be so good as to take this cheer here, next to me?” resumed Judge Priest when the noise abated; and he completed the ceremonial by indicating the place of the absent Mr. Reeves.
What the stranger saw as he came slowly forward – if, indeed, he was able to see anything with distinctness by reason of the evident confusion that covered him – was a double row of kindly, cordial, curious faces of old men, all staring at him. Before the battery of their eyes he bowed his acknowledgments, but did not speak them; still without speaking, he slipped into the seat which Tobe Emery sprang forward to draw clear of the table for his easier admission to the group. What the others saw was a tall, stooped, awkward man of, say, sixty-five, with sombre eyes, set deep in a whiskered face that had been burned a leathery red by wind and weather; a heavy-footed man, who wore a suit of store clothes – clothes of a homely cut and none too new, yet neat enough; such a man, one might guess at a glance, as would have little to say and would be chary about saying that little until sure of his footing and his audience. Judging by appearances and first impressions he did not promise to be what you might call exciting company, exactly; but he made fourteen at the table, and that was the main point, anyhow.
Now the dinner got under way with a swing and a clatter. For all the stitches and tucks that time had taken in their leg muscles, the three old negroes flitted about like flickery black shadows, bringing food to all and toddies to several, and just plain ice water to at least three of their white friends. Even Kentuckians have been known to be advocates of temperance. To learn how true a statement this is you must read, not the comic weeklies, but the official returns of local-option elections. Above the medley of commingling voices, some cracked and jangled with age, some still full and sonorous, and one at least as thin and piercing as the bleat of a reed flute – that would be Judge Priest’s voice, of course – sounded the rattling of dishes and glasses and plated silverware. Uncle Zach and his two aides may have been good waiters, but they were tolerably noisy ones.
Through it all the extra guest sat very quietly, eating little and drinking nothing. Sitting alongside him, Doctor Lake noticed that he fed himself with his right hand only; his left hand stayed in his lap, being hidden from sight beneath the table. Naturally this set afoot a train of mild professional surmise in the old doctor’s mind. The arm itself seemed sound enough; he vaguely wondered whether the Illinois man had a crippled hand or a deformed hand, or what. Judge Priest noticed it too, but subconsciously rather. At the beginning he tried to start a conversation with Watts, feeling it incumbent on him, as chief sponsor for the other’s presence, to cure him of his embarrassment if he could, and to make him feel more at home there among them; but his well-meant words appeared to fall on barren soil. The stranger answered in mumbled monosyllables, without once looking Judge Priest straight in the face. He kept his head half averted – a posture the judge ascribed to diffidence; but it was evident he missed nothing at all of the talk that ran up and down the long table and back and forth across it. Under his bushy brows his eyes shifted from face to face as this man or that had his say.
So presently the judge, feeling that he had complied with the requirements of hospitality, abandoned the effort to interest his silent neighbour, and very soon after forgot him altogether for the time being. Under the circumstances it was only to be expected of Judge Priest that he should forget incidental matters; for now, to all these lifelong friends of his, time was swinging backward on a greased hinge. The years that had lined these old faces and bent these old backs were dropping away; the memories of great and storied days were mounting to their brains like the fumes of strong wine, brightening their eyes and loosening their tongues.
From their eager lips dropped names of small country churches, tiny backwoods villages of the Southwest, trivial streams and geographically inconsequential mountains – names that once meant nothing to the world at large, but which, by reason of Americans having fought Americans there and Americans having died by the hundreds and the thousands there, are now printed in the school histories and memorised by the school children – Island Number 10 and Shiloh; Peachtree Creek and Stone River; Kenesaw Mountain and Brice’s Crossroads. They had been at these very places, or at most of them – these thirteen old men had. To them the names were more than names. Each one burned in their hearts as a living flame. All the talk, though, was not of battle and skirmish. It dealt with prisons, with hospitals, with camps and marches.
“By George, boys, will you ever forget the day we marched out of this town?” It was Doctor Lake speaking, and his tone was high and exultant. “Flags flying everywhere and our sweethearts crying and cheering us through their tears! And the old town band up front playing Girl I Left Behind Me and Johnnie’s Gone for a Soger! And we-all stepping along, feeling so high and mighty and stuck-up in our new uniforms! A little shy on tactics we were, and not enough muskets to go round; but all the boys wore new grey suits, I remember. Our mothers saw to that.”
“It was different, though, Lew, the day we came home again,” reminded some one else, speaking gently. “No flags flying then and nobody cheering, and no band to play! And half the women were in black – yes, more than half.”
“An’ dat’s de Gawd’s truth!” half-whispered black Tobe Emery, carried away for the moment.
“Well,” said Press Harper, “I know they run out of muskets ‘fore they got round to me. I call to mind that I went off totin’ an ole flintlock that my paw had with him down in Mexico when he wus campin’ on ole Santy Anny’s trail. And that wus all I did have in the way of weepins, ‘cept fur a great big bowie knife that a blacksmith out at Massac made fur me out of a rasp-file. I wus mighty proud of that there bowie of mine till we got down yonder to Camp Boone and found a whole company, all with bigger knives than whut mine wus. Called themselves the Blood River Tigers, those boys did, ‘cause they came frum up on Blood River, in Calloway.”
Squire Futrell took the floor – or the table, rather – for a moment:
“I recollec’ one Calloway County feller down at Camp Boone, when we fust got there, that didn’t even have a knife. He went round ‘lowin’ as how he wus goin’ to pick him out a likely Yank the fust fight we got into, and lick him with his bare hands ef he stood still and fit, or knock him down with a rock ef he broke and run – and then strip him of his outfit.”
“Why, I place that feller, jest ez plain ez if he wus standin’ here now,” declared Mr. Harper. “I remember him sayin’ he could lick ary Yankee that ever lived with his bare hands.”
“I reckin mebbe he could, too – he wus plenty long enough,” said the squire with a chuckle; “but the main obstacle wus that the Yankees wouldn’t fight with their bare hands. They jest would insist on usin’ tools – the contrary rascals! Let’s see, now, whut wus that Calloway County feller’s name? You remember him, Herman, don’t you? A tall, ganglin’ jimpy jawed, loose-laiged feller he wus – built like one of these here old blue creek cranes.”
Mr. Felsburg shook his head; but Press Harper broke in again:
“I’ve got him! The boys called him Lengthy fur short; but his real name wus Washburn, same ez – ”
He stopped short off there; and, twisting his head away from the disapproving faces, which on the instant had been turned full on him from all along the table, he went through the motion of spitting, as though to rid his mouth of an unsavoury taste. A hot colour climbed to Peter J. Galloway’s wrinkled cheeks and he growled under the overhang of his white moustache. Doctor Lake pursed up his lips, shaking his head slowly.
There was one black spot, and just one, on the records of Company B. And, living though he might still be, or dead, as probably he was, the name of one man was taboo when his one-time companions broke bread at their anniversary dinner. Indeed, they went farther than that: neither there nor elsewhere did they speak by name of him who had been their shame and their disgrace. It was a rule. With them it was as though that man had never lived.
Up to this point Mr. Herman Felsburg
