Chapter 10

Already now, the first little fight was going on, and Grafton, the last newspaper man ashore, was making for the front--with Bob close at his heels. It was hot, very hot, but the road was a good, hard path of clean sand, and now and then a breeze stirred, or a light, cool rain twinkled in the air. On each side lay marsh, swamp, pool, and tropical jungle--and, to Grafton's Northern imagination, strange diseases lurked like monsters everywhere. Every strange, hot odour made him uneasy and, at times, he found himself turning his head and holding his breath, as he always did when he passed a pest-house in his childhood. About him were strange plants, strange flowers, strange trees, the music of strange birds, with nothing to see that was familiar except sky, mountain, running water, and sand; nothing home-like to hear but the twitter of swallows and the whistle of quail.

That path was no road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus--spiders with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs, and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the bushes. Moreover, he was following the trail of an army by the uncheerful signs in its wake--the d�bris of the last night's camp--empty cans, bits of hardtack, crackers, bad odours, and, by and by, odds and ends that the soldiers discarded as the sun got warm and their packs heavy--drawers, undershirts, coats, blankets, knapsacks, an occasional gauntlet or legging, bits of fat bacon, canned meats, hardtack--and a swarm of buzzards in the path, in the trees, and wheeling in the air--and smiling Cubans picking up everything they could eat or wear.

An hour later, he met a soldier, who told him there had been a fight. Still, an hour later, rumours came thick, but so conflicting and wild that Grafton began to hope there had been no fight at all. Proof met him, then, in the road--a white man, on foot, with his arm in a bloody sling. Then, on a litter, a negro trooper with a shattered leg; then another with a bullet through his throat; and another wounded man, and another. On horseback rode a Sergeant with a bandage around his brow--Grafton could see him smiling broadly fifty yards ahead--and the furrow of a Mauser bullet across his temple, and just under his skin.

"Still nutty," said Grafton to himself.

Further on was a camp of insurgents--little, thin, brown fellows, ragged, dirty, shoeless--each with a sugar-loaf straw hat, a Remington rifle of the pattern of 1882, or a brand new Krag-Jorgensen donated by Uncle Sam, and the inevitable and ever ready mach�te swinging in a case of embossed leather on the left hip. Very young they were, and very old; and wiry, quick-eyed, intelligent, for the most part and, in countenance, vivacious and rather gentle. There was a little creek next, and, climbing the bank of the other side, Grafton stopped short, with a start, in the road. To the right and on a sloping bank lay eight gray shapes, muffled from head to foot, and Grafton would have known that all of them were in their last sleep, but one, who lay with his left knee bent and upright, his left elbow thrust from his blanket, and his hand on his heart. He slept like a child.

Beyond was the camp of the regulars who had taken part in the fight. On one side stood a Colonel, who himself had aimed a Hotchkiss gun in the last battle--covered with grime and sweat, and with the passion of battle not quite gone from his eyes; and across the road soldiers were digging one long grave. Grafton pushed on a little further, and on the top of the ridge and on the grassy sunlit knoll was the camp of the Riders, just beyond the rifle-pits from which they had driven the Spaniards. Under a tree to the right lay another row of muffled shapes, and at once Grafton walked with the Colonel to the hospital, a quarter of a mile away. The path, thickly shaded and dappled with sunshine, ran along the ridge through the battlefield, and it was as pretty, peaceful, and romantic as a lovers' walk in a garden. Here and there, the tall grass along the path was pressed flat where a wounded man had lain. In one place, the grass was matted and dark red; nearby was a blood-stained hat marked with the initials "E. L." Here was the spot where the first victim of the fight fell. A passing soldier, who reluctantly gave his name as Blackford, bared his left arm and showed the newspaper man three places between his wrist and elbow where the skin had been merely blistered by three separate bullets as he lay fighting unseen enemies. Further on, lay a dead Spaniard, with covered face.

"There's one," said the Colonel, with a careless gesture. A huge buzzard flapped from the tree over the dead man as they passed beneath. Beyond was the open-air hospital, where two more rigid human figures, and where the wounded lay--white, quiet, uncomplaining.

And there a surgeon told him how the wounded had lain there during the fight singing:

"My Country, 'tis of thee!"

And Grafton beat his hands together, while his throat was full and his eyes were full of tears. To think what he had missed--to think what he had missed!

He knew that national interest would centre in this regiment of Rough Riders; for every State in the Union had a son in its ranks, and the sons represented every social element in the national life. Never was there a more representative body of men, nor a body of more varied elements standing all on one and the same basis of American manhood. He recalled how, at Tampa, he had stood with the Colonel while the regiment filed past, the Colonel, meanwhile, telling him about the men--the strong men, who made strong stories for Wister and strong pictures for Remington. And the Colonel had pointed with especial pride and affection to two boy troopers, who marched at the head of his column--a Puritan from Massachusetts and a Cavalier through Virginia blood from Kentucky; one the son of a Confederate General, the other the son of a Union General--both beardless "bunkies," brothers in arms, and fast becoming brothers at heart--Robert Sumner and Basil Crittenden. The Colonel waved his hand toward the wild Westerners who followed them.

"It's odd to think it--but those two boys are the fathers of the regiment."

And now that Grafton looked around and thought of it again--they were. The fathers of the regiment had planted Plymouth and Jamestown; had wrenched life and liberty and civilization from the granite of New England, the fastnesses of the Cumberland, and the wildernesses of the rich valleys beyond; while the sires of these very Westerners had gone on with the same trinity through the barren wastes of plains. And, now, having conquered the New World, Puritan and Cavalier, and the children of both were come together again on the same old mission of freedom, but this time the freedom of others; carrying the fruits of their own struggle back to the old land from which they came, with the sword in one hand, if there was need, but with the torch of liberty in the other--held high, and, as God's finger pointed, lighting the way.

To think what he had missed!

As Grafton walked slowly back, an officer was calling the roll of his company under the quiet, sunny hill, and he stopped to listen. Now and then there was no answer, and he went on--thrilled and saddened. The play was ended--this was war.

Outside the camp the road was full of half-angry, bitterly disappointed infantry--Chaffee's men. When he reached the camp of the cavalry at the foot of the hill again, a soldier called his name as he passed--a grimy soldier--and Grafton stopped in his tracks.

"Well, by God!"

It was Crittenden, who smiled when he saw Grafton's bewildered face. Then the Kentuckian, too, stared in utter amazement at a black face grinning over Grafton's shoulder.

"Bob!" he said, sharply.

"Yessuh," said Bob humbly.

"Whar are you doing here?"

"Nothin', Ole Cap'n--jes doin' nothin'," said Bob, with the na�vet� of a child. "Jes lookin' for you."

"Is that your negro?" A sarcastic Lieutenant was asking the question.

"He's my servant, sir."

"Well, we don't allow soldiers to take their valets to the field."

"My servant at home, sir, I meant. He came of his own accord."

"Go find Basil," Crittenden said to Bob, "and if you can't find him," he added in a lower tone, "and want anything, come back here to me."

"Yessuh," said Bob, loath to go, but, seeing the Lieutenant scowling, he moved on down the road.

"I thought you were a Captain," said Grafton. Crittenden laughed.

"Not exactly."

"Forward," shouted the Lieutenant, "march!"

Grafton looked Crittenden over.

"Well, I swear," he said heartily, and, as Crittenden moved forward, Grafton stood looking after him. "A regular--I do be damned!"

That night Basil wrote home. He had not fired his musket a single time. He saw nothing to shoot at, and he saw no use shooting until he did have something to shoot at. It was terrible to see men dead and wounded, but the fight itself was stupid--blundering through a jungle, bullets zipping about, and the Spaniards too far away and invisible. He wanted to be closer.

"General Carter has sent for me to take my place on his staff. I don't want to go, but the Colonel says I ought. I don't believe I would, if the General hadn't been father's friend and if my 'bunkie' weren't wounded. He's all right, but he'll have to go back. I'd like to have his wound, but I'd hate to have to go back. The Colonel says he's sorry to lose me. He meant to make me a corporal, he says. I don't know what for--but Hooray!

"Brother was not in the fight, I suppose. Don't worry about me--please don't worry.

"P. S.--I have often wondered what it would be like to be on the eve of a battle. It's no different from anything else."

Abe Long and Crittenden were bunkies now. Abe's comrade, the boy Sanders, had been wounded and sent to the rear. Reynolds, too, was shot through the shoulder, and, despite his protests, was ordered back to the coast.

"Oh, I'll be on hand for the next scrap," he said.

Abe and Crittenden had been side by side in the fight. It was no surprise to Crittenden that any man was brave. By his code, a man would be better dead than alive a coward. He believed cowardice exceptional and the brave man the rule, but he was not prepared for Abe's coolness and his humour. Never did the Westerner's voice change, and never did the grim half-smile leave his eyes or his mouth. Once during the fight he took off his hat.

"How's my hair parted?" he asked, quietly.

A Mauser bullet had mowed a path through Abe's thick, upright hair, scraping the skin for three inches, and leaving a trail of tiny, red drops. Crittenden turned to look and laugh, and a bullet cut through the open flap of his shirt, just over his heart. He pointed to it.

"See the good turn you did me."

While the two were cooking supper, the old Sergeant came up.

"If you don't obey orders next time," he said to Crittenden, sternly, for Abe was present, "I'll report you to the Captain." Crittenden had declined to take shelter during the fight--it was a racial inheritance that both the North and the South learned to correct in the old war.

"That's right, Governor," said Abe.

"The Colonel himself wanted to know what damn fool that was standing out in the road. He meant you."

"All right, Sergeant," Crittenden said.

When he came in from guard duty, late that night, he learned that Basil was safe. He lay down with a grateful heart, and his thoughts, like the thoughts of every man in that tropical forest, took flight for home. Life was getting very simple now for him--death, too, and duty. Already he was beginning to wonder at his old self and, with a shock, it came to him that there were but three women in the world to him--Phyllis and his mother--and Judith. He thought of the night of the parting, and it flashed for the first time upon him that Judith might have taken the shame that he felt reddening his face as shame for her, and not for himself: and a pain shot through him so keen that he groaned aloud.

Above him was a clear sky, a quarter moon, an enveloping mist of stars, and the very peace of heaven. But there was little sleep--and that battle-haunted--for any: and for him none at all.

       *      *      *      *      *      *      *

And none at all during that night of agony for Judith, nor Phyllis, nor the mother at Canewood, though there was a reaction of joy, next morning, when the name of neither Crittenden was among the wounded or the dead.

Nothing had been heard, so far, of the elder brother but, as they sat in the porch, a negro boy brought the town paper, and Mrs. Crittenden found a paragraph about a soldier springing into the sea in full uniform at Siboney to rescue a drowning comrade, who had fallen into the surf while trying to land, and had been sunk to the bottom by his arms and ammunition. And the rescuer's name was Crittenden. The writer went on to tell who he was, and how he had given up his commission to a younger brother and had gone as a private in the regular army--how he had been offered another after he reached Cuba, and had declined that, too--having entered with his comrades, he would stay with them to the end. Whereat the mother's face burned with a proud fire, as did Phyllis's, when Mrs. Crittenden read on about this Crittenden's young brother, who, while waiting for his commission, had gone as a Rough Rider, and who, after gallant conduct during the first fight, had taken his place on General Carter's staff. Phyllis clapped her hands, softly, with a long sigh of pride--and relief.

"I can eat strawberries, now." And she blushed again. Phyllis had been living on bacon and corn-bread, she confessed shamefacedly, because Trooper Basil was living on bacon and hardtack--little dreaming that the food she forced upon herself in this sacrificial way was being swallowed by that hearty youngster with a relish that he would not have known at home for fried chicken and hot rolls.

"Yes," laughed Mrs. Crittenden. "You can eat strawberries now. You can balance them against his cocoanuts."

Phyllis picked up the paper then, with a cry of surprise--the name signed to the article was Grafton, whom she had seen at the recruiting camp. And then she read the last paragraph that the mother had not read aloud, and she turned sharply away and stooped to a pink-bed, as though she would pick one, and the mother saw her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, and she took the child in her arms.

There was to be a decisive fight in a few days--the attack on Santiago--that was what Phyllis had read. The Spaniard had a good muster-roll of regulars and aid from Cervera's fleet; was well armed, and had plenty of time to intrench and otherwise prepare himself for a bloody fight in the last ditch.

So that, each day there was a relief to the night agony, which, every morning, began straightway with the thought that the fight might be going on at that very hour. Not once did Judith come near. She had been ill, to be sure, but one day Mrs. Crittenden met her on the way to town and stopped her in the road; but the girl had spoken so strangely that the mother drove on, at loss to understand and much hurt. Next day she learned that Judith, despite her ill health and her father's protests, had gone to nurse the sick and the wounded--what Phyllis plead in vain to do. The following day a letter came from Mrs. Crittenden's elder son. He was well, and the mother must not worry about either him or Basil. He did not think there would be much fighting and, anyhow, the great risk was from disease, and he feared very little from that. Basil would be much safer as an aid on a General's staff. He would get plenty to eat, would be less exposed to weather, have no long marches--as he would be mounted--and no guard duty at all hours of day and night. And, moreover, he would probably be less constantly exposed to bullets. So she must not worry about him. Not one word was there about Judith--not even to ask how she was, which was strange. He had said nothing about the girl when he told his mother good-by; and when she broached the subject, he answered sadly:

"Don't, mother; I can't say a word--not a word."

In his letter he had outlined Basil's advantages, not one of which was his--and sitting on the porch of the old homestead at sunset of the last rich day in June, the mother was following her eldest born through the transport life, the fiery marches, the night watches on lonely outposts, the hard food, the drenching rains, steaming heat, laden with the breath of terrible disease, not realizing how little he minded it all and how much good it was doing him. She did know, however, that it had been but play thus far to what must follow. Perhaps, even now, she thought, the deadly work was beginning, while she sat in the shrine of peace--even now.

And it was. Almost at that hour the troops were breaking camp and moving forward along the one narrow jungle-road--choked with wagon, pack-mule, and soldier--through a haze of dust, and, turning to the right at the first crossing beyond corps head-quarters--under Chaffee--for Caney. Now and then a piece of artillery, with its flashes of crimson, would pass through the advancing columns amid the waving of hats and a great cheering to take position against the stone fort at Caney or at El Poso, to be trained on the block-house at San Juan. And through the sunset and the dusk the columns marched, and, after night fell, the dark, silent masses of slouch hats, shoulders, and gun-muzzles kept on marching past the smoke and flare of the deserted camp-fires that lighted thicket and grassy plot along the trail. And after the flames had died down to cinders--in the same black terrible silence, the hosts were marching still.

That night a last good-by to all womankind, but wife, mother, sister, sweetheart. The world was to be a man's world next day, and the man a coarse, dirty, sweaty, swearing, good-natured, grimly humorous, cruel, kindly soldier, feverish for a fight and as primitive in passion as a cave-dweller fighting his kind for food. The great little fight was at hand.