Chapter 23

Dan, stretched exhausted beside the road, ate his ear of corn, and idly watched the regiment that was marching by--marching, not with the even tread of regular troops, but with scattered ranks and broken column, each man limping in worn-out shoes, at his own pace. They were not fancy soldiers, these men, he felt as he looked after them. They were not imposing upon the road, but when their chance came to fight, they would be very sure to take it. Here and there a man still carried his old squirrel musket, with a rusted skillet handle stuck into the barrel, but when before many days the skillet would be withdrawn, the load might be relied upon to wing straight home a little later. On wet nights those muskets would stand upright upon their bayonets, with muzzles in the earth, while the rain dripped off, and on dry days they would carry aloft the full property of the mess, which had dwindled to a frying pan and an old quart cup; though seldom cleaned, they were always fit for service--or if they went foul what was easier than to pick up a less trusty one upon the field. On the other side hung the blankets, tied at the ends and worn like a sling from the left shoulder. The haversack was gone and with it the knapsack and the overcoat. When a man wanted a change of linen he knelt down and washed his single shirt in the brook, sitting in the sun while it dried upon the bank. If it was long in drying he put it on, wet as it was, and ran ahead to fall in with his company. Where the discipline was easy, each infantryman might become his own commissary.

Dan finished his corn, threw the husks over his head, and sat up, looking idly at the irregular ranks. He was tired and sick, and after a short rest it seemed all the harder to get up and take the road again. As he sat there he began to bandy words with the sergeant of a Maryland regiment that was passing.

“Hello! what brigade?” called the sergeant in friendly tones. He looked fat and well fed, and Dan felt this to be good ground for resentment.

“General Straggler's brigade, but it's none of your business,” he promptly retorted.

“General Straggler has a pretty God-forsaken crew,” taunted the sergeant, looking back as he stepped on briskly. “I've seen his regiments lining the road clear up from Chantilly.”

“If you'd kept your fat eyes open at Manassas the other day, you'd have seen them lining the battle-field as well,” pursued Dan pleasantly, chewing a long green blade of corn. “Old Stonewall saw them, I'll be bound. If General Straggler didn't win that battle I'd like to know who did.”

“Oh, shucks!” responded the sergeant, and was out of hearing.

The regiment passed by and another took its place. “Was that General Lee you were yelling at down there, boys?” inquired Dan politely, smiling the smile of a man who sits by the roadside and sees another sweating on the march.

“Naw, that warn't Marse Robert,” replied a private, limping with bare feet over the border of dried grass. “'Twas a blamed, blank, bottomless well, that's what 'twas. I let my canteen down on a string and it never came back no mo'.”

Dan lowered his eyes, and critically regarded the tattered banner of the regiment, covered with the names of the battles over which it had hung unfurled. “Tennessee, aren't you?” he asked, following the flag.

The private shook his head, and stooped to remove a pebble from between his toes.

“Naw, we ain't from Tennessee,” he drawled. “We've had the measles--that's what's the matter with us.”

“You show it, by Jove,” said Dan, laughing. “Step quickly, if you please--this is the cleanest brigade in the army.”

“Huh!” exclaimed the private, eying them with contempt. “You look like it, don't you, sonny? Why, I'd ketch the mumps jest to look at sech a set o' rag-a-muffins!”

He went on, still grunting, while Dan rose to his feet and slung his blanket from his shoulder. “Look here, does anybody know where we're going anyway?” he asked of the blue sky.

“I seed General Jackson about two miles up,” replied a passing countryman, who had led his horse into the corn field. “Whoopee! he was going at a God-a'mighty pace, I tell you. If he keeps that up he'll be over the Potomac before sunset.”

“Then we are going into Maryland!” cried Jack Powell, jumping to his feet. “Hurrah for Maryland! We're going to Maryland, God bless her!”

The shouts passed down the road and the Maryland regiment in front sent back three rousing cheers.

“By Jove, I hope I'll find some shoes there,” said Dan, shaking the sand from his ragged boots, and twisting the shreds of his stockings about his feet. “I've had to punch holes in my soles and lace them with shoe strings to the upper leather, or they'd have dropped off long ago.”

“Well, I'll begin by making love to a seamstress when I'm over the Potomac,” remarked Welch, getting upon his feet. “I'm decidedly in need of a couple of patches.”

“You make love! You!” roared Jack Powell. “Why, you're the kind of thing they set up in Maryland to keep the crows away. Now if it were Beau, there, I see some sense in it--for, I'll be bound, he's slain more hearts than Yankees in this campaign. The women always drain out their last drop of buttermilk when he goes on a forage.”

“Oh, I don't set up to be a popinjay,” retorted Welch witheringly.

“Popinjay, the devil!” scowled Dan, “who's a popinjay?”

“Wall, I'd like a pair of good stout breeches,” peacefully interposed Pinetop. “I've been backin' up agin the fence when I seed a lady comin' for the last three weeks, an' whenever I set down, I'm plum feared to git up agin. What with all the other things,--the Yankees, and the chills, and the measles,--it's downright hard on a man to have to be a-feared of his own breeches.”

Dan looked round with sympathy. “That's true; it's a shame,” he admitted smiling. “Look here, boys, has anybody got an extra pair of breeches?”

A howl of derision went up from the regiment as it fell into ranks.

“Has anybody got a few grape-leaves to spare?” it demanded in a high chorus.

“Oh, shut up,” responded Dan promptly. “Come on, Pinetop, we'll clothe ourselves to-morrow.”

The brigade formed and swung off rapidly along the road, where the dust lay like gauze upon the sunshine. At the end of a mile somebody stopped and cried out excitedly. “Look here, boys, the persimmons on that tree over thar are gittin' 'mos fit to eat. I can see 'em turnin',” and with the words the column scattered like chaff across the field. But the first man to reach the tree came back with a wry face, and fell to swearing at “the darn fool who could eat persimmons before frost.”

“Thar's a tree in my yard that gits ripe about September,” remarked Pinetop, as he returned dejectedly across the waste. “Ma she begins to dry 'em 'fo' the frost sets in.”

“Oh, well, we'll get a square meal in the morning,” responded Dan, growing cheerful as he dreamed of hospitable Maryland.

Some hours later, in the warm dusk, they went into bivouac among the trees, and, in a little while, the campfires made a red glow upon the twilight.

Pinetop, with a wooden bucket on his arm, had plunged off in search of water, and Dan and Jack Powell were sent, in the interests of the mess, to forage through the surrounding country.

“There's a fat farmer about ten miles down, I saw him,” remarked a lazy smoker, by way of polite suggestion.

“Ten miles? Well, of all the confounded impudence,” retorted Jack, as he strolled off with Dan into the darkness.

For a time they walked in silence, depressed by hunger and the exhaustion of the march; then Dan broke into a whistle, and presently they found themselves walking in step with the merry air.

“Where are your thoughts, Beau?” asked Jack suddenly, turning to look at him by the faint starlight.

Dan's whistle stopped abruptly.

“On a dish of fried chicken and a pot of coffee,” he replied at once.

“What's become of the waffles?” demanded Jack indignantly. “I say, old man, do you remember the sinful waste on those blessed Christmas Eves at Chericoke? I've been trying to count the different kinds of meat--roast beef, roast pig, roast goose, roast turkey--”

“Hold your tongue, won't you?”

“Well, I was just thinking that if I ever reach home alive I'll deliver the Major a lecture on his extravagance.”

“It isn't the Major; it's grandma,” groaned Dan.

“Oh, that queen among women!” exclaimed Jack fervently; “but the wines are the Major's, I reckon,--it seems to me I recall some port of which he was vastly proud.”

Dan delivered a blow that sent Jack on his knees in the stubble of an old corn field.

“If you want to make me eat you, you're going straight about it,” he declared.

“Look out!” cried Jack, struggling to his feet, “there's a light over there among the trees,” and they walked on briskly up a narrow country lane which led, after several turnings, to a large frame house well hidden from the road.

In the doorway a woman was standing, with a lamp held above her head, and when she saw them she gave a little breathless call.

“Is that you, Jim?”

Dan went up the steps and stood, cap in hand, before her. The lamplight was full upon his ragged clothes and upon his pallid face with its strong high-bred lines of mouth and chin.

“I thought you were my husband,” said the woman, blushing at her mistake. “If you want food you are welcome to the little that I have--it is very little.” She led the way into the house, and motioned, with a pitiable gesture, to a table that was spread in the centre of the sitting room.

“Will you sit down?” she asked, and at the words, a child in the corner of the room set up a frightened cry.

“It's my supper--I want my supper,” wailed the child.

“Hush, dear,” said the woman, “they are our soldiers.”

“Our soldiers,” repeated the child, staring, with its thumb in its mouth and the tear-drops on its cheeks.

For an instant Dan looked at them as they stood there, the woman holding the child in her arms, and biting her thin lips from which hunger had drained all the red. There was scant food on the table, and as his gaze went back to it, it seemed to him that, for the first time, he grasped the full meaning of a war for the people of the soil. This was the real thing--not the waving banners, not the bayonets, not the fighting in the ranks.

His eyes were on the woman, and she smiled as all women did upon whom he looked in kindness.

“My dear madam, you have mistaken our purpose--we are not as hungry as we look,” he said, bowing in his ragged jacket. “We were sent merely to ask you if you were in need of a guard for your smokehouse. My Colonel hopes that you have not suffered at our hands.”

“There is nothing left,” replied the woman mystified, yet relieved. “There is nothing to guard except the children and myself, and we are safe, I think. Your Colonel is very kind--I thank him;” and as they went out she lighted them with her lamp from the front steps.

An hour later they returned to camp with aching limbs and empty hands.

“There's nothing above ground,” they reported, flinging themselves beside the fire, though the night was warm. “We've scoured the whole country and the Federals have licked it as clean as a plate before us. Bless my soul! what's that I smell? Is this heaven, boys?”

“Licked it clean, have they?” jeered the mess. “Well, they left a sheep anyhow loose somewhere. Beau's darky hadn't gone a hundred yards before he found one.”

“Big Abel? You don't say so?” whistled Dan, in astonishment, regarding the mutton suspended on ramrods above the coals.

“Well, suh, 'twuz des like dis,” explained Big Abel, poking the roast with a small stick. “I know I ain' got a bit a bus'ness ter shoot dat ar sheep wid my ole gun, but de sheep she ain' got no better bus'ness strayin' roun' loose needer. She sutney wuz a dang'ous sheep, dat she wuz. I 'uz des a-bleeged ter put a bullet in her haid er she'd er hed my blood sho'.”

As the shout went up he divided the legs of mutton into shares and went off to eat his own on the dark edge of the wood.

A little later he came back to hang Dan's cap and jacket on the branches of a young pine tree. When he had arranged them with elaborate care, he raked a bed of tags together, and covered them with an army blanket stamped in the centre with the half obliterated letters U. S.

“That's a good boy, Big Abel, go to sleep,” said Dan, flinging himself down upon the pine-tag bed. “Strange how much spirit a sheep can put into a man. I wouldn't run now if I saw Pope's whole army coming.”

Turning over he lay sleepily gazing into the blue dusk illuminated with the campfires which were slowly dying down. Around him he heard the subdued murmur of the mess, deep and full, though rising now and then into a clearer burst of laughter. The men were smoking their brier-root pipes about the embers, leaning against the dim bodies of the pines, while they discussed the incidents of the march with a touch of the unconquerable humour of the Confederate soldier. Somebody had a fresh joke on the quartermaster, and everybody hoped great things of the campaign into Maryland.

“I pray it may bring me a pair of shoes,” muttered Dan, as he dropped off into slumber.

The next day, with bands playing “Maryland, My Maryland,” and the Southern Cross taking the September wind, the ragged army waded the Potomac, and passed into other fields.

II

A STRAGGLER FROM THE RANKS

In two weeks it swept back, wasted, stubborn, hungrier than ever. On a sultry September afternoon, Dan, who had gone down with a sharp return of fever, was brought, with a wagonful of the wounded, and placed on a heap of straw on the brick pavement of Shepherdstown. For two days he had been delirious, and Big Abel had held him to his bed during the long nights when the terrible silence seemed filled with the noise of battle; but, as he was lifted from the wagon and laid upon the sidewalk, he opened his eyes and spoke in a natural voice.

“What's all this fuss, Big Abel? Have I been out of my head?”

“You sutney has, suh. You've been a-prayin' en shoutin' so loud dese las' tree days dat I wunner de Lawd ain' done shet yo' mouf des ter git rid er you.”

“Praying, have I?” said Dan. “Well, I declare. That reminds me of Mr. Blake, Big Abel. I'd like to know what's become of him.”

Big Abel shook his head; he was in no pleasant humour, for the corners of his mouth were drawn tightly down and there was a rut between his bushy eyebrows.

“I nuver seed no sich place es dis yer town in all my lifetime,” he grumbled. “Dey des let us lie roun' loose on de bricks same es ef we ain' been fittin' fur 'em twel we ain' nuttin' but skin en bone. Dose two wagon loads er cut-up sodgers hev done fill de houses so plum full dat dey sticks spang thoo de cracks er de do's. Don' talk ter me, suh, I ain' got no use fur dis wah, noways, caze hit's a low-lifeted one, dat's what 'tis; en ef you'd a min' w'at I tell you, you'd be settin' up at home right dis minute wid ole Miss a-feedin' you on br'ile chicken. You may fit all you wanter--I ain' sayin' nuttin' agin yo' fittin ef yo' spleen hit's up--but you could er foun' somebody ter fit wid back at home widout comin' out hyer ter git yo'se'f a-jumbled up wid all de po' white trash in de county. Dis yer wah ain' de kin' I'se use ter, caze hit jumbles de quality en de trash tergedder des like dey wuz bo'n blood kin.”

“What are you muttering about now, Big Abel?” broke in Dan impatiently. “For heaven's sake stop and find me a bed to lie on. Are they going to leave me out here in the street on this pile of straw?”

“De Lawd he knows,” hopelessly responded Big Abel. “Dey's a-fixin' places, dey sez, dat's why all dese folks is a-runnin' dis away en dat away like chickens wid dere haids chopped off. 'Fo' you hed yo' sense back dey wanted ter stick you over yonder in dat ole blue shanty wid all de skin peelin' off hit, but I des put my foot right down en 'lowed dey 'ouldn't. W'at you wan' ketch mo'n you got fur?”

“But I can't stay here,” weakly remonstrated Dan, “and I must have something to eat--I tell you I could eat nails. Bring me anything on God's earth except green corn.”

The street was filled with women, and one of them, passing with a bowl of gruel in her hand, came back and held it to his lips.

“You poor fellow!” she said impulsively, in a voice that was rich with sympathy. “Why, I don't believe you've had a bite for a month.”

Dan smiled at her from his heap of straw--an unkempt haggard figure.

“Not from so sweet a hand,” he responded, his old spirit rising strong above misfortune.

His voice held her, and she regarded him with a pensive face. She had known men in her day, which had declined long since toward its evening, and with the unerring instinct of her race she knew that the one before her was well worth the saving. Gallantry that could afford to jest in rags upon a pile of straw appealed to her Southern blood as little short of the heroic. She saw the pinch of hunger about the mouth, and she saw, too, the singular beauty which lay, obscured to less keen eyes, beneath the fever and the dirt.

“The march must have been fearful--I couldn't have stood it,” she said, half to test the man.

Rising to the challenge, he laughed outright. “Well, since you mention it, it wasn't just the thing for a lady,” he answered, true to his salt.

For a moment she looked at him in silence, then turned regretfully to Big Abel.

“The houses have filled up already, I believe,” she said, “but there is a nice dry stable up the street which has just been cleaned out for a hospital. Carry your master up the next square and then into the alley a few steps where you will find a physician. I am going now for food and bandages.”

She hurried on, and Big Abel, seizing Dan beneath the arms, dragged him breathlessly along the street.

“A stable! Huh! Hit's a wunner dey ain' ax us ter step right inter a nice clean pig pen,” he muttered as he walked on rapidly.

“Oh, I don't mind the stable, but this pace will kill me,” groaned Dan. “Not so fast, Big Abel, not so fast.”

“Dis yer ain' no time to poke,” replied Big Abel, sternly, and lifting the young man in his arms, he carried him bodily into the stable and laid him on a clean-smelling bed of straw. The place was large and well lighted, and Dan, as he turned over, heaved a grateful sigh.

“Let me sleep--only let me sleep,” he implored weakly.

And for two days he slept, despite the noise about him. Dressed in clean clothes, brought by the lady of the morning, and shaved by the skilful hand of Big Abel, he buried himself in the fresh straw and dreamed of Chericoke and Betty. The coil of battle swept far from him; he heard none of the fret and rumour that filled the little street; even the moans of the men beneath the surgeons' knives did not penetrate to where he lay sunk in the stupor of perfect contentment. It was not until the morning of the third day, when the winds that blew over the Potomac brought the sounds of battle, that he was shocked back into a troubled consciousness of his absence from the army. Then he heard the voices of the guns calling to him from across the river, and once or twice he struggled up to answer.

“I must go, Big Abel--they are in need of me,” he said. “Listen! don't you hear them calling?”

“Go way f'om yer, Marse Dan, dey's des a-firin' at one anurr,” returned Big Abel, but Dan still tossed impatiently, his strained eyes searching through the door into the cloudy light of the alley. It was a sombre day, and the oppressive atmosphere seemed heavy with the smoke of battle.

“If I only knew how it was going,” he murmured, in the anguish of uncertainty. “Hush! isn't that a cheer, Big Abel?”

“I don' heah nuttin' but de crowin' er a rooster on de fence.”

“There it is again!” cried Dan, starting up. “I can swear it is our side. Listen--go to the door--by God, man, that's our yell! Ah, there comes the rattle of the muskets--don't you hear it?”

“Lawd, Marse Dan, I'se done hyern dat soun' twel I'm plum sick er it,” responded Big Abel, carefully measuring out a dose of arsenic, which had taken the place of quinine in a country where medicine was becoming as scarce as food. “You des swallow dis yer stuff right down en tu'n over en go fas' asleep agin.”

Taking the glass with trembling hands, Dan drained it eagerly.

“It's the artillery now,” he said, quivering with excitement. “The explosions come so fast I can hardly separate them. I never knew how long shells could screech before--do you mean to say they are really across the river? Go into the alley, Big Abel, and tell me if you see the smoke.”

Big Abel went out and returned, after a few moments, with the news that the smoke could be plainly seen, he was told, from the upper stories. There was such a crowd in the street, he added, that he could barely get along--nobody knew anything, but the wounded, who were arriving in great numbers, reported that General Lee could hold his ground “against Lucifer and all his angels.”

“Hold his ground,” groaned Dan, with feverish enthusiasm, “why, he could hold a hencoop, for the matter of that, against the whole of North America! Oh, but this is worse than fighting. I must get up!”

“You don' wanter git out dar in dat mess er skeered rabbits,” returned Big Abel. “You cyarn see yo' han' befo' you fur de way dey's w'igglin' roun' de street, en w'at's mo' you cyarn heah yo' own w'uds fur de racket dey's a-kickin' up. Des lis'en ter 'em now, des lis'en!”

“Oh, I wish I could tell our guns,” murmured Dan at each quick explosion. “Hush! there comes the cheer, now--somebody's charging! It may be our brigade, Big Abel, and I not in it.”

He closed his eyes and fell back from sheer exhaustion, still following, as he lay there, the battalion that had sprung forward with that charging yell. Gray, obscured in smoke, curved in the centre, uneven as the Confederate line of battle always was--he saw it sweep onward over the September field. At the moment to have had his place in that charge beyond the river, he would have cheerfully met his death when the day was over.

Through the night he slept fitfully, awaking from time to time to ask eagerly if it were not almost daybreak; then with the dawn the silence that had fallen over the Potomac seemed to leave a greater blank to be filled with the noises along the Virginia shore. The hurrying footsteps in the street outside kept up ceaselessly until the dark again; mingled with the cries of the wounded and the prayers of the frightened he heard always that eager, tireless passing of many feet. So familiar it became, so constant an accompaniment to his restless thoughts, that when at last the day wore out and the streets grew empty, he found himself listening for the steps of a passer-by as intently as he had listened in the morning for the renewed clamour of the battle on the Maryland fields.

The stir of the retreat did not reach the stable where he lay; all night the army was recrossing the Potomac, but to Dan, tossing on his bed of straw, it lighted the victor's watch-fires on the disputed ground. He had not seen the shattered line of battle as it faced disease, exhaustion, and an army stronger by double numbers, nor had he seen the gray soldiers lying row on row where they had kept the “sunken road.” Thick as the trampled corn beneath them, with the dust covering them like powder, and the scattered fence rails lying across their faces, the dead men of his own brigade were stretched upon the hillside, but through the long night he lay wakeful in the stable, watching with fevered eyes the tallow dips that burned dimly on the wall.

In the morning a nurse, coming with a bowl of soup, brought the news that Lee's army was again on Virginia soil.

“McClellan has opened a battery,” she explained, “that's the meaning of this fearful noise--did you ever hear such sounds in your life? Yes, the shells are flying over the town, but they've done no harm as yet.”