Читать книгу Tioba, and Other Tales - Arthur Willis Colton - Страница 5

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COMPANY A was cut up at Antietam, so that there was not enough of it left for useful purposes, and Deacon Andrew Terrell became a member of Company G, which nicknamed him “'is huliness.” Company A came from Dutchess County. There was a little white church in the village of Brewster, and a little white house with a meagre porch where that good woman, Mrs. Terrell, had stood and shed several tears as the deacon walked away down the street, looking extraordinary in his regimentals. She dried her eyes, settled down to her sewing in that quiet south window, and hoped he would remember to keep his feet dry and not lose the cough drops. That part of Dutchess County was a bit of New England spilled over. New England has been spilling over these many years.

The deacon took the cough drops regularly; he kept his gray chin beard trimmed with a pair of domestic scissors, and drilling never persuaded him to move his large frame with other than the same self-conscious restraint; his sallow face had the same set lines. There is something in the Saxon's blood that will not let him alter with circumstances, and it is by virtue of it that he conquers in the end.

But no doorkeeper in the house of God—the deacon's service in the meeting-house at Brewster—who should come perforce to dwell in the tents of wickedness would pretend to like it. Besides, Company G had no tents. It came from the lower wards of the great city. Dinkey Cott, that thin-legged, stunted, imp-faced, hardened little Bowery sprout, put his left fist in the deacon's eye the first day of their acquaintance, and swore in the pleasantest manner possible.

The deacon cuffed him, because he had been a schoolmaster in his day, and did not understand how he would be despised for knocking Dinkey down in that amateur fashion, and the lieutenant gave them both guard duty for fighting in the ranks.

The deacon declared “that young man Cott hadn't no moral ideas,” and did his guard duty in bitterness and strict conscience to the last minute of it. Dinkey put his thumb to his nose and offered to show the lieutenant how the thing should have been done, and that big man laughed, and both forgot about the guard duty.

Dinkey had no sense whatever of personal dignity, which was partly what the deacon meant by “moral ideas,” nor reverence for anything above or beneath. He did not harbor any special anger, either, and only enough malice to point his finger at the elder man, whenever he saw him, and snicker loudly to the entertainment of Company G.

Dinkey's early recollections had to do with the cobblestones of Mulberry Bend and bootblacking on Pearl Street. Deacon Terrell's began with a lonely farm where there were too many potato hills to hoe, a little schoolhouse where arithmetic was taught with a ferrule, a white meeting-house where the wrath of God was preached with enthusiasm; both seemed far enough away from the weary tramp, tramp, the picket duty, and the camp at last one misty night in thick woods on the Stafford hills, looking over the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg.

What happened there was not clear to Company G. There seemed to be a deal of noise and hurrying about, cannon smoke in the valley and cannon smoke on the terraces across the valley. Somebody was building pontoon bridges, therefore it seemed likely somebody wanted to get across. They were having hard luck with the bridges. That was probably the enemy on the ridge beyond.

There seemed to be no end to him, anyway; up and down the valley, mile beyond mile, the same line of wooded heights and drifting smoke.

And the regiment found itself crossing a shaky pontoon bridge on a Saturday morning in the mist and climbing the bank into a most battered and tired-looking little town, which was smoldering sulkily with burned buildings and thrilling with enormous noise. There they waited for something else to happen. The deacon felt a lump in his throat, stopping his breath.

“Git out o' me tracks!” snickered Dinkey Cott behind him. “I'll step on yer.”

Dinkey had never seemed more impish, unholy and incongruous. They seemed to stand there a long time. The shells kept howling and whizzing around; they howled till they burst, and then they whizzed. And now and then some one would cry out and fall. It was bad for the nerves. The men were growling.

“Aw, cap, give us a chance!”

“It ain't my fault, boys. I got to wait for orders, same as you.”

Dinkey poked the deacon's legs with the butt of his rifle.

“Say, it's rotten, ain't it? Say, cully, my ma don't like me full o' holes. How's yours?”

The other gripped his rifle tight and thought of nothing in particular.

Was it five hours that passed, or twenty, or one? Then they started, and the town was gone behind their hurrying feet. Over a stretch of broken level, rush and tramp and gasping for breath; fences and rocks ahead, clumps of trees and gorges; ground growing rougher and steeper, but that was nothing. If there was anything in the way you went at it and left it behind. You plunged up a hill, and didn't notice it. You dove into a gully, and it wasn't there. Time was a liar, obstacles were scared and ran away. But half-way up the last pitch ran a turnpike, with a stone wall in front that spit fire and came nearer and nearer. It seemed creeping down viciously to meet you. Up, up, till the powder of the guns almost burned the deacon's face, and the smoke was so thick he could only see the red flashes.

And then suddenly he was alone. At least there was no one in sight, for the smoke was very thick. Company G all dead, or fallen, or gone back. There was a clump of brambles to his left. He dropped to the ground, crept behind it and lay still. The roar went on, the smoke rolled down over him and sometimes a bullet would clip through the brambles, but after a time the small fire dropped off little by little, though the cannon still boomed on.

His legs were numb and his heart beating his sides like a drum. The smoke was blowing away down the slope. He lifted his head and peered through the brambles; there was the stone wall not five rods away, all lined along the top with grimy faces. A thousand rifles within as many yards, wanting nothing better than to dig a round hole in him. He dropped his head and closed his eyes.

His thoughts were so stunned that the slowly lessening cannonade seemed like a dream, and he hardly noticed when it had ceased, and he began to hear voices, cries of wounded men and other men talking. There was a clump of trees to the right, and two or three crows in the treetops cawing familiarly. An hour or two must have passed, for the sun was down and the river mist creeping up. He lay on his back, staring blankly at the pale sky and shivering a little with the chill.

A group of men came down and stood on the rocks above. They could probably see him, but a man on his back with his toes up was nothing particular there. They talked with a soft drawl. “Doggonedest clean-up I ever saw.”

“They hadn't no business to come up heah, yuh know. They come some distance, now.”

“Shuah! We ain't huntin' rabbits. What'd yuh suppose?”

Then they went on.

The mist came up white and cold and covered it all over. He could not see the wall any longer, though he could hear the voices. He turned on his face and crawled along below the brambles and rocks to where the clump of trees stood with a deep hollow below them. They were chestnut trees. Some one was sitting in the hollow with his back against the roots.

During the rush Dinkey Cott fairly enjoyed himself. The sporting blood in him sang in his ears, an old song that the leopard knows, it may be, waiting in the mottled shadow, that the rider knows on the race course, the hunter in the snow—the song of a craving that only excitement satisfies. The smoke blew in his face. He went down a hollow and up the other side. Then something hot and sudden came into the middle of him and he rolled back against the roots of a great tree.

“Hully gee! I'm plunked!” he grumbled disgustedly.

For the time he felt no pain, but his blood ceased to sing in his ears. Everything seemed to settle down around him, blank and dull and angry. He felt as if either the army of the North or the army of the South had not treated him rightly. If they had given him a minute more he might have clubbed something worth while. He sat up against a tree, wondered what his chance was to pull through, thought it poor, and thought he would sell it for a drink.

The firing dropped off little by little, and the mist was coming up. Dinkey began to see sights. His face and hands were hot, and things seemed to be riproaring inside him generally. The mist was full of flickering lights, which presently seemed to be street lamps down the Bowery. The front windows of Reilly's saloon were glaring, and opposite was Gottstein's jewelry store, where he had happened to hit one Halligan in the eye for saying that Babby Reilly was his girl and not Dinkey's; and he bought Babby a 90-cent gold ring of Gottstein, which proved Halligan to be a liar. The cop saw him hit Halligan, too, and said nothing, being his friend. And Halligan enlisted in Company G with the rest of the boys, and was keeled over in the dark one night on picket duty, somewhere up country. All the gang went into Company G. The captain was one of the boys, and so was Pete Murphy, the big lieutenant. He was a sort of ward sub-boss, was Pete.

“Reilly, he's soured on me, Pete. I dun-no wot's got the ol' man.”

The lights seemed to grow thick, till everything was ablaze.

“Aw, come off! Dis ain't de Bowery,” he muttered, and started and rubbed his eyes.

The mist was cold and white all around him, ghostly and still, except that there was a low, continual mutter of voices above, and now and then a soft moan rose up from somewhere. And it seemed natural enough that a ghost should come creeping out of the ghostly mist, even that it should creep near to him and peer into his face, a ghost with a gray chin beard and haggard eyes.

“I'm going down,” it whispered. “Come on. Don't make any noise.”

“Hully gee!” thought Dinkey. “It's the Pope!”

A number of things occurred to him in confusion. The deacon did not see he was hit. He said to himself:

“I ain't no call to spoil 'is luck, if he is country.”

He blinked a moment, then nodded and whispered hoarsely: “Go on.”

The deacon crept away into the mist. Dinkey leaned back feebly and closed his eyes.

“Wished I'd die quick. It's rotten luck. Wished I could see Pete.”

The deacon crept down about two hundred yards, then stopped and waited for the young man Cott. The night was closing in fast A cry in the darkness made him shiver. He had never imagined anything could be so desolate and sad. He thought he had better see what was the matter with Dinkey. He never could make out afterward why it had seemed necessary to look after Dinkey. There were hundreds of better men on the slopes. Dinkey might have passed him. It did not seem very sensible business to go back after that worthless little limb of Satan. The deacon never thought the adventure a credit to his judgment.

But he went back, guiding himself by the darker gloom of the trees against the sky, and groped his way down the hollow, and heard Dinkey muttering and babbling things without sense. It made the deacon mad to have to do with irresponsible people, such as go to sleep under the enemy's rifles and talk aloud in dreams. He pulled him roughly by the boots, and he fell over, babbling and muttering. Then it came upon the deacon that it was not sleep, but fever. He guessed the young man was hit somewhere. They had better be going, anyway. The Johnnies must have out a picket line somewhere. He slipped his hands under Dinkey and got up. He tried to climb out quietly, but fell against the bank. Some one took a shot at the noise, spattering the dirt under his nose. He lifted Dinkey higher and went on. Dinkey's mutterings ceased. He made no sound at all for a while, and at last said huskily:

“Wot's up?”

“It's me.”

“Hully gee! Wot yer doin'?”

His voice was weak and thin now. He felt as if he were being pulled in two in the middle.

“Say, ol' man, I won't jolly yer. Les' find Pete. There's a minie ball messed up in me stomick awful.”

“'Tain't far, Dinkey,” said the deacon, gently.

And he thought of Pete Murphy's red, fleshy face and black, oily mustache. It occurred to him that he had noticed most men in Company G, if they fell into trouble, wanted to find Pete. He thought he should want to himself, though he could not tell why. If he happened to be killed anywhere he thought he should like Pete Murphy to tell his wife about it.

Dinkey lay limp and heavy in his arms. The wet blackness seemed like something pressed against his face. He could not realize that he was walking, though in the night, down the same slope to a river called the Rappahannock and a town called Fredericksburg. It was strange business for him, Deacon Terrell of Brewster, to be in, stumbling down the battlefield in the pit darkness, with a godless little brat like Dinkey Cott in his arms.

And why godless, if the same darkness were around us all, and the same light, while we lived, would come to all in the morning? It was borne upon the deacon that no man was elected to the salvation of the sun or condemned to the night apart from other men.

The deacon never could recall the details of his night's journey, except that he fell down more than once, and ran against stone walls in the dark. It seemed to him that he had gone through an unknown, supernatural country. Dinkey lay so quiet that he thought he might be dead, but he could not make up his mind to leave him. He wished he could find Pete Murphy. Pete would tell him if Dinkey was dead.

He walked not one mile, but several, in the blind night Dinkey had long been a limp weight. The last thing he said was, “Les' find Pete,” and that was long before.

At last the deacon saw a little glow in the darkness, and, coming near, found a dying campfire with a few flames only flickering, and beside it two men asleep. He might have heard the ripple of the Rappahannock, but, being so worn and dull in his mind, he laid Dinkey down by the fire and fell heavily to sleep himself before he knew it.

When he woke Pete Murphy stood near him with a corporal and a guard. They were looking for the pieces of Company G. “Dead, ain't he?” said Pete.

The deacon got up and brushed his clothes. The two men who were sleeping woke up also, and they all stood around looking at Dinkey in awkward silence.

“Who's his folks?”

“Him!” said the big lieutenant. “He ain't got any folks. Tell you what, ol' man, I see a regiment drummer somewhere a minute ago. He'll do a roll over Dinkey, for luck, sure!”

They put Dinkey's coat over his face and buried him on the bank of the Rappahannock, and the drummer beat a roll over him.

Then they sat down on the bank and waited for the next thing.

The troops were moving back now across the bridge hurriedly. Company G had to take its turn. The deacon felt in his pockets and found the cough drops and Mrs. Terrell's scissors. He took a cough drop and fell to trimming his beard.