第16章 The Burial of the Guns(8)

Many of them cried like children; others offered to go down and have one more battle on the plain.The old Colonel soothed them, and quieted their excitement, and then gave a command about the preparations to be made.This called them to order at once; and in a few minutes the camp was as orderly and quiet as usual: the fires were replenished;the scanty stores were being overhauled; the place was selected, and being got ready to roll the guns over the cliff; the camp was being ransacked for such articles as could be carried, and all preparations were being hastily made for their march.

The old Colonel having completed his arrangements sat down by his camp-fire with paper and pencil, and began to write; and as the men finished their work they gathered about in groups, at first around their camp-fires, but shortly strolled over to where the guns still stood at the breastwork, black and vague in the darkness.Soon they were all assembled about the guns.

One after another they visited, closing around it and handling it from muzzle to trail as a man might a horse to try its sinew and bone, or a child to feel its fineness and warmth.They were for the most part silent, and when any sound came through the dusk from them to the officers at their fire, it was murmurous and fitful as of men speaking low and brokenly.

There was no sound of the noisy controversy which was generally heard, the give-and-take of the camp-fire, the firing backwards and forwards that went on on the march; if a compliment was paid a gun by one of its special detachment, it was accepted by the others;in fact, those who had generally run it down now seemed most anxious to accord the piece praise.Presently a small number of the men returned to a camp-fire, and, building it up, seated themselves about it, gathering closer and closer together until they were in a little knot.

One of them appeared to be writing, while two or three took up flaming chunks from the fire and held them as torches for him to see by.

In time the entire company assembled about them, standing in respectful silence, broken only occasionally by a reply from one or another to some question from the scribe.After a little there was a sound of a roll-call, and reading and a short colloquy followed, and then two men, one with a paper in his hand, approached the fire beside which the officers sat still engaged.

"What is it, Harris?" said the Colonel to the man with the paper, who bore remnants of the chevrons of a sergeant on his stained and faded jacket.

"If you please, sir," he said, with a salute, "we have been talking it over, and we'd like this paper to go in along with that you're writing."He held it out to the lieutenant, who was the nearer and had reached forward to take it."We s'pose you're agoin' to bury it with the guns," he said, hesitatingly, as he handed it over.

"What is it?" asked the Colonel, shading his eyes with his hands.

"It's just a little list we made out in and among us," he said, "with a few things we'd like to put in, so's if anyone ever hauls 'em out they'll find it there to tell what the old battery was, and if they don't, it'll be in one of 'em down thar 'til judgment, an' it'll sort of ease our minds a bit." He stopped and waited as a man who had delivered his message.The old Colonel had risen and taken the paper, and now held it with a firm grasp, as if it might blow away with the rising wind.He did not say a word, but his hand shook a little as he proceeded to fold it carefully, and there was a burning gleam in his deep-set eyes, back under his bushy, gray brows.

"Will you sort of look over it, sir, if you think it's worth while?

We was in a sort of hurry and we had to put it down just as we come to it;we didn't have time to pick our ammunition; and it ain't written the best in the world, nohow." He waited again, and the Colonel opened the paper and glanced down at it mechanically.It contained first a roster, headed by the list of six guns, named by name: "Matthew", "Mark", "Luke", and "John", "The Eagle", and "The Cat"; then of the men, beginning with the heading:

"Those killed".

Then had followed "Those wounded", but this was marked out.

Then came a roster of the company when it first entered service;then of those who had joined afterward; then of those who were present now.

At the end of all there was this statement, not very well written, nor wholly accurately spelt:

"To Whom it may Concern: We, the above members of the old battery known, etc., of six guns, named, etc., commanded by the said Col.etc., left on the 11th day of April, 1865, have made out this roll of the battery, them as is gone and them as is left, to bury with the guns which the same we bury this night.We're all volunteers, every man; we joined the army at the beginning of the war, and we've stuck through to the end;sometimes we aint had much to eat, and sometimes we aint had nothin', but we've fought the best we could 119 battles and skirmishes as near as we can make out in four years, and never lost a gun.

Now we're agoin' home.We aint surrendered; just disbanded, and we pledges ourselves to teach our children to love the South and General Lee; and to come when we're called anywheres an' anytime, so help us God."There was a dead silence whilst the Colonel read.