"Gimme drink, Ole Cap'n, please, suh."
Crittenden handed him his canteen, and Bob drank and rose unsteadily to
his feet.
"Dat ain't nuttin'," he said, contemptuously, feeling along the wound.
"'Tain't nigh as bad as mule kick. 'Tain't nuttin', 't all." And then he
almost fell.
"Go back, Bob."
"All right, Ole Cap'n, I reckon I'll jus' lay down heah little while,"
he said, stretching out behind the tree.
And Grafton reached over for Crittenden's hand. He was getting some new
and startling ideas about the difference in the feeling toward the negro
of the man who once owned him body and soul and of the man who freed him
body and soul. And in the next few minutes he studied Crittenden as he
had done before--taking in detail the long hair, lean face strongly
chiselled, fearless eye, modest demeanour--marking the intellectual look
of the face--it was the face of a student--a gentleman--gently born.
And, there in the heat of the fight, he fell to marvelling over the
nation that had such a man to send into the field as a common soldier.
Again they moved forward. Crittenden's Lieutenant dropped--wounded.
"Go on," he cried, "damn it, go on!"
Grafton helped to carry him back, stepping out into the open for him,
and Crittenden saw a bullet lick up the wet earth between the
correspondent's feet.
Forward again! It was a call for volunteers to advance and cut the
wires. Crittenden was the first to spring to his feet, and Abe Long and
Reynolds sprang after him. Forward they slipped on their bellies, and
the men behind saw one brown, knotty hand after another reach up from
the grass and clip, clip, clip through the thickly braided wires.
Forward again! The men slipped like eels through and under the wires,
and lay in the long grass behind. The time was come.
"FORWARD!"
Crittenden never knew before the thrill that blast sent through him, and
never in his life did he know it again.
It was the call of America to the American, white and black: and race
and colour forgotten, the American answered with the grit of the Saxon,
the Celt's pure love of a fight, and all the dash of the passionate
Gaul.
As Crittenden leaped to his feet, he saw Reynolds leap, too, and then
there was a hissing hell of white smoke and crackling iron at his
feet--and Reynolds disappeared.
It was a marvel afterward but, at that moment, Crittenden hardly noted
that the poor fellow was blown into a hundred fragments. He was in the
front line now. A Brigadier, with his hat in his hand and his white hair
shining in the sun, run diagonally across in front of his line of
battle, and, with a wild cheer, the run of death began.