Chapter 17
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 curlike 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 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
onslaughts 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 the 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.
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 awestruck ways.
It was plain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing
without 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 burrs.
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!
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 get
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
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