A War-Time Wooing | Page 5

of soldier brogans, and tying, with great deliberation, the leather
strings.
Casting his clear eyes over the group, as he steps forward to the edge,
the young officer speaks again:
"You're here, are you, Rix. That leaves little doubt as to the man even if
I were not sure of the voice. I could hear your brutal swearing, sir, loud
over the prayers the chaplain was saying for the dead. Have you no
sense of decency at all?"
"How'n hell did I know there was any prayin' going on?" muttered Rix,
bending his scowling brows down over his shoe and tugging savagely
at the string.
"What was that remark, Rix?" asks the lieutenant, his grasp tightening
on the stick.
No answer.
"Rix, drop that shoestring; stand attention, and look at me," says the
officer, very quietly, but with setting teeth that no man fails to note. Rix
slowly and sullenly obeys.
"What was the remark you made just now?" is again the question.
"I said I didn't know they were praying," growls Rix, finding he has to
face the music.
"That sounds very little like your words, but--let it go. You knew very
well that men were dying here right within earshot when you were
making the air blue with blasphemy, and when better men were
reverently silent. It is the third time you have been reprimanded in a
week. I shall see to it that you are sent back to your company
forthwith."
"Not while Lieutenant Hollins is quartermaster you won't," is the
insubordinate reply, and even the teamsters look scared as they glance

from the scowling, hanging face of Rix to the clear-cut features of the
officer, and mark the change that sweeps over the latter. His eyes seem
to flash fire, and his pallid face--thin with suffering and loss of
blood--flushes despite his physical weakness. His handsome mouth sets
like a steel-trap.
"Sergeant, get two of your men and put that fellow under guard," he
orders. "Stay where you are, Rix, until they come for you." His voice is
low and stern; he does not condescend to raise it for such occasion,
though there is a something about it that tells the soldier-ear it can ring
with command where ring is needed.
"I'd like to know what I've done," mutters Rix, angrily kicking at the
pebbles at his feet.
No answer. The lieutenant has walked back a pace and has seated
himself on a little bench. Another officer--a gray-haired and
distinguished-looking man, with silver eagles on his shoulders--is
rapidly nearing him and reaches the bank just in time to catch the next
words. He could have heard them farther back, for Rix is in a fury now,
and shouts aloud:
"If you knew your own interests--knew half that I know about your
affairs, Lieutenant Abbot--you'd think twice before you ordered me
under arrest."
The lieutenant half starts from the bench; but his self-control is strong.
"You are simply adding to your insubordination, sir," he says, coldly.
"Take your prisoner, sergeant. You men are all witnesses to this
language."
And muttering much to himself, Teamster Rix is marched slowly away,
leaving an audience somewhat mystified. The colonel stands looking
after him with a puzzled and astonished face; the men begin slowly to
edge away, and then Mr. Abbot wearily rises and--again he flushes red
when he finds his superior officer facing him at not three paces
distance.

"What on earth does that mean, Abbot?" asks the colonel. "Who is that
man?"
"One of the regimental teamsters, sir. He came here with the wounded,
and there appears to have been no opportunity of sending him back
now that the regiment is over in the Shenandoah. At all events, he has
been allowed to loaf around here for some time, and you probably
heard him swearing."
"I did; that's what brought me out of the house. But what does he mean
by threatening you?"
"I have no idea, sir; or, rather, I have an idea, but the matter is of no
consequence whatever, and only characteristic of the man. He is a
scoundrel, I suspect, and I wonder that Hollins has kept him so long."
"Do you know that Hollins hasn't turned up yet?"
"So I heard this morning, colonel, and yet you saw him the night of the
battle, did you not?"
"Not the night after, but the night before. We left him with the wagons
when we marched to the ford. I was knocked off my horse about one in
the afternoon, just north of the cornfield, and they got me back to the
wagons with this left shoulder all out of shape--collar-bone broken; and
he wasn't there then, and hadn't been seen since daybreak. Somebody
said he was so cut up when you were hit at the Gap. I