Part 38 (1/2)

Between nine and ten they came to a village. Boys and women stood in the dusty street with buckets of water--a few buckets, a little water. The women looked pale, as though they would swoon; beads of sweat stood on the boys' brows and their lips worked. Thousands of soldiers had pa.s.sed or were pa.s.sing; all thirsty, all crying, ”Water, please! water, please!” Women and boys had with haste drawn bucket after bucket from the wells of the place, pumped them full from a cistern, or run to a near-by spring and come panting back to the road--and not one soldier in ten could get his tin cup filled! They went by, an endless line, a few refreshed, the vast majority thirstier for the Tantalus failure. The water bearers were more deadly tired than they; after it was all over, the last regiment pa.s.sed, the women went indoors trembling in every limb. ”O Jesus! this war is going to be a dreadful thing!” The column marching on and pa.s.sing a signpost, each unit read what it had to say.

”_Seven miles to Middletown._--Seven miles to h.e.l.l!”

Some time later, the brigade made a discovery. ”They are willows--yes, they are!--running cross field, through the blur! Whoever's toting the water bucket, get it ready!”

The halt came--Jackson's ten minutes out of an hour ”lie-down-men.

You-rest-all-over-lying-down” halt. The water buckets were ready, and there were the willows that the dust had made as sere as autumn,--but where was the stream? The thin trickle of water had been overpa.s.sed, churned, trampled into mire and dirt, by half the army, horse and foot.

The men stared in blank disappointment. ”A polecat couldn't drink here!”

”Try it up and down,” said the colonel. ”It will be clearer away from the road. But every one of you listen for the _Fall-In_.”

Steve wandered off. He did not wait for clean water. There was a puddle, not half so bad as thirst! Settling down upon his hands, he leaned forward and well-nigh drank it up. Refreshed, he rose, got out of the mire back to the bank, and considered a deeper belt of willows farther down the stream. They were on the edge of the dust belt, they had an air faintly green, extremely restful. Steve looked over his shoulder. All the boys were drinking, or seeking a place to drink, and the dust was like a red twilight! Furtively swift as any Thunder Run ”crittur,” he made for the willows. They formed a deep little copse; n.o.body within their round and, oh joy! shade and a little miry pool! Steve sat down and drew off his shoes, taking some pains lest in the action side and sole part company. Undoubtedly his feet were sore and swollen, red and fevered. He drank from the miry pool, and then, trousers rolled to his knees, sunk foot and ankle in the delicious coolness. Presently he lay back, feet yet in mud and water, body flat upon cool black earth, overhead a thick screen of willow leaves. ”Ef I had a corn pone and never had to move I wouldn't change for heaven. O Gawd! that d.a.m.ned bugle!”

_Fall in! Fall in!--Fall in! Fall in!_ With a deep groan Steve picked up his shoes and dragged himself to the edge of the copse. He looked out.

”Danged fools! running back to line like chicks when the hen squawks 'Hawk!' O Gawd! my foot's too sore to run.” He stood looking cautiously out of an opening he had made in the willow branches. The regiments were already in column, the leading one, the 4th, formed and disappearing in the dust of the turnpike. ”Air ye going now and have every d.a.m.ned officer swearing at you? What do they care if your foot's cut and your back aches? and you couldn't come no sooner. _I ain't a-going._” Steve's eyes filled with tears. He felt sublimely virtuous; a martyr from the first. ”What does anybody there care for _me_! They wouldn't care if I dropped dead right in line. Well, I ain't a-going to gratify them!

What's war, anyhow? It's a trap to catch decent folk in! and the decenter you are the quicker you try to get out of it!” He closed the willow branches and stepped back to his lair. ”Let 'em bellow for Steve just as loud as they like! I ain't got no call to fight Banks on this here foot. If a d.a.m.ned provost-guard comes along, why I just fell asleep and couldn't help it.”

So tired was he, and so soothing still his retreat, that to fall asleep was precisely what he did. The sun was twenty minutes nearer the zenith when noise roused him--voices up and down the stream. He crawled across the black earth and looked out. ”Taliaferro's Brigade getting watered!

All I ask is you'll just let me and my willows alone.”

He might ask, but Taliaferro's seemed hardly likely to grant.

Taliaferro's had a harder time even than the Stonewall finding water.

There was less there to find and it was muddier. The men, swearing at their luck, ranged up and down the stream. It was presently evident that the search might bring any number around or through Steve's cool harbour. He cursed them, then, in a sudden panic, picked up his shoes and slipped out at the copse's back door. Able-bodied stragglers, when caught, were liable to be carried on and summarily deposited with their rightful companies. Deserters fared worse. On the whole, Steve concluded to seek safety in flight. At a little distance rose a belt of woods roughly parallel with the road. Steve took to the woods, and found sanctuary behind the bole of an oak. His eye advanced just beyond the bark, he observed the movement of troops with something like a grin. On the whole he thought, perhaps, he wouldn't rejoin. Taliaferro's men hardly seemed happy, up and down the trodden, miry runlet. ”Wuz a time they wouldn't think a dog could drink there, and now just look at them lapping it up! So many fine, stuck-up fellows, too--gentlemen and such.--Yah!”

The brigade moved on as had done the Stonewall. There grew in the wood a sound. ”What's that?” Scrambling up, he went forward between the trees and presently came full upon a narrow wood road, with a thin growth of forest upon the other side. The sound increased. Steve knew it well. He stamped upon the moss with the foot that hurt him least. ”Artillery coming!--and all them d.a.m.ned gunners with eyes like lynxes--”

He crossed the road and the farther strip of woods. Behind him the approaching wheels rumbled loudly; before him a narrow lane stretched through a ploughed field, to a gra.s.sy dooryard and a small house. On the edge of the wood was a ma.s.s of elderbush just coming into bloom. He worked his way into the centre of this, squatted down and regarded the house from between the green stems. Smoke rose from the chimney. ”It must be near eleven o'clock,” thought Steve. ”She's getting dinner.”

Behind him, through the wood, on toward Middletown rumbled the pa.s.sing battery. The heavy sound brought a young woman to the door. She stood looking out, her hands shading her eyes; then, the train disappearing, went back to her work. Steve waited until the sound was almost dead, then left the elder, went up the lane and made his appearance before the open door. The woman turned from the hearth where she was baking bread.

”Good-morning, sir.”

”Morning, miss,” said Steve. ”Could you spare a poor sick soldier a bite to eat?”

He ended with a hollow groan and the weight of his body against the lintel. The young woman dragged forward a split-bottomed armchair. ”Sit right down there! Of course I'll give you something to eat. It ain't anything catching, is it?”

Steve sank into the chair. ”It was pneumonia, and my strength ain't come back yet.”

”I only asked because I have to think of my baby.” She glanced toward a cradle by the window. ”Pneumonia is dreadful weakening! How come they let you march?”

”Why, I didn't,” said Steve, ”want to be left behind. I wanted to be in the fight with the rest of the boys. So the captain said, says he, 'Well, you can try it, for we need all the good fighters we've got, but if you find you're too weak to go on, fall out! Maybe some good Seraphim will give you 'commodation--'”

”I can't give you 'commodation, because there's just the baby and myself, James being with Ashby. But I can give you dinner (I haven't got much, but what I've got you're quite welcome to). You kin rest here till evening. Maybe a wagon'll come along and give you a lift, so's you can get there in time--”

”Get where, ma'am?”

”Why, wherever the battle's going to be!”

”Yaas, yaas,” said Steve. ”It's surely hard lines when those who kin fight have to take a back seat 'cause of illness and watch the other kind go front!” He groaned again and closed his eyes. ”I don't suppose you've got a drop of spirits handy?”