Burial of the Guns — Little Darby, Pt 3

As the war went on the hardships everywhere grew heavier and heavier;

the letters from home came oftener and oftener.

Many of the men got furloughs when they were in winter quarters, and sometimes in summer, too, from wounds, and went home to see their families.

Little Darby never went; he sent his mother his pay, and wrote to her, but he did not even apply for a furlough, and he had never been touched except for a couple of flesh wounds which were barely skin-deep.

When he heard from his mother she was always cheerful; and as he knew Vashti had never even visited her, there was no other reason for his going home.

It was in the late part of the third campaign of the war that he began to think of going.

When Cove Mills got a letter from his wife and told Little Darby how “ailin’” and “puny” his mother was getting, Darby knew that the letter was written by Vashti, and he felt that it meant a great deal.

He applied for a furlough, but was told that no furloughs would be granted then--which then meant that work was expected.

It came shortly afterward, and Little Darby and the company were in it.

Battle followed battle.

A good many men in the company were killed, but, as it happened, not one of the men from the district was among them, until one day when the company after a fierce charge found itself hugging the ground in a wide field, on the far side of which the enemy--infantry and artillery--was posted in force.

Lying down they were pretty well protected by the conformation of the ground from the artillery; and lying down, the infantry generally, even with their better guns, could not hurt them to a great extent; but a line of sharp-shooters, well placed behind cover of scattered rocks on the far side of the field, could reach them with their long-range rifles, and galled them with their dropping fire, picking off man after man.

A line of sharp-shooters was thrown forward to drive them in; but their guns were not as good and the cover was inferior, and it was only after numerous losses that they succeeded in silencing most of them.

They still left several men up among the rocks, who from time to time sent a bullet into the line with deadly effect.

One man, in particular, ensconced behind a rock on the hill-side, picked off the men with unerring accuracy.

Shot after shot was sent at him.

At last he was quiet for so long that it seemed he must have been silenced, and they began to hope; Ad Mills rose to his knees and in sheer bravado waved his hat in triumph.

Just as he did so a puff of white came from the rock, and Ad Mills threw up his hands and fell on his back, like a log, stone dead.

A groan of mingled rage and dismay went along the line.

Poor old Cove crept over and fell on the boy’s body with a flesh wound in his own arm.

Fifty shots were sent at the rock, but a puff of smoke from it afterward and a hissing bullet showed that the marksman was untouched.

It was apparent that he was secure behind his rock bulwark and had some opening through which he could fire at his leisure.

It was also apparent that he must be dislodged if possible; but how to do it was the question; no one could reach him.

The slope down and the slope up to the group of rocks behind which he lay were both in plain view, and any man would be riddled who attempted to cross it.

A

bit of woods reached some distance up on one side, but not far enough to give a shot at one behind the rock; and though the ground in that direction dipped a little, there was one little ridge in full view of both lines and perfectly bare, except for a number of bodies of skirmishers who had fallen earlier in the day.

It was discussed in the line; but everyone knew that no man could get across the ridge alive.

While they were talking of it Little Darby, who, with a white face, had helped old Cove to get his boy’s body back out of fire, slipped off to one side, rifle in hand, and disappeared in the wood.

They were still talking of the impossibility of dislodging the sharp-shooter when a man appeared on the edge of the wood.

He moved swiftly across the sheltered ground, stooping low until he reached the edge of the exposed place, where he straightened up and made a dash across it.

He was recognized instantly by some of the men of his company as Little Darby, and a buzz of astonishment went along the line.

What could he mean, it was sheer madness; the line of white smoke along the wood and the puffs of dust about his feet showed that bullets were raining around him.

The next second he stopped dead-still, threw up his arms, and fell prone on his face in full view of both lines.

A groan went up from his comrades; the whole company knew he was dead, and on the instant a puff of white from the rock and a hissing bullet told that the sharp-shooter there was still intrenched in his covert.

The men were discussing Little Darby, when someone cried out and pointed to him.

He was still alive, and not only alive, but was moving--moving slowly but steadily up the ridge and nearer on a line with the sharp-shooter, as flat on the ground as any of the motionless bodies about him.

A strange thrill of excitement went through the company as the dark object dragged itself nearer to the rock, and it was not allayed when the whack of a bullet and the well-known white puff of smoke recalled them to the sharp-shooter’s dangerous aim; for the next second the creeping figure sprang erect and made a dash for the spot.

He had almost reached it when the sharp-shooter discovered him, and the men knew that Little Darby had underestimated the quickness of his hand and aim; for at the same moment the figure of the man behind the rock appeared for a second as he sprang erect; there was a puff of white and Little Darby stopped and staggered and sank to his knees.

The next second, however, there was a puff from where he knelt, and then he sank flat once more, and a moment later rolled over on his face on the near side of the rock and just at its foot.

There were no more bullets sent from that rock that day--at least, against the Confederates--and that night Little Darby walked into his company’s bivouac, dusty from head to foot and with a bullet-hole in his clothes not far from his heart; but he said it was only a spent bullet and had just knocked the breath out of him.

He was pretty sore from it for a time, but was able to help old Cove to get his boy’s body off and to see him start; for the old man’s wound, though not dangerous, was enough to disable him and get him a furlough, and he determined to take his son’s body home, which the captain’s influence enabled him to do.

Between his wound and his grief the old man was nearly helpless, and accepted Darby’s silent assistance with mute gratitude.

Darby asked him to tell his mother that he was getting on well, and sent her what money he had--his last two months’ pay--not enough to have bought her a pair of stockings or a pound of sugar.

The only other message he sent was given at the station just as Cove set out.

He said: “Tell Vashti as I got him as done it.

” Old Cove grasped his hand tremulously and faltered his promise to do so, and the next moment the train crawled away and left Darby to plod back to camp in the rain, vague and lonely in the remnant of what had once been a gray uniform.

If there was one thing that troubled him it was that he could not return Vashti the needle-case until he replaced the broken needles--and there were so many of them broken.

After this Darby was in some sort known, and was put pretty constantly on sharp-shooter service.

The men went into winter quarters before Darby heard anything from home.

It came one day in the shape of a letter in the only hand in the world he knew--Vashti’s. What it could mean he could not divine--was his mother dead?

This was the principal thing that occurred to him.

He studied the outside.

It had been on the way a month by the postmark, for letters travelled slowly in those days, and a private soldier in an infantry company was hard to find unless the address was pretty clear, which this was not.

He did not open it immediately.

His mother must be dead, and this he could not face.

Nothing else would have made Vashti write.

At last he went off alone and opened it, and read it, spelling it out with some pains.

It began without an address, with the simple statement that her father had arrived with Ad’s body and that it had been buried, and that his wound was right bad and her mother was mightily cut up with her trouble.

Then it mentioned his mother and said she had come to Ad’s funeral, though she could not walk much now and had never been over to their side since the day after he--Darby--had enlisted; but her father had told her as how he had killed the man as shot Ad, and so she made out to come that far.

Then the letter broke off from giving news, and as if under stress of feelings long pent up, suddenly broke loose: she declared that she loved him; that she had always loved him--always--ever since he had been so good to her--a great big boy to a little bit of a girl--at school, and that she did not know why she had been so mean to him; for when she had treated him worst she had loved him most; that she had gone down the path that night when they had met, for the purpose of meeting him and of letting him know she loved him; but something had made her treat him as she did, and all the time she could have let him kill her for love of him.

She said she had told her mother and father she loved him and she had tried to tell his mother, but she could not, for she was afraid of her; but she wanted him to tell her when he came; and she had tried to help her and keep her in wood ever since he went away, for his sake.

Then the letter told how poorly his mother was and how she had failed of late, and she said she thought he ought to get a furlough and come home, and when he did she would marry him.

It was not very well written, nor wholly coherent;

at least it took some time to sink fully into Darby’s somewhat dazed intellect; but in time he took it in, and when he did he sat like a man overwhelmed.

At the end of the letter, as if possibly she thought, in the greatness of her relief at her confession, that the temptation she held out might prove too great even for him, or possibly only because she was a woman, there was a postscript scrawled across the coarse, blue Confederate paper: “Don’t come without a furlough; for if you don’t come honorable I won’t marry you.

” This, however, Darby scarcely read.

His being was in the letter.

It was only later that the picture of his mother ill and failing came to him, and it smote him in the midst of his happiness and clung to him afterward like a nightmare.

It haunted him.

She was dying.

He applied for a furlough; but furloughs were hard to get then and he could not hear from it; and when a letter came in his mother’s name in a lady’s hand which he did not know, telling him of his mother’s poverty and sickness and asking him if he could get off to come and see her, it seemed to him that she was dying, and he did not wait for the furlough.

He was only a few days’ march from home and he felt that he could see her and get back before he was wanted.

So one day he set out in the rain.

It was a scene of desolation that he passed through, for the country was the seat of war; fences were gone, woods burnt, and fields cut up and bare; and it rained all the time.

A little before morning, on the night of the third day, he reached the edge of the district and plunged into its well-known pines, and just as day broke he entered the old path which led up the little hill to his mother’s cabin.

All during his journey he had been picturing the meeting with some one else besides his mother, and if Vashti had stood before him as he crossed the old log he would hardly have been surprised.

Now, however, he had other thoughts; as he reached the old clearing he was surprised to find it grown up in small pines already almost as high as his head, and tall weeds filled the rows among the old peach-trees and grew up to the very door.

He had been struck by the desolation all the way as he came along;

but it had not occurred to him that there must be a change at his own home; he had always pictured it as he left it, as he had always thought of Vashti in her pink calico, with her hat in her hand and her heavy hair almost falling down over her neck.

Now a great horror seized him.

The door was wet and black.

His mother must be dead.

He stopped and peered through the darkness at the dim little structure.

There was a little smoke coming out of the chimney, and the next instant he strode up to the door.

It was shut, but the string was hanging out and he pulled it and pushed the door open.

A thin figure seated in the small split-bottomed chair on the hearth, hovering as close as possible over the fire, straightened up and turned slowly as he stepped into the room, and he recognized his mother--but how changed!

She was quite white and little more than a skeleton.

At sight of the figure behind her she pulled herself to her feet, and peered at him through the gloom.

“Mother!

” he said.

“Darby!

” She reached her arms toward him, but tottered so that she would have fallen, had he not caught her and eased her down into her chair.

As she became a little stronger she made him tell her about the battles he was in.

Mr. Mills had come to tell her that he had killed the man who killed Ad.

Darby was not a good narrator, however, and what he had to tell was told in a few words.

The old woman revived under it, however, and her eyes had a brighter light in them.

Darby was too much engrossed in taking care of his mother that day to have any thought of any one else.

He was used to a soldier’s scant fare, but had never quite taken in the fact that his mother and the women at home had less even than they in the field.

He had never seen, even in their poorest days after his father’s death, not only the house absolutely empty, but without any means of getting anything outside.

It gave him a thrill to think what she must have endured without letting him know.

As soon as he could leave her, he went into the woods with his old gun, and shortly returned with a few squirrels which he cooked for her; the first meat, she told him, that she had tasted for weeks.

On hearing it his heart grew hot.

Why had not Vashti come and seen about her?

She explained it partly, however, when she told him that every one had been sick at Cove Mills’s, and old Cove himself had come near dying.

No doctor could be got to see them, as there was none left in the neighborhood, and but for Mrs. Douwill she did not know what they would have done.

But Mrs. Douwill was down herself now.

The young man wanted to know about Vashti, but all he could manage to make his tongue ask was, “Vashti?

” She could not tell him, she did not know anything about Vashti.

Mrs. Mills used to bring her things sometimes, till she was taken down, but Vashti had never come to see her; all she knew was that she had been sick with the others.

That she had been sick awoke in the young man a new tenderness, the deeper because he had done her an injustice; and he was seized with a great longing to see her.

All his old love seemed suddenly accumulated in his heart, and he determined to go and see her at once, as he had not long to stay.

He set about his little preparations forthwith, putting on his old clothes which his mother had kept ever since he went away, as being more presentable than the old worn and muddy, threadbare uniform, and brushing his long yellow hair and beard into something like order.

He changed from one coat to the other the little package which he always carried, thinking that he would show it to her with the hole in it, which the sharp-shooter’s bullet had made that day, and he put her letter into the same pocket; his heart beating at the sight of her hand and the memory of the words she had written, and then he set out.

It was already late in the evening, and after the rain the air was soft and balmy, though the western sky was becoming overcast again by a cloud, which low down on the horizon was piling up mountain on mountain of vapor, as if it might rain again by night.

Darby, however, having dressed, crossed the flat without much trouble, only getting a little wet in some places where the logs were gone.

As he turned into the path up the hill, he stood face to face with Vashti.

She was standing by a little spring which came from under an old oak, the only one on the hill-side of pines, and was in a faded black calico.

He scarcely took in at first that it was Vashti, she was so changed.

He had always thought of her as he last saw her that evening in pink, with her white throat and her scornful eyes.

She was older now than she was then; looked more a woman and taller; and her throat if anything was whiter than ever against her black dress; her face was whiter too, and her eyes darker and larger.

At least, they opened wide when Darby appeared in the path.

Her hands went up to her throat as if she suddenly wanted breath.

All of the young man’s heart went out to her, and the next moment he was within arm’s length of her.

Her one word was in his ears: “Darby!

” He was about to catch her in his arms when a gesture restrained him, and her look turned him to stone.

“Yer uniform?

” she gasped, stepping back.

Darby was not quick always, and he looked down at his clothes and then at her again, his dazed brain wondering.

“Whar’s yer uniform?

” she asked.

“At home,” he said, quietly, still wondering.

She seemed to catch some hope.

“Yer got a furlough?

” she said, more quietly, coming a little nearer to him, and her eyes growing softer.

“Got a furlough?

” he repeated to gain time for thought.

“I--I----” He had never thought of it before; the words in her letter flashed into his mind, and he felt his face flush.

He would not tell her a lie.

“No, I ain’t got no furlough,” he said, and paused whilst he tried to get his words together to explain.

But she did not give him time.

“What you doin’ with them clo’se on?

” she asked again.

“I--I----” he began, stammering as her suspicion dawned on him.

“You’re a deserter!

” she said, coldly, leaning forward, her hands clenched, her face white, her eyes contracted.

“A what!

” he asked aghast, his brain not wholly taking in her words.

“You’re a deserter!

” she said again--“and--a coward!

” All the blood in him seemed to surge to his head and leave his heart like ice.

He seized her arm with a grip like steel.

“Vashti Mills,” he said, with his face white, “don’t you say that to me--if yer were a man I’d kill yer right here where yer stan’!

” He tossed her hand from him, and turned on his heel.

The next instant she was standing alone, and when she reached the point in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already on the other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep through the water as if he were on dry land.

She could not have made him hear if she had wished it;

for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines, bending them down like grass and blowing the water in the bottom into white waves, and the thunder which had been rumbling in the distance suddenly broke with a great peal just overhead.

In a few minutes the rain came; but the girl did not mind it.

She stood looking across the bottom until it came in sheets, wetting her to the skin and shutting out everything a few yards away.

The thunder-storm passed, but all that night the rain came down, and all the next day, and when it held up a little in the evening the bottom was a sea.

The rain had not prevented Darby from going out--he was used to it; and he spent most of the day away from home.

When he returned he brought his mother a few provisions, as much meal perhaps as a child might carry, and spent the rest of the evening sitting before the fire, silent and motionless, a flame burning back deep in his eyes and a cloud fixed on his brow.

He was in his uniform, which he had put on again the night before as soon as he got home, and the steam rose from it as he sat.

The other clothes were in a bundle on the floor where he had tossed them the evening before.

He never moved except when his mother now and then spoke, and then sat down again as before.

Presently he rose and said he must be going; but as he rose to his feet, a pain shot through him like a knife; everything turned black before him and he staggered and fell full length on the floor.

He was still on the floor next morning, for his mother had not been able to get him to the bed, or to leave to get any help; but she had made him a pallet, and he was as comfortable as a man might be with a raging fever.

Feeble as she was, the sudden demand on her had awakened the old woman’s faculties and she was stronger than might have seemed possible.

One thing puzzled her: in his incoherent mutterings, Darby constantly referred to a furlough and a deserter.

She knew that he had a furlough, of course; but it puzzled her to hear him constantly repeating the words.

So the day passed and then, Darby’s delirium still continuing, she made out to get to a neighbor’s to ask help.

The neighbor had to go to Mrs. Douwill’s as the only place where there was a chance of getting any medicine, and it happened that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers, on horseback, who asked her a few questions.

They were members of a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them they had learned her errand.

Fortunately, Darby’s illness took a better turn next day, and by sunset he was free from delirium.

Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills’s during these days any more than at Mrs. Stanley’s. Vashti was in a state of mind which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy.

She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening, for Vashti had not mentioned Darby’s name.

She kept his presence to herself, thinking that--thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat.

Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself of the thought of Darby.

She could have torn it out for hate of herself; and to all her mother’s questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx.

For two days she neither ate nor spoke.

She watched the opposite hill through the rain which still kept up--something was going on over there, but what it was she could not tell.

At last, on the evening of the third day, she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something; she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley’s, even if she had wished to do so;

for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side, and it was over her head in the current.

She set off, therefore, up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way.

She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening, and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things the men of the conscript guard she had seen.

Vashti’s heart gave a sudden bound up into her throat.

As she was so near she went on up to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen riding slowly along.

She stood aside to let them pass;

but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.

They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way.

Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot.

When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district.

Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve, and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry, and she knew that they were the Federals.

She had one moment of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her, and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears; but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her own terror in fear for her cause.

She had all her wits about her instantly; and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it.

She made out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day.

She admitted that she had never been on that road but once.

And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise, she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that, after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp.

She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run with all her speed.

Her chief thought was of Darby.

Deserter as he was, and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her.

She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it, was out of its banks; but she did not heed it--she waded through, it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.