On the Lightship Part 26

"You interest me," interposed Professor Sands.

"Oh, do I?" cried the cook. "By blood! I've half a mind to interest you more. But don't look at me like that--I tell you, I don't like your eye!" He tried to s.h.i.+eld himself from that unmoved gaze. "You're interested, are you? You'd like to put my case before your influential friends back East? You with your little bag of rocks and your little hammer and your gloves! Did you ever in your life see anyone who wasn't a nickel-plated angel? Did you ever run across a real live blackguard out of a story paper? Did you ever see a man who couldn't show his face in a settlement by the light of day, and had to take up any job that kept him out of sight? I don't know why, but I've got to shoot my mouth off now if it hangs me. I've got to blab or go stark mad!"

"I understand," said the professor.

"I was one of them patriots," Budd went on, speaking almost mechanically, as though hypnotized, "who enlisted for the boodle and then skipped out to work the racket somewhere else."

"In point of fact, a bounty jumper," his listener put in.

"Yes," agreed the cook, "that's what I was. They were paying three hundred gold for likely men to go down South and head off bullets, and that beat getting drafted, so I joined. Oh, those were great old days, great old days!"

"How long were you in the service?"

"About an hour and a quarter the first time," Budd replied. "It happened in New York, and when I'd signed the roll they put me in a squad to march off somewhere to get our uniforms. The sergeant was a tall guy, greener than spinach, who'd drifted down from Maine a week before, and didn't know no more about New York than a bull calf knows about the New Jerusalem; but he made a bluff and asked the feller next me, whose name was Butch, to give him points at every corner. Well, Butch directed, and His Nibs kept on commanding 'Column left!' and 'Column right!' till we got down to the toughest sort of a district--gas works and lumber yards and such. I didn't know the game, but I dropped to it quick enough when Butch says in a whisper, 'Here's our chance!' and it happened to be the neatest chance a new beginner ever had. You see, in those days when there was a fire pretty near everybody was welcome to catch hold and help pull the machine, and there was always a crowd that come along to holler and keep up the excitement. Well, that's the sort of outfit we come up against. They filled the whole street, yelling and pus.h.i.+ng, and a feller either had to turn and run with them or get knocked down. I didn't stop to see what became of the balance of the squad. I sloped up one street and down another, going like a jack rabbit, till I found myself before a ferry boat. I paid my fare and crossed the river, just to get a chance to think."

"Quite so," the professor sympathized.

"I never meant no harm," the cook protested--"not then. There wouldn't have been much sense in going back, especially when there were other recruiting offices right there in Jersey City. I got another three hundred, but my new sojer clothes was spoiled when I fell off the transport in the dark the night before we sailed--and got drownded. Oh, it was easy enough those days, before a lot of duffers took to the business. But it got so arter awhile that we professionals had to keep away from cities and play the country stations--Citizens' Committees, Women's Aid a.s.sociations, and the subst.i.tute racket. Sometimes I did the farmer boy with cowhide boots and hayseed in my hair, and told about the mortgage on the old place, and the kid that was expected; and there wasn't anything they wouldn't do so I could leave the folks comfortable when I went off to the war. Oh, those were great times. In one day, out the next!"

"And--and was the getting out as easy?" his hearer asked.

"Not quite," Budd admitted; "but pretty near. Say you were at a camp of instruction; then it might be a pa.s.s, or a little something to the sentry, or a brickbat in the dark, if you could throw straight. I gave a feller fifty to let me through once, and then the sucker peached on me, the lowdown sneak! But I got even with him later on. So I went marching out of Philadelphia with the band playing and the women crying and the men what was too delicate to go themselves singing out 'G.o.d bless you, boys!' I tell you what, professor, for a moment I come pretty near to wis.h.i.+ng I was playing square."

"A pa.s.sing sentiment, I'm sure," said the geologist.

"Sure!" cried Budd, delighted with his hearer's sympathy. "I'd like to see the sentiment that would hold out after a couple of nights building intrenchments in the rain. How could I help it if when the sentry's back was turned the pick flew out of my hand and clipped him right behind the ear? It was the same cuss who had blocked my game the week before."

"Good!" laughed the professor.

"He dropped," went on the cook, "and that was all I wanted. I lit out and lay around in barns and corn cribs, living on raw carrots and what eggs I found in the straw, till I guessed they must be tired looking for me, and then one morning early I crept out and scared an old black aunty who was feedin' chickens into fits. But I reckon I wasn't the first strange bird she'd seen that summer, for she fed me, and that night she steered me to a friend of hers who was in the clothing business and did a little bartering evenings. He charged a hundred for a suit of hand-me-downs and twenty for a hair cut and a shave--we enlisters never argued over trifles--and s.h.i.+pped me back to Pennsylvania. But maybe you won't believe it--by that time I had sorter lost my nerve. I got a notion in my head that every man who looked my way was spying on me. I couldn't pa.s.s the time of day with anyone who didn't seem to talk about deserters. I was afraid to get a gold piece changed, for all the gold went out of sight about that time, and just to have one was suspicious.

So what do you think I did? I walked right into a recruiting station and enlisted without getting a cent. 'Rah for the flag!' I says. 'Gimme a gun. I want to fight.' That was in Pittsburgh."

The professor's start was too slight to break the narrative, but if possible his watchfulness deepened; he leaned forward and his eyes held those of Budd.

"Yes," the cook continued, "in Pittsburgh. Same old band; same old handkerchiefs waving; same old 'G.o.d bless you, boys!' I thought at first I was all right and 'twould be the same old game, but it wasn't. They had me spotted with a lot of others, and they kept us guarded like a parcel of wild beasts, for all we was enlisted regular in the 120th Pennsylvania."

"The 120th Pennsylvania?" repeated the professor slowly.

"That's what I said!" Budd resented the interruption. "And I tell you it was no way to treat men. There must have been forty of us shut up in a baggage car with no light or air but from one door open at the end, and there we was for days and nights, and a tough lot, too! Bounty men and subst.i.tutes and drafted truck, slamming along to the front, cussing our luck, and everyone of us ready to bolt at the first chance. I stood it till I heard the guns roaring like sin, not five miles off. Say, did you ever hear that sound? Did you ever hear a gun you knew was fired at real men and sending them to Kingdom Come? I heard it once, and that was enough. We was laying flat along the floor, side by side as though we was dead already, and next me was a German-looking guy, what had been praying and swearing, turn about, ever since we started. When he heard the firing, he went clean off his nut; he'd have blown his brains out rather than take the chance of letting somebody else do it for him; he'd have fought the Union army single-handed sooner than listen to them shots another minute. Well, to make a long story short, him and me we fixed up a scheme."

The speaker caught his breath to listen, for the forest seemed suddenly alive with sound and motion. A cloud swept down the valley of the North Fork, so low that shreds of scud were caught in the topmost branches.

Hail pattered on the wire gra.s.s. The tent curtains flapped noisily, and in the shadow the aspen leaves flashed white as though a mailed army sprang from ambush.

"Go on!" the professor urged, and the cook held up a brawny fist and shook it at the universe defiantly.

"I'll tell it now," he cried, "and all the winds that ever blew sha'n't shout me down! Here's how it was." He faltered, and the professor prompted him.

"There's where you lay," he said, making a gesture to indicate the ranks of trembling men.

"There's where we lay," Budd echoed dully.

"And there was the door," said the professor softly. He pointed to a tree at the canon's brink.

"Yes, yes!" cried Budd, "there was the door. The platform was outside, and there were two on guard. I was to spring out first--so," he jumped up--"and tackle the one farthest off. The Dutchman was to grab the other from behind. Mine was a stout young feller."

"A stout young fellow," repeated the professor.

"Yes," and the cook stood motionless as though some vision rose before him. "I can see him now, with straight back and crisp curly brown hair."

"A little curly," murmured the other.

"Percy, they called him," said Budd.

"Percy?" echoed the professor. "You are sure it was Percy?"

"Sure as you're sitting there!" cried Budd. "'Keep your eyes open, Percy, they're a bad lot.' That's what the corporal told him when he went on guard. Lord! but it was a pity!" He chuckled inanely, swaying on his feet.

"What then?" inquired the man from Charbridge, rising slowly.

Budd cowered before his questioner's eyes as he might have cowered when those long silent guns were booming had the tall young fellow turned.

"Nothing!" he muttered sullenly. "Nothing, so help me G.o.d! I didn't do it."

"You lie!" retorted the small man quietly.

Budd laughed a foolish laugh. "There's where we lay," he babbled, "just where your foot is, me and the Dutchman and the balance of us, and here was the door----"

He lurched toward the aspen tree and laid a hand upon its trunk to keep from falling. The professor followed and stood close behind.

"What do you want?" cried Budd, wheeling in sudden panic.

"To learn the manner of my brother's death," the other answered between lips that scarcely moved.

The voice of the pines was like the rumble of a railway train; the winds boomed down from timber line like thunders of artillery; the hailstones struck the aspens' leaves like bullets, and over all the laugh of Budd rang in maniacal mirth.

The professor held his eye steadily; then abruptly: "Turn out the guard!" he shouted.

"Choke him, you big Dutch fool!" Budd called back in response, as with his bare arms he grappled with an invisible adversary.

He of the straight back and curly hair had been a strong young fellow, but, taken unawares, the contest was bound to go against him. Once, it seemed, he had brought Budd to his knees; once he had nearly hurled him from the rocking car; but his knapsack must have hampered him, and his musket and heavy cartridge box. The bounty jumper fought in silence and with desperate method, gaining advantage every moment; while one hand pinioned a phantom forearm, the other closed with murderous clutch upon a ghostly throat. Meanwhile the professor stood by with folded arms watching critically, one would have thought impartially.

It was over presently, and Budd stood breathing hard. Then--

"Jump for your life!" commanded the professor.

Without an instant's hesitation, Budd crept to the canon's brink and peered below.

"All right!" he whispered. "Good-by, Dutch! We're free!"