The Red Acorn Part 20

Abe, watch me closely while I drink. I magnanimously take the lead, out of consideration for you. If I ain't dead in five minutes, you try it."

"O, stop monkeying, and drink," was the impatient answer.

Kent put the jug to his mouth and took a long draught. "Shade of old Father Noah, the first drunkard," he said as he wiped the tears from his eyes, "another swig like that would pull out all the rivets in my internal pipings. Heavens! it went down like pulling a cat out of a hole by the tail. I'm afraid to wipe my mouth, lest my breath burn a hole in the sleeve of my blouse."

Three-quarters of an hour later, the spirits in the jug were lowering and those in the men rising with unequal rapidity. Under the influence of the fiery stimulant, Kent's sanguine temperament boiled and bubbled over. Imagination painted the present and future in hues of dazzling radiance. Everything was as delightful as it could be now, and would become more charming as time rolled on. But with Abe Bolton drinking tended to develop moroseness into savagery.

"Ah, comfort me with apple-jack, and stay me with flagons of it," said Kent Edwards, setting down the jug with the circ.u.mspection of a man not yet too drunk to suspect that he is losing exact control of his legs and arms. "That gets better the deeper down you go. First it was like swallowing a chestnut burr; now, old hand-made Bourbon couldn't be smoother."

"A man can get used to a'most anything," said Bolton.

"I get gladder every day, Abe, that I came into the army. I wouldn't have missed all this experience for the finest farm in the Miami Valley.

"Twere worth ten years of peaceful life, To soldier have a day,"

Sir Walter Scott says--as I improve him."

"'Specially one of them soaking days when we were marching through the mud to Wildcat."

"O, those were just thrown in to make us appreciate good weather when we have it. Otherwise we wouldn't. You know what the song says:

'For Spring would be but gloomy weather, If we had nothing else but Spring.'"

"Well, for my part, one o' them days was enough to p'ison six months o' suns.h.i.+ne. I declare, I believe I'll feel mildewed for the rest of my life. I know if I pulled off my clothes you could sc.r.a.pe the green mold off my back."

"And I'm sure that if we'd had the whole army to pick from, we couldn't've got in with a better lot of boys and officers. Every one of them's true blue, and a MAN all the way through. It's the best regiment in the army, and our company's the best company in the regiment, and I flatter myself the company hasn't got two other as good men as we are."

"Your modesty'll ruin you yet, Kent," said Abe, sardonically. "It's very painful to see a man going 'round unerrating himself as you do. If I could only get you to have a proper opinion of yourself--that is, believe that you are a bigger man than General Scott or George B.

McClellan, I'd have some hopes of you."

"We'll have one grand, big battle with the Secessionists now, pretty soon--everything's getting ripe for it--and we'll whip them like Wellington whipped Napoleon at Waterloo. Our regiment will cover itself with glory, in which you and I will have a big share. Then we'll march back to Sardis with flags flying and drums beating, everybody turning out, and the bands playing 'See, the Conquering Hero Comes,' when you and I come down the street, and we'll be heroes for the rest of our natural lives."

"Go ahead, and tell the rest of it to the mash-tubs and the still. I've heard as much as I can stand, an I must have a breath of fresh air. I'm going into the other cabin to see what's there."

Kent followed him to the door, with the jug in his hand.

"Kent, there's a man coming down the path there," said Abe, pulling himself together, after the manner of a half-drunken man whose attention is powerfully distracted.

"Where?" asked Kent, setting the jug down with solicitous gentleness, and reaching back for his musket.

"There, by that big chestnut. Can't you see him? or have you got so much whisky in you, that you can't see anything? He's in Rebel clothes, and he's got a gun. I'm going to shoot him."

"Maybe he's one of these loyal Kentuckians. Hold on a minute, till you are sure," said Kent, half c.o.c.king his own gun.

"The last words of General Was.h.i.+ngton were 'Never trust a n.i.g.g.e.r with a gun.' A man with that kind o' cloze has no business carrying weapons around in this country. I'm going to shoot."

"If you shoot with your hands wobbling that way, you'll make him aas full of holes as a skimmer. That'd be cruel. Steady yourself up a little, while I talk to him.

"Halt, there!" commanded Kent, with a thick tongue. "Who are you, and how many are with you?"

"I'm a Union man," said Fortner, for it was he, "an' I'm alone."

"Lay down your gun and come up here, if you are a friend," ordered Kent.

The swaggering imperiousness in Edward's tone nettled Fortner as much as the order itself. "I don't make a practice of layin' down my gun for no man," he said proudly. "I'm ez good Union ez ary of you'uns dar be, an' I don't take no orders from ye. I could've killed ye both, ef I'd a wanted ter, afore ye ever seed me."

Bolton's gun cracked, and the bullet buried itself in the thick, soft bark of the chestnut, just above Fortner's head, and threw dust and chips in his eyes. He brushed them away angrily, and instinctively raised his rifle. Kent took this as his cue to fire, but his aim was even worse than Abe's.

"Ruined again by strong drink," he muttered despairingly, as he saw the failure of his shot. "Nothing but new apple jack could make me miss so fair a mark."

"Now, ye fellers, lay down YORE guns!" shouted Fortner, springing forward to where they were, with his rifle c.o.c.ked. "Lay 'em down! I say.

Lay 'em down, or I'll let daylight through ye!"

"He's got us, Abe," said Kent, laying down his musket reluctantly. His example was followed by Abe, who, however, did not place his gun so far that he could not readily pick it up again, if Fortner gave him an instant's opportunity. Fortner noticed this, and pushed the musket farther away with his foot, still covering the two with his rifle.

"Ye see now," he said "thet I hev ye at my marcy, ef I wanted ter kill or capture ye. Efi I gin ye back yer guns, ye'll admit thet I'm yer friend, and not yer inimy, won't ye?"

"It'll certainly look like an overture to a permanent and disinterested friends.h.i.+p," said Kent, brightening up; and Abe, who was gathering himself up for a spring to catch Fortner's rifle, let his muscles relax again.

"Well, ye kin take up yer guns agin and load 'em," said Fortner, letting down the hammer of his rifle. "I'm Jim Fortner, supposed ter be the pizenest Union man on the Rocka.s.sel! Come along ter my house, an I'll gin ye a good meal o' vittels. Hit's on'y a little piece off, an' I've got thar one of yer fellers. His name's Harry Glen."

Chapter XIV. In the Hospital.

As the tall s.h.i.+p whose lofty prow Shall never stem the billows more Deserted by her gallant band, Amid the breakers lies astrand-- Soon his couch lay Rhoderick Dhu, And oft his fevered limbs he threw In toss abrupt, as when her sides Lie rocking in the advancing tides, That shake her frame with ceaseless beat, Yet can not heave her from her seat;-- O, how unlike her course on sea!

Or his free step on hill and lea!

--Lady of the Lake.

An Army Hospital is the vestibule of the Cemetery--the ante-room where the recruiting-agents of Death--Wounds and Disease--a.s.semble their conscripts to prepare them for the ranks from which there is neither desertion nor discharge. Therein enter those who are to lay aside "this muddy vesture of decay," for the changeless garb of the Beyond. Thither troop the Wasted and Stricken to rest a little, and prepare for the last great journey, the first milestone of which is placed over their heads.

Humanity and Science have done much for the Army Hospital, but still its swinging doors wave two to the tomb where they return one to health and activity.

It was a broiling hot day when Rachel Bond descended from the ambulance which had brought her from the station to camp.

She s.h.i.+elded her eyes with a palm-leaf fan, and surveyed the surroundings of the post of duty to which she had been a.s.signed. She found herself in a little city of rough plank barracks, arranged in geometrically correct streets and angles about a great plain of a parade ground, from which the heat radiated as from a glowing stove. A flag drooped as if wilted from the top of a tall pole standing on the side of the parade-ground opposite her. Languidly pacing in front of the Colonel's tent was an Orderly, who had been selected in the morning for his spruce neatness, but who now looked like some enormous blue vegetable, rapidly withering under the sun's blistering rays.

Beyond were the barracks, baking and sweltering, cracking their rough, unpainted sides into yawning fissures, and filling the smothering air with resinous odors distilled from the fat knots in the refuse planking of which they were built. Beyond these was the line of camp-guards--bright gun-barrels and bayonets glistening painfully, and those who bore them walking with as weary slowness as was consistent with any motion whatever, along their beats.

On straw in the oven-like barracks, and under the few trees in the camp-ground, lay the flushed and panting soldiers, waiting wearily for that relief which the descending sun would bring.

The hospital to which Rachel had been brought differed from the rest of the sheds in the camp by being whitewashed within and without, which made it radiate a still more unendurable heat than its duller-l.u.s.tered companions. A powerful odor of chloride of lime and carbolic acid shocked her sensitive nostrils with their tales of all the repulsiveness those disinfectants were intended to destroy or hide.

Several dejected, hollow-eyed convalescents, whose uniforms hung about their wasted bodies as they would about wooden crosses, sat on benches in the scanty shade by one side of the building, and fanned themselves weakly with fans clumsily fas.h.i.+oned from old newspapers. They looked up as the trim, lady-like figure stepped lightly down from the ambulance, and the long-absent l.u.s.ter returned briefly to their sad eyes.