The Raid of The Guerilla and Other Stories Part 7

"The Company's Una weighs two hundred pounds and has a face as broad as a barn-door. She shows she is afraid of the lion when she stands beside him in the street parade, and-curse him-he is so clever that he knows it, no matter how he is doped. It incites him to growl at her all through the pageant, and that simply queers the sweet peace of the idea."

"And you think this untrained girl could take her place?"

"Why not? She couldn't do worse-and she could look the part. See," he continued, in as business-like way as if Valeria were merely a bale of goods or deaf, "ethereal figure, poetic type of beauty, fine expression of candor and serene courage. She has a look of open-eyed innocence-I don't mean ignorance." He made a subtle distinction in the untutored aspect of the two countenances before him.

"Would you be afraid of the lion, child?" the stout man asked Valeria. "He is chained-and drugged, too-in the pageant."

It was difficult for the astonished Valeria to find her voice. "A lion?" she murmured. "I never seen a lion."

"No? Honest?" they both cried in amazement that such a thing could be. The portly man's rollicking laughter rang out through the thin walls of canvas to such effect that some savage caged beast within reach of the elastic buoyant sound was roused to anger and supplemented it with a rancorous snarl.

Valeria listened apprehensively, with dilated eyes. She thought of the lion, the ferocious creature that she had never seen. She thought of the ma.s.sive strong woman who knew and feared him. Then she remembered the desolate old grandparents and their hopeless, helpless poverty. "I'll resk the lion," she said with a tremulous bated voice.

"That's a brave girl," cried the manager.

"I hev read 'bout Daniel's lions an' him in the den," she explained. "An' Daniel hed consid'ble trust an' warn't afeard-an' mebbe I won't be afeard nuther."

"Daniel's Lions? Daniel's Lions?" the portly manager repeated attentively. "I don't know the show-perhaps in some combination now." For if he had ever heard of that signal leonine incident recorded in Scripture he had forgotten it. "Yes, yes," as Valeria eagerly appealed to him in behalf of Brent, "we must try to give Hubby some little stunt to do in the performance-but you are the ticket-a sure winner."

Of course the public knew, if it chose to reflect, that though apparently free the lion was muzzled with a strong steel ring, and every ponderous paw was chained down securely to the exhibition car; it may even have suspected that the savage proclivities of the great beast were dulled by drugs. But there is always the imminent chance of some failure of precaution, and the mult.i.tude must needs thrill to the spectacle of intrepidity and danger. Naught could exceed the enthusiasm that greeted this slim, graceful Una a few days later in the streets of a distant city, as clad in long draperies of fleecy white she reclined against a splendid leonine specimen, her s.h.i.+ning golden hair hanging on her shoulders, or mingling with his tawny mane as now and again she let her soft cheek rest on his head, her luminous dark gray eyes smiling down at the cheering crowds. This speedily became the favorite feature of the pageant, and the billboards flamed with her portrait, leaning against the lion, hundreds of miles in advance of her triumphal progress.

All this unexpected success presently awoke Brent's emulation-so far he had not even "barked a few." A liberal advance on his wife's salary had quieted him for a time, but when the wonders of this new life began to grow stale-the steam-cars, the great cities, the vast country the Company traversed-he became importunate for the opportunity of display. He "barked a few" so cleverly at a concert after the performance one evening that the manager gave him a chance to throw the very considerable volume of sound he could command into the jaws of one of the lions. "Let Emperor speak to the people," he said. Forthwith he wrote a bit of rodomontade which he bade Brent memorize and had the satisfaction soon to hear from the lion-trainer, to whom was intrusted all that pertained to the exhibition of these kings of beasts, that the rehearsal was altogether satisfactory.

An immense audience was a.s.sembled in the great tent. The soaring dome of white canvas reflected the electric light with a moony l.u.s.tre. The display of the three rings was in full swing. That magic atmosphere of the circus, the sense of simple festivity, the crises of thrilling expectancy, the revelation of successive wonders, the diffusive delight of a mult.i.tude not difficult to entertain-all were in evidence. Suddenly a ponderous cage was rolled in; the band was playing liltingly; the largest of the lions within the bars, a tawny monster, roused up and with head depressed and switching tail paced back and forth within the restricted limits of the cage, while the others looked out with motionless curiosity at the tiers of people. Presently with a long supple stride the gigantic, blond Norwegian trainer came lightly across the arena-a Hercules, with broad bare chest and arms, arrayed in spangled blue satin and white tights that forbade all suspicion of protective armor. At a single bound he sprang into the cage, while Brent, garbed in carnation and white, stood unheralded and unremarked close by outside among the armed attendants. There seemed no need of precaution, however, so lightly the trainer frolicked with the savage creatures. He performed wonderful acrobatic feats with them in which one hardly knew which most to admire, the agility and intrepidity of the man or the supple strength and curious intelligence of the beasts. He wrestled with them; he leaped and rolled among them; he put his head into their terrible full-fanged jaws-but before springing forth he fired his pistols loaded with blank cartridges full in their faces; for the instant the coercion of his eye was pretermitted every one treacherously bounded toward him, seeking to seize him before he could reach the door. Then Emperor, as was his wont, flung himself in baffled fury against the bars and stood erect and shook them in his wrath.

All at once, to the astonishment of the people, he spoke, voicing a plaintive panegyric on liberty and protesting his willingness to barter all the luxury of his captivity for one free hour on the desert sands.

Surprise, absolute, unqualified, reigned for one moment. But a circus-going crowd is uncannily quick. The audience perceived a certain involuntary element of the entertainment. A storm of cat-calls ensued, hisses, roars of laughter. For the place was the city of Glaston, the Company being once more in East Tennessee, and the lion spoke the old familiar mountain dialect so easily recognizable in this locality. Even a lapsus linguae, "you uns," was unmistakable amidst the high-flown periods. Although the ventriloquism was appreciated, the incongruity of this countrified jargon, held in great contempt by the townfolks, discounted Emperor's majesty and he was in ludicrous eclipse.

Behind the screening canvas the portly manager raged; "How dare you make that fine lion talk like a 'hill-Billy' such as yourself-as if he were fresh caught in the Great Smoky Mountains!" he stormed at the indignant ventriloquist. The other partners in the management interfered in Brent's behalf; they feared that the proud mountaineer, resenting the contemptuous designation "hill-Billy" might withdraw from the Company, taking his wife with him, and the loss of Valeria from the pageant would be well nigh irreparable, for her ethereal and fragile beauty as Una with her lion had a perennial charm for the public. The management therefore a.s.sumed the responsibility for the linguistic disaster, having confided the rehearsal to a foreigner, for the Norwegian lion-trainer naively explained that to him it seemed that all Americans talked alike.

A course in elocution was recommended to Brent by the managers, and he fell in with this plan delightedly, but after two or three elementary bouts with the vowel sounds, long and short, consonants, sonant and surd, he concluded that mere articulation could be made as laborious as sawing wood, and he discovered that it was incompatible with his dignity to be a pupil in an art in which he had professed proficiency. Thereafter his accomplishment rusted-to the relief of the management-although he required that Valeria should be described in the advertis.e.m.e.nts as the wife of "the celebrated ventriloquist, Mr. Brent Kayle," thus seeking by faked notoriety to secure the sweets of fame, without the labor of achievement.

Valeria had welcomed the pacific settlement of the difficulty, because her "good money" earned in the show so brightened and beautified the evening of life for the venerable grandparents at home. For their sake she had conquered her dread of the lion in the pageant. Indeed she had found other lions in her path that she feared more-the glitter and gauds of her tinsel world, the enervating love of ease, the influence of sordid surroundings and ign.o.ble ideals. But not one could withstand the simple goodness of the unsophisticated girl. They retreated before the power of her fireside traditions of right thinking and true living which she had learned in her humble mountain home.

It had come to be a dwelling of comfortable aspect, cared for in the absence of the young couple by a thrifty hired housekeeper, a widowed cousin, and here they spent the off-seasons when the circus company went into winter quarters. Repairs had been inst.i.tuted, several rooms were added, and a wide veranda replaced the rickety little porch and gave upon a n.o.ble prospect of mountain and valley and river. Here on suns.h.i.+ny noons in the good Saint Martin's summer the old gran'dad loved to sit, blithe and hearty, chirping away the soft unseasonable December days. Sometimes in the plenitude of content he would give Valeria a meaning glance and mutter "Oh, leetle Owel! Oh, leetle Owel!" and then break into laughter that must needs pause to let him wipe his eyes.

"Yes, Vallie 'pears ter hev right good sense an' makes out toler'ble well, considerin'," her husband would affably remark, "though of course it war me ez interduced her ter the managers, an' she gits her main chance in the show through my bein' a celebrated ventriloquisk."

THE LOST GUIDON

Night came early. It might well seem that day had fled affrighted. The heavy ma.s.ses of clouds, glooming low, which had gathered thicker and thicker, as if crowding to witness the catastrophe, had finally shaken asunder in the concussions of the air at the discharges of artillery, and now the direful rain, always sequence of the shock of battle, was steadily falling, falling, on the stricken field. Many a soldier who might have survived his wounds would succ.u.mb to exposure to the elements during the night, debarred the tardy succor that must needs await his turn. One of the surgeons at their hasty work at the field hospital, under the shelter of the cliffs on the slope, paused to note the presage of doom and death, and to draw a long breath before he adjusted himself anew to the grim duties of the scalpel in his hand. His face was set and haggard, less with a realization of the significance of the scene-for he was used to its recurrence-than simply with a physical reflection of horror, as if it were gla.s.sed in a mirror. A phenomenon that had earlier caught his attention in the landscape appealed again to his notice, perhaps because the symptom was not in his line.

"Looks like a case of dementia," he observed to the senior surgeon, standing near at hand.

The superior officer adjusted his field-gla.s.s. "Looks like 'Death on the White Horse'!" he responded.

Down the highway, at a slow pace, rode a cavalryman wearing a gray uniform, with a sergeant's chevrons, and mounted on a steed good in his day, but whose day was gone. A great clot of blood had gathered on his broad white chest, where a bayonet had thrust him deep. Despite his exhaustion, he moved forward at the urgency of his rider's heel and hand. The soldier held a long, heavy staff planted on one stirrup, from the top of which drooped in the dull air the once gay guidon, battle-rent and sodden with rain, and as he went he shouted at intervals, "Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the guidon!" Now and again his strident boyish voice varied the appeal, "Hyar's yer Dovinger's Rangers! Rally, boys! Rally on the reserve!"

Indeed, despite his stalwart, tall, broad-shouldered frame, he was scarcely more than a boy. His bare head had flaxen curls like a child's; his pallid, though sunburned face was broad and soft and beardless; his large blue eyes were languid and spiritless, though now and then as he turned an intent gaze over the field they flared anew with hope, as if he expected to see rise up from that desolate expanse, from among the stiffening carca.s.ses of horses and the stark corpses of the troopers, that gallant squadron wont to follow, so das.h.i.+ng and debonair, wherever the guidons might mark the way. But there was naught astir save the darkness slipping down by slow degrees-and perchance under its cloak, already stealthily afoot, the ghoulish robbers of the dead that haunt the track of battle. They were the human forerunners of the vulture breed, with even a keener scent for prey, for as yet the feathered carrion-seekers held aloof; two or three only were descried from the field hospital, perched on the boughs of a dead tree near the river, presently joined by another, its splendid sustained flight impeded somewhat by the rain, battling with its big, strong wings against the downpour of the torrents and the heavy air.

And still through all echoed the cry, "Rally on the guidon! Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the reserve!"

The bridge that crossed the river, which was running full and foaming, had been burnt; but a span, charred and broken, still swung from the central pier. Over toward the dun-tinted west a house was blazing, fired by some stray bomb, perhaps, or by official design, to hinder the enemy from utilizing the shelter, and its red rage of destruction bepainted the clouds that hung so low above the chimneys and dormer-windows. To the east, the woods on the steeps had been sh.e.l.led, and a myriad boughs and boles riven and rent, lay in fantastic confusion. Through the mournful chaos the wind had begun to sweep; it sounded in unison with the battle clamors, and shrieked and wailed and roared as it surged adown the defiles. Now and then there came on the blast the fusillade of dropping shots from the south, where the skirmish line of one faction engaged the rear-guard of the other, or the pickets fell within rifle-range. Once the sullen, melancholy boom of distant cannon shook the clouds, and then was still, and ever and again sounded that tireless cry, "Dovinger's Rangers. Hyar's yer guidon! Rally, boys! Rally on the guidon! Rally on the reserve!"

The senior surgeon, as the road wound near, stepped down toward it when the horseman, still holding himself proudly erect, pa.s.sed by. "Sergeant," he hailed the guidon, "where is Captain Dovinger?"

The hand mechanically went to the boy's forehead in the usual military salute. "Killed, sir."

"Where are the other officers of the squadron-the junior captain, the lieutenants?"

"Killed, sir."

"What has become of the troopers?"

"Killed, sir, in the last charge."

There was a pause. Then Dr. Trent broke forth: "Are you a fool, boy? If your command is annihilated, why do you keep up this commotion?"

The young fellow looked blank for a moment. Then, as if he had not reasoned on the catastrophe: "I thought at first they mought be scattered-some of 'em. But ef-ef-they war dead, but could once see the guidon, sure 't would call 'em to life. They couldn't be so dead but they would rally to the guidon! Guide right!" he shouted suddenly. "Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the guidon, boys! Rally on the reserve!"

It was a time that hardened men's hearts. The young soldier had no physical hurt that might appeal to the professional sympathies of the senior surgeon, and he turned away with a half laugh. "Let him go along! He can't rally Dovinger's Rangers this side of the river Styx, it seems."

But an old chaplain who had been hovering about the field hospital, whispering a word here and there to stimulate the fort.i.tude of the wounded and solace the fears of the dying, recognized moral symptoms alien to any diagnosis of which the senior surgeon was capable. The latter did not deplore the diversion of interest, for the old man's presence was not highly esteemed by the hospital corps at this scene of hasty and terrible work, although, having taken a course in medicine in early life, he was permitted to aid in certain ways. But the surgeons were wont to declare that the men began to bleat at the very sight of the chaplain. So gentle, so sympathetic, so paternal, was he that they made the more of their wretched woes, seeing them so deeply deplored. The senior surgeon, moreover, was not an ardent religionist. "This is no time for a revival, Mr. Whitmel," he would insist. "Jack, there, never spoke the name of G.o.d in his life, except to swear by it. He is too late for prayers, and if I can't pull him through, he is a goner!"

But the chaplain was fond of quoting:

"Between the stirrup and the ground He mercy sought and mercy found--"

and sometimes the scene was irreverently called a "love feast" when some hard-riding, hard-swearing, hard-fighting, unthinking sinner went joyfully out of this world from the fatherly arms of the chaplain into the paternal embrace of an eternal and merciful Father, as the man of G.o.d firmly believed.

He stood now, staring after the guidon borne through the rain and the mist, flaunting red as the last leaves of autumn against the dun-tinted dusk, that the dead might view the gallant and honored pennant and rise again to its leading!

No one followed but the tall, thin figure of the gaunt old chaplain, unless indeed the trooping shadows that kept him company had mysteriously roused at the stirring summons. Lanterns were now visible, dimly flickering in one quarter where the fighting had been furious and the slain lay six deep on the ground. Their aspirations, their valor, their patriotism, had all exhaled-volatile essences, these incomparable values!-and now their bodies, weighted with death, c.u.mbered the earth. They must be hurried out of sight, out of remembrance soon, and the burial parties were urged to diligence at the trenches where these cast-off semblances were to lie undistinguished together. And still the reflection of the burning house reddened the gloomy west, and still the cry, "Rally on the guidon! Dovinger's Rangers!" smote the thick air.

Suddenly it was silent. The white horse that had been visible in the flare from the flaming house, now and again flung athwart the landscape, no longer loomed in the vista of the shadowy road. He had given way at last, sinking down with that martial figure still in the saddle, and, with no struggle save a mere galvanic s.h.i.+ver, pa.s.sing away from the scene of his faithful devoirs.

Fatigue, agitation, anguish, his agonized obsession of the possibility of rallying the squadron, had served to prostrate the soldier's physical powers of resistance. He could not constrain his muscles to rise from the rec.u.mbent position against the carca.s.s. He started up, then sank back, and in another moment triumphant nature conquered, and he was asleep-a dull, dreamless sleep of absolute exhaustion, that perchance rescued his reason as well as saved his life.

The old chaplain was a man of infinite prejudice, steeped in all the infirmities and fantasies of dogma; a lover of harmony, and essentially an apostle of peace. Nevertheless, it would not have been physically safe to call him a Jesuit. But indeed he scarcely hesitated; he stepped over the great inert bulk of the dead horse, unclenched the muscular grasp of the soldier, as if it had been a baby's clasp, slipped the staff, technically the lance, of the guidon from its socket, and stood with it in his own hand, looking suspiciously to and fro to descry if perchance he were observed. The coast clear, he turned to the wall of rock beside the road, for this was near the mountain sandstone formation, fissured, splintered, with the erosions of water and weather; and into one of the cellular, tunnel-like apertures he ran the guidon, lance and all,-lost forever from human sight.

In those days one might speak indeed of the march of events. Each seemed hard on the heels of its precursor. Change ran riot in the ordering of the world, and its aspect was utterly transformed when Casper Girard, no longer bearing the guidon of Dovinger's Rangers, came out of the war with a captain's shoulder-straps, won by personal fitness often proved, the habit of command, and a great and growing opinion of himself. He was a changeling, so to speak. No longer he felt a native of the mountain cove where he had been born and reared. He had had a glimpse of the world from a different standpoint, and it lured him. A dreary, disaffected life he led for a time.

"'Minds me of a wild tur-r-key in a trap," his mother was wont to comment. "Always stretchin' his neck an' lookin' up an' away-when he mought git out by lookin' down." And the simile was so apt that it stayed in his mind-looking up and away!

Of all dull inventions, in his estimation the art of printing exceeded. He had made but indifferent progress in education during his early youth; he was a slow and inexpert reader, and a writer whose chirography shrank from exhibition. Now, however, a book in the hand gave him a cherished sentiment of touch with the larger world beyond those blue ranges that limited his sphere, and he spent much time in sedulously reading certain volumes which he had brought home with him.

"Spent money fur 'em!" his mother would e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, contemplating this extreme audacity of extravagance.