It was a wonderful period of mental development for this wild young creature of the woods, when Hilary received in his sudden transition to the “valley kentry” his first adequate impressions of civilization. He learned that the world is wide; he beheld the triumphs of military science; he acquiesced in the fixed distinctions of rank, since he must needs concede the finer grades of capacity. But courage, the inherent, inimitable endowment, he recognized as the soul of heroism, and in all the arrogance of elation he became conscious that he possessed it. This it was that opened his stolid mind to the allurements of ambition. He rejoiced in an aspiration.
He was brave. That was his identity—his essential vitality! Was he ignorant, poor, the butt of the campfire jokes, because of his simplicity in the wide world’s ways, slothful, slow, wild, and turbulent? He took heed of none of this! He was the bravest of the brave—and all the command knew it!
With an exultant heart he realized that Captain Bertley was aware of the fact, and often took account of it in laying his plans. The regiment of which this squadron was a part belonged to one of those brigades of light cavalry whose utility was chiefly in quick movements, in harassing an enemy’s march, in following up and hanging on his retreat, and sometimes in making swift forced marches, appearing unexpectedly in distant localities far from the main body and adding the element of surprise to a sudden and furious onslaught. Often Hilary was among a few picked men sent out to reconnoiter, or as the rear-guard when the little band was retreating before a superior force and it was necessary to fight and flee alternately. It was now and again in these skirmishes that he had the opportunity to show his pluck and his strength and his cool head and his ready hand. More than once he had been the bearer of dispatches of great importance sent by him alone, disguised in citizen’s dress and his destination a long way off. Thus did the captain commanding the squadron demonstrate his confidence in the boy’s fidelity and courage and resource. For his ready wit in an emergency was hardly less than his courage.
“What did you do, then, with the Colonel’s letter that you were to deliver at brigade head-quarters?” asked the Captain in much agitation, but with a voice like thunder and a flashing eye, when one day Hilary returned from a fruitless expedition, with his finger in his mouth, so to speak, and a tale of having encountered Federal scouts, who had stopped and questioned him, and finally after suspiciously searching him, had turned him loose, believing him nothing more than he seemed—a peaceful, ignorant country boy.
Hilary glanced ruefully down at the hat that he swung in his hand, then with anxious deprecation at the Captain, whose face as he stood beside his horse, ready to mount, had flushed deeply red, either because of the reflection of the sunset clouds massed in the west or because of the recollection that he had earnestly recommended the boy to his superior officer, for this dangerous mission, and thus felt peculiarly responsible; for the letter had contained details relating to the Colonel’s orders from brigade headquarters, his numbers, and other matters, the knowledge of which in the enemy’s hands might precipitate his capture, together with all the detachment.
“It’s gone, sir,” mumbled Hilary, the picture of despair; “I never knowed what ter do, so—”
“So you let them have that letter—when I had told you how important it was!”
“I don’t see how it could have been helped, since the boy was searched,” said Captain Blake, the junior captain of the squadron, who was standing by. “I am glad he came back to let us know.”
“That’s why I done what I done,” eagerly explained Hilary. “I—I—eat it.”
“All of it?” cried Captain Bertley, with a flash of relief.
“Yes, sir, I swallowed it all bodaciously—just ez soon ez I seen ’em a-kemin’ dustin’ along the road.”
“Well done, Baby Bunting!” cried the senior officer, for thus was Hilary distinguished among the troopers on account of his tender years.
The gruff Captain Blake laughed delightedly, a hoarse, discordant demonstration, much like the chuckling of a rusty old crow. He seemed to think it a good joke, and Hilary knew that he, too, was vastly relieved to have saved from the enemy such important information.
“Pretty bitter pill, eh?”
“Naw, sir,” said Hilary, his eyes twinkling as he swung his hat in his hand, for he could never be truly military out of his uniform; “it war like eatin’ a yard medjure of mustard plaster, bein’ stiff ter swaller an’ somehow goin’ agin the grain.”
The senior captain gravely commended his presence of mind, and said he would remember this and his many other good services. As he dismissed the young trooper and still standing, holding a sheet of paper against his saddle, began to write a report of the fate of the letter that had so threatened the capture of the whole command, Hilary overheard Captain Blake say in his bluff, extravagant way, “That boy ought to be promoted.”
“What?” said Captain Bertley, glancing back over his shoulder with the pencil in his hand. “Baby Bunting with a command!”
Despite the ridicule of the idea Hilary’s heart swelled within him as he strolled away, for he cared only to deserve the promotion and the confidence shown him, even if on account of his extreme youth and presumable irresponsibility he was debarred from receiving it.
He could not have said why he was not resentful of being called “Baby Bunting” by Captain Bertley. He felt it was in the nature of a courteous condescension that the officer should comment on the inadequacy of his age and the discrepancy between his limited powers and his valuable deeds—almost as a jesting token of affection, kindly meant and kindly received. But the name fell upon his ear often with a far different significance; the camp cry “Bye, oh, Baby Bunting,” was intended to goad him to such a degree of anger as should make him the sport of the groups around the bivouac fire. The chief instigator of this effort was a big, brutal cavalryman, by name Jack Bixby. He had a long, red beard; long, reddish hair; small, twinkling, dark eyes, and a powerfully built, sinewy, well-compacted figure. He was superficially considered jolly and genial, for few of his careless companions were observant enough of moral phenomena or sufficiently students of human nature to take note of the fact that there was always a spice of ill-humor in his mirth. Malice or jealousy or grudging or a mean spirit of derision pervaded his merriment. He found great joy in ridiculing a raw country boy, whose lack of knowledge of the world’s ways laid him liable to many mistakes and misconceptions, and at first Hilary’s credulity in the big lies told him by Jack Bixby and his simplicity in acting upon them exposed him to the laughter of the whole troop. This was checked in one instance, however; having been instructed that it was an accepted detail of the observances of a soldier, Hilary was induced to advance with great ceremony one day, and duly saluting ask Captain Bertley how he found his health. The officer was standing on ground somewhat elevated above the site of the camp, in full gray uniform, a field-glass in his hand, his splendid charger at his shoulder, the reins thrown over his arm. The humble “Baby Bunting” approaching this august military object, and presuming to ask after the commanding officer’s health, was in full view of a hundred or more startled and amazed veterans.
But Captain Bertley had seen and known much of this world and its ways. He instantly recognized the incident as a bit of malicious play upon the simplicity of the new recruit, and he took due note, too, of his own dignity. He realized how to balk the one and to support the other. He accepted the unusual and absurd demonstration concerning his health by saying simply that he was quite well, and then he kept the boy standing in conversation as to the state of a certain ford some distance up the river, with which Hilary was acquainted, having been of a scouting party which had been sent in that direction the previous day. The staring military spectators, their attention previously bespoken by Bixby, saw naught especial in the interview, the boy apparently having been summoned thither by order of the officer to make a report or give information, and thus the joke, attenuated to microscopic proportions, failed of effect. It had, however, very sufficient efficacy in recoil. Before dismissing Hilary the Captain asked how he had chanced to accost him in the manner with which he had approached him, and the boy in guilelessly detailing the circumstance, before he was admonished as to his credulous folly, betrayed Bixby as the perpetrator of the pleasantry at his expense, and what was far more serious at the expense of the officer. Jack Bixby, dull enough, as malicious people often are, or they would not otherwise let their malice appear—for they are not frank—did not see it in that light until he suddenly found himself under arrest and then required to mount the “wooden horse” for several weary hours.
“You’ll be hung up by the thumbs next time, my rooster,” said the sergeant, as he carried the sentence into effect. “The Cap’n ain’t so mighty partial to your record, no hows. He asked me if you hadn’t served with Whingan’s rangers, ez be no better’n bushwhackers, an’ ye know he is mighty partic’lar ’bout keepin’ up the tone an’ spirit o’ the men.”
Hilary, contradictorily enough, lost all sense of injury and shame in sorrow that he should have divulged Bixby’s agency in the matter and brought this disaster upon the trooper, who perhaps had only intended a little diversion, and had neither the good taste nor the good sense to perceive its offensiveness to the officer. Bixby had served in a band generally reputed bushwhackers, who did little more than plunder both sides, and in which discipline was necessarily slight. And thus after this episode they were better friends than before. True, in the days of dearth, for these men must needs starve as well as fight, when only rations of corn were served out, which the soldiers parched and ate by the fire, and which were so scanty that a strict watch was kept to prevent certain of them from robbing their own horses, on the condition and speed of which their very lives depended, Hilary, as in honor bound, being detailed for this duty, reported his greedy comrade, but in view of the half-famished condition of the troops Bixby’s punishment was light, and the incident did not break off their outward semblance of friendship, although one may be sure Bixby kept account of it.
So the years went—those wild years of hard riding and hard fighting; sleeping on the ground under the open skies whether cloudy or clear—it was months after it was all over before Hilary could accustom himself to sleep in a bed; roused by the note of the trumpet, sometimes while the stars were yet white in the dark heavens, with no token of dawn save a great translucent, tremulous planet heralding the morn, and that wild, sweet, exultant strain of reveille, so romantic, so stirring, that it might seem as if it had floated down, proclaiming the day, from that splendid vanguard of the sun. So they went—those wild years, all at once over.
The end came on a hard-contested field, albeit only a thousand or so were engaged on either side. The squadron, in one of those wild reckless assaults of cavalry against artillery, for which the Confederate horse were famous in this campaign, had gone to the attack straight up a hill, while the muzzles of the big, black guns sent forth smoke and roar, scarcely less frightful than the bombs which were bursting among the horses and men riding directly at the battery. It was hard to hold the horses. Often they swerved and faltered, and sought to turn back. Each time Captain Bertley, with drawn sword, reformed the line, encouraging the men and urging them to the almost impossible task anew. At it they went once more, in face of shot and shell. Now and again Hilary, riding in the rear rank, with his saber at “the raise,” heard a sharp, singing sibilance, which he knew was a minie-ball, whizzing close to his ear, and he realized that infantry was there a little to one side supporting the battery. The rush, the turmoil, the blare of the trumpets sounding “the charge,” the clamor of galloping hoofs, of shouting men, the roar of cannon, the swift panorama of moving objects before the eye, the ever-quickening speed, and the tremendous sensation of flying through the air like a projectile—it was all like some wild tempest, some mad conflict of the elements. And suddenly Hilary became aware that he was flying through the air without any will of his own. The horse had taken the bit between his teeth, and maddened by the noise, the frenzy of the fight, was rushing on he knew not whither, his head stretched out, his eyes starting, straight up the hill unmindful of the trumpet now sounding the recall and the heavy pull of the boy on the curb. Hilary was far away in advance of the others when the line wheeled. A few more impetuous bounds and plunges, and he was carried in among the Federal guns, mechanically slashing at the gunners with his saber, until one of the men, with a well-directed blow, knocked him off his horse with the long, heavy sponge-staff. So it was that Hilary was captured. He surrendered to the man with the sponge-staff, for the others were busily limbering up the guns; they were to take position on a new site—one less exposed to attack and very commanding. They had more than they wanted in Hilary. He realized that as he was on his way to the rear under guard. The engagement was practically at an end, and the successful Federals were keenly eager to pursue the retreating force and secure all the fruits of victory. To be hampered with the disposition of prisoners at such a moment was hardly wise, when an active pursuit might cut off the whole command. Therefore the few already taken, who were more or less wounded, were temporarily paroled in a neighboring hamlet, and Hilary, the war in effect concluded for him—for the parole was a pledge to remain within the lines and report at stated intervals to the party granting it—found himself looking out over a broad white turnpike in a flat country, down which a cloud of dust was all that could be seen of the body of cavalry so lately contending for every inch of ground.
Now and again a series of white puffs of smoke from amidst the hillocks on the west told that the battery of the Federals was shelling the woods which their enemy had succeeded in gaining, the shells hurtling high above the heads of their own infantry marching forward resolutely, secure in the fact of being too close for damage. Presently the battery became silent. Their vanguard was getting within range of their own guns, and a second move was in order. The boy watched the flying artillery scurrying across the plain, as he struck down a “dirt-road” which intersected the turnpike, and soon he noticed the puffs of white smoke from another coign of vantage and the bursting of shells still further away.
“Them dogs barkin’ again! Waal, I’m glad ter be wide o’ thar mark,” said a familiar voice at his elbow; the speaker was Bixby, a paroled prisoner, too, having been captured further down the hill during the general retreat.
Hilary was not ill-pleased to see him at first, especially as something presently happened which made him solicitous for the advice and guidance of an older head than his own. By one of the vicissitudes of war victory suddenly deserted the winning side, and presently here was the erstwhile successful party in full retreat, swarming over the flat country, the battery scurrying along the turnpike with two of its guns missing, captured as they barked with their mouths wide open, so to speak. The hurrying crash and noisy rout went past like the phantasmagoria of a dream, and these two prisoners were presently left quite outside the Federal lines by no act or volition of their own, and yet apparently far enough from Bertley’s squadron, for the pursuit was not pressed, both parties having had for the nonce enough of each other. The first object of the two troopers was to procure food of which they stood sadly in need. They set forth to find the nearest farmhouse, Hilary on his own horse, which in the confusion had not been taken from him when he was disarmed, and Bixby easily caught and mounted a riderless steed that had been in the engagement, but was now cropping the wayside grass.
A thousand times that day Hilary wished, as they went on their journey together, that he had never seen this man again. All Jack Bixby’s methods were false, and it revolted Hilary, educated to a simple but strict code of morals, to seem to share in his lies and his dubious devices to avoid giving a true account of themselves. In fact their progress was menaced with some danger. Having little to distinguish them as soldiers, for the gray cloth uniform in many instances had given place to the butternut jeans, the habitual garb of the poorer classes of the country, they could be mistaken for citizens, peacefully pursuing some rustic vocation, and this impression Bixby sought to impose on every party who questioned them. He feared to meet the Federals, because of their paroles, which showed them to be prisoners and yet out of the lines, and he thought this broken pledge might subject them to the penalty of being strung up by the neck.
“That air tale ’bout our bein’ in the lines an’ the lines shrinkin’ till we got out o’ ’em ain’t goin’ ter go down with no sech brash fellers,” he argued with some reason, for the probabilities seemed against them.
And now he dreaded an encounter with Union men, non-combatants, for the same reason. He slipped off his boot at one time and hid the paper under the sole of his foot. “Ef we-uns war ter be sarched they wouldn’t look thar, mos’ likely.” And finally when they reached the house of an aged farmer, who with partisan cordiality welcomed and fed them, declaring that although he was too old to fight he could thus help on the southern cause, Bixby took advantage of his host’s short absence from the dining-room to strike a match which he discovered in a candlestick on the mantel piece, for the season was too warm for fires, and lighting the candle he held the parole in the flame till the paper was reduced to a cinder; then he hastily extinguished the candle.
When once more on the road, however, Bixby regretted his decision. For aught he knew they were still within the Federal lines. The Union troops had doubtless been reinforced, for they were making a point of holding this region at all hazards. He was a fool he said to have burnt his parole—it was his protection. If he were taken now by troops not in the extreme activities of resisting a spirited cavalry attack, who had time to make his capture good, and means of transportation handy, he would be sent off to Camp Chase or some other prison, and shut up there till the crack of doom, whereas his parole rendered him for the time practically free.
“Why didn’t you keep me from doin’ it, Hil’ry?”
“Why, I baiged an’ baiged an’ besought ye ’fore we went in the house ter do nothin’ ter the paper,” said Hilary, wearied and excited and even alarmed by his companion’s vacillations, so wild with fear had Bixby become. “I wunk at ye when the old man’s back was turned. I even tried ter snatch the paper whenst ye put yer boot-toe on the aidge of a piece of it on the ha’thstone an’ helt it down till it war bu’nt.”
“I war a fool,” said Bixby, gloomily. “I wish I hed it hyar now.”
“I tole ye,” said Hilary, for he had spent the day in urging the fair and open policy, let come what might of it, “I tole ye ez I war a-goin’ ter show my parole ter the fust man ez halts me, an’ ef I be out’n the lines, an’ he won’t believe my tale, let him take it out on me howsumdever the law o’ sech doin’s ’pears. Nobody could expec’ me ter set an’ starve on that hillside till sech time ez the Fed’rals throw out thar line agin.”
“I wisht I hed my parole agin,” said Bixby, more moodily still.
Down the road before them suddenly they saw a dust, and a steely glitter—not so strong a reflection, however, as marching infantry throws out. A squad of cavalry was approaching at a steady pace. Jack Bixby’s first idea was flight; this the condition of the jaded horse rendered impolitic. Then he thought of concealment—in vain. On either hand the level, plowed fields afforded not the slightest bush as a shield. The only thicket in sight was alongside the road and now in line with the approaching party whom it so shadowed that it was impossible to judge by uniform or accoutrements to which army they belonged.
“Hil’ry,” said Jack Bixby, “let’s stick ter the country-jake story; I’ll say that I be a farmer round hyar somewhar, an’ pretend that you air my son. That’ll go down with any party.”
“I be goin’ ter tell the truth myself, an’ show my parole, whoever they be; that’s the right thing,” said Hilary, stoutly.
“But I ain’t got no parole,” quavered Bixby.
“Tell the truth an’ I’ll bear ye out,” said Hilary. “Tell ’em that thar be so many parties—Feds an’ Confeds an’ Union men an’ bushwhackers, an’ we-uns got by accident out’n the lines an’ ye took alarm an’ deestroyed yer parole. I’ll bear ye out an’ take my oath on it; an’ ye know the old man war remarkin’ on them cinders on the aidge o’ the mantel shelf an’ ha’thstone ez we left the house.”
“Hil’ry,” said Bixby, as with a sudden bright idea—anything but the truth seemed hopeful to him—“I’ll tell ye. I’ll take yer parole an’ claim it ez mine, an’ pretend that ye air my son—non-combatant, jes’ a boy, ez ye air.”
“But it’s got my name on it. It’s a-parolin’ of me,” said Hilary, “an’ I ain’t no non-combatant.”
“But I’ll claim your name; I’ll be Hil’ry Knox, an’ tall ez ye air, yer face shows ye ain’t nuthin’ but a boy. Nobody wouldn’t disbelieve it.”
“I won’t do it! I won’t put off a lie on ’em! I hev fought an’ fought an’ I’ll take the consekences o’ what I done—all the consekences o’ hevin’ fought. I am Hilary Knox, an’ I be plumb pledged by my word of honor. But I’ll bear ye out in the fac’s, an’ thar’s nuthin’ ter doubt in the fac’s—they air full reasonable.”
He had taken the paper out of his ragged breast-pocket to have it in readiness to present to the advance guard, who had perceived them and had quickened the pace for the purpose of halting them. Perhaps Bixby had no intention, save, by sleight-of-hand, to possess himself of the paper. Perhaps he thought that having it in his power the boy would hardly dare to contradict the story he had sketched and the name he intended to claim as the owner of the parole; if Hilary should protest he could say his son was weak-minded, an imbecile, a lunatic. He made a sudden lunge from the saddle and a more sudden snatch at the paper. But the boy’s strong hand held it fast. Jack Bixby hardly noted the surprise, the indignation, the reproach in Hilary’s face—almost an expression of grief—as he turned it toward him. With the determination that had seized him to possess the paper, Bixby struck the boy’s wrist and knuckles a series of sharp, brutal blows with the back of a strong bowie-knife, which had been concealed in his boot-leg at the surrender. They palsied the clutch of the boy’s left hand. But as the quivering fingers opened, Hilary caught the falling paper with his right hand.
“Let go, let go!” cried Jack Bixby in a frenzy; “else I’ll let you hev the blade—there, then!—take the aidge—ez keen ez a razor!”
The steel descended again and again, and as the boy was half dragged out of the saddle the blood poured down upon the parole. It would have been hard to say then what name was there!
A sudden shout rang out from down the road. The approaching men had observed the altercation, and mending their pace, came on at a swift gallop.
With not a glance at them, Jack Bixby turned his horse short around and fled as fast as the animal could go, striking out of the road and into the woods as soon as he reached the timbered land.
Poor “Baby Bunting,” dragged out of his saddle, fell down in the road beneath his horse’s hoofs, and all covered with white dust and red blood there he lay very still till the cavalrymen came up and found him.
For this was what they called him—“Poor Baby Bunting!” They were a small reconnoitering party of his own comrades, and it was with a hearty good will that they pursued Jack Bixby who fled, as from his enemies, through the brush. Perhaps his enemies would have been gentler with him than his quondam friends could they only have laid hands on him, for they all loved “Baby Bunting” for his brave spirit and his little simplicities and his hearty good-comradeship. Hilary recognized none of them. He only had a vague idea of Captain Bertley’s face with a grave anxiety and a deep pity upon it as the officer gazed down at him when he was borne past on the stretcher to the field hospital where his right arm was taken off by the surgeon. He was treated as kindly as possible, for the remembrance of his gallant spirit as well as humanity’s sake, and when at last he was discharged from the more permanent hospital to which he had been removed he realized that he had indeed done with war and fine deeds of valiance, and he set out to return home, tramping the weary way to the mountain and his mother.
After that fateful day, when maimed and wan and woebegone he came forth from the hospital and journeyed out from among the camps and flags and big guns and all the armaments of war, thrice splendid to his backward gaze, it seemed to him that he had left there more than was visible—that noble identity of valor for which he had revered himself.
For he found as he went a strange quaking in his heart. It was an alien thing, and he strove to repudiate it, and ached with helpless despair. When he came into unfamiliar regions, and a sudden clatter upon the lonely country road would herald the approach of mounted strangers, halting him, the convulsive start of his maimed right arm with the instinct to seize his weapons and the sense of being defenseless utterly would so unnerve him that he would give a disjointed account of himself, with hang-dog look and faltering words. And more than once he was seized and roughly handled and dragged to headquarters to show his papers and be at last passed on by the authorities.
He began to say to himself that his courage was in his cavalry pistol.
“Before God!” he cried, “me an’ my right arm an’ my weepon air like saltpetre an’ charcoal an’ sulphur—no ’count apart. An’ tergether they mean gunpowder!”
And doubly bereaved, he had come in sight of home.
But his mother fell upon his neck with joy, and the neighbors gathered to meet him. The splendors of the Indian summer were deepening upon the mountains, with gorgeous fantasies of color, with errant winds harping æolian numbers in the pines, with a translucent purple haze and a great red sun, and the hunter’s moon, most luminous. The solemnity and peace stole in upon his heart, and revived within him that cherished sense of home, so potent with the mountaineer, and in some wise he was consoled.
Yet he hardly paused. In this lighter mood he went on to the settlement, eager that the news of his coming should not precede him.
There was the bridge to cross and the rocky ascent, and at the summit stood the first log cabin of the scattered little hamlet. From the porch, overgrown with hop vines, he heard the whir of a spinning wheel. He saw the girl who stood beside it before she noticed the sound of his step. Then she turned, staring at him with startled recognition, despite all the changes wrought in the past two years. “It air me,” he said, jocosely.
From his hollow eyes and sunken cheeks and wan smile her gaze fell upon his empty sleeve. She suddenly threw her arm across her face. “I—I—can’t abide ter look at ye!” she faltered, with a gush of tears.
He stood dumfounded for a moment.
“Durn it!” he cried. “I can’t abide ter look at myself!”
And with a bitter laugh he turned on his heel.
He would not be reconciled later. The wound she had unintentionally dealt him rankled long. He said Delia Noakes was a sensible girl. Plenty of brave fellows would come home from the war, hale and hearty and with two good arms, better men in every way, in mind and body and heart and soul, for the stern experiences they were enduring so stanchly. The crop of sweethearts promised to be indeed particularly fine, and there was no use in wasting politeness on a fellow with whom she used to play before either of them could walk, but whose arm was gone now, through no glorious deed wrought for his country, for which he had intended to do all such service as a man’s right arm might compass, but because he was a fool, and had made a friend of a malevolent scoundrel, who had nearly taken his life, but had only—worse luck—taken his right arm! And besides he had seen enough of the world in his wanderings to know that it behooves people to look to the future and means of support. He had learned what it was to be hungry, he had learned what it was to lack. He was no longer the brave and warlike man-at-arms, “Baby Bunting.” He had no vocation, no possibility of a future of usefulness; he could not hold a gun or a plow or an ax, and Delia doubtless thought he would not be able to provide for her. And “dead shot” though he had been he could not now defend himself, he declared bitterly, much less her.