CHAPTER XVII
This advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth
like a ruthless hunting. He began to fume with rage and
exasperation. He beat his foot upon the ground, and scowled with
hate at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phantom
flood. There was a maddening quality in this seeming resolution of
the foe to give him no rest, to give him no time to sit down and
think. Yesterday he had fought and had fled rapidly. There had been
many adventures. For to-day he felt that he had earned
opportunities for contemplative repose. He could have enjoyed
portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes at which he had
been a witness or ably discussing the processes of war with other
proved men. Too it was important that he should have time for
physical recuperation. He was sore and stiff from his experiences.
He had received his fill of all exertions, and he wished to
rest.
But those other men seemed never to grow weary;
they were fighting with their old speed. He had a wild hate for the
relentless foe. Yesterday, when he had imagined the universe to be
against him, he had hated it, little gods and big gods; to-day he
hated the army of the foe with the same great hatred. He was not
going to be badgered of his life, like a kitten chased by boys, he
said. It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those
moments they could all develop teeth and claws.
He leaned and spoke into his friend’s ear. He
menaced the woods with a gesture. “If they keep on chasing us, by
Gawd, they’d better watch out. Can’t stand too much.”
The friend twisted his head and made a calm reply.
“If they keep on a-chasin’ us they’ll drive us all inteh th’
river.”
The youth cried out savagely at this statement. He
crouched behind a little tree, with his eyes burning hatefully and
his teeth set in a cur-hke snarl. The awkward bandage was still
about his head, and upon it, over his wound, there was a spot of
dry blood. His hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling,
moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his
forehead. His jacket and shirt were open at the throat, and exposed
his young bronzed neck. There could be seen spasmodic gulpings at
his throat.
His fingers twined nervously about his rifle. He
wished that it was an engine of annihilating power. He felt that he
and his companions were being taunted and derided from sincere
convictions that they were poor and puny. His knowledge of his
inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a dark and
stormy specter, that possessed him and made him dream of abominable
cruelties. The tormentors were flies sucking insolently at his
blood, and he thought that he would have given his life for a
revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights.
The winds of battle had swept all about the
regiment, until the one rifle, instantly followed by others,
flashed in its front. A moment later the regiment roared forth its
sudden and valiant retort. A dense wall of smoke settled slowly
down. It was furiously slit and slashed by the knifelike fire from
the rifles.
To the youth the fighters resembled animals tossed
for a death struggle into a dark pit. There was a sensation that he
and his fellows, at bay, were pushing back, always pushing fierce
on-slaughts of creatures who were slippery. Their beams of crimson
seemed to get no purchase upon the bodies of their foes; the latter
seemed to evade them with ease, and come through, between, around,
and about with unopposed skill.
When, in a dream, it occurred to the youth that his
rifle was an impotent stick, he lost sense of everything but his
hate, his desire to smash into pulp the glittering smile of victory
which he could feel upon the faces of his enemies.
The blue smoke-swallowed line curled and writhed
like a snake stepped upon. It swung its ends to and fro in an agony
of fear and rage.
The youth was not conscious that he was erect upon
his feet. He did not know the direction of the ground. Indeed, once
he even lost the habit of balance and fell heavily. He was up again
immediately. One thought went through the chaos of his brain at the
time. He wondered if he had fallen because he had been shot. But
the suspicion flew away at once. He did not think more of it.
He had taken up a first position behind the little
tree, with a direct determination to hold it against the world. He
had not deemed it possible that his army could that day succeed,
and from this he felt the ability to fight harder. But the throng
had surged in all ways, until he lost directions and locations,
save that he knew where lay the enemy.
The flames bit him, and the hot smoke broiled his
skin. His rifle barrel grew so hot that ordinarily he could not
have borne it upon his palms; but he kept on stuffing cartridges
into it, and pounding them with his clanking, bending ramrod. If he
aimed at some changing form through the smoke, he pulled his
trigger with a fierce grunt, as if he were dealing a blow of the
fist with all his strength.
When the enemy seemed falling back before him and
his fellows, he went instantly forward, like a dog who, seeing his
foes lagging, turns and insists upon being pursued. And when he was
compelled to retire again, he did it slowly, sullenly, taking steps
of wrathful despair.
Once he, in his intent hate, was almost alone, and
was firing, when all those near him had ceased. He was so engrossed
in his occupation that he was not aware of a lull.
He was recalled by a hoarse laugh and a sentence
that came to his ears in a voice of contempt and amazement. “Yeh
infernal fool, don’t yeh know enough t’ quit when there ain’t
anything t’ shoot at? Good Gawd! ”
He turned then and, pausing with his rifle thrown
half into position, looked at the blue line of his comrades. During
this moment of leisure they seemed all to be engaged in staring
with astonishment at him. They had become spectators. Turning to
the front again he saw, under the lifted smoke, a deserted
ground.
He looked bewildered for a moment. Then there
appeared upon the glazed vacancy of his eyes a diamond point of
intelligence. “Oh,” he said, comprehending.41
He returned to his comrades and threw himself upon
the ground. He sprawled like a man who had been thrashed. His flesh
seemed strangely on fire, and the sounds of the battle continued in
his ears. He groped blindly for his canteen.
The lieutenant was crowing. He seemed drunk with
fighting. He called out to the youth: “By heavens, if I had ten
thousand wild cats like you I could tear th’ stomach outa this war
in less’n a week!” He puffed out his chest with large dignity as he
said it.
Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in
awe-struck ways. It was plain that as he had gone on loading and
firing and cursing without the proper intermission, they had found
time to regard him. And they now looked upon him as a war
devil.
The friend came staggering to him. There was some
fright and dismay in his voice. “Are yeh all right, Fleming? Do yeh
feel all right? There ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with yeh, Henry, is
there?”
“No,” said the youth with difficulty. His throat
seemed full of knobs and burs.
These incidents made the youth ponder. It was
revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had
fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw
that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He had been a
tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome
obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains. They had fallen
like paper peaks, and he was now what he called a hero. And he had
not been aware of the process. He had slept and, awakening, found
himself a knight.
He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his
comrades. Their faces were varied in degrees of blackness from the
burned powder. Some were utterly smudged. They were reeking with
perspiration, and their breaths came hard and wheezing. And from
these soiled expanses they peered at him.
“Hot work! Hot work!” cried the lieutenant
deliriously. He walked up and down, restless and eager. Sometimes
his voice could be heard in a wild, incomprehensible laugh.
When he had a particularly profound thought upon
the science of war he always unconsciously addressed himself to the
youth.
There was some grim rejoicing by the men. “By
thunder, I bet this army’ll never see another new reg‘ment like
us!”
“You bet! ”
“A dog, a woman, an’ a walnut tree,
Th’ more yeh beat ‘em, th’ better they be!ae
Th’ more yeh beat ‘em, th’ better they be!ae
That’s like us.”
“Lost a piler men, they did. If an’ ol’ woman swep’
up th’ woods she’d git a dustpanful.”
“Yes, an’ if she’ll come around ag‘in in ’bout an’
hour she’ll git a pile more.”
The forest still bore its burden of clamor. From
off under the trees came the rolling clatter of the musketry. Each
distant thicket seemed a strange porcupine with quills of flame. A
cloud of dark smoke, as from smoldering ruins, went up toward the
sun now bright and gay in the blue, enameled sky.