As for the girl at the knot-hole, when she returned
to sense she found herself standing with clenched
hands and screaming with her might.
As if her reason had again departed from her, she
ran around the barn, in at the door, and flung herself
sobbing beside the body of the soldier in blue.
The uproar of the fight became at last coherent, inasmuch
as one party was giving shouts of supreme exultation.
The firing no longer sounded in crashes; it was now
expressed in spiteful crackles, the last words of
the combat, spoken with feminine vindictiveness.
Presently there was a thud of flying feet. A
grimy, panting, red-faced mob of troopers in blue
plunged into the barn, became instantly frozen to
attitudes of amazement and rage, and then roared in
one great chorus: “He’s gone!”
The girl who knelt beside the body upon the floor
turned toward them her lamenting eyes and cried:
“He’s not dead, is he? He can’t
be dead?”
They thronged forward. The sharp lieutenant who
had been so particular about the feed-box knelt by
the side of the girl, and laid his head against the
chest of the prostrate soldier. “Why, no,”
he said, rising and looking at the man. “He’s
all right. Some of you boys throw some water
on him.”
“Are you sure?” demanded the girl feverishly.
“Of course! He’ll be better after
awhile.”
“Oh!” said she softly, and then looked
down at the sentry. She started to arise, and
the lieutenant reached down and hoisted rather awkwardly
at her arm.
“Don’t you worry about him. He’s
all right.”
She turned her face with its curving lips and shining
eyes once more toward the unconscious soldier upon
the floor. The troopers made a lane to the door,
the lieutenant bowed, the girl vanished.
“Queer,” said a young officer. “Girl
very clearly worst kind of rebel, and yet she falls
to weeping and wailing like mad over one of her enemies.
Be around in the morning with all sorts of doctoring—you
see if she ain’t. Queer.”
The sharp lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.
After reflection he shrugged his shoulders again.
He said: “War changes many things; but it
doesn’t change everything, thank God!”
The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust
from the incessant wrestling of the two armies that
the regiment almost seemed a part of the clay bank
which shielded them from the shells. On the top
of the hill a battery was arguing in tremendous roars
with some other guns, and to the eye of the infantry,
the artillerymen, the guns, the caissons, the horses,
were distinctly outlined upon the blue sky. When
a piece was fired, a red streak as round as a log
flashed low in the heavens, like a monstrous bolt
of lightning. The men of the battery wore white
duck trousers, which somehow emphasised their legs:
and when they ran and crowded in little groups at
the bidding of the shouting officers, it was more
impressive than usual to the infantry.
