Woven with the Ship Part 31

The cheer that came in response was more like the growl of an angry animal. The men instantly followed the example of their leader and dismounted. Their horses were tied to the trees and saplings in the valley, and the men, circling the hill in a long line with Kirke in the centre and well in the lead, followed by Broadhead a short distance after, began to move up the slope through the trees.

It was still as death at the top. There was no sign of life there save the flag which rippled and fluttered gayly in the breeze. It was a bright, sunny morning. The cool touch of spring in the air made life sweet to all that possessed it. In the grim silence the men clambered up the steep slope and slowly neared the crest. Suddenly there was a puff of white smoke from the little log breastwork on the top. A moment later the crack of a rifle rolled down the hill, and the man nearest Kirke fell on the slope, rolled against a tree, and lay still.

He had rashly exposed himself, and he was gone. They were good shots, those Johnnies.

The men as they advanced sought instinctively such cover as they could, skipping from tree to tree. Every once in a while, however, one of them would expose himself in the open, and the exposure was always followed by a shot which more than once caught its mark. The crest was bare of trees, and the command arrived at the edge of the clearing with some loss, and cautiously concentrated, hesitating a moment before breaking out into the open and rushing the hill.

"Now, men," said Kirke, "you see what we have to do. The quicker we do it the better for us. Give me that flag," he added, turning to the color-bearer. "Gibson,"--to his bugler,--"stand by to sound the charge when I give the signal."

There was nothing dramatic about Kirke, it was all a matter of pure business with him; but the men thought they had never seen so splendid a figure as he when he tore off his cap, jerked his revolver from his belt, seized the flag with his left hand, and stepped out in the open.

He nodded his head to the alert Gibson, and the shrill notes of the charge echoed through the hills. Ere it had died away the men heard their colonel say, "Come on!"

It was always Kirke's way to say "Come" rather than "Go."

With a mighty roar they sprang from the shelter of the trees and dashed for the ridge. A terrific volley greeted them. With a crash like thunder, which echoed and re-echoed through the hills, the Confederate fire was poured upon them. Had it not been that most of the men, firing down the hill, overshot the mark, the "Lambs" would have been blown into eternity. As it was, many of them fell, but the rest plunged dauntlessly into the smoke through which the red of the flag could dimly be discerned waving in the advance.

Again the rifles of the brigade cracked out, and this time sent their messengers of death crashing full into the face of Kirke's men. This time the carnage was terrible; there were many dead, but the blood of the living was up: they would have charged a moving express train.

They tore recklessly through the smoke toward the top, following the flag.

Before the rifles could be reloaded the "Lambs" were at the breastwork, Kirke still in the lead. To leap the log walls was the work of a moment. The brigade was ready for them. The carbines cracked again and again; there was a grim, ghastly, awful struggle on the top of that hill around the foot of the Confederate flag-staff--then silence.

When the fighting stopped the few "Lambs" who were left leaned panting on their carbines, blood dripping from the gunstocks, surveying the tangled ma.s.s of dead and dying. The brigade had been annihilated.

Broadhead sprang to the staff to haul down the flag. He was nonplussed to find that there were no halliards, and that some one had evidently climbed a tree, which had been denuded of its limbs for the purpose, and nailed the flag there. He turned to look for Kirke, when, in the smoke that yet covered the field, he distinctly saw the man lift his revolver, pull its trigger, and blow out his brains.

In the confusion after the little battle, fortunately, no one noticed the action but himself. He was utterly at a loss to fathom the meaning of the suicide, but he quickly resolved that no one should know of it.

They buried the brigade with the dead "Lambs" around the foot of the staff, and Broadhead left the flag flying above them. He might have chopped down the tree and taken it, but it seemed fitting that the men who had defended it should have that last honor. The wind would whip it out in a day or two at best. Taking their wounded, they retraced their steps as they could, thinking that Kirke had been killed in the action, an opinion which Broadhead's report sedulously fostered.

Broadhead carefully preserved Kirke's revolver, which he took from his dead hand, the letter, which he found in his breast pocket, his watch and sword, and a lock of his black curly hair.

II.--IN THE ROOM IN THE NIGHT

When the war was over, and they were mustered out soon afterwards, Broadhead hastened to Philadelphia and drove immediately to Kirke's house. It was empty. There was no sign of life about it. As he stopped on the doorstep in the late afternoon, wondering vaguely what had happened and what he should do next, the door of the adjoining house opened and a woman came out, of whom he made inquiry for Mrs. Kirke.

"Mrs. Kirke!" said the woman, in surprise. "And who may you be, may I ask?"

"I am--I was--Colonel Kirke's dearest friend."

"Is Colonel Kirke dead?"

"Yes."

"And a good thing, too," said the woman.

"Madam," cried Broadhead, indignantly, "do you realize what you say?"

"Certainly I do. Don't you know about Mrs. Kirke?"

"No. Is she dead?"

"It would be better if she were," she answered. "She ran away two months ago with a man named Allen, and after she left she sent me a letter enclosing the key of her house and requesting that I give it to Colonel Kirke when he returned from the war. So long as he is gone, I guess you might as well have it. Wait; I'll fetch it."

The woman turned back into the house as she spoke. This, thought Broadhead, sadly, was the explanation of it all. That letter. He had never examined it. He had held it sacred, but now he felt that he must open it. It might give him some clew as to the whereabouts of the woman. Yet he hesitated.

When the woman gave him the key he entered the lonely house. He went upstairs and sat down in Kirke's study, and there, overcoming his hesitation, he read the letter. It was the letter of a weak, hysterical woman, reproaching her husband for his lack of love, his seeming neglect, for her loneliness, and ended by saying that she had gone off with a man who loved her, and that he should never see her again. Kirke's endors.e.m.e.nt was brief and as terse as the man's character.

"I have been to blame," he had written. "I did love you. I do. G.o.d only knows how much. I hope you may be happy. We are about to attack a strong position. I feel sure that after it is over I shall trouble you no more. You can marry the man--d.a.m.n him!--and be happy."

How characteristic that was, thought Jack Broadhead, as he read,--that last touch! He cursed the man yet spared the woman. For a long time Broadhead sat there in that house, thinking, thinking, thinking. He wondered if he were the only mourner for poor Kirke. The twilight and then the darkness came stealing over the town, and still he sat there.

By and by he heard a step--a hesitant, faltering step--in the hallway.

He remembered now that he had left the street door open. He sat still and listened. The step mounted the stairs. It came along the short hall and stopped at the entrance of the library. He sat by the open window. The wandering figure was that of a woman. She saw the soldier silhouetted in the darkness against the light from the street lamp outside.

"Robert! Robert!" she cried. "You have come back! Thank G.o.d!"

Broadhead rose to his feet.

"No," he said, quietly, "it is not Colonel Kirke."

"Mr. Broadhead!" exclaimed the woman.

"Yes, Mrs.--Mrs.--er--Allen, is it not?"

"No, no!" she shrieked, shrinking back. "My--my husband?"

"Do you mean Colonel Kirke?"

"Yes. I have no other."

"And Allen?"

"He has cast me off, turned me away."

"Haven't you heard?"

"I have heard nothing. I have been blind--in h.e.l.l--since----"

"Yes, I know."

"But Robert?"

"He is dead."

The woman sank into a chair, shuddering.

"When? How? Did he get my letter?"

"Yes. He was killed at the capture of a little hill in North Carolina on the day he received your letter. Here it is."