"No, I've not found a spoonful.The eloquence of thirst is the only inspiration I have at present.I fain would stay its cravings by quaffing a beaker of mountain-distilled hair-curler.Mayhap this humble receptacle contains yet a few drops which escaped thy ravenous thirst."Kent turned the canteen upside down and placed its mouth upon his tongue."No," he said, with deep dejection, "all that delicious fluid of yesterday is now like the Father of his Country.""Eh?" asked Abe, puzzled.
"Because it is no more--it is no more.It belongs to the unreturning past.""I say," he continued after a moment's pause, "let's go out and hunt for some.there must be plenty in this neighborhood.Nature never makes a want without providing something to supply it.
Therefore, judging from my thirst, this country ought to be full of distilleries."They buckled on their belts, picked up their guns and started out, directing their steps to the front.
In spite of the sunshine the walk through the battle-field was depressing.A chafing wind fretted through the naked limbs of the oaks and chestnuts, and drew moans from the pines and the hemlocks.
The brown, dead leaves rustled into little tawny hillocks, behind protecting logs and rocks.Frequently those took on the shape of long, narrow mounds as if they covered the graves of some ill-fated being, who like themselves, had fallen to the earth to rot in dull obscurity.The clear little streams that in Summer-time murmured musically down the slopes, under canopies of nodding roses and fragrant sweet-brier, were now turbid torrents, brawling like churls drunken with much wine, and tearing out with savage wantonness their banks, matted with the roots of the blue violets, and the white-flowered puccoon.
Scattered over the mountain-side were fatigue-parties engaged in hunting up the dead, and burying them in shallow graves, hastily dug in clay so red that it seemed as if saturated with the blood shed the day before.The buriers thrust their hands into the pockets of the dead with the flinching, nauseated air of men touching filth, and took from the garments seeping with water and blood, watches, letters, ambrotypes, money and trinkets, some of which they studied to gain a clue to the dead man's identity, some retained as souvenirs, but threw the most back into the grave with an air of loathing.The faces of the dead with their staring eyes and open mouths and long, lank hair, cloyed with the sand and mud thrown up by the beating rain, looked indescribably repulsive.
The buriers found it better to begin their work by covering the features with a cap or a broad-brimmed hat.It was difficult for the coarsest of them to fling a spadeful of dank clay directly upon the wide-open eyes and seemingly-speaking mouth.
"Those fellows' souls," said Kent, regarding the corpses, "seem to have left their earthly houses in such haste that they forgot to close the doors and windows after them.Somewhere I ahve read of a superstition that bodily tenements left in this way were liable to be entered and occupied by evil spirits, and from this rose the custom of piously closing the eyes and mouths of deceased friends.""No worse spirit's likely to get into them than was shot out of 'em," growled Abe."A Rebel with a gun is as bad an evil spirit as I ever expect to meet.But let's go on.It's another kind of an evil spirit that we are interested in just now--one that'll enter into and occupy our empty canteen.""You're right.It's the enemy that my friend Shakspere says we 'put into our mouths to steal away our brains.' By the way, what a weary hunt he must have in your cranium for a load worth stealing.""Thee goes that clack-mill again.Great Caesar! if the boys only had legs as active as your tongue what a racer the regiment would be! Cavalry'd be nowhere."Toward the foot of the mountain their path led them across a noisy, swollen little creek, whose overflowing waters were dyed deeply red and yellow by the load of hill caly they were carrying away in their headlong haste.A little to the left lay a corpse of more striking appearance than any they had yet seen.It was that of a tall, slender, gracefully formed young man, clad in an officer's uniform of rich gray cloth, lavishly ornamented with gilt buttons and gold lace.The features were strong, but delicately cut, and the dark skin smooth and fine-textured.One shapely hand still clasped the hilt of a richly ornamented sword, with which he had evidently been directing his men, and his staring gray eyes seemed yet filled with the anger of battle.A bullet had reached him as he stood upon a little knoll, striving to stay the headlong flight.
Falling backward his head touched the edge of the swift running water, which was now filling his long, black locks with slimy sediment.
