The Burial of the Guns
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Thomas Nelson Page >> The Burial of the Guns
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"Mother!" he said.
"Darby!" She reached her arms toward him, but tottered so
that she would have fallen, had he not caught her and eased her down
into her chair.
As she became a little stronger she made him tell her about the battles
he was in. Mr. Mills had come to tell her that he had killed the man
who killed Ad. Darby was not a good narrator, however, and what he had
to tell was told in a few words. The old woman revived under it, however,
and her eyes had a brighter light in them.
Darby was too much engrossed in taking care of his mother that day
to have any thought of any one else. He was used to a soldier's scant fare,
but had never quite taken in the fact that his mother and the women at home
had less even than they in the field. He had never seen, even in their
poorest days after his father's death, not only the house absolutely empty,
but without any means of getting anything outside. It gave him a thrill
to think what she must have endured without letting him know.
As soon as he could leave her, he went into the woods with his old gun,
and shortly returned with a few squirrels which he cooked for her;
the first meat, she told him, that she had tasted for weeks. On hearing it
his heart grew hot. Why had not Vashti come and seen about her?
She explained it partly, however, when she told him that every one
had been sick at Cove Mills's, and old Cove himself had come near dying.
No doctor could be got to see them, as there was none left
in the neighborhood, and but for Mrs. Douwill she did not know
what they would have done. But Mrs. Douwill was down herself now.
The young man wanted to know about Vashti, but all he could manage
to make his tongue ask was,
"Vashti?"
She could not tell him, she did not know anything about Vashti.
Mrs. Mills used to bring her things sometimes, till she was taken down,
but Vashti had never come to see her; all she knew was that she had been sick
with the others.
That she had been sick awoke in the young man a new tenderness,
the deeper because he had done her an injustice; and he was seized with
a great longing to see her. All his old love seemed suddenly accumulated
in his heart, and he determined to go and see her at once,
as he had not long to stay. He set about his little preparations forthwith,
putting on his old clothes which his mother had kept ever since he went away,
as being more presentable than the old worn and muddy, threadbare uniform,
and brushing his long yellow hair and beard into something like order.
He changed from one coat to the other the little package which
he always carried, thinking that he would show it to her with the hole in it,
which the sharp-shooter's bullet had made that day, and he put her letter
into the same pocket; his heart beating at the sight of her hand
and the memory of the words she had written, and then he set out.
It was already late in the evening, and after the rain the air was
soft and balmy, though the western sky was becoming overcast again by a cloud,
which low down on the horizon was piling up mountain on mountain of vapor,
as if it might rain again by night. Darby, however, having dressed,
crossed the flat without much trouble, only getting a little wet
in some places where the logs were gone. As he turned into the path
up the hill, he stood face to face with Vashti. She was standing by
a little spring which came from under an old oak, the only one
on the hill-side of pines, and was in a faded black calico.
He scarcely took in at first that it was Vashti, she was so changed.
He had always thought of her as he last saw her that evening in pink,
with her white throat and her scornful eyes. She was older now
than she was then; looked more a woman and taller; and her throat if anything
was whiter than ever against her black dress; her face was whiter too,
and her eyes darker and larger. At least, they opened wide
when Darby appeared in the path. Her hands went up to her throat
as if she suddenly wanted breath. All of the young man's heart
went out to her, and the next moment he was within arm's length of her.
Her one word was in his ears:
"Darby!" He was about to catch her in his arms when a gesture restrained him,
and her look turned him to stone.
"Yer uniform?" she gasped, stepping back. Darby was not quick always,
and he looked down at his clothes and then at her again,
his dazed brain wondering.
"Whar's yer uniform?" she asked.
"At home," he said, quietly, still wondering. She seemed to catch some hope.
"Yer got a furlough?" she said, more quietly, coming a little nearer to him,
and her eyes growing softer.
"Got a furlough?" he repeated to gain time for thought. "I -- I ----"
He had never thought of it before; the words in her letter flashed into
his mind, and he felt his face flush. He would not tell her a lie.
"No, I ain't got no furlough," he said, and paused whilst he tried
to get his words together to explain. But she did not give him time.
"What you doin' with them clo'se on?" she asked again.
"I -- I ----" he began, stammering as her suspicion dawned on him.
"You're a deserter!" she said, coldly, leaning forward, her hands clenched,
her face white, her eyes contracted.
"A what!" he asked aghast, his brain not wholly taking in her words.
"You're a deserter!" she said again -- "and -- a coward!"
All the blood in him seemed to surge to his head and leave his heart like ice.
He seized her arm with a grip like steel.
"Vashti Mills," he said, with his face white, "don't you say that to me --
if yer were a man I'd kill yer right here where yer stan'!"
He tossed her hand from him, and turned on his heel.
The next instant she was standing alone, and when she reached the point
in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already
on the other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep through the water
as if he were on dry land. She could not have made him hear if she had
wished it; for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines,
bending them down like grass and blowing the water in the bottom
into white waves, and the thunder which had been rumbling in the distance
suddenly broke with a great peal just overhead.
In a few minutes the rain came; but the girl did not mind it.
She stood looking across the bottom until it came in sheets,
wetting her to the skin and shutting out everything a few yards away.
The thunder-storm passed, but all that night the rain came down,
and all the next day, and when it held up a little in the evening
the bottom was a sea.
The rain had not prevented Darby from going out -- he was used to it;
and he spent most of the day away from home. When he returned
he brought his mother a few provisions, as much meal perhaps
as a child might carry, and spent the rest of the evening
sitting before the fire, silent and motionless, a flame burning
back deep in his eyes and a cloud fixed on his brow. He was in his uniform,
which he had put on again the night before as soon as he got home,
and the steam rose from it as he sat. The other clothes were in a bundle
on the floor where he had tossed them the evening before. He never moved
except when his mother now and then spoke, and then sat down again as before.
Presently he rose and said he must be going; but as he rose to his feet,
a pain shot through him like a knife; everything turned black before him
and he staggered and fell full length on the floor.
He was still on the floor next morning, for his mother had not been able
to get him to the bed, or to leave to get any help; but she had made him
a pallet, and he was as comfortable as a man might be with a raging fever.
Feeble as she was, the sudden demand on her had awakened the
old woman's faculties and she was stronger than might have seemed possible.
One thing puzzled her: in his incoherent mutterings,
Darby constantly referred to a furlough and a deserter.
She knew that he had a furlough, of course; but it puzzled her
to hear him constantly repeating the words. So the day passed and then,
Darby's delirium still continuing, she made out to get to a neighbor's
to ask help. The neighbor had to go to Mrs. Douwill's as the only place
where there was a chance of getting any medicine, and it happened
that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers, on horseback,
who asked her a few questions. They were members of
a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them
they had learned her errand.
Fortunately, Darby's illness took a better turn next day,
and by sunset he was free from delirium.
Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills's during these days
any more than at Mrs. Stanley's. Vashti was in a state of mind
which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy.
She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening,
for Vashti had not mentioned Darby's name. She kept his presence to herself,
thinking that -- thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat.
Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself
of the thought of Darby. She could have torn it out for hate of herself;
and to all her mother's questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx.
For two days she neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill
through the rain which still kept up -- something was going on over there,
but what it was she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day,
she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something;
she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley's, even if she had wished to do so;
for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side,
and it was over her head in the current. She set off, therefore,
up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way.
She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening,
and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things
the men of the conscript guard she had seen. Vashti's heart
gave a sudden bound up into her throat. As she was so near she went on up
to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road
before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen
riding slowly along. She stood aside to let them pass;
but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.
They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were
the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them
who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way.
Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot.
When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads
leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district.
Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve,
and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry,
and she knew that they were the Federals. She had one moment
of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her,
and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears;
but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be
the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her
own terror in fear for her cause. She had all her wits about her instantly;
and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men,
she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up
to unravel it. She made out that they were trying to reach the big river
by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day.
She admitted that she had never been on that road but once.
And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place
where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise,
she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that,
after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home
if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp.
She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run
with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby. Deserter as he was,
and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her.
She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches
which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it,
was out of its banks; but she did not heed it -- she waded through,
it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.
It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the pines
in front of the Stanley cabin. The latch-string was out,
and she knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously.
All she could make out to say was, "Darby." The old woman was on her feet,
and the young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.
Darby was the first to speak.
"What do you want here?" he asked, sternly.
"Darby -- the Yankees -- all around," she gasped -- "out on the road yonder."
"What!"
A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his jacket
while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had met
had told her of the two men she had seen. The presence of a soldier
had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women
left everything else to him. His experience or his soldier's instinct
told him what they were doing and also how to act. They were a raid which
had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the capital;
and from their position, unless they could be delayed they might surprise it.
In the face of the emergency a sudden genius seemed to illuminate
the young man's mind. By the time he was dressed he was ready with his plan
-- Did Vashti know where any of the conscript guard stayed?
Yes, down the road at a certain place. Good; it was on the way.
Then he gave her his orders. She was to go to this place and rouse any one
she might find there and tell them to send a messenger to the city
with all speed to warn them, and were to be themselves if possible
at a certain point on the road by which the raiders were travelling,
where a little stream crossed it in a low place in a heavy piece
of swampy woods. They would find a barricade there and a small force might
possibly keep them back. Then she was to go on down and have the bridge,
ten or twelve miles below on the road between the forks burned,
and if necessary was to burn it herself; and it must be done by sunrise.
But they were on the other road, outside of the forks, the girl explained,
to which Darby only said, he knew that, but they would come back
and try the bridge road.
"And you burn the bridge if you have to do it with your own hand, you hear --
and now go," he said.
"Yes -- I'll do it," said the girl obediently and turned to the door.
The next instant she turned back to him: he had his gun
and was getting his axe.
"And, Darby ----?" she began falteringly, her heart in her eyes.
"Go," said the young soldier, pointing to the door, and she went
just as he took up his old rifle and stepped over to where his mother sat
white and dumb. As she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back
up the path over the pine-bushes she saw him step out of the door
with his gun in one hand and his axe in the other.
An hour later Darby, with the fever still hot on him,
was cutting down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream,
and throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road,
in a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen's work for several hours,
and Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning.
Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened,
and then went on again. He had cut down a half-dozen trees and formed
a barricade which it would take hours to clear away before cavalry could pass,
when, stopping to listen, he heard a sound that caused him
to put down his axe: the sound of horses splashing along through the mud.
His practised ear told him that there were only three or four of them,
and he took up his gun and climbed up on the barricade and waited.
Presently the little squad of horsemen came in sight,
a mere black group in the road. They saw the dark mass lying across the road
and reined in; then after a colloquy came on down slowly.
Darby waited until they were within fifty yards of his barricade,
and then fired at the nearest one. A horse wheeled, plunged,
and then galloped away in the darkness, and several rounds from pistols
were fired toward him, whilst something went on on the ground.
Before he could finish reloading, however, the men had turned around
and were out of sight. In a minute Darby climbed over the barricade
and strode up the road after them. He paused where the man he had shot
had fallen. The place in the mud was plain; but his comrades had taken him up
and carried him off. Darby hurried along after them. Day was just breaking,
and the body of cavalry were preparing to leave their bivouac
when a man emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the camp
from that where Little Darby had been felling trees,
and walked up to the picket. He was halted and brought up
where the fire-light could shine on him, and was roughly questioned --
a tall young countryman, very pale and thin, with an old ragged slouched hat
pulled over his eyes, and an old patched uniform on his gaunt frame.
He did not seem at all disturbed by the pistols displayed around him,
but seated himself at the fire and looked about in a dull kind of way.
"What do you want?" they asked him, seeing how cool he was.
"Don't you want a guide?" he asked, drawlingly.
"Who are you?" inquired the corporal in charge. He paused.
"Some calls me a d'serter," he said, slowly.
The men all looked at him curiously.
"Well, what do you want?"
"I thought maybe as you wanted a guide," he said, quietly.
"We don't want you. We've got all the guide we want," answered the corporal,
roughly, "and we don't want any spies around here either, you understand?"
"Does he know the way? All the creeks is up now, an' it's sort o' hard
to git erlong through down yonder way if you don't know the way
toller'ble well?"
"Yes, he knows the way too -- every foot of it -- and a good deal more
than you'll see of it if you don't look out."
"Oh! That road down that way is sort o' stopped up," said the man,
as if he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him.
"They's soldiers on it too a little fur'er down, and they's done got word
you're a-comin' that a-way."
"What's that?" they asked, sharply.
"Leastways it's stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and about
as nigh as that," went on the speaker, in the same level voice.
"Where do you live?" they asked him.
"I lives back in the pines here a piece."
"How long have you lived here?"
"About twenty-three years, I b'leeves; 'ats what my mother says."
"You know all the country about here?"
"Ought to."
"Been in the army?"
"Ahn--hahn."
"What did you desert for?"
Darby looked at him leisurely.
"'D you ever know a man as 'lowed he'd deserted? I never did."
A faint smile flickered on his pale face.
He was taken to the camp before the commander, a dark,
self-contained looking man with a piercing eye and a close mouth,
and there closely questioned as to the roads, and he gave the same account
he had already given. The negro guide was brought up and his information
tallied with the new comer's as far as he knew it, though he knew well
only the road which they were on and which Darby said was stopped up.
He knew, too, that a road such as Darby offered to take them by
ran somewhere down that way and joined the road they were on
a good distance below; but he thought it was a good deal longer way
and they had to cross a fork of the river.
There was a short consultation between the commander and one or two
other officers, and then the commander turned to Darby, and said:
"What you say about the road's being obstructed this way is partly true;
do you guarantee that the other road is clear?"
Darby paused and reflected.
"I'll guide you," he said, slowly.
"Do you guarantee that the bridge on the river is standing
and that we can get across?"
"Hit's standing now, fur as I know."
"Do you understand that you are taking your life in your hand?"
Darby looked at him coolly.
"And that if you take us that way and for any cause --
for any cause whatsoever we fail to get through safe,
we will hang you to the nearest tree?"
Darby waited as if in deep reflection.
"I understand," he said. "I'll guide you."
The silence that followed seemed to extend all over the camp.
The commander was reflecting and the others had their eyes fastened on Darby.
As for him, he sat as unmoved as if he had been alone in the woods.
"All right," said the leader, suddenly, "it's a bargain:
we'll take your road. What do you want?"
"Could you gi'me a cup o' coffee? It's been some little time
since I had anything to eat, an' I been sort o' sick."
"You shall have 'em," said the officer, "and good pay besides,
if you lead us straight; if not, a limb and a halter rein; you understand?"
A quarter of an hour later they were on the march, Darby trudging in front
down the middle of the muddy road between two of the advance guard,
whose carbines were conveniently carried to insure his fidelity.
What he thought of, who might know? -- plain; poor; ignorant; unknown;
marching every step voluntarily nearer to certain and ignominious death
for the sake of his cause.
As day broke they saw a few people who lived near the road,
and some of them recognized Darby and looked their astonishment
to see him guiding them. One or two of the women broke out at him
for a traitor and a dog, to which he said nothing; but only looked
a little defiant with two red spots burning in his thin cheeks,
and trudged on as before; now and then answering a question;
but for the most part silent.
He must have thought of his mother, old and by herself in her cabin;
but she would not live long; and of Vashti some. She had called him
a deserter, as the other women had done. A verse from the Testament
she gave him may have come into his mind; he had never quite understood it:
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile ye." Was this what it meant?
This and another one seemed to come together. It was something about
"enduring hardship like a good soldier", he could not remember it exactly.
Yes, he could do that. But Vashti had called him a deserter. Maybe now
though she would not; and the words in the letter she had written him
came to him, and the little package in his old jacket pocket
made a warm place there; and he felt a little fresher than before.
The sun came up and warmed him as he trudged along,
and the country grew flatter and flatter, and the road deeper and deeper.
They were passing down into the bottom. On either side of them
were white-oak swamps, so that they could not see a hundred yards ahead;
but for several miles Darby had been watching for the smoke
of the burning bridge, and as they neared the river his heart began to sink.
There was one point on the brow of a hill before descending to the bottom,
where a sudden bend of the road and curve of the river
two or three miles below gave a sight of the bridge. Darby waited for this,
and when he reached it and saw the bridge still standing
his heart sank like lead. Other eyes saw it too, and a score of glasses
were levelled at it, and a cheer went up.
"Why don't you cheer too?" asked an officer. "You have more to make or lose
than anyone else."
"We ain't there yit," said Darby.
Once he thought he had seen a little smoke, but it had passed away,
and now they were within three miles of the bridge and there was nothing.
What if, after all, Vashti had failed and the bridge was still standing!
He would really have brought the raiders by the best way and have helped them.
His heart at the thought came up into his throat. He stopped and began to
look about as if he doubted the road. When the main body came up, however,
the commander was in no doubt, and a pistol stuck against his head
gave him to understand that no fooling would be stood. So he had to go on.
As to Vashti, she had covered the fifteen miles which lay
between the district and the fork-road; and had found and sent a messenger
to give warning in the city; but not finding any of the homeguard
where she thought they were, she had borrowed some matches
and had trudged on herself to execute the rest of Darby's commands.
The branches were high from the backwater of the fork, and she often had
to wade up to her waist, but she kept on, and a little after daylight
she came to the river. Ordinarily, it was not a large stream;
a boy could chuck a stone across it, and there was a ford above the bridge
not very deep in dry weather, which people sometimes took
to water their horses, or because they preferred to ride through the water
to crossing the steep and somewhat rickety old bridge. Now, however,
the water was far out in the woods, and long before the girl
got in sight of the bridge she was wading up to her knees. When she reached
the point where she could see it, her heart for a moment failed her;
the whole flat was under water. She remembered Darby's command, however,
and her courage came back to her. She knew that it could not be as deep
as it looked between her and the bridge, for the messenger had gone
before her that way, and a moment later she had gone back and collected
a bundle of "dry-wood", and with a long pole to feel her way she waded
carefully in. As it grew deeper and deeper until it reached her breast,
she took the matches out and held them in her teeth, holding her bundle
above her head. It was hard work to keep her footing this way, however,
and once she stepped into a hole and went under to her chin,
having a narrow escape from falling into a place which her pole
could not fathom; but she recovered herself and at last was on the bridge.
When she tried to light a fire, however, her matches would not strike.
They as well as the wood had gotten wet when she slipped,
and not one would light. She might as well have been at her home
in the district. When every match had been tried and tried again
on a dry stone, only to leave a white streak of smoking sulphur on it,
she sat down and cried. For the first time she felt cold and weary.
The rays of the sun fell on her and warmed her a little,
and she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked up. The sun had just come up
over the hill. It gave her courage. She turned and looked the other way
from which she had come -- nothing but a waste of water and woods. Suddenly,
from a point up over the nearer woods a little sparkle caught her eye;
there must be a house there, she thought; they might have matches,
and she would go back and get some. But there it was again -- it moved.
There was another -- another -- and something black moving.
She sprang to her feet and strained her eyes. Good God! they were coming!
In a second she had turned the other way, rushed across the bridge,
and was dashing through the water to her waist. The water was not wide
that way. The hill rose almost abruptly on that side, and up it she dashed,
and along the road. A faint curl of smoke caught her eye and she made for it
through the field.
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