“Hi, Yank!”
“Shut up!” replied Alden, wriggling to the edge of the rifle-pit. Connor
also crawled a little higher and squinted through the chinks of the pine
logs.
“Hey, Johnny!” he called across the river, “are you that clay-eatin’
Cracker with green lamps on your pilot?”
“Oh, Yank! Are yew the U. S. mewl with a C. S. A. brand on yewr
head-stall?”
“Go to hell!” replied Connor sullenly.
A jeering laugh answered him from across the river.
“He had you there, Connor,” observed Alden with faint interest.
Connor took off his blue cap and examined the bullet hole in the crown.
“C. S. A. brand on my head-stall, eh!” he repeated savagely, twirling the
cap between his dirty fingers.
“You called him a clay-eating Cracker,” observed Alden; “and you referred
to his spectacles as green lanterns on his pilot.”
“I’ll show him whose head-stall is branded,” muttered Connor, shoving
his smoky rifle through the log crack.
Alden slid down to the bottom of the shallow pit and watched him
apathetically.
The silence was intense; the muddy river, smooth as oil, swirled
noiselessly between its fringe of sycamores; not a breath of air stirred
the leaves around them. From the sun-baked bottom of the rifle-pit came
the stale smell of charred logs and smoke-soaked clothing. There was a
stench of sweat in the air and the heavy odour of balsam and pine seemed
to intensify it. Alden gasped once or twice, threw open his jacket at
the throat, and stuffed a filthy handkerchief into the crown of his cap,
arranging the ends as a shelter for his neck.
Connor lay silent, his right eye fastened upon the rifle-sight, his dusty
army shoes crossed behind him. One yellow sock had slipped down over the
worn shoe heel and laid bare a dust-begrimed ankle.
In the heated stillness Alden heard the boring of weevils in the logs
overhead. A tiny twig snapped somewhere in the forest; a fly buzzed
about his knees. Suddenly Connor’s rifle cracked; the echoes rattled and
clattered away through the woods; a thin cloud of pungent vapour slowly
drifted straight upward, shredding into filmy streamers among the tangled
branches overhead.
“Get him?” asked Alden, after a silence.
“Nope,” replied Connor. Then he addressed himself to his late target
across the river:
“Hello, Johnny!”
“Hi, Yank!”
“How close?”
“Hey?”
“How close?”
“What, sonny?”
“My shot, you fool!”
“Why, sonny!” called back the Confederate in affected surprise, “was yew
a shootin’ at me?”
Bang! went Connor’s rifle again. A derisive cat-call answered him, and he
turned furiously to Alden.
“Oh, let up,” said the young fellow; “it’s too hot for that.”
Connor was speechless with rage, and he hastily jammed another cartridge
into his long, hot rifle, while Alden roused himself, brushed away a
persistent fly, and crept up to the edge of the pit again.
“Hello, Johnny!” he shouted.
“That you, sonny?” replied the Confederate.
“Yes. Say, Johnny, shall we call it square until four o’clock?”
“What time is it?” replied the cautious Confederate; “all our expensive
gold watches is bein’ repaired at Chickamauga.”
At this taunt, Connor showed his teeth, but Alden laid one hand on his
arm and sang out: “It’s two o’clock, Richmond time; Sherman has just
telegraphed us from your State-house.”
“Wa-al, in that case this crool war is over,” replied the Confederate
sharpshooter; “we’ll be easy on old Sherman.”
“See here!” cried Alden; “is it a truce until four o’clock?”
“All right! Your word, Yank!”
“You have it!”
“Done!” said the Confederate, coolly rising to his feet and strolling
down to the river bank, both hands in his pockets.
Alden and Connor crawled out of their ill-smelling dust wallow, leaving
their rifles behind them.
“Whew! It’s hot, Johnny,” said Alden pleasantly. He pulled out a stained
pipe, blew into the stem, polished the bowl with his sleeve, and sucked
wistfully at the end. Then he went and sat down beside Connor who had
improvised a fishing pole from his ramrod, a bit of string, and a rusty
hook.
The Confederate rifleman also sat down on his side of the stream, puffing
luxuriously on a fragrant corn-cob pipe.
Presently the Confederate soldier raised his head and looked across at
Alden.
“What’s yewr name, sonny?” he asked.
“Alden,” replied the young fellow briefly.
“Mine’s Craig,” observed the Confederate; “what’s yewr regiment?”
“Two hundred sixtieth New York; what’s yours, Mr. Craig?”
“Ninety-third Maryland, _Mister_ Alden.”
“Quit that throwin’ sticks in the water!” growled Connor; “how do you
s’pose I’m goin’ to catch anythin’?”
Alden tossed his stick back into the brush-heap and laughed.
“How’s your tobacco, Craig?” he called out.
“Bully! How’s yewr coffee ’n ’tack, Alden?”
“First-rate!” replied the youth.
After a silence he said: “Is it a go?”
“You bet,” said Craig, fumbling in his pockets. He produced a heavy twist
of Virginia tobacco, laid it on a log, hacked off about three inches with
his sheath knife, and folded it up in a big green sycamore leaf. This
again he rolled into a corn-husk, weighted with a pebble, then stepping
back, he hurled it into the air, saying: “Deal squar, Yank!”
The tobacco fell at Alden’s feet. He picked it up, measured it carefully
with his clasp-knife, and called out: “Three and three-quarters, Craig.
What do you want, hard-tack or coffee?”
“’Tack,” replied Craig: “don’t stint!”
Alden laid out two biscuits. As he was about to hack a quarter from the
third he happened to glance over the creek at his enemy. There was no
mistaking the expression in his face. Starvation was stamped on every
feature.
When Craig caught Alden’s eye, he spat with elaborate care, whistled a
bar of the “Bonny Blue Flag,” and pretended to yawn.
Alden hesitated, glanced at Connor, then placed three whole biscuits in
the corn-husk, added a pinch of coffee, and tossed the parcel over to
Craig.
That Craig longed to fling himself upon the food and devour it was
plain to Alden, who was watching his face. But he didn’t; he strolled
leisurely down the bank, picked up the parcel, weighed it critically
before opening it, and finally sat down to examine the contents. When
he saw that the third cracker was whole, and that a pinch of coffee had
been added, he paused in his examination and remained motionless on the
bank, head bent. Presently he looked up and asked Alden if he had made a
mistake. The young fellow shook his head and drew a long puff of smoke
from his pipe, watching it curl out of his nose with interest.
“Then I’m obliged to yew, Alden,” said Craig; “’low, I’ll eat a snack to
see it ain’t pizened.”
He filled his lean jaws with the dry biscuit, then scooped up a tin-cup
full of water from the muddy river and set the rest of the cracker to
soak.
“Good?” queried Alden.
“Fair,” drawled Craig, bolting an unchewed segment and choking a little.
“How’s the twist?”
“Fine,” said Alden; “tastes like stable-sweepings.”
They smiled at each other across the stream.
“Sa-a-y,” drawled Craig with his mouth full, “when yew’re out of twist,
jest yew sing out, sonny.”
“All right,” replied Alden. He stretched back in the shadow of a sycamore
and watched Craig with pleasant eyes.
Presently Connor had a bite and jerked his line into the air.
“Look yere,” said Craig, “that ain’t no way foh to ketch ‘red-horse.’
Yew want a ca’tridge on foh a sinker, sonny.”
“What’s that?” inquired Connor suspiciously.
“Put on a sinker.”
“Go on, Connor,” said Alden.
Connor saw him smoking and sniffed anxiously. Alden tossed him the twist,
telling him to fill his pipe.
Presently Connor found a small pebble and improvised a sinker. He swung
his line again into the muddy current with a mechanical sidelong glance
to see what Craig was doing, and settled down again on his haunches,
smoking and grunting.
“Enny news, Alden?” queried Craig after a silence.
“Nothing much—except that Richmond has fallen,” grinned Alden.
“Quit foolin’,” urged the Southerner; “ain’t thar no news?”
“No. Some of our men down at Long Pond got sick eating catfish. They
caught them in the pond. It appears you Johnnys used the pond as a
cemetery, and our men got sick eating the fish.”
“That so?” grinned Craig; “too bad. Lots of yewr men was in Long Pond,
too, I reckon.”
In the silence that followed, two rifle shots sounded faint and dull from
the distant forest.
“’Nother great Union victory,” drawled Craig. “Extry! extry! Richmond is
took!”
Alden laughed and puffed at his pipe.
“We licked the boots off of the 30th Texas last Monday,” he said.
“Sho!” exclaimed Craig. “What did you go a lickin’ their boots
for?—blackin’?”
“Oh, shut up!” said Connor from the bank, “I can’t ketch no fish if you
two fools don’t quit jawin’.”
The sun was dipping below the pine-clad ridge, flooding river and wood
with a fierce radiance. The spruce needles glittered, edged with gold;
every broad green leaf wore a heart of gilded splendour, and the muddy
waters of the river rolled onward like a flood of precious metal, heavy,
burnished, noiseless.
From a balsam bough a thrush uttered three timid notes; a great
gauzy-winged grasshopper drifted blindly into a clump of sun-scorched
weeds, click! click! cr-r-r-r!
“Purty, ain’t it,” said Craig, looking at the thrush. Then he swallowed
the last morsel of muddy hard-tack, wiped his beard on his cuff, hitched
up his trousers, took off his green glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
“A he-catbird sings purtier though,” he said with a yawn.
Alden drew out his watch, puffed once or twice, and stood up, stretching
his arms in the air.
“It’s four o’clock,” he began, but was cut short by a shout from Connor.
“Gee-whiz!” he yelled, “what have I got on this here pole!”
The ramrod was bending, the line swaying heavily in the current.
“It’s four o’clock, Connor,” said Alden, keeping a wary eye on Craig.
“That’s all right!” called Craig; “the time’s extended till yewr friend
lands that there fish!”
“Pulls like a porpoise,” grunted Connor, “damn it! I bet it busts my
ramrod!”
“Does it pull?” grinned Craig.
“Yes,—a dead weight!”
“Don’t it jerk kinder this way an’ that,” asked Craig, much interested.
“Naw,” said Connor, “the bloody thing jest pulls steady.”
“Then it ain’t no ‘red-horse,’ it’s a catfish!”
“Huh!” sneered Connor,—“don’t I know a catfish? This ain’t no catfish,
lemme tell yer!”
“Then it’s a log,” laughed Alden.
“By gum! here it comes,” panted Connor; “here, Alden, jest you ketch it
with my knife,—hook the blade, blame ye!”
Alden cautiously descended the red bank of mud, holding on to roots and
branches, and bent over the water. He hooked the big-bladed clasp-knife
like a scythe, set the spring, and leaned out over the water.
“Now!” muttered Connor.
An oily circle appeared upon the surface of the turbid water,—another and
another. A few bubbles rose and floated upon the tide.
Then something black appeared just beneath the bubbles and Alden hooked
it with his knife and dragged it shoreward.
It was the sleeve of a man’s coat.
Connor dropped his ramrod and gaped at the thing: Alden would have loosed
it, but the knife-blade was tangled in the sleeve.
He turned a sick face up to Connor.
“Pull it in,” said the older man,—“here, give it to me, lad—”
When at last the silent visitor lay upon the bank, they saw it was the
body of a Union cavalryman. Alden stared at the dead face, fascinated;
Connor mechanically counted the yellow chevrons upon the blue sleeve, now
soaked black. The muddy water ran over the baked soil, spreading out in
dust-covered pools; the spurred boots trickled slime. After a while both
men turned their heads and looked at Craig. The Southerner stood silent
and grave, his battered cap in his hand. They eyed each other quietly for
a moment, then, with a vague gesture, the Southerner walked back into his
pit and presently reappeared, trailing his rifle.
Connor had already begun to dig with his bayonet, but he glanced up at
the rifle in Craig’s hands. Then he looked suspiciously into the eyes of
the Southerner. Presently he bent his head again and continued digging.
It was sunset before he and Alden finished the shallow grave, Craig
watching them in silence, his rifle between his knees. When they were
ready they rolled the body into the hole and stood up.
Craig also rose, raising his rifle to a “present.” He held it there
while the two Union soldiers shovelled the earth into the grave. Alden
went back and lifted the two rifles from the pit, handed Connor his, and
waited.
“Ready!” growled Connor, “aim!”
Alden’s rifle came to his shoulder. Craig also raised his rifle.
“Fire!”
Three times the three shots rang out in the wilderness, over the unknown
grave. After a moment or two Alden nodded good night to Craig across the
river and walked slowly toward his rifle-pit. Connor shambled after him.
As he turned to lower himself into the pit he called across the river;
“Good night, Craig!”
“Good night, Connor,” said Craig.