12 With the Vanguard

Some days passed and the Army of the Tennessee, forty thousand recruits, waiting for the Army of the Ohio, forty thousand of the same kind, to come up, took root where it lay, with its sides resting on Owl and Lick Creeks, and its back to the Tennessee River. I heard it said among the soldiers who exercised their privilege of free speech that we would resume our southward march as soon as Buell arrived with the Army of the Ohio; and all were impatient to see him, since we were afraid that the Southern forces, reported to be gathering in great strength at Corinth, in Mississippi, would retreat farther into the heart of the Confederacy.

Our young force lying in the Southern woods, with the spring growing about it, and the memory of its victory at Donelson, which was called brilliant, yet fresh, began to feel the high blood in its veins and rejoice at its vigour. The few men and women who lived there were loyal to the South, and if they knew anything to tell of the Southern army at Corinth nothing could have drawn from them the telling of it. That army we began to believe had become a fantasy, a dream; it was worse—a joke. Sibley served his term for drunkenness and proved himself a braggart as well as a soak.

“We took all the rebels at Donelson,” he said; “the rest are ghosts.”

His pronouncement was received with applause, and feeling approval he swaggered more than ever. The eighteen-year-old boy, Masters, already a hardened drunkard, imitated him with success, and considered himself on the road to greatness. But I saw the generals sometimes, and I was a witness to the anxiety on their faces when they looked upon the raw army and wondered if they would ever get a chance at their evasive foe.

The spring still unfolded, and the steamers puffed up and down the river, the lazy coils of smoke trailing across the blue sky. One evening some cavalry, scouting, exchanged shots with Confederates, but it was only a partisan band, they said, and the camp, ashamed to have aroused itself over such a trifle, settled back to its waiting. Buell, with the second army, was close at hand, and then, being in great force, we would start South again. The next night was that of Saturday, April 5, 1862, beautiful, warm, and clear, fit to precede the day of rest, Sunday, and near midnight Shaftoe and I took our places on the picket line. Our beats adjoined, and as we trod back and forth, and met, we exchanged a word now and then, but oftener were silent.

The forest was luminous behind me with the lights from a thousand fires, and when I looked back I saw the tracery of the trees appearing black and sharp, an infinite network against the glow of crimson and pink; but in front my eyes met only the wall of the forest, dark and silent, rising like an impregnable barrier between the army and the South. The nearest trees waved ghostly boughs in the moonlight, but farther on they melted together and no light passed between. A curious wailing noise, the sighing of the night breeze among the foliage, came out of that forest, and, though I knew its nature, I was moved by its lonely note. The sound was distinct in my ear, despite the tumult of the camp behind me, which had not yet died even at so late an hour. It was like a faint sob, and it rose and sank but never ceased. A small creek flowed near and some rays of moonlight fell on its surface, disclosing the silver bubbles, but the creek, too, quickly sank into the black wall of the forest and vanished. There was a rustle in a thicket and I took my rifle from my shoulder, but it was only a rabbit which leaped over a hillock and was gone, running northward. I put my weapon back on my shoulder and resumed my lonely beat. Lonelier I was to-night than I had been in many days, for my mind was running back over the past year and to those who were dear to me, though I kept my eyes on the forest because it was my duty to look that way, and because there was a spell in the solemn blank presented there; it was not a barrier only, but a mystery too, and the moan of the wind through the boughs was its voice, which I could not interpret.

There was a rustle; it was only another rabbit that leaped out of a thicket and scurried away; two more followed presently. I remembered a little later that all of them like the first ran northward.

The rumble of the camp behind me continued, and it was not one voice, but many, most of which were known to me. I heard the heavy clank of a cannon moved into a new position, the rattle of rifles against each other, the clatter of pots and kettles thrown into a corner for the morning’s use. The next day was Sunday, and the chaplains would hold services in the camp, for our Westerners were a religious people, liking the faith and the externals, and not much addicted to introspection.

The luminous haze over the camp which gave it such a picturesque effect sank a little, the dimness of the night was creeping down and inclosing the army. Far above shoals of stars twinkled in a sky of cloudless blue.

I walked back toward the eastern end of my beat and saw Shaftoe approaching. The regular at that moment was in an open space and the moon’s rays clothed him in a garment of misty silver, wrapping it about his figure like a veil, enlarging and idealizing him. I noticed that he was still elastic, upright, his dress trim, the man like his equipment in perfect order, and ready with a great reserve of strength for any call no matter how unexpected. It seemed to me that he bore upon him the seal of the United States Government, the American regular soldier, made especially for his work; the guarantee that the goods were perfect was current in any market.

Shots were heard to the right.

“Those fool volunteers firing off their guns again at the change of guard,” said Shaftoe.

We stood a moment when we met, listening, but the shots ceased. Then we looked toward the forest which had the same peculiar attraction for both.

“Do you know that we two are alone with the universe?” asked Shaftoe.

“What do you mean?”

“There are forty thousand men behind us, but we do not see one of them. So far as we are concerned we are the only two human beings on this globe. A man feels it on a night like this in the forest, but he feels it most of all in the dark, and in the immensity of the great plains, where a bullet might travel a thousand miles east, west, north, or south, and hit nothing. It’s out there, in all the huge loneliness, that the regulars have been doing their great work clearing the way for new States. Some day the world may hear of it.”

He did not say these things in any tone of complaint, but merely as a fact, and shouldering his rifle again walked back on his beat. I followed him with my eyes. This man had served his Government for thirty years, unknown, unrewarded, and unthanked; he stood now where he was when he began, plus nothing except thirty years, and yet he had no complaint to make, no fault to find with anybody, but did his duty as cheerfully and well in the thirtieth year as in the first. I leaned upon Shaftoe although I did not know it then.

The fires of the camp sank lower, the misty dusk hovering between the clear blue sky and the earth thickened, the clang of weapons and the talk of the men ceased. Most of the camp was sleeping. The wind increased a little, and its moan among the trees grew louder. The flames died, and only the glowing coals remained. All but the generals and sentinels slept. The camp was still, save a murmur like a heavy wind, made by the regular breathing of forty thousand men in slumber. As I walked my beat I heard nothing but this, the real wind in the forest, and the tread of my own footsteps. I was always glad when I went back toward the right, and met the regular returning on his beat.

“Do you see the forest in front of us twisting itself into fantastic shapes?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” replied Shaftoe, staring.

“Those boughs across yonder are curved into the outlines of a giant’s face; those two spots where the moon is peeping through form the eyes, and yonder is a church, and yonder is something else which I can’t exactly make out.”

Shaftoe laughed.

“You can make out enough,” he said. “Too much imagination, Henry; besides, you are thinking too hard. Don’t do it. Just watch and walk, or you’ll be thinking and imagining yourself into a fever.”

I quieted my fancy and the hours passed slowly on. Behind me was only a gleam from the fires and it lay close to the earth; now and then little white clouds sailed peacefully between the stars and me. In front the forests remained sombre and black, and the nearest trees holding out their boughs, like weapons, threatened. The idea that Shaftoe and I were alone with the universe still gripped me. Another rabbit leaped out of the woods and scurried by, almost brushing my foot.

“Either that was a very bold or a very scared rabbit!” I said to myself.

Like its predecessors it fled northward.

Presently there was a rustling heavier than that of a rabbit in the thicket before me. I cocked my rifle. A deer came out of the brush and, stopping abruptly, looked at me with great, frightened eyes. It panted and its flanks were hot with steam; evidently it had been running far and fast, and the terror of pursuit was upon it.

“Poor devil!” I thought. “What hunter has been chasing you at this hour of the night?” Then I said meditatively: “Why should we shoot deer now when there’s bigger game afoot?”

I could easily have put a bullet between the eyes of the scared animal, but I had no desire to do so; my feeling was sympathetic, instead.

“Come, Mr. Deer,” I said; “don’t be afraid of me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The deer gazed at me a moment or two longer with frightened eyes, and then skimming by was gone like a ghost.

It fled northward in the path of the rabbits.

I noticed the fact and wondered.

“How long until day?” I asked the regular when next we met.

“The four longest hours of the night,” replied Shaftoe. “Take it easy; you’ll have a whole Sunday to sleep and rest in.”

I decided to practise the veteran’s philosophy, and walked more slowly, while my thoughts wandered vaguely into worlds unknown. A gleam appeared in the forest, it was only a firefly and was gone; a second gleam, it was but the rotten wood which sometimes glows like a coal in the southern wilderness. Time passed and I saw far in the forest another light which flashed a little longer than the rest. I called to Shaftoe, who watched it until it faded.

“A firefly, a glowworm, or something of that kind,” said the veteran, and walked on unconcerned.

But my mind remained unquiet. My imagination, which I had kept in subjection for a little while, rose up, more powerful than ever; I saw lights where lights were not, and I feared that I did not see them where they were. Once I was sure that I heard a sound like the clank of a cannon wheel, and the tread of many men marching, but I laughed at myself for such fancies, believing that I was under the spell of the forest and the wilderness, which takes a man by the throat and turns him into a fanciful child. I had just heard Shaftoe say so; and the regular, out of his vast experience, ought to know.

The wind was now in my face, still moaning, but was as warm as June to the touch, and heavy with the promise of sunshine and rich summer. I had always loved the fields and the forest, and I liked now to think of myself wading knee-deep through the green grass, while on the horizon line the peach trees and the apple trees in new bloom shone in cones of pink and white.

“It’s the vanguard of summer and it’s getting into my blood,” I said to Shaftoe, when the veteran came once more.

“Strikes me that way too,” replied the regular; “makes me feel as if I were only fifteen again. But one can not trust this Southern spring; it’s full of treachery. Anyway, I’m going to take a long sleep when I go off duty, and day is pretty near now, for which I’m thankful.”

He straightened himself up and walked springily along, thinking, I was sure, of the rest and sleep that were soon to be his. I was not so fresh, and my steps dragged a little as I turned for the four hundredth time and walked away. I looked toward the east, and, seeing a tinge of gray over the crest of a distant hill, rejoiced at the sign that my night’s work was about to end. The gray turned to silver and the edge of the silver to pink, but my eyes wandered back to the forest, which I watched because it was in front of me. The camp behind me was still quiet; the regular breathing of many men coming like the murmur of a river.

The dusk shredded away a little and the trunks of the trees rising out of the mist stood in rows like columns, but the thickets, which grew where the trees were not, were still black and impenetrable.

I heard a noise which I would have sworn in the day was the clank of metal, but in the misty dawn I disbelieved my ears. I stopped, and when I walked on the noise was repeated. I tried to pierce the thickets with my eyes, and they were met by the flash of steel. I laughed aloud. My eyes were growing as untrue as my ears, and while one heard the unreal the other saw the same. They were entering into a conspiracy against me, for a sound as of a command given came from the forest, and then once more that tread of many feet. And there, too, was that flash of steel again! If a conspiracy between eye and ear, it was well maintained!

I stopped, and grew cold from head to foot. Neither sights nor sounds ceased; the unreal might be the real, and fact may have come disguised as fancy! I was about to call to Shaftoe, whose figure was approaching in the filmy gray of the dawn, but suddenly a wild, terrible shout from countless throats arose.

I knew it, the long-drawn, high-pitched cry, copied perhaps from the Indian war whoop, the fierce “rebel yell.” It swelled in tremendous volume, filling my ears and all the air, and echoing far across the river and hills.

The next instant an army of forty thousand men rose up from the forests and thickets and threw itself upon me.

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