The Code of the Mountains Part 23

CHAPTER XIX

That inflexible grip which the service takes upon its units and fractions of units, had slowly and unconsciously altered the view-point of The Fifth Kentucky foot. Back there in the stagnant riffle of a life which for a century had not taken a forward step, their motto had been, "Let us alone," and every man had been a law to himself; despot over his own affairs and the affairs of his family. Now, because they obeyed in a common cause and of their own volition, obedience no longer irked them, and they had come to think of themselves less as individuals than as bricks mortared together in a military arch.

The second day after the outbreak of insurrection pa.s.sed with no greater excitement than occasional and desultory firing from the front. Night fell with utter quiet as though both armies were exhausted and ready for sleep. The stars overhead were bright and close, and the men, sprawling on the earth, were thinking softened thoughts, or crouching around campfires in rehearsal of recent events.

Near the spot where Newt Spooner lay stretched on his blanket, a bearded, gaunt man, with a sprinkling of gray in his beard, was writing a letter home. It was Uncle Jerry Belmear, whose forge and smithy stood at the forks of Squabble Creek. The yellow flare from a shaded lantern fell in sharp high lights on his lean cheekbones and on the cramped hand, laboriously pushing its pencil. His lips moved, automatically spelling out the words of difficult composition. Newt was watching him with the reflection that there was nowhere anyone to whom he himself could send a thrill of pleasure with a letter. Then, since strange influences were working in the boy's starved heart, he wondered if, after all, "Clem's gal" might not be glad to hear from him. Minerva was "eddicated," and in her head were cogitations which he could never hope to comprehend. She took medals for "larnin'"--he ground his teeth as he thought from whose hand she had taken one. He was ignorant and "pizen-mean." The contrast was obvious. Yet, she had looked at him with a friendly glance, and had been grateful for his championship.

But these idle thoughts were violently interrupted by a sudden staccato outburst and the darting of Mauser tongues through the dark. Rec.u.mbent figures came to their feet. Uncle Jerry Belmear rose with the half-finished letter in his hand, and as he stood up he was struck. Had the same man been wounded in a charge or lying in his trench, he would have fallen silently, but that messenger out of the night, coming when his thoughts were all back in the silent c.u.mberlands, startled him into outcry. He wheeled, and from his lips broke a sound that started as an oath and ended in a weird shriek, heard along the whole battalion front.

As though they had wanted only that cue, the battalion, hitherto patient to await orders, sprang to the trenches and began pumping their Springfields frantically into the night. Buglers were madly blowing "Cease firing"; officers and sergeants were carrying profanity and strong language the length of the line, but the panic spirit had to spend itself before the men heard or obeyed--and realized with chagrin that stray bullets had upset them.

But that mild disgrace of showing nerves, instead of nerve, must be lived down, and it served to put the newly made veterans the more on their mettle.

Almost every day that followed brought its clash with the enemy, and once or twice the Shirt-tailers came into hand-to-hand struggles, where it was bayonet and b.u.t.t, and "fist and skull," and where their barbaric yell drowned the bugles. They grew accustomed to the thunderous roar with which the cruisers in the harbor sh.e.l.led the Insurgent positions in preparation for their advance, and so day by day, and step by step, the still parallel lines of the brown men gave back, and those of the American force hitched forward.

And in these, by no means idle days, the word went abroad among them that they were only waiting here to be relieved by fresh troops from the States, and were to be a part of the force designated to push on to the Insurgent capital.

But the rumor went ahead of the actuality. Sometimes there were days of quiet and even brief informal truces at certain sections of the front, when the open rice-fields became a common playground. Then the straw hats that had heretofore bobbed up only to fire and bob down again, moved about in the open, and watched the _Americanos_ playing baseball.

Once a band came out from Manila, and, when the heat of the day was spent, gave a concert in the rice-fields, and at its end, as the national air swelled out and the troops from home stood at attention and uncovered, the straw hats across the open fields were also doffed.

Though he did not quite understand why, that incident caused a strange and new emotion to pulse through the arteries of Private Newton Spooner; an emotion in no way kin to the "pizen-meanness" for which he was justly notorious. But the courteous enemy never allowed these pleasant recesses to endure long, and after a lesson or two in treachery they ended.

At last came the forward movement, the rush into native towns across their defenses, the pursuit of fleeing insurgents, and the glare in the sky as the nipa houses went up in flame; and the lying down at night in bivouac under the stars. In due course followed the end of state-troop days and the organization of new regiments of United States volunteers.

Yet, this was more a change in the technical than the real, for while the Fifth Kentucky ceased to exist and the Shirt-tail battalion was no more, most of the men who had comprised the command were again together in the Twenty-sixth Volunteers, and the men from the hills still followed Major Henry Falkins.

Young Manly Fulton had returned to Louisville with a degree from Harvard University and an ambition to become a journalist. At the newspaper office where he was carried exceedingly near the bottom of the pay-roll, he was cla.s.sed as a cub whose value no one took seriously save himself.

In the course of time, it entered the mind of young Fulton that a visit to the schools and "colleges" of the c.u.mberlands would make a "feature-story" of general interest. He heard of young people, and older people, too, who were struggling to shake off the bonds of a century-old illiteracy, so he confided to his Sunday editor that herein lay, ready to hand, a subject with genuine "heart-interest." The Sunday editor laughed, and explained that this story had been often written, but, if the reporter wished to ring one more change on an old theme, he might go--at his own expense. So the young man went to Jackson, and from Jackson, with mule and saddle-bags, to the college on Fist-fight Creek.

As the princ.i.p.al was showing him over the place, a girl pa.s.sed through the library, and the "furriner" was presented.

The girl looked unwaveringly into his eyes as the professor smilingly said, "This is Miss Minerva Rawlins; one of our native-born. We are rather proud of Miss Rawlins." Manly Fulton looked back at her, and his clean-cut young face for some reason flushed. He had heard much of the slatternly women of the hills, women who bore drudgery and children, and early became hags. Now, he found himself being put at ease by a young creature who carried herself like a G.o.ddess, and whose eyes shielded, behind a nave reserve, the truant impulse to twinkle into amus.e.m.e.nt at his evident confusion.

Later, the head of the faculty suggested:

"If you want to see and appreciate the full contrast between the school-life and home-life of these people, persuade Miss Rawlins to play guide for you along Troublesome. To-morrow is Sat.u.r.day, and she will be riding home. Why don't you ride with her?"

So, when "Clem's gal" started across the mountains, the young man rode at her side, listening eagerly to the new point of view that her speech developed, and marveling at the life he saw about him; a life in which he seemed to have stepped back a century. It was all wonderful, for spring had come to the hills and kissed them, and they were smiling with a smile of blossom and young leaf, and whispering with soft breezes and the singing of crystal waters.

For a time, her conversation was, "Yes, sir," and, "No, sir"; for, though at first it had been himself who was embarra.s.sed, it was now she, and so, until she discovered how boyish and frank he was, she eyed him with shy and sidelong glances. But, at last, she began to reveal a flower-like personality which was altogether charming, strangely blended with a gravely mature point of view. Her language, partly the hard-conned "proper speaking" of the school, and partly idiom, amused him with its quaint out-cropping of Elizabethan phrases, which fell in tripping unconsciousness from her lips.

When near sundown they came to her cabin, he felt the girl's embarra.s.sed eyes on him as her father invited him "to light an' stay all night." And at table, though his stomach revolted against the greasy and uninviting fare, he knew that, as she served him standing, her eyes were fixed upon him. He caught the high-chinned courage of her unapologetic loyalty, even to swinish blood, and gamely bolted his food with mock relish.

"G.o.d!" thought the boy, as he vainly tried to sleep that night in the swelter of the over-crowded cabin. "What a life it must be for her! And yet," he added, "what escape is there?"

The next day, she took him rambling along creek-beds where she had friends among the early flowers and ferns and budding things and the feathered and singing things. She was in an unusually light and gay mood, and chattered until he felt that he was in an enchanted forest, and through her talk, which was all of birds and blossoms and woodland mysteries, he caught brief flashes of insight into herself.

"Do you know," he suddenly demanded, looking up from a mossy place where he was gathering violets, "that you are a rather wonderful sort of person?"

She stood over him, slender, and simply garbed in a blue calico dress and a blue calico sun-bonnet. Into her belt she had thrust a cl.u.s.ter of violets, and her eyes, which were closely akin to their petals, grew suddenly serious. The corners of her lips drooped in wistfulness.

"Am I?" she questioned gravely. It was the nearest thing to a compliment that had come her way.

"Yes," he a.s.serted, rising to his feet. "Anywhere else in the world people would be wild about you, and here whom do you see? You know the verses, 'full many a flower was born to blush unseen.' Don't be one of them."

"How am I going to help it?" she asked him simply. He did not respond, because he was asking himself the same question. But, when that only visitor from the outside world had ridden away, the place seemed rather empty and desolate to the girl, and she sat alone in the spring woods while some voice insistently queried, "How can you help yourself?" She would marry no man who was ashamed of her people, even if such a man should come to woo her, and no man whom she would care to marry could well escape being ashamed of her people. Only one man had she ever known who seemed to feel for her a sort of reverence; to look up to her as superior to himself. That man had been very rough and wolfish in his championship--and that man had been a felon!

If some man might come who felt that way, and yet who had a living and enlightened soul; if such a man should say, "I love you--"

"Clem's gal" bent forward and pressed her fingers against her temples.

"Oh, G.o.d!" she whispered.

Long ago Malolas had been taken, and the armies of Emilio Aguinaldo were giving back. Soon was to come the second and longer phase of the insurrection: that of the guerilla days. But as yet there were still occasions of battle.

The enemy lay one day with his trench-tops commanding a steep river-bank and a deep, swiftly-flowing current of tawny water, adding defense to his front. Half-way across this stream the broken abutments and twisted girders of a dynamited railroad bridge showed his preparations for attack. Yet both river and trenches must be crossed, and the 26th Volunteers had come, among others, to do it. A small mortar was merrily tossing sh.e.l.ls across the way, but they fell on roofs devised of the rails from the uptorn track, and fell for the most part harmless. One small section of the earth-works was unroofed, and from it the mortar had driven the Insurgents. That troubled the enemy only because it was the one loop-holed portion of the defenses and consequently more healthful for riflemen.

A few strong swimmers might carry a rope across, thought Major Falkins, and attach its loose end to the bamboo stakes which went up at the very edge of the trench-embankments, provided they could live long enough.

Killing is quicker work than swimming in a strong current. But, if three started and one arrived, his fellows could follow in the few leaky barges that were available. These barges could cross, if at all, only by rope-ferry. The current set its veto on any use of oars. For such character of work a "suicide squad" is asked to nominate itself, and among those who responded was Corporal Newton Spooner, formerly Private Newton Spooner of the Shirt-tailers, and before that, No. 813 at Frankfort.

As the boy stripped off his khaki and stood naked behind a screening tangle of riverside growth, several machine-guns and the musketry of the regiment were preparing to give him at least a noisy end.

Major Falkins stood by, coaching the three swimmers as a trainer coaches his jockey when the saddling bugle sounds in the paddock.

"Watch the rope," commanded the major briefly. "Swim in single file, and not too close together." He turned to Newt, who happened to be standing nearest him.

"It's going to be mean work, Spooner," he said in a low voice; "I hate to order it."

Corporal Spooner saluted, but his eyes narrowed and glittered with a light venomously serpent-like.

"I reckon," he said in a guardedly low voice, which only the major heard, "you'd like to see me peg out, wouldn't you? But I ain't goin' to do it. I'm goin' to live long enough to finish a job I've got to attend to yet. I reckon you know what it is."

Then he slipped without a splash into the water, for he was to lead the little procession. The major raised his hand in signal, and the spattering roar became a solid thunder. Rapid-fire guns, mortar and Krags played on the earth-works. Every Shirt-tailer was sighting as though for a sharp-shooter's medal--carefully, deliberately. A scathe of lead raked the trench tops, under which every brown head went down and stayed cautiously invisible. With strong, sure strokes the three naked men shot out into the stream and past its center--seemingly un.o.bserved.

It began to look as though they would gain the other side unseen by the enemy. But suddenly, from the loop-holed section, came spiteful little squirts of fire. Against that fire only the mortar could cope--and the mortar had turned its attention elsewhere. Tiny geysers kicked themselves up where the Mauser bullets struck and skipped on the water.

The roar from the Shirt-tailers rose in louder indignation, and the crew serving the mortar was feverishly refinding the range. A few more strokes, and the three men fighting the current would be safe in the lee of the steep bank--but the little geysers were multiplying. The third man suddenly turned his face backward over his shoulder, and shook his head. He raised a hand as one who waves farewell at a railroad station, and went down. Corporal Spooner and the other man were reaching out to grasp the projecting roots that fringed the opposite sh.o.r.e, but, as the second man crawled up on the bank, there appeared on his naked flesh a constantly spreading splotch of crimson. Corporal Spooner paused to drag him under cover, then proceeded to tie the rope and--safe, because of his very proximity--sat down, panting, to wait.

CHAPTER XX

Two general officers were eye-witnesses to that river crossing; they chatted about it over the cable with the government at Washington. Major Falkins, too, who had conceived the plan and crossed in the first barge, before the mortar got the exact range of the loop-holed breast-works, was also mentioned in these despatches. Later, both the major and corporal were given the Medal of Honor, and Newt became Sergeant Spooner, whereat the Deacon, now battalion sergeant-major, patted him approvingly on the back. But fate sometimes indulges in satiric contrasts. One afternoon, when the rush on a trench was over, and had been so mild an affair that the men felt like a fire company turning out to a false alarm, the last straggling volley from the routed enemy dropped both the major and the new sergeant in the stubble.

Newt's hurt was a shattered arm, but the superior officer had an ugly hole torn through one lung, over which the field surgeons shook their heads and whispered things about grave complications. Both were jolted back in wagons to the railroad.