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Chapter 20
When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of
the regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was
coming slowly back. The men, having hurled themselves in
projectile fashion, had presently expended their forces.
They slowly retreated, with their faces still toward the
spluttering woods, and their hot rifles still replying to the din.
Several officers were giving orders, their voices keyed to screams.
"Where in hell yeh goin'?" the lieutenant was asking in a
sarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of
triple brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: "Shoot into 'em!
Shoot into 'em, Gawd damn their souls!" There was a melee of screeches,
in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things.
The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag.
"Give it t' me!"
"No, let me keep it!" Each felt satisfied with
the other's possession of it, but each felt bound to declare,
by an offer to carry the emblem, his willingness to further
risk himself. The youth roughly pushed his friend away.
The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted for
a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon
its track. Presently it resumed its march again, curving among
the tree trunks. By the time the depleted regiment had again
reached the first open space they were receiving a fast and
merciless fire. There seemed to be mobs all about them.
The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn by
the turmoil, acted as if stunned. They accepted the pelting of
the bullets with bowed and weary heads. It was of no purpose to
strive against walls. It was of no use to batter themselves
against granite. And from this consciousness that they had
attempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise
a feeling that they had been betrayed. They glowered with bent brows,
but dangerously, upon some of the officers, more particularly
upon the red-bearded one with the voice of triple brass.
However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who
continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes. They seemed
resolved to make every trouble. The youthful lieutenant was
perhaps the last man in the disordered mass. His forgotten back
was toward the enemy. He had been shot in the arm. It hung
straight and rigid. Occasionally he would cease to remember it,
and be about to emphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture.
The multiplied pain caused him to swear with incredible power.
The youth went along with slipping uncertain feet. He kept
watchful eyes rearward. A scowl of mortification and rage was
upon his face. He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer
who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers.
But he saw that it could not come to pass. His dreams had
collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered
and hesitated on the little clearing, and then had recoiled.
And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame to him.
A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held
toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man,
who, not knowing him, had called him a mule driver.
When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything
in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind
of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the
baffled to possess him. This cold officer upon a monument,
who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man,
he thought. So grievous did he think it that he could never possess
the secret right to taunt truly in answer.
He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. "We ARE mule
drivers, are we?" And now he was compelled to throw them away.
He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept
the flag erect. He harangued his fellows, pushing against their
chests with his free hand. To those he knew well he made frantic
appeals, beseeching them by name. Between him and the lieutenant,
scolding and near to losing his mind with rage, there was felt a
subtle fellowship and equality. They supported each other in all
manner of hoarse, howling protests.
But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled at
a forceless thing. The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were
continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades
were slipping with speed back to the lines. It was difficult
to think of reputation when others were thinking of skins.
Wounded men were left crying on this black journey.
The smoke fringes and flames blustered always. The youth,
peering once through a sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown
mass of troops, interwoven and magnified until they appeared
to be thousands. A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.
Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged,
the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred
flames jetted toward the retreating band. A rolling gray
cloud again interposed as the regiment doggedly replied.
The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears, which were
trembling and buzzing from the melee of musketry and yells.
The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became
panic-stricken with the thought that the regiment had lost
its path, and was proceeding in a perilous direction.
Once the men who headed the wild procession turned and came pushing
back against their comrades, screaming that they were being fired upon
from points which they had considered to be toward their own lines.
At this cry a hysterical fear and dismay beset the troops.
A soldier, who heretofore had been ambitious to make the
regiment into a wise little band that would proceed calmly
amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly sank down and
buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom.
From another a shrill lamentation rang out filled with profane
allusions to a general. Men ran hither and thither, seeking with
their eyes roads of escape. With serene regularity, as if
controlled by a schedule, bullets buffed into men.
The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with his
flag in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to
push him to the ground. He unconsciously assumed the attitude
of the color bearer in the fight of the preceding day. He passed
over his brow a hand that trembled. His breath did not come
freely. He was choking during this small wait for the crisis.
His friend came to him. "Well, Henry, I guess this is good-by-John."
"Oh, shut up, you damned fool!" replied the youth, and he would not
look at the other.
The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a
proper circle to face the menaces. The ground was uneven and torn.
The men curled into depressions and fitted themselves snugly
behind whatever would frustrate a bullet. The youth noted
with vague surprise that the lieutenant was standing mutely with
his legs far apart and his sword held in the manner of a cane.
The youth wondered what had happened to his vocal organs that he
no more cursed.
There was something curious in this little intent pause of the
lieutenant. He was like a babe which, having wept its fill,
raises its eyes and fixes upon a distant toy. He was engrossed
in this contemplation, and the soft under lip quivered from
self-whispered words.
Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding from
the bullets, waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the
plight of the regiment.
The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of the
youthful lieutenant bawling out: "Here they come! Right onto us,
b'Gawd!" His further words were lost in a roar of wicked thunder
from the men's rifles.
The youth's eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated
by the awakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had seen the
haze of treachery disclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy.
They were so near that he could see their features. There was
a recognition as he looked at the types of faces. Also he
perceived with dim amazement that their uniforms were rather
gay in effect, being light gray, accented with a brilliant-hued
facing. Too, the clothes seemed new.
These troops had apparently been going forward with caution,
their rifles held in readiness, when the youthful lieutenant had
discovered them and their movement had been interrupted by the
volley from the blue regiment. From the moment's glimpse, it was
derived that they had been unaware of the proximity of their
dark-suited foes or had mistaken the direction. Almost instantly
they were shut utterly from the youth's sight by the smoke from the
energetic rifles of his companions. He strained his vision to learn
the accomplishment of the volley, but the smoke hung before him.
The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a pair
of boxers. The fast angry firings went back and forth. The men
in blue were intent with the despair of their circumstances and
they seized upon the revenge to be had at close range. Their
thunder swelled loud and valiant. Their curving front bristled
with flashes and the place resounded with the clangor of their
ramrods. The youth ducked and dodged for a time and achieved a
few unsatisfactory views of the enemy. There appeared to be many
of them and they were replying swiftly. They seemed moving
toward the blue regiment, step by step. He seated himself
gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees.
As he noted the vicious, wolflike temper of his comrades he had
a sweet thought that if the enemy was about to swallow the
regimental broom as a large prisoner, it could at least have the
consolation of going down with bristles forward.
But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak.
Fewer bullets ripped the air, and finally, when the men slackened
to learn of the fight, they could see only dark, floating smoke.
The regiment lay still and gazed. Presently some chance whim
came to the pestering blur, and it began to coil heavily away.
The men saw a ground vacant of fighters. It would have been an
empty stage if it were not for a few corpses that lay thrown and
twisted into fantastic shapes upon the sward.
At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from
behind their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy. Their eyes
burned and a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their dry lips.
It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove
that they were impotent. These little battles had evidently
endeavored to demonstrate that the men could not fight well.
When on the verge of submission to these opinions, the small
duel had showed them that the proportions were not impossible,
and by it they had revenged themselves upon their misgivings
and upon the foe.
The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about
them with looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim,
always confident weapons in their hands. And they were men.
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