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

by Harold Frederic

  CHAPTER II.

  LAFE RECONNOITRES THE VALLEY.

  On the river road below the tannery, away back in New York State, therestood for many years a small house, always surrounded in summer bysunflowers and hollyhocks and peonies that enwrapped it as in abeautiful garment. It seemed that flowers grew nowhere else as they didfor the Widow Hornbeck.

  There was no other such show of lilacs in Juno Mills as that whichearly May brought for her front yard. The climbing roses which coveredthe whole front and side of the poor little house were only of thesimple, old sorts,--the Baltimore Belle, the yellow Scotch and theordinary pink brier,--but they bore thick clusters of delightfulblossoms. And in the fall, when the frosts had nipped and blackenedother people's flowers, the asters and nasturtiums and gladiolus inthis wee patch appeared unhurt by the weather.

  When there was to be a wedding in the village, or some celebration atthe church or the school-house, the children always went to the WidowHornbeck to beg for flowers. Often they found her sitting out in heryard among the plants she loved--a mild-faced, patient little woman,with thin, bent shoulders and hair whitened before its time; and shewould be poring through her spectacles over the same big Book spreadopen on her knees.

  The spectacle of Mrs. Hornbeck and her family Bible, framed like apicture in vines and flowering shrubs, grew pleasantly familiar toeverybody in the district. Strangers driving past used to stop theirbuggies and admire the place; and they, too, seeing the white-hairedowner sitting there, would feel that her presence added to the charm ofthe scene.

  The widow died suddenly one day in the autumn of 1863. She was foundquite lifeless, seated as of old in the garden, with the old patient,wistful half-smile on her face, and the old Book spread open in herlap.

  The village was sad for a day or two, and gently touched for afortnight. Then the widow had been forgotten, and the family Bible hadvanished. The cottage was taken for the mortgage upon it, and itsmeagre contents went the way of humble, ownerless things. Mrs. Hornbeckhad been very poor, and nothing was left for her son.

  In that family Bible had been written the names of some score ofHornbecks. Against all these names but two a date of death had alsobeen inscribed. One of these two names, the last in the list, was thatof the boy, now made an orphan, the Benjamin of the widow's flock. Hewas described on the yellowed page, in his mother's scrawling hand, as"Washington Lafayette Hornbeck, born April 30, 1850." In real life hehad always been known as "Lafe."

  He grew up a brown-skinned, hardy sort of ordinary boy, whose facemight suggest some acuteness and more resolution, but whom nobodythought of calling good-looking.

  He turned out to be the best wrestler among the village lads of hisage, and he was also the strongest swimmer of all the lot who used togo down, of a summer evening, to dive off the spring-board into thedeep pool below the mill-dam. This raised him a good deal in the esteemof the boys, but somehow their elders were not so much impressed by"Lafe's" qualities.

  He had to work, and he did work, but always at some new job--nowberry-picking, now stripping willows for the basket factory, nowpacking "heave-powders" for the local horse-doctor. He had beenemployed in the mills and in the tannery, and he had once travelled fora month as the assistant of a tin-peddler, not to mention variousexperiments in general farm-work.

  People hardly blamed Lafe for this lack of steadiness in employment.They said it was in his blood. All the Hornbecks since any one couldremember had been musicians--playing the fiddle or whatever else youliked at country dances, and some of them even journeying to distantparts as members of circus or minstrel bands.

  It was felt that a boy from such a roving stock could scarcely beexpected to tie himself down to regular work.

  Doubtless Lafe felt this, too, for as soon as he began thinking what heshould do, after the shock of his mother's death, he found himselfwishing to be a drummer-boy. The notion struck all the neighbors asquite appropriate. Lafe was a capital drummer. Kind old Doctor Peabodywent with him to Tecumseh, saw the head recruiting officer at the bigbarracks there, and arranged matters for him.

  Lafe was sent forward to New York, and thence to headquarters at thefront. Men liked him, and his lifelong familiarity with instrumentsmade him a handy boy to have about. Before long he was taken out of thelittle company drum-corps, and promoted to the big brigade band.

  This very morning, when he went up from the hospital camp to the ridgewhere he hoped to see the fighting beyond, he had been thinking whetherthis promotion had been what he wanted.

  All his dreams had been of action--of brave drummer-boys who went intobattle with the fifes, and stood through it all by the side of thefile-leader, valiantly pounding their sheep-skins as the shot and shellscreamed past, and men pitched headlong, and officers were hurled fromtheir horses, and the fight was lost or won.

  Alas! a brigade band never got so much as a whiff of actual warfare,but tamely stayed about in camp, playing selections outside thegeneral's headquarters while he ate his dinner, or contributing itsquota to the ceremonial of a Sunday dress-parade.

  Perhaps nothing more was to be looked for during the long winter inpeaceful quarters at Brandy Station; but now that spring had come, andthe grand advance was begun, and battles were in the air all aboutthem--even now the bandsmen merely gave the warriors a tune or two tostart them off, and then ingloriously loafed around the camp till theyreturned, or did not return, as the case might be. One might almost aswell have stayed at home in Juno Mills!

  The great rock on which Lafe and the German flute-player Foldeen hadtaken their station gave way beneath them, as was stated in the lastchapter, and smashed its way down the steep hillside, crushing thebrush and rooting up vines as it went, snapping saplings likepipestems, and bowling over even trees of a larger growth. It broughtup almost at the bottom of the hill, in the heart of a clump of sturdycedars.

  A long gash of earth laid bare and of foliage ripped and strewn asidestretched up the incline to mark the track of the fallen boulder.Half-way up this pathway of devastation a boy presently appeared.

  Lafe had crawled up out of the debris of saplings, boughs, and tangledcreepers into which he had been hurled, and clambered over now to theopen space. Then he stood looking up and down in a puzzled way, rubbinghis head. His clothes were torn a good deal, he had lost his cap, andhe was conscious of numerous bruises under these damaged clothes ofhis.

  There was blood on the palm of his hand, which had come from his head.So far as feeling could guide him, this, however, was nothing but ascalp scratch. He cared more about the tremendous bark one of his shinshad got, close up under his knee. When he took his first aimless steps,this had already stiffened, and was hurting him.

  Suddenly he remembered that he had not been alone on the rock. FoldeenSchell had been with him, and had grabbed his arm just as everythinggave way under them. His wits were still woolgathering under thecombined scare and tumble, and he began mechanically poking about amongthe underbrush at his feet, as if the missing flute-player might behidden there. Or was he hunting for his cap? For a dazed minute or twohe hardly knew.

  Then the sense of bewilderment lifted itself, and was gone. Lafestraightened himself, and looked comprehensively about him.

  "Foldeen!" he shouted shrilly, and then bent all his powers of hearingfor a reply. There came no answering call.

  The air was full of other sounds--the rattling echoes ofmusketry-firing and the boom of bigger guns, some far off, othersseemingly near, all mingling here among the thicket recesses in asubdued, continuous clamor. Perhaps shouting was of no use.

  Lafe climbed up the hill a dozen yards or so, to a point where he couldgo no farther, and scrutinized his surroundings carefully. Theimpenetrable wall of foliage shut out the valley from him even morecompletely than when he was on the ridge. He called again and again,and explored the bushes on either side, to no purpose.

  Limping slowly down the track cleared by the passing rock, he continuedhis search to the right and left. He knew so little of ho
w he himselfhad escaped death that there was nothing to help him guess how it hadfared with his companion.

  He had not known much about this missing bandsman heretofore, save thathe seemed to be the best fellow among the three or four Germanmusicians which the band contained. The boy, like the rest, spoke andthought of all these alien comrades as "Dutchmen," and he was far fromcomprehending that that outlandish name "Foldeen" was only a corruptionof "Valentine." But a common misfortune binds swift ties, and Lafe, ashe kept up his quest, began to think of Schell quite affectionately.

  He recalled how good-tempered he had always been; how he alone had madejokes on the long march, when the cold and driving rain had souredevery one else, and empty stomachs grumbled to keep company with achingbones.

  Reflecting upon this, Lafe realized that he was very fond of the"Dutchman," and would be in despair if he had come to grief.

  "Foldeen!" he yelled out again.

  "Sh! sh! geeb guiet!" came a guttural reply, from somewhere near by.

  The boy's heart lightened on the instant. He looked hastily about himwith a cheerful eye, trying to trace the direction of the voice. "Whereare you?" he demanded, in a lower tone.

  For answer, the blue-coated German rose from a cover of brush, awaydown the hill, and beckoned him, enforcing at the same time by emphaticgestures the importance of coming noiselessly.

  Lafe stole down furtively, and in a minute was bending close besideFoldeen in shrubby shelter.

  "Get hurt any?" Lafe asked, subduing his voice almost to a whisper indeference to the other's visible anxiety.

  Foldeen shook his head. "It is much worse," he murmured back. "I havemy flute lost."

  The boy could not but smile. "We can thank our stars we weren't bothsmashed to atoms," he observed.

  "Sh-h! don't talk!" Foldeen adjured him, and indicated with a sidewisenod of the head that special reasons for silence lay in that direction.

  Lafe edged himself forward, and looked out through the bushes. Theywere on the crest of a little mound which jutted out slightly from thedescending face of the hillside. The bottom of the ravine lay onlythirty feet or so below them.

  Save for scattered clumps of dwarf firs, hardly higher than the mulleinstalks about them, the ground was clear, and the short grass toldLafe's practised eye that it was pasture land. Beyond, there was thegravelled bed of a stream, along which a small rivulet wandered fromside to side.

  At the first glance his eye had taken in various splashes of colordotting the grass, which suggested bluebells. He saw now that thesewere made by the uniforms of men, who lay sprawled in various unnaturalpostures, flat on the green earth. Most of them were on their faces,and not one of them stirred. Lafe moved his head about among thescreening bushes, and was able to count twenty-six of these motionlessfigures.

  The boy had seen such sights before, and had even helped bring in thewounded from the field of Payne's Farm during the most of a long, coldnight in the previous November. This experience guided him now toremark a curious thing. No muskets, knapsacks, or canteens werescattered about beside these fallen men. And another odd detail--theywere all barefooted.

  "Some one's been along, after the fighting was over, and skinnedeverything clean," he muttered to his companion.

  Foldeen nodded again, and once more held up a warning hand. He himselfwas intently watching something beneath, from his side of the leafycover. The boy shifted his position, and craning his neck over theother's shoulder, saw that just below them, where the ascent began,there stretched a rough, newly made ridge of sods, fence rails andtree-tops, which had evidently been used as a breastwork.

  Behind this there were other human forms, also lying prone, but clad ingray or butternut instead of blue. Here, too, there was no sign oflife, but only that fixed absence of motion to which the remote thunderof gun-fire gave such a bitter meaning.

  "Anybody there?" whispered the boy.

  "I dink so," returned Foldeen, under his breath. "Dere is some, whatyou call it, hanky-banky, goes on here. Look yourself!"

  He moved aside, and Lafe crowded into his place, and put his head outcautiously through the bushes. In one corner of the breastwork therewas to be seen a big pile of accoutrements--knapsacks, muskets, swords,water-bottles, and the like, as well as a heap of old boots andmiscellaneous foot-gear.

  "Vell, how you make it out?" asked Foldeen.

  Lafe drew in his head. "The way I figure it," he whispered, "is first,that they held this place against our men, and drove 'em off. Then theywent out, and gathered up these traps, and brought 'em in there. Thensome more of our men came along, and chased them out. That's what itlooks like."

  "Well, den, vare is gone dem second men of ours?" the German demanded.

  "They've gone after 'em, up the valley, there."

  Foldeen shook his head. "Dey don't do such foolishness," he objected."Ven dey take some place like dis, den dey shtick to him. I know somuch, if I do blay mid the band."

  "There'd be rations in the knapsacks," mused Lafe, after a pause. Hehad never been so hungry before in his life.

  "What do you say to sneaking down there, and trying to find somethingto eat?" he suggested. "Come on!" he added persuasively. "There'snobody down there that--nobody that we need be afraid of."

  "Vell, I am afraid, dot's all," responded Foldeen.

  "They can't do more than make us prisoners," urged the boy, "and that'sbetter than starving to death. Come on! I'm going to make a try."

  The German took his companion by the arm. "See here," he explained;"ven dey catch you, dot's all right. You are prisoner; dot's all. Vendey catch me, den it goes one, two, dree--bang, und den Foldeen Schelladdends his own funeral. Dot's the difference by you und me."

  "Nonsense!" said Lafe. "They don't shoot anybody in the band."

  "Anyhow, dey shoot me out of de band," persisted Foldeen, gloomily. "Iwas in dot oder army myself, sometimes."

  The boy drew a long breath of enlightened surprise, which was almost awhistle.

  "Well, then, you stay here," he said, after a little, "and I'll take alook at the thing by myself."

  Suiting the action to the word, Lafe laid hold of the stoutestsaplings, and lowered himself down by his arms to the ledge below. Thefooting was not quite easy; but by hanging to the vines he managed towork his way obliquely across the face of the declivity, and yet keeppretty well under cover of the bushes.

  Suddenly, emerging from the thicket, he found himself quite inside thebreastwork, which he had entered from the open rear. The more terriblesigns of the conflict which had been waged here a few hours beforeforced themselves upon his attention, first of all.

  He braced himself to walk past them, and to go straight to the heap ofknapsacks piled up among the branches in the corner.

  Lifting one of the haversacks, he opened it. There was a tin cup ontop, and some woollen things which might be socks. Pushing his handunder these, he came upon some bread, and paused to express his contentby a smile.

  "Drop it--you!"

  "DROP IT--YOU!"]

  A loud, peremptory voice close at his shoulder caused the boy to turnwith alarmed abruptness. A burly man, with a rough, sandy stubble ofbeard about his face, had come into the breastwork--or perhaps had beenhidden there all the while.

  Lafe's first impulse was one of satisfaction at noting that thestranger wore the blue Union uniform.

  Then he looked into the man's face, and the instinct of pleasure diedsuddenly away.