WHEN the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment had crum-bled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back.The men, having hurled themselves in projectile fashion, had presently expended their forces.They slowly retreated, with their faces still toward the spluttering woods, and their hot rifles still replying to the din.Several officers were giving orders, their voices keyed to screams.
"Where in hell yeh goin'?" the lieutenant was asking in a sarcastic howl.And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: "Shoot into 'em!
Shoot into 'em, Gawd damn their souls!" There was a melee of screeches, in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things.
The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag."Give it t' me!" "No, let me keep it!" Each felt satisfied with the other's pos-session of it, but each felt bound to declare, by 189an offer to carry the emblem, his willingness to further risk himself.The youth roughly pushed his friend away.
The regiment fell back to the stolid trees.
There it halted for a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon its track.
Presently it resumed its march again, curving among the tree trunks.By the time the depleted regiment had again reached the first open space they were receiving a fast and merciless fire.
There seemed to be mobs all about them.
The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn by the turmoil, acted as if stunned.They accepted the pelting of the bul-lets with bowed and weary heads.It was of no purpose to strive against walls.It was of no use to batter themselves against granite.And from this consciousness that they had attempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feeling that they had been betrayed.
They glowered with bent brows, but danger-ously, upon some of the officers, more particu-larly upon the red-bearded one with the voice of triple brass.
However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes.They seemed resolved to make every trouble.The youthful lieutenant was per-haps the last man in the disordered mass.His forgotten back was toward the enemy.He had been shot in the arm.It hung straight and rigid.
Occasionally he would cease to remember it, and be about to emphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture.The multiplied pain caused him to swear with incredible power.
The youth went along with slipping, uncertain feet.He kept watchful eyes rearward.A scowl of mortification and rage was upon his face.He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers.But he saw that it could not come to pass.His dreams had collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered and hes-itated on the little clearing, and then had recoiled.
And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame to him.
A dagger-pointed gaze from without his black-ened face was held toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man, who, not knowing him, had called him a mule driver.
When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the baf-fled to possess him.This cold officer upon a monument, who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man, he thought.
So grievous did he think it that he could never possess the secret right to taunt truly in answer.
He had pictured red letters of curious revenge.
"We ARE mule drivers, are we?" And now he was compelled to throw them away.
He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept the flag erect.He ha-rangued his fellows, pushing against their chests with his free hand.To those he knew well he made frantic appeals, beseeching them by name.
Between him and the lieutenant, scolding and near to losing his mind with rage, there was felt a subtle fellowship and equality.They supported each other in all manner of hoarse, howling pro-tests.
But the regiment was a machine run down.
The two men babbled at a forceless thing.The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were con-tinually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades were slipping with speed back to the lines.It was difficult to think of reputation when others were thinking of skins.Wounded men were left crying on this black journey.
The smoke fringes and flames blustered al-ways.The youth, peering once through a sud-den rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of troops, interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be thousands.A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.
Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged, the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred flames jetted toward the retreating band.A rolling gray cloud again interposed as the regiment dog-gedly replied.The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears, which were trembling and buzzing from the melee of musketry and yells.
