The Battle Ground Part 60

Over the field the beaten soldiers, in ragged gray uniforms, were lying beneath little bushes of sa.s.safras and sumach, and to the right a few campfires were burning in a shady thicket. The struggle was over, and each man had fallen where he stood, hopeless for the first time in four long years. Up and down the road groups of Federal hors.e.m.e.n trotted with cheerful unconcern, and now and then a private paused to make a remark in friendly tones; but the men beneath the bushes only stared with hollow eyes in answer--the blank stare of the defeated who have put their whole strength into the fight.

Taking out his jack-knife, Dan unfastened the flag from the hickory pole on which he had placed it, and began cutting it into little pieces, which he pa.s.sed to each man who had fought beneath its folds. The last bit he put into his own pocket, and trembling like one gone suddenly palsied, pa.s.sed from the midst of his silent comrades to a pine stump on the border of the woods. Here he sat down and looked hopelessly upon the scene before him--upon the littered roads and the great blue lines encircling the horizon.

So this was the end, he told himself, with a bitterness that choked him like a grip upon the throat, this the end of his boyish ardour, his dream of fame upon the battle-field, his four years of daily sacrifice and suffering. This was the end of the flag for which he was ready to give his life three days ago. With his youth, his strength, his very bread thrown into the scale, he sat now with wrecked body and blighted mind, and saw his future turn to decay before his manhood was well begun. Where was the old buoyant spirit he had brought with him into the fight? Gone forever, and in its place he found his maimed and trembling hands, and limbs weakened by starvation as by long fever. His virile youth was wasted in the slow struggle, his energy was sapped drop by drop; and at the last he saw himself burned out like the battle-fields, where the armies had closed and opened, leaving an impoverished and ruined soil. He had given himself for four years, and yet when the end came he had not earned so much as an empty t.i.tle to take home for his reward. The consciousness of a hard-fought fight was but the common portion of them all, from the greatest to the humblest on either side. As for him he had but done his duty like his comrades in the ranks, and by what right of merit should he have raised himself above their heads? Yes, this was the end, and he meant to face it standing with his back against the wall.

Down the road a line of Federal privates came driving an ox before them, and he eyed them gravely, wondering in a dazed way if the taste of victory had gone to their heads. Then he turned slowly, for a voice was speaking at his side, and a tall man in a long blue coat was building a little fire hard by.

"Your stomach's pretty empty, ain't it, Johnny?" he inquired, as he laid the sticks crosswise with precise movements, as if he had measured the length of each separate piece of wood. He was lean and rawboned, with a s.h.a.ggy red moustache and a wart on his left cheek. When he spoke he showed an even row of strong white teeth.

Dan looked at him with a kind of exhausted indignation.

"Well, it's been emptier," he returned shortly.

The man in blue struck a match and held it carefully to a dried pine branch, watching, with a serious face, as the flame licked the rosin from the crossed sticks. Then he placed a quart pot full of water on the coals, and turned to meet Dan's eyes, which had grown ravenous as he caught the scent of beef.

"You see we somehow thought you Johnnies would be hard up," he said in an offhand manner, "so we made up our minds we'd ask you to dinner and cut our rations square. Some of us are driving over an ox from camp, but as I was hanging round and saw you all by yourself on this old stump, I had a feeling that you were in need of a cup of coffee. You haven't tasted real coffee for some time, I guess."

The water was bubbling over and he measured out the coffee and poured it slowly into the quart cup. As the aroma filled the air, he opened his haversack and drew out a generous supply of raw beef which he broiled on little sticks, and laid on a spread of army biscuits. The larger share he offered to Dan with the steaming pot of coffee.

"I declare it'll do me downright good to see you eat," he said, with a hospitable gesture.

Dan sat down beside the bread and beef, and, for the next ten minutes, ate like a famished wolf, while the man in blue placidly regarded him. When he had finished he took out a little bag of Virginian tobacco and they smoked together beside the waning fire. A natural light returned gradually to Dan's eyes, and while the clouds of smoke rose high above the bushes, they talked of the last great battles as quietly as of the Punic Wars. It was all dead now, as dead as history, and the men who fought had left the bitterness to the camp followers or to the ones who stayed at home.

"You have fine tobacco down this way," observed the Union soldier, as he refilled his pipe, and lighted it with an ember. Then his gaze followed Dan's, which was resting on the long blue lines that stretched across the landscape.

"You're feeling right bad about us now," he pursued, as he crossed his legs and leaned back against a pine, "and I guess it's natural, but the time will come when you'll know that we weren't the worst you had to face."

Dan held out his hand with something of a smile.

"It was a fair fight and I can shake hands," he responded.

"Well, I don't mean that," said the other thoughtfully. "What I mean is just this, you mark my words--after the battle comes the vultures. After the army of fighters comes the army of those who haven't smelled the powder. And in time you'll learn that it isn't the man with the rifle that does the most of the mischief. The d.a.m.ned coffee boilers will get their hands in now--I know 'em."

"Well, there's nothing left, I suppose, but to swallow it down without any fuss," said Dan wearily, looking over the field where the slaughtered ox was roasting on a hundred bayonets at a hundred fires.

"You're right, that's the only thing," agreed the man in blue; then his keen gray eyes were on Dan's face.

"Have you got a wife?" he asked bluntly.

Dan shook his head as he stared gravely at the embers.

"A sweetheart, I guess? I never met a Johnnie who didn't have a sweetheart."

"Yes, I've a sweetheart--G.o.d bless her!"

"Well, you take my advice and go home and tell her to cure you, now she's got the chance. I like your face, young man, but if I ever saw a half-starved and sickly one, it is yours. Why, I shouldn't have thought you had the strength to raise your rifle."

"Oh, it doesn't take much strength for that; and besides the coffee did me good, I was only hungry."

"Hungry, hump!" grunted the Union soldier. "It takes more than hunger to give a man that blue look about the lips; it takes downright starvation."

He dived into his haversack and drew out a quinine pill and a little bottle of whiskey.

"If you'll just chuck this down it won't do you any harm," he went on, "and if I were you, I'd find a shelter before I went to sleep to-night; you can't trust April weather. Get into that cow shed over there or under a wagon."

Dan swallowed the quinine and the whiskey, and as the strong spirit fired his veins, the utter hopelessness of his outlook m.u.f.fled him into silence.

Dropping his head into his open palms, he sat dully staring at the whitening ashes.

After a moment the man in blue rose to his feet and fastened his haversack.

"I live up by Bethlehem, New Hampshire," he remarked, "and if you ever come that way, I hope you'll look me up; my name's Moriarty."

"Your name's Moriarty, I shall remember," repeated Dan, trying, with a terrible effort, to steady his quivering limbs.

"Jim Moriarty, don't you forget it. Anybody at Bethlehem can tell you about me; I keep the biggest store around there." He went off a few steps and then came back to hold out an awkward hand in which there was a little heap of silver.

"You'd just better take this to start you on your way," he said, "it ain't but ninety-five cents--I couldn't make out the dollar--and when you get it in again you can send it to Jim Moriarty at Bethlehem, New Hampshire.

Good-by, and good luck to you this time."

He strode off across the field, and Dan, with the silver held close in his palm, flung himself back upon the ground and slept until Pinetop woke him with a grasp upon his shoulder.

"Ma.r.s.e Robert's pa.s.sin' along the road," he said. "You'd better hurry."

Struggling to his feet Dan rushed from the woods across the deserted field, to the lines of conquered soldiers standing in battle ranks upon the roadside. Between them the Commander had pa.s.sed slowly on his dapple gray horse, and when Dan joined the ranks it was only in time to see him ride onward at a walk, with the bearded soldiers clinging like children to his stirrups. A group of Federal cavalrymen, drawn up beneath a persimmon tree, uncovered as he went by, and he returned the salute with a simple gesture.

Lonely, patient, confirmed in courtesy, he pa.s.sed on his way, and his little army returned to camp in the strip of pines.

"'I've done my best for you,' that's what he said," sobbed Pinetop. "'I've done my best for you,'--and I kissed old Traveller's mane."

Without replying, Dan went back into the woods and flung himself down on the spread of tags. Now that the fight was over all the exhaustion of the last four years, the weakness after many battles, the weariness after the long marches, had gathered with acc.u.mulated strength for the final overthrow.

For three days he remained in camp in the pine woods, and on the third, after waiting six hours in a hard rain outside his General's tent, he secured the little printed slip which signified to all whom it might concern that he had become a prisoner upon his parole. Then, after a sympathetic word to the rest of the division, shivering beneath the sa.s.safras bushes before the tent, he shook hands with his comrades under arms, and started with Pinetop down the muddy road. The war was over, and footsore, in rags and with aching limbs, he was returning to the little valley where he had hoped to trail his glory.

Down the long road the gray rain fell straight as a curtain, and on either side tramped the lines of beaten soldiers who were marching, on their word of honour, to their distant homes. The abandoned guns sunk deep in the mud, the shivering men lying in rags beneath the bushes, and the charred remains of campfires among the trees were the last memories Dan carried from the four years' war.

Some miles farther on, when the pickets had been pa.s.sed, a man on a black horse rode suddenly from a little thicket and stopped across their path.

"You fellows haven't been such darn fools as to give your parole, have you?" he asked in an angry voice, his hand on his horse's neck. "The fight isn't over yet and we want your muskets on our side. I belong to the partisan rangers, and we'll cut through to Johnston's army before daylight.

If not, we'll take to the mountains and keep up the war forever. The country is ours, what's to hinder us?"

He spoke pa.s.sionately, and at each sharp exclamation the black horse rose on his haunches and pawed the air.

Dan shook his head.

"I'm out on parole," he replied, "but as soon as I'm exchanged, I'll fight if Virginia wants me. How about you, Pinetop?"

The mountaineer shuffled his feet in the mud and stood solemnly surveying the landscape.

"Wall, I don't understand much about this here parole business," he replied. "It seems to me that a slip of paper with printed words on it that I have to spell out as I go, is a mighty poor way to keep a man from fightin' if he can find a musket. I ain't steddyin' about this parole, but Ma.r.s.e Robert told me to go home to plant my crop, and I am goin' home to plant it."

"It is all over, I think," said Dan with a quivering lip, as he stared at the ruined meadows. The smart was still fresh, and it was too soon for him to add, with the knowledge that would come to him from years,--"it is better so." Despite the grim struggle and the wasted strength, despite the impoverished land and the nameless graves that filled it, despite even his own wrecked youth and the hard-fought fields where he had laid it down--despite all these a shadow was lifted from his people and it was worth the price.