The Return of the O'Mahony. Frederic Harold
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the pigs have straw to drame on.”
“Where did you expect to sleep—in a balloon?” asked the corporal, with curt sarcasm. Then the look of utter hopelessness on the other’s ugly face prompted him to add, in a softer tone; “You must hunt up a tent-mate for yourself—make friends with some fellow who’ll take you in.”
“Sorra a wan’ll be friends wid me,” said the despondent recruit. “I’m waitin’ yet, the furst dacent wurrud from anny of ’em.”
The corporal’s face showed that he did not specially blame them for their exclusiveness, but his words were kindly enough.
“Perhaps I can fix you out,” he said, and sent a comprehensive glance round the group which still huddled over the waning fire, on the other side.
“Hughie, here’s a countryman of yours,” he called out to a lean, tall, gray-bearded private who, seated on a rail, had taken off his wet boots and was scraping the mud from them with a bayonet; “can you take him in?”
“I have some one already,” the other growled, not even troubling to lift his eyes from his task.
It happened that this was a lie, and that the corporal knew it to be one. He hesitated for a moment, dallying with the impulse to speak sharply. Then, reflecting that Hugh O’Mahony was a quarrelsome and unsociable creature with whom a dispute was always a vexation to the spirit, he decided to say nothing.
How curiously inscrutable a thing is chance! Upon that one decision turned every human interest in this tale, and most of all, the destiny of the sulky man who sat scraping his boots. The Wheel of Fortune, in this little moment of silence, held him poised within the hair’s breadth of a discovery which would have altered his career in an amazing way, and changed the story of a dozen lives. But the corporal bit his lip and said nothing. O’Mahony bent doggedly over his work—and the wheel rolled on.
The corporal’s eye, roaming about the circle, fell upon the figure of a man who had just approached the fire and stood in the full glare of the red light, thrusting one foot close to the blaze, while he balanced himself on the other. His ragged hair and unkempt beard were of the color of the miry clay at his feet. His shoulders, rounded at best, were unnaturally drawn forward by the exertion of keeping his hands in his pockets, the while he maintained his balance. His face, of which snub nose and grey eyes alone were visible in the frame of straggling hair and under the shadow of the battered foragecap visor, wore a pleased, almost merry, look in the flickering, ruddy light. He was humming a droning sort of tune to himself as he watched the steam rise from the wet leather.
“Zeke’s happy to-night; that means fight tomorrow, sure as God made little fishes,” said the corporal to nobody in particular. Then he lifted his voice:
“Have you got a place in your diggin’s for a recruit, Zeke—say just for to-night?” he asked.
Zeke looked up, and sauntered forward to where they stood, hands still in pockets.
“Well—I don’t know,” he drawled. “Guess so—if he don’t snore too bad.”
He glanced Linsky over with indolent gravity. It was plain that he didn’t think much of him.
“Got a blanket?” he asked, abruptly.
“I have that,” the Irishman replied.
“Anything to drink?”
Linsky produced from his jacket pocket a flat, brown bottle, twin brother to that which had been passed about the camp-fire circle earlier in the evening, and held it up to the light.
“They called it whiskey,” he said, in apology; “an’ be the price I paid fur it, it moight a’ been doimonds dissolved in angel’s tears; but the furst sup I tuk of it, faith, I thought it ’ud tear th’ t’roat from me!”
Zeke had already linked Linsky’s arm within his own, and he reached forth now and took the bottle.
“It’s p’zen to a man that ain’t used to it,” he said, with a grave wink to the corporal. “Come along with me, Irish; mebbe if you watch me close you can pick up points about gittin’ the stuff down without injurin’ your throat.”
And, with another wink, Zeke led his new-found friend away from the fire, picking his steps through the soft mud, past dozens of little tents propped up with rails and boughs, walking unconsciously toward a strange, new, dazzling future.
CHAPTER II—THE VIDETTE POST.
Zeke’s tent—a low and lop-sided patchwork of old blankets, strips of wagon-covering and stray pieces of cast-off clothing—was pitched on the high ground nearest to the regimental sentry line. At its back one could discern, by the dim light of the camp-fires, the lowering shadows of a forest. To the west a broad open slope descended gradually, its perspective marked to the vision this night by red points of light, diminishing in size as they receded toward the opposite hill’s dead wall of blackness. Upon the crown of this wall, nearly two miles distant, Zeke’s sharp eyes now discovered still other lights which had not been visible before.
“Caught sight of any Rebs yet since you been here, Irish?” he asked, as the two stood halted before his tent.
“I saw some prisoners at what they call City Point, th’ day before yesterday—the most starved and miserable divils ever I laid eyes on. That’s what I thought thin, but I know betther now. Sure they were princes compared wid me this noight.”
“Well, it’s dollars to doughnuts them are their lights over yonder on the ridge,” said Zeke.
“You’ll see enough of ’em to-morrow to last a lifetime.”
Linksy looked with interest upon the row of dim sparks which now crowned the whole long crest. He had brought his blanket, knapsack and rifle from the stacks outside company headquarters, and stood holding them as he gazed.
“Faith,” he said at last, “if they’re no more desirous of seeing me than I am thim, there’s been a dale of throuble wasted in coming so far for both of us.”
Zeke, for answer, chuckled audibly, and the sound of this was succeeded by a low, soft gurgling noise, as he lifted the flask to his mouth and threw back his head. Then, after a satisfied “A-h!” he said:
“Well, we’d better be turning in now,” and kicked aside the door-flap of his tent.
“And is it here we’re to sleep?” asked Linsky, making out with difficulty the outlines of the little hut-like tent.
“I guess there won’t be much sleep about it, but this is our shebang. Wait a minute.” He disappeared momentarily within the tent, entering it on all-fours, and emerged with an armful of sticks and paper. “Now you can dump your things inside there. I’ll have a fire out here in the jerk of a lamb’s tail.”
The Irishman crawled in in turn, and presently, by the light of the blaze his companion had started outside, was able to spread out his blanket in some sort, and even to roll himself up in it, without tumbling the whole edifice down. There was a scant scattering of straw upon which to lie, but underneath this he could feel the chill of the damp earth. He managed to drag his knapsack under his head to serve as a pillow, and then, shivering, resigned himself to fate.
The fire at his feet burned so briskly that soon he began to be pleasantly conscious of its warmth stealing through the soles of his thick, wet soles.
“I’m thinkin’ I’ll take off me boots,” he called out. “Me feet are just perished wid the cold.”
“No. You couldn’t get ’em on again, p’r’aps, when we’re called, and I don’t want any such foolishness as that. When we get out, it’ll have