The Girl at the Halfway House | Page 5

he.
Franklin went on, following as nearly as he could the line of the assault
of the previous day, a track all too boldly marked by the horrid debris
of the fight. As he reached the first edge of the wood, where the
victorious column had made its entrance, it seemed to him that there
could have been no such thing as war. A gray rabbit hopped
comfortably across the field. Merry squirrels scampered and scolded in
the trees overhead. The jays jangled and bickered, it is true, but a score
of sweet-voiced, peaceful-throated birds sang bravely and contentedly
as though there had never been a sound more discordant than their own
speech. The air was soft and sweet, just cold enough to stir the leaves
upon the trees and set them whispering intimately. The sky, new
washed by the rain which had fallen in the night, was clean and bright
and sweet to look upon, and the sun shone temperately warm. All about
was the suggestion of calm and rest and happiness. Surely it had been a
dream! There could have been no battle here.
This that had been a dream was changed into a horrid nightmare as the
young officer advanced into the wood. About him lay the awful
evidences. Coats, caps, weapons, bits of gear, all marked and
emphasized with many, many shapeless, ghastly things. Here they lay,
these integers of the line, huddled, jumbled. They had all the
contortions, all the frozen ultimate agonies left for survivors to see and
remember, so that they should no more go to war. Again, they lay so
peacefully calm that all the lesson was acclaim for happy, painless war.
One rested upon his side, his arm beneath his head as though he slept.
Another sat against a tree, his head fallen slightly forward, his lax arms
allowing his hands to droop plaintively, palms upward and half spread,
as though he sat in utter weariness. Some lay upon their backs where
they had turned, thrusting up a knee in the last struggle. Some lay face

downward as the slaughtered fall. Many had died with hands open,
suddenly. Others sat huddled, the closed hand with its thumb turned
under and covered by the fingers, betokening a gradual passing of the
vital spark, and a slow submission to the conqueror. It was all a hideous
and cruel dream. Surely it could be nothing more. It could not be reality.
The birds gurgled and twittered. The squirrels barked and played. The
sky was innocent. It must be a dream.
In this part of the wood the dead were mingled from both sides of the
contest, the faded blue and the faded gray sometimes scarce
distinguishable. Then there came a thickening of the gray, and in turn,
as the traveller advanced toward the fences and abattis, the Northern
dead predominated, though still there were many faces yellow-pale,
dark-framed. At the abattis the dead lay in a horrid commingling mass,
some hanging forward half through the entanglement, some still in the
attitude of effort, still tearing at the spiked boughs, some standing
upright as though to signal the advance. The long row of dead lay here
as where the prairie wind drives rolling weeds, heaping them up against
some fence that holds them back from farther travel.
Franklin passed over the abattis, over the remaining fences, and into the
intrenchments where the final stand had been. The dead lay thick,
among them many who were young. Out across the broken and trodden
fields there lay some scattered, sodden lumps upon the ground.
Franklin stood looking out over the fields, in the direction of the town.
And there he saw a sight fitly to be called the ultimate horror of all
these things horrible that he had seen.
Over the fields of Louisburg there came a fearful sound, growing,
rising, falling, stopping the singing and the twitter of the birds. Across
the land there came a horrible procession, advancing with short,
uncertain, broken pauses--a procession which advanced, paused, halted,
broke into groups; advanced, paused, stopped, and stooped; a
procession which came with wailings and bitter cries, with wringing of
hands, with heads now and then laid upon the shoulders of others for
support; a procession which stooped uncertainly, horribly. It was the
women of Louisburg coming to seek their slain--a sight most

monstrous, most terrible, unknown upon any field of civilized war, and
unfit to be tolerated even in the thought! It is for men, who sow the
fields of battle, to attend also to the reaping.
Franklin stood at the inner edge of the earthworks, half hidden by a
little clump of trees. It seemed to him that he could not well escape
without being seen, and he hesitated at this thought, Yet as he stood it