IX
By and by bulletins began to come in to the mother at Canewood from her boy at Tampa. There was little psychology in Basil's bulletin:
"I got here all right. My commission hasn't come, and I've joined the Rough Riders, for fear it won't get here in time. The Colonel was very kind to me—called me Mister."I've got a lieutenant's uniform of khaki, but I'm keeping it out of sight. I may have no use for it. I've got two left spurs, and I'm writing in the Waldorf-Astoria. I like these Northern fellows; they are gentlemen and plucky—I can see that. Very few of them swear. I wish I knew where brother is. The Colonel calls everybody Mister—even the Indians."Word comes to-night that we are to be off to the front. Please send me a piece of cotton to clean my gun. And please be easy about me—do be easy. And if you insist on givingme a title, don't call me Private—call meTrooper."Yes, we are going; the thing is serious. We are all packed up now; have rolled up camping outfit and are ready to start."Baggage on the transport now, and we sail this afternoon. Am sorry to leave all of you, and I have a tear in my eye now that I can't keep back. It isn't a summer picnic, and I don't feel like shouting when I think of home; but I'm always lucky, and I'll come out all right. I'm afraid I sha'n't see brother at all. I tried to look cheerful for my picture (enclosed). Good-by."Some delay; actually on board and steam up."Waiting—waiting—waiting. It's bad enough to go to Cuba in boats like these, but to lie around for days is trying. No one goes ashore, and I can hear nothing of brother. I wonder why the General didn't give him that commission instead of me. There is a curious sort of fellow here, who says he knows brother. His name is Blackford, and he is very kind to me. He used to be a regular, and he says he thinks brother took his place in the —th and is a regular now himself—a private; I don't understand. There is mighty little Rough Riding about this."P. S.—My bunkie is from Boston—Bob Sumner. His fathercommanded a negro regiment in a fight once against my father; think of it!"Hurrah! we're off."
"I got here all right. My commission hasn't come, and I've joined the Rough Riders, for fear it won't get here in time. The Colonel was very kind to me—called me Mister.
"I've got a lieutenant's uniform of khaki, but I'm keeping it out of sight. I may have no use for it. I've got two left spurs, and I'm writing in the Waldorf-Astoria. I like these Northern fellows; they are gentlemen and plucky—I can see that. Very few of them swear. I wish I knew where brother is. The Colonel calls everybody Mister—even the Indians.
"Word comes to-night that we are to be off to the front. Please send me a piece of cotton to clean my gun. And please be easy about me—do be easy. And if you insist on givingme a title, don't call me Private—call meTrooper.
"Yes, we are going; the thing is serious. We are all packed up now; have rolled up camping outfit and are ready to start.
"Baggage on the transport now, and we sail this afternoon. Am sorry to leave all of you, and I have a tear in my eye now that I can't keep back. It isn't a summer picnic, and I don't feel like shouting when I think of home; but I'm always lucky, and I'll come out all right. I'm afraid I sha'n't see brother at all. I tried to look cheerful for my picture (enclosed). Good-by.
"Some delay; actually on board and steam up.
"Waiting—waiting—waiting. It's bad enough to go to Cuba in boats like these, but to lie around for days is trying. No one goes ashore, and I can hear nothing of brother. I wonder why the General didn't give him that commission instead of me. There is a curious sort of fellow here, who says he knows brother. His name is Blackford, and he is very kind to me. He used to be a regular, and he says he thinks brother took his place in the —th and is a regular now himself—a private; I don't understand. There is mighty little Rough Riding about this.
"P. S.—My bunkie is from Boston—Bob Sumner. His fathercommanded a negro regiment in a fight once against my father; think of it!
"Hurrah! we're off."
It was a tropical holiday—that sail down to Cuba—a strange, huge pleasure-trip of steamships, sailing in a lordly column of three; at night, sailing always, it seemed, in a harbour of brilliant lights under multitudinous stars and over thickly sown beds of tiny phosphorescent stars that were blown about like flowers in a wind-storm by the frothing wake of the ships; by day, through a brilliant sunlit sea, a cool breeze—so cool that only at noon was the heat tropical—and over smooth water, blue as sapphire. Music night and morning, on each ship, and music coming across the little waves at any hour from the ships about. Porpoises frisking at the bows and chasing each other in a circle around bow and stern as though the transports sat motionless; schools of flying-fish with filmy, rainbow wings rising from one wave and shimmering through the sunlight to the foamy crest of another—sometimes hundreds of yards away. Beautiful clear sunsets of rose, gold-green, and crimson, with one big, pure radiant star ever like a censor over them; everynight the stars more deeply and thickly sown and growing ever softer and more brilliant as the boats neared the tropics; every day dawn rich with beauty and richer for the dewy memories of the dawns that were left behind.
Now and then a little torpedo-boat would cut like a knife-blade through the water on messenger service; or a gunboat would drop lightly down the hill of the sea, along the top of which it patrolled so vigilantly; and ever on the horizon hung a battle-ship that looked like a great gray floating cathedral. But nobody was looking for a fight—nobody thought the Spaniard would fight—and so these were only symbols of war; and even they seemed merely playing the game.
It was as Grafton said. Far ahead went the flag-ship with the huge Commander-in-Chief and his staff, the gorgeous attachés, and the artists and correspondents, with valets, orderlies, stenographers, and secretaries. Somewhere, far to the rear, one ship was filled with newspaper men from stem to stern. But wily Grafton was with Lawton and Chaffee, the only correspondent aboard their transport. On the second day, as he sat on the poop-deck, a negro boy came up to him, grinning uneasily:
"I seed you back in ole Kentuck, suh."
"You did? Well, I don't remember seeing you. What do you want?"
"Captain say he gwine to throw me overboard."
"What for?"
"I ain't got no business here, suh."
"Then what are you here for?"
"Lookin' fer Ole Cap'n, suh."
"Ole Cap'n who?" said Grafton, mimicking.
"Cap'n Crittenden, suh."
"Well, if you are his servant, I suppose they won't throw you overboard. What's your name?"
"Bob, suh—Bob Crittenden."
"Crittenden," repeated Grafton, smiling. "Oh, yes, I know him; I should say so! So he's a Captain?"
"Yes, suh," said Bob, not quite sure whether he was lying or not.
Grafton spoke to an officer, and was allowed to take Bob for his own servant, though the officer said he did not remember any captain of that name in the —th. To the newspaper man, Bob was a godsend; for humour was scarce on board, and "jollying" Bob was a welcome diversion. He learned many things of Crittenden and the Crittendens, and what great people they had always been and still were; but at a certain point Bob was evasive or dumb—and the correspondent respected the servant's delicacy about family affairs and went no furtheralong that line—he had no curiosity, and was questioning idly and for fun, but treated Bob kindly and, in return, the fat of the ship, through Bob's keen eye and quick hand, was his, thereafter, from day to day.
Grafton was not storing up much material for use; but he would have been much surprised if he could have looked straight across to the deck of the ship running parallel to his and have seen the dignified young statesman whom he had heard speak at the recruiting camp in Kentucky; who made him think of Henry Clay; whom he had seen whisking a beautiful girl from the camp in the smartest turn-out he had seen South—had seen him now as PrivateCrittendenwith his fast friend, Abe Long, and passing in his company because of his bearing under a soubriquet donated by his late enemy, Reynolds, as "Old Hamlet of Kentuck." And Crittenden would have been surprised had he known that the active darky whom he saw carrying coffee and shoes to a certain stateroom was none other than Bob waiting on Grafton. And that the Rough Rider whom he saw scribbling on a pad in the rigging of theYucatanwas none other than Basil writing one of his bulletins home.
It was hard for him to believe that he really was going to war, even now, when the long sailwas near an end and the ships were running fearlessly along the big, grim coast-mountains of Cuba, with bands playing and colors to the breeze; hard to realize that he was not to land in peace and safety and, in peace and safety, go back as he came; that a little further down those gashed mountains, showing ever clearer through the mist, were men with whom the quiet officers and men around him would soon be in a death-grapple. The thought stirred him, and he looked around at the big, strong fellows—intelligent, orderly, obedient, good-natured, and patient; patient, restless, and sick as they were from the dreadful hencoop life they had led for so many days—patient beyond words. He had risen early that morning. The rose light over the eastern water was whitening, and all over the deck his comrades lay asleep, their faces gray in the coming dawn and their attitudes suggesting ghastly premonitions—premonitions that would come true fast enough for some of the poor fellows—perhaps for him. Stepping between and over the prostrate bodies, he made his way forward and leaned over the prow, with his hat in his hand and his hair blowing back from his forehead.
Already his face had suffered a change. For more than three long weeks he had been merely a plain man among plain men. At once when hebecame Private Crittenden, No. 63, Company C, —th United States Regular Cavalry, at Tampa, he was shorn of his former estate as completely as though in the process he had been wholly merged into some other man. The officers, at whose table he had once sat, answered his salute precisely as they answered any soldier's. He had seen Rivers but seldom—but once only on the old footing, and that was on the night he went on board, when Rivers came to tell him good-by and to bitterly bemoan the luck that, as was his fear from the beginning, had put him among the ill-starred ones chosen to stay behind at Tampa and take care of the horses; as hostlers, he said, with deep disgust, adding hungrily:
"I wish I were in your place."
With the men, Crittenden was popular, for he did his work thoroughly, asked no favors, shirked no duties. There were several officers' sons among them working for commissions, and, naturally, he drifted to them, and he found them all good fellows. Of Blackford, he was rather wary, after Rivers's short history of him, but as he was friendly, unselfish, had a high sense of personal honour, and a peculiar reverence for women, Crittenden asked no further questions, and was sorry, when he came back to Tampa, to find him gone with the Rough Riders. WithReynolds, he was particularly popular, and he never knew that the story of the Tampa fight had gone to all the line officers of the regiment, and that nearly every one of them knew him by sight and knew his history. Only once from an officer, however, and steadily always from the old Sergeant, could he feel that he was regarded in a different light from the humblest soldier in the ranks—which is just what he would have asked. The Colonel had cast an envious eye on Raincrow at Tampa, and, straightway, he had taken the liberty of getting the Sergeant to take the horse to the Colonel's tent with the request that he use him throughout the campaign. The horse came back with the Colonel's thanks; but, when the order came that the cavalry was to go unmounted, the Colonel sent word that he would take the horse now, as the soldier could not use him. So Raincrow was aboard the ship, and the old Colonel, coming down to look at the horse one day, found Crittenden feeding him, and thanked him and asked him how he was getting along; and, while there was a smile about his humorous mouth, there was a kindly look in his blue eyes that pleased Crittenden mightily. As for the old Sergeant, he could never forget that the soldier was a Crittenden—one of his revered Crittendens. And, while he was particularly stern with himin the presence of his comrades, for fear that he might be betrayed into showing partiality—he was always drifting around to give him a word of advice and to shake his head over the step that Crittenden had taken.
That step had made him good in body and soul. It made him lean and tanned; it sharpened and strengthened his profile; it cleared his eye and settled his lips even more firmly. Tobacco and liquor were scarce, and from disuse he got a new sensation of mental clearness and physical cleanliness that was comforting and invigorating, and helped bring back the freshness of his boyhood.
For the first time in many years, his days were full of work and, asleep, awake, or at work, his hours were clock-like and steadied him into machine-like regularity. It was work of his hands, to be sure, and not even high work of that kind, but still it was work. And the measure of the self-respect that this fact alone brought him was worth it all. Already, his mind was taking character from his body. He was distinctly less morbid and he found himself thinking during those long days of the sail of what he should do after the war was over. His desire to get killed was gone, and it was slowly being forced on him that he had been priggish, pompous, self-absorbed, hair-splitting, lazy,good-for-nothing, when there was no need for him to be other than what he meant to be when he got back. And as for Judith, he felt the bitterness of gall for himself when he thought of her, and he never allowed himself to think of her except to absolve her, as he knew she would not absolve herself, and to curse himself heartily and bitterly. He understood now. It was just her thought of his faithfulness, her feeling of responsibility for him—the thought that she had not been as kind to him as she might have been (and she had always been kinder than he deserved)—all this had loosed her tears and her self-control, and had thrown her into a mood of reckless self-sacrifice. And when she looked up into his face that night of the parting, he felt her looking into his soul and seeing his shame that he had lost his love because he had lost himself, and she was quite right to turn from him, as she did, without another word. Already, however, he was healthy enough to believe that he was not quite so hopeless as she must think him—not as hopeless as he had thought himself. Life, now, with even a soldier's work, was far from being as worthless as life with a gentleman's idleness had been. He was honest enough to take no credit for the clean change in his life—no other life was possible; but he was learning the practical value and mental comfortof straight living as he had never learned them before. And he was not so prone to metaphysics and morbid self-examination as he once was, and he shook off a mood of that kind when it came—impatiently—as he shook it off now. He was a soldier now, and his province was action and no more thought than his superiors allowed him. And, standing thus, at sunrise, on the plunging bow of the ship, with his eager, sensitive face splitting the swift wind—he might have stood to any thoughtful American who knew his character and his history as a national hope and a national danger. The nation, measured by its swift leap into maturity, its striking power to keep going at the same swift pace, was about his age. South, North, and West it had lived, or was living, his life. It had his faults and his virtues; like him, it was high-spirited, high-minded, alert, active, manly, generous, and with it, as with him, the bad was circumstantial, trivial, incipient; the good was bred in the Saxon bone and lasting as rock—if the surface evil were only checked in time and held down. Like him, it needed, like a Titan, to get back, now and then, to the earth to renew its strength. And the war would send the nation to the earth as it would send him, if he but lived it through.
There was little perceptible change in theAmerican officer and soldier, now that the work was about actually to begin. A little more soberness was apparent. Everyone was still simple, natural, matter-of-fact. But that night, doubtless, each man dreamed his dream. The West Point stripling saw in his empty shoulder-straps a single bar, as the man above him saw two tiny bars where he had been so proud of one. The Captain led a battalion, the Major charged at the head of a thousand strong; the Colonel plucked a star, and the Brigadier heard the tramp of hosts behind him. And who knows how many bold spirits leaped at once that night from acorns to stars; and if there was not more than one who saw himself the war-god of the anxious nation behind—saw, maybe, even the doors of the White House swing open at the conquering sound of his coming feet. And, through the dreams of all, waved aimlessly the mighty wand of the blind master—Fate—giving death to a passion for glory here; disappointment bitter as death to a noble ambition there; and there giving unsought fame where was indifference to death; and then, to lend substance to the phantom of just deserts, giving a mortal here and there the exact fulfilment of his dream.
Two toasts were drunk that night—one by the men who were to lead the Rough Riders of the West.
"May the war last till each man meets death, wears a wound, or wins himself better spurs."
And, in the hold of the same ship, another in whiskey from a tin cup between two comrades:
"Bunkie," said Blackford, to a dare-devil like himself, "welcome to the Spanish bullet that knocks for entrance here"—tapping his heart. Basil struck the cup from his hand, and Blackford swore, laughed, and put his arm around the boy.
X
Already now, the first little fight was going on, and Grafton, the last newspaper man ashore, was making for the front—with Bob close at his heels. It was hot, very hot, but the road was a good, hard path of clean sand, and now and then a breeze stirred, or a light, cool rain twinkled in the air. On each side lay marsh, swamp, pool, and tropical jungle—and, to Grafton's Northern imagination, strange diseases lurked like monsters everywhere. Every strange, hot odour made him uneasy and, at times, he found himself turning his head and holding his breath, as he always did when he passed a pest-house in his childhood. About him were strange plants, strange flowers, strange trees, the music of strange birds, with nothing to see that was familiar except sky, mountain, running water, and sand; nothing home-like to hear but the twitter of swallows and the whistle of quail.
That path was no road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from thehideous things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus—spiders with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs, and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the bushes. Moreover, he was following the trail of an army by the uncheerful signs in its wake—thedébrisof the last night's camp—empty cans, bits of hardtack, crackers, bad odours, and, by and by, odds and ends that the soldiers discarded as the sun got warm and their packs heavy—drawers, undershirts, coats, blankets, knapsacks, an occasional gauntlet or legging, bits of fat bacon, canned meats, hardtack—and a swarm of buzzards in the path, in the trees, and wheeling in the air—and smiling Cubans picking up everything they could eat or wear.
An hour later, he met a soldier, who told him there had been a fight. Still, an hour later, rumours came thick, but so conflicting and wild that Grafton began to hope there had been no fight at all. Proof met him, then, in the road—a white man, on foot, with his arm in a bloody sling. Then, on a litter, a negro trooper with a shattered leg; then another with a bullet through his throat; and another wounded man, and another.On horseback rode a Sergeant with a bandage around his brow—Grafton could see him smiling broadly fifty yards ahead—and the furrow of a Mauser bullet across his temple, and just under his skin.
"Still nutty," said Grafton to himself.
Further on was a camp of insurgents—little, thin, brown fellows, ragged, dirty, shoeless—each with a sugar-loaf straw hat, a Remington rifle of the pattern of 1882, or a brand new Krag-Jorgensen donated by Uncle Sam, and the inevitable and ever ready machéte swinging in a case of embossed leather on the left hip. Very young they were, and very old; and wiry, quick-eyed, intelligent, for the most part and, in countenance, vivacious and rather gentle. There was a little creek next, and, climbing the bank of the other side, Grafton stopped short, with a start, in the road. To the right and on a sloping bank lay eight gray shapes, muffled from head to foot, and Grafton would have known that all of them were in their last sleep, but one, who lay with his left knee bent and upright, his left elbow thrust from his blanket, and his hand on his heart. He slept like a child.
Beyond was the camp of the regulars who had taken part in the fight. On one side stood a Colonel, who himself had aimed a Hotchkiss gun in the last battle—covered with grime andsweat, and with the passion of battle not quite gone from his eyes; and across the road soldiers were digging one long grave. Grafton pushed on a little further, and on the top of the ridge and on the grassy sunlit knoll was the camp of the Riders, just beyond the rifle-pits from which they had driven the Spaniards. Under a tree to the right lay another row of muffled shapes, and at once Grafton walked with the Colonel to the hospital, a quarter of a mile away. The path, thickly shaded and dappled with sunshine, ran along the ridge through the battlefield, and it was as pretty, peaceful, and romantic as a lovers' walk in a garden. Here and there, the tall grass along the path was pressed flat where a wounded man had lain. In one place, the grass was matted and dark red; nearby was a blood-stained hat marked with the initials "E. L." Here was the spot where the first victim of the fight fell. A passing soldier, who reluctantly gave his name as Blackford, bared his left arm and showed the newspaper man three places between his wrist and elbow where the skin had been merely blistered by three separate bullets as he lay fighting unseen enemies. Further on, lay a dead Spaniard, with covered face.
"There's one," said the Colonel, with a careless gesture. A huge buzzard flapped from the tree over the dead man as they passed beneath.Beyond was the open-air hospital, where two more rigid human figures, and where the wounded lay—white, quiet, uncomplaining.
And there a surgeon told him how the wounded had lain there during the fight singing:
"My Country, 'tis of thee!"
And Grafton beat his hands together, while his throat was full and his eyes were full of tears. To think what he had missed—to think what he had missed!
He knew that national interest would centre in this regiment of Rough Riders; for every State in the Union had a son in its ranks, and the sons represented every social element in the national life. Never was there a more representative body of men, nor a body of more varied elements standing all on one and the same basis of American manhood. He recalled how, at Tampa, he had stood with the Colonel while the regiment filed past, the Colonel, meanwhile, telling him about the men—the strong men, who made strong stories for Wister and strong pictures for Remington. And the Colonel had pointed with especial pride and affection to two boy troopers, who marched at the head of his column—a Puritan from Massachusetts and a Cavalier through Virginia blood from Kentucky; one the son of a Confederate General,the other the son of a Union General—both beardless "bunkies," brothers in arms, and fast becoming brothers at heart—Robert Sumner and Basil Crittenden. The Colonel waved his hand toward the wild Westerners who followed them.
"It's odd to think it—but those two boys are the fathers of the regiment."
And now that Grafton looked around and thought of it again—they were. The fathers of the regiment had planted Plymouth and Jamestown; had wrenched life and liberty and civilization from the granite of New England, the fastnesses of the Cumberland, and the wildernesses of the rich valleys beyond; while the sires of these very Westerners had gone on with the same trinity through the barren wastes of plains. And, now, having conquered the New World, Puritan and Cavalier, and the children of both were come together again on the same old mission of freedom, but this time the freedom of others; carrying the fruits of their own struggle back to the old land from which they came, with the sword in one hand, if there was need, but with the torch of liberty in the other—held high, and, as God's finger pointed, lighting the way.
To think what he had missed!
As Grafton walked slowly back, an officerwas calling the roll of his company under the quiet, sunny hill, and he stopped to listen. Now and then there was no answer, and he went on—thrilled and saddened. The play was ended—this was war.
Outside the camp the road was full of half-angry, bitterly disappointed infantry—Chaffee's men. When he reached the camp of the cavalry at the foot of the hill again, a soldier called his name as he passed—a grimy soldier—and Grafton stopped in his tracks.
"Well, by God!"
It was Crittenden, who smiled when he saw Grafton's bewildered face. Then the Kentuckian, too, stared in utter amazement at a black face grinning over Grafton's shoulder.
"Bob!" he said, sharply.
"Yessuh," said Bob humbly.
"Whar are you doing here?"
"Nothin', Ole Cap'n—jes doin' nothin'," said Bob, with thenaïvetéof a child. "Jes lookin' for you."
"Is that your negro?" A sarcastic Lieutenant was asking the question.
"He's my servant, sir."
"Well, we don't allow soldiers to take their valets to the field."
"My servant at home, sir, I meant. He came of his own accord."
"Nothin', Ole Cap'n—jes doin' nothin'—jes lookin' for you.""Nothin', Ole Cap'n—jes doin' nothin'—jes lookin' for you."
"Go find Basil," Crittenden said to Bob, "and if you can't find him," he added in a lower tone, "and want anything, come back here to me."
"Yessuh," said Bob, loath to go, but, seeing the Lieutenant scowling, he moved on down the road.
"I thought you were a Captain," said Grafton. Crittenden laughed.
"Not exactly."
"Forward," shouted the Lieutenant, "march!"
Grafton looked Crittenden over.
"Well, I swear," he said heartily, and, as Crittenden moved forward, Grafton stood looking after him. "A regular—I do be damned!"
That night Basil wrote home. He had not fired his musket a single time. He saw nothing to shoot at, and he saw no use shooting until he did have something to shoot at. It was terrible to see men dead and wounded, but the fight itself was stupid—blundering through a jungle, bullets zipping about, and the Spaniards too far away and invisible. He wanted to be closer.
"General Carter has sent for me to take my place on his staff. I don't want to go, but the Colonel says I ought. I don't believe I would, if the General hadn't been father's friend and if my 'bunkie' weren't wounded. He's all right, but he'll have to go back. I'd like tohave his wound, but I'd hate to have to go back. The Colonel says he's sorry to lose me. He meant to make me a corporal, he says. I don't know what for—but Hooray!
"Brother was not in the fight, I suppose. Don't worry about me—please don't worry.
"P. S.—I have often wondered what it would be like to be on the eve of a battle. It's no different from anything else."
Abe Long and Crittenden were bunkies now. Abe's comrade, the boy Sanders, had been wounded and sent to the rear. Reynolds, too, was shot through the shoulder, and, despite his protests, was ordered back to the coast.
"Oh, I'll be on hand for the next scrap," he said.
Abe and Crittenden had been side by side in the fight. It was no surprise to Crittenden that any man was brave. By his code, a man would be better dead than alive a coward. He believed cowardice exceptional and the brave man the rule, but he was not prepared for Abe's coolness and his humour. Never did the Westerner's voice change, and never did the grim half-smile leave his eyes or his mouth. Once during the fight he took off his hat.
"How's my hair parted?" he asked, quietly.
A Mauser bullet had mowed a path through Abe's thick, upright hair, scraping the skin forthree inches, and leaving a trail of tiny, red drops. Crittenden turned to look and laugh, and a bullet cut through the open flap of his shirt, just over his heart. He pointed to it.
"See the good turn you did me."
While the two were cooking supper, the old Sergeant came up.
"If you don't obey orders next time," he said to Crittenden, sternly, for Abe was present, "I'll report you to the Captain." Crittenden had declined to take shelter during the fight—it was a racial inheritance that both the North and the South learned to correct in the old war.
"That's right, Governor," said Abe.
"The Colonel himself wanted to know what damn fool that was standing out in the road. He meant you."
"All right, Sergeant," Crittenden said.
When he came in from guard duty, late that night, he learned that Basil was safe. He lay down with a grateful heart, and his thoughts, like the thoughts of every man in that tropical forest, took flight for home. Life was getting very simple now for him—death, too, and duty. Already he was beginning to wonder at his old self and, with a shock, it came to him that there were but three women in the world to him—Phyllis and his mother—and Judith. He thought of the night of the parting, and it flashedfor the first time upon him that Judith might have taken the shame that he felt reddening his face as shame for her, and not for himself: and a pain shot through him so keen that he groaned aloud.
Above him was a clear sky, a quarter moon, an enveloping mist of stars, and the very peace of heaven. But there was little sleep—and that battle-haunted—for any: and for him none at all.
And none at all during that night of agony for Judith, nor Phyllis, nor the mother at Canewood, though there was a reaction of joy, next morning, when the name of neither Crittenden was among the wounded or the dead.
Nothing had been heard, so far, of the elder brother but, as they sat in the porch, a negro boy brought the town paper, and Mrs. Crittenden found a paragraph about a soldier springing into the sea in full uniform at Siboney to rescue a drowning comrade, who had fallen into the surf while trying to land, and had been sunk to the bottom by his arms and ammunition. And the rescuer's name was Crittenden. The writer went on to tell who he was, and how he had given up his commission to a younger brother and had gone as a private in the regular army—how he had been offered another afterhe reached Cuba, and had declined that, too—having entered with his comrades, he would stay with them to the end. Whereat the mother's face burned with a proud fire, as did Phyllis's, when Mrs. Crittenden read on about this Crittenden's young brother, who, while waiting for his commission, had gone as a Rough Rider, and who, after gallant conduct during the first fight, had taken his place on General Carter's staff. Phyllis clapped her hands, softly, with a long sigh of pride—and relief.
"I can eat strawberries, now." And she blushed again. Phyllis had been living on bacon and corn-bread, she confessed shamefacedly, because Trooper Basil was living on bacon and hardtack—little dreaming that the food she forced upon herself in this sacrificial way was being swallowed by that hearty youngster with a relish that he would not have known at home for fried chicken and hot rolls.
"Yes," laughed Mrs. Crittenden. "You can eat strawberries now. You can balance them against his cocoanuts."
Phyllis picked up the paper then, with a cry of surprise—the name signed to the article was Grafton, whom she had seen at the recruiting camp. And then she read the last paragraph that the mother had not read aloud, and she turned sharply away and stooped to a pink-bed,as though she would pick one, and the mother saw her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, and she took the child in her arms.
There was to be a decisive fight in a few days—the attack on Santiago—that was what Phyllis had read. The Spaniard had a good muster-roll of regulars and aid from Cervera's fleet; was well armed, and had plenty of time to intrench and otherwise prepare himself for a bloody fight in the last ditch.
So that, each day there was a relief to the night agony, which, every morning, began straightway with the thought that the fight might be going on at that very hour. Not once did Judith come near. She had been ill, to be sure, but one day Mrs. Crittenden met her on the way to town and stopped her in the road; but the girl had spoken so strangely that the mother drove on, at loss to understand and much hurt. Next day she learned that Judith, despite her ill health and her father's protests, had gone to nurse the sick and the wounded—what Phyllis plead in vain to do. The following day a letter came from Mrs. Crittenden's elder son. He was well, and the mother must not worry about either him or Basil. He did not think there would be much fighting and, anyhow, the great risk was from disease, and he feared very little from that. Basil would bemuch safer as an aid on a General's staff. He would get plenty to eat, would be less exposed to weather, have no long marches—as he would be mounted—and no guard duty at all hours of day and night. And, moreover, he would probably be less constantly exposed to bullets. So she must not worry about him. Not one word was there about Judith—not even to ask how she was, which was strange. He had said nothing about the girl when he told his mother good-by; and when she broached the subject, he answered sadly:
"Don't, mother; I can't say a word—not a word."
In his letter he had outlined Basil's advantages, not one of which was his—and sitting on the porch of the old homestead at sunset of the last rich day in June, the mother was following her eldest born through the transport life, the fiery marches, the night watches on lonely outposts, the hard food, the drenching rains, steaming heat, laden with the breath of terrible disease, not realizing how little he minded it all and how much good it was doing him. She did know, however, that it had been but play thus far to what must follow. Perhaps, even now, she thought, the deadly work was beginning, while she sat in the shrine of peace—even now.
And it was. Almost at that hour the troopswere breaking camp and moving forward along the one narrow jungle-road—choked with wagon, pack-mule, and soldier—through a haze of dust, and, turning to the right at the first crossing beyond corps head-quarters—under Chaffee—for Caney. Now and then a piece of artillery, with its flashes of crimson, would pass through the advancing columns amid the waving of hats and a great cheering to take position against the stone fort at Caney or at El Poso, to be trained on the block-house at San Juan. And through the sunset and the dusk the columns marched, and, after night fell, the dark, silent masses of slouch hats, shoulders, and gun-muzzles kept on marching past the smoke and flare of the deserted camp-fires that lighted thicket and grassy plot along the trail. And after the flames had died down to cinders—in the same black terrible silence, the hosts were marching still.
That night a last good-by to all womankind, but wife, mother, sister, sweetheart. The world was to be a man's world next day, and the man a coarse, dirty, sweaty, swearing, good-natured, grimly humorous, cruel, kindly soldier, feverish for a fight and as primitive in passion as a cave-dweller fighting his kind for food. The great little fight was at hand.
XI
Before dawn again—everything in war begins at dawn—and the thickets around a certain little gray stone fort alive with slouch hat, blue blouse, and Krag-Jorgensen, slipping through the brush, building no fires, and talking in low tones for fear the timorous enemy would see, or hear, and run before the American sharpshooter could get a chance to try his marksmanship; wondering, eight hours later, if the timorous enemy were ever going to run. Eastward and on a high knoll stripped of bushes, four 3.2 guns unlimbered and thrown into position against that fort and a certain little red-roofed town to the left of it. This was Caney.
Eastward still, three miles across an uneven expanse of green, jungle and jungle-road alive with men, bivouacing fearlessly around and under four more 3.2 guns planted on another high-stripped knoll—El Poso—and trained on a little pagoda-like block-house, which sat like a Christmas toy on top of a green little, steep little hill from the base of which curved an orchard-like valley back to sweeping curve of the jungle. This was San Juan.
Nature loves sudden effects in the tropics. While Chaffee fretted in valley-shadows around Caney and Lawton strode like a yellow lion past the guns on the hill and, eastward, gunner on the other hill at El Poso and soldier in the jungle below listened westward, a red light ran like a flame over the east, the tops of the mountains shot suddenly upward and it was day—flashing day, with dripping dew and birds singing and a freshness of light and air that gave way suddenly when the sun quickly pushed an arc of fire over the green shoulder of a hill and smote the soldiers over and under the low trees like rays from an open furnace.
It smote Reynolds as he sat by the creek under the guns before San Juan, idly watching water bubble into three canteens, and it opened his lips for an oath that he was too lazy to speak; it smote Abe Long cooking coffee on the bank some ten yards away, and made him raise from the fire and draw first one long forearm and then the other across his heat-wrinkled brow; but, unheeded, it smote Crittenden—who stood near, leaning against a palm-tree—full in his uplifted face. Perhaps that was the last sunrise on earth for him. He was watching it in Cuba, but his spirit was hovering around home. He could feel the air from the woods in front of Canewood; could hear the darkies going to workand Aunt Keziah singing in the kitchen. He could see his mother's shutter open, could see her a moment later, smiling at him from her door. And Judith—where was she, and what was she doing? Could she be thinking of him? The sound of his own name coming down through the hot air made him start, and, looking up toward the Rough Riders, who were gathered about a little stuccoed farm-house just behind the guns on the hill, he saw Blackford waving at him. At the same moment hoofs beat the dirt-road behind him—familiar hoof-beats—and he turned to see Basil and Raincrow—for Crittenden's Colonel was sick with fever and Basil had Raincrow now—on their way with a message to Chaffee at Caney. Crittenden saluted gravely, as did Basil, though the boy turned in his saddle, and with an affectionate smile waved back at him.
Crittenden's lips moved.
"God bless him."
"Fire!"
Over on the hill, before Caney, a man with a lanyard gave a quick jerk. There was a cap explosion at the butt of the gun and a bulging white cloud from the muzzle; the trail bounced from its shallow trench, the wheels whirled back twice on the rebound, and the shell was hissingthrough the air as iron hisses when a blacksmith thrusts it red-hot into cold water. Basil could hear that awful hiss so plainly that he seemed to be following the shell with his naked eye; he could hear it above the reverberating roar of the gun up and down the coast-mountain; hear it until, six seconds later, a puff of smoke answered beyond the Spanish column where the shell burst. Then in eight seconds—for the shell travelled that much faster than sound—the muffled report of its bursting struck his ears, and all that was left of the first shot that started the great little fight was the thick, sunlit smoke sweeping away from the muzzle of the gun and the little mist-cloud of the shell rising slowly upward beyond the stone fort, which seemed not to know any harm was possible or near.
Again Crittenden, leaning against the palm, heard his name called. Again it was Blackford who was opening his mouth to shout some message when—Ah! The shout died on Blackford's lips, and every man on the hill and in the woods, at that instant, stayed his foot and his hand—even a man standing with a gray horse against the blue wall—he, too, stopped to listen. It really sounded too dull and muffled for a shell; but, a few seconds later, there was a roar against the big walls of living green behind Caney.
The first shot!
"Ready!"
Even with the cry at El Poso came another sullen, low boom and another aggressive roar from Caney: then a great crackling in the air, as though thousands of schoolboys were letting off fire-crackers, pack after pack.
"Fire!"
Every ear heard, every eye saw the sudden white mist at a gun-muzzle and followed that first shell screaming toward the little Christmas toy sitting in the sun on that distant little hill. And yet it was nothing. Another and yet another mass of shrapnel went screaming, and still there was no response, no sign. It was nothing—nothing at all. Was the Spaniard asleep?
Crittenden could see attaché, correspondent, aid, staff-officer, non-combatant, sight-seer crowding close about the guns—so close that the gunners could hardly work. He could almost hear them saying, one to another:
"Why, is this war—really war? Why, this isn't so bad."
Twanged just then a bow-string in the direction of San Juan hill, and the twang seemed to be getting louder and to be coming toward the little blue farm-house. No cannon was in sight; there was no smoke visible, and many, with an upward look, wondered what the queer soundcould be. Suddenly there was a screeching, crackling answer in the air; the atmosphere was rent apart as by a lightning stroke directly overhead. The man and the horse by the blue wall dropped noiselessly to the earth. A Rough Rider paled and limped down the hill and Blackford shook his hand—a piece of shrapnel had fallen harmlessly on his wrist. On the hill—Crittenden laughed as he looked—on the hill, nobody ran—everybody tumbled. Besides the men at the guns, only two others were left—civilians.
"You're a fool," said one.
"You're another."
"What'd you stay here for?"
"Because you did. What'd you stay for?"
"Becauseyoudid."
Then they went down together—rapidly—and just in time. Another shell shrieked. Two artillerymen and two sergeants dropped dead at their guns, and a corporal fell, mortally wounded. A third burst in a group of Cubans. Several of them flew out, killed or wounded, into the air; the rest ran shrieking for the woods. Below, those woods began to move. Under those shells started the impatient soldiers down that narrow lane through the jungle, and with Reynolds and Abe Long on the "point" was Crittenden, his Krag-Jorgensen across his breast—thrilled, forall the world, as though he were on a hunt for big game.
And all the time the sound of ripping cloth was rolling over from Caney, the far-away rumble of wagons over cobble-stones, or softened stage hail and stage thunder around the block-house, stone fort, and town. At first it was a desultory fire, like the popping of a bunch of fire-crackers that have to be relighted several times, and Basil and Grafton, galloping toward it, could hear the hiss of bullets that far away. But, now and then, the fire was as steady as a Gatling-gun. Behind them the artillery had turned on the stone fort, and Grafton saw one shot tear a hole through the wall, then another, and another. He could see Spaniards darting from the fort and taking refuge in the encircling stone-cut trenches; and then nothing else—for their powder was smokeless—except the straw hats of the little devils in blue, who blazed away from their trenches around the fort and minded the shells bursting over and around them as little as though they had been bursting snowballs. If the boy ahead noted anything, Grafton could not tell. Basil turned his head neither to right nor left, and at the foot of the muddy hill, the black horse that he rode, without touch of spur, seemed suddenly to leave the earth and pass onout of sight with the swift silence of a shadow. At the foot of a hill walked the first wounded man—a Colonel limping between two soldiers. The Colonel looked up smiling—he had a terrible wound in the groin.
"Well," he called cheerily, "I'm the first victim."
Grafton wondered. Was it possible that men were going to behave on a battlefield just as they did anywhere else—just as naturally—taking wounds and death and horror as a matter of course? Beyond were more wounded—the wounded who were able to help themselves. Soon he saw them lying by the roadside, here and there a dead one; by and by, he struck a battalion marching to storm a block-house. He got down, hitched his horse a few yards from the road and joined it. He was wondering how it would feel to be under fire, when just as they were crossing another road, with a whir and whistle and buzz, a cloud of swift insects buzzed over his head. Unconsciously imitating the soldiers near him, he bent low and walked rapidly. Right and left of him sounded two or three low, horrible crunching noises, and right and left of him two or three blue shapes sank limply down on their faces. A sudden sickness seized him, nauseating him like a fetid odour—the crunching noise was the sound of a bullet crashing intoa living human skull as the men bent forward. One man, he remembered afterward, dropped with the quick grunt of an animal—he was killed outright; another gave a gasping cry, "Oh, God"—there was a moment of suffering consciousness for him; a third hopped aside into the bushes—cursing angrily. Still another, as he passed, looked up from the earth at him with a curious smile, as though he were half ashamed of something.
"I've got it, partner," he said, "I reckon I've got it, sure." And Grafton saw a drop of blood and the tiny mouth of a wound in his gullet, where the flaps of his collar fell apart. He couldn't realize how he felt—he was not interested any longer in how he felt. The instinct of life was at work, and the instinct of self-defence. When the others dropped, he dropped gladly; when they rose, he rose automatically. A piece of brush, a bush, the low branch of a tree, a weed seemed to him protection, and he saw others possessed with the same absurd idea. Once the unworthy thought crossed his mind, when he was lying behind a squad of soldiers and a little lower than they, that his chance was at least better than theirs. And once, and only once—with a bitter sting of shame—he caught himself dropping back a little, so that the same squad should be between him and the enemy: andforthwith he stepped out into the road, abreast with the foremost, cursing himself for a coward, and thereafter took a savage delight in reckless exposure whenever it was possible. And he soon saw that his position was a queer one, and an unenviable one, as far as a cool test of nerve was the point at issue. The officers, he saw, had their men to look after—orders to obey—their minds were occupied. The soldiers were busy getting a shot at the enemy—their minds, too, were occupied. It was his peculiar province to stand up and be shot at without the satisfaction of shooting back—studying his sensations, meanwhile, which were not particularly pleasant, and studying the grewsome horrors about him. And it struck him, too, that this was a ghastly business, and an unjustifiable, and that if it pleased God to see him through he would never go to another war except as a soldier. One consideration interested him and was satisfactory. Nobody was shooting at him—nobody was shooting at anybody in particular. If he were killed, or when anybody was killed, it was merely accident, and it was thus pleasant to reflect that he was in as much danger as anybody.
The firing was pretty hot now, and the wounded were too many to be handled. A hospital man called out sharply:
"Give a hand here." Grafton gave a hand to help a poor fellow back to the field hospital, in a little hollow, and when he reached the road again that black horse and his boy rider were coming back like shadows, through a rain of bullets, along the edge of the woods. Once the horse plunged sidewise and shook his head angrily—a Mauser had stung him in the neck—but the lad, pale and his eyes like stars, lifted him in a flying leap over a barbed-wire fence and swung him into the road again.
"Damn!" said Grafton, simply.
Then rose a loud cheer from the battery on the hill, and, looking west, he saw the war-balloon hung high above the trees and moving toward Santiago. The advance had begun over there; there was the main attack—the big battle. It was interesting and horrible enough where he was, but Caney was not Santiago; and Grafton, too, mounted his horse and galloped after Basil.
At head-quarters began the central lane of death that led toward San Juan, and Basil picked his way through it at a slow walk—his excitement gone for the moment and his heart breaking at the sight of the terrible procession on its way to the rear. Men with arms in slings; men with trousers torn away at the knee, and bandaged legs; men with brow, face, mouth, orthroat swathed; men with no shirts, but a broad swathe around the chest or stomach—each bandage grotesquely pictured with human figures printed to show how the wound should be bound, on whatever part of the body the bullet entered. Men staggering along unaided, or between two comrades, or borne on litters, some white and quiet, some groaning and blood-stained, some conscious, some dying, some using a rifle for a support, or a stick thrust through the side of a tomato-can. Rolls, haversacks, blouses, hardtack, bibles, strewn by the wayside, where the soldiers had thrown them before they went into action. It was curious, but nearly all of the wounded were dazed and drunken in appearance, except at the brows, which were tightly drawn with pain. There was one man, with short, thick, upright red hair, stumbling from one side of the road to the other, with no wound apparent, and muttering:
"Oh, I don't know what happened to me. I don't know what happened to me."
Another, hopping across the creek on one leg—the other bare and wounded—and using his gun, muzzle down, as a vaulting-pole. Another, with his arm in the sling, pointing out the way.
"Take this road," he said. "I don't know where that one goes, but I know this one. Iwent up this one, and brought back asouvenir," he added, cheerily, shaking a bloody arm.
And everywhere men were cautioning him to beware of the guerillas, who were in the trees, adding horror to the scene—shooting wounded men on litters, hospital men, doctors. Once, there was almost the horror of a panic in the crowded road. Soldiers answered the guerilla fire from the road; men came running back; bullets spattered around.
Ahead, the road was congested with soldiers. Beyond them was anchored the balloon, over the Bloody Ford—drawing the Spanish fire to the troops huddled beneath it. There was the death-trap.
And, climbing from an ambulance to mount his horse, a little, bent old man, weak and trembling from fever, but with his gentle blue eyes glinting fire—Basil's hero—ex-Confederate Jerry Carter.
"Give the Yanks hell, boys," he shouted.
It had been a slow, toilsome march up that narrow lane of death, and, so far, Crittenden had merely been sprinkled with Mauser and shrapnel. His regiment had begun to deploy to the left, down the bed of a stream. The negro cavalry and the Rough Riders were deploying to the right. Now broke the storm. Imaginesheet after sheet of hailstones, coated with polished steel, and swerved when close to the earth at a sharp angle to the line of descent, and sweeping the air horizontally with an awful hiss—swifter in flight than a peal of thunder from sky to earth, and hardly less swift than the lightning flash that caused it.
"T-t-seu-u-u-h! T-t-seu-oo! T-t-seu-oo!"—they went like cloud after cloud of lightning-winged insects, and passing, by God's mercy and the Spaniard's bad marksmanship—passing high. Between two crashes, came a sudden sputter, and some singing thing began to play up and down through the trees, and to right and left, in a steady hum. It was a machine gun playing for the range—like a mighty hose pipe, watering earth and trees with a steady, spreading jet of hot lead. It was like some strange, huge monster, unseeing and unseen, who knows where his prey is hidden and is searching for it blindly—by feeling or by sense of smell—coming ever nearer, showering the leaves down, patting into the soft earth ahead, swishing to right and to left, and at last playing in a steady stream about the prostrate soldiers.
"Swish-ee! Swish-ee! Swishee!"
"Whew!" said Abe Long.
"God!" said Reynolds.
Ah, ye scornful veterans of the great war.In ten minutes the Spaniard let fly with his Mauser more bullets than did you fighting hard for two long hours, and that one machine gun loosed more death stings in an hour than did a regiment of you in two. And they were coming from intrenchments on an all but vertical hill, from piles of unlimited ammunition, and from soldiers who should have been as placid as the earth under them for all the demoralization that hostile artillery fire was causing them.
And not all of them passed high. After that sweep of glistening steel rain along the edge of the woods rose the cry here, there, everywhere:
"Hospital man! hospital man!"
And here and there, in the steady pelt of bullets, went the quiet, brave fellows with red crosses on their sleeves; across the creek, Crittenden could see a tall, young doctor, bare-headed in the sun, stretching out limp figures on the sand under the bank—could see him and his assistants stripping off blouse and trousers and shirt, and wrapping and binding, and newly wounded being ever brought in.
And behind forged soldiers forward, a tall aide at the ford urging them across and stopping a panic among volunteers.
"Come back, you cowards—come back! Push 'em back, boys!"
A horse was crossing the stream. There wasa hissing shriek in the air, a geyser spouting from the creek, the remnants of a horse thrown upward, and five men tossed in a swirl like straw: and, a moment later, a boy feebly paddling towards the shore—while the water ran past him red with blood. And, through it all, looking backward, Crittenden saw little Carter coming on horseback, calm of face, calm of manner, with his hands folded over his saddle, and his eyes looking upward—little Carter who had started out in an ambulance that morning with a temperature of one hundred and four, and, meeting wounded soldiers, gave up his wagon to them, mounted his horse, and rode into battle—to come out normal at dusk. And behind him—erect, proud, face aflame, eyes burning, but hardly less cool—rode Basil. Crittenden's eyes filled with love and pride for the boy.
"God bless him—God save him!"
A lull came—one of the curious lulls that come periodically in battle for the reason that after any violent effort men must have a breathing spell—and the mist of bullets swept on to the right like a swift passing shower of rain.
There was a splash in the creek behind Crittenden, and someone fell on his face behind the low bank with a fervent:
"Thank God, I've got this far!" It was Grafton.
"That nigger of yours is coming on somewhere back there," he added, and presently he rose and calmly peered over the bank and at the line of yellow dirt on the crest of the hill. A bullet spat in the ground close by.
"That hit you?" he asked, without altering the tone of his voice—without even lowering his glasses.
Reynolds, on his right, had ducked quickly. Crittenden looked up in surprise. The South had no monopoly of nerve—nor, in that campaign, the soldier.
"Well, by God," said Reynolds, irritably—the bullet had gone through his sleeve. "This ain't no time to joke."
Grafton's face was still calm—he was still looking. Presently he turned and beckoned to somebody in the rear.
"There he is, now."
Looking behind, Crittenden had to laugh. There was Bob, in a cavalryman's hat, with a Krag-Jorgensen in his hand, and an ammunition belt buckled around him.
As he started toward Grafton, a Lieutenant halted him.
"Why aren't you with your regiment?" he demanded sharply.
"I ain't got no regiment. I'se looking fer Ole Captain."
"Get back into your regiment," said the officer, with an oath, and pointing behind to the Tenth Coloured Cavalry coming up.
"Huh!" he said, looking after the officer a moment, and then he came on to the edge of the creek.
"Go to the rear, Bob," shouted Crittenden, sharply, and the next moment Bob was crashing through the bushes to the edge of the creek.
"Foh Gawd, Ole Cap'n, I sutn'ly is glad to fine you. I wish you'd jes show me how to wuk this gun. I'se gwine to fight right side o' you—you heah me."
"Go back, Bob," said Crittenden, firmly.
"Silence in the ranks," roared a Lieutenant. Bob hesitated. Just then a company of the Tenth Cavalry filed down the road as they were deployed to the right. Crittenden's file of soldiers could see that the last man was a short, fat darky—evidently a recruit—and he was swinging along as jauntily as in a cake-walk. As he wheeled pompously, he dropped his gun, leaped into the air with a yell of amazed rage and pain, catching at the seat of his trousers with both hands. A bullet had gone through both buttocks.
"Gawd, Ole Cap'n, did you see dat nigger?"
A roar of laughter went down the bed of the creek.
"Go back!" repeated Crittenden, threateningly, "and stop calling me Old Captain." Bob looked after the file of coloured troops, and then at Crittenden.
"All right, Ole Cap'n; I tol' you in ole Kentuck that I gwine to fight wid the niggers ef you don't lemme fight wid you. I don't like disgracin' the family dis way, but 'tain't my fault, an' s'pose you git shot—" the slap of the flat side of a sword across Bob's back made him jump.
"What are you doing here?" thundered an angry officer." Get into line—get into line."
"I ain't no sojer."
"Get into line," and Bob ran after the disappearing file, shaking his head helplessly.
The crash started again, and the hum of bees and the soft snap of the leaves when bullets clipped them like blows with a rattan cane, and the rattling sputter of the machine guns, and once more came that long, long wait that tries the soldier's heart, nerve, and brain.
"Why was not something done—why?"
And again rose the cry for the hospital men, and again the limp figures were brought in from the jungle, and he could see the tall doctor with the bare head helping the men who hadbeen dressed with a first-aid bandage to the protecting bank of the creek farther up, to make room for the fresh victims. And as he stood up once, Crittenden saw him throw his hand quickly up to his temple and sink to the blood-stained sand. The assistant, who bent over him, looked up quickly and shook his head to another, who was binding a wounded leg and looking anxiously to know the fatal truth.
"I've got it," said a soldier to Crittenden's left; joyously, he said it, for the bullet had merely gone through his right shoulder. He could fight no more, he had a wound and he could wear a scar to his grave.
"So have I," said another, with a groan. And then next him there was a sudden, soft thud:
"T-h-u-p!" It was the sound of a bullet going into thick flesh, and the soldier sprang to his feet—the impulse seemed uncontrollable for the wounded to spring to their feet—and dropped with a groan—dead. Crittenden straightened him out sadly—putting his hat over his face and drawing his arms to his sides. Above, he saw with sudden nausea, buzzards circling—little cared they whether the dead were American or Spaniard, as long as there were eyes to pluck and lips to tear away, and then straightway, tragedy merged into comedy as swiftly as on astage. Out of the woods across the way emerged a detail of negro troopers—sent to clear the woods behind of sharpshooters—and last came Bob. The detail, passing along the creek on the other bank from them, scattered, and with Bob next the creek. Bob shook his gun aloft.
"I can wuk her now!"
Another lull came, and from the thicket arose the cry of a thin, high, foreign voice:
"Americano—Americano!"
"Whut regiment you b'long to?" the voice was a negro's and was Bob's, and Grafton and Crittenden listened keenly. Bob had evidently got a sharpshooter up a tree, and caught him loading his gun.
"Tenth Cav'rly—Tenth!" was the answer. Bob laughed long and loud.
"Well, you jus the man I been lookin' fer—the fust white man I ever seed whut 'longed to a nigger regiment. Come down, honey." There was the sharp, clean crack of a Krag-Jorgensen, and a yell of savage triumph.
"That nigger's a bird," said Grafton.
Something serious was going to be done now—the intuition of it ran down the line in that mysterious fashion by which information passes down a line of waiting men. The line rose, advanced, and dropped again. Companies deployed to the left and behind—fighting theirway through thechaparralas a swimmer buffets his way through choppy waves. Every man saw now that the brigade was trying to form in line of battle for a charge on that curving, smokeless flame of fire that ran to and fro around the top of the hill—blazing fiercely and steadily here and there. For half an hour the officers struggled to form the scattering men. Forward a little way; slipping from one bush and tree to another; through the thickets and bayonet grass; now creeping; now a dash through an open spot; now flat on the stomach, until Crittenden saw a wire fence stretching ahead. Followed another wait. And then a squad of negro troopers crossed the road, going to the right, and diagonally. The bullets rained about them, and they scuttled swiftly into the brush. The hindmost one dropped; the rest kept on, unseeing; but Crittenden saw a Lieutenant—it was Sharpe, whom he had met at home and at Chickamauga—look back at the soldier, who was trying to raise himself on his elbow—while the bullets seemed literally to be mowing down the tall grass about him. Then Crittenden heard a familiar grunt behind him, and the next minute Bob's figure sprang out into the open—making for the wounded man by the sympathy of race. As he stooped, to Crittenden's horror, Bob pitched to the ground—threshing aroundlike an animal that has received a blow on the head. Without a thought, without consciousness of his own motive or his act, Crittenden sprang to his feet and dashed for Bob. Within ten feet of the boy, his toe caught in a root and he fell headlong. As he scrambled to his feet, he saw Sharpe making for him—thinking that he had been shot down—and, as he turned, with Bob in his arms, half a dozen men, including Grafton and his own Lieutenant, were retreating back into cover—all under the same impulse and with the same motive having started for him, too. Behind a tree, Crittenden laid Bob down, still turning his head from side to side helplessly. There was a trail of blood across his temple, and, wiping it away, he saw that the bullet had merely scraped along the skull without penetrating it. In a moment, Bob groaned, opened his eyes, sat up, looked around with rolling eyes, grunted once or twice, straightened out, and reached for his gun, shaking his head.
"Gimme drink, Ole Cap'n, please, suh."
Crittenden handed him his canteen, and Bob drank and rose unsteadily to his feet.
"Dat ain't nuttin'," he said, contemptuously, feeling along the wound. "'Tain't nigh as bad as mule kick. 'Tain't nuttin', 't all." And then he almost fell.
"Go back, Bob."
"All right, Ole Cap'n, I reckon I'll jus' lay down heah little while," he said, stretching out behind the tree.
And Grafton reached over for Crittenden's hand. He was getting some new and startling ideas about the difference in the feeling toward the negro of the man who once owned him body and soul and of the man who freed him body and soul. And in the next few minutes he studied Crittenden as he had done before—taking in detail the long hair, lean face strongly chiselled, fearless eye, modest demeanour—marking the intellectual look of the face—it was the face of a student—a gentleman—gently born. And, there in the heat of the fight, he fell to marvelling over the nation that had such a man to send into the field as a common soldier.
Again they moved forward. Crittenden's Lieutenant dropped—wounded.
"Go on," he cried, "damn it, go on!"
Grafton helped to carry him back, stepping out into the open for him, and Crittenden saw a bullet lick up the wet earth between the correspondent's feet.
Forward again! It was a call for volunteers to advance and cut the wires. Crittenden was the first to spring to his feet, and Abe Long and Reynolds sprang after him. Forward they slipped on their bellies, and the men behind sawone brown, knotty hand after another reach up from the grass and clip, clip, clip through the thickly braided wires.
Forward again! The men slipped like eels through and under the wires, and lay in the long grass behind. The time was come.
"FORWARD!"
Crittenden never knew before the thrill that blast sent through him, and never in his life did he know it again.
It was the call of America to the American, white and black: and race and colour forgotten, the American answered with the grit of the Saxon, the Celt's pure love of a fight, and all the dash of the passionate Gaul.
As Crittenden leaped to his feet, he saw Reynolds leap, too, and then there was a hissing hell of white smoke and crackling iron at his feet—and Reynolds disappeared.
It was a marvel afterward but, at that moment, Crittenden hardly noted that the poor fellow was blown into a hundred fragments. He was in the front line now. A Brigadier, with his hat in his hand and his white hair shining in the sun, run diagonally across in front of his line of battle, and, with a wild cheer, the run of death began.