Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/redbadge.zip/FILE20.TXT

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 12KB | 188 lines

                              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.