The Short Line War | Page 3

better pull up a little," he said. "They'll be getting away from you."
"I love to go this way," she replied, and over the reins she told the colts the same thing, in a language they understood. Suddenly one of them broke, and in a second both were running.
"Pull 'em in," said Jim, sharply. "Here--give me the reins."
"I can hold them," she protested wilfully.
Then, without hesitation and with perfectly unconscious brutality, Jim tore the reins out of her hands, and addressed himself to the task of quieting the horses.
It was not easy, but he was cool and strong, and the horses knew he was their master; nevertheless it was several minutes before he had them on their legs again. During that time neither had spoken; then Jim waited for her to break the silence. He was somewhat vexed, for he thought she had deliberately exposed herself to an unnecessary peril. But she said nothing and they finished their drive in silence.
At her door he sprang out to help her to alight, but she ignored his offered aid. Though she turned away he saw that there were tears in her eyes.
"Ethel," he said softly, but she faced him in a flash of anger.
"Don't speak to me. Oh--how I hate you!"
Jim seemed suddenly to grow bigger. "Will you please tell me if you mean that?" he said slowly.
"I mean just that," she answered. "I--I hate you." She stood still a moment; then she seemed to choke, and turning, fled into the house.
To Jim's mind that was the end of it. She had told him that she hated him. The fact that there had been a catch in her voice as she said it weighed not at all with him; that was an unknown language. So he took her literally and exactly and went away by himself to think it over.
He was late for dinner that night, and when he came in his grandfather was pacing the dining room. But Jim wasted no words in explanation.
"Grandfather," he said, "I think if you won't need me for a while I'll enlist to-morrow."
"I can get along all right," said the old man, "but I'm sorry you're going."
The older man was looking at the younger one narrowly. Suddenly and bluntly he asked:--
"Is anything the matter with you and Ethel Harvey?"
Jim nodded, and without further invitation or questioning he related the whole incident. "That's all there is to it," he concluded. "The team had bolted and she wouldn't give me the reins; so I took them away from her and pulled in the horses. There was nothing else to do."
"And then she said she hated you," added Jonathan, musingly. "I reckon she hasn't much sense."
"It ain't that," Jim answered quickly. "She's got sense enough. The trouble with her is she's too damned plucky."
A few days later he was a private in the Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers. He made a good soldier, for not only did he love danger as had his great-grandfather before him, but he had nerves which months of inaction could not set jangling, and a constitution which hardship and privation could not undermine.
The keenest delight he had ever known came with his first experience under fire. He felt his breath coming in long deep inhalations; he could think faster and more clearly than at other times, and he knew that his hands were steady and his aim was good. Somehow it seemed that years of life were crowded into those few minutes, and he retired reluctantly when the order came.
His regiment was in the Army of the Potomac, and the story of its waiting and blundering and magnificent fighting need not be told again in these pages. Jim was one of thousands of brave, intelligent fighters who did not rise to the command of a division or even of a regiment. He was a lieutenant in Company E when the Nineteenth marched down the Emmittsburg Pike, through Gettysburg and out to the ridge beyond, to hold it until reenforcements should come.
They fought there during four long hours, until the thin line of blue could hold no longer, and gray ranks under Ewell and Fender had enveloped both flanks. Then sullenly they came back through the town, still firing defiantly, and cursing the help that had not come. It was during this retreat that Jim was hit, but he did not drop. Somehow--though as in a dream--he kept with his regiment, and it was not until they were rallied in the cemetery on the other side of the town that he pitched forward and lay quite still.
Everybody knows how the Eleventh Corps held the cemetery through the two bloody days that followed. But Jim was unconscious of it all, for he lay on a cot in the Sanitary Commission tent, raving in delirium. And the surgeons and