“About my age. Very tall and thin. You could mark him by his height.”
“It takes different kinds of people to make the world. My brother ain’t like him a-tall. Sam’s short, an’ thick as a buffalo. Weighs two twenty with no fat on him. What crowd do you belong to, youngster?”
“The division on our right. We attacked the wood there.”
“Well, you’re a bully boy. Give me your hand, if you are a Yank. You shorely came right up there and looked us in the eyes. How often did you charge us?”
“Five times, I think. But I may be mistaken. You know it wasn’t a day when a fellow could be very particular about his count.”
“Guess you’re right there. I made it five. What do you say, Jim?”
“Five she was.”
“That settles it. Jim kin always count up to five an’ never make a mistake. What you fellers goin’ to do in the mornin’?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pope ain’t asked you yet what to do. Well, Bobby Lee and Old Stonewall ain’t been lookin’ for me either to get my advice, but, Yank, you fellers do just what I tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“Pack up your clothes before daylight, say good-bye, and go back to Washington. You needn’t think you kin ever lick Marse Bobby an’ Stonewall Jackson.”
“But what if we do think it? We’ve got a big army back there yet, and more are always coming to us. We’ll beat you yet.”
“There seems to be a pow’ful wide difference in our opinions, an’ I can’t persuade you an’ you can’t persuade me. We’ll just let the question rip. I’m glad, after all, Yank, it’s so dark. I don’t want to see ten thousand dead men stretched out in rows.”
“We’re going to get a wettin’,” said the man to Jim. “The air’s already damp on my face. Thar, do you hear that thunder growlin’ in the southwest? Tremenjously like cannon far away, but it’s thunder all the same.”
“What do we care ’bout a wettin’, Jim? Fur the last few days this young Yank here an’ his comrades have shot at me ’bout a million cannon balls an’ shells, an’ more ‘n a hundred million rifle bullets. Leastways I felt as if they was all aimed at me, which is just as bad. After bein’ drenched fur two days with a storm of steel an’ lead an’ fire, what do you think I care for a summer shower of rain, just drops of rain?”
“But I don’t like to get wet after havin’ fit so hard. It’s unhealthy, likely to give me a cold.”
“Never min’ ’bout ketchin’ cold. You’re goin’ to get wet, shore. Thunder, but I thought fur a second that was the flash of a hull battery aimed at me. Fellers, if you wasn’t with me I’d be plumb scared, prowlin’ ‘roun’ here in a big storm on the biggest graveyard in the world. Keep close, Yank, we don’t want to lose you in the dark.”
A tremendous flash of lightning had cut the sky down the middle, as if it intended to divide the world in two halves, but after its passage the darkness closed in thicker and heavier than ever. The sinister sound of thunder muttering on the horizon now went on without ceasing.
Dick was awed. Like many another his brain exposed to such tremendous pressure for two or three days, was not quite normal. It was quickly heated and excited by fancies, and time and place alone were enough to weigh down even the coolest and most seasoned. He pressed close to his Confederate friends, whose names he never knew, and who never knew his, and they, feeling the same influence, never for an instant left the man who held the lantern.
The muttering thunder now came closer and broke in terrible crashes. The lightning flashed again and again so vividly that Dick, with involuntary motion, threw up his hands to shelter his eyes. But he could see before him the mournful forest, where so many good men had fallen, and, turned red in the gleam of the lightning, it was more terrifying than it had been in the mere black of the night. The wind, too, was now blowing, and the forest gave forth what Dick’s ears turned into a long despairing wail.