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The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 02

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Title: The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 02

Author: Ambrose Bierce


        
Release date: August 30, 2004 [eBook #13334]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF AMBROSE BIERCE, VOLUME 02 ***

THE COLLECTED
WORKS OF
AMBROSE BIERCE

VOLUME II


IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS



Originally Published 1909


PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION


Denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this
book owes itself to Mr. E.L.G. Steele, merchant, of this city. In
attesting Mr. Steele's faith in his judgment and his friend, it will
serve its author's main and best ambition.

A.B.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 4, 1891.




CONTENTS


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY                                                 15
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE                                     27
CHICKAMAUGA                                                           46
A SON OF THE GODS                                                     58
ONE OF THE MISSING                                                    71
KILLED AT RESACA                                                      93
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH                                        105
THE COUP DE GRÂCE                                                    122
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER                                         133
AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS                                                146
THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE                                            165
ONE KIND OF OFFICER                                                  178
ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN                                                 197
GEORGE THURSTON                                                      209
THE MOCKING-BIRD                                                     218

CIVILIANS

THE MAN OUT OF THE NOSE                                              233
AN ADVENTURE AT BROWNVILLE                                           247
THE FAMOUS GILSON BEQUEST                                            266
THE APPLICANT                                                        281
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD                                                290
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE                                                311
A HOLY TERROR                                                        324
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS                                            350
THE BOARDED WINDOW                                                   364
A LADY FROM RED HORSE                                                373
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER                                              385





SOLDIERS




A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

I

One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in a
clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia. He lay at
full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head
upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his
rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a
slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt he
might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty.
But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, death being the just
and legal penalty of his crime.

The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road
which after ascending southward a steep acclivity to that point turned
sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one hundred
yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging downward
through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a large flat
rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the
road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped from its
outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the
tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur
of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not
only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of the
entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him giddy
to look.

The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to
the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which
flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground
looked hardly larger than an ordinary door-yard, but was really several
acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing
forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon
which we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and
through which the road had somehow made its climb to the summit. The
configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from this point of
observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could but have wondered
how the road which found a way out of it had found a way into it, and
whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that parted the
meadow more than a thousand feet below.

No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theatre of
war; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap, in
which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved
an army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They had
marched all the previous day and night and were resting. At nightfall
they would take to the road again, climb to the place where their
unfaithful sentinel now slept, and descending the other slope of the
ridge fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was to
surprise it, for the road led to the rear of it. In case of failure,
their position would be perilous in the extreme; and fail they surely
would should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the movement.

II

The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named
Carter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had
known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were
able to command in the mountain country of western Virginia. His home
was but a few miles from where he now lay. One morning he had risen from
the breakfast-table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Union
regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it."

The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in
silence, and replied: "Well, go, sir, and whatever may occur do what you
conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must get
on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will speak
further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed you,
is in a most critical condition; at the best she cannot be with us
longer than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be better
not to disturb her."

So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, who returned the
salute with a stately courtesy that masked a breaking heart, left the
home of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by
deeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellows
and his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of
the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty at
the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than
resolution and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a
dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without a
movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of
the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with
unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness--whispered into the ear
of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever
have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised his
forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the
laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his
rifle.

His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal,
the cliff,--motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and
sharply outlined against the sky,--was an equestrian statue of
impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse,
straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in
the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costume
harmonized with its aërial background; the metal of accoutrement and
caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had
no points of high light. A carbine strikingly foreshortened lay across
the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at
the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In
silhouette against the sky the profile of the horse was cut with the
sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the
confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away,
showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to
the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by
the soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy the
group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.

For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had
slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art
reared upon that eminence to commemorate the deeds of an heroic past of
which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was dispelled by a
slight movement of the group: the horse, without moving its feet, had
drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man remained
immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to the significance of
the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle against his cheek
by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked the
piece, and glancing through the sights covered a vital spot of the
horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well
with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman turned his head and
looked in the direction of his concealed foeman--seemed to look into his
very face, into his eyes, into his brave, compassionate heart.

Is it then so terrible to kill an enemy in war--an enemy who has
surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades--an
enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its
numbers? Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint,
and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising,
falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand
fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested
on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy
soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.

It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth,
his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the
trigger; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound.
He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send him
dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was
plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush--without warning, without a
moment's spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken
prayer, he must be sent to his account. But no--there is a hope; he may
have discovered nothing--perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of the
landscape. If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away in the
direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge at the
instant of his withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that his
fixity of attention--Druse turned his head and looked through the deeps
of air downward, as from the surface to the bottom of a translucent sea.
He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men
and horses--some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his
escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a dozen
summits!

Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the
group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights
of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory, as
if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their
parting: "Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." He
was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves
were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's--not a tremor affected any muscle
of his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim,
was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the
body: "Peace, be still." He fired.

III

An officer of the Federal force, who in a spirit of adventure or in
quest of knowledge had left the hidden _bivouac_ in the valley, and with
aimless feet had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space
near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by
pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before
him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines
the gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him that
it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line
against the sky. It presented a clean, vertical profile against a
background of blue sky to a point half the way down, and of distant
hills, hardly less blue, thence to the tops of the trees at its base.
Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of its summit the officer saw an
astonishing sight--a man on horseback riding down into the valley
through the air!

Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in
the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too
impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward,
waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the
horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every
hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a
wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the
legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But
this was a flight!

Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in the
sky--half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new Apocalypse,
the officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs
failed him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing
sound in the trees--a sound that died without an echo--and all was
still.

The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an
abraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together he
ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff to a point distant from its
foot; thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he
naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination
had been so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of
the marvelous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of
march of aërial cavalry is directly downward, and that he could find the
objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half-hour later
he returned to camp.

This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredible
truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked
him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the
expedition he answered:

"Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from the
southward."

The commander, knowing better, smiled.

IV

After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle and
resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant
crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his
head nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition.

"Did you fire?" the sergeant whispered.

"Yes."

"At what?"

"A horse. It was standing on yonder rock--pretty far out. You see it is
no longer there. It went over the cliff."

The man's face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having
answered, he turned away his eyes and said no more. The sergeant did not
understand.

"See here, Druse," he said, after a moment's silence, "it's no use
making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the
horse?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"My father."

The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. "Good God!" he said.




AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE

I

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down
into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his
back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck.
It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack
fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers
supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his
executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a
sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short
remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of
his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge
stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say,
vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the
forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural
position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to
be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of
the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that
traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran
straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost
to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of
the stream was open ground--a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of
vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure
through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the
bridge. Mid-way of the slope between bridge and fort were the
spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the
butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly
backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A
lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon
the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of
four at the centre of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the
bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of
the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain
stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates,
but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is
to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most
familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity
are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five
years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit,
which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose,
firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed
straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting
frock-coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his
eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one
would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently
this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision
for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside
and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The
sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately
behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements
left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the
same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end
upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth.
This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was
now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter
would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down
between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as
simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes
bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his
gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his
feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes
followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a
sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and
children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding
mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the
soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he became
conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear
ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp,
distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer
upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it
was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its
recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He
awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension.
The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became
maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in
strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he
feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free
my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the
stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously,
reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God,
is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond
the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed
into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain
nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II

Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected
Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a
politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently
devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature,
which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking
service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns
ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious
restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of
the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,
would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he
could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South,
no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the
character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good
faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of
the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench
near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the
gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to
serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her
husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from
the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting
ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put
it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has
issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian
caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains
will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."

"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.

"About thirty miles."

"Is there no force on this side the creek?"

"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single
sentinel at this end of the bridge."

"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the
picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar,
smiling, "what could he accomplish?"

The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I
observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of
driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now
dry and would burn like tow."

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked
her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later,
after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the
direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost
consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was
awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure
upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant
agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of
his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined
lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid
periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to
an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing
but a feeling of fulness--of congestion. These sensations were
unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was
already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He
was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he
was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung
through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all
at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with
the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all
was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the
rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no
additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already
suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at
the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his
eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how
distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became
fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow
and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it
with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and
drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot.
No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist
apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle
his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without
interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!--what magnificent, what
superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell
away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each
side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first
one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it
away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a
water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these
words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by
the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly;
his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly,
gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole
body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his
disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water
vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He
felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest
expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs
engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a
shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed,
preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of
his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record
of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and
heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on
the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the
veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the
brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig
to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a
million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the
eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the
strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their
boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes
and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the
visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point,
and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the
captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in
silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing
at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others
were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms
gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly
within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He
heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at
his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The
man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his
own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye
and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all
famous markmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was
again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound
of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him
and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued
all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although
no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread
significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the
lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly
and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and
enforcing tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured
intervals fell those cruel words:

"Attention, company!... Shoulder arms!... Ready!... Aim!... Fire!"

Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his
ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the
volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal,
singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched
him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One
lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he
snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a
long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream--nearer to
safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods
flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels,
turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels
fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming
vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and
legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a
second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has
probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I
cannot dodge them all!"

An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud,
rushing sound, _diminuendo_, which seemed to travel back through the air
to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its
deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him,
blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As
he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard
the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it
was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use
a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will
apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile.
That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top.
The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men
--all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their
colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw.
He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity
of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments
he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream
--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which concealed him
from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one
of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He
dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and
audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could
think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the
bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their
arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate
light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in
their branches the music of æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his
escape--was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head
roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random
farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged
into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The
forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not
even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a
region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his
wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in
what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a
city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no
dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human
habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both
sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson
in perspective. Over-head, as he looked up through this rift in the
wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange
constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a
secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of
singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly
heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly
swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had
bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His
tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it
forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf
had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway
beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking,
for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a
delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it,
and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have
traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the
wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking
fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At
the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable
joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she
is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her
he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white
light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then
all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently
from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.




CHICKAMAUGA

One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a
small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense
of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and
adventure; for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for
thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and
conquest--victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries,
whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its
race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great
sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a
heritage.

The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In
his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against
naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a
civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the
warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man
loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to
make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would
hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely,
as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the
sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures
of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver's art.
Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes
attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military
error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found
himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters
barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with
illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the
spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable
in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some
bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he
made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary
foe, putting all to the sword.

Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to
his base of operations. Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like
one, the mightiest, he could not

                           curb the lust for war,
  Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.

Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself
confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was
following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before
it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not
in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother,
weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little
heart beating hard with terror--breathless, blind with tears--lost in
the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet
through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he
lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the
stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a
companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above
his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking
from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away
was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in
celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial
enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black
were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother's heart
was breaking for her missing child.

Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of
the evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he
had rested, and he no longer wept. With some blind instinct which
impelled to action he struggled through the undergrowth about him and
came to a more open ground--on his right the brook, to the left a
gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees; over all, the gathering
gloom of twilight. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It
frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction
whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward
the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving
object which he took to be some large animal--a dog, a pig--he could not
name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew
of nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But
something in form or movement of this object--something in the
awkwardness of its approach--told him that it was not a bear, and
curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on
gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the
long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was
half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait.
Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that
it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many
more; the whole open space about him was alive with them--all moving
toward the brook.

They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their
hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms
hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell
prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike,
save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in
pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting
now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their
movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as
one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood
behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in
motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again
go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange
gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again,
clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes
seen to do in public prayer.

Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by
an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like
babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. He
moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into
their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly
white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this--
something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements--
reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the
circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they
crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic
contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it
was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father's negroes creep upon their
hands and knees for his amusement--had ridden them so, "making believe"
they were his horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures
from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. The man sank
upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground
as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that
lacked a lower jaw--from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red
gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The
unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave
this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and
breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child
to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child; the child, terrified
at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took
a more serious view of the situation. And so the clumsy multitude
dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime--moved
forward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a
sound of going--in silence profound, absolute.

Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through
the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks
and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck
the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured
their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching
their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which
so many of them were freaked and maculated. It sparkled on buttons and
bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward
the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible
companions; in a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng--not
much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the
lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march,
conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that
his forces did not straggle. Surely such a leader never before had such
a following.

Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment
of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the
leader's mind, were coupled no significant associations: an occasional
blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together
with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken rifle--such
things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the
"spoor" of men flying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek,
which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud by
the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use
of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both
directions; the ground had been twice passed over--in advance and in
retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their
more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in
thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and
re-forming in lines, had passed the child on every side--had almost
trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not
awakened him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had
fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry,
the shock of the cannon, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting."
He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with
perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial
environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead
who had died to make the glory.

The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek,
reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing
the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the
vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were
many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood; the
less desperately wounded had stained them in crossing. On them, too, the
child now crossed with eager steps; he was going to the fire. As he
stood upon the farther bank he turned about to look at the companions of
his march. The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had
already drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces into the
flood. Three or four who lay without motion appeared to have no heads.
At this the child's eyes expanded with wonder; even his hospitable
understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as
that. After slaking their thirst these men had not had the strength to
back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. They were
drowned. In rear of these, the open spaces of the forest showed the
leader as many formless figures of his grim command as at first; but not
nearly so many were in motion. He waved his cap for their encouragement
and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the guiding
light--a pillar of fire to this strange exodus.

Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of
woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a
fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquet with his
responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling.
Desolation everywhere! In all the wide glare not a living thing was
visible. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced
with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about, collecting
fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in
from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he
flung in his sword--a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His
military career was at an end.

Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an
oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood
considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with
its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little
world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He
recognized the blazing building as his own home!

For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran
with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. There,
conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a
woman--the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched
full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and
full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away,
and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a
frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles--the work
of a shell.

The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He
uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries--something
between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey--a
startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child
was a deaf mute.

Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the
wreck.




A SON OF THE GODS

A STUDY IN THE PRESENT TENSE

A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left
and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open
but not venturing into it, long lines of troops, halted. The wood is
alive with them, and full of confused noises--the occasional rattle of
wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to cover the
advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound of
innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the
trees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well
in front--not altogether exposed--many of them intently regarding the
crest of a hill a mile away in the direction of the interrupted advance.
For this powerful army, moving in battle order through a forest, has met
with a formidable obstacle--the open country. The crest of that gentle
hill a mile away has a sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs a
stone wall extending to left and right a great distance. Behind the wall
is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather
straggling order. Among the trees--what? It is necessary to know.

Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously, we were fighting
somewhere; always there was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings
of musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we seldom
knew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at daybreak the
enemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, across
which we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through the
debris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the
woods beyond.

How curiously we had regarded everything! how odd it all had seemed!
Nothing had appeared quite familiar; the most commonplace objects--an
old saddle, a splintered wheel, a forgotten canteen--everything had
related something of the mysterious personality of those strange men who
had been killing us. The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the
conception of his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest himself of
the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently
conditioned, in an environment not altogether of the earth. The smallest
vestiges of them rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks
of them as inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them,
they appear farther away, and therefore larger, than they really are--
like objects in a fog. He is somewhat in awe of them.

From the edge of the wood leading up the acclivity are the tracks of
horses and wheels--the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is beaten down
by the feet of infantry. Clearly they have passed this way in thousands;
they have not withdrawn by the country roads. This is significant--it is
the difference between retiring and retreating.

That group of horsemen is our commander, his staff and escort. He is
facing the distant crest, holding his field-glass against his eyes with
both hands, his elbows needlessly elevated. It is a fashion; it seems to
dignify the act; we are all addicted to it. Suddenly he lowers the glass
and says a few words to those about him. Two or three aides detach
themselves from the group and canter away into the woods, along the
lines in each direction. We did not hear his words, but we know them:
"Tell General X. to send forward the skirmish line." Those of us who
have been out of place resume our positions; the men resting at ease
straighten themselves and the ranks are re-formed without a command.
Some of us staff officers dismount and look at our saddle girths; those
already on the ground remount.

Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the open ground comes a young
officer on a snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is scarlet. What a
fool! No one who has ever been in action but remembers how naturally
every rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no one but has
observed how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That such colors
are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the most
astonishing of all the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem to
have been devised to increase the death-rate.

This young officer is in full uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleam
with bullion--a blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War. A wave of
derisive laughter runs abreast of him all along the line. But how
handsome he is!--with what careless grace he sits his horse!

He reins up within a respectful distance of the corps commander and
salutes. The old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently knows him. A
brief colloquy between them is going on; the young man seems to be
preferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to grant. Let
us ride a little nearer. Ah! too late--it is ended. The young officer
salutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest of
the hill!

A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart,
now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to his
bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. _Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la!_
The skirmishers halt in their tracks.

Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is riding
at a walk, straight up the long slope, with never a turn of the head.
How glorious! Gods! what would we not give to be in his place--with his
soul! He does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs easily at his
side. The breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it smartly.
The sunshine rests upon his shoulder-straps, lovingly, like a visible
benediction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixed
upon him with an intensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten thousand
hearts keep quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his snowy steed.
He is not alone--he draws all souls after him. But we remember that we
laughed! On and on, straight for the hedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a
look backward. O, if he would but turn--if he could but see the love,
the adoration, the atonement!

Not a word is spoken; the populous depths of the forest still murmur
with their unseen and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe is
silence. The burly commander is an equestrian statue of himself. The
mounted staff officers, their field glasses up, are motionless all. The
line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at a new kind of
"attention," each man in the attitude in which he was caught by the
consciousness of what is going on. All these hardened and impenitent
man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a fact familiar to
their every-day observation; who sleep on hills trembling with the
thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play
at cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends--all are watching
with suspended breath and beating hearts the outcome of an act involving
the life of one man. Such is the magnetism of courage and devotion.

If now you should turn your head you would see a simultaneous movement
among the spectators--a start, as if they had received an electric
shock--and looking forward again to the now distant horseman you would
see that he has in that instant altered his direction and is riding at
an angle to his former course. The spectators suppose the sudden
deflection to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; but take this
field-glass and you will observe that he is riding toward a break in the
wall and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride through and overlook
the country beyond.

You are not to forget the nature of this man's act; it is not permitted
to you to think of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other hand,
a needless sacrifice of self. If the enemy has not retreated he is in
force on that ridge. The investigator will encounter nothing less than a
line-of-battle; there is no need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to
give warning of our approach; our attacking lines will be visible,
conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground the
moment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheet of
rifle bullets in which nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is
there, it would be madness to attack him in front; he must be manoeuvred
out by the immemorial plan of threatening his line of communication, as
necessary to his existence as to the diver at the bottom of the sea his
air tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there? There is but one
way,--somebody must go and see. The natural and customary thing to do is
to send forward a line of skirmishers. But in this case they will answer
in the affirmative with all their lives; the enemy, crouching in double
ranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will wait until
it is possible to count each assailant's teeth. At the first volley a
half of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it can
accomplish the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for gratified
curiosity! At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchase
knowledge! "Let me pay all," says this gallant man--this military
Christ!

There is no hope except the hope against hope that the crest is clear.
True, he might prefer capture to death. So long as he advances, the line
will not fire--why should it? He can safely ride into the hostile ranks
and become a prisoner of war. But this would defeat his object. It would
not answer our question; it is necessary either that he return unharmed
or be shot to death before our eyes. Only so shall we know how to act.
If captured--why, that might have been done by a half-dozen stragglers.

Now begins an extraordinary contest of intellect between a man and an
army. Our horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of the crest,
suddenly wheels to the left and gallops in a direction parallel to it.
He has caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all. Some slight
advantage of ground has enabled him to overlook a part of the line. If
he were here he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless; he
must make the best use of the few minutes of life remaining to him, by
compelling the enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly as
possible--which, naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. Not
a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not a cannoneer at those masked and
shotted guns, but knows the needs of the situation, the imperative duty
of forbearance. Besides, there has been time enough to forbid them all
to fire. True, a single rifle-shot might drop him and be no great
disclosure. But firing is infectious--and see how rapidly he moves, with
never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to take a new
direction, never directly backward toward us, never directly forward
toward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass; it seems
occurring within pistol-shot; we see all but the enemy, whose presence,
whose thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye there is
nothing but a black figure on a white horse, tracing slow zigzags
against the slope of a distant hill--so slowly they seem almost to
creep.

Now--the glass again--he has tired of his failure, or sees his error, or
has gone mad; he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as if to take
it at a leap, hedge and all! One moment only and he wheels right about
and is speeding like the wind straight down the slope--toward his
friends, toward his death! Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce
roll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards to right and left.
This is as instantly dissipated by the wind, and before the rattle of
the rifles reaches us he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has but
pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous
cheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of our
feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away. Away,
indeed--they are making directly to our left, parallel to the now
steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry is
continuous, and every bullet's target is that courageous heart.

Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes upward from behind the wall.
Another and another--a dozen roll up before the thunder of the
explosions and the humming of the missiles reach our ears and the
missiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into our
covert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporary
distraction, a passing thought of self.

The dust drifts away. Incredible!--that enchanted horse and rider have
passed a ravine and are climbing another slope to unveil another
conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. Another
moment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and strikes
the air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again--the
man has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect,
motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head.
His face is toward us. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face
and moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downward
curve. It is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity. It is a hero's
salute to death and history.

Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to cheer; they are choking
with emotion; they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch their
weapons and press tumultuously forward into the open. The skirmishers,
without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, like
hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open in full
chorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest,
seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud and the great shot pitch
roaring down among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges
from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on
its burnished arms. The rear battalions alone are in obedience; they
preserve their proper distance from the insurgent front.

The commander has not moved. He now removes his field-glass from his
eyes and glances to the right and left. He sees the human current
flowing on either side of him and his huddled escort, like tide waves
parted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face; he is thinking.
Again he directs his eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malign and
awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler. _Tra-la-la!
Tra-la-la!_ The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it. It is
repeated by all the bugles of all the sub-ordinate commanders; the sharp
metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance and
penetrate the sound of the cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colors
move slowly back; the lines face about and sullenly follow, bearing
their wounded; the skirmishers return, gathering up the dead.

Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful body
is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside--could it
not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion? Would
one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the
divine, eternal plan?




ONE OF THE MISSING

Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sherman's army, then
confronting the enemy at and about Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned
his back upon a small group of officers with whom he had been talking in
low tones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared in
a forest. None of the men in line behind the works had said a word to
him, nor had he so much as nodded to them in passing, but all who saw
understood that this brave man had been intrusted with some perilous
duty. Jerome Searing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks; he
was detailed for service at division headquarters, being borne upon the
rolls as an orderly. "Orderly" is a word covering a multitude of duties.
An orderly may be a messenger, a clerk, an officer's servant--anything.
He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders and
army regulations. Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favor,
upon accident. Private Searing, an incomparable marksman, young, hardy,
intelligent and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general commanding
his division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing what
was in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, but
formed a fraction of the line of the army; nor was he satisfied to
receive his knowledge of his _vis-à-vis_ through the customary channels;
he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by the corps commander
and the collisions of pickets and skirmishers. Hence Jerome Searing,
with his extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes, and
truthful tongue. On this occasion his instructions were simple: to get
as near the enemy's lines as possible and learn all that he could.

In a few moments he had arrived at the picket-line, the men on duty
there lying in groups of two and four behind little banks of earth
scooped out of the slight depression in which they lay, their rifles
protruding from the green boughs with which they had masked their small
defenses. The forest extended without a break toward the front, so
solemn and silent that only by an effort of the imagination could it be
conceived as populous with armed men, alert and vigilant--a forest
formidable with possibilities of battle. Pausing a moment in one of
these rifle-pits to apprise the men of his intention Searing crept
stealthily forward on his hands and knees and was soon lost to view in a
dense thicket of underbrush.

"That is the last of him," said one of the men; "I wish I had his rifle;
those fellows will hurt some of us with it."

Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground and
growth to give himself better cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, his
ears took note of every sound. He stilled his breathing, and at the
cracking of a twig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged the
earth. It was slow work, but not tedious; the danger made it exciting,
but by no physical signs was the excitement manifest. His pulse was as
regular, his nerves were as steady as if he were trying to trap a
sparrow.

"It seems a long time," he thought, "but I cannot have come very far; I
am still alive."

He smiled at his own method of estimating distance, and crept forward. A
moment later he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth and lay
motionless, minute after minute. Through a narrow opening in the bushes
he had caught sight of a small mound of yellow clay--one of the enemy's
rifle-pits. After some little time he cautiously raised his head, inch
by inch, then his body upon his hands, spread out on each side of him,
all the while intently regarding the hillock of clay. In another moment
he was upon his feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward with
little attempt at concealment. He had rightly interpreted the signs,
whatever they were; the enemy was gone.

To assure himself beyond a doubt before going back to report upon so
important a matter, Searing pushed forward across the line of abandoned
pits, running from cover to cover in the more open forest, his eyes
vigilant to discover possible stragglers. He came to the edge of a
plantation--one of those forlorn, deserted homesteads of the last years
of the war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with broken fences and desolate
with vacant buildings having blank apertures in place of doors and
windows. After a keen reconnoissance from the safe seclusion of a clump
of young pines Searing ran lightly across a field and through an orchard
to a small structure which stood apart from the other farm buildings, on
a slight elevation. This he thought would enable him to overlook a large
scope of country in the direction that he supposed the enemy to have
taken in withdrawing. This building, which had originally consisted of a
single room elevated upon four posts about ten feet high, was now little
more than a roof; the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks
loosely piled on the ground below or resting on end at various angles,
not wholly torn from their fastenings above. The supporting posts were
themselves no longer vertical. It looked as if the whole edifice would
go down at the touch of a finger.

Concealing himself in the debris of joists and flooring Searing looked
across the open ground between his point of view and a spur of Kennesaw
Mountain, a half-mile away. A road leading up and across this spur was
crowded with troops--the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, their
gun-barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight.

Searing had now learned all that he could hope to know. It was his duty
to return to his own command with all possible speed and report his
discovery. But the gray column of Confederates toiling up the mountain
road was singularly tempting. His rifle--an ordinary "Springfield," but
fitted with a globe sight and hair-trigger--would easily send its ounce
and a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. That would probably not
affect the duration and result of the war, but it is the business of a
soldier to kill. It is also his habit if he is a good soldier. Searing
cocked his rifle and "set" the trigger.

But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was
not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the
Confederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events
had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some
parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the
acts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of the pattern.
Some twenty-five years previously the Power charged with the execution
of the work according to the design had provided against that mischance
by causing the birth of a certain male child in a little village at the
foot of the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully reared it, supervised
its education, directed its desires into a military channel, and in due
time made it an officer of artillery. By the concurrence of an infinite
number of favoring influences and their preponderance over an infinite
number of opposing ones, this officer of artillery had been made to
commit a breach of discipline and flee from his native country to avoid
punishment. He had been directed to New Orleans (instead of New York),
where a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. He was enlisted and
promoted, and things were so ordered that he now commanded a Confederate
battery some two miles along the line from where Jerome Searing, the
Federal scout, stood cocking his rifle. Nothing had been neglected--at
every step in the progress of both these men's lives, and in the lives
of their contemporaries and ancestors, and in the lives of the
contemporaries of their ancestors, the right thing had been done to
bring about the desired result. Had anything in all this vast
concatenation been overlooked Private Searing might have fired on the
retreating Confederates that morning, and would perhaps have missed. As
it fell out, a Confederate captain of artillery, having nothing better
to do while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off, amused himself by
sighting a field-piece obliquely to his right at what he mistook for
some Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and discharged it. The
shot flew high of its mark.

As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his rifle and with his eyes
upon the distant Confederates considered where he could plant his shot
with the best hope of making a widow or an orphan or a childless
mother,--perhaps all three, for Private Searing, although he had
repeatedly refused promotion, was not without a certain kind of
ambition,--he heard a rushing sound in the air, like that made by the
wings of a great bird swooping down upon its prey. More quickly than he
could apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horrible
roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, striking
with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion of
timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringing down the
crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust!

When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness he did not at once
understand what had occurred. It was, indeed, some time before he opened
his eyes. For a while he believed that he had died and been buried, and
he tried to recall some portions of the burial service. He thought that
his wife was kneeling upon his grave, adding her weight to that of the
earth upon his breast. The two of them, widow and earth, had crushed his
coffin. Unless the children should persuade her to go home he would not
much longer be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. "I cannot
speak to her," he thought; "the dead have no voice; and if I open my
eyes I shall get them full of earth."

He opened his eyes. A great expanse of blue sky, rising from a fringe of
the tops of trees. In the foreground, shutting out some of the trees, a
high, dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an intricate,
patternless system of straight lines; the whole an immeasurable distance
away--a distance so inconceivably great that it fatigued him, and he
closed his eyes. The moment that he did so he was conscious of an
insufferable light. A sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmic
thunder of a distant sea breaking in successive waves upon the beach,
and out of this noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly coming from
beyond it, and intermingled with its ceaseless undertone, came the
articulate words: "Jerome Searing, you are caught like a rat in a trap--
in a trap, trap, trap."

Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black darkness, an infinite
tranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood,
and well assured of the trap that he was in, remembering all and nowise
alarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength of
his enemy, to plan his defense.

He was caught in a reclining posture, his back firmly supported by a
solid beam. Another lay across his breast, but he had been able to
shrink a little away from it so that it no longer oppressed him, though
it was immovable. A brace joining it at an angle had wedged him against
a pile of boards on his left, fastening the arm on that side. His legs,
slightly parted and straight along the ground, were covered upward to
the knees with a mass of debris which towered above his narrow horizon.
His head was as rigidly fixed as in a vise; he could move his eyes, his
chin--no more. Only his right arm was partly free. "You must help us out
of this," he said to it. But he could not get it from under the heavy
timber athwart his chest, nor move it outward more than six inches at
the elbow.

Searing was not seriously injured, nor did he suffer pain. A smart rap
on the head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurred
simultaneously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system,
had momentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including the
period of recovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, had
probably not exceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not
wholly cleared away as he began an intelligent survey of the situation.

With his partly free right hand he now tried to get hold of the beam
that lay across, but not quite against, his breast. In no way could he
do so. He was unable to depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow
beyond that edge of the timber which was nearest his knees; failing in
that, he could not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the beam. The
brace that made an angle with it downward and backward prevented him
from doing anything in that direction, and between it and his body the
space was not half so wide as the length of his forearm. Obviously he
could not get his hand under the beam nor over it; the hand could not,
in fact, touch it at all. Having demonstrated his inability, he
desisted, and began to think whether he could reach any of the débris
piled upon his legs.

In surveying the mass with a view to determining that point, his
attention was arrested by what seemed to be a ring of shining metal
immediately in front of his eyes. It appeared to him at first to
surround some perfectly black substance, and it was somewhat more than a
half-inch in diameter. It suddenly occurred to his mind that the
blackness was simply shadow and that the ring was in fact the muzzle of
his rifle protruding from the pile of débris. He was not long in
satisfying himself that this was so--if it was a satisfaction. By
closing either eye he could look a little way along the barrel--to the
point where it was hidden by the rubbish that held it. He could see the
one side, with the corresponding eye, at apparently the same angle as
the other side with the other eye. Looking with the right eye, the
weapon seemed to be directed at a point to the left of his head, and
_vice-versa._ He was unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, but
could see the under surface of the stock at a slight angle. The piece
was, in fact, aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.

In the perception of this circumstance, in the recollection that just
previously to the mischance of which this uncomfortable situation was
the result he had cocked the rifle and set the trigger so that a touch
would discharge it, Private Searing was affected with a feeling of
uneasiness. But that was as far as possible from fear; he was a brave
man, somewhat familiar with the aspect of rifles from that point of
view, and of cannon too. And now he recalled, with something like
amusement, an incident of his experience at the storming of Missionary
Ridge, where, walking up to one of the enemy's embrasures from which he
had seen a heavy gun throw charge after charge of grape among the
assailants he had thought for a moment that the piece had been
withdrawn; he could see nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. What
that was he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitched
another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is one
of the commonest incidents in a soldier's life--firearms, too, with
malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for.
Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, and
turned away his eyes.

After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time he made an
ineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage his
head, the fixity of which was the more annoying from his ignorance of
what held it. Next he tried to free his feet, but while exerting the
powerful muscles of his legs for that purpose it occurred to him that a
disturbance of the rubbish which held them might discharge the rifle;
how it could have endured what had already befallen it he could not
understand, although memory assisted him with several instances in
point. One in particular he recalled, in which in a moment of mental
abstraction he had clubbed his rifle and beaten out another gentleman's
brains, observing afterward that the weapon which he had been diligently
swinging by the muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock--knowledge
of which circumstance would doubtless have cheered his antagonist to
longer endurance. He had always smiled in recalling that blunder of his
"green and salad days" as a soldier, but now he did not smile. He turned
his eyes again to the muzzle of the rifle and for a moment fancied that
it had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer.

Again he looked away. The tops of the distant trees beyond the bounds of
the plantation interested him: he had not before observed how light and
feathery they were, nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among their
branches, where they somewhat paled it with their green; above him it
appeared almost black. "It will be uncomfortably hot here," he thought,
"as the day advances. I wonder which way I am looking."

Judging by such shadows as he could see, he decided that his face was
due north; he would at least not have the sun in his eyes, and north--
well, that was toward his wife and children.

"Bah!" he exclaimed aloud, "what have they to do with it?"

He closed his eyes. "As I can't get out I may as well go to sleep. The
rebels are gone and some of our fellows are sure to stray out here
foraging. They'll find me."

But he did not sleep. Gradually he became sensible of a pain in his
forehead--a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more and
more uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone--closed them and
it returned. "The devil!" he said, irrelevantly, and stared again at the
sky. He heard the singing of birds, the strange metallic note of the
meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He fell into
pleasant memories of his childhood, played again with his brother and
sister, raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks,
entered the sombre forest beyond and with timid steps followed the faint
path to Ghost Rock, standing at last with audible heart-throbs before
the Dead Man's Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mystery. For the
first time he observed that the opening of the haunted cavern was
encircled by a ring of metal. Then all else vanished and left him gazing
into the barrel of his rifle as before. But whereas before it had seemed
nearer, it now seemed an inconceivable distance away, and all the more
sinister for that. He cried out and, startled by something in his own
voice--the note of fear--lied to himself in denial: "If I don't sing out
I may stay here till I die."

He now made no further attempt to evade the menacing stare of the gun
barrel. If he turned away his eyes an instant it was to look for
assistance (although he could not see the ground on either side the
ruin), and he permitted them to return, obedient to the imperative
fascination. If he closed them it was from weariness, and instantly the
poignant pain in his forehead--the prophecy and menace of the bullet--
forced him to reopen them.

The tension of nerve and brain was too severe; nature came to his relief
with intervals of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of these he became
sensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he worked
his fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel that
they were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew the
sensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it
against the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full of
splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a
plain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he could
not die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there had
been some one to hear them, but he could die "game," and he would. But
if he could only know when to expect the shot!

Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking and
scampering about. One of them mounted the pile of débris that held the
rifle; another followed and another. Searing regarded them at first with
indifference, then with friendly interest; then, as the thought flashed
into his bewildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle,
he cursed them and ordered them to go away. "It is no business of
yours," he cried.

The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnaw
away his nose, cut his throat--he knew that, but he hoped by that time
to be dead.

Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with its
black interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and incessant. He
felt it gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until at
last its progress was arrested by the wood at the back of his head. It
grew momentarily more insufferable: he began wantonly beating his
lacerated hand against the splinters again to counteract that horrible
ache. It seemed to throb with a slow, regular recurrence, each pulsation
sharper than the preceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt
the fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country,
of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passed
away--not a vestige remained. Here in this confusion of timbers and
boards is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time--each pain an
everlasting life. The throbs tick off eternities.

Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the formidable enemy, the strong,
resolute warrior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was fallen; his eyes
protruded; he trembled in every fibre; a cold sweat bathed his entire
body; he screamed with fear. He was not insane--he was terrified.

In groping about with his torn and bleeding hand he seized at last a
strip of board, and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel with his
body, and by bending his elbow as much as the contracted space would
permit, he could draw it a few inches at a time. Finally it was
altogether loosened from the wreckage covering his legs; he could lift
it clear of the ground its whole length. A great hope came into his
mind: perhaps he could work it upward, that is to say backward, far
enough to lift the end and push aside the rifle; or, if that were too
tightly wedged, so place the strip of board as to deflect the bullet.
With this object he passed it backward inch by inch, hardly daring to
breathe lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and more than ever
unable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which might perhaps now hasten
to improve its waning opportunity. Something at least had been gained:
in the occupation of his mind in this attempt at self-defense he was
less sensible of the pain in his head and had ceased to wince. But he
was still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled like castanets.

The strip of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tugged
at it with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all he
could, but it had met some extended obstruction behind him and the end
in front was still too far away to clear the pile of débris and reach
the muzzle of the gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the trigger
guard, which, uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see with
his right eye. He tried to break the strip with his hand, but had no
leverage. In his defeat, all his terror returned, augmented tenfold. The
black aperture of the rifle appeared to threaten a sharper and more
imminent death in punishment of his rebellion. The track of the bullet
through his head ached with an intenser anguish. He began to tremble
again.

Suddenly he became composed. His tremor subsided. He clenched his teeth
and drew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defense; a
new design had shaped itself in his mind--another plan of battle.
Raising the front end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed it
forward through the wreckage at the side of the rifle until it pressed
against the trigger guard. Then he moved the end slowly outward until he
could feel that it had cleared it, then, closing his eyes, thrust it
against the trigger with all his strength! There was no explosion; the
rifle had been discharged as it dropped from his hand when the building
fell. But it did its work.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket-guard on that part
of the line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission,
sat with attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not the
faintest sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the barking of a
squirrel, the noise of the wind among the pines--all were anxiously
noted by his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly in front of his
line, he heard a faint, confused rumble, like the clatter of a falling
building translated by distance. The lieutenant mechanically looked at
his watch. Six o'clock and eighteen minutes. At the same moment an
officer approached him on foot from the rear and saluted.

"Lieutenant," said the officer, "the colonel directs you to move forward
your line and feel the enemy if you find him. If not, continue the
advance until directed to halt. There is reason to think that the enemy
has retreated."

The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; the other officer retired. In a
moment the men, apprised of their duty by the non-commissioned officers
in low tones, had deployed from their rifle-pits and were moving forward
in skirmishing order, with set teeth and beating hearts.

This line of skirmishers sweeps across the plantation toward the
mountain. They pass on both sides of the wrecked building, observing
nothing. At a short distance in their rear their commander comes. He
casts his eyes curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body half buried
in boards and timbers. It is so covered with dust that its clothing is
Confederate gray. Its face is yellowish white; the cheeks are fallen in,
the temples sunken, too, with sharp ridges about them, making the
forehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, slightly lifted, shows the
white teeth, rigidly clenched. The hair is heavy with moisture, the face
as wet as the dewy grass all about. From his point of view the officer
does not observe the rifle; the man was apparently killed by the fall of
the building.

"Dead a week," said the officer curtly, moving on and absently pulling
out his watch as if to verify his estimate of time. Six o'clock and
forty minutes.




KILLED AT RESACA

The best soldier of our staff was Lieutenant Herman Brayle, one of the
two aides-de-camp. I don't remember where the general picked him up;
from some Ohio regiment, I think; none of us had previously known him,
and it would have been strange if we had, for no two of us came from the
same State, nor even from adjoining States. The general seemed to think
that a position on his staff was a distinction that should be so
judiciously conferred as not to beget any sectional jealousies and
imperil the integrity of that part of the country which was still an
integer. He would not even choose officers from his own command, but by
some jugglery at department headquarters obtained them from other
brigades. Under such circumstances, a man's services had to be very
distinguished indeed to be heard of by his family and the friends of his
youth; and "the speaking trump of fame" was a trifle hoarse from
loquacity, anyhow.

Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in height and of splendid
proportions, with the light hair and gray-blue eyes which men so gifted
usually find associated with a high order of courage. As he was commonly
in full uniform, especially in action, when most officers are content to
be less flamboyantly attired, he was a very striking and conspicuous
figure. As to the rest, he had a gentleman's manners, a scholar's head,
and a lion's heart. His age was about thirty.

We all soon came to like Brayle as much as we admired him, and it was
with sincere concern that in the engagement at Stone's River--our first
action after he joined us--we observed that he had one most
objectionable and unsoldierly quality: he was vain of his courage.
During all the vicissitudes and mutations of that hideous encounter,
whether our troops were fighting in the open cotton fields, in the cedar
thickets, or behind the railway embankment, he did not once take cover,
except when sternly commanded to do so by the general, who usually had
other things to think of than the lives of his staff officers--or those
of his men, for that matter.

In every later engagement while Brayle was with us it was the same way.
He would sit his horse like an equestrian statue, in a storm of bullets
and grape, in the most exposed places--wherever, in fact, duty,
requiring him to go, permitted him to remain--when, without trouble and
with distinct advantage to his reputation for common sense, he might
have been in such security as is possible on a battlefield in the brief
intervals of personal inaction.

On foot, from necessity or in deference to his dismounted commander or
associates, his conduct was the same. He would stand like a rock in the
open when officers and men alike had taken to cover; while men older in
service and years, higher in rank and of unquestionable intrepidity,
were loyally preserving behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely
precious to their country, this fellow would stand, equally idle, on the
ridge, facing in the direction of the sharpest fire.

When battles are going on in open ground it frequently occurs that the
opposing lines, confronting each other within a stone's throw for hours,
hug the earth as closely as if they loved it. The line officers in their
proper places flatten themselves no less, and the field officers, their
horses all killed or sent to the rear, crouch beneath the infernal
canopy of hissing lead and screaming iron without a thought of personal
dignity.

In such circumstances the life of a staff officer of a brigade is
distinctly "not a happy one," mainly because of its precarious tenure
and the unnerving alternations of emotion to which he is exposed. From a
position of that comparative security from which a civilian would
ascribe his escape to a "miracle," he may be despatched with an order to
some commander of a prone regiment in the front line--a person for the
moment inconspicuous and not always easy to find without a deal of
search among men somewhat preoccupied, and in a din in which question
and answer alike must be imparted in the sign language. It is customary
in such cases to duck the head and scuttle away on a keen run, an object
of lively interest to some thousands of admiring marksmen. In returning
--well, it is not customary to return.

Brayle's practice was different. He would consign his horse to the care
of an orderly,--he loved his horse,--and walk quietly away on his
perilous errand with never a stoop of the back, his splendid figure,
accentuated by his uniform, holding the eye with a strange fascination.
We watched him with suspended breath, our hearts in our mouths. On one
occasion of this kind, indeed, one of our number, an impetuous
stammerer, was so possessed by his emotion that he shouted at me:

"I'll b-b-bet you t-two d-d-dollars they d-drop him b-b-before he g-gets
to that d-d-ditch!"

I did not accept the brutal wager; I thought they would.

Let me do justice to a brave man's memory; in all these needless
exposures of life there was no visible bravado nor subsequent narration.
In the few instances when some of us had ventured to remonstrate, Brayle
had smiled pleasantly and made some light reply, which, however, had not
encouraged a further pursuit of the subject. Once he said:

"Captain, if ever I come to grief by forgetting your advice, I hope my
last moments will be cheered by the sound of your beloved voice
breathing into my ear the blessed words, 'I told you so.'"

We laughed at the captain--just why we could probably not have
explained--and that afternoon when he was shot to rags from an ambuscade
Brayle remained by the body for some time, adjusting the limbs with
needless care--there in the middle of a road swept by gusts of grape and
canister! It is easy to condemn this kind of thing, and not very
difficult to refrain from imitation, but it is impossible not to
respect, and Brayle was liked none the less for the weakness which had
so heroic an expression. We wished he were not a fool, but he went on
that way to the end, sometimes hard hit, but always returning to duty
about as good as new.

Of course, it came at last; he who ignores the law of probabilities
challenges an adversary that is seldom beaten. It was at Resaca, in
Georgia, during the movement that resulted in the taking of Atlanta. In
front of our brigade the enemy's line of earthworks ran through open
fields along a slight crest. At each end of this open ground we were
close up to him in the woods, but the clear ground we could not hope to
occupy until night, when darkness would enable us to burrow like moles
and throw up earth. At this point our line was a quarter-mile away in
the edge of a wood. Roughly, we formed a semicircle, the enemy's
fortified line being the chord of the arc.

"Lieutenant, go tell Colonel Ward to work up as close as he can get
cover, and not to waste much ammunition in unnecessary firing. You may
leave your horse."

When the general gave this direction we were in the fringe of the
forest, near the right extremity of the arc. Colonel Ward was at the
left. The suggestion to leave the horse obviously enough meant that
Brayle was to take the longer line, through the woods and among the men.
Indeed, the suggestion was needless; to go by the short route meant
absolutely certain failure to deliver the message. Before anybody could
interpose, Brayle had cantered lightly into the field and the enemy's
works were in crackling conflagration.

"Stop that damned fool!" shouted the general.

A private of the escort, with more ambition than brains, spurred forward
to obey, and within ten yards left himself and his horse dead on the
field of honor.

Brayle was beyond recall, galloping easily along, parallel to the enemy
and less than two hundred yards distant. He was a picture to see! His
hat had been blown or shot from his head, and his long, blond hair rose
and fell with the motion of his horse. He sat erect in the saddle,
holding the reins lightly in his left hand, his right hanging carelessly
at his side. An occasional glimpse of his handsome profile as he turned
his head one way or the other proved that the interest which he took in
what was going on was natural and without affectation.

The picture was intensely dramatic, but in no degree theatrical.
Successive scores of rifles spat at him viciously as he came within
range, and our own line in the edge of the timber broke out in visible
and audible defense. No longer regardful of themselves or their orders,
our fellows sprang to their feet, and swarming into the open sent broad
sheets of bullets against the blazing crest of the offending works,
which poured an answering fire into their unprotected groups with deadly
effect. The artillery on both sides joined the battle, punctuating the
rattle and roar with deep, earth-shaking explosions and tearing the air
with storms of screaming grape, which from the enemy's side splintered
the trees and spattered them with blood, and from ours defiled the smoke
of his arms with banks and clouds of dust from his parapet.

My attention had been for a moment drawn to the general combat, but now,
glancing down the unobscured avenue between these two thunderclouds, I
saw Brayle, the cause of the carnage. Invisible now from either side,
and equally doomed by friend and foe, he stood in the shot-swept space,
motionless, his face toward the enemy. At some little distance lay his
horse. I instantly saw what had stopped him.

As topographical engineer I had, early in the day, made a hasty
examination of the ground, and now remembered that at that point was a
deep and sinuous gully, crossing half the field from the enemy's line,
its general course at right angles to it. From where we now were it was
invisible, and Brayle had evidently not known about it. Clearly, it was
impassable. Its salient angles would have afforded him absolute security
if he had chosen to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought in his
favor and leapt into it. He could not go forward, he would not turn
back; he stood awaiting death. It did not keep him long waiting.

By some mysterious coincidence, almost instantaneously as he fell, the
firing ceased, a few desultory shots at long intervals serving rather to
accentuate than break the silence. It was as if both sides had suddenly
repented of their profitless crime. Four stretcher-bearers of ours,
following a sergeant with a white flag, soon afterward moved unmolested
into the field, and made straight for Brayle's body. Several Confederate
officers and men came out to meet them, and with uncovered heads
assisted them to take up their sacred burden. As it was borne toward us
we heard beyond the hostile works fifes and a muffled drum--a dirge. A
generous enemy honored the fallen brave.

Amongst the dead man's effects was a soiled Russia-leather pocketbook.
In the distribution of mementoes of our friend, which the general, as
administrator, decreed, this fell to me.

A year after the close of the war, on my way to California, I opened and
idly inspected it. Out of an overlooked compartment fell a letter
without envelope or address. It was in a woman's handwriting, and began
with words of endearment, but no name.

It had the following date line: "San Francisco, Cal., July 9, 1862." The
signature was "Darling," in marks of quotation. Incidentally, in the
body of the text, the writer's full name was given--Marian Mendenhall.

The letter showed evidence of cultivation and good breeding, but it was
an ordinary love letter, if a love letter can be ordinary. There was not
much in it, but there was something. It was this:

"Mr. Winters, whom I shall always hate for it, has been telling that at
some battle in Virginia, where he got his hurt, you were seen crouching
behind a tree. I think he wants to injure you in my regard, which he
knows the story would do if I believed it. I could bear to hear of my
soldier lover's death, but not of his cowardice."

These were the words which on that sunny afternoon, in a distant region,
had slain a hundred men. Is woman weak?

One evening I called on Miss Mendenhall to return the letter to her. I
intended, also, to tell her what she had done--but not that she did it.
I found her in a handsome dwelling on Rincon Hill. She was beautiful,
well bred--in a word, charming.

"You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle," I said, rather abruptly. "You know,
doubtless, that he fell in battle. Among his effects was found this
letter from you. My errand here is to place it in your hands."

She mechanically took the letter, glanced through it with deepening
color, and then, looking at me with a smile, said:

"It is very good of you, though I am sure it was hardly worth while."
She started suddenly and changed color. "This stain," she said, "is it--
surely it is not--"

"Madam," I said, "pardon me, but that is the blood of the truest and
bravest heart that ever beat."

She hastily flung the letter on the blazing coals. "Uh! I cannot bear
the sight of blood!" she said. "How did he die?"

I had involuntarily risen to rescue that scrap of paper, sacred even to
me, and now stood partly behind her. As she asked the question she
turned her face about and slightly upward. The light of the burning
letter was reflected in her eyes and touched her cheek with a tinge of
crimson like the stain upon its page. I had never seen anything so
beautiful as this detestable creature.

"He was bitten by a snake," I replied.




THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH

"Do you think, Colonel, that your brave Coulter would like to put one of
his guns in here?" the general asked.

He was apparently not altogether serious; it certainly did not seem a
place where any artillerist, however brave, would like to put a gun. The
colonel thought that possibly his division commander meant
good-humoredly to intimate that in a recent conversation between them
Captain Coulter's courage had been too highly extolled.

"General," he replied warmly, "Coulter would like to put a gun anywhere
within reach of those people," with a motion of his hand in the
direction of the enemy.

"It is the only place," said the general. He was serious, then.

The place was a depression, a "notch," in the sharp crest of a hill. It
was a pass, and through it ran a turnpike, which reaching this highest
point in its course by a sinuous ascent through a thin forest made a
similar, though less steep, descent toward the enemy. For a mile to the
left and a mile to the right, the ridge, though occupied by Federal
infantry lying close behind the sharp crest and appearing as if held in
place by atmospheric pressure, was inaccessible to artillery. There was
no place but the bottom of the notch, and that was barely wide enough
for the roadbed. From the Confederate side this point was commanded by
two batteries posted on a slightly lower elevation beyond a creek, and a
half-mile away. All the guns but one were masked by the trees of an
orchard; that one--it seemed a bit of impudence--was on an open lawn
directly in front of a rather grandiose building, the planter's
dwelling. The gun was safe enough in its exposure--but only because the
Federal infantry had been forbidden to fire. Coulter's Notch--it came to
be called so--was not, that pleasant summer afternoon, a place where one
would "like to put a gun."

Three or four dead horses lay there sprawling in the road, three or four
dead men in a trim row at one side of it, and a little back, down the
hill. All but one were cavalrymen belonging to the Federal advance. One
was a quartermaster. The general commanding the division and the colonel
commanding the brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had ridden into
the notch to have a look at the enemy's guns--which had straightway
obscured themselves in towering clouds of smoke. It was hardly
profitable to be curious about guns which had the trick of the
cuttle-fish, and the season of observation had been brief. At its
conclusion--a short remove backward from where it began--occurred the
conversation already partly reported. "It is the only place," the
general repeated thoughtfully, "to get at them."

The colonel looked at him gravely. "There is room for only one gun,
General--one against twelve."

"That is true--for only one at a time," said the commander with
something like, yet not altogether like, a smile. "But then, your brave
Coulter--a whole battery in himself."

The tone of irony was now unmistakable. It angered the colonel, but he
did not know what to say. The spirit of military subordination is not
favorable to retort, nor even to deprecation.

At this moment a young officer of artillery came riding slowly up the
road attended by his bugler. It was Captain Coulter. He could not have
been more than twenty-three years of age. He was of medium height, but
very slender and lithe, and sat his horse with something of the air of a
civilian. In face he was of a type singularly unlike the men about him;
thin, high-nosed, gray-eyed, with a slight blond mustache, and long,
rather straggling hair of the same color. There was an apparent
negligence in his attire. His cap was worn with the visor a trifle
askew; his coat was buttoned only at the sword-belt, showing a
considerable expanse of white shirt, tolerably clean for that stage of
the campaign. But the negligence was all in his dress and bearing; in
his face was a look of intense interest in his surroundings. His gray
eyes, which seemed occasionally to strike right and left across the
landscape, like search-lights, were for the most part fixed upon the sky
beyond the Notch; until he should arrive at the summit of the road there
was nothing else in that direction to see. As he came opposite his
division and brigade commanders at the road-side he saluted mechanically
and was about to pass on. The colonel signed to him to halt.

"Captain Coulter," he said, "the enemy has twelve pieces over there on
the next ridge. If I rightly understand the general, he directs that you
bring up a gun and engage them."

There was a blank silence; the general looked stolidly at a distant
regiment swarming slowly up the hill through rough undergrowth, like a
torn and draggled cloud of blue smoke; the captain appeared not to have
observed him. Presently the captain spoke, slowly and with apparent
effort:

"On the next ridge, did you say, sir? Are the guns near the house?"

"Ah, you have been over this road before. Directly at the house."

"And it is--necessary--to engage them? The order is imperative?"

His voice was husky and broken. He was visibly paler. The colonel was
astonished and mortified. He stole a glance at the commander. In that
set, immobile face was no sign; it was as hard as bronze. A moment later
the general rode away, followed by his staff and escort. The colonel,
humiliated and indignant, was about to order Captain Coulter in arrest,
when the latter spoke a few words in a low tone to his bugler, saluted,
and rode straight forward into the Notch, where, presently, at the
summit of the road, his field-glass at his eyes, he showed against the
sky, he and his horse, sharply defined and statuesque. The bugler had
dashed down the speed and disappeared behind a wood. Presently his bugle
was heard singing in the cedars, and in an incredibly short time a
single gun with its caisson, each drawn by six horses and manned by its
full complement of gunners, came bounding and banging up the grade in a
storm of dust, unlimbered under cover, and was run forward by hand to
the fatal crest among the dead horses. A gesture of the captain's arm,
some strangely agile movements of the men in loading, and almost before
the troops along the way had ceased to hear the rattle of the wheels, a
great white cloud sprang forward down the slope, and with a deafening
report the affair at Coulter's Notch had begun.

It is not intended to relate in detail the progress and incidents of
that ghastly contest--a contest without vicissitudes, its alternations
only different degrees of despair. Almost at the instant when Captain
Coulter's gun blew its challenging cloud twelve answering clouds rolled
upward from among the trees about the plantation house, a deep multiple
report roared back like a broken echo, and thenceforth to the end the
Federal cannoneers fought their hopeless battle in an atmosphere of
living iron whose thoughts were lightnings and whose deeds were death.

Unwilling to see the efforts which he could not aid and the slaughter
which he could not stay, the colonel ascended the ridge at a point a
quarter of a mile to the left, whence the Notch, itself invisible, but
pushing up successive masses of smoke, seemed the crater of a volcano in
thundering eruption. With his glass he watched the enemy's guns, noting
as he could the effects of Coulter's fire--if Coulter still lived to
direct it. He saw that the Federal gunners, ignoring those of the
enemy's pieces whose positions could be determined by their smoke only,
gave their whole attention to the one that maintained its place in the
open--the lawn in front of the house. Over and about that hardy piece
the shells exploded at intervals of a few seconds. Some exploded in the
house, as could be seen by thin ascensions of smoke from the breached
roof. Figures of prostrate men and horses were plainly visible.

"If our fellows are doing so good work with a single gun," said the
colonel to an aide who happened to be nearest, "they must be suffering
like the devil from twelve. Go down and present the commander of that
piece with my congratulations on the accuracy of his fire."

Turning to his adjutant-general he said, "Did you observe Coulter's
damned reluctance to obey orders?"

"Yes, sir, I did."

"Well, say nothing about it, please. I don't think the general will care
to make any accusations. He will probably have enough to do in
explaining his own connection with this uncommon way of amusing the
rear-guard of a retreating enemy."

A young officer approached from below, climbing breathless up the
acclivity. Almost before he had saluted, he gasped out:

"Colonel, I am directed by Colonel Harmon to say that the enemy's guns
are within easy reach of our rifles, and most of them visible from
several points along the ridge."

The brigade commander looked at him without a trace of interest in his
expression. "I know it," he said quietly.

The young adjutant was visibly embarrassed. "Colonel Harmon would like
to have permission to silence those guns," he stammered.

"So should I," the colonel said in the same tone. "Present my
compliments to Colonel Harmon and say to him that the general's orders
for the infantry not to fire are still in force."

The adjutant saluted and retired. The colonel ground his heel into the
earth and turned to look again at the enemy's guns.

"Colonel," said the adjutant-general, "I don't know that I ought to say
anything, but there is something wrong in all this. Do you happen to
know that Captain Coulter is from the South?"

"No; _was_ he, indeed?"

"I heard that last summer the division which the general then commanded
was in the vicinity of Coulter's home--camped there for weeks, and--"

"Listen!" said the colonel, interrupting with an upward gesture. "Do you
hear _that_?"

"That" was the silence of the Federal gun. The staff, the orderlies, the
lines of infantry behind the crest--all had "heard," and were looking
curiously in the direction of the crater, whence no smoke now ascended
except desultory cloudlets from the enemy's shells. Then came the blare
of a bugle, a faint rattle of wheels; a minute later the sharp reports
recommenced with double activity. The demolished gun had been replaced
with a sound one.

"Yes," said the adjutant-general, resuming his narrative, "the general
made the acquaintance of Coulter's family. There was trouble--I don't
know the exact nature of it--something about Coulter's wife. She is a
red-hot Secessionist, as they all are, except Coulter himself, but she
is a good wife and high-bred lady. There was a complaint to army
headquarters. The general was transferred to this division. It is odd
that Coulter's battery should afterward have been assigned to it."

The colonel had risen from the rock upon which they had been sitting.
His eyes were blazing with a generous indignation.

"See here, Morrison," said he, looking his gossiping staff officer
straight in the face, "did you get that story from a gentleman or a
liar?"

"I don't want to say how I got it, Colonel, unless it is necessary"--he
was blushing a trifle--"but I'll stake my life upon its truth in the
main."

The colonel turned toward a small knot of officers some distance away.
"Lieutenant Williams!" he shouted.

One of the officers detached himself from the group and coming forward
saluted, saying: "Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you had been informed.
Williams is dead down there by the gun. What can I do, sir?"

Lieutenant Williams was the aide who had had the pleasure of conveying
to the officer in charge of the gun his brigade commander's
congratulations.

"Go," said the colonel, "and direct the withdrawal of that gun
instantly. No--I'll go myself."

He strode down the declivity toward the rear of the Notch at a
break-neck pace, over rocks and through brambles, followed by his little
retinue in tumultuous disorder. At the foot of the declivity they
mounted their waiting animals and took to the road at a lively trot,
round a bend and into the Notch. The spectacle which they encountered
there was appalling!

Within that defile, barely broad enough for a single gun, were piled the
wrecks of no fewer than four. They had noted the silencing of only the
last one disabled--there had been a lack of men to replace it quickly
with another. The débris lay on both sides of the road; the men had
managed to keep an open way between, through which the fifth piece was
now firing. The men?--they looked like demons of the pit! All were
hatless, all stripped to the waist, their reeking skins black with
blotches of powder and spattered with gouts of blood. They worked like
madmen, with rammer and cartridge, lever and lanyard. They set their
swollen shoulders and bleeding hands against the wheels at each recoil
and heaved the heavy gun back to its place. There were no commands; in
that awful environment of whooping shot, exploding shells, shrieking
fragments of iron, and flying splinters of wood, none could have been
heard. Officers, if officers there were, were indistinguishable; all
worked together--each while he lasted--governed by the eye. When the gun
was sponged, it was loaded; when loaded, aimed and fired. The colonel
observed something new to his military experience--something horrible
and unnatural: the gun was bleeding at the mouth! In temporary default
of water, the man sponging had dipped his sponge into a pool of
comrade's blood. In all this work there was no clashing; the duty of the
instant was obvious. When one fell, another, looking a trifle cleaner,
seemed to rise from the earth in the dead man's tracks, to fall in his
turn.

With the ruined guns lay the ruined men--alongside the wreckage, under
it and atop of it; and back down the road--a ghastly procession!--crept
on hands and knees such of the wounded as were able to move. The
colonel--he had compassionately sent his cavalcade to the right about--
had to ride over those who were entirely dead in order not to crush
those who were partly alive. Into that hell he tranquilly held his way,
rode up alongside the gun, and, in the obscurity of the last discharge,
tapped upon the cheek the man holding the rammer--who straightway fell,
thinking himself killed. A fiend seven times damned sprang out of the
smoke to take his place, but paused and gazed up at the mounted officer
with an unearthly regard, his teeth flashing between his black lips, his
eyes, fierce and expanded, burning like coals beneath his bloody brow.
The colonel made an authoritative gesture and pointed to the rear. The
fiend bowed in token of obedience. It was Captain Coulter.

Simultaneously with the colonel's arresting sign, silence fell upon the
whole field of action. The procession of missiles no longer streamed
into that defile of death, for the enemy also had ceased firing. His
army had been gone for hours, and the commander of his rear-guard, who
had held his position perilously long in hope to silence the Federal
fire, at that strange moment had silenced his own. "I was not aware of
the breadth of my authority," said the colonel to anybody, riding
forward to the crest to see what had really happened. An hour later his
brigade was in bivouac on the enemy's ground, and its idlers were
examining, with something of awe, as the faithful inspect a saint's
relics, a score of straddling dead horses and three disabled guns, all
spiked. The fallen men had been carried away; their torn and broken
bodies would have given too great satisfaction.

Naturally, the colonel established himself and his military family in
the plantation house. It was somewhat shattered, but it was better than
the open air. The furniture was greatly deranged and broken. Walls and
ceilings were knocked away here and there, and a lingering odor of
powder smoke was everywhere. The beds, the closets of women's clothing,
the cupboards were not greatly damaged. The new tenants for a night
made themselves comfortable, and the virtual effacement of Coulter's
battery supplied them with an interesting topic.

During supper an orderly of the escort showed himself into the
dining-room and asked permission to speak to the colonel.

"What is it, Barbour?" said that officer pleasantly, having overheard
the request.

"Colonel, there is something wrong in the cellar; I don't know what--
somebody there. I was down there rummaging about."

"I will go down and see," said a staff officer, rising.

"So will I," the colonel said; "let the others remain. Lead on,
orderly."

They took a candle from the table and descended the cellar stairs, the
orderly in visible trepidation. The candle made but a feeble light, but
presently, as they advanced, its narrow circle of illumination revealed
a human figure seated on the ground against the black stone wall which
they were skirting, its knees elevated, its head bowed sharply forward.
The face, which should have been seen in profile, was invisible, for the
man was bent so far forward that his long hair concealed it; and,
strange to relate, the beard, of a much darker hue, fell in a great
tangled mass and lay along the ground at his side. They involuntarily
paused; then the colonel, taking the candle from the orderly's shaking
hand, approached the man and attentively considered him. The long dark
beard was the hair of a woman--dead. The dead woman clasped in her arms
a dead babe. Both were clasped in the arms of the man, pressed against
his breast, against his lips. There was blood in the hair of the woman;
there was blood in the hair of the man. A yard away, near an irregular
depression in the beaten earth which formed the cellar's floor--fresh
excavation with a convex bit of iron, having jagged edges, visible in
one of the sides--lay an infant's foot. The colonel held the light as
high as he could. The floor of the room above was broken through, the
splinters pointing at all angles downward. "This casemate is not
bomb-proof," said the colonel gravely. It did not occur to him that his
summing up of the matter had any levity in it.

They stood about the group awhile in silence; the staff officer was
thinking of his unfinished supper, the orderly of what might possibly be
in one of the casks on the other side of the cellar. Suddenly the man
whom they had thought dead raised his head and gazed tranquilly into
their faces. His complexion was coal black; the cheeks were apparently
tattooed in irregular sinuous lines from the eyes downward. The lips,
too, were white, like those of a stage negro. There was blood upon his
forehead.

The staff officer drew back a pace, the orderly two paces.

"What are you doing here, my man?" said the colonel, unmoved.

"This house belongs to me, sir," was the reply, civilly delivered.

"To you? Ah, I see! And these?"

"My wife and child. I am Captain Coulter."




THE COUP DE GRÂCE

The fighting had been hard and continuous; that was attested by all the
senses. The very taste of battle was in the air. All was now over; it
remained only to succor the wounded and bury the dead--to "tidy up a
bit," as the humorist of a burial squad put it. A good deal of "tidying
up" was required. As far as one could see through the forests, among the
splintered trees, lay wrecks of men and horses. Among them moved the
stretcher-bearers, gathering and carrying away the few who showed signs
of life. Most of the wounded had died of neglect while the right to
minister to their wants was in dispute. It is an army regulation that
the wounded must wait; the best way to care for them is to win the
battle. It must be confessed that victory is a distinct advantage to a
man requiring attention, but many do not live to avail themselves of it.

The dead were collected in groups of a dozen or a score and laid side by
side in rows while the trenches were dug to receive them.

Some, found at too great a distance from these rallying points, were
buried where they lay. There was little attempt at identification,
though in most cases, the burial parties being detailed to glean the
same ground which they had assisted to reap, the names of the victorious
dead were known and listed. The enemy's fallen had to be content with
counting. But of that they got enough: many of them were counted several
times, and the total, as given afterward in the official report of the
victorious commander, denoted rather a hope than a result.

At some little distance from the spot where one of the burial parties
had established its "bivouac of the dead," a man in the uniform of a
Federal officer stood leaning against a tree. From his feet upward to
his neck his attitude was that of weariness reposing; but he turned his
head uneasily from side to side; his mind was apparently not at rest. He
was perhaps uncertain in which direction to go; he was not likely to
remain long where he was, for already the level rays of the setting sun
straggled redly through the open spaces of the wood and the weary
soldiers were quitting their task for the day. He would hardly make a
night of it alone there among the dead.

Nine men in ten whom you meet after a battle inquire the way to some
fraction of the army--as if any one could know. Doubtless this officer
was lost. After resting himself a moment he would presumably follow one
of the retiring burial squads.

When all were gone he walked straight away into the forest toward the
red west, its light staining his face like blood. The air of confidence
with which he now strode along showed that he was on familiar ground; he
had recovered his bearings. The dead on his right and on his left were
unregarded as he passed. An occasional low moan from some
sorely-stricken wretch whom the relief-parties had not reached, and who
would have to pass a comfortless night beneath the stars with his thirst
to keep him company, was equally unheeded. What, indeed, could the
officer have done, being no surgeon and having no water?

At the head of a shallow ravine, a mere depression of the ground, lay a
small group of bodies. He saw, and swerving suddenly from his course
walked rapidly toward them. Scanning each one sharply as he passed, he
stopped at last above one which lay at a slight remove from the others,
near a clump of small trees. He looked at it narrowly. It seemed to
stir. He stooped and laid his hand upon its face. It screamed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The officer was Captain Downing Madwell, of a Massachusetts regiment of
infantry, a daring and intelligent soldier, an honorable man.

In the regiment were two brothers named Halcrow--Caffal and Creede
Halcrow. Caffal Halcrow was a sergeant in Captain Madwell's company, and
these two men, the sergeant and the captain, were devoted friends. In so
far as disparity of rank, difference in duties and considerations of
military discipline would permit they were commonly together. They had,
indeed, grown up together from childhood. A habit of the heart is not
easily broken off. Caffal Halcrow had nothing military in his taste nor
disposition, but the thought of separation from his friend was
disagreeable; he enlisted in the company in which Madwell was
second-lieutenant. Each had taken two steps upward in rank, but between
the highest non-commissioned and the lowest commissioned officer the
gulf is deep and wide and the old relation was maintained with
difficulty and a difference.

Creede Halcrow, the brother of Caffal, was the major of the regiment--a
cynical, saturnine man, between whom and Captain Madwell there was a
natural antipathy which circumstances had nourished and strengthened to
an active animosity. But for the restraining influence of their mutual
relation to Caffal these two patriots would doubtless have endeavored to
deprive their country of each other's services.

At the opening of the battle that morning the regiment was performing
outpost duty a mile away from the main army. It was attacked and nearly
surrounded in the forest, but stubbornly held its ground. During a lull
in the fighting, Major Halcrow came to Captain Madwell. The two
exchanged formal salutes, and the major said: "Captain, the colonel
directs that you push your company to the head of this ravine and hold
your place there until recalled. I need hardly apprise you of the
dangerous character of the movement, but if you wish, you can, I
suppose, turn over the command to your first-lieutenant. I was not,
however, directed to authorize the substitution; it is merely a
suggestion of my own, unofficially made."

To this deadly insult Captain Madwell coolly replied:

"Sir, I invite you to accompany the movement. A mounted officer would be
a conspicuous mark, and I have long held the opinion that it would be
better if you were dead."

The art of repartee was cultivated in military circles as early as 1862.

A half-hour later Captain Madwell's company was driven from its position
at the head of the ravine, with a loss of one-third its number. Among
the fallen was Sergeant Halcrow. The regiment was soon afterward forced
back to the main line, and at the close of the battle was miles away.
The captain was now standing at the side of his subordinate and friend.

Sergeant Halcrow was mortally hurt. His clothing was deranged; it seemed
to have been violently torn apart, exposing the abdomen. Some of the
buttons of his jacket had been pulled off and lay on the ground beside
him and fragments of his other garments were strewn about. His leather
belt was parted and had apparently been dragged from beneath him as he
lay. There had been no great effusion of blood. The only visible wound
was a wide, ragged opening in the abdomen.

It was defiled with earth and dead leaves. Protruding from it was a loop
of small intestine. In all his experience Captain Madwell had not seen a
wound like this. He could neither conjecture how it was made nor explain
the attendant circumstances--the strangely torn clothing, the parted
belt, the besmirching of the white skin. He knelt and made a closer
examination. When he rose to his feet, he turned his eyes in different
directions as if looking for an enemy. Fifty yards away, on the crest of
a low, thinly wooded hill, he saw several dark objects moving about
among the fallen men--a herd of swine. One stood with its back to him,
its shoulders sharply elevated. Its forefeet were upon a human body, its
head was depressed and invisible. The bristly ridge of its chine showed
black against the red west. Captain Madwell drew away his eyes and fixed
them again upon the thing which had been his friend.

The man who had suffered these monstrous mutilations was alive. At
intervals he moved his limbs; he moaned at every breath. He stared
blankly into the face of his friend and if touched screamed. In his
giant agony he had torn up the ground on which he lay; his clenched
hands were full of leaves and twigs and earth. Articulate speech was
beyond his power; it was impossible to know if he were sensible to
anything but pain. The expression of his face was an appeal; his eyes
were full of prayer. For what?

There was no misreading that look; the captain had too frequently seen
it in eyes of those whose lips had still the power to formulate it by an
entreaty for death. Consciously or unconsciously, this writhing fragment
of humanity, this type and example of acute sensation, this handiwork of
man and beast, this humble, unheroic Prometheus, was imploring
everything, all, the whole non-ego, for the boon of oblivion. To the
earth and the sky alike, to the trees, to the man, to whatever took form
in sense or consciousness, this incarnate suffering addressed that
silent plea.

For what, indeed? For that which we accord to even the meanest creature
without sense to demand it, denying it only to the wretched of our own
race: for the blessed release, the rite of uttermost compassion, the
_coup de grâce_.

Captain Madwell spoke the name of his friend. He repeated it over and
over without effect until emotion choked his utterance.

His tears plashed upon the livid face beneath his own and blinded
himself. He saw nothing but a blurred and moving object, but the moans
were more distinct than ever, interrupted at briefer intervals by
sharper shrieks. He turned away, struck his hand upon his forehead, and
strode from the spot. The swine, catching sight of him, threw up their
crimson muzzles, regarding him suspiciously a second, and then with a
gruff, concerted grunt, raced away out of sight. A horse, its foreleg
splintered by a cannon-shot, lifted its head sidewise from the ground
and neighed piteously. Madwell stepped forward, drew his revolver and
shot the poor beast between the eyes, narrowly observing its
death-struggle, which, contrary to his expectation, was violent and
long; but at last it lay still. The tense muscles of its lips, which had
uncovered the teeth in a horrible grin, relaxed; the sharp, clean-cut
profile took on a look of profound peace and rest.

Along the distant, thinly wooded crest to westward the fringe of sunset
fire had now nearly burned itself out. The light upon the trunks of the
trees had faded to a tender gray; shadows were in their tops, like great
dark birds aperch. Night was coming and there were miles of haunted
forest between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he stood there at the side
of the dead animal, apparently lost to all sense of his surroundings.
His eyes were bent upon the earth at his feet; his left hand hung
loosely at his side, his right still held the pistol. Presently he
lifted his face, turned it toward his dying friend and walked rapidly
back to his side. He knelt upon one knee, cocked the weapon, placed the
muzzle against the man's forehead, and turning away his eyes pulled the
trigger. There was no report. He had used his last cartridge for the
horse.

The sufferer moaned and his lips moved convulsively. The froth that ran
from them had a tinge of blood.

Captain Madwell rose to his feet and drew his sword from the scabbard.
He passed the fingers of his left hand along the edge from hilt to
point. He held it out straight before him, as if to test his nerves.
There was no visible tremor of the blade; the ray of bleak skylight that
it reflected was steady and true. He stooped and with his left hand tore
away the dying man's shirt, rose and placed the point of the sword just
over the heart. This time he did not withdraw his eyes. Grasping the
hilt with both hands, he thrust downward with all his strength and
weight. The blade sank into the man's body--through his body into the
earth; Captain Madwell came near falling forward upon his work. The
dying man drew up his knees and at the same time threw his right arm
across his breast and grasped the steel so tightly that the knuckles of
the hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain effort to withdraw the
blade the wound was enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running sinuously
down into the deranged clothing. At that moment three men stepped
silently forward from behind the clump of young trees which had
concealed their approach. Two were hospital attendants and carried a
stretcher.

The third was Major Creede Halcrow.




PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER

"Prisoner, what is your name?"

"As I am to lose it at daylight to-morrow morning it is hardly worth
while concealing it. Parker Adderson."

"Your rank?"

"A somewhat humble one; commissioned officers are too precious to be
risked in the perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant."

"Of what regiment?"

"You must excuse me; my answer might, for anything I know, give you an
idea of whose forces are in your front. Such knowledge as that is what I
came into your lines to obtain, not to impart."

"You are not without wit."

"If you have the patience to wait you will find me dull enough
to-morrow."

"How do you know that you are to die to-morrow morning?"

"Among spies captured by night that is the custom. It is one of the nice
observances of the profession."

The general so far laid aside the dignity appropriate to a Confederate
officer of high rank and wide renown as to smile. But no one in his
power and out of his favor would have drawn any happy augury from that
outward and visible sign of approval. It was neither genial nor
infectious; it did not communicate itself to the other persons exposed
to it--the caught spy who had provoked it and the armed guard who had
brought him into the tent and now stood a little apart, watching his
prisoner in the yellow candle-light. It was no part of that warrior's
duty to smile; he had been detailed for another purpose. The
conversation was resumed; it was in character a trial for a capital
offense.

"You admit, then, that you are a spy--that you came into my camp,
disguised as you are in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, to obtain
information secretly regarding the numbers and disposition of my
troops."

"Regarding, particularly, their numbers. Their disposition I already
knew. It is morose."

The general brightened again; the guard, with a severer sense of his
responsibility, accentuated the austerity of his expression and stood a
trifle more erect than before. Twirling his gray slouch hat round and
round upon his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely survey of his
surroundings. They were simple enough. The tent was a common "wall
tent," about eight feet by ten in dimensions, lighted by a single tallow
candle stuck into the haft of a bayonet, which was itself stuck into a
pine table at which the general sat, now busily writing and apparently
forgetful of his unwilling guest. An old rag carpet covered the earthen
floor; an older leather trunk, a second chair and a roll of blankets
were about all else that the tent contained; in General Clavering's
command Confederate simplicity and penury of "pomp and circumstance" had
attained their highest development. On a large nail driven into the tent
pole at the entrance was suspended a sword-belt supporting a long sabre,
a pistol in its holster and, absurdly enough, a bowie-knife. Of that
most unmilitary weapon it was the general's habit to explain that it was
a souvenir of the peaceful days when he was a civilian.

It was a stormy night. The rain cascaded upon the canvas in torrents,
with the dull, drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. As the
whooping blasts charged upon it the frail structure shook and swayed and
strained at its confining stakes and ropes.

The general finished writing, folded the half-sheet of paper and spoke
to the soldier guarding Adderson: "Here, Tassman, take that to the
adjutant-general; then return."

"And the prisoner, General?" said the soldier, saluting, with an
inquiring glance in the direction of that unfortunate.

"Do as I said," replied the officer, curtly.

The soldier took the note and ducked himself out of the tent. General
Clavering turned his handsome face toward the Federal spy, looked him in
the eyes, not unkindly, and said: "It is a bad night, my man."

"For me, yes."

"Do you guess what I have written?"

"Something worth reading, I dare say. And--perhaps it is my vanity--I
venture to suppose that I am mentioned in it."

"Yes; it is a memorandum for an order to be read to the troops at
_reveille_ concerning your execution. Also some notes for the guidance
of the provost-marshal in arranging the details of that event."

"I hope, General, the spectacle will be intelligently arranged, for I
shall attend it myself."

"Have you any arrangements of your own that you wish to make? Do you
wish to see a chaplain, for example?"

"I could hardly secure a longer rest for myself by depriving him of some
of his."

"Good God, man! do you mean to go to your death with nothing but jokes
upon your lips? Do you know that this is a serious matter?"

"How can I know that? I have never been dead in all my life. I have
heard that death is a serious matter, but never from any of those who
have experienced it."

The general was silent for a moment; the man interested, perhaps amused
him--a type not previously encountered.

"Death," he said, "is at least a loss--a loss of such happiness as we
have, and of opportunities for more."

"A loss of which we shall never be conscious can be borne with composure
and therefore expected without apprehension. You must have observed,
General, that of all the dead men with whom it is your soldierly
pleasure to strew your path none shows signs of regret."

"If the being dead is not a regrettable condition, yet the becoming so--
the act of dying--appears to be distinctly disagreeable to one who has
not lost the power to feel."

"Pain is disagreeable, no doubt. I never suffer it without more or less
discomfort. But he who lives longest is most exposed to it. What you
call dying is simply the last pain--there is really no such thing as
dying. Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to escape. You lift the
revolver that you are courteously concealing in your lap, and--"

The general blushed like a girl, then laughed softly, disclosing his
brilliant teeth, made a slight inclination of his handsome head and said
nothing. The spy continued: "You fire, and I have in my stomach what I
did not swallow. I fall, but am not dead. After a half-hour of agony I
am dead. But at any given instant of that half-hour I was either alive
or dead. There is no transition period.

"When I am hanged to-morrow morning it will be quite the same; while
conscious I shall be living; when dead, unconscious. Nature appears to
have ordered the matter quite in my interest--the way that I should have
ordered it myself. It is so simple," he added with a smile, "that it
seems hardly worth while to be hanged at all."

At the finish of his remarks there was a long silence. The general sat
impassive, looking into the man's face, but apparently not attentive to
what had been said. It was as if his eyes had mounted guard over the
prisoner while his mind concerned itself with other matters. Presently
he drew a long, deep breath, shuddered, as one awakened from a dreadful
dream, and exclaimed almost inaudibly: "Death is horrible!"--this man of
death.

"It was horrible to our savage ancestors," said the spy, gravely,
"because they had not enough intelligence to dissociate the idea of
consciousness from the idea of the physical forms in which it is
manifested--as an even lower order of intelligence, that of the monkey,
for example, may be unable to imagine a house without inhabitants, and
seeing a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupant. To us it is horrible
because we have inherited the tendency to think it so, accounting for
the notion by wild and fanciful theories of another world--as names of
places give rise to legends explaining them and reasonless conduct to
philosophies in justification. You can hang me, General, but there your
power of evil ends; you cannot condemn me to heaven."

The general appeared not to have heard; the spy's talk had merely turned
his thoughts into an unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their
will independently to conclusions of their own. The storm had ceased,
and something of the solemn spirit of the night had imparted itself to
his reflections, giving them the sombre tinge of a supernatural dread.
Perhaps there was an element of prescience in it. "I should not like to
die," he said--"not to-night."

He was interrupted--if, indeed, he had intended to speak further--by the
entrance of an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, the
provost-marshal. This recalled him to himself; the absent look passed
away from his face.

"Captain," he said, acknowledging the officer's salute, "this man is a
Yankee spy captured inside our lines with incriminating papers on him.
He has confessed. How is the weather?"

"The storm is over, sir, and the moon shining."

"Good; take a file of men, conduct him at once to the parade ground, and
shoot him."

A sharp cry broke from the spy's lips. He threw himself forward, thrust
out his neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands.

"Good God!" he cried hoarsely, almost inarticulately; "you do not mean
that! You forget--I am not to die until morning."

"I have said nothing of morning," replied the general, coldly; "that was
an assumption of your own. You die now."

"But, General, I beg--I implore you to remember; I am to hang! It will
take some time to erect the gallows--two hours--an hour. Spies are
hanged; I have rights under military law. For Heaven's sake, General,
consider how short--"

"Captain, observe my directions."

The officer drew his sword and fixing his eyes upon the prisoner pointed
silently to the opening of the tent. The prisoner hesitated; the officer
grasped him by the collar and pushed him gently forward. As he
approached the tent pole the frantic man sprang to it and with cat-like
agility seized the handle of the bowie-knife, plucked the weapon from
the scabbard and thrusting the captain aside leaped upon the general
with the fury of a madman, hurling him to the ground and falling
headlong upon him as he lay. The table was overturned, the candle
extinguished and they fought blindly in the darkness. The
provost-marshal sprang to the assistance of his Superior officer and was
himself prostrated upon the struggling forms. Curses and inarticulate
cries of rage and pain came from the welter of limbs and bodies; the
tent came down upon them and beneath its hampering and enveloping folds
the struggle went on. Private Tassman, returning from his errand and
dimly conjecturing the situation, threw down his rifle and laying hold
of the flouncing canvas at random vainly tried to drag it off the men
under it; and the sentinel who paced up and down in front, not daring to
leave his beat though the skies should fall, discharged his rifle. The
report alarmed the camp; drums beat the long roll and bugles sounded the
assembly, bringing swarms of half-clad men into the moonlight, dressing
as they ran, and falling into line at the sharp commands of their
officers. This was well; being in line the men were under control; they
stood at arms while the general's staff and the men of his escort
brought order out of confusion by lifting off the fallen tent and
pulling apart the breathless and bleeding actors in that strange
contention.

Breathless, indeed, was one: the captain was dead; the handle of the
bowie-knife, protruding from his throat, was pressed back beneath his
chin until the end had caught in the angle of the jaw and the hand that
delivered the blow had been unable to remove the weapon. In the dead
man's hand was his sword, clenched with a grip that defied the strength
of the living. Its blade was streaked with red to the hilt.

Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to the earth with a moan and
fainted. Besides his bruises he had two sword-thrusts--one through the
thigh, the other through the shoulder.

The spy had suffered the least damage. Apart from a broken right arm,
his wounds were such only as might have been incurred in an ordinary
combat with nature's weapons. But he was dazed and seemed hardly to know
what had occurred. He shrank away from those attending him, cowered upon
the ground and uttered unintelligible remonstrances. His face, swollen
by blows and stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless showed white
beneath his disheveled hair--as white as that of a corpse.

"The man is not insane," said the surgeon, preparing bandages and
replying to a question; "he is suffering from fright. Who and what is
he?"

Private Tassman began to explain. It was the opportunity of his life; he
omitted nothing that could in any way accentuate the importance of his
own relation to the night's events. When he had finished his story and
was ready to begin it again nobody gave him any attention.

The general had now recovered consciousness. He raised himself upon his
elbow, looked about him, and, seeing the spy crouching by a camp-fire,
guarded, said simply:

"Take that man to the parade ground and shoot him."

"The general's mind wanders," said an officer standing near.

"His mind does _not_ wander," the adjutant-general said. "I have a
memorandum from him about this business; he had given that same order to
Hasterlick"--with a motion of the hand toward the dead provost-marshal--
"and, by God! it shall be executed."

Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adderson, of the Federal army,
philosopher and wit, kneeling in the moonlight and begging incoherently
for his life, was shot to death by twenty men. As the volley rang out
upon the keen air of the midnight, General Clavering, lying white and
still in the red glow of the camp-fire, opened his big blue eyes, looked
pleasantly upon those about him and said: "How silent it all is!"

The surgeon looked at the adjutant-general, gravely and significantly.
The patient's eyes slowly closed, and thus he lay for a few moments;
then, his face suffused with a smile of ineffable sweetness, he said,
faintly: "I suppose this must be death," and so passed away.




AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS

I

CONCERNING THE WISH TO BE DEAD

Two men sat in conversation. One was the Governor of the State. The year
was 1861; the war was on and the Governor already famous for the
intelligence and zeal with which he directed all the powers and
resources of his State to the service of the Union.

"What! _you_?" the Governor was saying in evident surprise--"you too
want a military commission? Really, the fifing and drumming must have
effected a profound alteration in your convictions. In my character of
recruiting sergeant I suppose I ought not to be fastidious, but"--there
was a touch of irony in his manner--"well, have you forgotten that an
oath of allegiance is required?"

"I have altered neither my convictions nor my sympathies," said the
other, tranquilly. "While my sympathies are with the South, as you do me
the honor to recollect, I have never doubted that the North was in the
right. I am a Southerner in fact and in feeling, but it is my habit in
matters of importance to act as I think, not as I feel."

The Governor was absently tapping his desk with a pencil; he did not
immediately reply. After a while he said: "I have heard that there are
all kinds of men in the world, so I suppose there are some like that,
and doubtless you think yourself one. I've known you a long time and--
pardon me--I don't think so."

"Then I am to understand that my application is denied?"

"Unless you can remove my belief that your Southern sympathies are in
some degree a disqualification, yes. I do not doubt your good faith, and
I know you to be abundantly fitted by intelligence and special training
for the duties of an officer. Your convictions, you say, favor the Union
cause, but I prefer a man with his heart in it. The heart is what men
fight with."

"Look here, Governor," said the younger man, with a smile that had more
light than warmth: "I have something up my sleeve--a qualification which
I had hoped it would not be necessary to mention. A great military
authority has given a simple recipe for being a good soldier: 'Try
always to get yourself killed.' It is with that purpose that I wish to
enter the service. I am not, perhaps, much of a patriot, but I wish to
be dead."

The Governor looked at him rather sharply, then a little coldly. "There
is a simpler and franker way," he said.

"In my family, sir," was the reply, "we do not do that--no Armisted has
ever done that."

A long silence ensued and neither man looked at the other. Presently the
Governor lifted his eyes from the pencil, which had resumed its tapping,
and said:

"Who is she?"

"My wife."

The Governor tossed the pencil into the desk, rose and walked two or
three times across the room. Then he turned to Armisted, who also had
risen, looked at him more coldly than before and said: "But the man--
would it not be better that he--could not the country spare him better
than it can spare you? Or are the Armisteds opposed to 'the unwritten
law'?"

The Armisteds, apparently, could feel an insult: the face of the younger
man flushed, then paled, but he subdued himself to the service of his
purpose.

"The man's identity is unknown to me," he said, calmly enough.

"Pardon me," said the Governor, with even less of visible contrition
than commonly underlies those words. After a moment's reflection he
added: "I shall send you to-morrow a captain's commission in the Tenth
Infantry, now at Nashville, Tennessee. Good night."

"Good night, sir. I thank you."

Left alone, the Governor remained for a time motionless, leaning against
his desk. Presently he shrugged his shoulders as if throwing off a
burden. "This is a bad business," he said.

Seating himself at a reading-table before the fire, he took up the book
nearest his hand, absently opening it. His eyes fell upon this sentence:

"When God made it necessary for an unfaithful wife to lie about her
husband in justification of her own sins He had the tenderness to endow
men with the folly to believe her."

He looked at the title of the book; it was, _His Excellency the Fool_.

He flung the volume into the fire.

II

HOW TO SAY WHAT IS WORTH HEARING

The enemy, defeated in two days of battle at Pittsburg Landing, had
sullenly retired to Corinth, whence he had come. For manifest
incompetence Grant, whose beaten army had been saved from destruction
and capture by Buell's soldierly activity and skill, had been relieved
of his command, which nevertheless had not been given to Buell, but to
Halleck, a man of unproved powers, a theorist, sluggish, irresolute.
Foot by foot his troops, always deployed in line-of-battle to resist the
enemy's bickering skirmishers, always entrenching against the columns
that never came, advanced across the thirty miles of forest and swamp
toward an antagonist prepared to vanish at contact, like a ghost at
cock-crow. It was a campaign of "excursions and alarums," of
reconnoissances and counter-marches, of cross-purposes and countermanded
orders. For weeks the solemn farce held attention, luring distinguished
civilians from fields of political ambition to see what they safely
could of the horrors of war. Among these was our friend the Governor. At
the headquarters of the army and in the camps of the troops from his
State he was a familiar figure, attended by the several members of his
personal staff, showily horsed, faultlessly betailored and bravely
silk-hatted. Things of charm they were, rich in suggestions of peaceful
lands beyond a sea of strife. The bedraggled soldier looked up from his
trench as they passed, leaned upon his spade and audibly damned them to
signify his sense of their ornamental irrelevance to the austerities of
his trade.

"I think, Governor," said General Masterson one day, going into informal
session atop of his horse and throwing one leg across the pommel of his
saddle, his favorite posture--"I think I would not ride any farther in
that direction if I were you. We've nothing out there but a line of
skirmishers. That, I presume, is why I was directed to put these siege
guns here: if the skirmishers are driven in the enemy will die of
dejection at being unable to haul them away--they're a trifle heavy."

There is reason to fear that the unstrained quality of this military
humor dropped not as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath
the civilian's silk hat. Anyhow he abated none of his dignity in
recognition.

"I understand," he said, gravely, "that some of my men are out there--a
company of the Tenth, commanded by Captain Armisted. I should like to
meet him if you do not mind."

"He is worth meeting. But there's a bad bit of jungle out there, and I
should advise that you leave your horse and"--with a look at the
Governor's retinue--"your other impedimenta."

The Governor went forward alone and on foot. In a half-hour he had
pushed through a tangled undergrowth covering a boggy soil and entered
upon firm and more open ground. Here he found a half-company of infantry
lounging behind a line of stacked rifles. The men wore their
accoutrements--their belts, cartridge-boxes, haversacks and canteens.
Some lying at full length on the dry leaves were fast asleep: others in
small groups gossiped idly of this and that; a few played at cards; none
was far from the line of stacked arms. To the civilian's eye the scene
was one of carelessness, confusion, indifference; a soldier would have
observed expectancy and readiness.

At a little distance apart an officer in fatigue uniform, armed, sat on
a fallen tree noting the approach of the visitor, to whom a sergeant,
rising from one of the groups, now came forward.

"I wish to see Captain Armisted," said the Governor.

The sergeant eyed him narrowly, saying nothing, pointed to the officer,
and taking a rifle from one of the stacks, accompanied him.

"This man wants to see you, sir," said the sergeant, saluting. The
officer rose.

It would have been a sharp eye that would have recognized him. His hair,
which but a few months before had been brown, was streaked with gray.
His face, tanned by exposure, was seamed as with age. A long livid scar
across the forehead marked the stroke of a sabre; one cheek was drawn
and puckered by the work of a bullet. Only a woman of the loyal North
would have thought the man handsome.

"Armisted--Captain," said the Governor, extending his hand, "do you not
know me?"

"I know you, sir, and I salute you--as the Governor of my State."

Lifting his right hand to the level of his eyes he threw it outward and
downward. In the code of military etiquette there is no provision for
shaking hands. That of the civilian was withdrawn. If he felt either
surprise or chagrin his face did not betray it.

"It is the hand that signed your commission," he said.

"And it is the hand--"

The sentence remains unfinished. The sharp report of a rifle came from
the front, followed by another and another. A bullet hissed through the
forest and struck a tree near by. The men sprang from the ground and
even before the captain's high, clear voice was done intoning the
command "At-ten-tion!" had fallen into line in rear of the stacked arms.
Again--and now through the din of a crackling fusillade--sounded the
strong, deliberate sing-song of authority: "Take... arms!" followed by
the rattle of unlocking bayonets.

Bullets from the unseen enemy were now flying thick and fast, though
mostly well spent and emitting the humming sound which signified
interference by twigs and rotation in the plane of flight. Two or three
of the men in the line were already struck and down. A few wounded men
came limping awkwardly out of the undergrowth from the skirmish line in
front; most of them did not pause, but held their way with white faces
and set teeth to the rear.

Suddenly there was a deep, jarring report in front, followed by the
startling rush of a shell, which passing overhead exploded in the edge
of a thicket, setting afire the fallen leaves. Penetrating the din--
seeming to float above it like the melody of a soaring bird--rang the
slow, aspirated monotones of the captain's several commands, without
emphasis, without accent, musical and restful as an evensong under the
harvest moon. Familiar with this tranquilizing chant in moments of
imminent peril, these raw soldiers of less than a year's training
yielded themselves to the spell, executing its mandates with the
composure and precision of veterans. Even the distinguished civilian
behind his tree, hesitating between pride and terror, was accessible to
its charm and suasion. He was conscious of a fortified resolution and
ran away only when the skirmishers, under orders to rally on the
reserve, came out of the woods like hunted hares and formed on the left
of the stiff little line, breathing hard and thankful for the boon of
breath.

III

THE FIGHTING OF ONE WHOSE HEART WAS NOT IN THE QUARREL

Guided in his retreat by that of the fugitive wounded, the Governor
struggled bravely to the rear through the "bad bit of jungle." He was
well winded and a trifle confused. Excepting a single rifle-shot now and
again, there was no sound of strife behind him; the enemy was pulling
himself together for a new onset against an antagonist of whose numbers
and tactical disposition he was in doubt. The fugitive felt that he
would probably be spared to his country, and only commended the
arrangements of Providence to that end, but in leaping a small brook in
more open ground one of the arrangements incurred the mischance of a
disabling sprain at the ankle. He was unable to continue his flight, for
he was too fat to hop, and after several vain attempts, causing
intolerable pain, seated himself on the earth to nurse his ignoble
disability and deprecate the military situation.

A brisk renewal of the firing broke out and stray bullets came flitting
and droning by. Then came the crash of two clean, definite volleys,
followed by a continuous rattle, through which he heard the yells and
cheers of the combatants, punctuated by thunderclaps of cannon. All this
told him that Armisted's little command was bitterly beset and fighting
at close quarters. The wounded men whom he had distanced began to
straggle by on either hand, their numbers visibly augmented by new
levies from the line. Singly and by twos and threes, some supporting
comrades more desperately hurt than themselves, but all deaf to his
appeals for assistance, they sifted through the underbrush and
disappeared. The firing was increasingly louder and more distinct, and
presently the ailing fugitives were succeeded by men who strode with a
firmer tread, occasionally facing about and discharging their pieces,
then doggedly resuming their retreat, reloading as they walked. Two or
three fell as he looked, and lay motionless. One had enough of life left
in him to make a pitiful attempt to drag himself to cover. A passing
comrade paused beside him long enough to fire, appraised the poor
devil's disability with a look and moved sullenly on, inserting a
cartridge in his weapon.

In all this was none of the pomp of war--no hint of glory. Even in his
distress and peril the helpless civilian could not forbear to contrast
it with the gorgeous parades and reviews held in honor of himself--with
the brilliant uniforms, the music, the banners, and the marching. It was
an ugly and sickening business: to all that was artistic in his nature,
revolting, brutal, in bad taste.

"Ugh!" he grunted, shuddering--"this is beastly! Where is the charm of
it all? Where are the elevated sentiments, the devotion, the heroism,
the--"

From a point somewhere near, in the direction of the pursuing enemy,
rose the clear, deliberate sing-song of Captain Armisted.

"Stead-y, men--stead-y. Halt! Com-mence fir-ing."

The rattle of fewer than a score of rifles could be distinguished
through the general uproar, and again that penetrating falsetto:

"Cease fir-ing. In re-treat... maaarch!"

In a few moments this remnant had drifted slowly past the Governor, all
to the right of him as they faced in retiring, the men deployed at
intervals of a half-dozen paces. At the extreme left and a few yards
behind came the captain. The civilian called out his name, but he did
not hear. A swarm of men in gray now broke out of cover in pursuit,
making directly for the spot where the Governor lay--some accident of
the ground had caused them to converge upon that point: their line had
become a crowd. In a last struggle for life and liberty the Governor
attempted to rise, and looking back the captain saw him. Promptly, but
with the same slow precision as before, he sang his commands:

"Skirm-ish-ers, halt!" The men stopped and according to rule turned to
face the enemy.

"Ral-ly on the right!"--and they came in at a run, fixing bayonets and
forming loosely on the man at that end of the line.

"Forward... to save the Gov-ern-or of your State... doub-le quick...
maaarch!"

Only one man disobeyed this astonishing command! He was dead. With a
cheer they sprang forward over the twenty or thirty paces between them
and their task. The captain having a shorter distance to go arrived
first--simultaneously with the enemy. A half-dozen hasty shots were
fired at him, and the foremost man--a fellow of heroic stature, hatless
and bare-breasted--made a vicious sweep at his head with a clubbed
rifle. The officer parried the blow at the cost of a broken arm and
drove his sword to the hilt into the giant's breast. As the body fell
the weapon was wrenched from his hand and before he could pluck his
revolver from the scabbard at his belt another man leaped upon him like
a tiger, fastening both hands upon his throat and bearing him backward
upon the prostrate Governor, still struggling to rise. This man was
promptly spitted upon the bayonet of a Federal sergeant and his
death-gripe on the captain's throat loosened by a kick upon each wrist.
When the captain had risen he was at the rear of his men, who had all
passed over and around him and were thrusting fiercely at their more
numerous but less coherent antagonists. Nearly all the rifles on both
sides were empty and in the crush there was neither time nor room to
reload. The Confederates were at a disadvantage in that most of them
lacked bayonets; they fought by bludgeoning--and a clubbed rifle is a
formidable arm. The sound of the conflict was a clatter like that of the
interlocking horns of battling bulls--now and then the pash of a crushed
skull, an oath, or a grunt caused by the impact of a rifle's muzzle
against the abdomen transfixed by its bayonet. Through an opening made
by the fall of one of his men Captain Armisted sprang, with his dangling
left arm; in his right hand a full-charged revolver, which he fired with
rapidity and terrible effect into the thick of the gray crowd: but
across the bodies of the slain the survivors in the front were pushed
forward by their comrades in the rear till again they breasted the
tireless bayonets. There were fewer bayonets now to breast--a beggarly
half-dozen, all told. A few minutes more of this rough work--a little
fighting back to back--and all would be over.

Suddenly a lively firing was heard on the right and the left: a fresh
line of Federal skirmishers came forward at a run, driving before them
those parts of the Confederate line that had been separated by staying
the advance of the centre. And behind these new and noisy combatants, at
a distance of two or three hundred yards, could be seen, indistinct
among the trees a line-of-battle!

Instinctively before retiring, the crowd in gray made a tremendous rush
upon its handful of antagonists, overwhelming them by mere momentum and,
unable to use weapons in the crush, trampled them, stamped savagely on
their limbs, their bodies, their necks, their faces; then retiring with
bloody feet across its own dead it joined the general rout and the
incident was at an end.

IV

THE GREAT HONOR THE GREAT

The Governor, who had been unconscious, opened his eyes and stared about
him, slowly recalling the day's events. A man in the uniform of a major
was kneeling beside him; he was a surgeon. Grouped about were the
civilian members of the Governor's staff, their faces expressing a
natural solicitude regarding their offices. A little apart stood General
Masterson addressing another officer and gesticulating with a cigar. He
was saying: "It was the beautifulest fight ever made--by God, sir, it
was great!"

The beauty and greatness were attested by a row of dead, trimly
disposed, and another of wounded, less formally placed, restless,
half-naked, but bravely bebandaged.

"How do you feel, sir?" said the surgeon. "I find no wound."

"I think I am all right," the patient replied, sitting up. "It is that
ankle."

The surgeon transferred his attention to the ankle, cutting away the
boot. All eyes followed the knife.

In moving the leg a folded paper was uncovered. The patient picked it up
and carelessly opened it. It was a letter three months old, signed
"Julia." Catching sight of his name in it he read it. It was nothing
very remarkable--merely a weak woman's confession of unprofitable sin--
the penitence of a faithless wife deserted by her betrayer. The letter
had fallen from the pocket of Captain Armisted; the reader quietly
transferred it to his own.

An aide-de-camp rode up and dismounted. Advancing to the Governor he
saluted.

"Sir," he said, "I am sorry to find you wounded--the Commanding General
has not been informed. He presents his compliments and I am directed to
say that he has ordered for to-morrow a grand review of the reserve
corps in your honor. I venture to add that the General's carriage is at
your service if you are able to attend."

"Be pleased to say to the Commanding General that I am deeply touched by
his kindness. If you have the patience to wait a few moments you shall
convey a more definite reply."

He smiled brightly and glancing at the surgeon and his assistants added:
"At present--if you will permit an allusion to the horrors of peace--I
am 'in the hands of my friends.'"

The humor of the great is infectious; all laughed who heard.

"Where is Captain Armisted?" the Governor asked, not altogether
carelessly.

The surgeon looked up from his work, pointing silently to the nearest
body in the row of dead, the features discreetly covered with a
handkerchief. It was so near that the great man could have laid his hand
upon it, but he did not. He may have feared that it would bleed.




THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE

I

Captain Parrol Hartroy stood at the advanced post of his picket-guard,
talking in low tones with the sentinel. This post was on a turnpike
which bisected the captain's camp, a half-mile in rear, though the camp
was not in sight from that point. The officer was apparently giving the
soldier certain instructions--was perhaps merely inquiring if all were
quiet in front. As the two stood talking a man approached them from the
direction of the camp, carelessly whistling, and was promptly halted by
the soldier. He was evidently a civilian--a tall person, coarsely clad
in the home-made stuff of yellow gray, called "butternut," which was
men's only wear in the latter days of the Confederacy. On his head was a
slouch felt hat, once white, from beneath which hung masses of uneven
hair, seemingly unacquainted with either scissors or comb. The man's
face was rather striking; a broad forehead, high nose, and thin cheeks,
the mouth invisible in the full dark beard, which seemed as neglected as
the hair. The eyes were large and had that steadiness and fixity of
attention which so frequently mark a considering intelligence and a will
not easily turned from its purpose--so say those physiognomists who have
that kind of eyes. On the whole, this was a man whom one would be likely
to observe and be observed by. He carried a walking-stick freshly cut
from the forest and his ailing cowskin boots were white with dust.

"Show your pass," said the Federal soldier, a trifle more imperiously
perhaps than he would have thought necessary if he had not been under
the eye of his commander, who with folded arms looked on from the
roadside.

"'Lowed you'd rec'lect me, Gineral," said the wayfarer tranquilly, while
producing the paper from the pocket of his coat. There was something in
his tone--perhaps a faint suggestion of irony--which made his elevation
of his obstructor to exalted rank less agreeable to that worthy warrior
than promotion is commonly found to be. "You-all have to be purty
pertickler, I reckon," he added, in a more conciliatory tone, as if in
half-apology for being halted.

Having read the pass, with his rifle resting on the ground, the soldier
handed the document back without a word, shouldered his weapon, and
returned to his commander. The civilian passed on in the middle of the
road, and when he had penetrated the circumjacent Confederacy a few
yards resumed his whistling and was soon out of sight beyond an angle in
the road, which at that point entered a thin forest. Suddenly the
officer undid his arms from his breast, drew a revolver from his belt
and sprang forward at a run in the same direction, leaving his sentinel
in gaping astonishment at his post. After making to the various visible
forms of nature a solemn promise to be damned, that gentleman resumed
the air of stolidity which is supposed to be appropriate to a state of
alert military attention.

II

Captain Hartroy held an independent command. His force consisted of a
company of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a section of artillery,
detached from the army to which they belonged, to defend an important
defile in the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. It was a field
officer's command held by a line officer promoted from the ranks, where
he had quietly served until "discovered." His post was one of
exceptional peril; its defense entailed a heavy responsibility and he
had wisely been given corresponding discretionary powers, all the more
necessary because of his distance from the main army, the precarious
nature of his communications and the lawless character of the enemy's
irregular troops infesting that region. He had strongly fortified his
little camp, which embraced a village of a half-dozen dwellings and a
country store, and had collected a considerable quantity of supplies. To
a few resident civilians of known loyalty, with whom it was desirable to
trade, and of whose services in various ways he sometimes availed
himself, he had given written passes admitting them within his lines. It
is easy to understand that an abuse of this privilege in the interest of
the enemy might entail serious consequences. Captain Hartroy had made an
order to the effect that any one so abusing it would be summarily shot.

While the sentinel had been examining the civilian's pass the captain
had eyed the latter narrowly. He thought his appearance familiar and had
at first no doubt of having given him the pass which had satisfied the
sentinel. It was not until the man had got out of sight and hearing that
his identity was disclosed by a revealing light from memory. With
soldierly promptness of decision the officer had acted on the
revelation.

III

To any but a singularly self-possessed man the apparition of an officer
of the military forces, formidably clad, bearing in one hand a sheathed
sword and in the other a cocked revolver, and rushing in furious
pursuit, is no doubt disquieting to a high degree; upon the man to whom
the pursuit was in this instance directed it appeared to have no other
effect than somewhat to intensify his tranquillity. He might easily
enough have escaped into the forest to the right or the left, but chose
another course of action--turned and quietly faced the captain, saying
as he came up: "I reckon ye must have something to say to me, which ye
disremembered. What mout it be, neighbor?"

But the "neighbor" did not answer, being engaged in the unneighborly act
of covering him with a cocked pistol.

"Surrender," said the captain as calmly as a slight breathlessness from
exertion would permit, "or you die."

There was no menace in the manner of this demand; that was all in the
matter and in the means of enforcing it. There was, too, something not
altogether reassuring in the cold gray eyes that glanced along the
barrel of the weapon. For a moment the two men stood looking at each
other in silence; then the civilian, with no appearance of fear--with as
great apparent unconcern as when complying with the less austere demand
of the sentinel--slowly pulled from his pocket the paper which had
satisfied that humble functionary and held it out, saying:

"I reckon this 'ere parss from Mister Hartroy is--"

"The pass is a forgery," the officer said, interrupting. "I am Captain
Hartroy--and you are Dramer Brune."

It would have required a sharp eye to observe the slight pallor of the
civilian's face at these words, and the only other manifestation
attesting their significance was a voluntary relaxation of the thumb and
fingers holding the dishonored paper, which, falling to the road,
unheeded, was rolled by a gentle wind and then lay still, with a coating
of dust, as in humiliation for the lie that it bore. A moment later the
civilian, still looking unmoved into the barrel of the pistol, said:

"Yes, I am Dramer Brune, a Confederate spy, and your prisoner. I have on
my person, as you will soon discover, a plan of your fort and its
armament, a statement of the distribution of your men and their number,
a map of the approaches, showing the positions of all your outposts. My
life is fairly yours, but if you wish it taken in a more formal way than
by your own hand, and if you are willing to spare me the indignity of
marching into camp at the muzzle of your pistol, I promise you that I
will neither resist, escape, nor remonstrate, but will submit to
whatever penalty may be imposed."

The officer lowered his pistol, uncocked it, and thrust it into its
place in his belt. Brune advanced a step, extending his right hand.

"It is the hand of a traitor and a spy," said the officer coldly, and
did not take it. The other bowed.

"Come," said the captain, "let us go to camp; you shall not die until
to-morrow morning."

He turned his back upon his prisoner, and these two enigmatical men
retraced their steps and soon passed the sentinel, who expressed his
general sense of things by a needless and exaggerated salute to his
commander.

IV

Early on the morning after these events the two men, captor and captive,
sat in the tent of the former. A table was between them on which lay,
among a number of letters, official and private, which the captain had
written during the night, the incriminating papers found upon the spy.
That gentleman had slept through the night in an adjoining tent,
unguarded. Both, having breakfasted, were now smoking.

"Mr. Brune," said Captain Hartroy, "you probably do not understand why I
recognized you in your disguise, nor how I was aware of your name."

"I have not sought to learn, Captain," the prisoner said with quiet
dignity.

"Nevertheless I should like you to know--if the story will not offend.
You will perceive that my knowledge of you goes back to the autumn of
1861. At that time you were a private in an Ohio regiment--a brave and
trusted soldier. To the surprise and grief of your officers and comrades
you deserted and went over to the enemy. Soon afterward you were
captured in a skirmish, recognized, tried by court-martial and sentenced
to be shot. Awaiting the execution of the sentence you were confined,
unfettered, in a freight car standing on a side track of a railway."

"At Grafton, Virginia," said Brune, pushing the ashes from his cigar
with the little finger of the hand holding it, and without looking up.

"At Grafton, Virginia," the captain repeated. "One dark and stormy night
a soldier who had just returned from a long, fatiguing march was put on
guard over you. He sat on a cracker box inside the car, near the door,
his rifle loaded and the bayonet fixed. You sat in a corner and his
orders were to kill you if you attempted to rise."

"But if I _asked_ to rise he might call the corporal of the guard."

"Yes. As the long silent hours wore away the soldier yielded to the
demands of nature: he himself incurred the death penalty by sleeping at
his post of duty."

"You did."

"What! you recognize me? you have known me all along?"

The captain had risen and was walking the floor of his tent, visibly
excited. His face was flushed, the gray eyes had lost the cold, pitiless
look which they had shown when Brune had seen them over the pistol
barrel; they had softened wonderfully.

"I knew you," said the spy, with his customary tranquillity, "the moment
you faced me, demanding my surrender. In the circumstances it would have
been hardly becoming in me to recall these matters. I am perhaps a
traitor, certainly a spy; but I should not wish to seem a suppliant."

The captain had paused in his walk and was facing his prisoner. There
was a singular huskiness in his voice as he spoke again.

"Mr. Brune, whatever your conscience may permit you to be, you saved my
life at what you must have believed the cost of your own. Until I saw
you yesterday when halted by my sentinel I believed you dead--thought
that you had suffered the fate which through my own crime you might
easily have escaped. You had only to step from the car and leave me to
take your place before the firing-squad. You had a divine compassion.
You pitied my fatigue. You let me sleep, watched over me, and as the
time drew near for the relief-guard to come and detect me in my crime,
you gently waked me. Ah, Brune, Brune, that was well done--that was
great--that--"

The captain's voice failed him; the tears were running down his face and
sparkled upon his beard and his breast. Resuming his seat at the table,
he buried his face in his arms and sobbed. All else was silence.

Suddenly the clear warble of a bugle was heard sounding the "assembly."
The captain started and raised his wet face from his arms; it had turned
ghastly pale. Outside, in the sunlight, were heard the stir of the men
falling into line; the voices of the sergeants calling the roll; the
tapping of the drummers as they braced their drums. The captain spoke
again:

"I ought to have confessed my fault in order to relate the story of your
magnanimity; it might have procured you a pardon. A hundred times I
resolved to do so, but shame prevented. Besides, your sentence was just
and righteous. Well, Heaven forgive me! I said nothing, and my regiment
was soon afterward ordered to Tennessee and I never heard about you."

"It was all right, sir," said Brune, without visible emotion; "I escaped
and returned to my colors--the Confederate colors. I should like to add
that before deserting from the Federal service I had earnestly asked a
discharge, on the ground of altered convictions. I was answered by
punishment."

"Ah, but if I had suffered the penalty of my crime--if you had not
generously given me the life that I accepted without gratitude you would
not be again in the shadow and imminence of death."

The prisoner started slightly and a look of anxiety came into his face.
One would have said, too, that he was surprised. At that moment a
lieutenant, the adjutant, appeared at the opening of the tent and
saluted. "Captain," he said, "the battalion is formed."

Captain Hartroy had recovered his composure. He turned to the officer
and said: "Lieutenant, go to Captain Graham and say that I direct him to
assume command of the battalion and parade it outside the parapet. This
gentleman is a deserter and a spy; he is to be shot to death in the
presence of the troops. He will accompany you, unbound and unguarded."

While the adjutant waited at the door the two men inside the tent rose
and exchanged ceremonious bows, Brune immediately retiring.

Half an hour later an old negro cook, the only person left in camp
except the commander, was so startled by the sound of a volley of
musketry that he dropped the kettle that he was lifting from a fire. But
for his consternation and the hissing which the contents of the kettle
made among the embers, he might also have heard, nearer at hand, the
single pistol shot with which Captain Hartroy renounced the life which
in conscience he could no longer keep.

In compliance with the terms of a note that he left for the officer who
succeeded him in command, he was buried, like the deserter and spy,
without military honors; and in the solemn shadow of the mountain which
knows no more of war the two sleep well in long-forgotten graves.




ONE KIND OF OFFICER

I

OF THE USES OF CIVILITY

"Captain Ransome, it is not permitted to you to know _anything_. It is
sufficient that you obey my order--which permit me to repeat. If you
perceive any movement of troops in your front you are to open fire, and
if attacked hold this position as long as you can. Do I make myself
understood, sir?"

"Nothing could be plainer. Lieutenant Price,"--this to an officer of his
own battery, who had ridden up in time to hear the order--"the general's
meaning is clear, is it not?"

"Perfectly."

The lieutenant passed on to his post. For a moment General Cameron and
the commander of the battery sat in their saddles, looking at each other
in silence. There was no more to say; apparently too much had already
been said. Then the superior officer nodded coldly and turned his horse
to ride away. The artillerist saluted slowly, gravely, and with extreme
formality. One acquainted with the niceties of military etiquette would
have said that by his manner he attested a sense of the rebuke that he
had incurred. It is one of the important uses of civility to signify
resentment.

When the general had joined his staff and escort, awaiting him at a
little distance, the whole cavalcade moved off toward the right of the
guns and vanished in the fog. Captain Ransome was alone, silent,
motionless as an equestrian statue. The gray fog, thickening every
moment, closed in about him like a visible doom.

II

UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MEN DO NOT WISH TO BE SHOT

The fighting of the day before had been desultory and indecisive. At the
points of collision the smoke of battle had hung in blue sheets among
the branches of the trees till beaten into nothing by the falling rain.
In the softened earth the wheels of cannon and ammunition wagons cut
deep, ragged furrows, and movements of infantry seemed impeded by the
mud that clung to the soldiers' feet as, with soaken garments and rifles
imperfectly protected by capes of overcoats they went dragging in
sinuous lines hither and thither through dripping forest and flooded
field. Mounted officers, their heads protruding from rubber ponchos that
glittered like black armor, picked their way, singly and in loose
groups, among the men, coming and going with apparent aimlessness and
commanding attention from nobody but one another. Here and there a dead
man, his clothing defiled with earth, his face covered with a blanket or
showing yellow and claylike in the rain, added his dispiriting influence
to that of the other dismal features of the scene and augmented the
general discomfort with a particular dejection. Very repulsive these
wrecks looked--not at all heroic, and nobody was accessible to the
infection of their patriotic example. Dead upon the field of honor, yes;
but the field of honor was so very wet! It makes a difference.

The general engagement that all expected did not occur, none of the
small advantages accruing, now to this side and now to that, in isolated
and accidental collisions being followed up. Half-hearted attacks
provoked a sullen resistance which was satisfied with mere repulse.
Orders were obeyed with mechanical fidelity; no one did any more than
his duty.

"The army is cowardly to-day," said General Cameron, the commander of a
Federal brigade, to his adjutant-general.

"The army is cold," replied the officer addressed, "and--yes, it doesn't
wish to be like that."

He pointed to one of the dead bodies, lying in a thin pool of yellow
water, its face and clothing bespattered with mud from hoof and wheel.

The army's weapons seemed to share its military delinquency. The rattle
of rifles sounded flat and contemptible. It had no meaning and scarcely
roused to attention and expectancy the unengaged parts of the
line-of-battle and the waiting reserves. Heard at a little distance, the
reports of cannon were feeble in volume and _timbre_: they lacked sting
and resonance. The guns seemed to be fired with light charges,
unshotted. And so the futile day wore on to its dreary close, and then
to a night of discomfort succeeded a day of apprehension.

An army has a personality. Beneath the individual thoughts and emotions
of its component parts it thinks and feels as a unit. And in this large,
inclusive sense of things lies a wiser wisdom than the mere sum of all
that it knows. On that dismal morning this great brute force, groping at
the bottom of a white ocean of fog among trees that seemed as sea weeds,
had a dumb consciousness that all was not well; that a day's manoeuvring
had resulted in a faulty disposition of its parts, a blind diffusion of
its strength. The men felt insecure and talked among themselves of such
tactical errors as with their meager military vocabulary they were able
to name. Field and line officers gathered in groups and spoke more
learnedly of what they apprehended with no greater clearness. Commanders
of brigades and divisions looked anxiously to their connections on the
right and on the left, sent staff officers on errands of inquiry and
pushed skirmish lines silently and cautiously forward into the dubious
region between the known and the unknown. At some points on the line the
troops, apparently of their own volition, constructed such defenses as
they could without the silent spade and the noisy ax.

One of these points was held by Captain Ransome's battery of six guns.
Provided always with intrenching tools, his men had labored with
diligence during the night, and now his guns thrust their black muzzles
through the embrasures of a really formidable earthwork. It crowned a
slight acclivity devoid of undergrowth and providing an unobstructed
fire that would sweep the ground for an unknown distance in front. The
position could hardly have been better chosen. It had this peculiarity,
which Captain Ransome, who was greatly addicted to the use of the
compass, had not failed to observe: it faced northward, whereas he knew
that the general line of the army must face eastward. In fact, that part
of the line was "refused"--that is to say, bent backward, away from the
enemy. This implied that Captain Ransome's battery was somewhere near
the left flank of the army; for an army in line of battle retires its
flanks if the nature of the ground will permit, they being its
vulnerable points. Actually, Captain Ransome appeared to hold the
extreme left of the line, no troops being visible in that direction
beyond his own. Immediately in rear of his guns occurred that
conversation between him and his brigade commander, the concluding and
more picturesque part of which is reported above.

III

HOW TO PLAY THE CANNON WITHOUT NOTES

Captain Ransome sat motionless and silent on horseback. A few yards away
his men were standing at their guns. Somewhere--everywhere within a few
miles--were a hundred thousand men, friends and enemies. Yet he was
alone. The mist had isolated him as completely as if he had been in the
heart of a desert. His world was a few square yards of wet and trampled
earth about the feet of his horse. His comrades in that ghostly domain
were invisible and inaudible. These were conditions favorable to
thought, and he was thinking. Of the nature of his thoughts his
clear-cut handsome features yielded no attesting sign. His face was as
inscrutable as that of the sphinx. Why should it have made a record
which there was none to observe? At the sound of a footstep he merely
turned his eyes in the direction whence it came; one of his sergeants,
looking a giant in stature in the false perspective of the fog,
approached, and when clearly defined and reduced to his true dimensions
by propinquity, saluted and stood at attention.

"Well, Morris," said the officer, returning his subordinate's salute.

"Lieutenant Price directed me to tell you, sir, that most of the
infantry has been withdrawn. We have not sufficient support."

"Yes, I know."

"I am to say that some of our men have been out over the works a hundred
yards and report that our front is not picketed."

"Yes."

"They were so far forward that they heard the enemy."

"Yes."

"They heard the rattle of the wheels of artillery and the commands of
officers."

"Yes."

"The enemy is moving toward our works."

Captain Ransome, who had been facing to the rear of his line--toward the
point where the brigade commander and his cavalcade had been swallowed
up by the fog--reined his horse about and faced the other way. Then he
sat motionless as before.

"Who are the men who made that statement?" he inquired, without looking
at the sergeant; his eyes were directed straight into the fog over the
head of his horse.

"Corporal Hassman and Gunner Manning."

Captain Ransome was a moment silent. A slight pallor came into his face,
a slight compression affected the lines of his lips, but it would have
required a closer observer than Sergeant Morris to note the change.
There was none in the voice.

"Sergeant, present my compliments to Lieutenant Price and direct him to
open fire with all the guns. Grape."

The sergeant saluted and vanished in the fog.

IV.

TO INTRODUCE GENERAL MASTERSON

Searching for his division commander,
General Cameron and his escort had followed the line of battle for
nearly a mile to the right of Ransome's battery, and there learned that
the division commander had gone in search of the corps commander. It
seemed that everybody was looking for his immediate superior--an ominous
circumstance. It meant that nobody was quite at ease. So General Cameron
rode on for another half-mile, where by good luck he met General
Masterson, the division commander, returning.

"Ah, Cameron," said the higher officer, reining up, and throwing his
right leg across the pommel of his saddle in a most unmilitary way--
"anything up? Found a good position for your battery, I hope--if one
place is better than another in a fog."

"Yes, general," said the other, with the greater dignity appropriate to
his less exalted rank, "my battery is very well placed. I wish I could
say that it is as well commanded."

"Eh, what's that? Ransome? I think him a fine fellow. In the army we
should be proud of him."

It was customary for officers of the regular army to speak of it as "the
army." As the greatest cities are most provincial, so the
self-complacency of aristocracies is most frankly plebeian.

"He is too fond of his opinion. By the way, in order to occupy the hill
that he holds I had to extend my line dangerously. The hill is on my
left--that is to say the left flank of the army."

"Oh, no, Hart's brigade is beyond. It was ordered up from Drytown during
the night and directed to hook on to you. Better go and--"

The sentence was unfinished: a lively cannonade had broken out on the
left, and both officers, followed by their retinues of aides and
orderlies making a great jingle and clank, rode rapidly toward the spot.
But they were soon impeded, for they were compelled by the fog to keep
within sight of the line-of-battle, behind which were swarms of men, all
in motion across their way. Everywhere the line was assuming a sharper
and harder definition, as the men sprang to arms and the officers, with
drawn swords, "dressed" the ranks. Color-bearers unfurled the flags,
buglers blew the "assembly," hospital attendants appeared with
stretchers. Field officers mounted and sent their impedimenta to the
rear in care of negro servants. Back in the ghostly spaces of the forest
could be heard the rustle and murmur of the reserves, pulling themselves
together.

Nor was all this preparation vain, for scarcely five minutes had passed
since Captain Ransome's guns had broken the truce of doubt before the
whole region was aroar: the enemy had attacked nearly everywhere.

V

HOW SOUNDS CAN FIGHT SHADOWS

Captain Ransome walked up and down behind his guns, which were firing
rapidly but with steadiness. The gunners worked alertly, but without
haste or apparent excitement. There was really no reason for excitement;
it is not much to point a cannon into a fog and fire it. Anybody can do
as much as that.

The men smiled at their noisy work, performing it with a lessening
alacrity. They cast curious regards upon their captain, who had now
mounted the banquette of the fortification and was looking across the
parapet as if observing the effect of his fire. But the only visible
effect was the substitution of wide, low-lying sheets of smoke for their
bulk of fog. Suddenly out of the obscurity burst a great sound of
cheering, which filled the intervals between the reports of the guns
with startling distinctness! To the few with leisure and opportunity to
observe, the sound was inexpressibly strange--so loud, so near, so
menacing, yet nothing seen! The men who had smiled at their work smiled
no more, but performed it with a serious and feverish activity.

From his station at the parapet Captain Ransome now saw a great
multitude of dim gray figures taking shape in the mist below him and
swarming up the slope. But the work of the guns was now fast and
furious. They swept the populous declivity with gusts of grape and
canister, the whirring of which could be heard through the thunder of
the explosions. In this awful tempest of iron the assailants struggled
forward foot by foot across their dead, firing into the embrasures,
reloading, firing again, and at last falling in their turn, a little in
advance of those who had fallen before. Soon the smoke was dense enough
to cover all. It settled down upon the attack and, drifting back,
involved the defense. The gunners could hardly see to serve their
pieces, and when occasional figures of the enemy appeared upon the
parapet--having had the good luck to get near enough to it, between 

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