(Author of “Ole Mistis,” “Songs and Stories From Tennessee,” “A Summer
Hymnal,” etc.)
Chickamauga Creek had no place on the map until September, ’63. Then it
ran blood and became history. For it takes blood to make history.
When Bragg went to pieces two months later, after the shambles of
Missionary Ridge, Hooker’s Corps was the pack turned loose to harry him
out of the valley. They rushed thoughtlessly—Hooker’s hounds always
did—and the foremost quickly paid the tax which Rashness pays to Reason.
Cleburne, the rebel general, who brought up the rear of Bragg’s army,
turned, wolf-like, at a gap in the mountains and cut to pieces the hound
that had outstripped the pack in its zeal to snap at harried haunches.
The hound whimpered and fell back, but not before Cleburne had shingled
the sides of the mountain with the dead of the Yankee army.
The General who claimed the cut-up regiment was mad, and as he rode,
with his staff, to the front, he was swearing in a deep, jerky, guttural
voice. He stopped to look at the bloody gap, the lusty, voiceless,
blue-coated forms, lying so weirdly unnatural—as trees when the hurricane
has passed: “Mountain gaps—they are little traps of hell,” he kept
repeating, and he spurred on for a guide—to a cracker cabin higher up on
the mountain side.
The General rode a clean-limbed, loosely-ribbed, long-back thoroughbred,
fresh from a blue grass paddock in Middle Tennessee. For he was weak
on horse-flesh, and had impressed this scion of a Derby winner before
Rosecrans went North.
Two mountaineers stood in the cabin yard. One was middle-aged,
sullen-eyed and stooped, but standing six feet with the stoop. He leaned
on an unmounted axe-helm, and as he stood slouching, long armed, bowed in
the legs, his hairy chest gleaming through open shirt front, he looked
not unlike a great gorilla, brought to bay with uprooted club in his
hands.
The other man was not much more than a boy, except in size. He was
larger, bigger chested, bigger fisted, and his wonder-haunted, kindly
face wore a smile instead of a scowl. Never before had he seen the flag
which one of the officers carried. Never such a horse as the one ridden
by the man in front—never such a horse, and how he did love horses!
But the thoroughbred shied at the sight of the bearded man and sprang
sideways, snorting, and wheeled to run. The boy’s face broke over in a
quizzical, familiar grin, and he drawled exultantly:
“Say, Mister, whut yo ridin’ there?” The man turned sullenly and knocked
him down with the axe-helm. He went down helplessly and with a subdued
surprise in his blue eyes. The man did not turn his body, but stood
indifferently, watching him slowly arising, wiping the blood from his
forehead and whimpering like a struck cub:
“Ef mammy hadn’t tuck an’ went an’ died—I promised mammy I’d nurver
strike ye, dad.” He blew the blood from his nose and stood scratching one
leg with the bare foot of the other, whimpering still, and dazed.
“Solomon Hosea Hanks, ye’re a blatherin’ yearlin’ an’ ’ll allers be one.
Ain’t I knocked ye down often fur buttin’ in ye horns befo’ ye’re axed up
to the trough?”
He was talking to the boy, but saying it for the men in front:
“Gentlemen, ’light an’ look at yer saddles. I’m jes teachin’ the lad some
manners—you hafter teach ’em to some folks with a club.”
The boy suddenly straightened up. Half defiantly, and with quick
eagerness, he leaped across the path where sat the color-bearer. He
stopped beneath the flag and began to fondle it as a child would—the
pretty stars, the gold cord that fell from the eagle above: “Ye’ll nurver
knock me down ag’in, Dad. Ye’re a g’erriller an’ ye know it, an’ ye
wanter make me one, but I’ve seen my country’s colors to-day an’ I’m
goin’ ter jine.”
He turned to the group: “I know whut you want, Mister-men, an’ I’ll
lead you over the mount’in ef you’ll let me jine. ’Taint uverbody
I’ll let knock me down”—he wagged his head at the man with whimpering
apology—“promised mammy afo’ she tuck an’ went an’ died I’d nurver strike
him”—
A rattling volley of shots rang out across the mountain, down in the next
valley. They were echoed back, then shouts, and when the General wheeled,
the boy had struck out toward the firing, his tough, bare feet crounching
the gravel as he strode on in his shambling way. They followed him, but
could not overtake the long, swinging trot in the crooked path amid the
boulders and clay roots. On a projection beyond the ridge he stopped,
calling back to the man:
“Far’well, Dad—you’ll nurver see me aga’in onless I hear you’ve beat
little Dinah Mariah—then I’ll come back an’ forgit I urver had a mammy.”
He shook his great fist at the man still standing immovable, then: “Come
on, Mister-men—Bragg’s a good dog, but Holdfas’ is better.”
And that is how Solomon came into the camp of the Tenth.
He led them to the firing line, where the General suddenly found plenty
to do. So much that he forgot Solomon until the brigade went into camp
five miles further, on the trail of the retreating enemy. Then Solomon
staggered in through the darkness to the camp fire carrying a half dead
Confederate on his back. He laid the man down on a bed of leaves near
the mess tent of the Tenth. He lifted the helpless head very tenderly
and gave him water while the stricken one kept whispering, “Water—more
water—for God’s sake—and death!”
The staff had been laughing and swearing before, with tin cups full of
mountain whisky. For they were tired, and death had sprung up so often
and so suddenly that day from batteries and trenches and mountain gorges;
and from still, restful copses of silent woods, peaceful and inviting,
until—Spit! Spit!—and the rattlesnake of sharp-shooting rifles spat out
the virus which had put comrades and mess-mates to sleep. But now the
silence and the night fell from the deep treetops together. That dying
man in the camp, that strange, solemn giant of the woods—
The General, his tin cup half emptied, spoke first, in a voice strangely
soft, the staff thought, for the old fighter:
“Any kin to you, Solomon—the man there?”
“He’s mighty nigh to me—mighty nigh.”
“Ah—sorry—sorry. And who is he?”
“Jes’ my brother, that’s all.”
“Oh, too bad—sorry—sorry”—and the staff muttered the echo.
Then the General put down his cup, went over and glanced at the man.
He stepped back quickly and hastily drained the tin cup: “Nasty fix,
Solomon—sorry—but we’ll do what we can for him. When did you see him
last?”
“Nurver seed him befo’—but thar’s hund’erds of ’em—all our brothers,
’specially when we’ve shot ’em an’ they’re helpless an’ dyin’.”
The General winced and turned quickly to the fire. The staff went after
another drink. Solomon’s eye fell on the mess table—the supper set forth
and waiting; then Solomon fell on the supper. Between mouthfuls he
growled out:
“You fellers orter be ashamed o’ yerselves to shoot a man’s innards out
like that. I found him three miles beyant the mount’in whar you-uns fit
thar this mornin’ an’ I fetch’t him over on my back.”
That reminded him. He picked up some hardtack and bacon and started
toward the groaning man. Then he stopped, disappointed: “Whut’s the
use—he’s got no whur to put it. You-uns done shot his innards out. The
fust lickin’ Dad gin me was fur shootin’ a b’ar in ther innards.”
He sat down again and ate everything in sight. The General and staff got
busy at something else. Solomon gave the dying man another drink and
began looking around like a huge bear-dog for a spot to roll up on, and
sleep. He found it in the General’s blanket, his huge feet sticking out,
bunion covered and black. They thought he was asleep and coming quietly
back one by one, sat down, and were eating in silence when a shock of
hair blurred up out of the blanket:
“Say, Mister-men, but ain’t war hell sho’ nuff? But tell the boys not to
shoot ther Innards out—’taint fair.” Then he slept.
The General waited till he heard him snoring: “Major, if you happen to
lose him to-morrow in the first skirmish—really, I don’t think we need
him, Major?” The Major was sure they did not—so were the others.
They made the dying man as comfortable as they could, the General sparing
his own warm rain-coat for the limbs now rapidly chilling. But his groans
kept them awake: “Water—water—oh, God—water and death—kill me, somebody!”
The cry fell out of the silence with the starlight, mingling strangely
with the shivering wail of a screech owl—so uncannily mingling that they
seemed as one.
It was nearly midnight when the General saw the foot withdrawn, the big
form arise and slouch over to the dying man: “Water—water—and, oh, for
God’s sake—have mercy and kill me.”
Solomon tenderly lifted the gasping lips to the canteen: “Do yo’ means
it—want me to kill ye sho’ nuff, brother?”
The man’s eyes were beseeching as he gasped: “I——can’t——live——death
every——minute——put me——out of misery—God will——reward you.”
Solomon’s eyes were wet with tears. His great pitying heart thumped
loudly: “How, brother? Whut with?”
The dying man nodded at a bayonetted rifle near by: “That——push
that——through my heart——quick!”
The General arose just in time. Solomon, with a strange sob in his
throat, stood over the man, the gun poised, the bayonet’s point—
“My God, Solomon!”—and he grasped the descending gun by the barrel. “This
is murder—I’ll have you shot!” The giant turned on him astonished: “He
cyant live—you-uns shot him to pieces. That’s war. I put him out o’ his
misery—that’s murder. Strange—strange! Brother,” he stooped and whispered
regretfully to the man, who beseeched him with fixed, unwinking eyes,
“Brother, I’d do it—God knows I’d like ter ’commodate yer, but ye heurn
yo’self.” Still lower: “But say, brother, ef you fin’ ye cyant stan’ it
no longer—when they sleep—call Solomon—an’ I’ll sho’ ’commodate you in
this. God bless ye.”
Later there was a rigid stiffening and gasps among the leaves and Solomon
knew there was no need for his bayonet.
The next morning when the General arose, Solomon had fed and rubbed down
Ajax, the thoroughbred. He stood talking to himself—he had forgotten the
war: “Whut a hoss—whut legs—whut muscles, like bees a swarming! I’ve
allers dreamed o’ keerin’ fur sech!” He turned to the General: “I’ll
take keer o’ him from now on.” The General was touched and when he shook
Solomon’s hand the bond was sealed.
“How long have you been up, Solomon?”
“Two hours b’ day—Gen’l.” It was the first time he had used the word and
the old fighter inwardly scored one more point for the horse—that could
prune the pride of the mountaineer—he who knew no titles, no superior.
“Ye see, Gen’l, forgot yistiddy to kiss Dinah Mariah good-bye. She’s the
little deef-mute mammy lef’ befo’ she tuck an’ went an’ died. I raised
her—gi’n her urver rappin she had ’cep the milk she drunk, an’ wish’t I
c’ud er gi’n her that. Dad’s been so tarnel mean to her. D’ye know I had
an idee that he wanted ter put her out o’ the way? So I steps back over
the mount’in an into the cabin whur they all sleeps—all ’leven on ’em.
But ye know I couldn’t kiss ’er good-bye, seein’ ’er sleepin’ thar so
sweet?” He struck savagely at his eyes with his big-knuckled fist. “But
I fetched this—I’ve jined fur the war an’ I wants my own gun—don’t like
ther blunderbusses you-uns shoots. This un’s a Deckerd—been thro’ ther
Revolushun, an’ with Ole Hickory at New ’leans. It’s fittin’ fur it to
fit ag’in fur the Union. Thar—see!” and he pointed the gun high up at the
limb of a big oak.
The General saw nothing until the great flint and steel snapped together
like the jaws of an alligator, and he had a tender but headless fox
squirrel for his breakfast, cooked, later, by Solomon’s own hand. “An’ I
don’t shoot ther innards out, nurther,” he growled.
“You needn’t lose him, Major,” chuckled the general, as he pulled off
a succulent hind limb, roasted on a green stick-spittle over a pit of
coals. The Major having the mate of it in his own mouth, could not speak,
but nodded vigorously.
A hard winter and deadly fighting between Missionary Ridge and Atlanta:
but Solomon enlivened it for the Tenth. For he was their brother and his
quaint sayings became their intellectual stock in trade. For instance:
“The —— Iowa flickered at Dug’s Creek. Then they sulked.” They had done
it before. “What shall I do with them?” snarled the General that night in
camp. Solomon drawled in:
“’Pint ’em ter bury ther dead—they’re nat’ul born pallbearers. I’ve seed
lots o’ folks that was.”
When old Tecumseh Sherman heard of this he offered to promote Solomon to
a corporalcy:
“Nun—no,” said Solomon, “then I’d hafter wear boots an’ a unerform. An’
say, them thar unerforms you-uns wear meks you-uns look jes lak them
little flyin’ stink-ants that swarms out in the spring. God didn’t inten’
no two fol’ks ter be alike. Es fur boots, they fus’ jes make yer feet
tender an’ then wears out. I’ve got on a pa’r thet nurver wears out.”
He figured next in a horse race with a Kentucky regiment which was first
unwise enough to cast aspersions on the speed of Ajax and then bold
enough to back them with the long green. It was a great race run between
two lines of howling blue. “Nurver bet agin natur’,” said Solomon dryly,
as he pocketed all the money of the Republic which the unwise Kentuckians
had. “Ajax is by natur’ a horse an’ your’n ain’t.”
For a week after that the Tenth indulged in vain and effeminate luxuries.
Spring brought the fighting and the tragedy—of the latter, Solomon was
the ink.
They made him color-bearer—he was so strong, and it was so easy to see
him in his coon-skin cap, his Deckerd strapped to his back. For he would
not lay it down even while carrying the flag. At Resaca he took the
colors through balls which came thick enough to stop a bluebird. Mines
cut the tail from his cap, a buck-and-ball cleared one foot of bunions,
and canister carried his canteen bodily from his body; but in the thick
of it he yelled out savagely at the General: “Say, thar, Gen’l, get out
o’ thar on that hoss! You mout get ’im hurt!”
He spent the next week nursing the wounded enemy: “For ain’t they our
brothers?” he asked, and the scoffers in blue were silent.
A beautiful valley beyond Resaca and Solomon had never seen such rich
land. A grand mansion in the valley and Solomon had never seen such a
house. The General had pitched his camp near by. A thousand other camps
dotted the valleys and hills. A hundred battle flags fluttered from their
staffs. There was planning, priming; trenches crept across the hills in
the night, like mole-paths in a garden, and the valleys were billowed
with them, cannon crowned and picketed with steel. They would give little
Joe his death blow.
Solomon stood sentinel that night by the big house on the lawn. It was
never the color-bearer’s duty to stand sentinel—but “Yer see, Gen’l,
Ajax is stalled right over thar beyant, an’ them brothers o’ our’n from
Kentucky loves a good hoss.”
It was past midnight and the army was asleep. There was a light
suspiciously faint in the window of the big house. Solomon slipped up and
peeped in through a blind slat, awry. He stepped back blushing, ashamed
that he had peeped. He picked up his Deckerd. The light went out and the
door opened silently and a handsome man dressed in citizens’ clothes
kissed a Beautiful One good-bye. Then he slipped out into the dark and
mounted a horse hid so securely as to surprise Solomon, with his keen
mountain eyes.
“Halt, thar, brother, an’ gin the countersign.”
Pistol shots buzzing from the cylinder of Colt, and that quick grapple
of horse hoofs in the gravel which tells of a rowel driven in suddenly;
then the sound of a flying horse through the lane.
Silence, then quaintly as if talking to himself: “A cyclone spiked with
hell-fire! Solomon, yer nurver had so narrow a shave—yer’ll be keerful
ther nex’ time yer brother a gatlin’-gun buckled to a thoroughbred.”
The girl clutched the window—white and with eyes lit with flashes of the
weird starlight. It seemed a half hour to Solomon before he heard her
give a rippling, cut-off laugh, and the dawn sprang to her cheeks as the
starlight went out of her eyes. High up on the mountain she had seen what
Solomon had not—a splinter of light leap out of the heart of the mountain
beyond the picket lines. Solomon was still watching her—so strangely
fascinated that he had not noticed the blood running down his arm. She
closed the window with a happy laugh, and Solomon felt that it was now
night—all around him.
And so the spell of the big house was upon Solomon and he begged to stand
guard next day. It was early and he stood silent before the splendor of
the house, the marble steps, the big, hooded gables, then—
“God! she’s comin’!”
He turned—no, he was a sentinel—he could not run. She wore white—fluffy
and airy in the warm June morning. Above—
“Molasses candy hair,” said Solomon, licking his mouth, “an’, oh, Lord,
Black-Eyed-Susan eyes!”
He thought again of running. Then of the wild fawn that once ran to meet
him, off in the mountain woods, so innocent that it knew not that death
dwelt with man.
He slipped behind a tree. Never before had he been ashamed of his bare
feet. He peeped out—she was still coming—no, she had come, and he turned
pale and his knees trembled, for there she stood smiling as only an angel
could, and holding something out to him:
“I know you must be hungry, and it is so good of you to guard our house.
Now, please let me serve you your breakfast.”
Off came his coon-skin cap. Her smile, her eyes made him homesick. He
saw the summer lightning playing at midnight around the peaks of Tiger
Head. Then tears welled which made him hate himself—him a soldier of the
Tenth—and he slipped farther around the tree. She was serious instantly,
and her beautiful eyes had sized him up—gratitude, homesickness, all—and
when she peeped around the tree again—after awhile, and he had had time
to brace himself, she laughed a musical, comrady laugh, and—
“Now, please don’t be offended, for I should love so much to be your
friend.”
Again the homesickness. That laugh, that voice—it was the silver ripple
of Telulah Falls under the white stars of the mountain. That meant home
and Dinah Mariah. Trembling, dazed and choking with the swelling that
made him wish to do something—to do something grand for once in his life,
he tried to speak, but ended in bringing his Deckerd to present arms. She
laughed, saluting him in turn with a saucy military flash of her pretty
hand.
“Miss—Miss”—
“Nellie,” she said, sympathetically, helping him out.
“Do they—breed ’em—all like you-uns down here?”
She laughed and handed him the plate. Solomon knew the ham, but did not
know what the rolls and the orange were. His hand touched hers—he fumbled
and dropped the plate: “God, but I thort I—I teched fire!”
“Oh!” and the hurt look made Solomon wish to fight something for her
sake—“but I’ll soon be back with more.” She turned with a pretty gesture.
“Don’t—don’t,” he called, “send it by a nigger. Who can eat with a angel
lookin’?” She laughed so heartily at this that Solomon was soon himself.
When she brought him another plate he forgot everything except he had
seen her, that at last into his life something had come. He wished very
much to impress her—to say something grand, but everything he tried to
say ended in a brag—so unusual for Solomon:
“I was heah las’ night a-guardin’ you-uns, an’ I come mighty nigh killin’
a man.”
“Oh!”—and the fun went out of her eyes. “I am so grateful to you.
Did—did—he hurt you when he fired?”
All the brag went out of him. Not for the world would he have her know
that.
“No—but—it was a narrow shave.”
“I am so glad—you see he—was—my brother.”
“Sho’ nuff?” and Solomon guffawed. Somehow it relieved him so to know he
was only a brother. “Wal, now, how strange! But the Gen’l was tellin’ us
’bout a Johnny Scout in here, a tall feller in citizens’ clothes. Oh,
he’s played the devil with us. He knows our plans better’n we do. We ’low
we s’prise little Joe at Dug’s Gap, but little Joe s’prises us. Then we
’low we’ll trap him at Resaca an’ swing round on his flank. But he come
nigh trappin’ us. We laid for him mighty keerful at New Hope an’ saunt
Howard to turn his flank. He turned our’n. It’s all that’r scout, and so
the Gen’l sed when he saunt me out las’ night: “Solomon, shoot anything
in citizens’ clothes that tries to buck our lines. Kill him fust an’ ax
him whur he’s goin’ after’uds.” So when he steps out las’ night—that
brother er your’n—I was right thar watchin’, an’ I flung up my old
Deckerd an’ I drawed a bead on him—it was all so plain, him outlined in
the starlight. But he looked so han’sum a-settin a hoss so lak Ajax thet
I sed: ”No, I’ll not shoot him—he’s somebody’s brother. An’ sho’ nuff he
was your’n!”
The girl turned white, then pink. Tears came to her eyes, the sight of
which made Solomon’s jaws set in stern decision. He pitied her, thinking
of Dinah Mariah—his sister. He swelled savagely: “Say, but don’t you cry.
I’ll lick arry man that ’ud hurt yo’ brother!”
“That is so sweet of you,” she said softly.
“Then I fetched my piece down an’ axed him fur the countersign an’—wal,”
he nodded his head up and down meaningly—“I got it!” He rolled up his
sleeve and showed the red furrow of another across his arm.
“Oh, I am so sorry—do—do come in and let mamma and me dress it.”
Solomon laughed: “Now, don’t bother ’bout it, Miss—yo’ bein’ sorry has
already cured it. I’d have it dressed but Gen’l ’ud find out an’ say I
was a fool fur not shootin’.”
But she dressed it—she and a stately White-haired one, bringing the salve
and bandages out to his beat; and when they had finished and the smarting
pain had ceased, Solomon belonged to them.
Then came the strange change in Solomon. He did not know what it meant.
Why he put on the uniform, the cavalry boots and the big spurs. Why he
wanted to strut and swell in the pride of his six feet three, when the
old General blurted out:
“Solomon, damned if you ain’t real handsome—what’s come over you?”
“Gen’l—Gen’l, I dunno—but I finds myse’f struttin’ jes like a wood-cock
in the spring.”
“Oho,” laughed the General, “look out, Solomon.”
That was all open—seen of all men. But secretly, silently, painfully—in
the depths of his great soul something stirred within him that he told to
no man, for he knew not what it was. What it did he knew: “God, it lifts
me out o’ the clay o’ myse’f!”
Never had he been so happy. Ride? He could ride Ajax over a whole
regiment. He could lick Johnston’s whole army. “An’ the cu’is part,
Solomon—yer fool—you are wantin’ to fight outwardly, but in’ardly you are
cryin’ all the time.”
It hurt him when he saw her. He was sorry when she brought him his meals;
he got behind a tree and wept when she left, and in this state he stopped
one day and turned white: “God, mebbe it’s that thar blin’ staggers I’ve
got—that I heur’n so o’ fo’ks havin’ in the rich valleys.” The dreadful
blind staggers he had heard of all his life—that never came to those high
up in the pure air of the mountain! He was sure they had him.
It was the third day and twilight, and when she came out, bringing his
supper, the red ribbon in the white of her gown, her dark eyes above,
made him think of the tiger lilies that grew by Telulah. He pretended not
to see her and when she blocked his path with a pretty smile and salute,
he feigned astonishment:
“Law, but I thort the moon had riz!”
“Oh, you are a poet, Solomon, and a dreadful flatterer,” but she laughed
in so pleased a way that Solomon swelled up in his great chest and blew
deep and long, snorting it out, to loosen the great hurting feeling that
was there. Then, too, he had seen Ajax do it with the thunder of battle
in his nostrils.
She sat on the stump before him, kicking her slippered heels against the
rough bark and watching him so keenly with measuring, wistful eyes.
“Solomon, I have been thinking, and mother and I want you to come in the
house and hear my music. You have been so good to us and we are so fond
of you.” She jumped down, took his hand and led him. It burned him—it
made him gasp for breath, yet all he could do was to follow.
And the house—never before had he seen splendor. They had trouble
persuading him to step on the rugs and to walk on the carpets. But the
sweet-faced, white-haired lady came graciously forward and shook his hand
which made him feel better. Then the Angel sat down before something
Solomon had never seen and—
They both stood over him ten minutes afterwards, for he was sitting on a
sofa weeping:
“’Scuse me—no—no, ’taint my wounded arm—it’s that’r thing over thar
that’s waked up the cat birds in the roderdendrums at home, an’ I heurd
the water failin’ over Telulah an’ the wind at midnight in Devil’s Gorge,
an’ I nurver knowed befo’ whut little Dinah Mariah had missed bein’ a
deef-mute an’—so—it sot me ter bellerin’ this away.”
They were very gentle with him after that, and more gracious, and when
the Angel played another piece full of dash and jig and rosened-bow and
thunder, he stood it until the blood began to boil under his hair and
they found him again in the middle of the floor shouting:
“Hurrah, boys! Lord, but can’t he run? Come home, Ajax!” “’Scuse
me—’scuse me—Mrs.—Mrs.—Angul—” after he came to himself—“but—but—she
plays that thing ’zactly like Ajax runs.”
It was the greatest day that had ever come into his life, and when he
left to go back to his beat he proclaimed exultingly to the White-haired
one that it was “Christmas, an’ hog-killin’ an’ heav’n all rolled into
one.”
It was twilight when she came out on the lawn, dressed in white with
ribbons in her hair. When he turned she had perched herself on her
favorite stump and was beckoning him to sit by her. Trembling, weak he
obeyed, his great arm touching hers, which thrilled him so that pains
shot into his wounds. She was silent, looking at him with the same
wistful, doubting eyes of the morning. He had seen them before, in camp,
when the boys gambled and their month’s pay was at stake, holding a card
aloft uncertain whether to cast or not. And how they held him—those eyes
of hers with the tragedy in them!
“Solomon, you know how we love you, mamma and I.” He sat mute with bowed
head. “And Solomon, if I trust you—if I tell you—will you never betray?”
“Whut—like that’r Judas I onct heurn of the time I went to meetin’?” She
nodded. It hurt him. “I can’t betray—It ain’t in me,” he said simply.
“Forgive me, Solomon. I knew it,” and she put her hand in his just as
Dinah Mariah had so often done, except that this made his heart beat so
it bothered his breathing and unlike Dinah Mariah’s he could not—she
being an angel—clasp it in turn. “Now, Solomon, my brother is coming
to-night—he will slip in yonder,” and she pointed to a by road leading
through shrubbery to a side gate. “You are not to see him, Solomon,
and you are to let him out the same way after we have fed him. For he
is hungry, Solomon, and in great danger—been surrounded and hiding
for days—they are on his trail. Your men, you know, have killed his
horse”—(Solomon winced—it hurt him to hear of a horse being killed)—“and,
Solomon, this is the only way he can get out—can save his life—for—for,
Solomon, they are to take him dead or alive.” She had ceased to smile.
Tears were in her eyes and Solomon’s great hand closed over her little
one.
“So he’p me God, I’ll nurver pester him!”
“And when he is ready to go—to try to escape, oh, Solomon, you will stand
by us—with Ajax ready?”
He started—he jumped from his seat. “Not Ajax—any critter we got but
Ajax.”
“Oh, Solomon, they cannot run—it’s—it’s—Ajax or death for him.”
She was weeping, her head on his great shoulder, clinging to his arm,
the perfume of her hair going into the soul of him like the odor of wild
grape blossoms after the spring rains in Dingley Dell. “Will you—will
you, Solomon; oh, save him for me!”
“So he’p me God, I will—he bein’ yo’ brother—my brother.”
“You are my brother, Solomon—the Brother of Nobility.”
Silence. He sat holding her hand as he would Dinah Mariah’s. “Will
you—er—kiss yo’ brother—when he gits here?”
She blushed. “Don’t we always kiss our brothers, Solomon?”
He scratched his head thoughtfully. “Awhile ago you made a remark
cal’k’lated ter sorter sot me to ’sposin’ thet mebbe I mou’t also be yo’
brother—”
There was a ripple from Telulah Falls, the pressure of lips on his cheek,
a whiff of wild grape blossoms in the Dell, a rustle of skirts up the
path, and Solomon sat breathing hard in silence.
“Wal, ef lightnin’ ’ud only give us notice when an’ whur it’s goin’ ter
strike!”
In camp he heard news—strange news. The whole army would strike next day,
for they had Johnston with his flank wide open; would bag him if that
scout didn’t get back through the lines—Captain Coleman, the daring rebel
scout. They had him surrounded now in a thicket by the creek, the man
they would give a brigade for—he was theirs if the pickets were careful.
Then it all came over Solomon and with it a blow that brought the great
strange man to dumbness. “I swore not to betray her—not to be her
Judas—oh, God, enny body but thet white-livered, snivelin’—” He heard
the flag rustling in the night air. He walked over, crept under the
folds, pressing it to his hot cheeks, kissing and fondling it. “Judas!
Judas!—oh, my country’s colors.” He looked across the night to the
hills where a thousand camp-fires twinkled in unbroken lines of starry
sentinels.
“Ye’ve got so menny to defen’ ye,” he said to the flag, “so menny twixt
you an’ death. An’ she—jes’ me—jes’ me!” He sang low the song that had
taken the camp.
“I’ve seed him in the camp fires of a hunder’d circlin’ camps,
They have builded him an altar in the evenin’ dews an’ damps—”
He stopped and looks at the living scene before him—it was all so true.
Then lower still:
“He has sounded forth the trumpet thet shall nurver know retreat,
He is siftin’ out the souls o’ men—”
He sprang up with a pain in his heart. “Siftin’ out the Judases, an’, oh
God, I’m a Judas arry way you fix it! Why did you fling me in this heah
pit among the wolves o’ war—away from my mount’in home—from little Dinah
Mariah?”
When Solomon went back to his beat he had slipped out Ajax, saddled, and
held him in the clump of orchard trees, near the sweet window where the
faint light came out, that he knew shone also over her and her brother.
He held his Deckerd proudly, for was he not all that stood between
her and death? He swelled with the pride of it and that queer sullen
feeling that came over him at times—that savage feeling he could not
understand—that made him willing to kill—kill if—
“They’d better not pester her,” he growled as he heard the pickets go out
for their night’s duty.
He heard them moving in the room. Her brother was preparing to go. He
peeped and turned away his head. “Somehow it riles me to see her brother
kiss her that away.” He tapped on the blind saying softly: “Ready—ready.”
“O, Solomon,” joyfully in a whisper, “bless you; bless you!”
“No Judas in mine, Angul.”
He turned, for Ajax had thrust his head over his keeper’s shoulder and
the man laid his cheek against it and his lips had parted for the pet
words which he never uttered; for there was a noise in the dark behind
him and two soldiers tried to rush by to the door of the room.
Solomon stopped them with his great Deckerd at port. “Halt fus’ an’
give the countersign,” he said, and he heard the scream of a woman, the
hurrying of feet within.
“Stand back, you fool, we are men of the Tenth and we’ve got Coleman in
there.”
“Stan’ back yerse’f—he’s her brother—my brother.”
There was a rush at him, into arms which made them think of a mountain
bear, for he gathered them to his heart, and the breath of them went out.
In the glare of the wide open door a girl stood white-faced with tragedy.
A man leaped to the back of a horse and the swaying, struggling group
were baptized in a shower of flying gravel. Shots and shouts behind and
the scud of a flying horse into the night.
“You damned traitor!” Solomon dropped the two men in the paralysis of the
bayonet thrust that sank into his back.
He quivered to the death stroke and turned beseechingly to the man:
“Shoot me, quick, brother—in the heart—in the breast—I’m no traitor, no
Judas—she’ll say I ain’t.” The man cocked his rifle but the great head
with the shock of long hair had gone down and the girl stood between them.
“No—no—not Judas—she’ll swear I ain’t.”
She did not seem to notice them—her beautiful head was turned side-wise
listening to the vanishing rhythm of flying hoof beats. “O, Solomon,
Solomon; will they catch him?”
“Whut—an’ him on Ajax? Ho-ho-oh,” and the great chest, schooled to the
mountain halloo, echoed it for the last time, like the sound of thunder
among the hollow gorges of the hills.
Then joy, great, radiant joy in her face, and with the returning glory of
it all—tenderness—tenderness and sorrow for him. “Can I—O, Solomon—can I
do anything for you?” She sat by him, her hand on the sweat-damp brow.
“You mou’t—kiss—me ag’in—an’ ef—you—happen to see—little Dinah Mariah—”
* * * * *
What doth it mean and whither tendeth,
This life—this death—this world—the whirling stars?
Why do we live to-day—to-morrow endeth
Our half dreampt dream behind the twilight bars?
[Illustration]