Battle Ground

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

  I

  HOW MERRY GENTLEMEN WENT TO WAR

  The July sun fell straight and hot upon the camp, and Dan, as he sat on awoodpile and ate a green apple, wistfully cast his eyes about for a deepershade. But the young tree from which he had just shaken its last fruitstood alone between the scattered tents and the blur of willows down thegentle slope, and beneath its speckled shadow the mess had gatheredsleepily, after the mid-day meal.

  In the group of privates, stretched under the gauzy shade on the trampledgrass, the first thing to strike an observer would have been, perhaps,their surprising youth. They were all young--the eldest hardly more thanthree and twenty--and the faces bore a curious resemblance in type, as ifthey were, one and all, variations from a common stock. There was aboutthem, too, a peculiar expression of enthusiasm, showing even in the facesof those who slept; a single wave of emotion which, rising to its height inan entire people revealed itself in the features of the individual soldier.As yet the flower of the South had not withered on its stalk, and the menfirst gathered to defend the borders were men who embraced a cause asfervently as they would embrace a woman; men in whom the love of anabstract principle became, not a religion, but a romantic passion.

  Beyond them, past the scattered tents and the piles of clean straw, thebruised grass of the field swept down to a little stream and the fallenstones that had once marked off the turnpike. Farther away, there was adark stretch of pines relieved against the faint blue tracery of thedistant mountains.

  Dan, sitting in the thin shelter on the woodpile, threw a single glance atthe strip of pines, and brought back his gaze to Big Abel who was splittingan oak log hard by. The work had been assigned to the master, who had, inturn, tossed it to the servant, with the remark that he "came out to killmen, not to cut wood."

  "I say, Big Abel, this sun's blazing hot," he now offered cheerfully.

  Big Abel paused for a moment and wiped his brow with his blue cottonsleeve.

  "Dis yer ain' no oak, caze it's w'it-leather," he rejoined in an injuredtone, as he lifted the axe and sent it with all his might into theshivering log, which threw out a shower of fine chips. The powerful strokebrought into play the negro's splendid muscles, and Dan, watching him,carelessly observed to a young fellow lying half asleep upon the ground,"Big Abel could whip us all, Bland, if he had a mind to."

  Bland grunted and opened his eyes; then he yawned, stretched his arms, andsat up against the logs. He was bright and boyish-looking, with a franktanned face, which made his curling flaxen hair seem almost white.

  "I worked like a darky hauling yesterday," he said reproachfully, "but whenyour turn comes, you climb a woodpile and pass the job along. When we gointo battle I suppose Dandy and you will sit down to boil coffee, and handyour muskets to the servants."

  "Oh, are we ever going into battle?" growled Jack Powell from the otherside. "Here I've been at this blamed drilling until I'm stiff in everyjoint, and I haven't seen so much as the tail end of a fight. You may rantas long as you please about martial glory, but if there's any man whothinks it's fun merely to get dirty and eat raw food, well, he's welcome tomy share of it, that's all. I haven't had so much as one of the necessitiesof life since I settled down in this old field; even my hair has taken tostanding on end. I say, Beau, do you happen to have any pomade about you?Oh, you needn't jeer, Bland, there's no danger of your getting bald, withthat sheepskin over your scalp; and, besides, I'm willing enough tosacrifice my life for my country. I object only to giving it my hairinstead."

  "I believe you'll find a little in my knapsack," gravely replied Dan, to beassailed on the spot by a chorus of comic demands.

  "I say, Beau, have you any rouge on hand? I'm growing pale. Please drop alittle cologne on this handkerchief, my boy. May I borrow your powder puff?I've been sitting in the sun. Don't you want that gallon of stalebuttermilk to take your tan off, Miss Nancy?"

  "Oh, shut up!" cried Dan, sharply; "if you choose to turn pigs simplybecause you've come out to do a little fighting, I've nothing to sayagainst it; but I prefer to remain a gentleman, that's all."

  "He prefers to remain a gentleman, that's all," chanted the chorus roundthe apple tree.

  "And I'll knock your confounded heads off, if you keep this up," pursuedDan furiously.

  "And he'll knock our confounded heads off, if we keep this up," shouted thechorus in a jubilant refrain.

  "Well, I'll tell you one thing," remarked Jack Powell, feeling hisresponsibility in the matter of the pomade. "All I've got to say is, ifthis is what you call war, it's a pretty stale business. The next time Iwant to be frisky, I'll volunteer to pass the lemonade at a Sunday-schoolpicnic."

  "And has anybody called it war, Dandy?" inquired Bland, witheringly.

  "Well, somebody might, you know," replied Jack, opening his fine whiteshirt at the neck, "did I hear you call it war, Kemper?" he asked politely,as he punched a stout sleeper beside him.

  Kemper started up and aimed a blow at vacancy. "Oh, you heard the devil!"he retorted.

  "I beg your pardon; it was mistaken identity," returned Jack suavely.

  "Look here, my lad, don't fool with Kemper when he's hot," cautioned Bland,"He's red enough to fire those bales of straw. I say, Kemper, may I lightmy pipe at your face?"

  "Shut up, now, or he'll be puffing round here like a steam engine," said asmall dark man named Baker, "let smouldering fires lie on a day like this.Give me a light, Dandy."

  Jack Powell held out his cigar, and then, leaning back against the tree,blew a cloud of smoke about his head.

  "I'll be blessed if I don't think seven hours' drill is too much of a badthing," he plaintively remarked; "and I may as well add, by the bye, thatthe next time I go to war, I intend to go in the character of aMajor-general."

  "Make it Commander-in-chief. Don't be too modest, my boy."

  "Well, you may laugh if you like," pursued Jack, "but between you and me,it was all the fault of those girls at home--they have an idea thatpatriotism never trims its sleeves, you know. On my word, I might have beenCaptain of the Leicesterburg Guards after Champe Lightfoot joined thecavalry; but such averted looks were turned from me by the ladies, that Ihad to jump into the ranks merely to reinstate myself in their regard. Theymade even Governor Ambler volunteer as a private, I believe, but he waslucky and got made a Colonel instead."

  Bland laughed softly.

  "That reminds me of our Colonel," he observed. "I overheard him talking tohimself the other day, and he said: 'All I ask is not to be in command of avolunteer regiment in hell.'"

  "Oh, he won't," put in Dan; "all the volunteers will be in heaven--unlessthey're sent down below because they were too big fools to join thecavalry."

  "Then, in heaven's name, why didn't you join the cavalry?" inquired Baker.

  Dan looked at him a moment, and then threw the apple core at a water bucketthat stood upside down upon the grass. "Well, I couldn't go on my ownhorse, you see," he replied, "and I wouldn't go on the Government's. Idon't ride hacks."

  "So you came into the infantry to get court-martialled," remarked Bland."The captain said down the valley, you'll remember, that if the war lasteda month, you'd be court-martialled for disobedience on the thirtieth day."

  Dan growled under his breath. "Well, I didn't enter the army to be hectoredby any fool who comes along," he returned. "Look at that fellow Jones, now.He thinks because he happens to be Lieutenant that he's got a right toforget that I'm a gentleman and he's not. Why, the day before we came uphere, he got after me at drill about being out of step, or some littlething like that; and, by George, to hear him roar you'd have thought thatwar wasn't anything but monkeying round with a musket. Why, the rascal camefrom my part of the country, and his father before him wasn't fit to blackmy boots."

  "Did you knock him down?" eagerly inquired Bland.

  "I told him to take off his confounded finery and I would," answered Dan."So when drill was over, we went off behind a tent, and I smashed his nose.He's no coward, I'll say that for him,
and when the Captain told him helooked as if he'd been fighting, he laughed and said he had had 'a littlepersonal encounter with the enemy.'"

  "Well, I'm willing enough to do battle for my country," said Jack Powell,"but I'll be blessed if I'm going to have my elbow jogged by the poor whitetrash while I'm doing it."

  "He was scolding at us yesterday because when we were detailed to clean outthe camp, we gave the order to the servants," put in Baker. "Clean out thecamp! Does he think my grandmother was a chambermaid?" He suddenly brokeoff and helped himself to a drink of water from a dripping bucket that atall mountaineer was passing round the group.

  "Been to the creek, Pinetop?" he asked good-humouredly.

  The mountaineer, who had won his title from his great height, towering ashe did above every man in the company, nodded drowsily as he settledhimself upon the ground. He was lithe and hardy as a young hickory, and hisabundant hair was of the colour of ripe wheat. At the call to arms he hadcome, with long strides, down from his bare little cabin in the Blue Ridge,bringing with him a flintlock musket, a corncob pipe, and a stockingful ofVirginia tobacco. Since the day of his arrival, he had accepted the pointedjokes of the mess into which he had drifted, with grave lips and a flickerof his calm blue eyes. They had jeered him unmercifully, and he hadregarded them with serene and wondering attention. "I say, Pinetop, is itraining up where you are?" a wit had put to him on the first day, and hehad looked down and answered placidly:--

  "Naw, it's cl'ar."

  As he sat down in the group beside the woodpile, Bland tossed him thelatest paper, but carefully folding it into a square, he laid it aside, andstretched himself upon the brown grass.

  "This here's powerful weather for sweatin'," he pleasantly observed, as hepulled a mullein leaf from the foot of the apple tree and placed it overhis eyes. Then he turned over and in a moment was sleeping as quietly as achild.

  Dan got down from the logs and stood thoughtfully staring in the directionof the happy little town lying embosomed in green hills. That little towngave to him, as he stood there in the noon heat, a memory of deep gardensfilled with fragrance, of open houses set in blue shadows, and of thebright fluttering of Confederate flags. For a moment he looked toward itdown the hot road; then, with a sigh, he turned away and wandered off toseek the outside shadow of a tent.

  As he flung himself down in the strip of shade, his gaze went longingly tothe dim chain of mountains which showed like faint blue clouds against thesky, while his thoughts returned, as a sick man's, to the clustered elmboughs and the smooth lawn at Chericoke, and to Betty blooming like aflower in a network of sun and shade.

  The memory was so vivid that when he closed his eyes it was almost as if heheard the tapping of the tree-tops against the roof, and felt the pleasantbreeze blowing over the sweet-smelling meadows. He looked, through hisclosed eyes, into the dim old house, seeing the rustling grasses in thegreat blue jar and their delicate shadow trembling on the pure white wall.There was the tender hush about it that belongs to the memories of deadfriends or absent places; a hush that was reverent as a Sabbath calm. Hesaw the shining swords of the Major and the Major's father; the rear doorwith the microphylla roses nodding upon the lintel, and, high above all,the shadowy bend of the staircase, with Betty standing there in her coolblue gown.

  He opened his eyes with a start, and pillowing his head on his arm, laylooking off into the burning distance. A bee, straying from a field ofclover across the road, buzzed, for a moment, round his face, and thenknocked, with a flapping noise, against the canvas tent. Far away, beyondthe murmur of the camp, he heard a partridge whistling in a tangled meadow;and at the same instant his own name called through the sunlight.

  "I say, Beau, Beau, where are you?" He sat up, and shouted in response, andJack Powell came hurriedly round the tent to fling himself down upon thebeaten grass.

  "Oh, you don't know what you missed!" he cried, chuckling. "You didn't staylong enough to hear the joke on Bland."

  "I hope it's a fresh one," was Dan's response. "If it's that old thingabout the mule and the darky, I may as well say in the beginning that Iheard it in the ark."

  "Oh, it's new, old man. He made the mistake of trying to get some fun outof Pinetop, and he got more than he bargained for, that's all. He began totease him about those blue jean trousers he carries in his knapsack. You'veseen them, I reckon?"

  Dan nodded as he chewed idly at a blade of grass. "I tried to get him tothrow them away yesterday," he said, "and he did go so far as to haul themout and look them over; but after meditating a half hour, he packed themaway again and declared there was 'a sight of wear left in them still.' Hetold me if he ever made up his mind to get rid of them, and peace shouldcome next day, he'd never forgive himself."

  "Well, I warned Bland not to meddle with him," pursued Jack, "but he gotbored and set in to make things lively. 'Look here, Pinetop,' he began,'will you do me the favour to give me the name of the tailor who made yourblue jeans?' and, bless your life, Pinetop just took the mullein leaf fromhis eyes, and sang out 'Maw.' That was what Bland wanted, of course, so,without waiting for the danger signal, he plunged in again. 'Then if youdon't object I should be glad to have the pattern of them,' he went on, assmooth as butter. 'I want them to wear when I go home again, you know. Why,they're just the things to take a lady's eye--they have almost the fit of aflour-sack--and the ladies are fond of flour, aren't they?' The whole crowdwas waiting, ready to howl at Pinetop's answer, and, sure enough, he raisedhimself on his elbow, and drawled out in his sing-song tone: 'I say, Sonny,ain't yo' Maw done put you into breeches yit?'"

  "It serves him right," said Dan sternly, "and that's what I like aboutPinetop, Jack, there's no ruffling him." He brushed off the bee that hadfallen on his head, and dodged as it angrily flew back again.

  "Some of the boys raised a row when he came into our mess," returned Jack,"but where every man's fighting for his country, we're all equal, say I.What makes me dog-tired, though, is the airs some of these fool officersput on; all this talk about an 'officer's mess' now, as if a man is toogood to eat with me who wouldn't dare to sit down to my table if he had oncivilian's clothes. It's all bosh, that's what it is."

  He got up and strolled off with his grievance, and Dan, stretching himselfupon the ground, looked across the hills, to the far mountains where theshadows thickened.