“Who—me?” asked the private. “Oh, I just sorter dropped in.” With a deeper meaning he added: “Sorter dropped in in a friendly way, thinkin’ ye was mebbe a different kind of a feller from what ye be.”
The inference was clearly marked.
It was now Gates’s turn to stare, and stare he unfeignedly did.
“Go back to your quarters,” he said at length.
The volunteer became very angry.
“Oh, ye needn’t be so up-in-th’-air, need ye? Don’t know’s I’m dead anxious to inflict my company on yer since I’ve had a good look at ye. There may be men in this here battalion what’s had just as much edjewcation as you have, and I’m damned if they ain’t got better manners. Good-mornin’,” he said, with dignity; and, passing out of the tent, he flung the flap back in place with an air of slamming it as if it had been a door. He made his way back to his company street, striding high. He was furious. He met a large crowd of his comrades.
“What’s the matter, Lige?” asked one, who noted his temper.
“Oh, nothin’,” answered Lige, with terrible feeling. “Nothin’. I jest been lookin’ over the new major—that’s all.”
“What’s he like?” asked another.
“Like?” cried Lige. “He’s like nothin’. He ain’t out’n the same kittle as us. No. Gawd made him all by himself—sep’rate. He’s a speshul produc’, he is, an’ he won’t have no truck with jest common—men, like you be.”
He made a venomous gesture which included them all.
“Did he set on ye?” asked a soldier.
“Set on me? No,” replied Lige, with contempt. “I set on him. I sized ’im up in a minute. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I says, as I was comin’ out; ‘guess you ain’t the only man in the world,’ I says.”
For a time Lige Wigram was quite a hero. He endlessly repeated the tale of his adventure, and men admired him for so soon taking the conceit out of the new officer. Lige was proud to think of himself as a plain and simple patriot who had refused to endure any high-soaring nonsense.
But he came to believe that he had not disturbed the singular composure of the major, and this concreted his hatred. He hated Gates, not as a soldier sometimes hates an officer, a hatred half of fear. Lige hated as man to man. And he was enraged to see that, so far from gaining any hatred in return, he seemed incapable of making Gates have any thought of him save as a unit in a body of three hundred men. Lige might just as well have gone and grimaced at the obelisk in Central Park.
When the battalion became the best in the regiment he had no part in the pride of the companies. He was sorry when men began to speak well of Gates. He was really a very consistent hater.
III
The transport occupied by the 307th was commanded by some sort of Scandinavian who was afraid of the shadows of his own topmasts. He would have run his steamer away from a floating Gainsborough hat, and, in fact, he ran her away from less on some occasions. The officers, wishing to arrive with the other transports, sometimes remonstrated, and to them he talked of his owners. Every officer in the convoying warships loathed him, for in case any hostile vessel should appear they did not see how they were going to protect this rabbit, who would probably manage during a fight to be in about a hundred places on the broad, broad sea, and all of them offensive to the navy’s plan. When he was not talking of his owners he was remarking to the officers of the regiment that a steamer really was not like a valise, and that he was unable to take his ship under his arm and climb trees with it. He further said that “them naval fellows” were not near so smart as they thought they were.
From an indigo sea arose the lonely shore of Cuba. Ultimately, the fleet was near Santiago, and most of the transports were bidden to wait a minute while the leaders found out their minds. The skipper to whom the 307th were prisoners waited for thirty hours halfway between Jamaica and Cuba. He explained that the Spanish fleet might emerge from Santiago harbor at any time, and he did not propose to be caught. His owners—Whereupon the colonel arose as one having nine hundred men at his back, and he passed up to the bridge and he spake with the captain. He explained indirectly that each individual of his nine hundred men had decided to be the first American soldier to land for this campaign, and that in order to accomplish the marvel it was necessary for the transport to be nearer than forty-five miles from the Cuban coast. If the skipper would only land the regiment the colonel would consent to his then taking his interesting old ship and going to hell with it. And the skipper spake with the colonel. He pointed out that, as far as he officially was concerned, the United States Government did not exist. He was responsible solely to his owners. The colonel pondered these sayings. He perceived that the skipper meant that he was running his ship as he deemed best, in consideration of the capital invested by his owners, and that he was not at all concerned with the feelings of a certain American military expedition to Cuba. He was a free son of the sea—he was a sovereign citizen of the republic of the waves. He was like Lige.
However, the skipper ultimately incurred the danger of taking his ship under the terrible guns of the New York, Iowa, Oregon, Massachusetts, Indiana, Brooklyn, Texas, and a score of cruisers and gunboats. It was a brave act for the captain of a United States transport, and he was visibly nervous until he could again get to sea, where he offered praises that the accursed 307th was no longer sitting on his head. For almost a week he rambled at his cheerful will over the adjacent high seas, having in his hold a great quantity of military stores as successfully secreted as if they had been buried in a copper box in the cornerstone of a new public building in Boston. He had had his master’s certificate for twenty-one years, and those people couldn’t tell a marlinespike from the starboard side of the ship.
The 307th was landed in Cuba, but to their disgust they found that about ten thousand regulars were ahead of them. They got immediate orders to move out from the base on the road to Santiago. Gates was interested to note that the only delay was caused by the fact that many men of the other battalions strayed off sightseeing. In time the long regiment wound slowly among hills that shut them from sight of the sea.
For the men to admire, there were palm trees, little brown huts, passive, uninterested Cuban soldiers much worn from carrying American rations inside and outside. The weather was not oppressively warm, and the journey was said to be only about seven miles. There were no rumors save that there had been one short fight, and the army had advanced to within sight of Santiago. Having a peculiar faculty for the derision of the romantic, the 307th began to laugh. Actually there was not anything in the world which turned out to be as books describe it. Here they had landed from the transport expecting to be at once flung into line of battle and sent on some kind of furious charge, and now they were trudging along a quiet trail lined with somnolent trees and grass. The whole business so far struck them as being a highly tedious burlesque.
After a time they came to where the camps of regular regiments marked the sides of the road—little villages of tents no higher than a man’s waist. The colonel found his brigade commander, and the 307th was sent off into a field of long grass, where the men grew suddenly solemn with the importance of getting their supper.
In the early evening some regulars told one of Gates’s companies that at daybreak this division would move to an attack upon something.
“How d’ you know?” said the company, deeply awed.
“Heard it.”
“Well, what are we to attack?”
“Dunno.”
The 307th was not at all afraid, but each man began to imagine the morrow. The regulars seemed to have as much interest in the morrow as they did in the last Christmas. It was none of their affair, apparently.
“Look here,” said Lige Wigram, to a man in the 17th Regular Infantry, “whereabouts are we goin’ ter-morrow an’ who do we run up against—do ye know?”
The 17th soldier replied, truculently: “If I ketch th’ —— —— —— what stole my terbaccer, I’ll whirl
in an’ break every —— —— bone in his body.”
Gates’s friends in the regular regiments asked him numerous questions as to the reliability of his organization. Would the 307th stand the racket? They were certainly not contemptuous; they simply did not seem to consider it important whether the 307th would or whether it would not.
“Well,” said Gates, “they won’t run the length of a tentpeg if they can gain any idea of what they’re fighting; they won’t bunch if they’ve about six acres of open ground to move in; they won’t get rattled at all if they see you fellows taking it easy, and they’ll fight like the devil as long as they thoroughly, completely, absolutely, satisfactorily, exhaustively understand what the business is. They’re lawyers. All excepting my battalion.”
IV
Lige awakened into a world obscured by blue fog. Somebody was gently shaking him. “Git up; we’re going to move.” The regiment was buckling up itself. From the trail came the loud creak of a light battery moving ahead. The tones of all men were low; the faces of the officers were composed, serious. The regiment found itself moving along behind the battery before it had time to ask itself more than a hundred questions. The trail wound through a dense tall jungle, dark, heavy with dew.
The battle broke with a snap—far ahead. Presently Lige heard from the air above him a faint low note as if somebody were blowing softly in the mouth of a bottle. It was a stray bullet which had wandered a mile to tell him that war was before him. He nearly broke his neck looking upward. “Did ye hear that?” But the men were fretting to get out of this gloomy jungle. They wanted to see something. The faint rup-rup-rrrrup-rup on in the front told them that the fight had begun; death was abroad, and so the mystery of this wilderness excited them. This wilderness was portentously still and dark.
They passed the battery aligned on a hill above the trail, and they had not gone far when the gruff guns began to roar and they could hear the rocket-like swish of the flying shells. Presently everybody must have called out for the assistance of the 307th. Aides and couriers came flying back to them.
“Is this the 307th? Hurry up your men, please, Colonel. You’re needed more every minute.”
Oh, they were, were they? Then the regulars were not going to do all the fighting? The old 307th was bitterly proud or proudly bitter. They left their blanket rolls under the guard of God and pushed on, which is one of the reasons why the Cubans of that part of the country were, later, so well equipped. There began to appear fields, hot, golden-green in the sun. On some palm-dotted knolls before them they could see little lines of black dots—the American advance. A few men fell, struck down by other men who, perhaps half a mile away, were aiming at somebody else. The loss was wholly in Carmony’s battalion, which immediately bunched and backed away, coming with a shock against Gates’s advance company. This shock sent a tremor through all of Gates’s battalion, until men in the very last files cried out nervously, “Well, what in hell is up now?” There came an order to deploy and advance. An occasional hoarse yell from the regulars could be heard. The deploying made Gates’s heart bleed for the colonel. The old man stood there directing the movement, straight, fearless, somberly defiant of—everything. Carmony’s four companies were like four herds. And all the time the bullets, from no living man knows where, kept pecking at them and pecking at them. Gates, the excellent Gates, the highly educated and strictly military Gates, grew rankly insubordinate. He knew that the regiment was suffering from nothing but the deadly range and oversweep of the modern rifle, of which many proud and confident nations know nothing save that they have killed savages with it, which is the least of all informations.
Gates rushed upon Carmony.
“God damn it, man, if you can’t get your people to deploy, for God’s sake give me a chance! I’m stuck in the woods!”
Carmony gave nothing, but Gates took all he could get, and his battalion deployed and advanced like men. The old colonel almost burst into tears, and he cast one quick glance of gratitude at Gates, which the younger officer wore on his heart like a secret decoration.
There was a wild scramble up hill, down dale, through thorny thickets. Death smote them with a kind of slow rhythm, leisurely taking a man now here, now there, but the cat-spit sound of the bullets was always. A large number of the men of Carmony’s battalion came on with Gates. They were willing to do anything, anything. They had no real fault, unless it was that early conclusion that any brave high-minded youth was necessarily a good soldier immediately, from the beginning. In them had been born a swift feeling that the unpopular Gates knew everything, and they followed the trained soldier.
If they followed him, he certainly took them into it. As they swung heavily up one steep hill, like so many wind-blown horses, they came suddenly out into the real advance. Little blue groups of men were making frantic rushes forward and then flopping down on their bellies to fire volleys while other groups made rushes. Ahead they could see a heavy house-like fort which was inadequate to explain from whence came the myriad bullets. The remainder of the scene was landscape. Pale men, yellow men, blue men came out of this landscape quiet and sad-eyed with wounds. Often they were grimly facetious. There is nothing in the American regular so amazing as his conduct when he is wounded—his apologetic limp, his deprecatory arm-sling, his embarrassed and ashamed shot-hole through the lungs. The men of the 307th looked at calm creatures who had divers punctures, and they were made better. These men told them that it was only necessary to keep a-going. They of the 307th lay on their bellies, red, sweating, and panting, and heeded the voice of the elder brother.
Gates walked in back of his line, very white of face, but hard and stern past anything his men knew of him. After they had violently adjured him to lie down and he had given weak backs a cold, stiff touch, the 307th charged by rushes. The hatless colonel made frenzied speech, but the man of the time was Gates. The men seemed to feel that this was his business. Some of the regular officers said afterward that the advance of the 307th was very respectable indeed. They were rather surprised, they said. At least five of the crack regiments of the regular army were in this division, and the 307th could win no more than a feeling of kindly appreciation.
Yes, it was very good, very good indeed, but did you notice what was being done at the same moment by the 12th, the 17th, the 7th, the 8th, the 25th, the——?
Gates felt that his charge was being a success. He was carrying out a successful function. Two captains fell bang on the grass, and a lieutenant slumped quietly down with a death wound. Many men sprawled suddenly. Gates was keeping his men almost even with the regulars, who were charging on his flanks. Suddenly he thought that he must have come close to the fort and that a Spaniard had tumbled a great stone block down upon his leg. Twelve hands reached out to help him, but he cried:
“No—damn your souls—go on—go on!”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and it really was only for a moment. When he opened them he found himself alone with Lige Wigram, who lay on the ground near him.
“Maje,” said Lige, “yer a good man. I’ve been a-follerin’ ye all day, an’ I want to say yer a good man.”
The major turned a coldly scornful eye upon the private.
“Where are you wounded? Can you walk? Well, if you can, go to the rear and leave me alone. I’m bleeding to death, and you bother me.”
Lige, despite the pain in his wounded shoulder, grew indignant.
“Well,” he mumbled, “you and me have been on th’ outs fer a long time, an’ I only wanted to tell ye that what I seen of ye t’day has made me feel mighty different.”
“Go to the rear—if you can walk,” said the major.
“Now, Maje, look here. A little thing like that—”
“Go to the rear.”
Lige gulped with sobs.
“Maje, I know I didn’t understand ye at first, but ruther’n let a little thing like that come between us, I’d—I’d——”
“Go to the rear.”
In this r
eiteration Lige discovered a resemblance to that first old offensive phrase, “Come to attention and salute.” He pondered over the resemblance, and he saw that nothing had changed. The man bleeding to death was the same man to whom he had once paid a friendly visit with un-friendly results. He thought now that he perceived a certain hopeless gulf, a gulf which is real or unreal, according to circumstances. Sometimes all men are equal; occasionally they are not. If Gates had ever criticized Lige’s manipulation of a hay fork on the farm at home, Lige would have furiously disdained his hate or blame. He saw now that he must not openly approve the major’s conduct in war. The major’s pride was in his business, and his, Lige’s, congratulations were beyond all enduring.
The place where they were lying suddenly fell under a new heavy rain of bullets. They sputtered about the men, making the noise of large grasshoppers.
“Major!” cried Lige. “Major Gates! It won’t do for ye to be left here, sir. Ye’ll be killed.”
“But you can’t help it, lad. You take care of yourself.”
“I’m damned if I do,” said the private, vehemently. “If I can’t git you out, I’ll stay and wait.”
The officer gazed at his man with that same icy, contemptuous gaze.
“I’m—I’m a dead man anyhow. You go to the rear, do you hear?”
“No.”
The dying major drew his revolver, cocked it, and aimed it unsteadily at Lige’s head.
“Will you obey orders?”
“No.”
“One?”
“No.”
“Two?”
“No.”
Gates weakly dropped his revolver.
“Go to the devil, then. You’re no soldier, but—” He tried to add something. “But—” He heaved a long moan. “But—you—you— Oh, I’m so-o-o tired.”