Chapter 18

“Why the devil don't we move? We ought to move,” he said angrily, as he glanced round the crowded field where the men were arraying themselves in all the useless trappings of the Southern volunteer. Kemper was busily placing his necessary toilet articles in his haversack, having thrown away half his rations for the purpose; Jack Powell, completely dressed for the march, was examining his heavy revolver, with the conscious pride a field officer might have felt in his sword. As he stuck it into his belt, he straightened himself with a laugh and jauntily set his small cap on his curling hair; he was clean, comely, and smooth-shaven as if he had just stepped from a hot bath and the hands of his barber.

“You may roll Dandy in the dust and he'll come out washed,” Baker had once forcibly remarked.

“I say, boys, why don't we start?” persisted Dan impatiently, flicking with his handkerchief at a grain of sand on his high boots. Then, as Big Abel brought him a cup of coffee, he drank it standing, casting eager glances over the rim of his cup. He had an odd feeling that it was all a great fox hunt they were soon to start upon; that they were waiting only for the calling of the hounds. The Major's fighting blood had stirred within his grandson's veins, and generations of dead Lightfoots were scenting the coming battle from the dust. When Dan thought now of the end to which he should presently be marching, it suggested to him but a quickened exhilaration of the pulses and an old engraving of “Waterloo,” which hung on the dining-room wall at Chericoke. That was war; and he remembered vividly the childish thrill with which he had first looked up at it. He saw the prancing horses, the dramatic gestures of the generals with flowing hair, the blur of waving flags and naked swords. It was like a page torn from the eternal Romance; a page upon which he and his comrades should play heroic parts; and it was white blood, indeed, that did not glow with the hope of sharing in that picture; of hanging immortal in an engraving on the wall.

The “fall in” of the sergeant was already sounding from the road, and, with a last glance about the field, Dan ran down the gentle slope and across the little stream to take his place in the ranks of the forming column. An officer on a milk-white horse was making frantic gestures to the line, and the young man followed him an instant with his eyes. Then, as he stood there in the warm sunshine, he felt his impatience prick him like a needle. He wanted to push forward the regiments in front of him, to start in any direction--only to start. The suppressed excitement of the fox hunt was upon him, and the hoarse voices of the officers thrilled him as if they were the baying of the hounds. He heard the musical jingle of moving cavalry, the hurried tread of feet in the soft dust, the smothered oaths of men who stumbled over the scattered stones. And, at last, when the sun stood high above, the long column swung off toward the south, leaving the enemy and the north behind it.

“By God, we're running away,” said Bland in a whisper. With the words the gayety passed suddenly from the army, and it moved slowly with the dispirited tread of beaten men. The enemy lay to the north, and it was marching to the south and home.

As it passed through the fragrant streets of Winchester, women, with startled eyes, ran from open doors into the deep old gardens, and watched it over the honeysuckle hedges. Under the fluttering flags, past the long blue shadows, with the playing of the bands and the clatter of the canteens--on it went into the white dust and the sunshine. From a wide piazza, a group of schoolgirls pelted the troops with roses, and as Dan went by he caught a white bud and stuck it into his cap. He looked back laughing, to meet the flash of laughing eyes; then the gray line swept out upon the turnpike and went down the broad road through the smooth green fields, over which the sunlight lay like melted gold.

Dan, walking between Pinetop and Jack Powell, felt a sudden homesickness for the abandoned camp, which they were leaving with the gay little town and the red clay forts, naked to the enemy's guns. He saw the branching apple tree, the burned-out fires, the silvery fringe of willows by the stream; and he saw the men in blue already in possession of his woodpile, broiling their bacon by the logs that Big Abel had cut.

At the end of three miles the brigades abruptly halted, and he listened, looking at the ground, to an order, which was read by a slim young officer who pulled nervously at his moustache. Down the column came a single ringing cheer, and, without waiting for the command, the men pushed eagerly forward along the road. What was a forced march of thirty miles to an army that had never seen a battle?

As they went on a boyish merriment tripped lightly down the turnpike; jests were shouted, a wit began to tease a mounted officer who was trying to reach the front, and somebody with a tenor voice was singing “Dixie.” A stray countryman, sitting upon the wall of loose stones, was greeted affectionately by each passing company. He was a big, stupid-looking man, with a gray fowl hanging, head downward, from his hand, and as he responded “Howdy,” in an expressionless tone, the fowl craned its long neck upward and pecked at the creeper on the wall.

“Howdy, Jim!” “Howdy, Peter!” “Howdy, Luke!” sang the first line. “How's your wife?” “How's your wife's mother?” “How's your sister-in-law's uncle?” inquired the next. The countryman spat into the ditch and stared solemnly in reply, and the gray fowl, still craning its neck, pecked steadily at the leaves upon the stones.

Dan looked up into the blue sky, across the open meadows to the far-off low mountains, and then down the long turnpike where the dust hung in a yellow cloud. In the bright sunshine he saw the flash of steel and the glitter of gold braid, and the noise of tramping feet cheered him like music as he walked on gayly, filled with visions. For was he not marching to his chosen end--to victory, to Chericoke--to Betty? Or if the worst came to the worst--well, a man had but one life, after all, and a life was a little thing to give his country. Then, as always, his patriotism appealed to him as a romance rather than a religion--the fine Southern ardour which had sent him, at the first call, into the ranks, had sprung from an inward, not an outward pressure. The sound of the bugle, the fluttering of the flags, the flash of hot steel in the sunlight, the high old words that stirred men's pulses--these things were his by blood and right of heritage. He could no more have stifled the impulse that prompted him to take a side in any fight than he could have kept his heart cool beneath the impassioned voice of a Southern orator. The Major's blood ran warm through many generations.

“I say, Beau, did you put a millstone in my knapsack?” inquired Bland suddenly. His face was flushed, and there was a streak of wet dust across his forehead. “If you did, it was a dirty joke,” he added irritably. Dan laughed. “Now that's odd,” he replied, “because there's one in mine also, and, moreover, somebody has stuck penknives in my boots. Was it you, Pinetop?”

But the mountaineer shook his head in silence, and then, as they halted to rest upon the roadside, he flung himself down beneath the shadow of a sycamore, and raised his canteen to his lips. He had come leisurely at his long strides, and as Dan looked at him lying upon the short grass by the wall, he shook his own roughened hair, in impatient envy. “Why, you've stood it like a Major, Pinetop,” he remarked.

Pinetop opened his eyes. “Stood what?” he drawled.

“Why, this heat, this dust, this whole confounded march. I don't believe you've turned a hair, as Big Abel says.”

“Good Lord,” said Pinetop. “I don't reckon you've ever ploughed up hill with a steer team.”

Without replying, Dan unstrapped his knapsack and threw it upon the roadside. “What doesn't go in my haversack, doesn't go, that's all,” he observed. “How about you, Dandy?”

“Oh, I threw mine away a mile after starting,” returned Jack Powell, “my luxuries are with a girl I left behind me. I've sacrificed everything to the cause except my toothbrush, and, by Jove, if the weight of that goes on increasing, I shall be forced to dispense with it forever. I got rid of my rations long ago. Pinetop says a man can't starve in blackberry season, and I hope he's right. Anyway, the Lord will provide--or he won't, that's certain.”

“Is this the reward of faith, I wonder?” said Dan, as he looked at a lame old negro who wheeled a cider cart and a tray of green apple pies down a red clay lane that branched off under thick locust trees. “This way, Uncle, here's your man.”

The old negro slowly approached them to be instantly surrounded by the thirsty regiment.

“Howdy, Marsters? howdy?” he began, pulling his grizzled hair. “Dese yer's right nice pies, dat dey is, suh.”

“Look here, Uncle, weren't they made in the ark, now?” inquired Bland jestingly, as he bit into a greasy crust.

“De ark? naw, suh; my Mehaley she des done bake 'em in de cabin over yonder.” He lifted his shrivelled hand and pointed, with a tremulous gesture, to a log hut showing among the distant trees.

“What? are you a free man, Uncle?”

“Free? Go 'way f'om yer! ain' you never hyearn tell er Marse Plunkett?”

“Plunkett?” gravely repeated Bland, filling his canteen with cider. “Look here, stand back, boys, it's my turn now.--Plunkett--Plunkett--can I have a long-lost friend named Plunkett? Where is he, Uncle? has he gone to fight?”

“Marse Plunkett? Naw, suh, he ain' fit nobody.”

“Well, you tell him from me that he'd better enlist at once,” put in Jack Powell. “This isn't the time for skulkers, Uncle; he's on our side, isn't he?” The old negro shook his head, looking uneasily at the froth that dripped from the keg into the dust.

“Naw, suh, Marse Plunkett, he's fur de Un'on, but he's pow'ful feared er de Yankees,” he returned.

Bland broke into a laugh. “Oh, come, that's downright treason,” he protested merrily. “Your Marse Plunkett's a skulker sure enough, and you may tell him so with my compliments. You're on the Yankee side, too, I reckon, and there're bullets in these pies, sure as I live.”

The old man shuffled nervously on his bare feet.

“Go 'way, Marster, w'at I know 'bout 'sides'?” he replied, tilting his keg to drain the last few drops into the canteen of a thirsty soldier. “I'se on de Lawd's side, dat's whar I is.”

He fell back startled, for the call of “Column, forward!” was shouted down the road, and in an instant the men had left the emptied cart, and were marching on into the sunny distance.

As the afternoon lengthened the heat grew more oppressive. Straight ahead there was dust and sunshine and the ceaseless tramp, and on either side the fresh fields were scorched and whitened by a powdering of hot sand. Beyond the rise and dip of the hills, the mountains burned like blue flames on the horizon, and overhead the sky was hard as an inverted brazier.

Dan had begun to limp, for his stiff boots galled his feet. His senses were blunted by the hot sand which filled his eyes and ears and nostrils, and there was a shimmer over all the broad landscape. When he shook his hair from his forehead, the dust floated slowly down and settled in a scorching ring about his neck.

The day closed gradually, and as they neared the river, the mountains emerged from obscure outlines into wooded heights upon which the trees showed soft and gray in the sunset. A cool breath was blown through a strip of damp woodland, where the pale bodies of the sycamores were festooned in luxuriant vines, and from the twilight long shadows stretched across the red clay road. Then, as they went down a rocky slope, a fringe of willows appeared suddenly from the blur of green, and they saw the Shenandoah running between falling banks, with the colours of the sunset floating like pink flowers upon its breast.

With a shout the front line plunged into the stream, holding its heavy muskets high above the current of the water, and filing upon the opposite bank, into a rough road which wound amid the ferns.

Midway of the river, near the fording point, there was a little island which lay like a feathery tree-top upon the tinted water; and as Dan went by, he felt the brush of willows on his face and heard the soft lapping of the small waves upon the shore. The keen smell of the sycamores drifted to him from the bank that he had left, and straight up stream he saw a single peaked blue hill upon which a white cloud rested. For a moment he lingered, breathing in the fragrance, then the rear line pressed upon him, and, crossing rapidly, he stood on the rocky edge, shaking the water from his clothes. Out of the after-glow came the steady tramp of tired feet, and with aching limbs, he turned and hastened with the column into the mountain pass.

III

THE REIGN OF THE BRUTE

The noise of the guns rolled over the green hills into the little valley where the regiment had halted before a wayside spring, which lay hidden beneath a clump of rank pokeberry. As each company filled its canteens, it filed across the sunny road, from which the dust rose like steam, and stood resting in an open meadow that swept down into a hollow between two gently rising hills. From the spring a thin stream trickled, bordered by short grass, and the water, dashed from it by the thirsty men, gathered in shining puddles in the red clay road. By one of these puddles a man had knelt to wash his face, and as Dan passed, draining his canteen, he looked up with a sprinkling of brown drops on his forehead. Near him, unharmed by the tramping feet, a little purple flower was blooming in the mud.

Dan gazed thoughtfully down upon him and upon the little purple flower in its dangerous spot. What did mud or dust matter, he questioned grimly, when in a breathing space they would be in the midst of the smoke that hung close above the hill-top? The sound of the cannon ceased suddenly, as abruptly as if the battery had sunk into the ground, and through the sunny air he heard a long rattle that reminded him of the fall of hail on the shingled roof at Chericoke. As his canteen struck against his side, it seemed to him that it met the resistance of a leaden weight. There was a lump in his throat and his lips felt parched, though the moisture from the fresh spring water was hardly dried. When he moved he was conscious of stepping high above the earth, as he had done once at college after an over-merry night and many wines.

Straight ahead the sunshine lay hot and still over the smooth fields and the little hollow where a brook ran between marshy banks. High above he saw it flashing on the gray smoke that hung in tatters from the tree-tops on the hill.

An ambulance, drawn by a white and a bay horse, turned gayly from the road into the meadow, and he saw, with surprise, that one of the surgeons was trimming his finger nails with a small penknife. The surgeon was a slight young man, with pointed yellow whiskers, and light blue eyes that squinted in the sunshine. As he passed he stifled a yawn with an elaborate affectation of unconcern.

A man on horseback, with a white handkerchief tied above his collar, galloped up and spoke in a low voice to the Colonel. Then, as his horse reared, he glanced nervously about, grew embarrassed, and, with a sharp jerk of the bridle, galloped off again across the field. Presently other men rode back and forth along the road; there were so many of them that Dan wondered, bewildered, if anybody was left to make the battle beyond the hill.

The regiment formed into line and started at “double quick” across the broad meadow powdered white with daisies. As it went into the ravine, skirting the hillside, a stream of men came toward it and passed slowly to the rear. Some were on stretchers, some were stumbling in the arms of slightly wounded comrades, some were merely warm and dirty and very much afraid. One and all advised the fresh regiment to “go home and finish ploughing.” “The Yankees have got us on the hip,” they declared emphatically. “Whoopee! it's as hot as hell where you're going.” Then a boy, with a blood-stained sleeve, waved his shattered arm in the air and laughed deliriously. “Don't believe them, friends, it's glorious!” he cried, in the voice of the far South, and lurched forward upon the grass.

The sight of the soaked shirt and the smell of blood turned Dan faint. He felt a sudden tremor in his limbs, and his arteries throbbed dully in his ears. “I didn't know it was like this,” he muttered thickly. “Why, they're no better than mangled rabbits--I didn't know it was like this.”

They wound through the little ravine, climbed a hillside planted in thin corn, and were ordered to “load and lie down” in a strip of woodland. Dan tore at his cartridge with set teeth; then as he drove his ramrod home, a shell, thrown from a distant gun, burst in the trees above him, and a red flame ran, for an instant, along the barrel of his musket. He dodged quickly, and a rain of young pine needles fell in scattered showers from the smoked boughs overhead. Somewhere beside him a man was groaning in terror or in pain. “I'm hit, boys, by God, I'm hit this time.” The groans changed promptly into a laugh. “Bless my soul! the plagued thing went right into the earth beneath me.”

“Damn you, it went into my leg,” retorted a hoarse voice that fell suddenly silent.

With a shiver Dan lay down on the carpet of rotted pine-cones and peered, like a squirrel, through the meshes of the brushwood. At first he saw only gray smoke and a long sweep of briers and broom-sedge, standing out dimly from an obscurity that was thick as dusk. Then came a clatter near at hand, and a battery swept at a long gallop across the thinned edge of the pines. So close it came that he saw the flashing white eyeballs and the spreading sorrel manes of the horses, and almost felt their hot breath upon his cheek. He heard the shouts of the outriders, the crack of the stout whips, the rattle of the caissons, and, before it passed, he had caught the excited gestures of the men upon the guns. The battery unlimbered, as he watched it, shot a few rounds from the summit of the hill, and retreated rapidly to a new position. When the wind scattered the heavy smoke, he saw only the broom-sedge and several ridges of poor corn; some of the gaunt stalks blackened and beaten to the ground, some still flaunting their brave tassels beneath the whistling bullets. It was all in sunlight, and the gray smoke swept ceaselessly to and fro over the smiling face of the field.

Then, as he turned a little in his shelter, he saw that there was a single Confederate battery in position under a slight swell on his left. Beyond it he knew that the long slope sank gently into a marshy stream and the broad turnpike, but the brow of the hill went up against the sky, and hidden in the brushwood he could see only the darkened line of the horizon. Against it the guns stood there in the sunlight, unsupported, solitary, majestic, while around them the earth was tossed up in the air as if a loose plough had run wild across the field. A handful of artillerymen moved back and forth, like dim outlines, serving the guns in a group of fallen horses that showed in dark mounds upon the hill. From time to time he saw a rammer waved excitedly as a shot went home, or heard, in a lull, the hoarse voices of the gunners when they called for “grape!”

As he lay there, with his eyes on the solitary battery, he forgot, for an instant, his own part in the coming work. A bullet cut the air above him, and a branch, clipped as by a razor's stroke, fell upon his head; but his nerves had grown steady and his thoughts were not of himself; he was watching, with breathless interest, for another of the gray shadows at the guns to go down among the fallen horses.

Then, while he watched, he saw other batteries come out upon the hill; saw the cannon thrown into position and heard the call change from “grape!” to “canister!” On the edge of the pines a voice was speaking, and beyond the voice a man on horseback was riding quietly back and forth in the open. Behind him Jack Powell called out suddenly, “We're ready, Colonel Burwell!” and his voice was easy, familiar, almost affectionate.

“I know it, boys!” replied the Colonel in the same tone, and Dan felt a quick sympathy spring up within him. At that instant he knew that he loved every man in the regiment beside him--loved the affectionate Colonel, with the sleepy voice, loved Pinetop, loved the lieutenant whose nose he had broken after drill.

At a word he had leaped, with the others, to his feet, and stood drawn up for battle against the wood. Then it was that he saw the General of the day riding beside fluttering colours across the waste land to the crest of the hill. He was rallying the scattered brigades about the flag--so the fight had gone against them and gone badly, after all.

Around him the men drifted back, frightened, straggling, defeated, and the broken ranks closed up slowly. The standards dipped for a moment before a sharp fire, and then, as the colour bearers shook out the bright folds, soared like great red birds' wings above the smoke.

It seemed to Dan that he stood for hours motionless there against the pines. For a time the fight passed away from him, and he remembered a mountain storm which had caught him as a boy in the woods at Chericoke. He heard again the cloud burst overhead, the soughing of the pines and the crackling of dried branches as they came drifting down through interlacing boughs. The old childish terror returned to him, and he recalled his mad rush for light and space when he had doubled like a hare in the wooded twilight among the dim bodies of the trees. Then as now it was not the open that he feared, but the unseen horror of the shelter.

Again the affectionate voice came from the sunlight and he gripped his musket as he started forward. He had caught only the last words, and he repeated them half mechanically, as he stepped out from the brushwood. Once again, when he stood on the trampled broom-sedge, he said them over with a nervous jerk, “Wait until they come within fifty yards--and, for God's sake, boys, shoot at the knees!”

He thought of the jolly Colonel, and laughed hysterically. Why, he had been at that man's wedding--had kissed his bride--and now he was begging him to shoot at people's knees!

With a cheer, the regiment broke from cover and swept forward toward the summit of the hill. Dan's foot caught in a blackberry vine, and he stumbled blindly. As he regained himself a shell ripped up the ground before him, flinging the warm clods of earth into his face. A “worm” fence at a little distance scattered beneath the fire, and as he looked up he saw the long rails flying across the field. For an instant he hesitated; then something that was like a nervous spasm shook his heart, and he was no more afraid. Over the blackberries and the broom-sedge, on he went toward the swirls of golden dust that swept upward from the bright green slope. If this was a battle, what was the old engraving? Where were the prancing horses and the uplifted swords?

Something whistled in his ears and the air was filled with sharp sounds that set his teeth on edge. A man went down beside him and clutched at his boots as he ran past; but the smell of the battle--a smell of oil and smoke, of blood and sweat--was in his nostrils, and he could have kicked the stiff hands grasping at his feet. The hot old blood of his fathers had stirred again and the dead had rallied to the call of their descendant. He was not afraid, for he had been here long before.