“I believe so,” said Ericson. “Go on; don’t wait!”
“Good-by, my boy,” Huckaby said. “I’d tote ye, but some ‘n’ is the matter with the calf o’ my right leg. I’d give out, I know, an’—an’ I must remember my wife and the ba—” He was gone.
Half an hour passed, during which time Ericson had experienced the delicious sensation of a man freezing to death, then a realization of his condition permeated his consciousness. He drew himself up on an elbow and glanced over the field. Black ambulances, like vultures stalking about with drooping wings, were picking their way among the dead and dying. Vaguely Ericson’s numb fancy pictured himself being jostled like a human log of wood to hospital, or perhaps to prison, and grasping his musket, and transforming it into a crutch, he rose and hobbled away from the groans and puddles of blood into the edge of the wood.
He had no sooner reached it than he felt the earth acting as if it were a mad sea again, and he sank headlong into the heather and underbrush. When he came to it was morning. The oblique rays of the sun were making diamonds and pearls of the poised dew-drops. The field had been cleared. Only a shattered gun, a tattered cap, a battered canteen bore evidence of the recent carnage. Half a mile across the level valley Ericson saw a village of tents, blue-coated guards pacing to and fro, and the stars and stripes rippling from a tall staff.
The private rose cautiously to his trembling feet, and aided by his too weighty crutch he went slowly through the wood toward the cabin where dwelt Sally Tripp.
“It’s the nighest house,” he said to himself. “Shorely she won’t refuse to let me in.”
However, when he had passed through the wood and saw the cabin not fifty yards from him in the open, a screw of blue smoke curling from the mud-and-stick chimney, misgivings which had depressed him ever since he had parted with her attacked him anew. He forgot that he had lost nearly every ounce of his life-blood, and stood almost erect, resting hardly the weight of his hand on the gun as his eyes drank in the familiar old scene.
Then he heard the massive bar of one of the doors squeak as it was lifted from its wooden sockets, and in the doorway stood a golden-haired vision.
“Thank God, it’s her!” Ericson muttered; and the sight of her standing there, looking afar off toward the camp of the Federals, gave him courage. He dropped his gun, determined not to exhibit weakness, and walked erectly, if slowly, toward her.
He saw the girl turn pale, stare at him steadily, and stifle a scream with her hand at her lips.