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Software Vault: The Gold Collection
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1993-06-14
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CHAPTER TWENTY
When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of
the regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming
back. The men, having hurled themselves in projectile fashion, had
presently expended their forces. They slowly retreated, with their
faces still toward the spluttering woods, and their hot rifles
still replying to the din. Several officers were giving orders,
their voices keyed to screams.
"Where in hell you going?" the lieutenant was asking in a
sarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple
brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: "Shoot into them!
Shoot into them, God damn their souls!" There was a mêlée of
screeches, in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and
impossible things.
The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag.
"Give it to me!" "No, let me keep it!" Each felt satisfied with the
other's possession of it, but each felt bound to declare, by an
offer to carry the emblem, his willingness to further risk himself.
The youth roughly pushed his friend away.
The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted
for a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal
upon its track. Presently it resumed its march again, curving among
the tree trunks. By the time the depleted regiment had again
reached the first open space they were receiving a fast and
merciless fire. There seemed to be mobs all about them.
The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn
by the turmoil, acted as if stunned. They accepted the pelting of
the bullets with bowed and weary heads. It was of no purpose to
strive against walls. It was of no use to batter themselves against
granite. And from this consciousness that they had attempted to
conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feeling that
they had been betrayed. They glowered with bent brows, but
dangerously, upon some of the officers, more particularly upon the
red-bearded one with the voice of triple brass.
However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who
continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes. They seemed
resolved to make every trouble. The youthful lieutenant was perhaps
the last man in the disordered mass. His forgotten back was toward
the enemy. He had been shot in the arm. It hung straight and rigid.
Occasionally he would cease to remember it, and be about to
emphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture. The multiplied pain
caused him to swear with incredible power.
The youth went along with slipping, uncertain feet. He kept
watchful eyes rearward. A scowl of mortification and rage was upon
his face. He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had
referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers. But he saw that it
could not come to pass. His dreams had collapsed when the mule
drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered and hesitated on the little
clearing, and then had recoiled. And now the retreat of the mule
drivers was a march of shame to him.
A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held
toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man,
who, not knowing him, had called him a mule driver.
When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do
anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a
kind of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the
baffled to possess him. This cold officer upon a monument, who
dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man,
he thought. So grievous did he think it that he could never possess
the secret right to taunt truly in answer.
He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. "We are mule
drivers, are we?" And now he was compelled to throw them away.
He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and
kept the flag erect. He harangued his fellows, pushing against
their chests with his free hand. To those he knew well he made
frantic appeals, beseeching them by name. Between him and the
lieutenant, scolding and near to losing his mind with rage, there
was felt a subtle fellowship and equality. They supported each
other in all manner of hoarse, howling protests.
But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled
at a forceless thing. The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were
continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades
were slipping with speed back to the lines. It was difficult to
think of reputation when others were thinking of skins. Wounded men
were left crying on this black journey.
The smoke fringes and flames blustered always. The youth,
peering once through a sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of
troops, interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be
thousands. A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.
Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been
prearranged, the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and
a hundred flames jetted toward the retreating band. A rolling gray
cloud again interposed as the regiment doggedly replied. The youth
had to depend again upon his misused ears, which were trembling and
buzzing from the mêlée of musketry and yells.
The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became panic-
stricken with the thought that the regiment had lost its path, and
was proceeding in a perilous direction. Once the men who headed the
wild procession turned and came pushing back against their
comrades, screaming that they were being fired upon from points
which they had considered to be toward their own lines. At this cry
a hysterical fear and dismay beset the troops. A soldier, who
heretofore had been ambitious to make the regiment into a wise
little band that would proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing
difficulties, suddenly sank down and buried his face in his arms
with an air of bowing to a doom. From another a shrill lamentation
rang out filled with profane allusions to a general. Men ran hither
and thither, seeking with their eyes roads to escape. With serene
regularity, as if controlled by a schedule, bullets buffed into
men.
The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with
his flag in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to
push him to the ground. He unconsciously assumed the attitude of
the color bearer in the fight of the preceding day. He passed over
his brow a hand that trembled. His breath did not come freely. He
was choking during this small wait for the crisis.
His friend came to him. "Well, Henry, I guess this is goodby--
John. "
"Oh, shut up, you damned fool!" replied the youth, and he
would not look at the other.
The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a
proper circle to face the menaces. The ground was uneven and torn.
The men curled into depressions and fitted themselves snugly behind
whatever would frustrate a bullet.
The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was
standing mutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the
manner of a cane. The youth wondered what had happened to his vocal
organs that he no more cursed.
There was something curious in this little intent pause of the
lieutenant. He was like a babe which, having wept its fill, raises
its eyes and fixed them upon a distant toy. He was engrossed in
this contemplation, and the soft under lip quivered from self-
whispered words.
Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding
from the bullets, waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the
plight of the regiment.
The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of
the youthful lieutenant bawling out: "Here they come! Right on to
us, by God!" His further words were lost in a roar of wicked
thunder from the men's rifles.
The youth's eyes had instantly turned in the direction
indicated by the awakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had seen
the haze of treachery disclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy.
They were so near that he could see their features. There was a
recognition as he looked at the types of faces. Also he perceived
with dim amazement that their uniforms were rather gay in effect,
being light gray, accented with a brilliant-hued facing. Moreover,
the clothes seemed new.
These troops had apparently been going forward with caution,
their rifles held in readiness, when the youthful lieutenant had
discovered them and their movement had been interrupted by the
volley from the blue regiment. From the moment's glimpse, it was
derived that they had been unaware of the proximity of their dark-
suited foes or had mistaken the direction. Almost instantly they
were shut utterly from the youth's sight by the smoke from the
energetic rifles of his companions. He strained his vision to learn
the accomplishment of the volley, but the smoke hung before him.
The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a
pair of boxers. The fast angry firings went back and forth. The men
in blue were intent with the despair of their circumstances and
they seized upon the revenge to be had at close range. Their
thunder swelled loud and valiant. Their curving front bristled with
flashes and the place resounded with the clangor of their ramrods.
The youth ducked and dodged for a time and achieved a few
unsatisfactory views of the enemy. There appeared to be many of
them and they were replying swiftly. They seemed moving toward the
blue regiment, step by step. He seated himself gloomily on the
ground with his flag between his knees.
As he noted the vicious, wolf-like temper of his comrades he
had a sweet thought that if the enemy was about to swallow the
regimental broom as a large prisoner, it could at least have the
consolation of going down with bristles forward.
But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak. Fewer
bullets ripped the air, and finally, when the men slackened to
learn of the fight, they could see only dark, floating smoke. The
regiment lay still and gazed. Presently some chance whim came to
the pestering blur, and it began to coil heavily away. The men saw
a ground vacant of fighters. It would have been an empty stage if
it were not for a few corpses that lay thrown and twisted into
fantastic shapes upon the sward.
At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from
behind their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy. Their eyes
burned and a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their dry lips.
It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove
that they were impotent. These little battles had evidently
endeavored to demonstrate that the men could not fight well. When
on the verge of submission to these opinions, the small duel had
showed them that the proportions were not impossible, and by it
they had revenged themselves upon their misgivings and upon the
foe.
The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about
them with looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim,
always confident weapons in their hands. And they were men.