The Last Rebel

by Joseph A. Altsheler

At that point the mountains were more accessible than farther back toward Fort Defiance. One might penetrate them in several directions if he were willing to risk falls on the sheet ice. Several of us, taking our alpenstocks, explored the neighborhood again. The light was sufficient, the reflection from the ice throwing a kind of pale glow over everything. But our explorations brought no profit, and, the night, as we had expected, turning very cold, we returned to the hut.

We stacked our rifles against the wall and composed ourselves for rest. We did not realize, until the necessity for exertion was over, how very tired we were. Grace retired to her curtained corner, and in a few minutes was so still there that we knew she must be asleep despite anxiety. Some of the soldiers stretched themselves upon the floor, and they, too, soon slept. Another, sitting upon a stool, with his head against the wall, snored placidly. We saw no necessity for keeping watch, and even the vigilant Crothers lay down upon the bench, where his eyes soon closed and his breathing became long and regular. The last army of the Confederacy was sound asleep, and the colonel's Yankee spy alone was awake.

They were old, men mostly, heads gray, almost white, and faces deeply seamed, like the colonel's. But they looked to me like a loyal lot, and my sympathy went out to these old fellows, every one of whom I had no doubt carried old scars on his body. I was sitting on a stone before the fire, trying to read my fortune in the deep bed of coals. Tiring of the vain pursuit, I walked to the little window. The old soldiers slept such a tired and heavy sleep that my footsteps did not disturb them.

I could see nothing but the mountains, cold and white as a tombstone, and hear nothing but the occasional rattle of the loose ice as it fell from the trees and shattered on the thicker ice below.

I went back to the fire, picked out a convenient place in front of it, and decided that I too would recognize the claims of exhaustion and sleep, which were now growing clamorous. Doubling up my blanket and putting it under my head for a pillow, I stretched myself out with my feet to the fire and resumed my old occupation of studying the red coals and the fortune that might be written for me there. I had done it many a time as a boy, and as a man I was not changed.

The regular and heavy breathing of the sleepers had something soothing in it. The logs burned through, crumbled, and fell in coals, adding to the glowing mass. With my half-closed eyes making much from little and seeing things that were not, I built castles in the fire and sent troops of real soldiers marching through them. When the fourth castle was but half finished, I closed my eyes and joined the others in sleep.

Perhaps it was the strangeness of these scenes, much more strange to me than to the others, that disturbed and excited my brain while I slept, and by and by made me waken. The great heap of coals had sunk but little lower, and I reckoned that I had not slept more than two hours at the farthest. It was very warm in the room, for we had not been chary with the fire, and I turned to the little window for fresh air.

Framed in the window I saw very distinctly a pair of bright eyes and a part of a human face. The eyes gazed at me, and I am quite sure I returned the stare with equal intentness. We had hoped for a visitor, but we did not expect to find him at the window.

I rose quickly to my feet, and the face was withdrawn. Wishing to look into the matter myself without disturbing the others, I walked lightly to the door, on the way stepping over the prostrate bodies of two or three members of the Confederate army. I opened the door and went out. When I came to the window I found that my man was gone, but not fifty feet away, walking toward the recesses of the mountains, was a tall, slender figure. I knew that military bearing could belong to none other in those mountains than Colonel Hetherill, and I felt sure also that it was he who had been looking through the window at us.

I ran after him, but he was better accustomed to sleety mountains than I, and the distance between us widened. He curved around a hillock, and for a few moments was out of my sight, but when I too passed the hillock I saw him straight ahead, his shoulders stooped a little, but walking swiftly as if he were bent upon reaching the very heart of the highest and most difficult mountains.