"Why, that box that Alf Russell got was half full. He tried to keep 'em all hisself, and intended to shoot 'em off, one by one, to make the rest of us envious. Alf always was a pig in school, and never would divide his apples or doughnuts with the other boys. But we see them almost as quick as he did, an' Gid and me set down on him suddently, as he was lying on the roof, and took away all his catridges, and give 'em around to the rest o' the boys, one a-piece."
The very word "war" roused that red spark of self-preservation. It was harder, Dodd had found, to live with hope than to live without it: it was always possible to become resigned to a given state of affairsbut not if you kept thinking matters would improve. So he stamped on the spark, kept it down, ignored it. You had to accept things, and go on from there."That reminds me," said Shorty, "that our squad o' recruits'll probably fill up the rijimint so's to give McBiddle his eagle. They'll be 'round presently to divide up the squad and assign 'em to companies. As all the companies is about equally strong, they'll divide 'em equallythat'll make six and one-half boys to each company. Capt. McGillicuddy bein' the senior Captain, is to have first choice. We want to pick out the best six and one-half for our company and put 'em in one squad at the right or left, and give the Captain the wink to choose 'em."
ONE:"Old Jeff Billings's got 'em down at Zeke Wiggins's hash-foundry feedin' 'em, so's he kin toll 'em off into another rijimint."
TWO:"O, yes. Jest give the order, and I'll get the boys and myself back home, sure's you're livin'.""Well, don't ask questions," Albin said. He kept one eye on the shifting mob. "If there's anything good for you to know, you'll be told. Meanwhile, just don't ask any questions."
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ONE:Everything about the usually cheerful farm-house was shrouded in palpable gloom. The papers of the day before, with their ghastly lists of the dead and wounded, had contained Si's and Shorty's names, besides those of other boys of the neighborhood, in terrific, unmistakable plainness. There were few homes into which mourning had not come. The window curtains were drawn down, the front doors closed, no one appeared on the front porch, and it seemed that even the dogs and the fowls were op pressed with the general sadness, and forebore their usual cheerful utterances. Attired in sober black, with eyes red from weeping, and with camphor bottle near, Mr. Klegg sat in Si's room, and between her fits of uncontrollable weeping turned over, one after another, the reminders of her son. There were his bed, his clothes, which she had herself fashioned in loving toil for him; the well-thumbed school-books which had cost him so many anxious hours, his gun and fishing rod. All these were now sacred to her. Elsewhere in the house his teary-eyed sisters went softly and silently about their daily work.
TWO:The musketry fire continued fitfully around the mill in the distance.
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ONE:"Don't be so impatient. Si," said Maria, feeling around for a hair-pin with which to rip open the envelope. "You're gittin' crosser'n two sticks since you're gittin' well."
TWO:"I shouldn't wonder if his story is true, General," said a member of the staff. "You see, your cow has been gone really two days. Day before yesterday we sent Blue Jim out into the country with her. She needed it awfully. We laid the law down to Blue Jim about being very careful with her and keep her near the road. It seems that he found a good piece of meadow, and turned her loose in it, but then, nigger like, he forgot all that we had told him about staying light alongside of her, and wandered off to gather persimmons, and afterward fell asleep in a fence-corner. When he woke up the cow was gone, and he was scared nearly to death. He hunted around for her all day, and came in last night nearly starved to death, and whimpering and blubbering. We told him that you would order him shot as soon as you found out. He has been to see the Chaplain twice, to prepare for death."As soon as he was well on his way the woman leaned forward and asked Shorty in an earnest tone:
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TWO:MRS. G.: Who, the people with guns? Well, nobody lets them, not just like that. It's just like we only found out about it now.
FORE:"Well, the cow was here. He brung her here last night, and owned up to it. He milked her, and you drunk some of the milk. The Provost-Guard's now walkin' the cow and him up to Headquarters. These are early mornin' facts. You kin believe what you dumbed please."
FORE:"What we have got," Dr. Haenlingen said, "is more like ten days. And there is nothing to do in ten days. The people have spoken. Vox populi...." The eyes closed. There was a silence Norma waited, astonished, horrified. "Perhaps it is necessary," Dr. Haenlingen's voice said. "Perhaps ... we must wait. Ich kann nicht anders...."
FORE:"The same idea has occurred to me," said the Lieutenant; "though I've felt all along that we should not be diverted by anything from making our way as fast as possible up to the main line. What do you think, Shorty?""You ain't a-goin' to keep 'em through another night, are you?" asked Shorty anxiously, as he gloated over the sight. "Le's eat 'em to-day."
FORE:"'Tention, company!" commanded the Orderly. "Stack arms! Right faceBreak ranksMarch!"
FORE:"Look," Albin said. "That's what's wrong with you, kid. You talk as if we all had nothing to do but work and watch tapes. What you need is a little educationa little real educationand I'm the one to give it to you."The long line was halted in anxious expectation for a little while, as the storm of battle rose, and the men looked into each other's faces with sickening apprehension, for it seemed much like defeat and capture. Then loud cheers, taken up clear down the line', rose as Turchin's Brigade, by a swift bayonet charge, swept away all opposition, scattered the rebels to the shelter of the woods, and reopened the way. But the rebels still continued to fire long distance shots at the road as outlined by the burn ing fences.
FORE:"O, Mister Lootenant," pleaded the Deacon, with drops of sweat on his brow. "Please let me go on. My only son lays there in Chattanooga, a-dyin' for all I know. He's bin a good soldier. Ask anybody that knows the 200th Injianny, and they'll tell you that there ain't no better soldier in the regiment than Corporal Si Klegg. You've a father yourself. Think how he'd feel if you was layin' in a hospital at the pint o' death, and him not able to git to you. You'll let me go on, I know you will. It aint in you to re fuse."
TWO:"Where we'll probably git sometime after dark," assented Si.The Alberts in spite of a few fearful masters, had been issued Belbis tubes and fought valiantly with them; the batteries did everything expected of them, and the sky was lit with supernal flashes of blinding color throughout one hard-fought night. Dodd himself, carrying a huge Belbis beam, braced himself against the outer wall of Building One and played the beam like a hose on any evidence of Confederation ships up there in the lightning-lit sky: he felt only like a robot, doing an assigned and meaningless job, and it was only later that he realized he had been shivering all the time he had used the killing beam. As far as he could tell he had hit nothing at all.
TWO:One by one, and very slowly, other nerves awoke. He became conscious that there was a sharp stone or knot under his head, which hurt, and he tried to move it, but queerly his head would not move, and then he found that neither would his hands. This was faintly puzzling, as things are in dreams. Then his throat became on fire with thirst, and somehow there came a dream of the deliciously cool well on the farm at home, the bucket covered with green moss swinging over it, the splash of cool water when it was lowered, the trough by the side, where they used to pour water for the fowls to drink, the muddy spot around, where water plants grew on the splashings and drippings. Then were visions of the eternal, parching thirst of the damned, which he had often heard preachers describe, and he was conscious of a faint curiosity as to whether he had died and waked up in the home of the lost.The rumbling sound of the bombardment came to him only dimly, and for brief seconds. To Cadnan, it sounded like a great machine, and he wondered about that, too, but he could find no answers.
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TWO:Dodd heard the words echoing in his mind that night, and the next night, and the next. All that she had said:
TWO:"Git a bushel basket, and gather 'em up in it."
"Go away, Groundhog," said the Deacon, recognizing him. "I've only got a little here for Si and Shorty. I hain't a spoonful left for myself, and none to give away. Go and get your own chickens, and bile 'em yourself.""Orderly, we need some more cartridges," suggested Shorty. health and hope you are enjoyin' the same blessing fur which"Gen. Grant's no great shakes as a dresser," returned the other. "I was never so surprised in my life as one day when I was Orderly at Division Headquarters, and a short man with a red beard, and his clothes spattered with mud, rode up, followed by one Orderly, and said, 'Orderly, tell the General that Gen. Grant would like to see him.' By looking hard I managed to make out three stars on his shoulder. Why, if Gen. McClellan had been coming you'd have seen him for a mile before he got there.""What star was it?""You're just the man I'm looking for," returned the officer. Then turning to a Sergeant who had just come up at the end of a squad, he said:"You'd better go," the calm voice said. "There will be others needing helpand you will be safer underground, in any case."
TWO:"Git a bushel basket, and gather 'em up in it."
