Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier

by Beulah Marie Dix

Then conversation ceased, for reaching a gully in the hillside they gave all their thoughts to descending it, and slipped and scuffled in the dry bed till Frank had wrenched his ankle and Hugh had a torn coat-sleeve to his credit. The gully ending in a small stream, they followed it down through a copse of bare bushes that snapped against the face, and so came out upon the open plain. Not an eighth of a mile distant, sitting ready with their backpieces gleaming and their carabines slung across their shoulders, they could see the ranks of horsemen. In the open betwixt the boys and the ordered troops messengers were spurring to and fro, and now and again, in small groups or man by man, stray horsemen straggled by. One such they came upon by the brook, as he was patching a broken girth, and Hugh, pausing to lend his aid, asked him what news there was in the field. “Why does not the battle begin at once?” Frank urged, and, when the man answered the troops were but waiting the word to fall on, he caught Hugh’s arm and bade him come forward quickly to seek their regiment.

At that the trooper struck in: “Best keep out o’ the press, sir. You’ll be trampled to pieces there with small good to the king or to yourself. Better bear off to the northward out of harm’s way.”

“But I am here solely to get in harm’s way,” Frank protested; and, when Hugh, taking the advice, made for a log bridge to cross the stream, followed grumblingly.

Once over, with the intention of taking their final stand at the extreme right of the line of waiting horsemen, they pressed northward across the uneven plain. They were sliding down the bank to a shallow hollow, when the thud, thud of hoofs warned them to look to the westward and there, over a slight rise in the ground, a belated troop came at a smart trot. Pressing back against the bank Hugh watched the crowded columns approach, the bespattered breasts of the horses, their tossing heads, and above the waving manes the white faces of the riders. As the head of the column came close upon him his eyes rested on its leader, and he saw he was a man of middle height with reddish hair, who rode in his shirt with neither cuirass nor helmet. Then the troop was sweeping past, black, red, and gray horses straining at a trot, and men with steady faces and silent lips, among whom, looking closer, Hugh recognized some he knew.

But he only gazed without speaking till the last horse had swung down the hollow, and Frank, who had been cheering mightily, settled his hat on his head again, with an excited, “A brave troop, was it not, Hugh?”

“It was my troop,” Hugh answered. “Did you not note? ’Twas my father led them.”

“Oh, ay, to be sure,” replied Frank, making for the opposite side of the hollow. “I scarce remembered him, and, to my thinking, he has used you so knavishly that he does not merit to dwell in any gentleman’s remembrance, and—Hark, there!”

Both halted a moment as from far off on the left came the dull boom, boom of cannon. From far to the front an answering crash sounded. “They’re falling to it,” Frank cried. “Briskly, Hugh!”

One last spurt that sent the blood beating to the temples and turned the breath hot in the throat, and they were stumbling up the little hillock for which they had headed. Still, before and on the left, the cannon were pounding, and there came, too, in long, undistinguishable shouts, the noise of men cheering. The withered grass of the hillside wavered before Hugh’s eyes with the very weariness of running, yet he found strength in him to pull off his hat and breath to pant out: “For a king!”

Then, coming over the brow of the hill, he had sight of the rough plain stretching off to the gray west, and across it saw the long ranks of horsemen sweeping forward. A gleam of cuirasses and helmets, a glimpse of plunging horses and waving swords, a flutter of banners; they had charged onward, and only the echo of their shouts still lingered and was lost in the throb of cannon. Now first Hugh realized his throat was near cracked with cheering and his arm ached with waving his hat; so he paused breathless, with his eyes still fastened on the brown dust-cloud toward the west. There came a touch on his arm, and putting out his hand he grasped Frank’s wrist. Young Pleydall was gasping for breath with a choke like a half sob. “If we had only been with them!” he broke out.