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Software Vault: The Gold Collection
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1993-06-14
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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.