Part 13

He looked from one face to another, as heads were shaken, several reminding him that they were in a prohibition State. Only Jim Carter admitted that he had "just a smodgykin" saved up for a time of need. He ran to the sleeping-loft and returned with a flask containing less than half a pint of colorless whisky. This was forthwith poured down Jackson's throat.

Meanwhile Zack James and Mitch' Jenkins had drawn stout cords as tightly as possible round the leg above and below the wound, with a view to check the circulation of poisoned blood. This done, large portions of the raw quivering flesh of a turkey just killed were pressed hard, one after another, upon the wound itself, these supposedly acting as an absorbent.

One of the men suggested that the raw flesh of the rattler be applied in lieu of the turkey, mentioning a story he had heard to the effect that the best results could be thus obtained; but the poisoned man shuddered and refused to permit this.

He called pitifully for "a doctor," and the men about him only looked at each other helplessly, the nearest physician being many miles too far away to be sent for and brought through the swamp's difficulties in time to be of any service. There seemed to be nothing further to do but to continue to apply raw flesh to the wound.

By the time July announced supper, which nobody could eat, Jackson's leg was startlingly swollen and an hour or two later he had begun to wander in his mind.

Meanwhile, Hubert had related to Buck Hardy and several other listeners how he had one day been invited to visit the rattlesnake at its hole; how Billy had fed it, and seemed to be on the friendliest terms with it. Ted and July having confirmed Hubert's story, it became clear to everyone that Billy had brought the snake into the camp and was playing with it when the retreating Jackson stepped upon it. Nobody forgot that Jackson was of an ugly temper and had harshly used the half-witted boy whom he had brought into the swamp and who was said to be his cousin; but none the less was Billy now looked upon with suspicion and aversion, and by common consent he was shut up in the prison-pen that had been built for July. Rafe Wheeler gave expression to the general sentiment when he said:

"We don't want no sich walkin' free aroun' this camp. Fust thing we know he'll be tolin' up another rattlesnake to bite some of us."

As the poisoned man grew steadily worse and the inevitable issue had to be faced, Buck Hardy called Peters, Jones, Jenkins and James into consultation.

"He won't last through the night," said Buck in low tones, "and I reckon we'll have to bury him right h-yuh. He'd spoil before we could git him out. What do you say, men?"

All agreed that this was the only thing to be done, Zack James adding: "And 'sides that them that undertook to tote him out would run a turrible risk of goin' to jail for dodgin' the draft."

"Another thing," said Buck: "there's that po' fool Billy. He ought to go to his people, and I know you all want to get rid o' him. What had we better do about that?"

"Rafe Wheeler is goin' out for salt in the mornin'," said Zack James. "Maybe we could git him to take him."

This suggestion was approved, Wheeler was approached; and, though he objected, saying that he was afraid to lie down in the woods with "a crazy snake-charmer," a collection of contributed quarters and dimes offered as a substantial reward, induced him to undertake the disagreeable task.

Shortly after midnight Sweet Jackson drew his last breath, after his physical anguish had been mercifully dulled by delirium. Then a hush fell on the camp. Ted and Hubert retired to the sleeping-loft, but all the men sat about the fire until break of day. Straightening the limbs and covering the face of the dead, they sat about a freshened fire, speaking little and thinking much. Young men who had scarcely reflected seriously in all their lives did so now. Some of them feared the blow that had fallen was a judgment not only upon Jackson but upon the slacker camp in general, and more than one troubled mind wrestled with the question as to whether to turn from a selfish and cowardly course and go where duty called.

Awakening rather late in the morning, Ted and Hubert heard the sound of carpenter's tools and, descending from the sleeping-loft, they saw two of the slackers engaged in the construction of a rough coffin. Later they learned that others were digging a grave several hundred yards out in the pine woods. As July was giving them their breakfast, they also heard with relief that Wheeler had "gone out," and that poor Billy had been persuaded to accompany him.

An hour later the body was placed in the coffin and four men bore it to the grave, where the whole camp assembled. When the boys reached the spot Buck Hardy softly called Ted to come to him where he stood in consultation with several of the slackers.

"We ain't got no preacher nor no Bible," he said to the boy, "and we've agreed that the least we can do is to stand round the grave and every man say what he can remember of the prayers he used to say. We don't have to say 'em out loud if we don't want to."

There was a slight pause, and then Buck rather awkwardly added:

"Kid, I was thinkin' that, as you are the speaker in this camp, maybe you could remember some o' them pieces out o' the Bible they say at funerals, and----"

"Oh, Mr. Hardy, I'm afraid I can't," gasped Ted, appalled by the solemn responsibility thus placed upon him.

"You can do it, kid," urged Buck. "Don't be scared. Nobody will crack a smile, and we'll all think you're just great," As Ted still hesitated, Buck said further: "If you can remember any o' them Bible pieces, I think Sweet's folks would be glad if you said 'em."

"Well--I'll try--to remember some," said the shrinking boy, unable to resist this last appeal, "and--and--I'll do my best."

"Good for you," said Buck, putting an affectionate hand on Ted's shoulder.

Then he turned, gave the awaited signal, and all present formed a circle round the grave. Then, with bent and uncovered heads, practically every one repeated in whispers the whole of known or fragments of long-forgotten prayers.

As soon as the last man to do this looked up, thus signifying that he had finished, Buck stood a little forward with Ted, his hand on the boy's shoulder. Then Ted, in a voice at first low and trembling but gradually strengthening, his eyes fixed upon the coffin, repeated:

"Jesus said, I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.... Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.... Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...."

The boy hesitated and, turning to Buck whispered anxiously:

"I--I don't think I can remember any more."

"That'll do fine," whispered Buck, then announced aloud: "Now we'll bury him."

XXII

After the slackers had spent the afternoon in heavy sleep and eaten a hearty supper, the atmosphere of gloom was partially lifted from the camp; but the thoughts of all were still busier than their tongues as they sat and smoked about the fire. Though conversation lagged, nobody was sleepy, and all lingered, lounging on the grass until Ted suddenly rose to his feet and asked if he might say a few words.

"I am only a boy," he said, "and a boy is not expected to talk to men, but there are a few things I want _so much_ to say, and I hope you will let me."

"Go ahead, kid," said Buck Hardy.

Al Peters and Bud Jones added their permission, the others remaining silent. All stared at the boy, giving him close attention. Instead of shrinking before the steady gaze of so many eyes, he felt inspired thereby. It had been so ever since he was first given declamation exercises at school. Always he had found writing "a composition" a distasteful, unwelcome and heavy task, but as soon as he was given a chance to speak to attentive listeners his work became easy, his active mind became more fully awake, crowding thoughts clamored for expression, and, while he talked, the subject given to him developed far beyond any previous outline that he had made. And it was so now, his proposed few words becoming many and his promise to be very brief being soon forgotten.

"Of course, we are all thinking a lot about that poor man," he said, "and perhaps some of you have thought, as I have, how much better it would have been for him and his family if he had gone to the war and died gloriously for his country instead of coming to such an end in such a place as this at such a time. But I don't want to say much about Mr. Jackson. Ever since the days of old Rome, my uncle says, it has been agreed that we ought to say little about the dead unless we are ready to say something in praise.

"I speak of him because the way he died reminds me of what I read in that newspaper Mr. Jenkins brought in here when he came. I read in that paper of how a captain in our army wasn't true to our side because his parents were Germans and he had relatives in Germany, and of how he was sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor. That and lots of other things I've read show what we are up against in this country. My uncle says our Northern States are full of foreigners who came over here just to make money, and they and their children still love the countries they came from, the Germans especially, who, I've read, claim twenty millions in our country that are German by birth or descent."

"Gee-whiz!" cried Buck Hardy, quick to see the boy's point.

"Of course, most of these have been here long enough to become real Americans. My uncle thinks there is doubt about only the more recent immigrations. But even these are a great population, and the things that have happened prove that very many of them are working for the Kaiser with all their might. They spy for Germany and blow up and burn down munition plants. They do even more harm by their cunning whispers and continual talk. They get hold of ignorant people and try to persuade them that it costs too much in blood and money to fight Germany and that, anyhow, the world would be better off under the Kaiser's rule. I read of one German, a professor in one of our colleges, who actually argued in print that the wisest thing to do is to submit and make peace on any terms. You see, they are not real Americans, and still love and admire Germany; they would really enjoy having the Kaiser walk on their necks, and they may think that to try to make this country one of the tails to the Kaiser's kite is just the thing they ought to do. Besides, they know that German rule would bring them forward and make them the aristocrats in this country."

The listeners to this boyish, but pointed and intensely earnest harangue were all of old American stock and at this point all of them, without exception, were visibly indignant.

"Don't you see what this brings us up against?" asked Ted. "And what we are up against reminds me of the way Mr. Jackson died. This great German element that is secretly for the Kaiser is our Snake in the Grass that watches and waits and will come out and strike openly if ever a German army lands on our shores. Meanwhile it tries to poison the minds of our people and it does all the damage it possibly can on the sly. You see what we have to fight right here at home and how, in a way, we have a harder pull and need more help than any of our Allies.

"Now this is my answer to the argument I have heard in this camp. Some of you have said that you are not needed because the country is so big and powerful and has so many men. We _are_ powerful, but, you see, we have the secret foe at home as well as the open foe on the French border, and we need all our strength--all our able-bodied young men--so that we can go ahead in a big way and _smash_ the hateful Huns. Our country needs _you_, and _you_, and _you_," cried Ted, nodding his head toward Buck Hardy, and then toward every man around the camp fire in turn.

"Do you want to see a German viceroy taking orders from the Kaiser at Washington?" he demanded. "Do you want to see a German general in command of Atlanta and of every other State capital? Do you want to see a strutting German boss lording it over every town and county in this country? If you do, then you can say that you are not needed. Maybe you can't be stirred up by the President's call to make the world safe for democracy, because that may sound to you like something far away--though it isn't--But don't you--" cried the boy, tears starting in his eyes--"don't you want to see the American flag keep on flying? Don't you want to see your neighbors and all our people live in freedom and safety? Don't you want Americans still to rule in the country which our ancestors fought for and won and built up? Even little children have not been safe from the cruelty of the Germans. Do you want them protected? Do you want to keep our young women from being carried off into slavery? Do you want your mothers and sisters and sweethearts to belong to foreign beasts? Do you want to see in your own neighborhoods the dreadful things that have been seen in Belgium and France? The people in France have suffered so that when our first soldiers landed some of the French kissed the very hem of their garments. Do you want to wait until _we_ feel like that toward any people who might come to help us to drive back the German hordes?

"'Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!'

"Breathes _here_, to-night, a man with soul so dead that he thinks of the safety of his own skin instead of the safety of his country, his people, his women, and who is not willing to stand up and fight for freedom, for security, for the right to live in peace, against powerful and wicked aggressors? Oh, God, I wish _I_ were old enough to go to the war and do my part!"

Then, overcome by his emotions, Ted threw himself down on the grass and sobbed aloud. Hubert, who was near, put an arm over his cousin and sobbed with him. July, who had crawled nearer on the grass while Ted was speaking and now lay flat on his stomach close at hand, reached out a hand and touched the boy's shoulder, whispering:

"Nem-mind, Cap'n Ted. You done yo' part to-night. You been doin' yo' part ever since you come to dis camp. Don't you cry, Cap'n Ted, honey."

"Did you ever see the like o' that boy?" asked Al Peters softly. "He sure made the cold chills run up and down my back."

The remark was made to Buck Hardy, whose lips were twitching nervously and who did not answer.

"Too bad he _ain't_ old enough," said Bud Jones. "He'd sure make a dandy cap'n in the army."

The other slackers stared into the fire in gloomy silence.

Suddenly Buck Hardy rose to his feet, clearing his throat as he too looked steadily into the fire.

"Well, fellows," he said, "I don't know how the rest o' you feel, but I'm ready to quit. I'm tired o' playin' the game of a sneakin' suck-egg dog and I want to try the game of bein' a _man_."

"Goin' to desert, air you?" asked Zack James in a harsh, unsteady voice.

"No--goin' to _quit desertin'_."

"Goin' to go back on _us_," insisted James, "jes' because a _boy_ has got lots o' lip and can talk to beat the band."

"No," said Buck, keeping his temper. "He sure is game and a great kid, and he stirred me up powerful; but I made up my mind before to-night. I made it up when I was by my sick mother's bed. I'm free to say that that boy's talk before that had a lot to do with it, but the truth is I ain't been satisfied from the start. I never did really belong to this crowd. I got in wrong last summer when I thought I knew better than the Congress of the United States about that draft business and was fool enough to get mad."

Zack James blew out his breath in a sort of contemptuous hiss.

"I meant to tell you all as soon as I come back yesterday," continued Buck, taking no notice of James, "but the trouble in camp stopped me. I only come back to get them boys, and to-morrow I'll start out with 'em. I'm goin' to take them boys home and then I'm goin' to the war."

"Oh, Mr. Hardy," cried Ted, who had been drying his eyes as he listened, and who now started up, "I'm gladder to hear that than to know that we are going home!"

Mitch' Jenkins now spoke for the first time.

"Maybe you are goin' to take them boys home," he said, "but you ain't goin' to the war. You are goin' to jail, and then you are goin' to be shot."

"What do you mean?" demanded Buck in startled tones, plainly disturbed.

Then Ted darted his hand into an inside pocket and brought out a battered newspaper clipping.

"That's what they are sayin' in my neighborhood," declared Jenkins. "And that's why, when I heard of you fellows on the quiet, I came in to join you. I'd let the time to register go by, and so I come in here a-kitin'."

"Mr. Jenkins," said Ted, boldly facing hostile eyes, his voice quite steady, "you heard a wild rumor of the sort the Germans in this country are spreading all the time. I have the real facts here, Mr. Hardy. I cut this out of that paper Mr. Jenkins himself brought in, thinking I might need it. It got wet when we crossed the 'prairie,' but you can read it. It is a part of Provost Marshal General Crowder's report on the first draft. It says that out of nearly ten million men not much over five thousand arrests were made for failure to register, that more than half of these, after registering, were released. "'The authorities,'" read the boy from his clipping, "'wisely assumed an attitude of leniency toward all those who after arrest exhibited a willingness to register and extended the _locus penitentiae_ as far as possible, believing that the purpose of the law was to secure a full registration rather than full jails.'"

Ted handed the clipping to Buck, who, after looking it over carefully, handed it to Al Peters, remarking:

"Another lie nailed. I don't mean that you did the lyin', Jenkins. I reckon it was the Germans."

The clipping passed from Peters to Jones and then to Jenkins, each holding it near the fire and reading in silence. Jenkins studied it carefully and then, without comment, passed it to James, who, after hardly a glance at the printed lines, tore up the clipping and threw it into the fire.

"What good will that do you?" asked Peters scornfully.

"Nothin' but newspaper lies to fool runaways like us out of their hidin' places," said James bitterly.

Ted, who regarded the clipping as of great value and considered it his property, turned with an outraged face to Buck, who chose to take no notice of an incident which appeared to him unimportant.

"Well, fellows," he said in conclusion, "I've put you on notice, and now all I've got to do is to get ready."

"So you've gone back on us," repeated James, his voice trembling with anger, "and you'll go out and put the sheriff on our trail?"

"I didn't say that. I don't expect to hunt up the sheriff. I'll be satisfied if he don't hunt me up. But if he asks me straight up and down, I don't engage to do any lyin'."

"You mean that after them boys has blabbed the whole thing, you won't deny it?" demanded James.

"I told you I wouldn't do any lyin'," said Buck sharply.

"All _right_," said James menacingly. "That's all I want to know."

"How much more do you deserve?" asked Buck, his tone showing irritation for the first time. "Al Peters," he said suddenly, turning to the young man addressed, "I don't think you belong in this crowd, either. If there's any yellow dog in you, I ain't seen it. Don't you want to come along with me and join the _men_?"

"Buck," said Peters, rising and stepping forward, "I have a good mind to do it."

"Good for you! Now, Jones, let's hear from you. I ain't seen any yellow dog in you either. I think that down underneath you're a _man_. Don't you want to come along?"

"Buck, I think I will," said Bud Jones.

He spoke as lightly as if a fishing trip had been proposed. He even smiled as he rose and took his stand in the group of which the boys were now the center.

Zack James started up, staring and muttering, his manner suggestive of impotent rage. He drew Thatcher aside and whispered to him.

"How about you, Jenkins?" asked Buck, smiling. "You're new and I hardly know you, but from things I've heard it looks to me like you're pretty nearly all white."

"No, thank you," said Jenkins, with mocking courtesy. "I'm stayin'. It's risky--with the sheriff gettin' on to it in three days' time--but it ain't as risky as goin' to jail with the chance o' bein' shot."

"Then, that's all," said Buck. "No use to ask any o' the rest."

"July wants to go out with us," spoke up Ted.

"I sho do want to go wid Mr. Hardy an' Cap'n Ted," declared the grinning negro.

"All right, July. I brought you in and, if you want to go, I'll take you out."

The two groups were now quite distinct, first Carter and then Jenkins having joined James and Thatcher.

"So," said James, as if estimating the relative strength of contending forces, "there's three of you and the nigger and the boys, and there's four of us--five when Wheeler gets back."

"Yes, you'll get Wheeler--not a doubt of it," said Buck, as if greatly amused. "And you're welcome to him."

Then he turned his back on James, remarking to those about him: "Well, I think our crowd had better go to bed. We ought to start early in the mornin'."

To this there was general assent, the three men and the two boys moving at once toward the sleeping-loft, followed slowly by the negro.

"Good night," called out Buck, his tone quite friendly.

But no response came from the four slackers who, standing in their tracks, watched the departing "deserters" with hostile eyes.

As the three men and the boys were climbing the ladder, July quietly disappeared. Stealing into the bushes bent double, he skirted the clearing, treading very softly. Five minutes later he lay in the brush within earshot of the four slackers who still stood in consultation.

XXIII

Ted went to bed a very happy boy, seeing nothing but the wonderful achievement of his fond dream. Hubert alone noted that the three men put their guns within reach of their hands when they lay down, and he alone heard Al Peters whisper:

"What if them fellows want to make trouble?"

The boy was glad to hear Buck answer: "Oh, shucks, there ain't spunk enough in _that_ bunch."

Some two hours later Buck saw reason to modify this contemptuous opinion, for July brought startling news. Climbing up into the sleeping-loft very quietly, the negro bent down over Peters, Jones and Hardy in turn, shaking each until assured that each was fully awake. Each grumbled sleepily, protesting and questioning. Not until all three stood up and peered at him in the dim light did July fully explain.

"Sorry to 'sturb you gen'l'mens," he apologized, "but it ain't safe to stay sleep in dis place to-night. I's scared dem mens out dere is fixin' to burn it down on you."

"What in the dickens made you wake us up to tell such a fool tale as that?" demanded Buck skeptically.

"I tellin' you de trufe," insisted July in an injured tone. "I was lookin' an' listenin' when Mr. James shook his fist at dis place an' says: 'Less burn 'em up--dat's de quick an' sure way.' Dem's his very words. I slipped up on 'em an' watched an' listened."

Peters and Jones looked at each other and then at Buck.

"Zack James is a fool anyhow and now that he's mad, his brains is plumb addled," said Buck in a disgusted tone. "Nothin' but talk. Jenkins wouldn't stand for it."

"Well, you better believe dem mens is gittin' ready to fight," insisted July. "Dey's tuck all de provisions an' put 'em wid dey guns behind a bunch o' permeters close by de big pine--you know de big pine--and dey got another fire built down dere. And dey's tuck all de boats an' hid 'em. I sneaked round an' watched 'em while dey was doin' it all."