Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 | Page 2

their feet and pour out the
red light and harsh roar of combat. There were two lines of battle, each
of three regiments of infantry, the first some two hundred yards in
advance of the second. In the space between them lay two four-gun
batteries, one of them brass twelve-pounder "Napoleons," and the other
rifled Parrotts. To the rear of the infantry were the recumbent troopers
and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry. All around, in the far,
black distance, invisible and inaudible, paced or watched stealthily the
sentinels of the grand guards.
There was not a fire, not a torch, nor a star-beam in the whole bivouac
to guide the feet of Adjutant Wallis in his pilgrimage after whiskey.
The orders from brigade headquarters had been strict against
illuminations, for the Confederates were near at hand in force, and a
surprise was proposed as well as feared. A tired and sleepy youngster,
almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he
stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar
footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary
obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It was

a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been more
noise in it. He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him hastily,
"Steady, man--a friend!" as the half-roused soldier clutched his rifle.
Then he found a lieutenant, and shook him in vain; further on a captain,
and exchanged saddening murmurs with him; further still a
camp-follower of African extraction, and blasphemed him.
"It's a God-forsaken camp, and there isn't a horn in it," said Adjutant
Wallis to himself as he pursued his groping journey. "Bet you I don't
find the first drop," he continued, for he was a betting boy, and
frequently argued by wagers, even with himself. "Bet you two to one I
don't. Bet you three to one--ten to one."
Then he saw, an indefinite distance beyond him, burning like red-hot
iron through the darkness, a little scarlet or crimson gleam, as of a
lighted cigar.
"That's Old Grumps, of the Bloody Fourteenth," he thought. "I've
raided into his happy sleeping-grounds. I'll draw on him."
But Old Grumps, otherwise Colonel Lafayette Gildersleeve, had no
rations--that is, no whiskey.
"How do you suppose an officer is to have a drink, Lieutenant?" he
grumbled. "Don't you know that our would-be Brigadier sent all the
commissary to the rear day before yesterday? A canteenful can't last
two days. Mine went empty about five minutes ago."
"Oh, thunder!" groaned Wallis, saddened by that saddest of all thoughts,
"Too late!" "Well, least said soonest mended. I must wobble back to
my Major."
"He'll send you off to some other camp as dry as this one. Wait ten
minutes, and he'll be asleep. Lie down on my blanket and light your
pipe. I want to talk to you about, official business--about our would-be
Brigadier."
"Oh, your turn will come some day," mumbled Wallis, remembering

Gildersleeve's jealousy of the brigade commander--a jealousy which
only gave tongue when aroused by "commissary." "If you do as well as
usual to-morrow you can have your own brigade."
"I suppose you think we are all going to do well to-morrow," scoffed
old Grumps, whose utterance by this time stumbled. "I suppose you
expect to whip and to have a good time. I suppose you brag on fighting
and enjoy it."
"I like it well enough when it goes right; and it generally does go right
with this brigade. I should like it better if the rebs would fire higher and
break quicker."
"That depends on the way those are commanded whose business it is to
break them," growled Old Grumps. "I don't say but what we are rightly
commanded," he added, remembering his duty to superiors. "I concede
and acknowledge that our would-be Brigadier knows his military
business. But the blessing of God, Wallis! I believe in Waldron as a
soldier. But as a man and a Christian, faugh!"
Gildersleeve had clearly emptied his canteen unassisted; he never
talked about Christianity when perfectly sober.
"What was your last remark?" inquired Wallis, taking his pipe from his
mouth to grin. Even a superior officer might be chaffed a little in the
darkness.
"I made no last remark," asserted the Colonel with dignity. "I'm not
a-dying yet. If I said anything last it was a mere exclamation of
disgust--the disgust of an officer and gentleman. I suppose you know
something about our would-be Brigadier. I suppose you think you
know something about him."
"Bet you I know all about him" affirmed Wallis. "He enlisted in the
Old Tenth as a common soldier. Before he had been a week in camp
they found that he knew his biz, and they made him a sergeant.