Part 76 (1/2)

”All right!” the st.u.r.dy lips cried. ”Let him go ahead--I'm ready now!”

John held his hand, while the knife cut through the soft young flesh and found the lead. The grip of the slim fingers tightened, but he gave no cry. John handed him the bullet to put in his pocket and left him smiling his thanks.

He began to wonder vaguely if he had lost his cook forever. Julius should have found the regiment before this. It was just before day that he came on him working with might and main at a job that was the last one on earth he would have selected.

He had been seized by a burying squad and put to work dragging corpses to the trenches from the great piles where the wagons had dumped them.

The black man rolled his eyes in piteous appeal to his master:

”For Gawd's sake, Ma.r.s.e John, save me--dese here men won't lemme go. I been er throwin' corpses inter dem trenches since dark. I'se most dead frum work, let 'lone bein' scared ter death.”

”Sorry, Julius,” was the quick answer, ”we've all got to work at a time like this. There's no help for it.”

Julius bent again to his horrible task. The thing that appalled him was the way the dead men kept looking at him out of their eyes wide and staring in the flickering light of the lanterns.

John stood watching him thoughtfully. He had finished one pile of bodies, dragging them by the heels one by one, and throwing them into the trenches. He was just about to begin on the last stack when he saw that he had left one lying a little further back in the shadows.

Julius looked at it dubiously and scratched his head. He didn't like the idea of going so far back in the dark, away from the light, but there was no help for it. The guard stood with his musket scowling:

”Get a move on you--d.a.m.n you, don't stand there!” he growled.

Julius walled his eyes at his tormentor and ran for the body. It happened to be the sleeping form of a tired guard who had been up three nights. The negro grabbed his legs and rushed toward the lights and the trenches.

He had almost reached the grave when the corpse gave a vicious kick and yelled:

”Here--what'ell!”

Julius didn't stop to look or to answer. What he felt in his hands was enough. With a yell of terror he dropped the thing and plunged straight ahead.

”Gawd, save me!” he gasped.

His foot slipped on the edge of the trench and he rolled in the dark hole. With the leap of a frightened panther he reached the solid earth and flew, each leap a muttered prayer:

”Save me! Lawd, save me!”

Standing there beside the grim piles of his dead comrades John Vaughan joined the guard in uncontrollable laughter. It was many a day before he saw his cook again.

The laughter suddenly stopped, and he turned from the scene with a shudder.

”I wonder,” he muttered, ”if I live through this war, whether I'll come out of it with a soul!”

The report from Chancellorsville drifted slowly, ominously, appallingly, over Was.h.i.+ngton with the clouds and mists of the storm which swept up the Potomac and shrouded the city in a grey mantle of mourning. The White House was still. The dead were walking through its great rooms of state. The anguished heart who watched by the window toward the hills of Virginia saw and heard each m.u.f.fled footfall.

He walked to the table with stumbling, uncertain step at last, his face ghastly and rigid, its color grey ashes, his deep set eyes streaming with tears, sank helplessly into a chair, and for the first time gave way to despair:

”O my G.o.d! My G.o.d! what will the country say!”

CHAPTER XXVIII