomach's pretty empty, ain't it, Johnny?” he inquired, as he laid
the sticks crosswise with precise movements, as if he had measured the
length of each separate piece of wood. He was lean and rawboned, with a
shaggy red moustache and a wart on his left cheek. When he spoke he showed
an even row of strong white teeth.
Dan looked at him with a kind of exhausted indignation.
“Well, it's been emptier,” he returned shortly.
The man in blue struck a match and held it carefully to a dried pine
branch, watching, with a serious face, as the flame licked the rosin from
the crossed sticks. Then he placed a quart pot full of water on the coals,
and turned to meet Dan's eyes, which had grown ravenous as he caught the
scent of beef.
“You see we somehow thought you Johnnies would be hard up,” he said in an
offhand manner, “so we made up our minds we'd ask you to dinner and cut our
rations square. Some of us are driving over an ox from camp, but as I was
hanging round and saw you all by yourself on this old stump, I had a
feeling that you were in need of a cup of coffee. You haven't tasted real
coffee for some time, I guess.”
The water was bubbling over and he measured out the coffee and poured it
slowly into the quart cup. As the aroma filled the air, he opened his
haversack and drew out a generous supply of raw beef which he broiled on
little sticks, and laid on a spread of army biscuits. The larger share he
offered to Dan with the steaming pot of coffee.
“I declare it'll do me downright good to see you eat,” he said, with a
hospitable gesture.
Dan sat down beside the bread and beef, and, for the next ten minutes, ate
like a famished wolf, while the man in blue placidly regarded him. When he
had finished he took out a little bag of Virginian tobacco and they smoked
together beside the waning fire. A natural light returned gradually to
Dan's eyes, and while the clouds of smoke rose high above the bushes, they
talked of the last great battles as quietly as of the Punic Wars. It was
all dead now, as dead as history, and the men who fought had left the
bitterness to the camp followers or to the ones who stayed at home.
“You have fine tobacco down this way,” observed the Union soldier, as he
refilled his pipe, and lighted it with an ember. Then his gaze followed
Dan's, which was resting on the long blue lines that stretched across the
landscape.
“You're feeling right bad about us now,” he pursued, as he crossed his legs
and leaned back against a pine, “and I guess it's natural, but the time
will come when you'll know that we weren't the worst you had to face.”
Dan held out his hand with something of a smile.
“It was a fair fight and I can shake hands,” he responded.
“Well, I don't mean that,” said the other thoughtfully. “What I mean is
just this, you mark my words--after the battle comes the vultures. After
the army of fighters comes the army of those who haven't smelled the
powder. And in time you'll learn that it isn't the man with the rifle that
does the most of the mischief. The damned coffee boilers will get their
hands in now--I know 'em.”
“Well, there's nothing left, I suppose, but to swallow it down without any
fuss,” said Dan wearily, looking over the field where the slaughtered ox
was roasting on a hundred bayonets at a hundred fires.
“You're right, that's the only thing,” agreed the man in blue; then his
keen gray eyes were on Dan's face.
“Have you got a wife?” he asked bluntly.
Dan shook his head as he stared gravely at the embers.
“A sweetheart, I guess? I never met a Johnnie who didn't have a
sweetheart.”
“Yes, I've a sweetheart--God bless her!”
“Well, you take my advice and go home and tell her to cure you, now she's
got the chance. I like your face, young man, but if I ever saw a
half-starved and sickly one, it is yours. Why, I shouldn't have thought you
had the strength to raise your rifle.”
“Oh, it doesn't take much strength for that; and besides the coffee did me
good, I was only hungry.”
“Hungry, hump!” grunted the Union soldier. “It takes more than hunger to
give a man that blue look about the lips; it takes downright starvation.”
He dived into his haversack and drew out a quinine pill and a little bottle
of whiskey.
“If you'll just chuck this down it won't do you any harm,” he went on, “and
if I were you, I'd find a shelter before I went to sleep to-night; you
can't trust April weather. Get into that cow shed over there or under a
wagon.”
Dan swallowed the quinine and the whiskey, and as the strong spirit fired
his veins, the utter hopelessness of his outlook muffled him into silence.
Dropping his head into his open palms, he sat dully staring at the
whitening ashes.
After a moment the man in blue rose to his feet and fastened his haversack.
“I live up by Bethlehem, New Hampshire,” he remarked, “and if you ever come
that way, I hope you'll look me up; my name's Moriarty.”
“Your name's Moriarty, I shall remember,” repeated Dan, trying, with a
terrible effort, to steady his quivering limbs.
“Jim Moriarty, don't you forget it. Anybody at Bethlehem can tell you about
me; I keep the biggest store around there.” He went off a few steps and
then came back to hold out an awkward hand in which there was a little heap
of silver.
“You'd just better take this to start you on your way,” he said, “it ain't
but ninety-five cents--I couldn't make out the dollar--and when you get it
in again you can send it to Jim Moriarty at Bethlehem, New Hampshire.
Good-by, and good luck to you this time.”
He strode off across the field, and Dan, with the silver held close in his
palm, flung himself back upon the ground and slept until Pinetop woke him
with a grasp upon his shoulder.
“Marse Robert's passin' along the road,” he said. “You'd better hurry.”
Struggling to his feet Dan rushed from the woods across the deserted field,
to the lines of conquered soldiers standing in battle ranks upon the
roadside. Between them the Commander had passed slowly on his dapple gray
horse, and when Dan joined the ranks it was only in time to see him ride
onward at a walk, with the bearded soldiers clinging like children to his
stirrups. A group of Federal cavalrymen, drawn up beneath a persimmon tree,
uncovered as he went by, and he returned the salute with a simple gesture.
Lonely, patient, confirmed in courtesy, he passed on his way, and his
little army returned to camp in the strip of pines.
“'I've done my best for you,' that's what he said,” sobbed Pinetop. “'I've
done my best for you,'--and I kissed old Traveller's mane.”
Without replying, Dan went back into the woods and flung himself down on
the spread of tags. Now that the fight was over all the exhaustion of the
last four years, the weakness after many battles, the weariness after the
long marches, had gathered with accumulated strength for the final
overthrow.
For three days he remained in camp in the pine woods, and on the third,
after waiting six hours in a hard rain outside his General's tent, he
secured the little printed slip which signified to all whom it might
concern that he had become a prisoner upon his parole. Then, after a
sympathetic word to the rest of the division, shivering beneath the
sassafras bushes before the tent, he shook hands with his comrades under
arms, and started with Pinetop down the muddy road. The war was over, and
footsore, in rags and with aching limbs, he was returning to the little
valley where he had hoped to trail his glory.
Down the long road the gray rain fell straight as a curtain, and on either
side tramped the lines of beaten soldiers who were marching, on their word
of honour, to their distant homes. The abandoned guns sunk deep in the mud,
the shivering men lying in rags beneath the bushes, and the charred remains
of campfires among the trees were the last memories Dan carried from the
four years' war.
Some miles farther on, when the pickets had been passed, a man on a black
horse rode suddenly from a little thicket and stopped across their path.
“You fellows haven't been such darn fools as to give your parole, have
you?” he asked in an angry voice, his hand on his horse's neck. “The fight
isn't over yet and we want your muskets on our side. I belong to the
partisan rangers, and we'll cut through to Johnston's army before daylight.
If not, we'll take to the mountains and keep up the war forever. The
country is ours, what's to hinder us?”
He spoke passionately, and at each sharp exclamation the black horse rose
on his haunches and pawed the air.
Dan shook his head.
“I'm out on parole,” he replied, “but as soon as I'm exchanged, I'll fight
if Virginia wants me. How about you, Pinetop?”
The mountaineer shuffled his feet in the mud and stood solemnly surveying
the landscape.