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_ In the gray dawn tents were struck, and five days' rations were issued with
the marching orders. As Dan packed his knapsack with trembling hands, he
saw men stalking back and forth like gigantic shadows, and heard the hoarse
shouting of the company officers through the thick fog which had rolled
down from the mountains. There was a persistent buzz in the air, as if a
great swarm of bees had settled over the misty valley. Each man was asking
unanswerable questions of his neighbour.
At a little distance Big Abel, with several of the company "darkies" was
struggling energetically over the property of the mess, storing the cooking
utensils into a stout camp chest, which the strength of several men would
lift, when filled, into the wagon. Bland, who had just tossed his overcoat
across to them, turned abruptly upon Dan, and demanded warmly "what had
become of his case of razors?"
"Where are we going?" was Dan's response, as he knelt down to roll up his
oilcloth and blanket. "By Jove, it looks as if we'd gobble up Patterson for
breakfast!"
"I say, where's my case of razors?" inquired Bland, with irritation. "They
were lying here a moment ago, and now they're gone. Dandy, have you got my
razors?"
"Look here, Beau, what are you going to leave behind?" asked Kemper over
Bland's shoulder.
"Leave behind? Why, dull care," rejoined Dan gayly. "By the way, Pinetop,
why don't you save your appetite for Patterson's dainties?"
Pinetop, who was leisurely eating his breakfast of "hardtack" and bacon,
took a long draught from his tin cup, and replied, as he wiped his mouth on
his shirt sleeve, that he "reckoned thar wouldn't be any trouble about
finding room for them, too." The general gayety was reflected in his face;
he laughed as he bit deeply into his half-cooked bacon.
Dan stood up and nervously strapped on his knapsack; then he swung his
canteen over his shoulder and carefully tightened his belt. His face was
flushed, and when he spoke his voice quivered with emotion. It seemed to
him that the delay of every instant was a reckless waste of time, and he
trembled at the thought that the enemy might be preparing to fall upon them
unawares; that while the camp was swarming like an ant's nest, Patterson
and his men might be making good use of the fleeting moments.
"Why the devil don't we move? We ought to move," he said angrily, as he
glanced round the crowded field where the men were arraying themselves in
all the useless trappings of the Southern volunteer. Kemper was busily
placing his necessary toilet articles in his haversack, having thrown away
half his rations for the purpose; Jack Powell, completely dressed for the
march, was examining his heavy revolver, with the conscious pride a field
officer might have felt in his sword. As he stuck it into his belt, he
straightened himself with a laugh and jauntily set his small cap on his
curling hair; he was clean, comely, and smooth-shaven as if he had just
stepped from a hot bath and the hands of his barber.
"You may roll Dandy in the dust and he'll come out washed," Baker had once
forcibly remarked.
"I say, boys, why don't we start?" persisted Dan impatiently, flicking with
his handkerchief at a grain of sand on his high boots. Then, as Big Abel
brought him a cup of coffee, he drank it standing, casting eager glances
over the rim of his cup. He had an odd feeling that it was all a great fox
hunt they were soon to start upon; that they were waiting only for the
calling of the hounds. The Major's fighting blood had stirred within his
grandson's veins, and generations of dead Lightfoots were scenting the
coming battle from the dust. When Dan thought now of the end to which he
should presently be marching, it suggested to him but a quickened
exhilaration of the pulses and an old engraving of "Waterloo," which hung
on the dining-room wall at Chericoke. That was war; and he remembered
vividly the childish thrill with which he had first looked up at it. He saw
the prancing horses, the dramatic gestures of the generals with flowing
hair, the blur of waving flags and naked swords. It was like a page torn
from the eternal Romance; a page upon which he and his comrades should play
heroic parts; and it was white blood, indeed, that did not glow with the
hope of sharing in that picture; of hanging immortal in an engraving on the
wall.
The "fall in" of the sergeant was already sounding from the road, and, with
a last glance about the field, Dan ran down the gentle slope and across the
little stream to take his place in the ranks of the forming column. An
officer on a milk-white horse was making frantic gestures to the line, and
the young man followed him an instant with his eyes. Then, as he stood
there in the warm sunshine, he felt his impatience prick him like a needle.
He wanted to push forward the regiments in front of him, to start in any
direction--only to start. The suppressed excitement of the fox hunt was
upon him, and the hoarse voices of the officers thrilled him as if they
were the baying of the hounds. He heard the musical jingle of moving
cavalry, the hurried tread of feet in the soft dust, the smothered oaths of
men who stumbled over the scattered stones. And, at last, when the sun
stood high above, the long column swung off toward the south, leaving the
enemy and the north behind it.
"By God, we're running away," said Bland in a whisper. With the words the
gayety passed suddenly from the army, and it moved slowly with the
dispirited tread of beaten men. The enemy lay to the north, and it was
marching to the south and home.
As it passed through the fragrant streets of Winchester, women, with
startled eyes, ran from open doors into the deep old gardens, and watched
it over the honeysuckle hedges. Under the fluttering flags, past the long
blue shadows, with the playing of the bands and the clatter of the
canteens--on it went into the white dust and the sunshine. From a wide
piazza, a group of schoolgirls pelted the troops with roses, and as Dan
went by he caught a white bud and stuck it into his cap. He looked back
laughing, to meet the flash of laughing eyes; then the gray line swept out
upon the turnpike and went down the broad road through the smooth green
fields, over which the sunlight lay like melted gold.
Dan, walking between Pinetop and Jack Powell, felt a sudden homesickness
for the abandoned camp, which they were leaving with the gay little town
and the red clay forts, naked to the enemy's guns. He saw the branching
apple tree, the burned-out fires, the silvery fringe of willows by the
stream; and he saw the men in blue already in possession of his woodpile,
broiling their bacon by the logs that Big Abel had cut.
At the end of three miles the brigades abruptly halted, and he listened,
looking at the ground, to an order, which was read by a slim young officer
who pulled nervously at his moustache. Down the column came a single
ringing cheer, and, without waiting for the command, the men pushed eagerly
forward along the road. What was a forced march of thirty miles to an army
that had never seen a battle?
As they went on a boyish merriment tripped lightly down the turnpike; jests
were shouted, a wit began to tease a mounted officer who was trying to
reach the front, and somebody with a tenor voice was singing "Dixie." A
stray countryman, sitting upon the wall of loose stones, was greeted
affectionately by each passing company. He was a big, stupid-looking man,
with a gray fowl hanging, head downward, from his hand, and as he responded
"Howdy," in an expressionless tone, the fowl craned its long neck upward
and pecked at the creeper on the wall.
"Howdy, Jim!" "Howdy, Peter!" "Howdy, Luke!" sang the first line. "How's
your wife?" "How's your wife's mother?" "How's your sister-in-law's uncle?"
inquired the next. The countryman spat into the ditch and stared solemnly
in reply, and the gray fowl, still craning its neck, pecked steadily at the
leaves upon the stones.
Dan looked up into the blue sky, across the open meadows to the far-off low
mountains, and then down the long turnpike where the dust hung in a yellow
cloud. In the bright sunshine he saw the flash of steel and the glitter of
gold braid, and the noise of tramping feet cheered him like music as he
walked on gayly, filled with visions. For was he not marching to his chosen
end--to victory, to Chericoke--to Betty? Or if the worst came to the
worst--well, a man had but one life, after all, and a life was a little
thing to give his country. Then, as always, his patriotism appealed to him
as a romance rather than a religion--the fine Southern ardour which had
sent him, at the first call, into the ranks, had sprung from an inward, not
an outward pressure. The sound of the bugle, the fluttering of the flags,
the flash of hot steel in the sunlight, the high old words that stirred
men's pulses--these things were his by blood and right of heritage. He
could no more have stifled the impulse that prompted him to take a side in
any fight than he could have kept his heart cool beneath the impassioned
voice of a Southern orator. The Major's blood ran warm through many
generations.
"I say, Beau, did you put a millstone in my knapsack?" inquired Bland
suddenly. His face was flushed, and there was a streak of wet dust across
his forehead. "If you did, it was a dirty joke," he added irritably. Dan
laughed. "Now that's odd," he replied, "because there's one in mine also,
and, moreover, somebody has stuck penknives in my boots. Was it you,
Pinetop?"
But the mountaineer shook his head in silence, and then, as they halted to
rest upon the roadside, he flung himself down beneath the shadow of a
sycamore, and raised his canteen to his lips. He had come leisurely at his
long strides, and as Dan looked at him lying upon the short grass by the
wall, he shook his own roughened hair, in impatient envy. "Why, you've
stood it like a Major, Pinetop," he remarked.
Pinetop opened his eyes. "Stood what?" he drawled.
"Why, this heat, this dust, this whole confounded march. I don't believe
you've turned a hair, as Big Abel says."
"Good Lord," said Pinetop. "I don't reckon you've ever ploughed up hill
with a steer team."
Without replying, Dan unstrapped his knapsack and threw it upon the
roadside. "What doesn't go in my haversack, doesn't go, that's all," he
observed. "How about you, Dandy?"
"Oh, I threw mine away a mile after starting," returned Jack Powell, "my
luxuries are with a girl I left behind me. I've sacrificed everything to
the cause except my toothbrush, and, by Jove, if the weight of that goes on
increasing, I shall be forced to dispense with it forever. I got rid of my
rations long ago. Pinetop says a man can't starve in blackberry season, and
I hope he's right. Anyway, the Lord will provide--or he won't, that's
certain."
"Is this the reward of faith, I wonder?" said Dan, as he looked at a lame
old negro who wheeled a cider cart and a tray of green apple pies down a
red clay lane that branched off under thick locust trees. "This way, Uncle,
here's your man."
The old negro slowly approached them to be instantly surrounded by the
thirsty regiment.
"Howdy, Marsters? howdy?" he began, pulling his grizzled hair. "Dese yer's
right nice pies, dat dey is, suh."
"Look here, Uncle, weren't they made in the ark, now?" inquired Bland
jestingly, as he bit into a greasy crust.
"De ark? naw, suh; my Mehaley she des done bake 'em in de cabin over
yonder." He lifted his shrivelled hand and pointed, with a tremulous
gesture, to a log hut showing among the distant trees.
"What? are you a free man, Uncle?"
"Free? Go 'way f'om yer! ain' you never hyearn tell er Marse Plunkett?"
"Plunkett?" gravely repeated Bland, filling his canteen with cider. "Look
here, stand back, boys, it's my turn now.--Plunkett--Plunkett--can I have a
long-lost friend named Plunkett? Where is he, Uncle? has he gone to fight?"
"Marse Plunkett? Naw, suh, he ain' fit nobody."
"Well, you tell him from me that he'd better enlist at once," put in Jack
Powell. "This isn't the time for skulkers, Uncle; he's on our side, isn't
he?" The old negro shook his head, looking uneasily at the froth that
dripped from the keg into the dust.
"Naw, suh, Marse Plunkett, he's fur de Un'on, but he's pow'ful feared er de
Yankees," he returned.
Bland broke into a laugh. "Oh, come, that's downright treason," he
protested merrily. "Your Marse Plunkett's a skulker sure enough, and you
may tell him so with my compliments. You're on the Yankee side, too, I
reckon, and there're bullets in these pies, sure as I live."
The old man shuffled nervously on his bare feet.
"Go 'way, Marster, w'at I know 'bout 'sides'?" he replied, tilting his keg
to drain the last few drops into the canteen of a thirsty soldier. "I'se on
de Lawd's side, dat's whar I is."
He fell back startled, for the call of "Column, forward!" was shouted down
the road, and in an instant the men had left the emptied cart, and were
marching on into the sunny distance.
As the afternoon lengthened the heat grew more oppressive. Straight ahead
there was dust and sunshine and the ceaseless tramp, and on either side the
fresh fields were scorched and whitened by a powdering of hot sand. Beyond
the rise and dip of the hills, the mountains burned like blue flames on the
horizon, and overhead the sky was hard as an inverted brazier.
Dan had begun to limp, for his stiff boots galled his feet. His senses were
blunted by the hot sand which filled his eyes and ears and nostrils, and
there was a shimmer over all the broad landscape. When he shook his hair
from his forehead, the dust floated slowly down and settled in a scorching
ring about his neck.
The day closed gradually, and as they neared the river, the mountains
emerged from obscure outlines into wooded heights upon which the trees
showed soft and gray in the sunset. A cool breath was blown through a strip
of damp woodland, where the pale bodies of the sycamores were festooned in
luxuriant vines, and from the twilight long shadows stretched across the
red clay road. Then, as they went down a rocky slope, a fringe of willows
appeared suddenly from the blur of green, and they saw the Shenandoah
running between falling banks, with the colours of the sunset floating like
pink flowers upon its breast.
With a shout the front line plunged into the stream, holding its heavy
muskets high above the current of the water, and filing upon the opposite
bank, into a rough road which wound amid the ferns.
Midway of the river, near the fording point, there was a little island
which lay like a feathery tree-top upon the tinted water; and as Dan went
by, he felt the brush of willows on his face and heard the soft lapping of
the small waves upon the shore. The keen smell of the sycamores drifted to
him from the bank that he had left, and straight up stream he saw a single
peaked blue hill upon which a white cloud rested. For a moment he lingered,
breathing in the fragrance, then the rear line pressed upon him, and,
crossing rapidly, he stood on the rocky edge, shaking the water from his
clothes. Out of the after-glow came the steady tramp of tired feet, and
with aching limbs, he turned and hastened with the column into the mountain
pass. _
Read next: BOOK THIRD - THE SCHOOL OF WAR: Chapter III - The Reign of the Brute
Read previous: BOOK THIRD - THE SCHOOL OF WAR: Chapter I - How Merry Gentlemen went to War
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