The Red Acorn Part 10

"Quite natural; quite natural."

"For example, how have the fatigues and pains of my afternoon's chopping contributed a particle toward the suppression of the rebellion? What have my blistered hands to do with the hurts of actual conflict?"

"Let us admit that the connection is somewhat obscure," said Doctor Denslow, philosophically.

"It is easier for you, than for me, to view the matter calmly. Your hands are unhurt. I am the galled jade whose withers are wrung."

"Body and spirit both bruised?" said the Surgeon, half reflectively.

Harry colored. "Yes," he said, rather defiantly. "In addition to desiring to serve my country, I want to vindicate my manhood from some aspersions which have been cast upon it."

"Quite a fair showing of motives. Better, perhaps, than usual, when a careful weighing of the relative proportions of self-esteem, self-interest and higher impulses is made."

"I am free to say that the discouragements I have met with are very different, and perhaps much greater than I contemplated. Nor can I bring myself to belive that they are necessary. I am trying to be entirely willing to peril life and limb on the field of battle, but instead of placing me where I can do this, and allowing me to concentrate all my energies upon that object, I am kept for months chafing under the petty tyrannies of a bullying officer, and deprived of most of the comforts that I have heretofore regarded as necessary to my existence. What good can be accomplished by diverting forces which should be devoted to the main struggle into this ign.o.ble channel? That's what puzzles and irritates me."

"It seems to be one of the inseparable conditions of the higher forms of achievement that they require vastly more preparation for them than the labor of doing them."

"That's no doubt very philosophical, but it's not satisfactory, for all that."

"My dear boy, learn this grand truth now: That philosophy is never satisfactory; it is only mitigatory. It consists mainly in saying with many fine words: 'What can't be cured must be endured.'"

"I presume that is so. I wish, though, that by the mere syaing so, I could make the endurance easier."

"I can make your lot in the service easier."

"Indeed! how so?"

"By having you appointed my Hospital Steward. I have not secured one yet, and the man who is acting as such is so intemperate that I feel a fresh sense of escape with every day that pa.s.ses without his mistaking the oxalic acid for Epsom salts, to the destruction of some earnest but constipated young patriot's whole digestive viscera.

"If you accept this position," continued the Surgeon, flinging away his refractory cigar in disgust, and rising to get a fresh one, "you will have the best rank and pay of any non-commissioned officer in the regiment; better, indeed, than that of a Second Lieutenant. You will have your quarters here with me, and be compelled to a.s.sociate with no one but me, thus reducing your disagreeable companions at a single stroke, to one. And you will escape finally from all subserviency to Lieutenant Alspaugh, or indeed to any other officer in the regiment, except your humble servant. As to food, you will mess with me."

"Those are certainly very strong inducements," said Harry, meditating upon the delightfulness of relief from the myriad of rasping little annoyances which rendered every day of camp-life an infliction.

"Yes, and still farther, you will never need to go under fire, or expose yourself to danger of any kind, unless you choose to."

Harry's face crimsoned to the hue of the western sky where the sun was just going down. He started to answer hotly, but an understanding of the Surgeon's evident kindness and sincerity interposed to deter him. He knew there was no shaft of sarcasm hidden below this plain speech, and after a moment's consideration he replied:

"I am very grateful, I a.s.sure you, for your kindness in this matter. I am strongly tempted to accept your offer, bu there are still stronger reasons why I should decline it."

"May I ask your reasons?"

"My reasons for not accepting the appointment?"

"Yes, the reasons which impel you to prefer a dinner of bitter herbs, under Mr. Alspaugh's usually soiled thumb, to a stalled ox and my profitable society," said the Surgeon, gayly.

Harry hesitated a moment, and then decided to speak frankly. "Yes," he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of grat.i.tude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things. I feel that I no longer have a choice in the matter; I must do it. But there goes the drum for roll-call. I must go. Good evening, and very many thanks."

"The young fellow's no callow milksop, after all," said the Surgeon Denslow, as his eyes followed Harry's retreating form. "His gristle is hardening into something like his stern old father's backbone."

Chapter IX. On the March.

"He smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the Captains and the shouting."

-- Job.

The weary weeks in Camp of Instruction ended with the Summer.

September had come, and Nature was hanging out crimson battle-flags every-where--on the swaying poppy and the heavy-odored geranium. The sumach and the sa.s.safras wore crimson signals of defiance, and the maples blazed with the gaudy red, yellow and orange of warlike pomp.

The regiment made its first step on Kentucky soil with a little bit of pardonable ostentation. Every one looked upon it as the real beginning of its military career. When the transport was securely tied up at the wharf, the Colonel mounted his horse, drew his sword, placed himself at the head of the regiment, and gave the command "Forward." Eleven hundred superb young fellows, marching four abrest, with bayonets fixed, and muskets at "right shoulder shift," strode up the bank after him and went into line of battle at the top, where he made a short soldierly speech, the drums rolled, the colors dipped, the men cheered, and the band played "Star-spangled Banner" and "Dixie."

Three years later the two hundred survivors of this number returning from their "Veteran furlough," without a band and with their tattered colors carefully cased, came off a transport at the same place, without uttering a word other than a little grumbling at the trouble of disposing of some baggage, marched swiftly and silently up the bank, and disappeared before any one fairly realized that they were there. So much had Time and War taught them.

"Now our work may be said to be fairly begun." said the Colonel, turning from the contemplation of his regiment, and scanning anxiously the tops of the distant line of encircling hills, as if he expected to see there signs of the Rebels in strong force. All the rest imitated his example, and studied the horizon solicitously. "And I expect we shall have plenty of it!" continued the Colonel.

"No doubt of that," answered the Major. "They say the Rebels are filling Kentucky with troops, and going to fight for every foot of the Old Dark and b.l.o.o.d.y Ground. I think we will have to earn all we get of it."

"To-day's papers report," joined in Surgeon Denslow, "that General Sherman says it will take two hundred thousand troops to redeem Kentucky."

"Yes," broke in the Colonel testily, "and the same papers agree in p.r.o.nouncing Sherman crazy. But no matter how many or how few it takes, that's none of our affair. We've got eleven hundred good men in ranks, and we're going to do all that eleven hundred good men can do. G.o.d Almighty and Abe Lincoln have got to take care of the rest."

It will be seen that the Colonel was a very practical soldier.

"First think we know, the Colonel will be trying to make us 'leven hundred clean out 'leven thousand Rebs," growled Abe Bolton.

"Suppose the Colonel should imagine himself another Leonidas, and us his Spartan band, and want us to die around him, and start another Thermopylae down her in the mountains, some place," suggested Kent Edwards, "you would cheerfully pa.s.s in your checks along with the rest, so as to make the thing an entire success, wouldn't you?"

"The day I'm sent below, I'll take a pile of Rebs along to keep me company," answered Abe, surlily.

Glen, standing in the rear of his company in his place as file-closer, listened to these words, and saw in the dim distance and on the darkling heights the throngs of fierce enemies and avalanches of impeding dangers as are likely to oppress the imagination of a young soldier at such unfavorable moments. The conflict and carnage seemed so imminent that he half expected it to begin that very night, and he stiffened his sinews for the shock.

Lieutenant Alspaugh also heard, studied over the unwelcome possibilities shrouded in the gathering gloom of the distance, and regretted that he had not, before crossing the Ohio, called the Surgeon's attention to some premonitory symptoms of rheumatism, which he felt he might desire to develop into an acute attack in the event of danger a.s.suming an unpleasant proximity.

But as no Rebels appeared on the sweeping semi-circle of hills that shut in Convington on the south, he concluded to hold his disability in abeyance, by a strong effort of the will, until the regiment had penetrated farther into the enemy's country.

For days the regiment marched steadily on through the wonderfully lovely Blue Gra.s.s Region, toward the interior of the State, without coming into the neighborhood of any organized body of the Rebels.

Glen's first tremors upon crossing the Ohio subsided so as to permit him to thoroughly enjoy the beauties of the scenery, and the pleasures of out-door life in a region so attractive at that season of the year.

The turnpike, hard and smooth as a city pavement, wound over and around romantic hills--hills crowned with cedar and evergreen laurel, and scarred with cliffs and caverns. It pa.s.sed through forests, aromatic with ripening nuts and changing leaves, and glorious in the colors of early Autumn. Then its course would traverse farms of gracefully undulating acres, bounded by substantial stone-walls, marked by winding streams of pure spring water, centering around great roomy houses, with huge outside chimneys, and broad piazzas, and with a train of humble negro cabins in the rear. The horses were proud stepping thoroughbreds, the women comely and spirited, the men dignified and athletic, and all seemed well-fed and comfortable. The names of the places along the route recalled to Harry's memory all he had ever read of the desperate battles and ma.s.sacres and single-handed encounters of Daniel Boone and his a.s.sociates, with the Indians in the early history of the country.

"This certainly seems an ideal pastoral land--a place where one would naturally locate a charming idyl or bucolic love-story!" he said one evening, to Surgeon Paul Denslow, after descanting at length upon the beauties of the country which they were "redeeming" from the hands of the Rebels.

"Yes," answered Dr. Denslow, "and it's as dull and sleepy and non-progressive as all those places are where they locate what you call your idyls and pastorals! These people haven't got an idea belonging to this century, nor do they want one. They know how to raise handsome girls, distil good whisky, and breed fast horses. This they esteem the end of all human knowledge and understanding. Anything more is to them vanity and useless vexation of spirit."