The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the roadway was
barely out of the youth’s sight before he saw dark waves of men come
sweeping out of the woods and down through the fields. He knew at once
that the steel fibers had been washed from their hearts. They were
bursting from their coats and their equipments as from entanglements.
They charged down upon him like terrified buffaloes.
Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops, and
through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant pink glare. The
voices of the cannon were clamoring in interminable chorus.
The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement. He
forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe. He threw aside
his mental pamphlets on the philosophy of the retreated and rules for
the guidance of the damned.
The fight was lost. The dragons were coming with invincible strides.
The army, helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the
overhanging night, was going to be swallowed. War, the red animal, war,
the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.
Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to make a
rallying speech, to sing a battle hymn, but he could only get his
tongue to call into the air: “Why—why—what—what’s th’ matter?”
Soon he was in the midst of them. They were leaping and scampering all
about him. Their blanched faces shone in the dusk. They seemed, for the
most part, to be very burly men. The youth turned from one to another
of them as they galloped along. His incoherent questions were lost.
They were heedless of his appeals. They did not seem to see him.
They sometimes gabbled insanely. One huge man was asking of the sky:
“Say, where de plank road? Where de plank road!” It was as if he had
lost a child. He wept in his pain and dismay.
Presently, men were running hither and thither in all ways. The
artillery booming, forward, rearward, and on the flanks made jumble of
ideas of direction. Landmarks had vanished into the gathered gloom. The
youth began to imagine that he had got into the center of the
tremendous quarrel, and he could perceive no way out of it. From the
mouths of the fleeing men came a thousand wild questions, but no one
made answers.
The youth, after rushing about and throwing interrogations at the
heedless bands of retreating infantry, finally clutched a man by the
arm. They swung around face to face.
“Why—why—” stammered the youth struggling with his balking tongue.
The man screamed: “Let go me! Let go me!” His face was livid and his
eyes were rolling uncontrolled. He was heaving and panting. He still
grasped his rifle, perhaps having forgotten to release his hold upon
it. He tugged frantically, and the youth being compelled to lean
forward was dragged several paces.
“Let go me! Let go me!”
“Why—why—” stuttered the youth.
“Well, then!” bawled the man in a lurid rage. He adroitly and fiercely
swung his rifle. It crushed upon the youth’s head. The man ran on.
The youth’s fingers had turned to paste upon the other’s arm. The
energy was smitten from his muscles. He saw the flaming wings of
lightning flash before his vision. There was a deafening rumble of
thunder within his head.
Suddenly his legs seemed to die. He sank writhing to the ground. He
tried to arise. In his efforts against the numbing pain he was like a
man wrestling with a creature of the air.
There was a sinister struggle.
Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect, battle with the air
for a moment, and then fall again, grabbing at the grass. His face was
of a clammy pallor. Deep groans were wrenched from him.
At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and knees, and
from thence, like a babe trying to walk, to his feet. Pressing his
hands to his temples he went lurching over the grass.
He fought an intense battle with his body. His dulled senses wished him
to swoon and he opposed them stubbornly, his mind portraying unknown
dangers and mutilations if he should fall upon the field. He went tall
soldier fashion. He imagined secluded spots where he could fall and be
unmolested. To search for one he strove against the tide of pain.
Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly touched the
wound. The scratching pain of the contact made him draw a long breath
through his clinched teeth. His fingers were dabbled with blood. He
regarded them with a fixed stare.
Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the scurrying
horses were lashed toward the front. Once, a young officer on a
besplashed charger nearly ran him down. He turned and watched the mass
of guns, men, and horses sweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a
fence. The officer was making excited motions with a gauntleted hand.
The guns followed the teams with an air of unwillingness, of being
dragged by the heels.
Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing like
fishwives. Their scolding voices could be heard above the din. Into the
unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron of cavalry. The faded
yellow of their facings shone bravely. There was a mighty altercation.
The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.
The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were
long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the western sky partly
smothering the red.
As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar
out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled
like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the
tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing
infantry. Turning to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange
light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden
lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could see heaving
masses of men.
He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely
distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men
who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating
against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men
and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields.
The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned
wagons like sun-dried bowlders. The bed of the former torrent was
choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts of war machines.
It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He was afraid
to move rapidly, however, for a dread of disturbing it. He held his
head very still and took many precautions against stumbling. He was
filled with anxiety, and his face was pinched and drawn in anticipation
of the pain of any sudden mistake of his feet in the gloom.
His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a
cool, liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down
under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think
his neck to be inadequate.
The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering
voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought,
definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed he could
measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became
frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched into his brain.
Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of
the past. He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at
home, in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had
occupied prominent positions. He saw the spread table. The pine walls
of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he
remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house
to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array
upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water
upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody
in the wind of youthful summer.
He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness. His head hung
forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing a great
bundle. His feet shuffled along the ground.
He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down and sleep
at some near spot, or force himself on until he reached a certain
haven. He often tried to dismiss the question, but his body persisted
in rebellion and his senses nagged at him like pampered babies.
At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: “Yeh seem t’ be in a
pretty bad way, boy?”
The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue. “Uh!”
The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm. “Well,” he
said, with a round laugh, “I’m goin’ your way. Th’ hull gang is goin’
your way. An’ I guess I kin give yeh a lift.” They began to walk like a
drunken man and his friend.
As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted him with
the replies like one manipulating the mind of a child. Sometimes he
interjected anecdotes. “What reg’ment do yeh b’long teh? Eh? What’s
that? Th’ 304th N’ York? Why, what corps is that in? Oh, it is? Why, I
thought they wasn’t engaged t’-day-they’re ’way over in th’ center. Oh,
they was, eh? Well pretty nearly everybody got their share ’a fightin’
t’-day. By dad, I give myself up fer dead any number ’a times. There
was shootin’ here an’ shootin’ there, an’ hollerin’ here an’ hollerin’
there, in th’ damn’ darkness, until I couldn’t tell t’ save m’ soul
which side I was on. Sometimes I thought I was sure ’nough from Ohier,
an’ other times I could ’a swore I was from th’ bitter end of Florida.
It was th’ most mixed up dern thing I ever see. An’ these here hull
woods is a reg’lar mess. It’ll be a miracle if we find our reg’ments
t’-night. Pretty soon, though, we’ll meet a-plenty of guards an’
provost-guards, an’ one thing an’ another. Ho! there they go with an
off’cer, I guess. Look at his hand a-draggin’. He’s got all th’ war he
wants, I bet. He won’t be talkin’ so big about his reputation an’ all
when they go t’ sawin’ off his leg. Poor feller! My brother’s got
whiskers jest like that. How did yeh git ’way over here, anyhow? Your
reg’ment is a long way from here, ain’t it? Well, I guess we can find
it. Yeh know there was a boy killed in my comp’ny t’-day that I thought
th’ world an’ all of. Jack was a nice feller. By ginger, it hurt like
thunder t’ see ol’ Jack jest git knocked flat. We was a-standin’ purty
peaceable fer a spell, ’though there was men runnin’ ev’ry way all
’round us, an’ while we was a-standin’ like that, ’long come a big fat
feller. He began t’ peck at Jack’s elbow, an’ he ses: ‘Say, where’s th’
road t’ th’ river?’ An’ Jack, he never paid no attention, an’ th’
feller kept on a-peckin’ at his elbow an’ sayin’: ‘Say, where’s th’
road t’ th’ river?’ Jack was a-lookin’ ahead all th’ time tryin’ t’ see
th’ Johnnies comin’ through th’ woods, an’ he never paid no attention
t’ this big fat feller fer a long time, but at last he turned ’round
an’ he ses: ‘Ah, go t’ hell an’ find th’ road t’ th’ river!’ An’ jest
then a shot slapped him bang on th’ side th’ head. He was a sergeant,
too. Them was his last words. Thunder, I wish we was sure ’a findin’
our reg’ments t’-night. It’s goin’ t’ be long huntin’. But I guess we
kin do it.”
In the search which followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the
youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded the mazes of the
tangled forest with a strange fortune. In encounters with guards and
patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a
gamin. Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance. The youth,
with his chin still on his breast, stood woodenly by while his
companion beat ways and means out of sullen things.
The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic circles,
but the cheery man conducted the youth without mistakes, until at last
he began to chuckle with glee and self-satisfaction. “Ah, there yeh
are! See that fire?”
The youth nodded stupidly.
“Well, there’s where your reg’ment is. An’ now, good-by, ol’ boy, good
luck t’ yeh.”
A warm and strong hand clasped the youth’s languid fingers for an
instant, and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as the
man strode away. As he who had so befriended him was thus passing out
of his life, it suddenly occurred to the youth that he had not once
seen his face.