Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/redbadge.zip/FILE12.TXT

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 14KB | 219 lines

                              CHAPTER TWELVE

          The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the
     roadway was barely out of the youth's sight before he saw dark
     waves of men come sweeping out of the woods and down through the
     fields. He knew at once that the steel fibers had been washed from
     their hearts. They were bursting from their coats and their
     equipments as from entanglements. They charged down upon him like
     terrified buffaloes.
          Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops,
     and through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant pink
     glare. The voices of the cannon were clamoring in interminable
     chorus.
          The youth was horror-stricken. He stared in agony and
     amazement. He forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe.
     He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philosophy of the
     retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.
          The fight was lost. The dragons were coming with invincible
     strides. The army, helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by
     the overhanging night, was going to be swallowed. War, the red
     animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.
          Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to
     make a rallying speech, to sing a battle hymn, but he could only
     get his tongue to call into the air: "Why---why---what---what's the
     matter?"
          Soon he was in the midst of them. They were leaping and
     scampering all about him. Their blanched faces shone in the dusk.
     They seemed, for the most part, to be very burly men. The youth
     turned from one to another of them as they galloped along. His
     incoherent questions were lost. They were heedless of his appeals.
     They did not seem to see him.
          They sometimes gabbled insanely. One huge man was asking of
     the sky: "Say, where the plank road? Where the plank road!" It was
     as if he had lost a child. He wept in his pain and dismay.
          Presently, men were running hither and thither in all ways.
     The artillery booming, forward, rearward, and on the flanks made
     jumble of ideas of direction. Landmarks had vanished into the
     gathered gloom. The youth began to imagine that he had got into the
     center of the tremendous quarrel, and he could perceive no way out
     of it. From the mouths of the fleeing men came a thousand wild
     questions, but no one made answers.
          The youth, after rushing about and throwing interrogations at
     the heedless bands of retreating infantry, finally clutched a man
     by the arm. They swung around face to face.
          "Why---why---" stammered the youth struggling with his balking
     tongue.
          The man screamed: "Let go me! Let go me! " His face was livid
     and his eyes were rolling uncontrolled. He was heaving and panting.
     He still grasped his rifle, perhaps having forgotten to release his
     hold upon it. He tugged frantically, and the youth being compelled
     to lean forward was dragged several paces.
          "Let go me! Let go me!"
          "Why---why---" stuttered the youth.
          "Well, then!" bawled the man in a lurid rage. He adroitly and
     fiercely swung his rifle. It crushed upon the youth's head. The man
     ran on.
          The youth's fingers had turned to paste upon the other's arm.
     The energy was smitten from his muscles. He saw the flaming wings
     of lightning flash before his vision. There was a deafening rumble
     of thunder within his head.
          Suddenly his legs seemed to die. He sank writhing to the
     ground. He tried to arise. In his efforts against the numbing pain
     he was like a man wrestling with a creature of the air.
          There was a sinister struggle.
          Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect, battle with
     the air for a moment, and then fall again, grabbing at the grass.
     His face was of a clammy pallor. Deep groans were wrenched from
     him.
          At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and
     knees, and from thence, like a babe trying to walk, to his feet.
     Pressing his hands to his temples he went lurching over the grass.
          He fought an intense battle with his body. His dulled senses
     wished him to swoon and he opposed them stubbornly, his mind
     portraying unknown dangers and mutilations if he should fall upon
     the field. He went tall soldier fashion. He imagined secluded spots
     where he could fall and be unmolested. To search for one he strove
     against the tide of his pain.
          Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly
     touched the wound. The scratching pain of the contact made him draw
     a long breath through his clinched teeth. His fingers were dabbled
     with blood. He regarded them with a fixed stare.
          Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the
     scurrying horses were lashed toward the front. Once, a young
     officer on a besplashed charger nearly ran him down. He turned and
     watched the mass of guns, men, and horses sweeping in a wide curve
     toward a gap in a fence. The officer was making excited motions
     with a gauntleted hand. The guns followed the teams with an air of
     unwillingness, of being dragged by the heels.
          Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and
     railing like fishwives. Their scolding voices could be heard above
     the din. Into the unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron
     of cavalry. The faded yellow of their facings shone bravely. There
     was a mighty altercation.
          The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.
          The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of
     forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the western
     sky partly smothering the red.
          As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns
     suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They
     belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air
     was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. With it came the
     shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him,
     he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance.
     There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he
     thought he could see heaving masses of men.
          He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could
     barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was
     filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see
     them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to
     be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and
     in the fields.
          The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were
     overturned wagons like sun-dried boulders. The bed of the former
     torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts
     of war machines.
          It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He
     was afraid to move rapidly, however, for a dread of disturbing it.
     He held his head very still and took many precautions against
     stumbling. He was filled with anxiety, and his face was pinched and
     drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden mistake of his feet
     in the gloom.
          His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt.
     There was a cool, liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood
     moving slowly down under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a
     size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.
          The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little
     blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were,
     he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he
     believed that he could measure his plight. But when they remained
     ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers
     that clutched into his brain.
          Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and
     conditions of the past. He bethought him of certain meals his
     mother had cooked at home, in which those dishes of which he was
     particularly fond had occupied prominent positions. He saw the
     spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the
     warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his
     companions used to go from the schoolhouse to the bank of a shaded
     pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the
     bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The
     leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of
     youthful summer.
          He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness. His head
     hung forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing
     a great bundle. His feet shuffled along the ground.
          He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down
     and sleep at some near spot, or force himself on until he reached
     a certain haven. He often tried to dismiss the question, but his
     body persisted in rebellion and his senses nagged at him like
     pampered babies.
          At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: "You seem
     to be in a pretty bad way, boy."
          The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue.
     "Uh!"
          The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm.
     "Well," he said, with a round laugh, "I'm going your way. The whole
     gang is going your way. And I guess I can give you a lift." They
     began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.
          As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted
     him with the replies like one manipulating the mind of a child.
     Sometimes he interjected anecdotes. "What regiment do you belong
     to? Eh? What's that? The 304th New York? Why, what corps is that
     in? Oh, it is? Why, I thought they wasn't engaged today---they're
     away over in the center. Oh, they was, eh? Well, pretty nearly
     everybody got their share of fighting today. By dad, I give myself
     up for dead any number of times. There was shooting here and
     shooting there, and hollering here and hollering there, in the
     damned darkness, until I couldn't tell to save my soul which side
     I was on. Sometimes I thought I was sure enough from Ohio, and
     other times I could a swore I was from the bitter end of Florida.
     It was the most mixed up darn thing I ever see. And these here
     whole woods is a regular mess. It'll be a miracle if we find our
     regiments tonight. Pretty soon, though, we'll meet a-plenty of
     guards and provost-guards, and one thing and another. Ho! there
     they go with an officer, I guess. Look at his hand a-dragging. He's
     got all the war he wants, I bet. He won't be talking so big about
     his reputation and all when they go to sawing off his leg. Poor
     fellow! My brother's got whiskers just like that. How did you get
     away over here, anyhow? Your regiment is a long way from here,
     ain't it? Well, I guess we can find it. You know there was a boy
     killed in my company today that I thought the world and all of.
     Jack was a nice fellow. By ginger, it hurt like thunder to see old
     Jack just get knocked flat. We was a-standing pretty peaceable for
     a spell, although there was men running every way all around us,
     and while we was a-standing like that, along come a big fat fellow.
     He began to peck at Jack's elbow, and he says: `Say, where's the
     road to the river?' And Jack, he never paid no attention, and the
     fellow kept on a-pecking at his elbow and saying: 'Say, where's the
     road to the river?' Jack was a-looking ahead all the time trying to
     see the Johnnies coming through the woods, and he never paid no
     attention to this big fat fellow for a long time, but at last he
     turned around and he says: `Ah, go to hell and find the road to the
     river!' And just then a shot slapped him bang on the side the head.
     He was a sergeant, too. Them was his last words. Thunder, I wish we
     was sure of finding our regiments tonight. It's going to be long
     hunting. But I guess we can do it."
          In the search which followed, the man of the cheery voice
     seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded
     the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune. In
     encounter with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a
     detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles fell before him and
     became of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast,
     stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out of
     sullen things.
          The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic
     circles but the cheery man conducted the youth without mistakes,
     until at last he began to chuckle with glee and self-satisfaction.
     "Ah, there you are! See that fire?"
          The youth nodded stupidly.
          "Well, there's where your regiment is. And now, goodby, old
     boy, good luck to you."
          A warm and strong hand clasped the youth's languid fingers for
     an instant, and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as
     the man strode away. As he who had so befriended him was thus
     passing out of his life, it suddenly occurred to the youth that he
     had not once seen his face.