The Battle Ground Part 47

"Go to the field, you crows, and be d.a.m.ned!" he called.

One of the prisoners, a ruddy-cheeked young fellow in private's clothes, looked up and touched his cap.

"Thank you, sir, I hope we'll meet at the front," he said, in a rich Irish brogue. Then he pa.s.sed on to Libby prison, while Dan turned from the window and lay watching the surgeon's faces as they probed for bullets.

It was a long unceiled building, filled with bright daylight and the buzzing of countless flies. Women, who had volunteered for the service, pa.s.sed swiftly over the creaking boards, or knelt beside the pallets as they bathed the shattered limbs with steady fingers. Here and there a child held a gla.s.s of water to a man who could not raise himself, or sat fanning the flies from a pallid face. None was too old nor too young where there was work for all.

A stir pa.s.sed through the group about the long pine table, and one of the surgeons, wiping the sweat from his brow, came over to where Dan lay, and stopped to take breath beside the window.

"By Jove, that man died game," he said, shaking his handkerchief at the flies. "We took both his legs off at the knee, and he just gripped the table hard and never winked an eyelash. I told him it would kill him, but he said he'd be hanged if he didn't take his chance--and he took it and died. Talk to me about nerve, that fellow had the cleanest grit I ever saw."

Dan's pulses fluttered, as they always did at an example of pure pluck.

"What's his regiment?" he asked, watching the two slaves who, followed by their mistresses, were bringing the body back to the stretcher.

"Oh, he was a scout, I believe, serving with Stuart when he was wounded.

His name is--by the way, his name is Montjoy. Any relative of yours, I wonder?"

Raising himself upon his elbow, Dan turned to look at the dead man beside him. A heavy beard covered the mouth and chin, but he knew the sunken black eyes and the hair that was like his own.

"Yes," he answered after a long pause, "he is a relative of mine, I think;"

and then, while the man lay waiting for his coffin, he propped himself upon his arm and followed curiously the changes made by death.

At his first recognition there had come only a wave of repulsion--the old disgust that had always dogged the memory of his father; then, with the dead face before his eyes, he was aware of an unreasoning pride in the blood he bore--in the fact that the soldier there had died pure game to the last. It was as a braggart and a bully that he had always thought of him; now he knew that at least he was not a craven--that he could take blows as he dealt them, from the shoulder out. He had hated his father, he told himself unflinchingly, and he did not love him now. Had the dead man opened his eyes he could have struck him back again with his mother's memory for a weapon. There had been war between them to the grave, and yet, despite himself, he knew that he had lost his old boyish shame of the Montjoy blood. With the instinct of his race to glorify physical courage, he had seen the shadow of his boyhood loom from the petty into the gigantic. Jack Montjoy may have been a scoundrel,--doubtless he was one,--but, with all his misdeeds on his shoulders, he had lived pure game to the end.

A fresh bleeding of Dan's wound brought on a sudden faintness, and he fell heavily upon Big Abel's arm. With the pain a groan hovered an instant on his lips, but, closing his eyes, he bit it back and lay silent. For the first time in his life there had come to him, like an impulse, the knowledge that he must not lower his father's name.

BOOK FOURTH

THE RETURN OF THE VANQUISHED

I

THE RAGGED ARMY

The brigade had halted to gather rations in a corn field beside the road, and Dan, lying with his head in the shadow of a clump of sumach, hungrily regarded the "roasting ears" which Pinetop had just rolled in the ashes. A malarial fever, which he had contracted in the swamps of the Chickahominy, had wasted his vitality until he had begun to look like the mere shadow of himself; gaunt, unwashed, hollow-eyed, yet wearing his torn gray jacket and brimless cap as jauntily as he had once worn his embroidered waistcoats.

His hand trembled as he reached out for his share of the green corn, but weakened as he was by sickness and starvation, the defiant humour shone all the clearer in his eyes. He had still the heart for a whistle, Bland had said last night, looking at him a little wistfully.

As he lay there, with the dusty sumach shrub above him, he saw the ragged army pus.h.i.+ng on into the turnpike that led to Maryland. Lean, sun-scorched, half-clothed, dropping its stragglers like leaves upon the roadside, marching in borrowed rags, and fighting with the weapons of its enemies, dirty, fevered, choking with the hot dust of the turnpike--it still pressed onward, bending like a blade beneath Lee's hand. For this army of the sick, fighting slow agues, old wounds, and the sharp diseases that follow on green food, was becoming suddenly an army of invasion. The road led into Maryland, and the brigades swept into it, jesting like schoolboys on a frolic.

Dan, stretched exhausted beside the road, ate his ear of corn, and idly watched the regiment that was marching by--marching, not with the even tread of regular troops, but with scattered ranks and broken column, each man limping in worn-out shoes, at his own pace. They were not fancy soldiers, these men, he felt as he looked after them. They were not imposing upon the road, but when their chance came to fight, they would be very sure to take it. Here and there a man still carried his old squirrel musket, with a rusted skillet handle stuck into the barrel, but when before many days the skillet would be withdrawn, the load might be relied upon to wing straight home a little later. On wet nights those muskets would stand upright upon their bayonets, with muzzles in the earth, while the rain dripped off, and on dry days they would carry aloft the full property of the mess, which had dwindled to a frying pan and an old quart cup; though seldom cleaned, they were always fit for service--or if they went foul what was easier than to pick up a less trusty one upon the field. On the other side hung the blankets, tied at the ends and worn like a sling from the left shoulder. The haversack was gone and with it the knapsack and the overcoat. When a man wanted a change of linen he knelt down and washed his single s.h.i.+rt in the brook, sitting in the sun while it dried upon the bank.

If it was long in drying he put it on, wet as it was, and ran ahead to fall in with his company. Where the discipline was easy, each infantryman might become his own commissary.

Dan finished his corn, threw the husks over his head, and sat up, looking idly at the irregular ranks. He was tired and sick, and after a short rest it seemed all the harder to get up and take the road again. As he sat there he began to bandy words with the sergeant of a Maryland regiment that was pa.s.sing.

"h.e.l.lo! what brigade?" called the sergeant in friendly tones. He looked fat and well fed, and Dan felt this to be good ground for resentment.

"General Straggler's brigade, but it's none of your business," he promptly retorted.

"General Straggler has a pretty G.o.d-forsaken crew," taunted the sergeant, looking back as he stepped on briskly. "I've seen his regiments lining the road clear up from Chantilly."

"If you'd kept your fat eyes open at Mana.s.sas the other day, you'd have seen them lining the battle-field as well," pursued Dan pleasantly, chewing a long green blade of corn. "Old Stonewall saw them, I'll be bound. If General Straggler didn't win that battle I'd like to know who did."

"Oh, shucks!" responded the sergeant, and was out of hearing.

The regiment pa.s.sed by and another took its place. "Was that General Lee you were yelling at down there, boys?" inquired Dan politely, smiling the smile of a man who sits by the roadside and sees another sweating on the march.

"Naw, that warn't Ma.r.s.e Robert," replied a private, limping with bare feet over the border of dried gra.s.s. "'Twas a blamed, blank, bottomless well, that's what 'twas. I let my canteen down on a string and it never came back no mo'."

Dan lowered his eyes, and critically regarded the tattered banner of the regiment, covered with the names of the battles over which it had hung unfurled. "Tennessee, aren't you?" he asked, following the flag.

The private shook his head, and stooped to remove a pebble from between his toes.

"Naw, we ain't from Tennessee," he drawled. "We've had the measles--that's what's the matter with us."

"You show it, by Jove," said Dan, laughing. "Step quickly, if you please--this is the cleanest brigade in the army."

"Huh!" exclaimed the private, eying them with contempt. "You look like it, don't you, sonny? Why, I'd ketch the mumps jest to look at sech a set o'

rag-a-m.u.f.fins!"

He went on, still grunting, while Dan rose to his feet and slung his blanket from his shoulder. "Look here, does anybody know where we're going anyway?" he asked of the blue sky.

"I seed General Jackson about two miles up," replied a pa.s.sing countryman, who had led his horse into the corn field. "Whoopee! he was going at a G.o.d-a'mighty pace, I tell you. If he keeps that up he'll be over the Potomac before sunset."

"Then we are going into Maryland!" cried Jack Powell, jumping to his feet.

"Hurrah for Maryland! We're going to Maryland, G.o.d bless her!"

The shouts pa.s.sed down the road and the Maryland regiment in front sent back three rousing cheers.

"By Jove, I hope I'll find some shoes there," said Dan, shaking the sand from his ragged boots, and twisting the shreds of his stockings about his feet. "I've had to punch holes in my soles and lace them with shoe strings to the upper leather, or they'd have dropped off long ago."

"Well, I'll begin by making love to a seamstress when I'm over the Potomac," remarked Welch, getting upon his feet. "I'm decidedly in need of a couple of patches."

"You make love! You!" roared Jack Powell. "Why, you're the kind of thing they set up in Maryland to keep the crows away. Now if it were Beau, there, I see some sense in it--for, I'll be bound, he's slain more hearts than Yankees in this campaign. The women always drain out their last drop of b.u.t.termilk when he goes on a forage."

"Oh, I don't set up to be a popinjay," retorted Welch witheringly.

"Popinjay, the devil!" scowled Dan, "who's a popinjay?"

"Wall, I'd like a pair of good stout breeches," peacefully interposed Pinetop. "I've been backin' up agin the fence when I seed a lady comin' for the last three weeks, an' whenever I set down, I'm plum feared to git up agin. What with all the other things,--the Yankees, and the chills, and the measles,--it's downright hard on a man to have to be a-feared of his own breeches."

Dan looked round with sympathy. "That's true; it's a shame," he admitted smiling. "Look here, boys, has anybody got an extra pair of breeches?"