"You're no more than a thief, Wes Boone; your father stole all he's got. Some day I'll make him give it back, or send him to jail, where he ought to be now."
Schoolboy though the railer was, Boone staggered against the hedge, the words brought a dreadful flush and then a livid pallor to the miserable parent's cheek. He dared not trust himself to speak then. Nor was the antipathy the outbreak caused mitigated by the savage thrashing that Wesley, throwing aside his dignity, proceeded to administer to the unbridled accuser. After that, by the father's sternest command, neither of his children was to return the courteous salutation the Perley ladies had never ceased to bestow in meeting the Boones walking or in company. Now, Dick was the kind of boy that those who know boy nature would call adorable. To the Philistine, without humor or sympathy, I'm afraid he was a very bad boy. He was until late in his teens painfully shy with grown people and strangers; even under the eyes of his aunts and with youths of his own age, diffident to awkwardness. He had the face of a well-fed cherub and the gentle, dreamy, and wistful eye of a girl in love. With his elders he had the halting, confused speech of a new boy in a big school. But in the woods or on the playground he was the merriest, most daring, and winningly obstreperous lad that ever filled three maiden aunts with terror and delight.
For weeks the regiment expected every day the order to march. The guns had been distributed and all their fascinating secrets mastered. In evolution and manual the men regarded themselves as quite equal to the regulars. The strict orders forbidding absence overnight were hardly needed, as no one ventured far, fearing that the regiment would be whirled away to Washington during the night. Had the men been older or more experienced in war, the weeks of waiting would have been delightful rather than dreary. The regiment was the object of universal interest in the town. Base-ball and the alluring outdoor pastimes that now divert the dawdlers of cities were unknown. Hence the camp-ground of the Caribees was the matinee, ball-match, tennis, boating, all in one of the idle afternoon world of Warchester. At parade and battalion drill the scene was like the race-ground on gala days.
All the fine equipages of the town drew up in the roads and lanes flanking the camp, where with leveled glasses the mothers, sisters, and sweethearts watched the columns as they skirmished, formed squares, or "passed the defile," quite sure that the rebels would fly in confusion before such surprising manoeuvres. This daily audience stimulated such a fierce rivalry among the companies that the men turned out at all hours of the day to drill and practice in squads, rather than loiter about the camp. One day great news aroused the camp: the Governor was to review the regiment and send it to the front. All Warchester poured out to the Holly Hills, and when at five o'clock the companies filed out on the shining green there was such a cheer that the men felt repaid for the tiresome wait of months. The civic commander-in-chief watched the movements with affable scrutiny, surrounded by a profusely uniformed staff, to whom he expressed the most politic approval. He was heard to remark that no such soldiers had been seen on this continent since Scott had marched to Lundy's Lane.
There was a throb of passionate joy in the ranks when this eulogium reached the men, for the words were hardly spoken when they were known in every company by that mysterious telegraphy which makes the human body a conductor swift as an electric wire among large masses of men. Nor were the words less relished that the eulogist was as ignorant of military excellence as a Malay of the uses of a patent mower. The men, it was easy to see, were much more efficient in movement than the officers in handling them. Colonel Oswald had wasted weeks in the study of the occult evolutions of the battalion; they were still a maddening mystery to him that fatal day. For six weeks his dreams had been haunted by airy battalions filing over impossible defiles. The commands he gave that day would have thrown the companies into hopeless confusion had the junior officers not boldly substituted the right ones for the colonel's blunders. This, however, passed unnoted, for the crowds, and even the men, were not the sharp critics they afterward became when mistakes by an incompetent officer were saluted by shouts of ridicule, and the men contemptuously disregarded them. When Colonel Oswald ordered them to "present arms" from a "place rest" there was more perplexity than merriment, and the admiring crowd saw nothing peculiar in one company snatching up bayonets to present while others remained perfectly still.
Jack, to whom the manual was a very sacred thing, broke into fierce ridicule of the commander, declaring that he was better fitted for sutler than colonel. When the savage speech was reported to headquarters that young fellow's prospects for the straps—never the best—were by no means improved. The review brought bitter disappointment to the regiment. The inspector-general, who was present, informed the colonel that no more than a thousand men could be accepted in one body; that five hundred of the Caribees would have to be divided among other troops in the State. The order aroused wild excitement. Half the men looked upon the edict as a scheme to give the politicians more places for their feudatories. Indeed, though that was not the origin of the order, that was the use made of it. Some of the junior officers, who disliked Oswald and distrusted his capacity to command, drew out very willingly, and of course carried many of their men with them.
But in the end the matter had to be decided by lot. Now this chance threw Wesley Boone out, and there was great rejoicing in the Acredale group, who hoped that this stroke of luck would make place for their favorite, Jack Sprague. But, to everybody's astonishment, a day or two after the event, Wesley resumed his place in Company K, and gave out that it was by order of the Governor. Jack was urged by the major of the regiment, who had gone with the five hundred, to cast his fortunes with the new body, promising a speedy lieutenancy. But Jack would not desert the Caribees. All of Company K, and many in the others, had enlisted on his word, and he could not in honor leave them. The opposition journals had from the first denounced the division of the Caribees as a trick of the partisans, and, sure enough, the men were given to understand that there would be no move to Washington until after the election, then pending. This was a municipal contest, and the Administration party made good use of the incipient soldiery to obtain a majority in the town.
Promotion was quite openly held out as a reward for those who could influence most votes for the Administration candidates. At night the various companies were sent into the city to take part in the political propaganda; to march in processions or occupy conspicuous places at the party meetings. The private soldiers were almost to a man Democrats, but the chance to escape the long and irksome evenings of the camp and join the frolic and adventure of the street made most of them willing enough to play the part of claque or figurantes. Jack, of course, refused to take part in these scenic rallies, making known his sentiments in vehement disdain. He detested Oswald, who had quit his party, not on a question of principle, but merely for place, and Jack did not spare him in his satirical allusions to the new uses invented for the military.
A still more trying injustice befell the luckless Jack. For a long time he had, as senior, acted as orderly sergeant of Company K. This officer is virtually the executive functionary in the company. It is his place to form the men in rank, make out details, and prepare everything for the captain. The orderly sergeant is to the company what the adjutant is to the regiment. He carries a musket and marches with the ranks, but in responsibility is not inferior to an officer. One evening when it was known that orders had come for the regiment to march, Jack, having formed the company for parade, received a paper from the captain's orderly to read. He opened it without suspicion, and, among other changes in the corps, read, "Thomas Trask to be first sergeant of Company K, and he will be obeyed and respected accordingly." Jack read the monstrous wrong without a tremor. The men flung down their arms and broke into a fierce clamor of rage and grief. Many of them were Jack's classmates. These swarmed about him. One, assuming the part of spokesman, cried out:
"It's an infamous outrage. They cheated you out of your captaincy; they have put every slight they could upon you. But we have some rights. We won't stand this. There are thirty of your classmates who will do whatever you say to show these people that they can't act like this."
There were mutiny and desperation in the air. It needed but a spark to destroy the usefulness of the company. But, as is often the case with impetuous, hot-headed spirits, Jack cooled as his friends grew hot. He was the more patient that the injustice was his injury alone. He remained in his place at the right of the company, and confronted the rebellious group with amazing self-control. Then loud above the murmuring his voice rang out:
"Company, attention! fall in, fall in! Any man out of the ranks will be sent to the guard-house. Eight dress, steady on the left."
Many a time afterward these angry mutineers heard that sonorous, clear, boyish treble in stern and determined command; but they never heard it signalize a more heroic temper than at that moment, when, himself deeply wronged, he forced them to go back in the ranks to receive the interloper. They "dressed up" sullenly as Jack called the roll for the last time, and received Trask, the new orderly, at a "present," which, though not in the tactics, Jack exacted as a penitence for the momentary revolt. Poor Trask looked very unhappy indeed as his displaced rival stepped back to the rear and left the new orderly to march the company out from the narrow way to take its place in the parade. It was easy to see that he would have been very glad to postpone or evade his new honors, on any pretext, for the time. He was so confused that Jack, from the flank, was obliged to repeat the few commands needed to get the company to the field.
Fortunately for the efficiency of the raw army, as this public discontent reached its most acute stage orders came to march the troops to Washington. The Caribees were the first body of soldiers sent from Warchester, and there was a memorable scene when the jaunty ranks filed through the streets to the station. By the time the men reached the train they discovered that they could never make war laden down as they were by knapsacks filled with the preposterous impedimenta feminine foresight had provided.
The men's backs bulged out with such a pack of supplies that when the regiment halted each man was forced to kneel and let a comrade take off or put on his knapsack. And then the march through the streets—every man known to scores in the throng! The brisk, high-stepping drum corps rat-a-tatting at intervals; then tempests of cheers, flashing banners and patriotic symbols at every window; tears, laughter, humorous cries, jokes, sobbing outbreaks. The whole city was in march as the Caribees reached the thronged main thoroughfare. Ready hands relieved the soldiers of their burden as the line filed in sight of the Governor, who had come to speed the parting braves.
Lads and lasses made merry with the elated warriors. The muskets were turned into bouquet-holders, and the first move toward real war took on the air of a floralfête. There were popping corks and sounds of convivial revelry that made the scene anything but warlike. Jack, in a cluster of his town cronies, caught sight of his mother at one of the windows of the Parthenon Hotel. He wafted her a joyous kiss, pretending not to see the tears falling down her cheeks. Olympia was not apparently very deeply affected. She made her way through the crowd to her brother's side, and with an air of the liveliest interest demanded:
"Jack, what have you in your knapsack? Let me see."
"O Polly, it's such a job to close it! What do you want? It is harder to manage than a Saratoga trunk. I can't really stuff another pin or needle in, so pray keep what you have for my furlough."
"No, I am not going to put anything in." She bent over while Barney Moore, one of Jack's Acredale comrades, gallantly loosed the straps. She searched carefully through the divers articles, taking everything out, Jack looking on ruefully while his companions gathered about in vague curiosity. When she had removed and restored everything she arose, saying: "I feel easier now. I merely looked to see if that marshal'sbâtonI have heard so much about was there. I shall feel easy in my mind now, because abâtonin your baggage would have made you too adventurous."
There was a great shout of laughter as the fun of the incident flashed upon the listeners, many of whom had heard the ingenuous Jack often in other days sighing for war, and the chance that Napoleon said every man had of finding a marshal'sbâtonin his knapsack. Jack bore the banter very equably, knowing that Olympia was rather striving to keep his spirits up and divert him from the tears in his mother's eyes than indulge her own humor. Indeed, most of the gayety at this moment was contributed by those whose hearts were heaviest. The consecrated priesthood of patriotism must see no weakness in those left behind. The only son, now brought face to face with the meaning and consequence of his rashly seized chance for glory, must not be reminded that perhaps a grave lay beyond the thin veil of the near future; must not be reminded that heavy hearts and dim eyes were left behind, feeding day by day, hour by hour, on terror and dread, unsupported by the changing scenes, the wild excitement, and the joyous vicissitudes of the soldier's life, it was a cruel comedy acted every day between 1861 and 1865. They laughed who were not gay, and they seemed indifferent who were fainting with despair. The courage of battle is mere brutish insensibility compared with the abnegation of the million mothers who gave their boys to the bestial maw of war.
The harrowing ceremonial of parting is ended. The train moves slowly out of the station, and a murmur of sobs and cheers echoes until it is far beyond the easternmost limits of the city. After a journey of two days and a night the train readied Philadelphia. Jack was all eyes and ears for the spectacle the country presented. In every station through which the regiment passed crowds welcomed the blue-coats. Women fed them, or those who seemed in need, thinking, perhaps, of their own distant darlings receiving like tenderness from the stranger.
In Philadelphia, the regiment marched across the city to resume its journey. It was a cold spring night, and the regimental quartermaster and commissary had made no provision for the men. Indeed, as the observant Jack afterward learned, it was part of the plan of the groups that first began to create great fortunes during the war to make the soldiers pay for their rationsen routeto the seat of war, or depend upon the charity of citizens along the railway lines. The Government paid for the supplies just the same, while the money went into the pockets of contractors and quartermasters. After a weary tramp through what seemed to the soldiers the biggest city in the world, the regiment, with blistered feet, hungry and cross, were halted before a long, low wooden building, through whose rough glass windows cheerful lights could be seen. A rumor spread that they were to have a hot supper, and, sure enough, they were marched in, dividing on each side of four long tables that stretched into spectral distance, in the feeble glimmer of the oil-lamps hanging from the ceiling. Most of the men in Jack's company, at least, were gently nurtured, but the steaming oysters, cold beef, and generous "chunks" of bread, filled their eyes with a magnificence and their stomachs with a gentle repletion no banquet before or after ever equaled. The feast was set in the same place during four years, by the Sanitary Society, I think, but the memory of that homely board, plenteously spread, is in the mind of many a veteran who faced warward during the conflict.
The next morning, when the men debarked to march through Baltimore, every one was on thequi viveto fasten in his memory the scene of the shameful attack upon the soldiers of Massachusetts on the 19th of April. But, as the line marched proudly down Pratt Street, there were no signs of the hostile spirit that made Baltimore a center of doubt and suspicion in the North for many a day afterward. It was, however, when the train dashed out from among the hills to the northwest of the sheet of water behind the capitol that the Caribees glued their eyes to the panes in awe not unmingled with delight. No American will ever look upon that imperial dome again with the sensations that filled the breasts of those who first saw its rounded outlines in the war epoch. What the ark of the covenant was to the armies that marched in the wilderness, or the cross of St. Peter to the pilgrims approaching Rome, that the great dome, towering cloud ward in the perpetual blue, was to the wondering eye of the soldier as his glance first fell upon it; that it was for months—yes, ever after—on the plains of Arlington and in the deadly exhalations of the Chickahominy. Every one looked anxiously to see signs of war—indeed, since leaving Baltimore, there was a delicious feeling of suspense—as the train shot over embankments or skirted the deep pine woods. Perhaps an adventurous rebel vanguard might attack them. Perhaps they might have the glory of fighting their way to the beleaguered capital. Perhaps Father Abraham might come out and smile benignantly at them for a brave deed well done. Faces flushed and eyes sparkled in the delightful anticipation: and some of the ardent spirits, more eager than the others, loaded their muskets to be ready! But, beyond the Federal picket-post at the stations, no sign of war was soon, nor much sign of hostilities, such as the vivid fancies of the raw young warriors conjured.
But now the train was at rest, and the officers—who had not been seen during the journey—turned out in resplendent plumery. The station—in those days a tumble-down barrack—was already crowded with soldiery. The Caribees were aligned along the track, the officers so bewildered by the confusion that it was by a miracle some of the groups of moving men were not run over by the backing engines. After an interminable delay, the band set up "We're coming down to Washington to fight for Abraham's daughter!" and with exuberant joy a thousand pairs of legs kept brisk step and elastic movement to the inspiriting strain. Now the longing eyes see the circumstance and even some of the pomp of war. The regiment debouches into Pennsylvania Avenue, under the very shadow of the Capitol, which looks sadly shabby and disproportioned to the eyes that had an hour or two before opened in such admiration at the first view. But there is no time for architectural criticism. They are moving down the avenue toward the White House, toward the home of that patient, kindly, sorely-tried ruler—the Democritus of his grisly epoch. The Caribees excite none of the sensation here they have been accustomed to. The streets are not crowded, and the few civilians passing hardly turn their heads. Mounted orderlies dash hurriedly, with hideous clatter of sabre and equipments, across the line of march, through the very regiment's ranks, answering with a disdainful oath or mocking gibe when an outraged shoulder-strap raised a remonstrating voice. At Fourteenth Street the Caribees were halted until the colonel could take his bearings from headquarters, just around the corner. The wide sidewalks were dense with bestarred and epauleted personages in various keys of discussion. Jack and his crony, Barney Moore, studied the scene in wonder. Their company was halted exactly at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and the two were standing at Willard's corner.
"I wonder if the President just stands and throws the stars down from that balcony?" Jack said, as the crowd of brigadiers thickened before the hotel door. "What on earth are they all doing here?"
"Oh, they come to make requisition on General Bacchus; he's the commissary-general of the brigadiers—don't you know?" Barney said, innocently.
"General Bacchus? Barney, you're crazy—there's no such officer in the army—I know all the names—you mean General Banks, don't you?"
"Oh, no, I'm not mistaken—General Bacchus has been selected to deal out theesprit de corps!"
"L'esprit de corps? Barney, you're certainly tipsy. I'm ashamed of you!"
"Yes, the spirit of that corps, as you can tell from the whiffs that come this way, is the whisky-bottle. Bacchus presides over that spirit. One would think you'd never read an eclogue of Virgil—you're duller than a doctor of divinity's after-dinner speech! A tutor's joke is the utmost wit you ought to bear."
"And so you call that a joke?"
"Well, it isn't a cough, a song, an oath, or—or anything old Oswald would say, so it must be a joke."
"Well, in that sense it may pass, like a tipsy soldier without the countersign."
"Oh, come now, Jack, these stars are really dazzling you!"
"Not but I'll make you see some that will dazzle you, if you don't treat your superior more respectfully."
"Oh, the punch you think of giving me wouldn't solve this star problem; it requires to be made in the old—the milky way."
But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march. The regiment passed up the steep hill, out Fourteenth Street—then a red clay thoroughfare of sticky mire with only here and there a negro's shanty where the palaces of the rich rise to-day. The men learned something of their future enemy, Virginia mud, as they climbed the red gorge and debouched on Meridian Hill, where, presently, an aide-de-camp marked the ground assigned the regiment, and the real life of the soldier began. How tame to tell, but how "imperial the hour" when these one thousand lads first went, on guard! Yes, the fact was now before them. They were no longer segregated atoms, inert, ineffective, eccentric. They were part of that mighty bulwark of blood and iron that stood between law and rebellion, between the nation's heart and the assassin dagger of disunion.
How proud and glad and manly they felt, these bright-eyed boys—for boys they mostly were; not a hundred in the regiment had seen their five-and-twentieth year. One razor would have been ample for the beards of the whole battalion. And oh, the nameless, the intoxicating sense of solidarity as they swept the vast reach of hillsides, and saw the white tents in brooding immensity on either hand! Yes, yonder, far across the wondrous belt of water, touching loyalty and rebellion in its mighty rush seaward, they could distinguish the cities of canvas on the distant Virginia shore.
"It makes a fellow feel as Godfrey's hosts felt when they came in sight of the Bosporus, and the hordes of the Saracens on the plains of the Hellespont," Jack said, exultingly, as Barney stood on a pile of camp equipages above him, surveying the quickening spectacle.
"I don't know how Godfrey's fellows felt, Jack, but itdomake a man feel kinder able to do something with so many near by to lend a hand. But, stars and garters! what a head it must take to manage all these! Fair and square, now, Jack, you feel the fires of military genius in your big head—do you think that you could disentangle this enormous coil—put each corps, division, and regiment, in its proper place—at a day's notice?"
"Oh, I couldn't perhaps do it just to-day; but give me time!"
"Yes, I'll give you to the age of Methuselah, and then if you can manage it I shall not lose faith in you."
"Come, men, the tents must be up before dark. Sergeant Sprague, your squad has five tents for its detail. You'll find axes and tools at the quartermaster's wagon on the hill yonder!" It was the captain who spoke, and, an instant later, the plot of ground, perhaps an acre and a half in area, was a scene of rollicking labor. Each company had a street, the tents—calculated to hold four each, but the number varied, going up often as high as six—faced each other, leaving room enough for the company to march in column or in line between the white walls. As the regiment would be presumably some time on the ground, the canvas tents rested on the top of a palisade of logs cut in the neighboring woods. These were five feet or more in length, and when driven into the ground a foot, and banked by the sticky clay, served excellently as walls upon which to rest the A tents. Two berths, sometimes four, were fastened laterally on these walls, frames running up to the center of the A held the guns, while lines stretched across from above served as wardrobes for such garments as could be hung up.
All this manoeuvring for space in such close quarters was great fun for lads accustomed to roomy houses, and careless, almost to slovenliness, in the matter of keeping things in place. Absurd as these details may seem, they were all parts, and very important parts, in the life and training of that mighty host that carried the destiny of the country in its discipline during four years. There was rigid inspection of quarters every Sunday morning, and during the week the non-commissioned officers were expected to see that cleanliness was not intermitted. The company "street" was "policed" every morning after breakfast, swept and garnished, that is, with the care of a Dutch housewife. Order is the first law of the soldier as well as of Heaven, and many a careless lad brought from his four years' drill method and painstaking that made him of more value to himself and his neighbors.
Personal traits, too, could be divined in these toy-like interiors. The regulations prescribed the arrangement of the "bunks," blankets folded, knapsacks laid at the head of the bed, accoutrements burnished until, at first sight, the four guns in the rack seemed to be a mirror for the orderly spirit of this thrifty grot. The shining plates, cups, and spoons, would have done no discredit to the most energetic, housewife, as they hung from pegs either above the bunks or along the wall. If running water were not accessible, every tent had a tin basin for the morning ablution, each soldier taking turn good humoredly. The household duties were scrupulously observed, each man assuming hisrôlein the complicatedménage.
It was fully a week before the Caribees were installed ready for Sunday inspection, as no exigency was permitted to interfere with morning and afternoon drill, guard-mount, and parade. Battalion and brigade drill, too, were new diversions for the Caribees, as now, camped near other troops, these more complicated movements were part of the regiment's allotted duty. After they were sufficiently trained in this they were to take part in a grand review by the general-in-chief, when the President, the Secretary of War, and all the great folks in Washington rode out to witness the spectacle.
There was no time for dullness. Every hour had its duty, and these soon became second nature to the zealous young warriors. Such rivalry to best master the manual, to hold the most soldierly stature in the ranks, to detect the drill-sergeant when, to test their attention, he gave a false command! And then the coronal joy of a reward of merit for efficiency and alertness on guard! The rapture the bit of paper brought, and the exultation with which the hero thus signalized went off to town for the day, wandered through the waste of streets, stood before Willard's and admired in awe and wonder the indolent groups from whose shoulders gleamed one and sometimes two stars! One day Jack and Barney, walking in Fifteenth Street, saw a stout man, with no insignia to indicate rank or station, coming out of the headquarters hurriedly. He walked to the edge of the pavement, and, looking up and down, seemed disconcerted. Noticing the two lads, he came to where Jack was standing in a preoccupied way, and the two saluted decorously. He returned the salute and asked:
"Sergeant, are you on duty?"
"No, sir; I'm on leave for the day."
"Ah, good; my orderly was here a moment ago, but I don't see him anywhere. Would you mind taking this telegram to the War Department, through the park yonder?"
He gave Jack an envelope and hurried back into the building as the two lads started with alacrity across the street.
"I've seen that chap before, somewhere," Barney said, panting with the rapid pace.
"He's a staff officer, I suppose, not very high rank, for he only had a blouse on. General officers always wear double-button frocks even if they don't carry the insignia."
The War Department was easy of access, an old building not unlike Jack's own home in Acredale. He asked the sentry at the door where his envelope was to be delivered. The man looked at it, pointed to a closed door, and Jack, receiving no response to his knock, entered. Three men were in the room. One was seated at a vast desk with papers, maps, dispatches, and books piled in disheartening confusion, within reach of his hand. Behind him a young captain in uniform sat writing. But the figure that fixed Jack's reverential attention was half sprawling, half lying over the heaped-up impediments of the big desk. The young soldier caught sight of the serious, sad face, the wistful humorous eyes, and he knew, with a thrill through all his body and an adoring throb in his breast, that it was the President—hapless heritor of generations of disjointed time. All thought of his errand, all thought of place and person, faded as he realized this presence. How long he would have remained in this mute adoration there is no telling. The restless, keen eyes looked up sharply and a dissonant, imperious, repellent voice jerked out:
"Well, my man, what is it?"
Without a word Jack handed him the envelope, and with a sort of reverence to the tall figure whose face was turned kindly toward him he backed to the door.
"O Barney, I've seen the President!"
"Seen the President! No? Oh! Why could not I have gone in with you? It's always my luck."
"No: it was my luck. But take heart. He will come out pretty soon, and we'll loaf about here. Perhaps we can see him as he goes back to the White House yonder."
But though they waited far into the afternoon, forgetting their dinner in the impulse of homage, they did not catch sight of the well-known figure, for the President's way to the Secretary's room was a private one, and when he went away the boys of course could not see him. But Jack's good fortune was the talk of the regiment for many a day, and for months when the fellows of the Caribee got leave they lingered expectantly about the modest headquarters, hoping that a missing orderly might bring them Jack Sprague's proud distinction of seeing the President face to face. On the grand review, a few days later, Jack and his crony were reminded of the encounter at headquarters, for the man who had given the envelope to carry to the war office was riding a splendid horse next to the President. Two stars glittered on his shoulder now, and as he answered the cheers that saluted the group, the young men saw that it was General McDowell, the commander of the forces. The President rode along the lines, with a kindly wistfulness in the honest eyes that studied with no superficial glance the long line of shouting soldiery. He was not an imposing figure in the sense of cavalier bravery, but no man that watched as he moved in the glittering group, conspicuous by his somber black and high hat, ever forgot the melancholy, rapt regard he gave the ranks, as at an easy canter he passed the fronts of the squares or sat solemnly at the march past that concluded the review.
What between the doings of the camp and the daily visit to Washington, "soldiering" grew into an enchanting existence for the young warriors of the Caribee. Their quarters were on the high plateaus north and west of the city—which were in those days shaded slopes, that made suburban Washington a vale of Tempe. In the streets they saw bedizened officers, from commanders of armies down to presidential orderlies. In the Senate and House they heard the voices of men afterward potent in public councils.
What an exuberant, vagrant life it was! The blood warms and the nerves tingle after the tensions and heats of a quarter of a century as those days of sublime vagabondage come back. The melodious morning calls that waked the sleepy, lusty young bodies; the echoing bugle and the abrupt drum! And then the roll-call, in the misty morning when the sun, blear and very red, rose as if blushing, or apoplectic after the night's carouse! It was an army of poets—of Homers—that began the never monotonous routine of these memorable days, for the incense of national sympathy came faint but intoxicating to the soldier's nostrils in the visits of great statesmen, the picnics of civilians, the copious descriptive letters of correspondents and the daily scrawls from far-away valleys, where fond eyes watched the sun rise, noted the stars, to mark the special duties their darlings were doing in the watches of the night. And then the mad music of cheers when the news came that the young McClellan in West Virginia had scattered the adventurous columns of Lee, capturing guns, men, and arms, and forever saving the great Kanawha country to the Union! And in Kentucky the rebels had been outmanoeuvred; while in Missouri the glorious Lyon and the crafty Blair had, one in the Cabinet, the other in the camp, routed the secret, black, and Janus-like rabble of treason and anarchy.
To feel that he was part of all this; that, at rest in the iron ring girdling the capital, he was might in leash; that to-morrow he would be vengeance let loose—this was the sustaining, exulting thought that made the volunteer the best of soldiers. His heart was all in the glorious ardor for action. Night and morning he looked proudly at the sacred ensign waving lightly in the summer breeze, and he remembered that the eyes of Washington had rested on the same standard at Valley Forge; that the sullen battalions of Cornwallis had saluted it at Yorktown.
It was a beautiful ardor that filled the young hosts that waited in leash on the green hills of the Potomac those months of turmoil, when Scott and McDowell were straining the crude machinery of war to get ready for the vital lunge. Jack and his Acredale squad, as the college fellows were called, lived in a perpetual dream, from which the hard realities of drill, now six hours a day, could not waken them. In days of release they scoured the Maryland hills, secretly hoping that an adventurous rebel picket might appear and give them occasion to return to camp decked with preluding laurels. Mile after mile of the charming woodland country they scoured, their hearts beating at the appearance of any animate thing that for a brief, intoxicating moment they could conjure into a rebel advance post. But, beyond wan and reticent yokels, engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause. Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in Company K with effusive outbreaks by their less restive comrades.
As July wore on, the signs of movement grew. Regiments were moved away mysteriously, and soon the Caribees were almost alone on Meridian Hill. Jack was filled with dire fears that the commanding officer, having discovered the incompetency of Oswald, feared to take the Caribees to the front. Something of the rumor spread through the regiment, and if, as reputed, "Old Sauerkraut" (this was the name he got behind his back) had spies in all the companies, the adage about listeners was abundantly confirmed. In the secrecy of Jack's tent, however, the subject was freely discussed. Nick Marsh, the poet of the class, as became the mystic tendencies of his tribe, was for poisoning the detested Pomeranian—Oswald was a compatriot of Bismarck, often boasting, as the then slowly emerging statesman became more widely known, that he lived in his near neighborhood. Marsh's suggestion fell upon fruitful perceptions. Bernard Moore—Barney, for short—was to be a physician, and had already passed an apprenticeship in a pharmacy, coincident with his college term in Jack's class.
"By the powers of mud and blood, Nick, dear, I have it!"
"Have what, Barney, me b'y?" Nick asked, mimicking Barney's quaintly displaced vowels.
"Why, the way to get rid of Old Schnapps and Blitzen—more power to me!"
"All the power you want, if you'll only do that; and your voice will be as sweet as 'the harp that once in Tara's halls—'"
"Never moind the harp—Sassenach—here's what we can do. Tim Hussey is Oswald's orderly; he and I are good friends. I know a preparation that will turn the sauerkraut and sausages, that Oswald eats so much of, into degluted fire and brimstone, warranted to keep him on the broad of his back for ten days or a fortnight. Will ye all swear secrecy?"
"We will! We will!"
"On what?"
"On the double crown on your head," Jack answered, solemnly, "which you have often told us was considered a sign that an angel had touched you—I'm sure nothing could be more solemn than that. It isn't every fellow that can get an angel to touch the top of his head."
"No; most fellows can consider themselves lucky if an angel touches their lips—or heart," Barney cried, naïvely.
"Well, never mind that sort of angel now, Barney," Nick said, pettishly; "I notice that you always bring up with something about the girls, no matter what the subject we set off on. It's the jalap—isn't that what it's called?—we want to hear about."
"There isn't enough poetry or sentiment in the two o' ye to fill a wind-blown buttercup. No wonder ye don't care to talk of the gurls—they'll have none of ye."
"We'll be satisfied if they'll have you, Barney. I'm sure that's magnanimous. But if your jalap takes as much time in working Old Schnapps as you take in explaining it, the war will be over, and we shall have seen none of it."
"It's too great a conception to be hastily set forth. Give me time. I'll lay a guinea that Oswald goes to the hospital before this day week. Let us see. This is the 14th; before the 20th—" and Barney gave the barrel of his gun, near him, a furtive wipe with his coat-sleeve.
"Barney, if you'll do that, I'll gather every four-leaved clover between here and Richmond to give you; and, what's more, if I die I'll leave you my bones to operate."
"Ah, Nick, dear, I'd rather have your little finger living than all the possessions of your father's bank. If you were dead—" And honest Barney seized the poet's hand sentimentally.
"Come, come, fellows, what sort of soldiering do you call this? You remind me of two school-girls," Jack remonstrated, as in duty bound to keep up the warrior spirit.
"Yer acquaintances among females being chiefly of the silly sort, it's no wonder we remind you of the only things you can look back on without blushing," Barney retorted; and a neighbor poking his head in the door to learn the cause of the hilarity, the conspirators sallied out for a jaunt until parade-time. Now, what means Barney employed, or whether he had any handiwork in what befell, it does not fall to me to say, but this is what happened: A market hawker came into camp the next morning and went straight to the big marquee tent where Colonel Oswald stood, in all the bravery of a new broadcloth uniform with spreading eagles on the shoulders. The savory fumes of hot sauerkraut aroused the warrior from his reveries, and he asked, in vociferous delight:
"Was haben sie? Kohlen, nicht wahr—sauerkraut—das is aber schon?"
"Yes, mein golonel, I hof cabbage und sauerkraut und"—looking about circumspectly—"etwas schnapps aus Antwerpen gebracht?"
The "golonel's" eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go to the rear of the marquee. Passing through from the front, he met him at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to Hussey to store in the larder. There had been a good deal of uneasiness in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal epidemics. When, therefore, the evening after the colonel's purchase the regimental surgeon was summoned in alarm, it was instantly believed in the regiment that "Old Sauerkraut" was stricken with cholera. He at first suffered hideous pains in the stomachic regions. This was followed by a raging thirst, and, unknown to the physician, the three bottles of schnapps were quite emptied. On the fourth day the poor man, very woe-begone, but now suffering no pain, was carried to the hospital, and the next day, as the campaign was about to begin, he was sent North, to leave room near the field for those who should be wounded in the coming engagement.
Company K was drilling on the wide plateau between the camp and the highway when the ambulance bearing the afflicted officer came slowly over the road worn through the greensward. Hussey sat solemnly on the seat with the driver, and as the vehicle reached the company, standing at rest, Barney Moore in the rear rank spoke up:
"Tim, is the poor colonel no better?"
"Divil a betther; it's worse he's intirely. God be good till 'im!"
Neither Jack nor Nick Marsh dared trust himself to meet the other's eyes as the helpless chief disappeared down the hillside, while Barney entered into an exhaustive treatise on the symptoms of cholera and the liability of the most robust to meet sudden disaster in this malarious upland, circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on every hand. But when, an hour later, Company K's whole street was aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion to settle their collapsed nerves!
"Well, haven't I won the guinea, now? It cost me just twice that. If ye's have a spark of honor ye'll pay your just dues, so ye will," Barney said, in the evening, returning from parade, where Lieutenant-Colonel Grandison officiated as commander, to the unconcealed delight of all but the Oswald parasites among the officers.
"Don't say a word, Barney—to whom the medicos of mythology and all the wizards of antique story are clowns and mountebanks—you shall have the guinea or its equivalent."
"Twenty-one shillings gold, bear in mind. Yer father's a banker, ye ought to know that!"
"I do. You shall have the twenty-one shillings in the shinplasters of the republic."
The colonel had been routed none too soon. The very next morning, when the Caribees "fell in" for roll-call, the orderly received a paper from the commander's orderly which read, "Tents to be struck at twelve o'clock and the men ready to march, with ten days' rations."
At last! All the future, glowing with heroism, exciting with the march, the attack, the battle—ah! what after? With something of joy and regret the comely tents, that had given them home and harbor, were taken down, folded in precise line, and carried away for storage—for in the field the ranks were to bivouac in the open air. Such gayety; such jokes; such bravado; and augury of the to be! And the rumors! Telephones, had they been invented; stenographers, had they been present in legion, could not have kept track of the momentous tales that were instantly bruited about. General Scott was going to lead the army in person. His charger had been seen before the headquarters. The rebels were going to be swooped up by another such famous dash as the flank march from Vera Cruz to the plateau of Mexico! Then came a numbing fear that Beauregard's bragging host had fled, and that the movement would turn out a tedious stern chase to Richmond. In the agony of all this Jack, returning from a "detail" to the quartermaster's tent, heard his name shouted where his tent had been. He hurried to the spot and Nick saluted him with the cry—
"Here, Jack, are two recruits who declare they must enter Company K."
His gun was on his arm and his knapsack on his back, but only the realization that a score of eyes were upon him saved Jack from dropping limply on the ground, as, looking in the group, he saw Dick Perley and Tom Twigg grinning ingratiatingly at him.
"Where—how in the name of all that's sacred did you get here?" he gasped.
"Why, we enlisted for drummers in the Caribees, but the recruiting officer told us as we were eighteen we could carry muskets if we wanted to. We do want to, and we're going to come into Company K."
They looked him confidently in the face as Dick repeated this evidently long-practiced explanation. It would not do to take them to task before the company. Jack waited until the rest were scattered, and then, leading the boys aside, said, sternly:
"Don't you know you can be put in prison for this? You have run away from your parents and guardians. No one had a lawful right to enlist you. I shall send for the provost marshal and have you put in prison until your parents can come and get your enlistment annulled."
Appalled by Jack's stern manner as much as by his words, the two lads began to whimper and expostulate tearfully. They had trusted to his ancient friendship. They could have gone into any other regiment, but they had enlisted to be with him. Whatever happened, they were soldiers, and, if Tom Twigg wasn't eighteen until September, it was perfectly lawful for him to enlist as a drummer. Perley was eighteen in April last, and he was a soldier in spite of all that Jack could do. Jack was deeply perplexed. What could be done? If he attempted to put the machinery of reclamation in order, the boys would be subjected to all sorts of vicissitudes, prisons, everything distressing and demoralizing to tender youth.
"Do they know at home what you have done?" Jack asked, doubtingly.
"Yes," Dick said, noting with boyish quickness the indecision in Jack's troubled face. "I sent a letter to Aunt Pliny, from New York, telling her we were soldiers, and that we were happy and well."
"You impudent young scamp—to write that to your best friend! Don't you know it will kill her?"
Dick had no answer for this, and looked perplexedly at Tom, who was lost in admiration of a neighboring group engaged in athletic exercises. He felt rather than heard the question put by the Mentor, and observing Dick's discomfiture, stammered:
"It didn't kill your mother when you went for a soldier, I guess."
The astute young rascal had hit upon the weak place, and Jack stood in anxious doubt wondering what to do. An aide that he recognized from division headquarters rode past at the moment and Jack turned to watch him. He leaped from his horse at the colonel's tent. Jack again looked at the boys. They were lost in delight at the scene and oblivious of the debate going on in their guardian's mind.
"Stay here till I come back," he said, authoritatively, and strode off to Grandison's tent. As he reached it the major, McGoyle, was entering, and Jack waited until that officer should come out. He came presently, and Colonel Grandison with him. Jack saluted, and stated his dilemma to the commander, who listened with amused interest.
"I don't see that anything can be done now, Jack. I'm just about leaving the regiment. I have been assigned to General Tyler's staff during the campaign. McGoyle takes command of the regiment. He will need orderlies, and the boys can serve with him until we can get time to look into the business. I will settle the matter with him, and if you will write a telegram to the lad's family I will have it sent as I go to headquarters."
Jack's relief and gratitude were best seen in the brightening eye and the more buoyant movement that succeeded the heaviness and agitation of his first impression. The boys' coming would weigh upon him every minute until he was in some sort relieved of even passive complicity. He would feel that the kind-hearted "Pearls," as the aunts were often called, would look upon him as having led the truants into the army. But Grandison's interposition had shifted from him a weighty anxiety. The boys would not be left friendless and irresponsible in the turbulent streets of Washington. Nor would they, as orderlies, be in continuous or inextricable danger in battle—for whereas the soldier in the line must keep in ranks even when not in actual battle, with the enemy's missiles as destructive as in the charge or combat, the orderlies may take advantage of the inequalities of ground and natural objects. Jack explained something of this to the young Marlboroughs, and was fairly irritated at the crest-fallen look that came into their eager, shining faces when they comprehended that they were not to be with their hero.
"But you couldn't be in the company in any event. You look more like rebels than soldiers, with your gray jackets and trousers"—for the boys still wore their Acredale uniform, an imitation of the West Point cadet's costume. "We shall be on the march in a few minutes, and there is only one of two things to be done. Remain here in the 'unassigned' camp, where you may be transferred into any regiment in the service that needs recruits; or go, as Colonel Grandison has very kindly consented to have you, as orderlies or clerks."
The very possibility of being sent into some unknown regiment was a terror so great that the other alternative became less odious to the boys, and they trotted after Jack, as he stalked moody and distracted to Major Mike McGoyle's tent, now the only habitable spot left where a few hours before a symmetrical little city had stood.
"And so ye want to be solgers, me foine b'yes? Well, well, 'tis litterfor yer mothers' knees ye are, with yer rosy cheeks and curling locks.It's a poor place here for yer bright oies and soft hands, me lads; butI'm not the wan to throw the dish after th' milk when it's spilt!"
He stroked the bared heads of the blushing lads, and, turning to their unhappy sponsor, he added with official brevity: "I will put Twiggs's son at me papers in the adjutant's office. Young Pearley can remain with your company until I make out a detail for him."
It was impossible for Jack to sustain therôleof frowning displeasure as Dick skipped back with him to the company. He remembered his own delight three months before, even with the haunting thoughts of his mother's reproaches to dampen his ardor, and he was soon dazzling the neophyte with the wonders that were just about to begin.
It was the afternoon of the 16th of July, and the hillsides, which the day before were covered with tents as far as the eye could see on every hand, were now blue with masses of men, while other masses had been passing on the red highways since early morning, taking the direction of the Potomac bridges.
It has always seemed to me that the life, the routine, the many small haps in the daily function of a soldier, which in sum made up to him all that there was in thedevoirof death, ought to be read with interest by the millions whose kin were part of the civil war, as well as by those who knew of it only as we know Napoleon's wars or Washington's. For my part, I would find a livelier pleasure in the diary of a common soldier, in any of the great wars, than I do in the confusing pamphlets, bound in volumes called history. I like to read of war as our Uncle Toby related it. I like to know what two observing eyes saw and the feelings that sometimes made the timidest heroes—sometimes cravens.
For a month—yes, months—the burden of the press, the prayers of the North, had been, "On to Richmond!" Jack, through Colonel Grandison, knew that General McDowell and the commander-in-chief, the venerable soldier Scott, had pleaded and protested against a move until the new levies under the three-months' call could be drilled and disciplined. But on the Fourth of July Congress had assembled, and the raw statesmen—with an eye to future elections—took up the public clamor. They gave the Cabinet, the President, no peace until General Scott and McDowell had given way and promised the pending movement.
"Our soldiers are so green that I shall move with fear," McDowell said to the President.
"Well, they" (meaning the rebels) "are green too, and one greenness will offset the other," Lincoln responded with kindly malice. It was useless to argue further; useless to point out that the rebels were not so "green," for the young men of the semi-aristocratic society of the South were trained to arms, whereas it was a mark of lawlessness and vulgarity to carry arms in the Puritan ranks of the North. Something of the unreadiness of the army, every reflecting soldier in the ranks comprehended, when he saw within the precincts of his own brigades the hap hazard conduct of the quartermaster's and staff departments. Some regiments had raw flour dealt them for rations and no bake-ovens to turn it into bread; some regiments had abundance of bread, but no coffee or meat rations. As to vegetables—beans, or anything of the sort—if the pockets of the soldiers had not been well supplied from home, the army that set out for Manassas would have been eaten with scurvy and the skin diseases that come from unseasoned food.
Now, at the very moment the legions were stripped for the march, many of them were without proper ammunition. Various arms were in use, and the same cartridge did not lit them all. Eager groups could be seen all through the brigades filing down the leaden end of the cartridge to make their weapons effective, until a proper supply could be obtained. This was promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish unrest for the forward movement, there was a good deal of sober foreboding among the men, who held to the American right to criticise as the Briton maintains his right to grumble. For the soldier in camp or on the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip, and no problem in war or statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution. Of the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of July there were, at a low estimate, ten thousand who believed themselves as fitted to command as the chieftains who led them.
By two o'clock the Caribees were in the line that had been passing city-ward since daylight. The sun had baked the sticky clay into brick-like hardness, and the hours of trampling, the tread of heavy teams, and the still heavier artillery, had filled the air with an opaque atmosphere of reddish powder, through which the masses passed in almost spectral vagueness. The city crowds, usually alert, when great masses of men moved, were discouraged by heat and dust, and the streets were quite given over to the military. Eager as Jack and his friends were to note the impression the march made upon the civilians, most of whom were thought to be secretly in sympathy with the rebellion, it was impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers. Pennsylvania Avenue, when they reached it, was a billowy channel of impalpable powder. But at the Long Bridge the breeze from the wide channel of the river cleared the clouds of dust, and the men, catching glimpses of each other, broke into jocose banter. On the bridge they looked eagerly down the river, where the low roofs of Alexandria were visible, and upward on the Virginia shore where the gleaming walls of Arlington recalled to Jack far different times and scenes.
"Now we're in Jeff Davis's land," Barney called out from one of the rear files, as the company reached midway in the bridge.
"Not by a long shot," Nick Marsh cried. "Davis's land begins and ends within cannon-shot of himself. He is like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen—he has to beg his neighbor's permission to hold battalion drill."
"He isn't so polite as the duke; he takes it without asking," Barney retorts.
"But now we are on the 'sacred soil,'" Jack cries, as the company debouched from the bridge up the steep, narrow road that seemed to be taking them to Arlington. In spite of the burning heat and the exhaustion of the three hours' march, the scene was, or rather the imagination of the men, invested each step with a sort of awe. They were at last in the enemy's territory. It had been held by the Union forces, only by dint of large numbers and strong fortifications. There wasn't a man in the company that didn't resent the fact, constantly obtruding itself on the ranks as they marched eagerly onward by every knoll, every bush in the landscape, that Union soldiers had been there before them! that their devouring eyes were not the first to mark these historic spots.
Tired as they were and burdensome as the heavy knapsacks and still heavier ammunition had become, they heard an aide give the order to bivouac with chagrin! They so longed to put undebatable ground behind them and really be where the distant coppice might be a curtain to the enemy! The Caribees marked with indignant surprise that, when they had turned into a field about seven o'clock, the long line following them pushed onward until far into the night, and they envied the contiguity this would give the lucky laggards to first see and engage the enemy! But they turned-to very merrily, in this first night of real soldiering. They were "in the field." All the parade part of military life was now relaxed. The hot little dress coats were left behind; there was no display. Even guard-mount was reduced to the simplest possible form.
With one impulse all the men—that is, all who had been alert enough to provide pen and paper—bestowed themselves about the candles allotted each group, and began letters "home," dated magniloquently "Headquarters in the Field. Tyler's Division, Sherman's Brigade, 16th July, 1861." The imperial impulse manifested itself in these curt epistles. I can't resist giving Jack's:
"Dear Mother: How I wish you and Polly could see us now! We are really on the march at last. The battle can't be far off. We are not many miles from the enemy, and, if he stands, what glorious news you will hear very soon! I wish you could have seen us to-day. Colonel Sherman, who is the sternest looking man I ever saw, a regular army officer, once a professor, told the major—you know McGoyle is commanding us now—he is a brick—Sherman told him that the Caribees did as good marching as the regulars, who came behind us. Dear old Mick, with his brogue and his blarney, has won every heart in the regiment, and you may be sure we shall see the whites of the enemy's eyes under him, which we never should have done under that odious Hessian, Oswald—in hospital now, thank Heaven—though some time, when I tell you the story, you will see that in this, as in most other things, Heaven helps those who help themselves. Taps will sound in five minutes, and I can only add that I am in good health, glorious spirits, and unshaken confidence that we shall return to Acredale before your longing to see your son overcomes your love of glory. We shall return victors, if not heroes—at least I know that you and Polly will believe this of your affectionate and dutiful son
Barney read one or two phrases of his composition to the indulgent ear of Jack and the poet, over which they laughed a good deal. "We are," he said, "before the enemy. I feel as our great ancestor, Baron Moore, felt at Fontenoy when the Sassenachs were over against the French lines—as if all the blood in Munster was in my veins and I wanted to spill it on the villains ferninst us."
The poet declined to quote from his epistle, and the three friends sat in the dim light until midnight, wondering over what the morrow had in store. Dick Perley listened in awe to Jack's wonderful ratiocinations on what was to come—secretly believing him much more learned in war than this General McDowell who was commanding the army. The first bugle sounded at three in the morning in the Caribees' camp, and when the coffee had been hastily dispatched, the men began to understand the cause of their being shunted into the field so early the evening before while the rear of the column marched ahead of them. The Caribees passed a mile or more of encampments, the men not yet aroused, and when at daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance, with nothing before them but a few hundred cavalry.
A delirious expectation, a rapturous sense of holding the post of danger, kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours passed like minutes. The dusty roads, the intolerable thirst, and the nauseous, tepid water, the blistered feet, the abraded hips, where the cartridge-box began to wear the flesh—all these woes of the march were ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead, to note the first sight of the enemy. It was not until four o'clock in the afternoon that the column was halted, and two companies, K and H, were marched out of the column and formed in platoons across the line of march, that the regiment learned with mortification that hitherto the route had been inside the Union lines! They soon saw the difference in the tactics of the march. The company was spread out in groups of four; these again were separated by a few yards, and in this order, sweeping like a drag-net, they advanced over the dry fields, through the clustering pines or into cultivated acres, and through great farm-yards.
Back of them the long column came, slowly winding over the sandy highway which curved through the undulating land. Here and there the skirmishers—for that was the office the two companies were now filling—came upon signs of picket-posts; and once, as Jack hurried beyond his group to the thicket, near a wretched cabin, a horse and rider were visible tearing through the foliage of a winding lane. He drew up his musket in prompt recognition of his duty, but he saw with mortification that the horse and rider continued unharmed. Other shots from the skirmish-line followed, but Jack's rebel was the only enemy seen, when, in the early dusk, an orderly from the main column brought the command to set pickets and bivouac for the night. Jack would have written with better grounds for his solemnity if he had waited until this evening; but now there was no chance.
The companies were the extreme advance of the army; nothing between them and the enemy but detached pickets of cavalry, at long distances apart, to fly back with the report of the least signs made by the rebels. These meager groups were forbidden fires, or any evidence of their presence that might guide hostile movement, and the infantry outposts felt that they were really the guardians of the sleeping thousands a mile or so behind them. No one minded the cold water and hard bread which for the first time formed the company's fare that night. Like the cavalry, fire was forbidden them. They formed little groups in the rear of the outer line of pickets, discussing with animation—even levity—the likelihood of an engagement the next day. It was the general opinion that if Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the excellent points of vantage that had been encountered in the day's march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed the rest when he said:
"Beauregard is no fool. His army is massed near the point that he is guarding—Manassas Junction. You seem to think that war is a game of chance, armies fighting just where they happen to meet each other. Not at all. Our business is to march to Richmond; Beauregard's business is to prevent us. To do this he must, first of all, keep his lines of supply safe. An army without that is like a ship at sea without food—the more of a crew, the worse the situation. Of course, Beauregard had his skirmishers spread out in front of us, but, as there is no use in killing until some end is to be gained, they have got out of our way. If the spies that are in our ranks should send information that promised to give the rebels a chance to get at a big body of our men, before the whole army came up, you'd see a change of things very quick. We've got fifty thousand men, or thereabout" (Jack was wrong; there were but thirty thousand). "Now, these men are stretched back of us to Washington, fifteen miles or more, because the artillery must be guarded, and infantry only can do that. Now, suppose Beauregard finds that there is a gap somewhere between the forces stretching back, and he happens to have ten or fifteen thousand men handy? Why, he just swoops down upon us, and, if we can't defend ourselves until the rest of the army comes up, he has won what is called a tactical victory, and endangered our strategy."
"Goodness, Jack, you ought to have been commander-in-chief! You talk war like a book!" Barney cried, in mock admiration.
The war-talk went on late into the night, for the company, detached from camp, was not obliged to follow the signals of the bugles that came in melodious echoes over the fragrant fields. It was a thrilling sight as the lone watchers peered backward. The June fields for miles were dotted with blazing spires, as if the earth had opened to pour out columns of flame, guiding the wanderers on their trying way. The sleep of the night was desultory and fitful, excitement stimulating everybody to wakefulness.