The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane [ebook reader macos TXT] 📗

Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the scurrying horses were lashed toward the front. Once, a young officer on a besplashed charger nearly ran him down. He turned and watched the mass of guns, men, and horses sweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a fence. The officer was making excited motions with a gauntleted hand. The guns followed the teams with an air of unwillingness, of being dragged by the heels.

Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing like fishwives. Their scolding voices could be heard above the din. Into the unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron of cavalry. The faded yellow of their facings shone bravely. There was a mighty altercation.

The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.

The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red.

As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could see heaving masses of men.

He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields.

The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned wagons like sun-dried boulders. The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts of war machines.

It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He was afraid to move rapidly, however, for a dread of disturbing it. He held his head very still and took many precautions against stumbling. He was filled with anxiety, and his face was pinched and drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden mistake of his feet in the gloom.

His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a cool, liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.

The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed he could measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched into his brain.

Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past. He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at home, in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions. He saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the schoolhouse to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of youthful summer.

He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness. His head hung forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing a great bundle. His feet shuffled along the ground.

He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down and sleep at some near spot, or force himself on until he reached a certain haven. He often tried to dismiss the question, but his body persisted in rebellion and his senses nagged at him like pampered babies.

At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: “Yeh seem t’ be in a pretty bad way, boy?”

The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue. “Uh!”

The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm. “Well,” he said, with a round laugh, “I’m goin’ your way. Th’ hull gang is goin’ your way. An’ I guess I kin give yeh a lift.” They began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.

As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted him with the replies like one manipulating the mind of a child. Sometimes he interjected anecdotes. “What reg’ment do yeh b’long teh? Eh? What’s that? Th’ 304th N’ York? Why, what corps is that in? Oh, it is? Why, I thought they wasn’t engaged t’day⁠—they’re ’way over in th’ center. Oh, they was, eh? Well pretty nearly everybody got their share ’a fightin’ t’day. By dad, I give myself up fer dead any number ’a times. There was shootin’ here an’ shootin’ there, an’ hollerin’ here an’ hollerin’ there, in th’ damn’ darkness, until I couldn’t tell t’ save m’ soul which side I was on. Sometimes I thought I was sure ’nough from Ohier, an’ other times I could ’a swore I was from th’ bitter end of Florida. It was th’ most mixed up dern thing I ever see. An’ these here hull woods is a reg’lar mess. It’ll be a miracle if we find our reg’ments t’night. Pretty soon, though, we’ll meet aplenty of guards an’ provost-guards, an’ one thing an’ another. Ho! there they go with an off’cer, I guess. Look at his hand a-draggin’. He’s got all th’ war he wants, I bet. He won’t be talkin’ so big about his reputation an’ all when they