When Lafe Hornbeck looked into the countenance of the strange man who appeared thus unexpectedly before him in the deserted breastwork, it needed no second glance to tell him that he had to deal with a scoundrel. A threatening and formidable scoundrel he seemed, too, with his heavy, slouching shoulders, his long arms ending in huge, hairy hands, and the surly scowl on his low-browed, frowzy face.
He wore the dark-blue jacket and light-blue trousers of the Federal infantry, and their relative newness showed that he was a fresh recruit. His badge was the Maltese cross of the Fifth Corps, and its color, red, indicated the First Division. This was the corps and division of Boyce\'s brigade.
Even in the first minute of surprised scrutiny of the fellow Lafe found himself thinking that he probably belonged to that Ohio regiment which he had seen bringing up the rear of the line forming for battle.
"drop it, I say!" the man repeated, harshly.
Lafe drew his hand from the haversack slowly and reluctantly.
"There\'s enough more of \'em here," he protested, nodding at the pile in the corner of the earthwork. "I haven\'t had a mouthful since before sunrise, and I\'m hungry."
"Where\'d you come from, anyway, and what business have you got here?" the other demanded, with an oath and a forward step.
"I\'m Fifth Corps, same as you are," replied Lafe, making an effort to keep his voice bold and firm, "and I came here by tumbling head over heels down that hill there, right spang from top to bottom." He took courage from the indecision apparent in the man\'s eyes to add, "And that\'s why I\'m going to have something to eat."
The stranger gave a grunt, which, bad-tempered though it was, did not seem to forbid the action, and Lafe drew forth the bread again. It was dry and tasteless enough, but he almost forgot to look at his unwelcome companion in the satisfaction which he had in gulping down the food.
The man lounged over to the pile of haversacks, muskets, and clothing, and seemed to be trying to make out whether anything was missing. He grunted again, and turned to Lafe just as the last crust was disappearing.
"You\'re a drummer, ain\'t you?" he said roughly. "Where do you belong?"
Lafe held up his hand to signify that his mouth was too full to talk. "Boyce\'s brigade," he explained, after a little.
"That ain\'t what I asked. What\'s your regiment?"
"Haven\'t got any regiment," replied Lafe. "I\'m in the brigade band."
"Oh!" growled the man, and turned on his heel. The information seemed to relieve his mind, for when he had taken a few loitering steps about the enclosure, and confronted Lafe again, his tone was less quarrelsome. "Left the hospital camp up there, eh?" he asked, with a sidelong nod of his head toward the top of the hill.
"Well, yes—and no," responded the boy. "It was there when I left it, but it ain\'t there now. Or rather, it is there, but we ain\'t there."
"What are you driving at?" the man demanded, once more in a rougher voice.
"The rebs have gobbled it," said Lafe. "Our folks were skedaddling and the rebs were coming in the last I saw."
The man gave a low whistle of surprise and interest. He began walking about again, bending his ugly brows in thought meanwhile. From time to time he paused to ask other questions, as to which way the people of the brigade camp had fled, how large was the force which had captured the camp, and the like.
The news evidently impressed him a good deal. Lafe got the idea that somehow it changed his plans. What were these plans? the boy wondered. The whole thing was very hard to make out. More than once he had had it in mind to say that he had left another member of the band, a very nice fellow indeed, up on the side-hill above them, who must also be hungry, and to suggest that he should call him down.
But every time, when this rose to his tongue, a glance at the evil face of the man restrained him. He could not but remember what Foldeen had hinted, that there was some "deviltry" going on down below here. What was it?
"There must have been some pretty tough fighting right here," he ventured to remark, after a while.
"You bet there was!" the other assented. He seemed not averse to a little talk, though his mind was still on other things.
"I don\'t quite figure it out," the boy went on, cautiously. "Of course, wrastling round in the woods like this, you can\'t make head nor tail of how things go, or who\'s on top, or where—but how does it stand—right here, I mean? We\'re in our own lines here, ain\'t we?"
The stranger fixed a long, inquiring glance upon the boy\'s face. Lafe returned the gaze with all the calmness he could muster. He could not help feeling that there was a good deal of stupidity in the stare under which he bore up. The man was not quick-minded; that was clear enough. But it was also plain that he was both a stubborn and a brutal creature.
"Yes," he growled, after he had stared Lafe out of countenance, "yes, these are our own lines."
The phrase seemed to tickle his fancy, for something like the beginning of a grin stirred on the stubbly surface about his mouth. "Yes—our own lines," he repeated. How strange it was! All at once, like a flash, Lafe remembered having seen this man before. That slow, sulky wavering of a grimace on his lips betrayed him. Swiftly pursuing the clue, the boy reconstructed in his mind a scene in which this man had played the chief part.
It must have been in the early part of the previous December—just after the army went into winter quarters behind the line of the Orange railroad, cooped up in its earth-huts all the way from Culpeper Court House to Brandy Station. Lafe had gone over on leave one afternoon to the corps headquarters—it must have been of a Thursday, because there was to be a military execution the next day, and these were always fixed for Friday.
The army was then receiving almost weekly large batches of raw recruits, sent from the big cities, some the product of the draft, others forwarded by the enlistment bureaus. Among these new-comers were many good citizens and patriots; but there were also a great many cowards and a considerable number of scoundrels who made a business of enlisting to get the bounty, deserting as soon as they could, and enlisting again from some other point.
To prevent wholesale desertions, both of the cowards and the "bounty-jumpers," the utmost vigilance was needed. Their best chance to run away was offered by picket duty, when they found themselves posted out in comparative solitude, in the dark, on the very outskirts of the army line.
To checkmate this, a cordon of cavalry had to be drawn still farther out than the pickets—cavalry-men who slept all day, and at night patrolled the uttermost confines of the great camp, watching with all their eyes and ears, ready on the instant to clap spurs and ride down any skulking wretch who could be discovered attempting his escape.
Even in the teeth of this precaution, the attempts were continually made, and it was the rarest event for a Friday to pass without the spectacle of summary punishment being meted out to some captured deserter on the corps\' shooting-ground. Often there were more than one of these victims to martial law.
Lafe now remembered how, with a boy\'s curiosity, he had prowled about the provost marshal\'s guard quarters, fascinated by the idea that inside the log shanty, where the two sentinels with fixed bayonets walked constantly up and down, there were men condemned to be shot at six the following morning.
Standing around, and gossiping amiably with these sentinels, who shared the common feeling of the army in making pets of the drummer-boys, he had managed at last to get a glimpse at one of these fated prisoners.
A face had appeared at the little window, square-cut in the logs. It was a bad, unkempt face, with a reddish stubble of beard on jaws and cheek. There may have been some rough jest passed by the other prisoners inside the hut, for as the boy watched this face, a grim, mean sort of smile flickered momentarily over it.
Then the face itself disappeared, and left the boy marvelling that a man could grin in presence of the fact that he was to be shot on the morrow.
The smile, and the countenance it played upon for that instant of time, burned themselves into his memory. Lafe racked his brain now for some recollection of having heard that these particular prisoners............