Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/redbadge.zip/FILE23.TXT

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 11KB | 169 lines

                           CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

          The colonel came running along back of the line. There were
     other officers following him. "We must charge them!" they shouted.
     "We must charge them!" they cried with resentful voices, as if
     anticipating a rebellion against this plan by the men.
          The youth, upon hearing the shouts, began to study the
     distance between him and the enemy. He made vague calculations. He
     saw that to be firm soldiers they must go forward. It would be
     death to stay in the present place, and with all the circumstances
     to go backward would exalt too many others. Their hope was to push
     the galling foes away from the fence.
          He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened, would
     have to be driven to this assault, but as he turned toward them he
     perceived with a certain surprise that they were giving quick and
     unqualified expressions of assent. There was an ominous, clanging
     overture to the charge when the shifts of the bayonets rattled upon
     the rifle barrels. At the yelled words of command the soldiers
     sprang forward in eager leaps. There was new and unexpected force
     in the movement of the regiment. A knowledge of its faded and jaded
     condition made the charge appear like a paroxysm, a display of the
     strength that comes before a final feebleness. The men scampered in
     insane fever of haste, racing as if to achieve a sudden success
     before an exhilarating fluid should leave them. It was a blind and
     despairing rush by the collection of men in dusty and tattered
     blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire sky, toward a fence,
     dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which spluttered the fierce
     rifles of enemies.
          The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving
     his free arm in furious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and
     appeals, urging on those that did not need to be urged, for it
     seemed that the mob of blue men hurling themselves on the dangerous
     group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild with an enthusiasm
     of unselfishness. From the many firings starting toward them, it
     looked as if they would merely succeed in making a great sprinkling
     of corpses on the grass between their former position and the
     fence. But they were in a state of frenzy, perhaps because of
     forgotten vanities, and it made an exhibition of sublime
     recklessness. There was no obvious questioning, nor figurings, nor
     diagrams. There was, apparently, no considered loopholes. It
     appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered
     against the iron gates of the impossible.
          He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage religion-mad. He
     was capable of profound sacrifices, a tremendous death. He had no
     time for dissections, but he knew that he thought of the bullets
     only as things that could prevent him from reaching the place of
     his endeavor. There were subtle flashings of joy within him that
     thus should be his mind.
          He strained all his strength. His eyesight was shaken and
     dazzled by the tension of thought and muscle. He did not see
     anything excepting the mist of smoke gashed by the little knives of
     fire, but he knew that in it lay the aged fence of a vanished
     farmer protecting the snuggled bodies of the gray men.
          As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his
     mind. He expected a great concussion when the two bodies of troops
     crashed together. This became a part of his wild battle madness. He
     could feel the onward swing of the regiment about him and he
     conceived of a thunderous, crushing blow that would prostrate the
     resistance and spread consternation and amazement for miles. The
     flying regiment was going to have a catapultian effect. This dream
     made him run faster among his comrades, who were giving vent to
     hoarse and frantic cheers.
          But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did
     not intend to abide the blow. The smoke, rolling, disclosed men who
     ran, their faces still turned. These grew to a crowd, who retired
     stubbornly. Individuals wheeled frequently to send a bullet at the
     blue wave.
          But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate
     group that made no movement. They were settled firmly down behind
     posts and rails. A flag, ruffled and fierce, waved over them and
     their rifles dinned fiercely.
          The blue whirl of men got very near, until it seemed that in
     truth there would be a close and frightful scuffle. There was an
     expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group, that
     changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue. They became
     yells of wrath, directed, personal. The cries of the two parties
     were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.
          They in blue showed their teeth; their eyes shone all white.
     They launched themselves as at the throats of those who stood
     resisting. The space between dwindled to an insignificant distance.
          The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other
     flag. Its possession would be high pride. It would express bloody
     minglings, near blows. He had a gigantic hatred for those who made
     great difficulties and complications. They caused it to be as a
     craved treasure of mythology, hung amid tasks and contrivances of
     danger.
          He plunged like a mad horse at it. He was resolved it should
     not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it. His
     own emblem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward the other. It
     seemed there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks and
     claws, as of eagles.
          The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close
     and disastrous range and roared a swift volley. The group in gray
     was split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still
     fought. The men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.
          The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture
     of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon
     their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts
     from the sky. Tottering among them was the rival color bearer, whom
     the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last
     formidable volley. He perceived this man fighting a last struggle,
     the struggle of one whose legs are grasped by demons. It was a
     ghastly battle. Over his face was the bleach of death, but set upon
     it were the dark and hard lines of desperate purpose. With this
     terrible grin of resolution he hugged his precious flag to him and
     was stumbling and staggering in his design to go the way that led
     to safety for it.
          But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were
     retarded, held, and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible
     ghouls fastened greedily upon his limbs. Those in advance of the
     scampering blue men, howling cheers, leaped at the fence. The
     despair of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back at them.
          The youth's friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling
     heap and sprang at the flag as a panther at prey. He pulled at it
     and, wrenching it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry
     of exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched over in a
     final throe and, stiffening convulsively, turned his dead face to
     the ground. There was much blood upon the grass blades.
          At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of
     cheers. The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy. When they
     spoke it was as if they considered their listener to be a mile
     away. What hats and caps were left to them they often slung high in
     the air.
          At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and
     they now sat as prisoners. Some blue men were about them in an
     eager and curious circle. The soldiers had trapped strange birds,
     and there was an examination. A flurry of fast questions was in the
     air.
          One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the
     foot. He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to
     curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of
     his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon the
     pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was
     singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct
     of prisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his
     toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his duty, to use deep,
     resentful oaths.
          Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great
     calmness and apparent good nature. He conversed with the men in
     blue, studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes. They
     spoke of battles and conditions. There was an acute interest in all
     their faces during this exchange of viewpoints. It seemed a great
     satisfaction to hear voices from where all had been darkness and
     speculation.
          The third captive sat with a morose countenance. He preserved
     a stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he made one reply
     without variation, "Ah, go to hell!"
          The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part,
     kept his face turned in unmolested directions. From the views the
     youth received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection.
     Shame was upon him, and with it profound regret that he was,
     perhaps, no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows. The
     youth could detect no expression that would allow him to believe
     that the other was giving a thought to his narrowed future, the
     pictured dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutalities, liable
     to the imagination. All to be seen was shame for captivity and
     regret for the right to antagonize.
          After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down
     behind the old rail fence, on the opposite side to the one from
     which their foes had been driven. A few shot perfunctorily at
     distant marks.
          There was some long grass. The youth nestled in it and rested,
     making a convenient rail support the flag. His friend, jubilant and
     glorified, holding his treasure with vanity, came to him there.
     They sat side by side and congratulated each other.