In the cold light of dawn the men were on their knees, packing,
strapping, and buckling. The comic toy hamlet of shelter-tents had been
wiped out as if by a cyclone. Through the trees could be seen the
crimson of a light battery's blankets, and the wheels creaked like the
sound of a musketry fight. Nolan, well gripped by his shelter tent, his
blanket, and his cartridge-belt, and bearing his rifle, advanced upon a
small group of men who were hastily finishing a can of coffee.
"Say, give us a drink, will yeh?" he asked, wistfully. He was as
sad-eyed as an orphan beggar.
Every man in the group turned to look him straight in the face. He had
asked for the principal ruby out of each one's crown. There was a grim
silence. Then one said, "What fer?" Nolan cast his glance to the
ground, and went away abashed.
But he espied Watkins and Martin surrounding Grierson, who had gained
three pieces of hard-tack by mere force of his audacious inexperience.
Grierson was fending his comrades off tearfully.
"Now, don't be damn pigs," he cried. "Hold on a minute." Here Nolan
asserted a claim. Grierson groaned. Kneeling piously, he divided the
hard-tack with minute care into four portions. The men, who had had
their heads together like players watching a wheel of fortune, arose
suddenly, each chewing. Nolan interpolated a drink of water, and sighed
contentedly.
The whole forest seemed to be moving. From the field on the other side
of the road a column of men in blue was slowly pouring; the battery had
creaked on ahead; from the rear came a hum of advancing regiments. Then
from a mile away rang the noise of a shot; then another shot; in a
moment the rifles there were drumming, drumming, drumming. The
artillery boomed out suddenly. A day of battle was begun.
The men made no exclamations. They rolled their eyes in the direction
of the sound, and then swept with a calm glance the forests and the
hills which surrounded them, implacably mysterious forests and hills
which lent to every rifle-shot the ominous quality which belongs to
secret assassination. The whole scene would have spoken to the private
soldiers of ambushes, sudden flank attacks, terrible disasters, if it
were not for those cool gentlemen with shoulder-straps and swords who,
the private soldiers knew, were of another world and omnipotent for the
business.
The battalions moved out into the mud and began a leisurely march in
the damp shade of the trees. The advance of two batteries had churned
the black soil into a formidable paste. The brown leggings of the men,
stained with the mud of other days, took on a deeper colour.
Perspiration broke gently out on the reddish faces. With his heavy roll
of blanket and the half of a shelter-tent crossing his right shoulder
and under his left arm, each man presented the appearance of being
clasped from behind, wrestler fashion, by a pair of thick white arms.
There was something distinctive in the way they carried their rifles.
There was the grace of an old hunter somewhere in it, the grace of a
man whose rifle has become absolutely a part of himself. Furthermore,
almost every blue shirt sleeve was rolled to the elbow, disclosing
fore-arms of almost incredible brawn. The rifles seemed light, almost
fragile, in the hands that were at the end of these arms, never fat but
always with rolling muscles and veins that seemed on the point of
bursting. And another thing was the silence and the marvellous
impassivity of the faces as the column made its slow way toward where
the whole forest spluttered and fluttered with battle.
Opportunely, the battalion was halted a-straddle of a stream, and
before it again moved, most of the men had filled their canteens. The
firing increased. Ahead and to the left a battery was booming at
methodical intervals, while the infantry racket was that continual
drumming which, after all, often sounds like rain on a roof. Directly
ahead one could hear the deep voices of field-pieces.
Some wounded Cubans were carried by in litters improvised from hammocks
swung on poles. One had a ghastly cut in the throat, probably from a
fragment of shell, and his head was turned as if Providence
particularly wished to display this wide and lapping gash to the long
column that was winding toward the front. And another Cuban, shot
through the groin, kept up a continual wail as he swung from the tread
of his bearers. "Ay--ee! Ay--ee! Madre mia! Madre mia!" He sang this
bitter ballad into the ears of at least three thousand men as they
slowly made way for his bearers on the narrow wood-path. These wounded
insurgents were, then, to a large part of the advancing army, the
visible messengers of bloodshed and death, and the men regarded them
with thoughtful awe. This doleful sobbing cry--"Madre mia"--was a
tangible consequent misery of all that firing on in front into which
the men knew they were soon to be plunged. Some of them wished to
inquire of the bearers the details of what had happened; but they could
not speak Spanish, and so it was as if fate had intentionally sealed
the lips of all in order that even meagre information might not leak
out concerning this mystery--battle. On the other hand, many unversed
private soldiers looked upon the unfortunate as men who had seen
thousands maimed and bleeding, and absolutely could not conjure any
further interest in such scenes.
A young staff-officer passed on horseback. The vocal Cuban was always
wailing, but the officer wheeled past the bearers without heeding
anything. And yet he never before had seen such a sight. His case was
different from that of the private soldiers. He heeded nothing because
he was busy--immensely busy and hurried with a multitude of reasons and
desires for doing his duty perfectly. His whole life had been a mere
period of preliminary reflection for this situation, and he had no
clear idea of anything save his obligation as an officer. A man of this
kind might be stupid; it is conceivable that in remote cases certain
bumps on his head might be composed entirely of wood; but those
traditions of fidelity and courage which have been handed to him from
generation to generation, and which he has tenaciously preserved
despite the persecution of legislators and the indifference of his
country, make it incredible that in battle he should ever fail to give
his best blood and his best thought for his general, for his men, and
for himself. And so this young officer in the shapeless hat and the
torn and dirty shirt failed to heed the wails of the wounded man, even
as the pilgrim fails to heed the world as he raises his illumined face
toward his purpose--rightly or wrongly, his purpose--his sky of the
ideal of duty; and the wonderful part of it is, that he is guided by an
ideal which he has himself created, and has alone protected from
attack. The young man was merely an officer in the United States
regular army.
The column swung across a shallow ford and took a road which passed the
right flank of one of the American batteries. On a hill it was booming
and belching great clouds of white smoke. The infantry looked up with
interest. Arrayed below the hill and behind the battery were the horses
and limbers, the riders checking their pawing mounts, and behind each
rider a red blanket flamed against the fervent green of the bushes. As
the infantry moved along the road, some of the battery horses turned at
the noise of the trampling feet and surveyed the men with eyes as deep
as wells, serene, mournful, generous eyes, lit heart-breakingly with
something that was akin to a philosophy, a religion of self-sacrifice--oh,
gallant, gallant horses!
"I know a feller in that battery," said Nolan, musingly. "A driver."
"Dam sight rather be a gunner," said Martin.
"Why would ye?" said Nolan, opposingly.
"Well, I'd take my chances as a gunner b'fore I'd sit way up in th' air
on a raw-boned plug an' git shot at."
"Aw----" began Nolan.
"They've had some losses t'-day all right," interrupted Grierson.
"Horses?" asked Watkins.
"Horses and men too," said Grierson.
"How d'yeh know?"
"A feller told me there by the ford."
They kept only a part of their minds bearing on this discussion because
they could already hear high in the air the wire-string note of the
enemy's bullets.