The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

by Harold Frederic

  CHAPTER I.

  THE VALLEY OF DEATH.

  The rising sun lifted its first curved rim of dazzling light above thedark line of distant treetops just as the brigade band began a newtune--"The Faded Coat of Blue." The musicians themselves, huddledtogether under the shelter of a mound of rocks where the road descendedinto the ravine, did not get their share of this early morningradiance, but remained in the shadows.

  Only a yard or two away from the outermost drummer-boy these shadowsended, and a picture began that was full of action and color, andflooded with golden sunshine.

  The bandsmen, as they played, observed this picture, and thanked theirstars they were no part of it. Better a whole life spent in the shade,than sunlight at such a price as was being paid for it out there in theroad!

  This road had never before been anything but a narrow, grass-grown,out-of-the-way track for mule-carts. Now it had become the bed of abroad, endless, moving human flood--filling it compactly from side toside, with ever a fresh wave of blue-coated men entering at the rear,where the scrub-oak opening began, and ever a front wave gliding offdownward from view with that sinister slipperiness which arches thebrow of a cataract.

  The sense of motion conveyed by these thousands of passing men was atits perfection of rhythm just opposite the band. They were marching ineights, so close together that they trod continually on any laggingheel.

  The ranks, when they first came in view, seemed pressing forwardwithout much order. Then, as they drew close to the musicians, theyfell into step instinctively, swung along in swaying unison for a fewrods, and again lapsed into jagged irregularity as they swept downwardbehind the rock.

  It was indeed only this shifting section of the dozen nearest ranksthat could catch the strains of the band. The others, whether in van orrear, moved on with their hearing numbed by a ceaseless and terribleuproar which came from the ravine in front, and, mounting upward,seemed to shake the earth on which they trod.

  The musicians might blow themselves red in the face, the drummers beatthe strained sheepskins to bursting, and make no headway against thisdin of cannon.

  The men of Boyce's brigade, as they came into the little space wherethey could hear the music above the artillery, and caught the step itwas setting, hardly looked that way, but pushed forward with eyesstraight ahead, and grave, drawn faces on which the cheerful sunlightseemed a mockery.

  When the band had finished "The Faded Coat of Blue" the sky was stillclear overhead, but from the gully below a dense cloud of smoke hadspread upward to choke the morning light. While the bandsmen paused,blowing their instruments clear and breathing hard, this smoke began tothicken the air about the rock which sheltered them.

  In a minute more the front figures of the endless moving chain beforethem seemed to be walking off into a fog, and the atmosphere was all atonce heavy with the smell of gunpowder.

  Curiously enough, the men's faces brightened at this. There came ablock now somewhere on the road ahead, and the column halted. Theregimental flags, with the color-guard, were just abreast of the band.The sergeant took out his knife to cut one of the furling strings thatwas in a hard knot, and untied the rest, shaking out the silken foldsof the banners.

  "I always untie 'em when we get into the smoke," he said, speaking atlarge.

  The drummer-boy nearest the road moved over to study the flags. He heldhis head to one side and scrutinized them critically.

  "No bullet holes in 'em yet, to speak of, I notice," he remarked to thesergeant, raising a clear, sharp young voice above the universalracket. "Guess you'll get enough to-day to make up!" he added.

  The old sergeant nodded his head. "Something besides flags will getholes in 'em, too," he returned, lifting his voice also, like a mantalking in the teeth of a roaring gale.

  "What are you? Michiganders?" shouted the boy.

  "No--Ohio!" the sergeant bawled back. "When they changed the corps,they brigaded us all up fresh, so that we don't know our own mothers.We've got in with some New Yorkers that ain't got no more sense than tochew fine-cut tobacco. You can't raise a plug in a whole regiment of'em. Regular pumpkin-heads!"

  "They'll show you fellows the way, down below there, though!" retortedthe boy, his injured state pride adding shrillness to his tone. "Ohio'sno good, anyhow!"

  He instinctively moved beyond reach of the sergeant's boot, as hepassed this last remark. Some of the men in the crowded ranks close bylaughed at his impudence, and he himself was grinning with a sense ofsuccessful repartee, when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. Helooked up, and found himself confronting a young, fair-faced officer,who was regarding him with gravely gentle eyes.

  "Don't say that about any men who are going out to die," this officersaid; and though he did not seem to be speaking loudly, the words fellvery distinctly. "I've got a brother at home about your size. So havelots of the rest of us here. We want to carry down there with us apleasant notion of the last boy we saw."

  "I was only fooling!" the drummer-boy rejoined.

  There was no time for further words, as the preparatory rattle on thedrum-edge behind warned him. In another minute he was back in hisplace, and the band was hurling forth into the general uproar thestrains of "The Red, White, and Blue."

  The column had begun to move again. The flags, the color-guard, theyoung officer with the sad, gentle eyes, had passed downward out ofsight, and company after company of their regiment came pressing onwardnow.

  The boy, as he kept up with his part of the familiar work, watchedthese Ohio men swing past. They seemed young fellows, for the mostpart, and their uniforms were significantly new and clean. Everythingabout them showed that they were going under fire for the first time,though they pushed forward as stoutly as veterans. The boy foundhimself hoping that a good many of these Ohio men would come back allright--and most of all that young officer who had a brother about hissize.

  All this while a group of field officers had been standing on the ridgeup above the rocky mound which sheltered the band. Their figures, withbroad hats and big-cuffed gauntlets, had grown indistinct against thesky as the smoke thickened. Now they gave up trying to follow throughtheir glasses the movements in the vale below, and turned to descend.

  Their horses, which men had been holding near the musicians, werehastily brought forward, and the general and his staff sprang into thesaddle and trotted over toward the road.

  The end of the column was in view, with its disorder of servants,baggage-carriers, soldiers who had lost their places, and behind, thelooming canvas covers of ambulance-wagons and the train. Into the thickof this straggling mass General Boyce, sitting splendidly erect andwith a bold smile on his rosy-cheeked face, spurred his way, and thestaff in turn clattered after him down out of sight. The brigade hadpassed, and the band stopped playing.

  Files of mules, heavily laden with stacks of cartridge-boxes, werestill pouring along the road and being whacked down the ravine path;but the big wagons, as they came, halted, and were drawn off into thefield to the left. Tall poles were taken out and set up. Coils of ropewere unwound, stakes driven, and huge cylinders of canvas unrolled onthe grass.

  Soon there arose the gray outlines of tents--one dominating structurefully thirty yards long, and around it, like little mushrooms about theparent stool, a number of smaller tents, some square, some conical. Thedrummer-boy, his task ended, sauntered over with his companions towardthe tents.

  He paused to watch the heavy folds of canvas being hauled up to theridge-pole of the big one. In one way it recalled those preparations onthe old circus-ground at home which he used to watch with such zest.But in another way it was strangely different.

  While some men tugged at the ropes or drove in stakes for theguy-lines, others were busy bringing from the wagons rolls of blanketsand huge trusses of straw. Even before the roof was secure scores ofrude beds were being spread on the trampled grass underneath.

  Bearded and spectacled men, dressed after the fashion of officers, yetclearly not soldiers at all, were directi
ng everything now. Among them,here and there, flitted young women, clad also in a sort of uniform,who seemed busiest of all.

  No, this was decidedly different from a circus tent. The thunder of thebatteries on the other side of the ridge was alone enough to throw asolemn meaning over this long, barn-like house of ropes and cloths. Itwas the brigade hospital-tent, and the hundreds of active hands at workcould hardly hope to have it ready before it was needed.

  It was the morning of the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness.The men of Boyce's brigade knew only vaguely, by hearsay, of what hadhappened on that terrible yesterday. They themselves, forming therear-guard of the great army, had been nearly the last to cross theRapidan on the swinging pontoon bridge of Germania ford. They had had anight's forced march; a two hours' nap in the open starlight; a hastybite of rations at half-past three in the morning, and now this plungein the chilly twilight of sunrise down into the unknown.

  There had been, just before the general advance across the Rapidan, awholesale shaking-up of army organization. Two whole corps had beenabolished, and their strength distributed among the three remainingcorps. Regiments found themselves suddenly torn from their oldassociates, and brigaded with strangers. Their pet officersdisappeared, and others took their places whom the men did not know andwere disposed to dislike.

  To add to this discontent, there was an understanding that theirleaders had been entrapped into this Wilderness fighting. Certainly itwas no place which an invading army would have chosen for battle.

  It was a vast, sprawling forest district, densely covered with lowtimber, scrub-oak, dwarf junipers, and tangled cedars and pines, allknit together breast-high and upward with interlacing wild vines, andfoul underfoot with swamp or thicket.

  In this gloomy and sinister wilderness men did not know where theywere, nor whom they were fighting. Whole commands were lost in theimpenetrable woods. Mounted orderlies could not get about through theunderbrush, and orders sent out were never delivered.

  Though gulches and steep ravines abounded, cutting sharp gashes throughthe forest, there were no hills upon which a general and his keen-eyedstaff might perch themselves and get an idea of how the land about themlay. The Confederates had plenty of this local knowledge, and used itto terrible purpose. The invaders could only put their heads down, andstrive to crush their way blindly through.

  After a little, the drummer-boy put his snare-drum in the wagon wherethe other instruments were, and started off up the ridge, to see whatthe general and his staff had been observing earlier in the morning.

  As he neared the summit, he noticed that the roar of the cannondirectly in front seemed to have died down a good deal. There werestill angry outbursts, but one had to wait for them now; and a new kindof noise, made up of peal after peal of crackling musketry fire, wasrising from the gully farther to the left.

  The boy had come now to the top of the ridge, only to find it crownedwith a thick fringe of alders which completely shut out his view. Fromthe roots of the farther bushes the hillside dropped precipitously. Heworked his way along until, by a cleft in the rocks, an opening offereditself.

  Here, stooping low and bending aside the alders, he could creep outupon a big, flat, moss-grown boulder, which overhung the ravine like abalcony. He had not thought he was so high up. The other side of thegulf spread out before him could not be seen for the smoke--but thetops of tall pines growing on its bottom were far below him.

  The steepness of the descent made him dizzy. The rock on which he stoodseemed to be suspended in mid-air. He drew back a little. Thencuriosity got the upper hand. He laid himself face down on the boulder,and edged cautiously forward till he could peer over its front.

  The fog-like smoke was so dense that at first he could see nothing.Even when the bearings of the land below, masked as it all was underforest, began to be apparent to him, his ears were still the best guideto what was going on. The confused sound of men's shouts and yellsmingled now with the intermittent volleys of musketry to the left. Thecannon-firing had stopped altogether.

  He discovered all at once that a good many of the tree-tops in front ofhim seemed to have been broken off very recently. Some were hanging tothe trunks by their bark; everywhere the splinters were white andfresh. Now that he listened more intently, there were weird whistlingnoises among these shattered boughs and an incessant dropping of leavesand twigs.

  Suddenly a big branch not far away shook violently, then toppleddownward. At the same moment a swift ringing buzz sounded just over hishead, and a bunch of alder-blossoms fell upon one of his hands. Hepulled himself back abruptly.

  Crawling backward out through the alders, he did not venture to lifthis head until there was a comfortable wall of rocks between him andthat murderous ravine. Then, getting to his feet, he looked amazed downupon the brigade camp, which he had left an hour before. The big tent,and the little ones about it, only a while ago the scene of suchbustling activity, were all deserted.

  Some of the wagons could be seen rolling and bumping off toward theroad to the left under drivers who stood up to lash their teams. Thewhite, canvas-hooped tops were the centres of wild confusion.

  Other drivers were scurrying off on horseback, leading with them in afrantic gallop groups of the team horses, pulled along by their bunchedreins. The people on foot--doctors, nurses, camp-guards and therest--were all racing pell-mell toward the road for dear life.

  Thunderstruck at the spectacle, the boy turned to the right. A long,double line of men had come out through the woods in which the ridgelost itself, and were advancing upon the camp at a sharp run. Theyseemed dressed in a sort of mud-colored uniform, and they raised asharp whoop of triumph as they came. At the farther end of the line,some of these men lifted their guns as they ran, and fired into thereceding mass of fugitives.

  Down in front, meantime, the foremost of the advancing line had reachedthe camp and entered upon possession. They had begun overhauling thecaptured wagons, and were tossing out loaves of bread and hardtackboxes, which their comrades fell upon eagerly. The boy reflected nowthat he himself was hungry, and he scratched his head with perplexity.

  The sound of panting breath close beside him made him turn swiftly. Aman had clambered up the side of the ridge, away from the camp, and hadrushed up to him, his eyes starting from his head with excitement. Hewaved something like a short stick, with wild gestures, and tried toshout, but could only pant instead.

  He stopped as he came up, stared at the boy, then shook his headdolefully as he gasped for breath.

  "Is dot you, Lafe?" he managed to groan. "Oh, my jiminy priest!"

  "Look out!" cried the boy. "Lie down!"

  Some of the men below had caught sight of them, and two or three sparksand jets of smoke told that they were being fired at. Though they wereprobably beyond range, it was safer behind the alders, so the twocrawled out on the overhanging ledge.

  "I say, Foldeen, have they scooped the old band wagon? I couldn't seefrom here," was the boys first remark.

  "Dey von't get 'em my flute, anyhow," the other responded, holdingproudly forth the ebony stock with its silver keys, which he had beenwaving so vehemently. "I don't catch me putting him in de bant vagon."

  Even as he spoke he clutched the boy fiercely by the arm, with asmothered exclamation of horror. The rock on which they crouched hadstirred from its foundations, and as the two instinctively strove toturn themselves, it lurched outward, and went crashing down the steepdeclivity.