The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

"I wonder what time it's got to be," Lafe remarked, as they were finishing the last mouthful. "Oh, I forgot – he's got a gold watch in his pocket, and I think it's going."

Foldeen knelt, and feeling about for it, drew the watch from Red Pete's trousers pocket. "By jiminy priest! it's near four o'clock!" he exclaimed. Then rising, he looked more attentively at the watch, turning it over in his hand admiringly, and prying open the back of the case with his nail.

There seemed to be an inscription on the inside of the cover, and Foldeen held the watch sidewise to decipher this more readily, while Lafe peered over his shoulder to look.

"It's in writing," he said; "let me take it. I can make it out easier, perhaps."

The legend inside the gold case was delicately engraved in small running script. Lafe, reading with increasing surprise, discovered it to be this: —

Presented to Lieut. Lyman Hornbeck, January 22, 1864, by his friends and admirers Of St. Mark's Church, Cleveland

"Say, Foldeen," Lafe burst forth, "I bet that's a relation of mine. I've got an uncle – "

"So everybody has got some ungles," put in the musician.

"No, but look here," the boy insisted. "That says 'Lyman Hornbeck.' Well, my father's brother was Lyman Hornbeck. I've heard talk about my Uncle Lyme ever since I could remember. He left home years ago, before I was born. They always said he was out West, somewhere. I bet it's the same man. At any rate, I'm going to take a look around. You fix up the pole and the white flag outside here, and bring out the shovels. I'll be back again and help."

Lafe's eyes sparkled with a new excitement as he made his way across the pasture to the bank of the creek, noting as he strode along that all the lifeless forms on the grass wore the uniforms of privates.

He walked along the shelving edge of this bank from one end of the clearing to the other, to make sure that the winding bed of the stream below did not hold what he sought for. There was no sign, anywhere in the open, of an officer.

He remembered now that Red Pete had spoken of the other side of the creek, which lay so much lower than the bank on which he stood that it could not have been raked by the fire from the breastwork. It was swampy ground, covered heavily with high, bushing willows and rank growths of tall marsh grass. No path leading into it was discernible, perhaps because the wind blew the reeds and flags so stiffly sidewise.

With a running jump Lafe cleared the bed of the stream, and pushed his way into the morass. It was not so wet underfoot as he had expected, but the tangle of vines and undergrowth made his progress slow and troublesome. It was easy enough to see that no portion of the brigade had passed this way; there were no indications that wild nature here had ever been disturbed. The boy pressed on until, finding the swamp-jungle getting worse with every yard, and the shadows deepening about him, it was clearly useless to go farther.

Turning, he fancied he knew from which direction he had advanced into this maze. There was no use in merely retracing his steps. He settled his bearings as well as might be, and struck off to the left, to work his way diagonally out to the clearing.

When he had floundered on over what seemed twice the distance of his first direct line, and halted, hot, tired, and out of breath, he could detect no open space ahead. The wind was blowing hard from up above, and the noise of its impact upon the wilderness was in itself enough to confuse the senses. It was undoubtedly growing dark.

"Hello – Hornbeck!" Lafe shouted.

The wind seized the shrill cry and scattered it into fragmentary echoes. It was worse than useless to call out. He must push doggedly on. Lafe turned a little to the right, and crushed his way forward through the brush and bracken, with a step to which dawning fears of being lost lent added vigor.

He was traversing slightly higher ground now. The willows and marsh grass had given place to a more orderly second growth of firs, with dry moss underfoot, and open spaces overhead. In one of these breathing-places of the thicket, he came suddenly upon the blue-clad figure of a man sitting propped up against a stump, his head hanging on his breast.

He was young and fair-haired, and Lafe's glance took in the glint of gilt straps on his shoulders as he hurried toward him. Almost in the same instant the boy, kneeling at his side, saw that this was the young Ohio officer he had spoken with at sunrise, and that he was alive.

As he sought to waken the wounded man, and make out how badly he had been hurt, it grew suddenly, strangely dark. Looking upward, Lafe saw above the treetops nearest him, piling skyward on the wind, a great writhing wall of black smoke.

It mounted in huge, waving coils as he looked, and came nearer, bending forward in a sinister arch across the heavens. His startled ears dimly heard a sullen, roaring sound, newly engrafted upon the whistling of the wind.

The woods were on fire!

CHAPTER V.
LAFE RESCUES AN OFFICER, AND FINDS HIS COUSIN

Lafe had seen forest fires near Juno Mills, and there was nothing in his recollection of them to suggest great danger in this one. He was more interested for the moment in the young Ohio officer propped against the stump. This lieutenant was barefooted. A thief had evidently taken also his sash, sword, and belt.

He was probably one of Red Pete's victims. The others could not be far away, among them Lafe's problematical kinsman with the presentation watch.

But finding a possible uncle was just now of less importance than finding a safe way out of the thicket. The smoke grew visibly thicker, and Lafe could detect, off to the left, the distinct crackling noise of flames. He dropped on one knee again, and patted the officer's shoulder with decision.

The young man moved his head restlessly, then opened his eyes and stared dully at Lafe.

"Which way is the creek?" the drummer-boy shouted.

The lieutenant, as if dazed, looked half wonderingly into the boy's face. Then he blinked, shook himself, and made a move to sit upright. He sank back with his mouth drawn awry by the severity of his pain, and forced the semblance of a laugh upon these pale lips.

"I thought at first I was home, and you were my brother," he said.

"How bad are you hurt? Can you walk?" Lafe demanded. "We've got to get out of this. The woods are on fire, and the wind is blowing it dead this way. Where are you hit?"

"Minie ball here – between the shoulder and the lung, I hope," replied the other, indicating his left side. "It's stiffened and I can't lift myself. Help me on my feet, and I guess I can walk away."

Lafe put an arm under him and gave him his hand. The lieutenant, with a groan, set his teeth and scrambled up on his feet. He looked about him for an instant, and then hastily seated himself on the stump.

"I'm dizzy for the minute," he murmured. "I must have lost so much blood. It's afternoon, isn't it?"

"Past five. You'd better brace up now, and try to come on. Which way is it?"

The officer looked vaguely around. "I hardly know," he confessed. "I can just remember dragging myself off into the swamp. I thought I should find some water, and I guess my strength gave out about here. Somebody came along and pulled off my boots and stockings, and went through my pockets, but I was too near dead to resist, and I kept my eyes shut."

"Well, you want to keep 'em open now. This must be the way out, according to the wind. That's it; get your arm over my shoulder, and we'll make a break."

They walked thus for a dozen steps or so, the officer leaning a little on Lafe's right shoulder. Then the wounded man stopped.

"I'd rather you went ahead," he called into the boy's ear. "The branches knock against my game side, this way. I'll keep behind you;" and so they went on again, Lafe pushing the saplings and boughs aside for the other.

The smoke had become almost blinding now, as it sifted through the motionless air of the thicket. The noises had risen now into a pandemonium of uproar – on the left the furious bellowing of the tempest and the flames, to the right a series of outbursts that shook the earth like mine explosions. It sometimes seemed to Lafe as if he distinguished the cheers and vague cries of men, off on the other side – and then back would come the chaotic din.

Awed and deafened, the two pushed doggedly on, Lafe stealing glances over his shoulder, to see if the officer was following. He came, holding to the branches with his right hand for support, and striving to pick soft places for his bare feet among the stones and prickly ground vines.

It had suddenly grown very hot. The heat began to sting Lafe's forehead and eyes. They were advancing into the temperature of a veritable furnace. The crackling noises to the left had swollen all at once to an angry tumult close at hand.

Looking up with smarting eyes through the pungent smoke, the boy beheld scattered flashes of flame dotting the murky shadows of the forest beyond, and even as he looked these tongues of fire ran forward under the wind with darting swiftness. An imperative outcry behind Lafe called a halt. He turned as his companion reeled, clutched wildly at an ash sapling, and fell against it, his head hanging helplessly forward on his breast.

"It's no use," he gasped, as the boy strode back. "I'm choking, and I'm played out. I can't go another step."

He falteringly lifted one of his torn and bleeding feet, and put it down again. His arm slipped from around the sapling, and he would have fallen if Lafe had not caught him.

"Why don't you be a man!" the boy screamed shrilly through the tumult.

A sort of angry desperation seized upon Lafe. He would drag this Ohio tenderfoot out of the fire in spite of himself. With rough energy he fitted his shoulder under the officer's armpit, and drew his right arm forward in the determined clutch of both his hands.

"Come on now, the best way you can. Never mind your feet or your shoulder either!" he yelled, and then, stiffening his back under the burden, he staggered forward.

He could never afterward recall anything definitely of how he did it, or how long it took. But through the shrivelling heat, through the murderous swoop of fire and smoke, somehow he came. All at once there was the play of cooler air upon his face. Instead of the choking smoke and darkness he was wrapped about by a clean wind. It had grown suddenly daylight again.

Bent almost double under his burden, he strove in vain to fill his lungs with this fresh air. It was dimly in his mind to straighten himself, and breathe in all he could hold. But the load on his back seemed to be pressing him further down, and whirling him round as well.

Then he was lying face downward, on dry, soft earth with the sharp edges of stiff marsh grass in his hair. Something heavy lay across him. He rolled himself free from the encumbrance, and stretched himself out luxuriously on his back. The wind soughed pleasantly through the reeds about his head.

He went to sleep, dreaming placidly as he dropped off that ordered swarms of men were passing through the tall grass close beside him, firing volleys and cheering as they fired.

Four red points of light, at regular distances apart, and shining faintly against a broad canopy of blackness, was what Lafe, still lying on his back, beheld when he woke. He looked at them lazily for what seemed a long time, and did not care in the least what they signified. Then, quite without any effort, he knew that they were lanterns hung on a rope.

There were sinuous lines of motion in the darkness above the lanterns, and these revealed themselves to him as the sides of canvas-strips stirring in the wind. This, too, did not seem important, and he indolently closed his eyes again.

A sharp cry, ringing abruptly out close at hand, awoke him more thoroughly. He even lifted his head a little, and saw many more lights – lanterns, kerosene lamps, and tallow-dips stuck in bottles. They stretched out irregularly in all directions, illumining little patches of space, which seemed all the smaller by comparison with the vast blocks of deep shadows surrounding them.

The radiance of many of these lights centred upon a broad table, about which several men were standing in their shirtsleeves, and with aprons like butchers. There seemed to be another man lying on this table, and one of his legs was bared to the thigh. Some of these shadowy figures moved, and another cry arose. Lafe shut his eyes, and turned away from the spectacle.

There was now a rustle of straw under him, and he noted that his head was resting on a canvas pillow filled with straw. A strong smell, as of arnica, attracted his attention. Now he understood that he was in a hospital tent.

He wondered where he himself had been hurt. Except for a general, dull aching of the muscles, he was conscious of no special pain. He tried opening and closing his fingers, and moving his toes.

Each member seemed in working order. He passed his hands along his sides, and still found nothing amiss. But his head certainly did ache.

Vague recollection of the events of the day began to stir in his memory, but not at all in their right order. It seemed as if it was Foldeen Schell whom he had carried out of the burning woods, and nearer still in point of time seemed to be Red Pete's stifling grip upon his neck. Then, somehow, his thoughts drifted to the watch and its inscription.

He drowsily tried to think what this Lyman Hornbeck must be like – a gray-bearded old man and a church-member, and yet only a lieutenant. So his vagrant fancy drifted about on the border-land of sleep.

Suddenly there were voices close about him. Half opening his eyes, Lafe blinked at three or four torches which some soldiers were holding up at the foot of his bed. A half-dozen officers were there as well, and the foremost one was General Boyce.

The light hurt Lafe's eyes, and he closed them. The general's cheery voice remained in his ears, though, and conveyed so true a notion of the man that Lafe seemed to continue to behold him, the red torchlight heightening the glow of health on his round cheeks and shining in his brave, kindly eyes.

"Oh, you'll be up and about in a day or two," the general was saying, in a hearty, encouraging way. "Won't he, surgeon-major?"

"Well, inside a week," answered another voice. "The wound in itself wasn't much. It's the loss of blood that's worst."

"Lieutenant," the general went on, "if I don't call you captain when you get back from your furlough, it won't be my fault. You've been mentioned in the despatches. Your company's tussle with the breastwork under the hill was as plucky a thing as has been done to-day. Well, good luck to you!"

There was a rattle of spurs and swords, as if the group were moving, and then Lafe was conscious that the young Ohio officer spoke, as if from the very next bed.

"O general," he called out, "I'll save my own thanks for some other time! But I want you to take notice of this boy here. He's one who ought to be mentioned in despatches. I'd have been roasted alive if it hadn't been for him. He came into the woods and found me, and routed me up, and made me walk, and when I gave out he actually carried me right through the blaze. Talk about charging the breast-work! What he did was worth fifty of it."

Lafe felt through his closed eyelids that the torches were being held so as to cover him with their light. Oddly enough, he seemed without desire to look.

"I won't forget," said the general. "How badly off is he?"

"He was brought in with the lieutenant here," returned the surgeon-major. "I didn't see him myself. You were here, nurse?"

A woman's voice took up the thread: "Poor little fellow, he doesn't seem to have been shot, but his head was laid open to the bone somehow. Doctor Alvord thought it must have been a horse's hoof."

"We were both on the ground in the way when the big charge down the run was made," explained the lieutenant. "He must have got trampled on. I think he's a drummer in the brigade band. I noticed him when we went into line this morning."

"I wonder if it can be our Juno Mills boy," broke in the general. Lafe felt that the great man was bending over close to him. "Some Dutchman in the band was telling a tremendous yarn about a youngster who went down alone into the breast-work after it was deserted, and had a fight, single-handed, with a baggage-thief, and played the deuce generally. Does anybody know whether he's the same one?"

Lafe could never understand afterward what ailed him to behave so, but at this he kept his breathing down to its gentlest possible form. The general and his attendants moved off down the aisles, halting with the torches at other bedsides to give cheer. Their going gave Lafe leisure for the thought which interested him most.

The news that his head had been laid open to the bone had fascinated him. He put up a hand now and felt of his skull. It was covered all over with interlaced strips of stiff plaster encased in a soft linen bandage drawn tight.

"Are you feeling all right?"

It was the voice of the lieutenant. Lafe, proud of his plasters, opened his eyes and made out the young officer, propped up with a couple of straw pillows on the bed next his.

"My head aches a little, that's all," said Lafe. "Say, we had a squeak for it, didn't we?"

"I shan't forget it – nor you," responded the other.

"Cleveland's in Ohio, ain't it?" the boy asked, all at once pursuing a subject which had kept dodging in and out of his mind. "Perhaps you know an old man in one of the Ohio regiments – he must be getting along toward sixty – he's a lieutenant, and his name's Lyman Hornbeck. I was looking for him this afternoon when – when I lighted on you."

The young officer, quite heedless of his bandages, sat bolt upright and stared at Lafe as if too much amazed for words.

"I don't know what you're driving at," he said at last. "My name is Lyman Hornbeck, and I'm a Cleveland man and a lieutenant – but I'm a long way off from sixty. You can't mean my father? He's been dead two years. His name was Lyman. Why, hold on! General Boyce said something about Juno Mills – my father came from near there – you don't mean to say you're a Hornbeck?"

An irresistible impulse moved Lafe to crawl out of his bed and totter across to the other's pallet. He sat down on the edge of it, and leaned his head back on the officer's two pillows.

"Say, I'm Steve Hornbeck's son," he said, "and your father was my Uncle Lyme. Do you know, I kind of felt like takin' a shine to you when you spoke to me early this morning."

The officer had put his arm affectionately round the boy's neck. "Why, don't you remember," he cried, with pleased interest, "how I said I had a brother like you at home?"

And so the two lay close together in a delighted gossip until the surgeon came, and laughingly but peremptorily drove them apart. They told him something of the strange story, and an attendant went out and found Foldeen, and brought him in, and he added many striking variations to the legend which now, by midnight, had become the talk of the brigade.

General Boyce came back to the hospital tent purposely to see the boy from his own Dearborn County whom men were talking about. He nodded his head approvingly as he stood by the bedside and listened to Foldeen's excited narrative of the lad's fight with Red Pete.

"I remember hearing of that fellow before," he said. "We'll hang him in the morning, if we have to go without breakfast to do it."

Foldeen shook his head. "He is no good for hanging, dot Red Pete," he explained. "When the fire is gone out by dot breastwork where he vas, maybe you find some chargoals from him – und maybe two, dree buttons – dot's all."

The beautiful city by the lake wore its most velvety, green robes of June when Lieutenant Hornbeck, who had been home invalided for some weeks, was able at last to accept the reception which the good people of St. Mark's Church wished to hold in his honor.

It seemed as if all Cleveland sought for admission to this festival of welcome to the brave young officer. Yet when he came in, leaning on his wife's arm, and with the flush of honest pride mantling upon the pallor of his face, it turned out that the real hero of the evening was the wiry, brown-faced boy he brought with him.

Lafe's story had been told in many other places. They knew it by heart here in his new home, where henceforth he was to live with his cousin. He blushed many times that evening at the things admiring people said to his face about him, and he still says if folks will insist on discussing it, that the only interesting thing of the whole day was his taking a shine to his cousin before he knew who he was.