When the prisoner moved back in reluctant obedience, he faced for an instant the entrance of the little pa.s.sage, and what he saw there must have been written swiftly, graphically in his eyes. And the sentry read it and knew then that he was upon the threshold of his death. In a fraction of time, certain information went from the grim thing in the pa.s.sage to the prisoner, and from the prisoner to the sentry. But at that instant the black formidable figure arose, towered, and made its leap. A new shadow flashed across the floor when the blow was struck.
As for the girl at the knothole, when she returned to sense she found herself standing with clinched hands and screaming with her might.
As if her reason had again departed from her, she ran around the barn, in at the door, and flung herself sobbing beside the body of the soldier in blue.
The uproar of the fight became at last coherent, inasmuch as one party was giving shouts of supreme exultation. The firing no longer sounded in crashes; it was now expressed in spiteful crackles, the last words of the combat, spoken with feminine vindictiveness.
Presently there was a thud of flying feet. A grimy panting, red-faced mob of troopers in blue plunged into the barn, became instantly frozen to att.i.tudes of amazement and rage, and then roared in one great chorus, "He"s gone!"
The girl who knelt beside the body upon the floor turned toward them her lamenting eyes and cried: "He"s not dead, is he? He can"t be dead?"
They thronged forward. The sharp lieutenant who had been so particular about the feed box knelt by the side of the girl and laid his head against the chest of the prostrate soldier. "Why, no," he said, rising and looking at the man. "He"s all right. Some of you boys throw some water on him."
"Are you sure?" demanded the girl, feverishly.
"Of course! He"ll be better after awhile."
"Oh!" said she softly, and then looked down at the sentry. She started to arise, and the lieutenant reached down and hoisted rather awkwardly at her arm.
"Don"t you worry about him. He"s all right."
She turned her face with its curving lips and shining eyes once more toward the unconscious soldier upon the floor. The troopers made a lane to the door, the lieutenant bowed, the girl vanished.
"Queer," said a young officer. "Girl very clearly worst kind of rebel, and yet she falls to weeping and wailing like mad over one of her enemies. Be around in the morning with all sorts of doctoring--you see if she ain"t. Queer."
The sharp lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. After reflection he shrugged his shoulders again. He said: "War changes many things; but it doesn"t change everything, thank G.o.d!"
A MYSTERY OF HEROISM.
The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the incessant wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a part of the clay bank which shielded them from the sh.e.l.ls. On the top of the hill a battery was arguing in tremendous roars with some other guns, and to the eye of the infantry, the artillerymen, the guns, the caissons, the horses, were distinctly outlined upon the blue sky. When a piece was fired, a red streak as round as a log flashed low in the heavens, like a monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of the battery wore white duck trousers, which somehow emphasized their legs; and when they ran and crowded in little groups at the bidding of the shouting officers, it was more impressive than usual to the infantry.
Fred Collins, of A Company, was saying: "Thunder! I wisht I had a drink.
Ain"t there any water round here?" Then somebody yelled, "There goes th"
bugler!"
As the eyes of half the regiment swept in one machinelike movement there was an instant"s picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of a death wound and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread fingers before his face. On the ground was the crimson terror of an exploding sh.e.l.l, with fibres of flame that seemed like lances. A glittering bugle swung clear of the rider"s back as fell headlong the horse and the man. In the air was an odour as from a conflagration.
Sometimes they of the infantry looked down at a fair little meadow which spread at their feet. Its long, green gra.s.s was rippling gently in a breeze. Beyond it was the gray form of a house half torn to pieces by sh.e.l.ls and by the busy axes of soldiers who had pursued firewood. The line of an old fence was now dimly marked by long weeds and by an occasional post. A sh.e.l.l had blown the well-house to fragments. Little lines of gray smoke ribboning upward from some embers indicated the place where had stood the barn.
From beyond a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some stupendous scuffle, as if two animals of the size of islands were fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of swift-moving men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the crashing of infantry volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied cheers. In the midst of it all Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company, were engaged in a heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions of the national existence.
The battery on the hill presently engaged in a frightful duel. The white legs of the gunners scampered this way and that way, and the officers redoubled their shouts. The guns, with their demeanours of stolidity and courage, were typical of something infinitely self-possessed in this clamour of death that swirled around the hill.
One of a "swing" team was suddenly smitten quivering to the ground, and his maddened brethren dragged his torn body in their struggle to escape from this turmoil and danger. A young soldier astride one of the leaders swore and fumed in his saddle, and furiously jerked at the bridle. An officer screamed out an order so violently that his voice broke and ended the sentence in a falsetto shriek.
The leading company of the infantry regiment was somewhat exposed, and the colonel ordered it moved more fully under the shelter of the hill.
There was the clank of steel against steel.
A lieutenant of the battery rode down and pa.s.sed them, holding his right arm carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not at all a part of him, but belonged to another man. His sober and reflective charger went slowly. The officer"s face was grimy and perspiring, and his uniform was tousled as if he had been in direct grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared at him. He turned his horse toward the meadow.
Collins, of A Company, said: "I wisht I had a drink. I bet there"s water in that there ol" well yonder!"
"Yes; but how you goin" to git it?"
For the little meadow which intervened was now suffering a terrible onslaught of sh.e.l.ls. Its green and beautiful calm had vanished utterly.
Brown earth was being flung in monstrous handfuls. And there was a ma.s.sacre of the young blades of gra.s.s. They were being torn, burned, obliterated. Some curious fortune of the battle had made this gentle little meadow the object of the red hate of the sh.e.l.ls, and each one as it exploded seemed like an imprecation in the face of a maiden.
The wounded officer who was riding across this expanse said to himself, "Why, they couldn"t shoot any harder if the whole army was ma.s.sed here!"
A sh.e.l.l struck the gray ruins of the house, and as, after the roar, the shattered wall fell in fragments, there was a noise which resembled the flapping of shutters during a wild gale of winter. Indeed, the infantry paused in the shelter of the bank appeared as men standing upon a sh.o.r.e contemplating a madness of the sea. The angel of calamity had under its glance the battery upon the hill. Fewer white-legged men laboured about the guns. A sh.e.l.l had smitten one of the pieces, and after the flare, the smoke, the dust, the wrath of this blow were gone, it was possible to see white legs stretched horizontally upon the ground. And at that interval to the rear, where it is the business of battery horses to stand with their noses to the fight awaiting the command to drag their guns out of the destruction or into it or wheresoever these incomprehensible humans demanded with whip and spur--in this line of pa.s.sive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man"s control of them--in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward the sky.
Some comrades joked Collins about his thirst. "Well, if yeh want a drink so bad, why don"t yeh go git it!"
"Well, I will in a minnet, if yeh don"t shut up!"
A lieutenant of artillery floundered his horse straight down the hill with as great concern as if it were level ground. As he galloped past the colonel of the infantry, he threw up his hand in swift salute.
"We"ve got to get out of that," he roared angrily. He was a black-bearded officer, and his eyes, which resembled beads, sparkled like those of an insane man. His jumping horse sped along the column of infantry.
The fat major, standing carelessly with his sword held horizontally behind him and with his legs far apart, looked after the receding horseman and laughed. "He wants to get back with orders pretty quick, or there"ll be no batt"ry left," he observed.
The wise young captain of the second company hazarded to the lieutenant colonel that the enemy"s infantry would probably soon attack the hill, and the lieutenant colonel snubbed him.
A private in one of the rear companies looked out over the meadow, and then turned to a companion and said, "Look there, Jim!" It was the wounded officer from the battery, who some time before had started to ride across the meadow, supporting his right arm carefully with his left hand. This man had encountered a sh.e.l.l apparently at a time when no one perceived him, and he could now be seen lying face downward with a stirruped foot stretched across the body of his dead horse. A leg of the charger extended slantingly upward precisely as stiff as a stake. Around this motionless pair the sh.e.l.ls still howled.
There was a quarrel in A Company. Collins was shaking his fist in the faces of some laughing comrades. "Dern yeh! I ain"t afraid t" go. If yeh say much, I will go!"
"Of course, yeh will! You"ll run through that there medder, won"t yeh?"
Collins said, in a terrible voice, "You see now!" At this ominous threat his comrades broke into renewed jeers.
Collins gave them a dark scowl and went to find his captain. The latter was conversing with the colonel of the regiment.
"Captain," said Collins, saluting and standing at attention--in those days all trousers bagged at the knees--"captain, I want t" get permission to go git some water from that there well over yonder!"
The colonel and the captain swung about simultaneously and stared across the meadow. The captain laughed. "You must be pretty thirsty, Collins?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Well--ah," said the captain. After a moment, he asked, "Can"t you wait?"
"No, sir."
The colonel was watching Collins"s face. "Look here, my lad," he said, in a pious sort of a voice--"look here, my lad"--Collins was not a lad--"don"t you think that"s taking pretty big risks for a little drink of water?"