|In straggling, despondent lines the men in soiled gray leaned on their
muskets and peered through the misty darkness at the enemy crawling
across the field in front of them like a monster reptile. The colonel
of the regiment nearest the coppice of pines strode restlessly back and
forth in front of his men, on tenter-hooks of anxiety, the spasmodic
glow of his cigar showing features grim and tortured.
“I feel like we ‘re in fer it to-night,” whispered Private Ericson to a
battle-stained comrade.
“Right you are,” was the guarded reply; “an’ we-uns ain’t a handful
beside the army out thar. I tell you the blasted fellers have had
reinforcements sence the sun went down. I know it, an’ our colonel is
beginnin’ to suspicion it. Ef he had his way he’d order a retreat while
thar’s a chance.”
Silence, punctuated by the clanking of the colonel’s sword and the
snoring of a private asleep standing, intervened. Then Private Huckaby
resumed:
“So this is raily yore old stompin’-ground, Ericson. I reckon you uster
haul pine-knots out ’n them woods, and split rails on that mountain-side.”
“I know every inch of it like a book,” sighed Ericson.
“An’ I reckon that sweetheart o’ yor ’n don’t live fur off, ef she didn’t
refugee.”
“Her folks wuz Union,” returned Ericson, sententiously. “Her ’n tuk one
side, an’ me an’ mine t’other. The cabin she used to live in is jest
beyond them woods at the foot o’ the fust mountain, ‘Old Crow.’ She’s
thar yit. A feller that seed ’er a week ago told me. She ‘lowed ef I
jined the Confederacy I needn’t ever look her way any more. Her father
an’ only brother went to the Union side, an’ she blamed me fer wantin’
to go with my folks. She is as proud as Lucifer. I wisht we’d parted
friendlier. I hain’t been in a single fight without wantin’ that one
thing off my mind.”
Ericson leaned on the muzzle of his gun, and Huckaby saw his broad
shoulders rise and quiver convulsively. He stared at the begrimed face
under the slouched hat, beginning to think that what he had seen of his
young mate had been only the surface--the froth--of a deeper nature. An
excited grunt came from the mist which almost enveloped the colonel, and
he was seen to dart to the end of the regiment and throw down his cigar.
“To arms!” he cried.
The words were drowned in the clatter of muskets as they were snatched
from the ground to horny palms. The sound died like the rustle of dead
leaves in a forest after a gust of wind. A composite eye saw that
the line which had been moving across the field in front had paused,
steadied itself. The next instant it was a billow of flame half a
mile in length, rolling up and dashing itself against the wall of damp
darkness. The colonel, his blue steel blade raised against the sheet of
piercing lead, sprang forward, a black silhouette against the enemy’s
glare. He meant it as an objective command--a prayer--to his men to
stand to their ground, but he tottered, leaned on his sword, and as its
point sank into the earth he fell face downward. Drums, great and small,
boomed and rattled on the Confederate side like a prolonged echo of the
Federal’s salvo.
The ranks of the Confederates wavered--broke; the retreat began. Running
backward, his gun poised, Ericson felt a numb, tingling sensation in his
right side. He turned and started after his comrades, but each step he
put down seemed to meet the ground as it fell from him. Then he felt
dizzy. There was a roaring in his ears, and his legs weakened. As he
fell his gun tripped the feet of Huckaby, and that individual went to
earth, and then on hands and knees, to avoid being shot, crept to his
friend’s side.
“What’s wrong, Eric? Done fer?” he asked, his tone weighty with the
tragedy of the moment.
“I believe so,” said Ericson. “Go on; don’t wait!”
“Good-by, my boy,” Huckaby said. “I’d tote ye, but some ‘n’ is the matter
with the calf o’ my right leg. I’d give out, I know, an’--an’ I must
remember my wife and the ba--” He was gone.
Half an hour passed, during which time Ericson had experienced the
delicious sensation of a man freezing to death, then a realization of
his condition permeated his consciousness. He drew himself up on an
elbow and glanced over the field. Black ambulances, like vultures
stalking about with drooping wings, were picking their way among the
dead and dying. Vaguely Ericson’s numb fancy pictured himself being
jostled like a human log of wood to hospital, or perhaps to prison,
and grasping his musket, and transforming it into a crutch, he rose and
hobbled away from the groans and puddles of blood into the edge of the
wood.
He had no sooner reached it than he felt the earth acting as if it were
a mad sea again, and he sank headlong into the heather and underbrush.
When he came to it was morning. The oblique rays of the sun were making
diamonds and pearls of the poised dew-drops. The field had been cleared.
Only a shattered gun, a tattered cap, a battered canteen bore evidence
of the recent carnage. Half a mile across the level valley Ericson saw
a village of tents, blue-coated guards pacing to and fro, and the stars
and stripes rippling from a tall staff.
The private rose cautiously to his trembling feet, and aided by his too
weighty crutch he went slowly through the wood toward the cabin where
dwelt Sally Tripp.
“It’s the nighest house,” he said to himself. “Shorely she won’t refuse
to let me in.”
However, when he had passed through the wood and saw the cabin not
fifty yards from him in the open, a screw of blue smoke curling from the
mud-and-stick chimney, misgivings which had depressed him ever since he
had parted with her attacked him anew. He forgot that he had lost nearly
every ounce of his life-blood, and stood almost erect, resting hardly
the weight of his hand on the gun as his eyes drank in the familiar old
scene.
Then he heard the massive bar of one of the doors squeak as it was
lifted from its wooden sockets, and in the doorway stood a golden-haired
vision.
“Thank God, it’s her!” Ericson muttered; and the sight of her standing
there, looking afar off toward the camp of the Federals, gave him
courage. He dropped his gun, determined not to exhibit weakness, and
walked erectly, if slowly, toward her.
He saw the girl turn pale, stare at him steadily, and stifle a scream
with her hand at her lips.
“Don’t you know me, Sally?” he asked.
She stared mutely, inwardly occupied with her outward appearance,
fearing perhaps that a tithe of her gladness of heart at seeing him
might be detected by his supersensitive, pleading eye.
“Thar ain’t nothin’ to keep me from knowin’ of you,” she said. “As
fur as them clothes on yore back is concerned, they become yore sort
powerful well. A rebel is a rebel anywhar.”
Again the qualms of physical weakness stirred within him. He hung his
head, praying for strength to keep from falling at her feet. She smiled
relentlessly and continued:
“I reckon when the Union men attackted you-uns last night you broke an’
ran like all the rest. I seed that fight, John Ericson. Me an’ grandpa
scrouged down behind the chimney so as not to git struck an’ watched the
trap the bluecoats was a-layin’ fer you-uns. We seed the reinforcements
slide in round ‘Old Crow’, an’ knowed most o’ you-uns would play
mumbly-peg ‘fore mornin’. I mought ‘a’ ‘lowed you’d git off unteched,
knowing them woods as well as you do.”
His silence, his downcast attitude may have shamed the girl, for
a change came over her. She cast a hurried glance at the far-off
encampment, and a touch of anxiety came into her tone as she added:
“You’d better git back into hidin’, John Ericson. The Union soldiers
have been sendin’ out searchin’ squads all day fer men that got aloose
in the woods. They say they pulled Jake McLain right out ’n his bed. His
wife had burnt his rebel uniform an’ said he was a Yank a-lyin’ up sick,
but the powder-stains on his face give him away, an’ they tuk him off.”
It was plain to him that she did not suspect he was wounded unto death,
and he forgave her sternness for the sake of his great love. Besides,
she was showing qualities of patriotism to which he granted her the
right, though he could not comprehend what influence had entered
her life to harden it to such an extent. Just then the bent form of
Grandfather Tripp emerged from the other room of the cabin, crossed the
entry, and stared at the soldier.
“Well, I ’ll be liter’ly bumfuzzled!” he exclaimed. “Ef it ain’t John
Ericson! I knowed yore company was in the fight last night, an’ I
thought o’ you when I heerd the grape-shot a-plinkin’ out thar. But hang
me, ef you don’t look sick ur half starved! Sally, give ’im some ‘n’ t’
eat. They don’t feed the rebs much. Johnny, she’s been a-pinin’ fer you
ever sence you enlisted, an’ last night durin’ the fight she mighty nigh
went distracted. She--”
“Grandpa, that’s a lie!” cried the girl, fiercely; but there were pink
spots in her cheeks as she retreated into the cabin and began to slam
the pots and pans on the stone hearth.
The old man caught the arm of the soldier. “Go right in, my boy. She’s
that glad to see you unhurt she don’t know what to do. She ’ll give you a
mouthful gladder ’n she ever fed a Yank.”
Mounting the log steps to the cabin door seemed to deprive the soldier
of the last vestige of his strength. As if from a distance he heard the
girl’s complaining voice, and a blur hung before his sight. Blindly he
felt for a chair and sank into it. His head was sinking to his breast,
when the sharp voice of the girl--sharper because of her grandfather’s
meddling--revived him like the lash of a whip on the back of a
succumbing beast of burden.
“Pa’s dead, John Ericson,” she cried. “Shot down, fer all I know, by
you. He’s gone. Now I reckon you see why I don’t like the looks o’ yore
clothes. Then jest see heer.” She flounced into a corner of the room,
jerked a trunk open and brought to him the soiled uniform of a Federal
soldier. “This was what Brother Jasper had on when he died. That hole
in the breast is where the ball went in. He come home a week ago on a
furlough to git over his wound, an’ died a-settin’ thar in that door. Do
you wonder that I never want to lay eyes on a dirty gray coat again?”
Ericson’s slouched hat hid the piteous glare in his eyes. He rested his
two hands on the arms of the chair and tried to draw himself up, but
that effort was the signal for his collapse. The girl laid the uniform
on the table and stared at him, the lines of her face softening and
betraying vague disquietude.
“Look a heer,” she blurted out, suddenly, “are--are you wounded?”
He tried to speak, but his lips seemed paralyzed.
“My God! Grandpa, look!” the girl cried. “He’s wounded! He’s dying, an’
I’ve jest been a-standin’ heer--”
The old man bent over the soldier, and turned his face upward.
“Say, whar are you hit, Johnny?”
Ericson tried to affect a careless smile, and managed to place his hand
on his wounded side. The old man unbuttoned his coat.
“Well, I should think so!” he muttered. “He’s lost enough of the life
fluid to paint a barn. Quick, Sally, put down a quilt fer ’im to lie on
in front o’ the fire!”
The girl obeyed as by clock-work, the whiteness of terror and regret
in her face. She brought an armful of straw and some quilts and hastily
patted out a crude bed for the soldier.
“Now,” said the old man, “you must lie down, Johnny.”
Ericson sat up erect.
“I don’t want to--to be helpless heer,” he stammered. “All through the
war I’ve never thought o’ one single thing except Sally, an’ now--”
The girl cowered down on the hearth in front of him, and hid her face
with her hands.
“I didn’t dream you was wounded,” she said. “Ef I’d ‘a’ knowed that, I’d
never ‘a’ said what I did. Grandpa told the truth jest now, he did. Lie
down, please do!”
He raised his eyes to her with a grateful glance. At this juncture the
small, remote blast of a bugle fell on their ears, and it struck the
tenderness from her great moist eyes. She rose and went to the door.
“It’s a searchin’ squad,” she cried, her voice vibrating with fear.
“They are at Joe French’s house now. They are shore to come heer next.
Ef they take John away he ’ll die!”
The old man stared at her rigidly.
“We must hide ‘im,” he said. “Sally, he’s an old friend an’ a neighbor.
We must hide ‘im!”
The wounded soldier stood up, grasped the edge of the mantel-piece and
swayed back and forth. There was a sweet comfort in her startled concern
that rendered him impervious to fear.
“Thar ain’t no place to hide ‘im,” said the girl, with an agonized
glance through the doorway toward French’s house.
Ericson’s knees began to bend, and he sank into his chair again.
“No use,” he muttered. “I ‘lowed I mought git to the woods, but I’d
hobble so slow they’d be shore to see me. When they git heer I ’ll tell
‘em you wasn’t harborin’ of me.”
The girl turned from the door.
“They are a-comin’,” she said. Then her eyes fell on her brother’s
uniform. She started, clutched it, and held it toward her grandfather,
fired with a sudden hope.
“Dress ’im in it,” she said. “I ’ll go out an’ meet ’em an’ tell ‘em
nobody ain’t heer except you an’ my wounded brother home on a furlough.
The permit is in t’other room. I ’ll show ’em that. They ’ll never dream
he ain’t brother when they read the furlough an’ see ’im in the blue
uniform.”
A sickly smile worked its way through the grimy surface of the soldier’s
face as he raised his hand to signify opposition to her suggestion.
“I couldn’t do that, Sally,” he said. “Not to save my life, I couldn’t.
Somehow I think the chances o’ my seein’ another sunrise is dead ag’in’
me, an’ I don’t want to die in any other uniform except the one me an’
my comrades has fought in. I’d as soon wear the clothes of a brother
o’ yor ’n as anybody else alive, but I can’t put on blue even to escape
arrest. I jest can’t! It would be exactly the same as bein’ a spy, an’
the Lord only knows how a fightin’ man hates that sort of a character.”
“But you must,” urged the girl, frantically. “Oh, you must!”
“I simply can’t. That’s all. I’d a sight ruther be tuk as a wounded
soldier unable to stir a single peg than to sneak into another man’s
clothes an’ deny the side I fit on. Huh, you are a woman! War makes
men mighty indifferent to anything except duty.” A picture of baffled
despair, the girl peered through the doorway at the approaching men.
“You once said you’d do anything I asked ef I’d consent to marry you.
John, now will you let grandpa put it on you?”
A warm scarlet wave had passed over her. She had never looked so
beautiful. He hesitated for some time, and then shook his head. “I can’t
put on blue clothes, Sally.”
The air was still as death. Above the beat of her strumming pulse she
could hear the “hep! hep!” of the soldiers as they marched toward the
cabin. Ericson staggered to his feet and stood swaying beside her.
“I mought as well go out an’ meet ‘em,” he said, his face awry with pain
and utter exhaustion. “Ef I don’t they ’ll think you are harborin’ a reb,
an’ it mought go ag’in’ you-uns.”
Then he threw out his hands and clutched her shoulders, and sank to the
floor.
“He has fainted, grandpa,” said the girl.
“Quick! Put the uniform on ‘im. I ’ll try to detain ’em out thar till you
are ready.”
“I mought just as well take off his suit an’ kiver ’im with quilts,”
suggested the old man. “It ’ll save time.”
“No, the uniform!” cried the girl. “Ef he has that on they won’t ask
no questions--along with the furlough. You know Jake McLain tried that
trick on ’em an’ failed. Put it on ‘im, for the Lord’s sake. Don’t stand
thar idle!”
The steady tramp of feet was now audible, and the occasional command of
the officer in charge. Darting from the back door the girl crossed the
entry, went into the next room, and emerged with the permit of absence
in her belt. Picking up a pail near the door, she went to the pig-pen in
a corner of the zigzag rail fence, and with no eyes for the approaching
men, slowly poured the food into the animal’s trough.
Stopping the squad a few yards from her, the captain doffed his cap and
bowed.
“I have come to search your house for possible fugitives from the
Confederate ranks last night,” he said, politely. “A good many have been
found hiding in farmhouses in the vicinity.”
The girl set her pail down at her feet.
“We are Union,” she said, simply.
“I was told so,” the captain answered. “Nevertheless, I have orders to
search your premises. Is there any one within?”
“Nobody but grandpa an’ my wounded brother, a Union soldier home on
a furlough.” She took the paper from her belt and unfolded it very
deliberately. “Thar’s his permit. I fetched it out to show it so’s you
wouldn’t have to wake ’im up ef you could help it. He couldn’t sleep
last nigh fer the shootin’, an’ the truth is, he is as nigh dead as kin
be. I wisht you would let ’im rest.” The officer perused the furlough
through his eyeglasses.
“That’s all right,” he said, handing it back. “But you see I have to
obey orders.”
There was a pause. The maiden felt the captain’s eyes resting on her
admiringly. She could hear the hobnailed soles of her grandparent’s
shoes grinding on the puncheon floor, and knew that the old man was
still engaged in dressing or undressing the fugitive.
“That’s so,” she said, in a tone which plainly intimated that the
question was not positively settled. “But it looks like a shame, for
brother is powerful low, an’ any noise mought do ’im lots o’ harm.”
“I ’ll leave my men here, and go in myself,” compromised the officer.
“I ’ll walk very lightly.”
The heart of the girl sank. She could still hear the crunching of her
grandfather’s shoes in the cabin.
“I ’ll be much obleeged ef you will be careful,” she said. And as he
started to the cabin she joined him. “Please go in here first,” pointing
to the room across the entry from the one containing the two men, “an’
I ’ll run in an’ see ef brother is fit to be seen.”
He complied, with a bow, and went into the room indicated. Reappearing
in a moment, he found her crouching down on the grass, a look of pain on
her face.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, with concern.
“Nothin’,” she winced. “I set my foot on that rock an’ it kinder twisted
my ankle.”
He gave her his hand and aided her to rise.
“Please wait jest one minute,” she said, putting her foot down
tentatively. “I was in sech a hurry jest now that I almost broke my
ankle-bone.”
He bowed assent. His eyes lit with admiration for her physical charms,
and she limped around to the rear of the cabin and went in. Just as she
did so the noise of her grandfather’s shoes on the floor ceased. The
old man, thinking she was accompanied by the soldiers, was enacting his
part. He had flung himself into a chair, and sat nodding as if asleep.
On the bed of straw lay Ericson, still unconscious, completely clothed
in blue uniform. The discarded gray suit lay in a bundle in a corner.
“Quick, that will never do!” she cried, causing the old man to look up
with a start. Taking a case from a pillow on the bed, she filled it with
the gray uniform and crushed it into the bottom of the old man’s chair.
“Set on it,” she said. “An’ don’t git up, whatever you do.” Then she
wrung her hands despairfully as she surveyed the room. A twitching of
Ericson’s yellow face warned her that he was returning to consciousness,
and a new terror pierced her heart.
“Ef he comes to,” she thought, “he ’ll deny being a Union soldier, an’
then they ’ll take ‘im--my God, have pity on the pore boy!”
She turned from the door and limped smilingly toward the waiting
officer.
“Ef brother wakes,” she said, “I hope you won’t git mad at nothin’ he
says. Fer the last two days he has been clean out ’n his head. Once he
declared to us that he was actu’ly President Jeff Davis. Thar’s no
tellin’ what idea may strike ’im next.”
“I ’ll try not to wake him,” said the captain. “I ’ll merely step inside
very carefully. I wouldn’t do that if--if my men were not watching. You
see they’d wonder--”
“Come on, then.” The rigidity of a crisis held her features. She entered
first, and pushed the great cumbersome door open before her. The old man
regarded them with sleepy looks and began to nod again.
The officer stood over the form in blue a moment, then peered under the
bed, and even up the funnel-shaped chimney.
“It’s all right,” he whispered to Sally.
Ericson opened his eyes and smiled faintly.
The girl comprehended his frame of mind; he had not noticed that his
clothes had been changed.
“You’ve run me in a hole,” he said to the captain. “I’m ready to go, but
I don’t want you to think that these folks are a-harborin’ of me. I come
heer uninvited. The truth is, that young lady ordered me off, an’ I’d
‘a’ gone, but I keeled over in the door.”
He put a hand on either side of him, and with a strenuous effort managed
to sit up. Then he noticed his change of uniform, and as he plucked
distastefully at his coat-sleeve, he stared first at the girl and then
at the captain.
“Why, who’s done this heer?” he asked. “I ain’t no Yankee soldier. I’m a
rebel dyed in the wool.”
The girl laid her hand on the officer’s arm.
“Come on, please, sir; he’s gittin’ excited. Ef we dispute with ‘im
he ’ll git to rantin’ awful.”
Without a word the officer followed her from the cabin and down toward
where his men stood. She walked rapidly, her steps quickened by the
rising tones of Ericson’s voice behind her. She put her handkerchief to
her dry eyes, and said, plaintively:
“I hardly know what to do. We’ve had no end of trouble. First the news
come that pa had fell, an’ then brother come home like he is now.”
“He looks like a very sick man,” said the officer, with a bluntness
peculiar to times of war. “Perhaps I ought to ask our surgeon to run
over and take a look at him.”
She started, her face fell.
“Old Doctor Stone, nigh us, is a-lookin’ after ‘im,” was the hasty
product of her bewildered invention. “He ’ll do all that can be
done--an’--an’ I want to keep brother from thinkin’ about army folks as
much as I can. Will you-uns camp nigh us long?”
“We leave inside of an hour.” He raised his cap, saluted his men, gave
an order, and they whirled and tramped away.
She went back into the cabin and sat down by the side of Ericson’s
pallet. There was something in his dumb glance and subdued air that
quenched the warmth of her recent success. As he looked at her steadily
his eyes became moist and his powder-stained lips began to quiver.
“I didn’t ’low you’d play sech a dog-mean trick on me, Sally,” he
muttered. “I’d ruther a thousand times ‘a’ been shot like a soldier than
to hide in Yankee clothes.” Under her warm rush of love and pity for him
she completely lost the touch of hauteur that had clung to her since
his return. She took his hand in hers and bent her body down till his
fingers lay against her cheek. He could feel that she was deeply moved.
“I couldn’t stand to see ’em take you off,” she sobbed. “Because you are
all I got on earth to keer fer. It would ‘a’ killed you, an’ me, too.”
Her voice took on the gentle cadences of a mother consoling a sick
child. “Grandpa will take off the mean old blue suit an’ put you up in
the big bed, and I ’ll make you some good chicken soup with boiled rice
in it.”
He pressed her hand.
“Do you raily want me heer, Sally?”
Her reply was a moment’s hesitation, a convulsive motion of the vocal
cords, a failure of speech, and a final pressure of her lips on his
fingers.
“Beca’se ef I ‘lowed you did, Sally, I wouldn’t keer much which side
beat. I wouldn’t be able to think about any livin’ thing but you.”
“Well, you can, then,” she said; and she rose quickly. “Grandpa, I’m
goin’ in t’other room to fix ’im some chicken soup. Undress ’im an’ put
‘im to bed, an’ then go fetch Doctor Stone.”
An hour later the old physician arrived and examined the patient.
“A flesh wound only,” he said. “But he has lost mighty nigh every bit o’
blood in ‘im. Nuss ’im good, Sally, an’ he ’ll be able to make plenty o’
corn and taters fer you the rest o’ yore life--that is, if the war ever
ends.’’ Ericson was convalescing when the news of Lee’s surrender came
floating over the devastated land.
“I’m awfully glad it’s all over,” he said. “I’m satisfied. I was shot
by a Yankee ball an’ nussed back to life by a Union gal, so I reckon my
account is even.”