Lige awakened into a world obscured by blue fog. Somebody was gently
shaking him. "Git up; we're going to move." The regiment was buckling
up itself. From the trail came the loud creak of a light battery moving
ahead. The tones of all men were low; the faces of the officers were
composed, serious. The regiment found itself moving along behind the
battery before it had time to ask itself more than a hundred questions.
The trail wound through a dense tall jungle, dark, heavy with dew.
The battle broke with a snap--far ahead. Presently Lige heard from the
air above him a faint low note as if somebody were blowing softly in
the mouth of a bottle. It was a stray bullet which had wandered a mile
to tell him that war was before him. He nearly broke his neck looking
upward. "Did ye hear that?" But the men were fretting to get out of
this gloomy jungle. They wanted to see something. The faint
rup-rup-rrrrup-rup on in the front told them that the fight had begun;
death was abroad, and so the mystery of this wilderness excited them.
This wilderness was portentously still and dark.
They passed the battery aligned on a hill above the trail, and they had
not gone far when the gruff guns began to roar and they could hear the
rocket-like swish of the flying shells. Presently everybody must have
called out for the assistance of the 307th. Aides and couriers came
flying back to them.
"Is this the 307th? Hurry up your men, please, Colonel. You're needed
more every minute."
Oh, they were, were they? Then the regulars were not going to do _all_
the fighting? The old 307th was bitterly proud or proudly bitter. They
left their blanket rolls under the guard of God and pushed on, which
is one of the reasons why the Cubans of that part of the country
were, later, so well equipped. There began to appear fields, hot,
golden-green in the sun. On some palm-dotted knolls before them they
could see little lines of black dots--the American advance. A few men
fell, struck down by other men who, perhaps half a mile away, were
aiming at somebody else. The loss was wholly in Carmony's battalion,
which immediately bunched and backed away, coming with a shock against
Gates's advance company. This shock sent a tremor through all of
Gates's battalion until men in the very last files cried out nervously,
"Well, what in hell is up now?" There came an order to deploy and
advance. An occasional hoarse yell from the regulars could be heard.
The deploying made Gates's heart bleed for the colonel. The old man
stood there directing the movement, straight, fearless, sombrely
defiant of--everything. Carmony's four companies were like four herds.
And all the time the bullets from no living man knows where kept
pecking at them and pecking at them. Gates, the excellent Gates, the
highly educated and strictly military Gates, grew rankly insubordinate.
He knew that the regiment was suffering from nothing but the deadly
range and oversweep of the modern rifle, of which many proud and
confident nations know nothing save that they have killed savages with
it, which is the least of all informations.
Gates rushed upon Carmony.
"---- ---- it, man, if you can't get your people to deploy, for ----
sake give me a chance! I'm stuck in the woods!"
Carmony gave nothing, but Gates took all he could get and his battalion
deployed and advanced like men. The old colonel almost burst into
tears, and he cast one quick glance of gratitude at Gates, which the
younger officer wore on his heart like a secret decoration.
There was a wild scramble up hill, down dale, through thorny thickets.
Death smote them with a kind of slow rhythm, leisurely taking a man now
here, now there, but the cat-spit sound of the bullets was always. A
large number of the men of Carmony's battalion came on with Gates. They
were willing to do anything, anything. They had no real fault, unless
it was that early conclusion that any brave high-minded youth was
necessarily a good soldier immediately, from the beginning. In them had
been born a swift feeling that the unpopular Gates knew everything, and
they followed the trained soldier.
If they followed him, he certainly took them into it. As they swung
heavily up one steep hill, like so many wind-blown horses, they came
suddenly out into the real advance. Little blue groups of men were
making frantic rushes forward and then flopping down on their bellies
to fire volleys while other groups made rushes. Ahead they could see a
heavy house-like fort which was inadequate to explain from whence came
the myriad bullets. The remainder of the scene was landscape. Pale men,
yellow men, blue men came out of this landscape quiet and sad-eyed with
wounds. Often they were grimly facetious. There is nothing in the
American regulars so amazing as his conduct when he is wounded--his
apologetic limp, his deprecatory arm-sling, his embarrassed and ashamed
shot-hole through the lungs. The men of the 307th looked at calm
creatures who had divers punctures and they were made better. These men
told them that it was only necessary to keep a-going. They of the 307th
lay on their bellies, red, sweating and panting, and heeded the voice
of the elder brother.
Gates walked back of his line, very white of face, but hard and stern
past anything his men knew of him. After they had violently adjured him
to lie down and he had given weak backs a cold, stiff touch, the 307th
charged by rushes. The hatless colonel made frenzied speech, but the
man of the time was Gates. The men seemed to feel that this was his
business. Some of the regular officers said afterward that the advance
of the 307th was very respectable indeed. They were rather surprised,
they said. At least five of the crack regiments of the regular army
were in this division, and the 307th could win no more than a feeling
of kindly appreciation.
Yes, it was very good, very good indeed, but did you notice what was
being done at the same moment by the 12th, the 17th, the 7th, the 8th,
the 25th, the----
Gates felt that his charge was being a success. He was carrying out a
successful function. Two captains fell bang on the grass and a
lieutenant slumped quietly down with a death wound. Many men sprawled
suddenly. Gates was keeping his men almost even with the regulars, who
were charging on his flanks. Suddenly he thought that he must have come
close to the fort and that a Spaniard had tumbled a great stone block
down upon his leg. Twelve hands reached out to help him, but he cried:
"No--d---- your souls--go on--go on!"
He closed his eyes for a moment, and it really was only for a moment.
When he opened them he found himself alone with Lige Wigram, who lay on
the ground near him.
"Maje," said Lige, "yer a good man. I've been a-follerin' ye all day
an' I want to say yer a good man."
The major turned a coldly scornful eye upon the private.
"Where are you wounded? Can you walk? Well, if you can, go to the rear
and leave me alone. I'm bleeding to death, and you bother me."
Lige, despite the pain in his wounded shoulder, grew indignant.
"Well," he mumbled, "you and me have been on th' outs fer a long time,
an' I only wanted to tell ye that what I seen of ye t'day has made me
feel mighty different."
"Go to the rear--if you can walk," said the major.
"Now, Maje, look here. A little thing like that----"
"Go to the rear."
Lige gulped with sobs.
"Maje, I know I didn't understand ye at first, but ruther'n let a
little thing like that come between us, I'd--I'd----"
"Go to the rear."
In this reiteration Lige discovered a resemblance to that first old
offensive phrase, "Come to attention and salute." He pondered over the
resemblance and he saw that nothing had changed. The man bleeding to
death was the same man to whom he had once paid a friendly visit with
unfriendly results. He thought now that he perceived a certain hopeless
gulf, a gulf which is real or unreal, according to circumstances.
Sometimes all men are equal; occasionally they are not. If Gates had
ever criticised Lige's manipulation of a hay fork on the farm at home,
Lige would have furiously disdained his hate or blame. He saw now that
he must not openly approve the major's conduct in war. The major's
pride was in his business, and his, Lige's congratulations, were beyond
all enduring.
The place where they were lying suddenly fell under a new heavy rain of
bullets. They sputtered about the men, making the noise of large
grasshoppers.
"Major!" cried Lige. "Major Gates! It won't do for ye to be left here,
sir. Ye'll be killed."
"But you can't help it, lad. You take care of yourself."
"I'm damned if I do," said the private, vehemently. "If I can't git
_you_ out, I'll stay and wait."
The officer gazed at his man with that same icy, contemptuous gaze.
"I'm--I'm a dead man anyhow. You go to the rear, do you hear?"
"No."
The dying major drew his revolver, cocked it and aimed it unsteadily at
Lige's head.
"Will you obey orders?"
"No."
"One?"
"No."
"Two?"
"No."
Gates weakly dropped his revolver.
"Go to the devil, then. You're no soldier, but----" He tried to add
something, "But----"