The Battle Ground Part 59

For answer Pinetop felt in his pocket and brought out a slice of fat bacon, which he gave to him uncooked.

"Wait till I git a light," he commanded. "A woman up the road gave me a hunk, and I've had my share."

"You've had your share," repeated Dan, greedily, his eyes on the meat, though he knew that Pinetop was lying.

The mountaineer struck a match and lighted a bit of pine, holding the bacon to the flame until it scorched.

"You'd better git it all in yo' mouth quick," he advised, "for if the smell once starts on the breeze the whole brigade will be on the scent in a minute."

Dan ate it to the last morsel and licked the warm juice from his fingers.

"You lied, Pinetop," he said, "but, by G.o.d, you saved my life. What place is this, I wonder. Isn't there any hope of our cutting through Grant's lines to-day?"

Pinetop glanced about him.

"Somebody said we were comin' on to Sailor's Creek," he answered, "and it's about as G.o.d-forsaken country as I care to see. h.e.l.lo! what's that?"

In the road there was an abandoned battery, cut down and left to rot into the earth, and as they swept past it at "double quick," they heard the sound of rapid firing across the little stream.

"It's a fight, thank G.o.d!" yelled Pinetop, and at the words a tumultuous joy urged Dan through the water and over the sharp stones. After all the hunger and the intolerable waiting, a chance was come for him to use his musket once again.

As they pa.s.sed through an open meadow, a rabbit, starting suddenly from a clump of sumach, went bounding through the long gra.s.s before the thin gray line. With ears erect and short white tail bobbing among the broom-sedge, the little quivering creature darted straight toward the low brow of a hill, where a squadron of cavalry made a blue patch on the green.

"Geriminy! thar goes a good dinner," Pinetop gasped, smacking his lips.

"An' I've got to save this here load for a Yankee I can't eat."

With a long flying leap the rabbit led the charge straight into the enemy's ranks, and as the squirrel rifles rang out behind it, a blue horseman was swept from every saddle upon the hill.

"By G.o.d, I'm glad I didn't eat that rabbit!" yelled Pinetop, as he reloaded and raised his musket to his shoulder.

Back and forth before the line, the general of the brigade was riding bareheaded and frantic with delight. As he pa.s.sed he made sweeping gestures with his left hand, and his long gray hair floated like a banner upon the wind.

"They're coming, men!" he cried. "Get behind that fence and have your muskets ready to pick your man. When you see the whites of his eyes fire, and give the bayonet. They're coming! Here they are!"

The old "worm" fence went down, and as Dan piled up some loose rails before him, a creeping brier tore his fingers until the blood spurted upon his sleeve. Then, kneeling on the ground, he raised his musket and fired at one of the skirmishers advancing briskly through the broom-sedge. In an instant the meadow and the hill beyond were blue with swarming infantry, and the little gray band fell back, step by step, loading and firing as it went across the field. As the road behind it closed, Dan turned to battle on his own account, and entering a thinned growth of pines, he dodged from tree to tree and aimed above the brushwood. Near him the colour bearer of the regiment was fighting with his flagstaff for a weapon, and out in the meadow a member of the glee club, crouching behind a clump of sa.s.safras as he loaded, was singing in a cracked voice:--

"Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again!"

Then a bullet went with a soft thud into the singer's breast, and the cracked voice was choked out beneath the bushes.

Gripped by a sudden pity for the helpless flag he had loved and followed for four years, Dan made an impetuous dash from out the pines, and tearing the colours from the pole, tossed them over his arm as he retreated rapidly to cover. At the instant he held his life as nothing beside the faded strip of silk that wrapped about his body. The cause for which he had fought, the great captain he had followed, the devotion to a single end which had kept him struggling in the ranks, the daily sacrifice, the very poverty and cold and hunger, all these were bound up and made one with the tattered flag upon his arm. Through the belt of pines, down the muddy road, across the creek and up the long hill, he fell back breathlessly, loading and firing as he went, with his face turned toward the enemy. At the end he became like a fox before the hunters, dashing madly over the rough ground, with the colours blown out behind him, and the quick shots ringing in his ears.

Then, as if by a single stroke, Lee's army vanished from the trampled broom-sedge and the strip of pines. The blue brigades closed upon the landscape and when they opened there were only a group of sullen prisoners and the sound of stray shots from the scattered soldiers who had fought their way beyond the stream.

IX

IN THE HOUR OF DEFEAT

As the dusk fell Dan found himself on the road with a little company of stragglers, flying from the pursuing cavalry that drew off slowly as the darkness gathered. He had lost his regiment, and, as he went on, he began calling out familiar names, listening with strained ears for an answer that would tell of a friend's escape. At last he caught the outlines of a gigantic figure relieved on a hillock against the pale green west, and, with a shout, he hurried through the swarm of fugitives, and overtook Pinetop, who had stooped to tie his shoe on with a leather strap.

"Thank G.o.d, old man!" he cried. "Where are the others?"

Pinetop, panting yet imperturbable, held out a steady hand.

"The Lord knows," he replied. "Some of 'em air here an' some ain't. I was goin' back agin to git the flag, when I saw you chased like a fox across the creek with it hangin' on yo' back. Then I kinder thought it wouldn't do for none of the regiment to answer when Ma.r.s.e Robert called, so I came along right fast and kep' hopin' you would follow."

"Here I am," responded Dan, "and here are the colours." He twined the silk more closely about his arm, gloating over his treasure in the twilight.

Pinetop stretched out his great rough hand and touched the flag as gently as if it were a woman.

"I've fought under this here thing goin' on four years now," he said, "and I reckon when they take it prisoner, they take me along with it."

"And me," added Dan; "poor Granger went down, you know, just as I took it from him. He fell fighting with the pole."

"Wall, it's a better way than most," Pinetop replied, "an' when the angel begins to foot up my account on Jedgment Day, I shouldn't mind his cappin'

the whole list with 'he lost his life, but he didn't lose his flag.' To make a blamed good fight is what the Lord wants of us, I reckon, or he wouldn't have made our hands itch so when they touch a musket."

Then they trudged on silently, weak from hunger, sickened by defeat. When, at last, the disorganized column halted, and the men fell to the ground upon their rifles, Dan kindled a fire and parched his corn above the coals.

After it was eaten they lay down side by side and slept peacefully on the edge of an old field.

For three days they marched steadily onward, securing meagre rations in a little town where they rested for a while, and pausing from time to time, to beat off a feigned attack. Pinetop, cheerful, strong, undaunted by any hardship, set his face unflinchingly toward the battle that must clear a road for them through Grant's lines. Had he met alone a squadron of cavalry in the field, he would, probably, have taken his stand against a pine, and aimed his musket as coolly as if a squirrel were the mark. With his sunny temper, and his gloomy gospel of predestination, his heart could swell with hope even while he fought single-handed in the face of big battalions. What concerned him, after all, was not so much the chance of an ultimate victory for the cause, as the determination in his own mind to fight it out as long as he had a cartridge remaining in his box. As his fathers had kept the frontier, so he meant, on his own account, to keep Virginia.

On the afternoon of the third day, as the little company drew near to Appomattox Court House, it found the road blocked with abandoned guns, and lined by exhausted stragglers, who had gone down at the last halting place.

As it filed into an open field beyond a wooded level, where a few campfires glimmered, a group of Federal hors.e.m.e.n clattered across the front, and, as if by instinct, the column formed into battle line, and the hand of every man was on the trigger of his musket.

"Don't fire, you fools!" called an officer behind them, in a voice sharp with irritation. "The army has surrendered!"

"What! Grant surrendered?" thundered the line, with muskets at a trail as it rushed into the open.

"No, you blasted fools--we've surrendered," shouted the voice, rising hoa.r.s.ely in a gasping indignation.

"Surrendered, the deuce!" scoffed the men, as they fell back into ranks.

"I'd like to know what General Lee will think of your surrender?"

A little Colonel, with his hand at his sword hilt, strutted up and down before a tangle of dead thistles.

"I don't know what he thinks of it, he did it," he shrieked, without pausing in his walk.

"It's a d.a.m.n lie!" cried Dan, in a white heat. Then he threw his musket on the ground, and fell to sobbing the dry tearless sobs of a man who feels his heart crushed by a sudden blow.

There were tears on all the faces round him, and Pinetop was digging his great fists into his eyes, as a child does who has been punished before his playmates. Beside him a man with an untrimmed s.h.a.ggy beard hid his distorted features in shaking hands.

"I ain't blubberin' fur myself," he said defiantly, "but--O Lord, boys--I'm cryin' fur Ma.r.s.e Robert."