The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag.Its possession would be high pride.It would express bloody minglings, near blows.He had a gigantic hatred for those who made great difficulties and complications.
They caused it to be as a craved treasure of my-thology, hung amid tasks and contrivances of danger.
He plunged like a mad horse at it.He was resolved it should not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it.His own em-blem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward the other.It seemed there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks and claws, as of eagles.
The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and disastrous range and roared a swift volley.The group in gray was split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still fought.The men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.
The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky.Tottering among them was the rival color bearer, whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last formidable volley.He perceived this man fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose legs are grasped by demons.It was a ghastly battle.
Over his face was the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines of desperate purpose.With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged his precious flag to him and was stum-bling and staggering in his design to go the way that led to safety for it.
But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded, held, and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls fastened greedily upon his limbs.Those in advance of the scam-pering blue men, howling cheers, leaped at the fence.The despair of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back at them.
The youth's friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap and sprang at the flag as a panther at prey.He pulled at it and, wrench-ing it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry of exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched over in a final throe and, stiff-ening convulsively, turned his dead face to the ground.There was much blood upon the grass blades.
At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers.The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy.When they spoke it was as if they considered their listener to be a mile away.What hats and caps were left to them they often slung high in the air.
At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they now sat as prisoners.
Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious circle.The soldiers had trapped strange birds, and there was an examination.A flurry of fast questions was in the air.
One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot.He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors.He consigned them to red regions;he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods.And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the con-duct of prisoners of war.It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.
Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great calmness and apparent good nature.He conversed with the men in blue, studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes.They spoke of battles and conditions.
There was an acute interest in all their faces dur-ing this exchange of view points.It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had been darkness and speculation.
The third captive sat with a morose counte-nance.He preserved a stoical and cold attitude.
To all advances he made one reply without varia-tion, "Ah, go t' hell!"
1
molested directions.From the views the youth received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection.Shame was upon him, and with it profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows.The youth could detect no expression that would allow him to believe that the other was giving a thought to his narrowed future, the pictured dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutali-ties, liable to the imagination.All to be seen was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize.
After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down behind the old rail fence, on the opposite side to the one from which their foes had been driven.A few shot perfunctorily at distant marks.
There was some long grass.The youth nestled in it and rested, making a convenient rail support the flag.His friend, jubilant and glori-fied, holding his treasure with vanity, came to him there.They sat side by side and congratu-lated each other.
