Crittenden Part 3

The pike-gate slammed now and the swift rush of wheels over the bluegra.s.s turf followed; the barn-gate cracked sharply on the night air and Crittenden heard him singing, in the boyish, untrained tenor that is so common in the South, one of the old-fashioned love-songs that are still sung with perfect sincerity and without shame by his people:

"You'll never find another love like mine, "You'll never find a heart that's half so true."

And then the voice was m.u.f.fled suddenly. A little while later he entered the yard-gate and stopped in the moonlight and, from his window, Crittenden looked down and watched him. The boy was going through the manual of arms with his buggy-whip, at the command of an imaginary officer, whom, erect and martial, he was apparently looking straight in the eye. Plainly he was a private now. Suddenly he sprang forward and saluted; he was volunteering for some dangerous duty; and then he walked on toward the house. Again he stopped. Apparently he had been promoted now for gallant conduct, for he waved his whip and called out with low, sharp sternness;

"Steady, now! Ready; fire!" And then swinging his hat over his head:

"Double-quick--charge!" After the charge, he sat down for a moment on the stiles, looking up at the moon, and then came on toward the house, singing again:

"You'll never find a man in all this world Who'll love you half so well as I love you."

And inside, the mother, too, was listening; and she heard the elder brother call the boy into his room and the door close, and she as well knew the theme of their talk as though she could hear all they said. Her sons--even the elder one--did not realize what war was; the boy looked upon it as a frolic. That was the way her two brothers had regarded the old war. They went with the South, of course, as did her father and her sweetheart. And her sweetheart was the only one who came back, and him she married the third month after the surrender, when he was so sick and wounded that he could hardly stand. Now she must give up all that was left for the North, that had taken nearly all she had.

Was it all to come again--the same long days of sorrow, loneliness, the anxious waiting, waiting, waiting to hear that this one was dead, and that this one was wounded or sick to death--would either come back unharmed? She knew now what her own mother must have suffered, and what it must have cost her to tell her sons what she had told hers that night. Ah, G.o.d, was it all to come again?

V

Some days later a bugle blast started Crittenden from a soldier's cot, when the flaps of his tent were yellow with the rising sun. Peeping between them, he saw that only one tent was open. Rivers, as acting-quartermaster, had been up long ago and gone. That blast was meant for the private at the foot of the hill, and Crittenden went back to his cot and slept on.

The day before he had swept out of the hills again--out through a blossoming storm of dogwood--but this time southward bound.

Incidentally, he would see unveiled these statues that Kentucky was going to dedicate to her Federal and Confederate dead. He would find his father's old comrade--little Jerry Carter--and secure a commission, if possible. Meanwhile, he would drill with Rivers's regiment, as a soldier of the line.

At sunset he swept into the glory of a Southern spring and the hallowed haze of an old battlefield where certain gallant Americans once fought certain other gallant Americans fiercely forward and back over some six thousand acres of creek-bottom and wooded hills, and where Uncle Sam was pitching tents for his war-children--children, too--some of them--of those old enemies, but ready to fight together now, and as near shoulder to shoulder as the modern line of battle will allow.

Rivers, bronzed, quick-tempered, and of superb physique, met him at the station.

"You'll come right out to camp with me."

The town was thronged. There were gray slouched hats everywhere with little bra.s.s crosses pinned to them--tiny rifles, sabres, cannon--crosses that were not symbols of religion, unless this was a time when the Master's coming meant the sword. Under them were soldiers with big pistols and belts of big, gleaming cartridges--soldiers, white and black, everywhere--swaggering, ogling, and loud of voice, but all good-natured, orderly.

Inside the hotel the lobby was full of officers in uniform, scanning the yellow bulletin-boards, writing letters, chatting in groups; gray veterans of horse, foot, and artillery; company officers in from Western service--quiet young men with bronzed faces and keen eyes, like Rivers's--renewing old friendships and swapping experiences on the plains; subalterns down to the last graduating cla.s.s from West Point with slim waists, fresh faces, and nothing to swap yet but memories of the old school on the Hudson. In there he saw Grafton again and Lieutenant Sharpe, of the Tenth Colored Cavalry, whom he had seen in the Bluegra.s.s, and Rivers introduced him. He was surprised that Rivers, though a Southerner, had so little feeling on the question of negro soldiers; that many officers in the negro regiments were Southern; that Southerners were preferred because they understood the black man, and, for that reason, could better handle him. Sharpe presented both to his father, Colonel Sharpe, of the infantry, who was taking credit to himself, that, for the first time in his life, he allowed his band to play "Dixie" in camp after the Southerners in Congress had risen up and voted millions for the national defence. Colonel Sharpe spoke with some bitterness and Crittenden wondered. He never dreamed that there was any bitterness on the other side--why? How could a victor feel bitterness for a fallen foe? It was the one word he heard or was to hear about the old war from Federal or ex-Confederate. Indeed, he mistook a short, stout, careless appointee, Major Billings, with his negro servant, his Southern mustache and goatee and his pompous ways, for a genuine Southerner, and the Major, though from Vermont, seemed pleased.

But it was to the soldier outside that Crittenden's heart had been drawn, for it was his first stirring sight of the regular of his own land, and the soldier in him answered at once with a thrill. Waiting for Rivers, he stood in the door of the hotel, watching the strong men pa.s.s, and by and by he saw three coming down the street, arm in arm. On the edge of the light, the middle one, a low, thick-set, black-browed fellow, pushed his comrades away, fell drunkenly, and slipped loosely to the street, while the two stood above him in disgust. One of them was a mere boy and the other was a giant, with a lean face, so like Lincoln's that Crittenden started when the boy called impatiently:

"Pick him up, Abe."

The tall soldier stooped, and with one hand lifted the drunken man as lightly as though he had been a sack of wool, and the two caught him under the arms again. As they came on, both suddenly let go; the middle one straightened sharply, and all three saluted. Crittenden heard Rivers's voice at his ear:

"Report for this, Reynolds."

And the drunken soldier turned and rather sullenly saluted again.

"You'll come right out to camp with me," repeated Rivers.

And now out at the camp, next morning, a dozen trumpets were ringing out an emphatic complaint into Crittenden's sleeping ears:

"I can't git 'em up, I can't git 'em up, I can't git 'em up in the mornin', I can't git 'em up, I can't git 'em up, I can't git 'em up at all.

The corporal's worse than the sergeant, The sergeant's worse than the lieutenant, And the captain is worst of all."

This is as high up, apparently, as the private dares to go, unless he considers the somnolent iniquity of the Colonel quite beyond the range of the bugle. But the pathetic appeal was too much for Crittenden, and he got up, stepping into a fragrant foot-bath of cold dew and out to a dapple gray wash-basin that sat on three wooden stakes just outside.

Sousing his head, he sniffed in the chill air and, looking below him, took in, with pure mathematical delight, the working unit of the army as it came to life. The very camp was the symbol of order and system: a low hill, rising from a tiny stream below him in a series of natural terraces to the fringe of low pines behind him, and on these terraces officers and men sitting, according to rank; the white tepees of the privates and their tethered horses--camped in column of troops--stretching up the hill toward him; on the first terrace above and flanking the columns, the old-fashioned army tents of company officer and subaltern and the guidons in line--each captain with his lieutenants at the head of each company street; behind them and on the next terrace, the majors three--each facing the centre of his squadron.

And highest on top of the hill, and facing the centre of the regiment, the slate-coloured tent of the Colonel, commanding every foot of the camp.

"Yes," said a voice behind him, "and you'll find it just that way throughout the army."

Crittenden turned in surprise, and the ubiquitous Grafton went on as though the little trick of thought-reading were too unimportant for notice.

"Let's go down and take a look at things. This is my last day," Grafton went on, "and I'm out early. I go to Tampa to-morrow."

All the day before, as he travelled, Crittenden had seen the station thronged with eager countrymen--that must have been the way it was in the old war, he thought--and swarmed the thicker the farther he went south. And now, as the two started down the hill, he could see in the dusty road that ran through the old battlefield Southern interest and sympathy taking visible shape. For a hundred miles around, the human swarm had risen from the earth and was moving toward him on wagon, bicycle, horseback, foot; in omnibus, carriage, cart; in barges on wheels, with projecting additions, and other land-craft beyond cla.s.sification or description. And the people--the American Southerners; rich whites, whites well-to-do, poor white trash; good country folks, valley farmers; mountaineers--darkies, and the motley feminine horde that the soldier draws the world over--all moving along the road as far as he could see, and interspersed here and there in the long, low cloud of dust with a clanking troop of horse or a red rumbling battery--all coming to see the soldiers--the soldiers!

And the darkies! How they flocked and stared at their soldier-brethren with pathetic worship, dumb admiration, and, here and there, with a look of contemptuous resentment that was most curious. And how those dusky sons of Mars were drinking deep into their broad nostrils the incense wafted to them from hedge and highway.

For a moment Grafton stopped still, looking.

"Great!"

Below the Majors' terrace stood an old sergeant, with a gray mustache and a kind, blue eye. Each horse had his nose in a mouth-bag and was contentedly munching corn, while a trooper affectionately curried him from tip of ear to tip of tail.

"Horse ever first and man ever afterward is the trooper's law," said Grafton.

"I suppose you've got the best colonel in the army," he added to the soldier and with a wink at Crittenden.

"Yes, sir," said the guileless old Sergeant, quickly, and with perfect seriousness. "We have, sir, and I'm not sayin' a wor-rd against the rest, sir."

The Sergeant's voice was as kind as his face, and Grafton soon learned that he was called "the Governor" throughout the regiment--that he was a Kentuckian and a sharpshooter. He had seen twenty-seven years of service, and his ambition had been to become a sergeant of ordnance. He pa.s.sed his examination finally, but he was then a little too old. That almost broke the Sergeant's heart, but the hope of a fight, now, was fast healing it.

"I'm from Kentucky, too," said Crittenden. The old soldier turned quickly.

"I knew you were, sir."

This was too much for Grafton. "Now-how-on-earth--" and then he checked himself--it was not his business.

"You're a Crittenden."

"That's right," laughed the Kentuckian. The Sergeant turned. A soldier came up and asked some trifling question, with a searching look, Grafton observed, at Crittenden. Everyone looked at that man twice, thought Grafton, and he looked again himself. It was his manner, his bearing, the way his head was set on his shoulders, the plastic force of his striking face. But Crittenden saw only that the Sergeant answered the soldier as though he were talking to a superior. He had been watching the men closely--they might be his comrades some day--and, already, had noticed, with increasing surprise, the character of the men whom he saw as common soldiers--young, quiet, and above the average countryman in address and intelligence--and this man's face surprised him still more, as did his bearing. His face was dark, his eye was dark and penetrating and pa.s.sionate; his mouth was reckless and weak, his build was graceful, and his voice was low and even--the voice of a gentleman; he was the refined type of the Western gentleman-desperado, as Crittenden had imagined it from fiction and hearsay. As the soldier turned away, the old Sergeant saved him the question he was about to ask.

"He used to be an officer."

"Who--how's that?" asked Grafton, scenting "a story."

The old Sergeant checked himself at once, and added cautiously:

"He was a lieutenant in this regiment and he resigned. He just got back to-day, and he has enlisted as a private rather than risk not getting to Cuba at all. But, of course, he'll get his commission back again." The Sergeant's manner fooled neither Grafton nor Crittenden; both respected the old Sergeant's unwillingness to gossip about a man who had been his superior, and Grafton asked no more questions.