An Unofficial Patriot

by Helen H. Gardener

"We'll get it, boys! We'll get it!" rang out with the roar of the battle. At last the tree was only a few feet away. A private dashed out of the line, and grasped the bayonet that held the coveted paper and swung it aloft. The challenge was captured! Even the boys who lay on the ground joined in the triumphal shout and one of them volunteered to reply. He had a good arm left! He took a pencil from his breast pocket, and turned his body painfully, slowly, so that he could write. The stock of his gun was desk enough. He read the captured paper and laughed. "The ——— La. presents its compliments to the ——— Ind., and intends to thrash it out of its boots—as usual."

The wounded man turned the paper over and wrote: "The ——— Ind. returns its compliments to the ——— La. and expresses a desire to see it accomplish the job." He was so near to the tree that he thought he could drag himself to it and post up the reply on the far side, but his legs were numb and helpless, and the pain of dragging himself on hands and hips conquered him. He looked all about him. The ambulance workers had come, not far away, to carry off the wounded. One came near and offered to help him.

"Pin that paper to the far side of that tree, first," he said, with a grim smile. "I'll wait."

The man refused, but the wounded fellow essaying to drag himself toward it again, he yielded, and the return challenge was posted.

Two hours later its work, was done. The ———

La. held the hill again! A laughing shout went up. It might have been a warmly contested game of football, so free from malice was it.

All over the great battle-field the work of the day was back and forth over the same bloody and trampled ground. The mud of the morning took on another tinge of red, and the mingled blood of the gallant fellows who gave their lives for the side they had espoused made hideous mortar of the ghastly sacrifice. The river ran on its way to the sea, floating the costliest driftwood ever cast by man as an offering to his own passions, mistakes, and ambitions; a driftwood pale and ghastly, clad in gray or in blue, and scattering from Maine to Texas, from ocean to ocean, the sorrow that travels in the wake of war, the anguish of those who silently wait by the fireside, for the step that will never come, for the voice that is silent forever! Ah, the ghastliness of war! Ah, the costliness of war! It is those who do not fight who pay the heaviest debt and find its glory ashes!

On the hill was the rivalry of the challenge. It gave grim humor to the contest. Three challenges were taken, and three replaced, before the sunset brought that suspension of effort which left the hill, the tree, and the final glory of the day in the hands of the Confederates. The drawn battle was over for the night, but the trend of the victory was southward, and the heavens once more deluged the dead and dying with the pitiless downpour of chilling rain all the night long. In the northern camp the tired men slept in spite of rain and mud and distant cannonading. With the slain beside them, the groans of the dying about them, the echo of the conflict in their ears, the promise of the struggle of the morrow, still the tired men slept! In the Confederate camp sleep was impossible. The Federal relief boats had come! To-morrow fresh men would fill the Northern ranks. Meantime the thunder of the great gunboats continued the unequal contest. Shot and shell fell with the rain into the Confederate camp. All night the bombardment went on. The river was tinged with red, the heavens kept up the old refrain and wept for the sins, the mistakes, the cruelties of men, and still the tired soldiers slept and waited for the morrow—and what? There would be no more surprises at least. Both understood now that it was a stubborn fight. Both knew that the reinforcements were here for the Federal troops. Pickets and scouts were wide awake now; no danger of another surprise. All night the relief corps worked. All night the distant echoes from the gunboats brought hope to the one and desperation to the other army. All night the surgeons labored. All night stragglers came in dragging wounded limbs. All night suffering horses neighed and whinnied and struggled and at last died from loss of blood—and still men slept! Ah, the blessed oblivion and relief of sleep! If to-morrow's action must come, then to-night nature must restore the wasted energy, and repair the deathly exhaustion,—and men slept! Soaked through with rain, begrimed with smoke and with mud, assailed with groans and with that insidious foe of rest, uncertainty, still men slept, soundly, profoundly, dreamlessly!

The first gray streak of dawn brought a bugle call: another, another. The clouds were clearing away. Nature was preparing to witness another and more desperate struggle. The dreamless sleep, that had refused to yield to hunger, pain, uproar or anxiety, yielded at the first note of the réveille. Every man was awake, alert, active. The rain and action-stiffened limbs were ready for duty again. The seventh of April had dawned. Reinforcements would soon land; but the battle was on before they could disembark. The Confederates, flushed with the advantage of the day before, were determined to overwhelm even the new force. The battle was on. Roy, the spruce, trim, and some young lieutenant of the day before, waiting for his brother with proud, brotherly anxiety, was a sorry sight to-day, but that did not trouble him. His new shoulder-straps were tarnished, his sword was marked with an ugly red stain, his freshly brushed uniform was bespattered and wrinkled and wet, mud-covered and torn; but he was unhurt save for the track of a Minie ball under the skin of his left arm. To that he gave no heed. A plaster of the pottery clay, self-applied, had taken the soreness almost away, and as Roy stood at the head of his company to-day and took the place of the captain, who would respond to roll-call no more, he was wondering if Beverly would be with the troops that would land, and if they would help save the day. He hoped that Beverly would be there, and yet—after the sights and experiences of yesterday—did he hope that Beverly would be there? Beverly might be killed! He had not thought of that the day before, nor had it troubled him for himself; but as he looked about him now or bent to see if an old comrade were really dead, or only unconscious, he somehow felt glad that Beverly had not been there the day before. Ah, these hearts of ours!—these hearts of ours! What tricks they play us! What cowards they make of us! What selfishness they breed in us! For ourselves we can be brave, defiant, even jocose, in the midst of danger or of sorrow; but for those we love! Ah, for those we love, our philosophy is scant comfort, our courage is undermined before it is tested, and we are helpless in the face of Love. We can walk bravely enough into the mouth of a cannon, but Love disarms us, and we cry for mercy where we did not shrink from death!

Roy wondered how much Beverly knew of the battle, and if his heart was anxious, also. He knew Beverly's division was expected, but he thought as he fought, "I reckon I'd just as lieve Beverly shouldn't be with them. If he were on sick leave or—or—something." He felt a little sense of shame for the thought, and fought the more determinedly because of it. The gallant Confederates were flushed by their gain of the day before. No one would have dreamed that they were exhausted by a long march before the surprise. No one would have dreamed that they were hungry, and that their supply-wagons had not come up until long after the struggle. No one would have dreamed that they had been kept up all night by the bombardment from the distant gunboats. No one would have dreamed that out of that intrepid ——— Louisiana, with its challenge again on the tree there, would never muster again over three hundred and twenty-seven of the six hundred merry fellows who flung themselves up that hill only twelve short hours ago!