John Brown’s Body: Book III

By Pittsburg Landing, the turbid Tennessee Sucks against black, soaked spiles with soil-colored waters. That country is huge and disorderly, even now. —This is Ellyat’s tune, this is no tune but his— Country of muddy rivers, sombre and swollen, Country of bronze wild turkeys and catfish-fries And brushpile landings going back to the brush. A province of mush and milk, a half-cleared forest, A speckled guinea-cock that never was cooped But ran away to grow his spurs by himself. Neither North nor South, but crunching a root of its own Between strong teeth—perhaps a wild-onion-root, Perhaps a white stalk of arbutus, hardier there, Than any phantom-arbutus of Eastern Springs. A mudsill man with the river-wash in his ears, Munching the coarse, good meal of a johnny-cake Hot from the hob—even now it tastes of the brush, The wilderness, the big lost star in the pines, The brown river-dirt, the perpetual river-sound, In spite of the sidewalks, in spite of the trolley-cars. No trolley-car-bell can drown that river-sound, Or take the loneliness out of the lost moon, The night too big for a man, too lonesome and wide. The vastness has been netted in railroad tracks But it is still vast, uneasy. And when the brief Screech of the railway-whistle stabs at the trees That grow so thick, so unplanned, so untidily strong On either side of the two planned ribs of steel, Ghost-steamboats answer it from the sucking brown water.

In Sixty-two, it was shaggy with wilderness still For stretches and stretches of close-packed undergrowth, Wild as a muskrat, ignorant of the axe; Stretches and stretches where roughly-chinked log-cabins, Two shouts and a holler away from the nearest neighbors, Stood in a wisp of open. All night long The cabin-people heard the chant of the trees, The forest, hewn away from the painful clearing For a day or a year, with sweat and back-breaking toil, But waiting to come back, to crush the crude house And the planted space with vines and trailers of green, To quench the fire on the hearth with running green saps, With a chant of green, with tiny green tendrils curling, —This is Ellyat’s tune, this is no tune but his— The railway-train goes by with a shrill, proud scream And the woman comes to the door in a butternut dress Hair tousled up in a knot on the back of her head, A barefoot child at her skirt. The train goes by. They watch it with a slow wonder that is not pathos Nor heroism but merely a slow wonder.

Jack Ellyat, in camp above Pittsburg Landing, Speck in Grant’s Army of the Tennessee, Thought of old fences in Connecticut With a homesick mind. This country was too new, Too stragglingly-unplanned, too muddy with great, Uncomfortable floods, too roughly cut With a broad hatchet out of a hard tree.

It had seemed fine when he was mustered out After Bull Run, to wear a veteran air, And tell pink Ellen Baker about war And how, as soon as he could re-enlist He’d do it where he got a chance to fight— Wet mouth of tears—he hadn’t wanted to kiss her At first, but it was easier later on. Why had he ever gone out to Chicago? Why had he ever heard that shallow band Whanging its brass along a Western street And run to sign the muster-roll again? Why had he ever talked about Bull Run To these green, husky boys from Illinois And Iowa, whose slang was different slang, Who called suspenders galluses and swore In the sharp pops of a mule-driver’s whip? Bull Run—it had impressed them for a week But then they started to call him “Bull Run Jack.” …

Henry Fairfield marching along with his sword, All the old company marching after him Back in McClellan’s army, back by the known Potomac, back in the safe and friendly East; All the papers telling how brave they were And how, as soon as the roads dried up in the spring, “The little Napoleon” would hammer the South to bits With a blue thunderbolt. And here he was A lost pea, spilt at random in a lost war; A Tennessee war that had no Tribunes or polish, Where he was the only Easterner in the whole Strange-swearing regiment of Illinois farmers, Alien as Rebels, and rough as all outdoors.

He wanted to get transferred, he wanted to be Back with the company, back with the Eastern voices, Back where nobody called him “Bull Run Jack” And snickered at him for shaving every two days. He’d written about it and Father knew a congressman But nothing would happen—he’d never get away, He’d stay being Bull Run Jack till the end of the war And march through acres of hostile Tennessee mud Till his legs dropped off, and never get to be Corporal. He was sick of the war and the mud and the Western faces. He hated the sight of his Illinois uniform. He was sorry for himself. He felt with a vague Soft blur of self-pity that he was really quite brave, And if people only knew, they’d do something about it.

This is Ellyat’s tune, this is no tune but his. Nine months have passed since McDowell reddened Bull Run, Nine strong-hoofed months, but they have meant little to Ellyat. What means the noise of the wind to the dust in the wind? But the wind calls strange things out, calls strange men out, A dozen pictures flash in front of the eyes And are gone in a flash— rough-bearded Tecumseh Sherman, Who had tried most things, but being cursed with a taste For honesty, had found small luck in his stars; Ex-soldier, banker, lawyer, each in its turn, Ex-head of a Southern military-school, Untidy ex-president of a little horse-railroad; Talkative, nervous, salty, Scotch-Irish fighter, High-strung, quick-tempered, essentially modern-minded, Stamping the length of the dusty corridors Of a Western hotel with a dead cigar in his teeth, Talking the war to himself, till the word goes round The new general is crazy— neat, handsome McClellan, Ex-railroad president too, but a better railroad; The fortunate youth, the highly-modern boy-wonder, The snapping-eyed, brisk banner-salesman of war With all the salesman’s gifts and the salesman’s ego; Great organizer, with that magnetic spark That pulls the heart from the crowd—and all of it spoiled By the Napoleon-complex that haunts such men. There never has been a young banner-salesman yet That did not dream of a certain little cocked-hat And feel it fit. McClellan felt that it fitted. —After a year and a day, the auditors come, Dry auditors, going over the books of the company, Sad auditors, with groups of red and black figures That are not moved by a dream of precious cocked hats. And after the auditors go, the board of directors, Decides, with a sigh, to do without banner-salesmen.— It is safer to dream of a rusty Lincoln stovepipe. That dream has more patience in it. And yet, years later, Meeting the banner-salesman in some cheap street With the faded clippings of old success in his pocket, One cannot help feeling sorry for the cocked hat So briefly worn in a dream of luck and the ego. One cannot help feeling sorry for George McClellan, He should have been a hero by every rule. He looked the part—he could have acted the part Word perfectly. He looked like an empire-maker. But so few empire-makers have looked the part.

Fate has a way of picking unlikely material, Greasy-haired second lieutenants of French artillery, And bald-headed, dubious, Roman rake-politicians. Her stiff hands were busy now with an odd piece of wood, Sometime Westpointer, by accident more than choice, Sometime brevet-captain in the old Fourth Infantry, Mentioned in Mexican orders for gallant service And, six years later, forced to resign from the Army Without enough money to pay for a stateroom home. Turned farmer on Hardscrabble Farm, turned bill-collector, Turned clerk in the country-store that his brothers ran, The eldest-born of the lot, but the family-failure, Unloading frozen hides from a farmer’s sleigh With stoop-shouldered strength, whittling beside the stove, And now and then turning to whiskey to take the sting From winter and certain memories. It didn’t take much. A glass or two would thicken the dogged tongue And flush the fair skin beneath the ragged brown beard. Poor and shabby—old “Cap” Grant of Galena, Who should have amounted to something but hadn’t so far Though he worked hard and was honest. A middle-aged clerk, A stumpy, mute man in a faded army overcoat, Who wrote the War Department after Fort Sumter, Offering them such service as he could give And saying he thought that he was fit to command As much as a regiment, but getting no answer.

So many letters come to a War Department, One can hardly bother the clerks to answer them all— Then a Volunteer colonel, drilling recruits with a stick, A red bandana instead of an officer’s sash; A brigadier-general, one of thirty-seven, Snubbed by Halleck and slighted by fussy Frémont; And then the frozen February gale Over Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, The gunboats on the cold river—the brief siege— “Unconditional surrender”—and the newspapers.

Major-General Grant, with his new twin-stars, Who, oddly, cared so little for reading newspapers, Though Jesse Grant wrote dozens of letters to them Pointing out all the wonders his son had done And wringing one dogged letter from that same son That should have squelched anybody but Jesse Grant. It did not squelch him. He was a business man, And now Ulysses had astonished Galena By turning out to be somebody after all; Ulysses’ old father was going to see him respected And, incidentally, try to wangle a contract For army-harness and boom the family tannery. It was a great surprise when Ulysses refused, The boy was so stubborn about it. And everywhere Were business-people, picking up contraband cotton, Picking up army-contracts, picking up shoddy, Picking up shoes and blankets, picking up wagons, Businesslike robins, picking up juicy earthworms, Picking up gold all over Tom-Tiddler’s Ground, And Ulysses wouldn’t see it. Few people have been More purely Yankee, in essence, than Jesse Grant.

More pictures—Jefferson Davis, in dripping Spring rain, Reading a chilly inauguration-address To an unstirred crowd. He is really President now. His eyes are more tired, his temper beginning to fray. A British steamer in the Bahama Channel Stopped by a Captain Wilkes and a Union cruiser. They take two men, and let the steamer puff on —And light a long hissing fuse that for a month Nearly brings war with England. Lincoln and Seward Stamp out the fuse, and let the Confederates go— Wooden frigates at anchor in Hampton Roads Burning and sinking with tattered banners apeak Under the strange new, armadillo-bite Of something plated with iron that yet can float, The Merrimac—and all Washington and the North In a twenty-four-hours’ panic—then, next day— As Lincoln stares from the window of the White House For the sooty sign in the sky that means defeat— The armadillo, smoking back in her pride To crunch up another meal of weak wooden ships, Is beaten off by another leaky prodigy A tin-can cylinder on a floating shingle, The Monitor—the first fight of ironclads, The sinking of all the world’s old sea-bitten names, Temeraire, Victory, and Constellation, Serapis, Bon Homme Richard, Golden Hind, Galleys of Antony, galleys of Carthage, Galleons with gilded Virgins, galleasses, Viking long-serpents, siren-haunted galliots, Argos and argosies and the Achaean pride, Moving to sea in one long wooden wall Behind the huge ghost-flagship of the Ark In such a swelling cloud of phantom sail They whitened Ocean—going down by the head, Green water seeping through the battened ports, Spreading along the scrubbed and famous decks, Going down—going down—going down—to mermaid-pools, To Fiddler’s Green—to the dim barnacle-thrones, Where Davy Jones drinks everlasting rum With the sea-horses of his sunken dreams.

But this is Ellyat’s tune—and if the new Army of the Potomac stands astrain To end Secession with its “little Napoleon.” If Lee is just about to find his hour; If, among many mirrors and gilt chairs, Under the flare of the gas-chandeliers A sallow-faced and puffy Emperor With waxed mustachios and a slick goatee Gave various Southern accents, talking French, Evasive answers and no definite help, Ready enough to recognize the South If he were sure of profit in the scheme But not yet finding such a profit sure; If in the foggy streets of Westminster, The salty streets of Liverpool and Hull, The same mole-struggle in the dark went on Between Confederate and Unionist— The Times raved at the North—Mr. Gladstone thought England might recognize the South next year, While Palmerston played such a tangled game It is illegible yet—and Henry Adams Added one more doubt to his education By writing propaganda for the North, It is all mist to Ellyat. And when he sleeps, He does not dream of Grant or Lee or Lincoln. He only dreams that he is back at home With a heroic wound that does not hurt, A uniform that never stings with lice, And a sword like Henry Fairfield’s to show Ellen Baker.

As far as the maps and the blocks on the maps have meaning, The situation is this. A wide Western river, A little lost landing, with a steamboat-store, A post office where the roads from the landings meet, A plank church three miles inland called Shiloh Chapel, An undulating and broken table-land Roughed into a triangle by bordering creeks. Each side of the triangle runs about four miles long And, scattered in camps from the tip of the triangle To the base at the landing, are thirty-three thousand men, Some fairly seasoned in war, but many green sticks, Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Down the river Don Carlos Buell has twenty-five thousand more In the Army of the Ohio. Opposing these Are Albert Sidney Johnston and Beauregard With something like forty-thousand butternut fighters, Including a martial bishop. Johnston plans To smash Grant’s army to bits, before Buell can join it, And water his wagon-trains in the Tennessee. He has sneaked his army along through wilderness roads Till now they are only a mile and a half away Tonight from the Union lines. He is tall and active. Light brown hair streaked with grey feathers, blue claymore eyes That get steel shadows in battle, a face like Hamilton’s, Old Westpointer, old cavalry-colonel, well-schooled in war. Lincoln offered to make him a major-general And rumor says that he could have had the command Of the Union armies, once. But he resigned And later, went with his State. It is hard to say What he might have been. They called him the “preux chevalier” At times, as they called and were to call many others With that Waverley-streak that was so strong in the South. They also called him one of Davis’s pets, One of the tin Westpointers that Davis favored Above good politicians and courtesy colonels. The Richmond Enquirer didn’t think so much of him, His soldiers thought rather more. Only this can be said. He caught Grant napping in some strange flaw of skill Which happened once and did not happen again. And drove his unprepared, unwatchful brigades Back almost into the river. And in the heat Of seeing his lines go forward, he bled to death From a wound that should not have been mortal. After which, While the broken Union stragglers under the bluff Were still howling that they were beaten, Buell came up, Lew Wallace came up, the knife half-sunk in the wound Was not thrust home, the night fell, the battle lagged. The bulldog got the bone in his teeth again And next day, reinforced, beat Beauregard back And counted a Union victory. In the books Both sides claim victory on one day or the other And both claims seem valid enough. It only remains To take the verdict of the various dead In this somewhat indecisive meeting of blocks. There were thirty-five hundred dead when the blocks had met. But, being dead, their verdict is out of court. They cannot puzzle the books with their testimony.

Now, though, it is only the evening before the day. Johnston and Beauregard meet with their corps-commanders By the wagon-cut Pittsburg road. The march has been slow. The marching men have been noisy and hard to manage. By every rule of war, Grant must have been warned Long before now, and is planning an ambush for them. They are being marched into an open Union trap. So Beauregard thinks and says—and is perfectly right According to rules. There is only one difficulty. There is no ambush. Sherman has just reported The presence of enemy troops in front of his lines But says he expects nothing more than some picket-firing And Grant that evening telegraphs General Halleck, “I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack.”

So much for the generals. Beauregard makes his point And is overruled. The April night comes down. The butternut men try to get some sleep while they can. They are to be up and fighting by five in the morning.

Jack Ellyat, least of any, expected attack. He woke about five with a dazzle struck in his eyes Where a long dawn-ray slid through a crack in the tent. He cursed at the ray and tried to go back to sleep But he couldn’t do it, although he was tired enough, Something ate at his mind as soon as he wakened And kept on eating. This morning was Sunday morning. The bells would be jangling for church back home, pretty soon, The girls would be going to church in white Sunday dresses, No, it was too early for that—they’d be muffled up In coats and galoshes. Their cheeks would be pink as apples. He wanted to see a girl who washed her hair, Not a flat old woman sucking a yellow snuffstick Or one of the girls in the dirty blue silk wrappers With flags on their garters. He wanted to see a girl.

He wondered idly about the flags on the garters. Did they change them to Rebel flags when the Rebels came? Some poor whore down the river had had herself Tattoed with a Secesh flag. She was patriotic. She cried so hard when the Union troops were landed That the madam had to hide her down in the cellar. He must be bad to be thinking of things like that On Sunday morning. He’d better go to church If they had any kind of church, and make up for it— O frosty churchbells jangling across the thin Crust of packed frost, under Connecticut sky, Put snow on my tongue, and the grey, cool flower of rain— He had to get up. He couldn’t lie here and listen To Bailey and the rest of them, snoring away. His throat was dry. He needed a drink of water But not from a muddy river—put rain on my tongue! Souse me with chilly, sweet flaws of Puritan rain— He started to put on his boots, looking over at Bailey. Bailey was bearded, Bailey was thirty-two, Bailey had been a teamster and was a corporal. The waking Bailey looked like a stupid horse, The sleeping Bailey looked like a dirty sack, Bailey called him “Colonel” and didn’t mean it, Bailey had had him tossed in a blanket once, Bailey had told the tale of the tattooed whore, Somehow he hated Bailey worse than the rest. He managed to leave the tent without waking Bailey. It was very early still. The sun was just up. A fair sky, a very fair day. The air still held That bloom which is not the bloom on apple or peach But the bloom on a fruit made up of pure water and light, The freshness of dawn, still trembling, being new-born. He sucked at it gratefully. The camp was asleep. All that length of tents still asleep. He could see through the tents. He could see all those sleeping, rough, lousy, detested men Laden with sleep as with soft leaden burdens laden, Movelessly lying between the brown fawns of sleep Like infants nuzzled against the flanks of a doe, In quietness slumbering, in a warm quietness, While sleep looked at them with her fawn’s agate eyes And would not wake them yet. And he was alone, And for a moment, could see this, and see them so And, being free, stand alone, and so being free To love or hate, do neither, but merely stand Above them like sleep and see them with untouched eyes. In a while they would wake, and he would hate them again. But now he was asleep. He was the sun on the coat Of the halted fawn at the green edge of the wood Staring at morning. He could not hate them yet.

Somebody near by, in the woods, took a heap of dry sticks, And began to break them quickly, first one by one, Then a dozen together, then hard-cracking axe-helves breaking. Ellyat was running. His mouth felt stiff with loud words Though he heard no sound from his mouth. He could see the white Fine pine-splinters flying from those invisible axe-helves. …

For a minute all of them were tangled together In the bucking tent like fish in a canvas scoop, Then they were out of it somehow—falling in line— Bailey’s hair looked angry and sleepy. The officers Were yelling the usual things that officers yelled. It was a surprise. They were going to be licked again. It did not matter yet. It would matter soon. Bailey had lost his blouse and his pants weren’t buttoned. He meant to tell Bailey about it. There wasn’t time. His eyes felt bald as glass but that was because He kept looking for flying pine-splinters in the air. Now they were setting off firecrackers under a boiler And a man ran past with one hand dripping red paint, Holding the hand with his other hand and talking As if the hurt hand were a doll. An officer hit him With the flat of a sword. It spanked some dust from his coat And the man’s face changed from a badly-fitting mask Of terror, cut into ridges of sallow wax, To something pink and annoyed, but he kept on running. All this happened at once as they were moving. The dawn had been hit to pieces with a hard mallet. There were no fawns. There was an increasing noise Through which he heard the lugubrious voice of Bailey Singing off-key, like a hymn, “When I was a weaver, I lived by myself, And I worked at the weaver’s tra-a-de—”

The officers were barking like foxes now.

As the last tent dropped behind them, Ellyat saw A red, puzzled face, looking out from under a tent-flap, Like a bear from a cave. The face had been drunk last night, And it stared at the end of the column with a huge and stupid wisdom.

“When I was a weaver, I lived by myself, And I worked at the weaver’s trade—”

Jack Ellyat found himself back behind somebody’s tent After a while. He had been out in the woods. He remembered scrouging against a too-porous tree For a day or a number of minutes while he jerked A rattling ramrod up and down in a gun. But they couldn’t stay in the woods—they had to come back. They had called him “Bull Run Jack” but they had to come back, Bailey and all the rest. He had come back with them, But that was different—that was all right for him. This red-colored clang of haste was different for him. Bailey and all the rest could run where they liked. He was an old soldier. He would stay here and fight.

Running, he tripped on a rope, and began to fall, Bailey picked him back on his feet. “Did they get you, Bud?” “No, they didn’t get me.” Ellyat’s voice was a snarl. What business had Bailey steadying him like that? He hadn’t been running. Suddenly he saw Gray shouting strangers bursting into the tents And his heart shrank up in a pea. “Oh hell,” he said, Hopelessly ramming a cartridge. He was an old soldier. He wasn’t going to run. He was going to act Vast fictive heroisms in front of Bailey, If they only gave him time, just a little time.

A huge horse rose above the wall of the tent And hung there a second like a bad prodigy, A frozen scream full of hoofs. He struck at its head And tried to get out from under as it lunged down But he wasn’t quite quick enough. As he slipped and fell He saw the laughter pasted on Bailey’s face But before he could hear the laugh, the horse had fallen, Jarring the world. After blunt, sickly time A fat young man with a little pink moustache Was bawling “Hey, Yank, surrender!” into his ear And nervously waving a pistol in front of his eyes. He nodded weakly. “Hey, boys,” called the fat young man, “I got two Yanks!” His mouth was childish with pleasure. He was going to tell everybody he had two Yanks. “Here, Yank, come and pull the horse off the other Yank.”

The prisoner’s column straggled along the road All afternoon. Jack Ellyat marched in it numbly. He was stiff and sore. They were going away from the battle But they could still hear it, quaking, The giant stones rolled over the grumbling bridge.

Some of the prisoners tried to joke with the guards, Some walked in silence, some spoke out now and then, As if to explain to the world why they were there.

One man said, “I got a sore heel.” Another said, “All the same the Tenth Missouri’s a damn good regiment.” Another said, “Listen, boys, don’t it beat all hell? I left my tobacco behind me, back in the tent, Don’t it beat all hell to lose your tobacco like that?”

Bailey kept humming the “Weaver,” but now and then He broke it off, to say, with a queer satisfaction, “Well, we surely did skedaddle—we surely did.” Jack Ellyat had said nothing for a long time. This was war, this was Phaëton, this was the bronze chariot Rolling the sky. If he had a soul any more It felt scrawny and thin as a sick turkey-poult. It was not worth the trouble to fatten. He tried to fatten it With various thoughts, now and then, but the thoughts were spoilt Corn. They had damn well skedaddled. They damn well had. That was all. The rest of the army could win or lose They had surely skedaddled. They had been whipped again. He had been whipped again. He was no longer The old soldier—no longer even “Bull Run Jack.” He had lost a piece of himself. It had ragged edges That piece. He could see it left behind in the tents Under a dirty coat and a slab of tobacco.

After a while he knocked against Bailey’s arm. “Where are we going?” he said, in a shy voice. Bailey laughed, not badly, “Well, Colonel, Corinth I guess, Corinth first—and then some damn prison-camp.” He spat in the road. “It won’t be good grub,” he said. “Bacon and hominy-grits. They don’t eat right. They don’t eat nothing but bacon and hominy-grits. God, I’m goin’ to get tired of bacon and hominy-grits!”

Ellyat looked. There was something different about him. He stated a fact. “You’ve buttoned your pants,” he said. “I remember you didn’t have ’em buttoned this morning.”

“That’s so,” said Bailey, impressed, “Now when did I button em?” They chewed at the question, trying to puzzle it out. It seemed very important to both for quite a long time.

It was night now. The column still marched. But Bailey and Ellyat Had dropped to the rear of the column, planning escape. There were few guards and the guards were as tired as they. Two men could fall in a ditch by the side of the road And get away, perhaps, if they picked a good time. They talked it over in stupid whispers of weariness. The next bend—no, the guard was coming along. The next bend after—no, there was light for a moment From a brief star, then clouded—the top of the hill— The bottom of the hill—and they still were marching. Rain began to fall, a drizzle at first, then faster. Ellyat’s eyes were thick. He walked in a dream, A heavy dream, cut from leaden foil with blunt shears. Then Bailey touched him—he felt the tired bones of his skull Click with a sudden spark—his feet stopped walking— He held his breath for an instant, And then wearily slumped in the ditch with enormous noise, Hunching his shoulders against a phantom bayonet.

But when he could raise his head, the column had gone. He felt fantastic. They couldn’t escape like this. You had to escape like a drawing in Harper’s Weekly With stiff little men on horses like sickle-pears Firing round frozen cream-puffs into your back. But they had escaped. Life came back to him in a huge Wave of burnt stars. He wanted to sing and yell. He crackled out of the ditch and stood beside Bailey. Had he ever hated Bailey? It could not have been. He loved Bailey better than anything else in the world.

They moved slyly toward the woods, they were foxes escaped. Wise foxes sliding away to a hidden earth To a sandy floor, to the warm fawn-flanks of sweet sleep. … And then an awful molasses-taffy voice Behind them yelled “Halt!” and “Halt!” and—sudden explosion Of desultory popcorn in iron poppers— Wild running at random—a crash among broken boughs— A fighting sound—Bailey’s voice, half-strangled but clear, “Run like hell, Jack, they’ll never catch you!” He ran like hell.

Time passed like the rain. Time passed and was one with the rain.

Ellyat woke from a nightmare and put out his hand To touch the wall by his bed, but there was no wall. Then he listened for Bailey’s snoring. And he heard The gorged, sweet pouring of water through infinite boughs, The hiss of the big spilt drop on the beaten leaf, The bird-voiced and innumerable rain, A wet quail piping, a thousand soaked black flutes Building a lonely castle of sliding tears, Strange and half-cruel as a dryad’s bright grief.

Ellyat huddled closer under the tree, Remembering what he could. He had run for years, He had slept for years—and yet it was still not dawn. It seemed cruel to him that it should never be dawn. It seemed cruel that Bailey was lost. He had meant to show Some fictive heroisms in front of Bailey. He had not. Bailey had saved his skin instead, And Bailey was lost. And in him something was lost, Something worse than defeat or this rain—some piece of himself, Some piece of courage. Now the slant rain began To creep through his sodden heart. He thought, with wild awe, “This is Nibelung Hall. I am lying in Nibelung Hall. I am long dead. I fell there out of the sky In a wreck of horses, spilling the ball of the sun, And they shut my eyes with stone runes and put me to sleep On a bier where the living stream perpetually flows Past Ygdrasil and waters the roots of the world. I can hear the ravens scream from the cloudy roof. I can hear the bubbles rising in the clear stream. I can hear the old gods shout in the heathen sky As the hawk-Valkyrie carry the stiffened lumps Of corpse-faced heroes shriekingly to Valhalla. This is Nibelung Hall. I must break the runes from my eyes. I must escape it or die.” He slept. The rain fell.

Melora Vilas, rising by candlelight, Looked at herself in the bottom of the tin basin And wished that she had a mirror. Now Spring was here, She could kneel above the well of a forest pool And see the shadow hidden under the water, The intent brown eyes, the small face cut like a heart. She looked at the eyes and the eyes looked back at her, But just when it seemed they could start to talk to each other— “What are you like? Who are you?”— a ripple flawed The deep glass and the shadow trembled away.

If she only had a mirror, maybe she’d know Something, she didn’t know what, but something important, Something like knowing your skin and you were alive On a good day, something as drenched as sleep, As wise as sleep, as piercing as the bee’s dagger. But she’d never know it unless she could get a mirror And they’d never get a mirror while they were hiders. They were bound to be hiders as long as the war kept on. Pop was that way. She remembered roads and places. She was seventeen. She had seen a lot of places, A lot of roads. Pop was always moving along. Everybody she’d ever known was moving along. —Dusty wagons full of chickens and children, Full of tools and quilts, Rising Sun and Roses of Sharon, Mahogany dressers out of Grandmother’s house, Tin plates, cracked china, a couple of silver spoons, Moving from State to State behind tired, scuffed horses Because the land was always better elsewhere.

Next time they’d quit. Next stop they’d settle right down. Next year they’d have time to rub up the mahogany dresser. Next place, Mom could raise the flowers she wanted to raise. But it never began. They were always moving along.

She liked Kansas best. She wished they’d go back to Kansas. She liked the smell of the wind there. But Pop hadn’t wanted to join with the Free-Soilers And then the slavery men had shot up the town And killed the best horse they had. That had settled Pop. He said something about a plague on both of your houses And moved along. So now they were hiders here And whenever you wanted to ask Pop about the war All he said was that same old thing about the plague. She mustn’t call him Pop—that was movers’-talk. She must call him Father, the way Mom, Mother wanted. But it was hard to remember. Mom talked a lot About old times back in the East and Grandmother’s house. She couldn’t remember an East. The East wasn’t real. There was only the dusty road and moving along. Although she knew that Mom had worn a silk dress And gone to a ball, once. There was a picture of Pop And Mom, looking Eastern, in queer old Eastern clothes. They weren’t white trash. She knew how to read and figure. She’d read Macbeth and Beulah and Oliver Twist. She liked Beulah best but Macbeth would have suited Pop. Sometimes she wondered what had happened to them, When Mother used to live in Grandmother’s house And wear silk dresses, and Father used to read Latin— When had they started to go just moving along, And how would it feel to live in Grandmother’s house?

But it was so long ago, so hard to work out And she liked it this way—she even liked being hiders. It was exciting, especially when the guns Coughed in the sky as they had all yesterday, When Bent hid out in the woods to keep from recruiters, And you knew there were armies stumbling all around you, Big, blundering cows of armies, snuffling and tramping The whole scuffed world with their muddy, lumbering hoofs, Except the little lost brushpile where you were safe. There were guns in the sky again today. Big armies. An army must be fine to look at. But Pop Would never let her do it or understand.

An army or a mirror. She didn’t know Which she’d rather find, but whenever she thought of it The mirror generally won. You could keep a mirror yourself.

She had to call the hogs that afternoon. You had to call them once or twice a month And give them food or else they ran too wild And never came for butchering in the Fall, Though they lived well enough without your calling, Fat in the forest, feeding on beech mast, Wild muscadines and forest provender That made their flesh taste sweet as hazelnuts.

She liked the hogs, they weren’t tame, sleepy hogs Grunting in a black wallow, they were proud Rapid and harsh and savage as Macbeth. There was a young boar that she called Macbeth, She’d seen him fight grey-bristled, drowsy Duncan And drive him from the trough. Fagin was there, Bill Sikes was there and Beulah the black sow, And Lady Macduff whose grunt was half a whine. You could learn lots about a book from hogs. She poured the swill and cupped her hands to call. Sometimes they’d help her with it, Pop or Bent, But Pop was off with Bent this afternoon And Mom was always busy. Slim and straight She stood before the snake-rail pen that kept Macbeths on their own proper side of the fence. “Piggy,” she called. “Here, piggy, piggy, piggy!” It wasn’t the proper call, but the hogs knew That sweet clear loudness with its sleepy silver Trembling against a chanter of white ash. “Here, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy! Here, piggy, piggy!” There was a scrambling noise At the edge of the woods. “Here, piggy!” It was Banquo. Greedy, but hesitant. The Artful Dodger Slim, black and wicked, had two feet in the trough Before that obese indecision moved. “Here, piggy! Here, piggy, piggy!” The gleaming call Floated the air like a bright glassy bubble, Far, far, with its clean silver and white ash. And Ellyat, lost and desperate in the wood, Heard it, desirous as the elvish blast Wound on a tiny horn of magic grass To witch steel riders into a green hill. He stumbled toward its music. “Piggy, piggy, Here, piggy, piggy,” The swine grunted and jostled. Melora watched them, trying to count them up With grave eyes, brown as nuts in rainwater. They were all there, she thought—she must be sure. She called again. No, something moved in the woods. She stared past the clearing, puzzled. So Ellyat saw her Beyond the swine, head lifted like a dark foal That listens softly for strangeness. And she saw An incoherent scarecrow in blue clothes Stagger on wooden feet from the deep wood. She called to him to keep away from the hogs, Half-frightenedly. He did not hear or obey. He was out of Nibelung Hall. She put one hand On the rail of the fence to steady herself and waited. “You can’t come in here,” she said, fiercely. “The hogs’ll kill you.” But he was past the fed hogs and over the fence. She saw a queer look on his face. “You’re hungry,” she said. He grinned, made a noise in his throat, and fell, trying to touch her.

Now that I am clean again, Now I’ve slept and fed, How shall I remember when I was someone dead?

Now the balm has worked its art And the gashes dry, And the lizard at my heart Has a sleepy eye,

How shall I remember yet Freezing underground, With the wakened lizard set To the living wound?

Do not ponder the offence Nor reject the sore, Do not tear the cerements Flesh may need once more.

Cold comes back and pain comes back And the lizard, too. And the burden in the sack May be meant for you.

Do not play the risen dunce With unrisen men. Lazarus was risen once But earth gaped again.

So Ellyat swam back to life, swam back to warmth And the smell of cooking food. It was night. He heard Impenetrable rain shake a low roof And hiss stray, scattering drops on an open fire. But he was safe. That rain was caged in the sky. It could not fall on him. He lay in a lax Idleness, warm and hungry, not wanting to move. A grub in a close cocoon neither bold nor wise, but content.

A tall woman was cooking mush in an iron pot. The smell of the mush was beautiful, the shape of the pot More beautiful than an urn by sea-nymphs carved From sunken marbles stained with the cold sea-rose. The woman was a great Norn, in her pot she cooked a new world, Made of pure vapors and the juices of unspoilt light, A new globe of sulliless amber and grains of white corn, An orbed perfection. All life was beautiful now.

A girl came into the room upon light, quick feet. He stared at her, solemnly. She was young and thin. The small, just head was set on the slender neck With a clean sureness. The heavy hair was a helm Of bronze cooled under a ripple, marked by that flowing. It was not slight but it could not weight her down. Her hands and feet were well made and her body had That effortless ease, that blood that flies with the bird. She saw his open eyes and came over to him, Not shyly but not concernedly. Their eyes met. The older woman kept stirring her melted world. “Well,” said the girl, “You look better.” He nodded, “Yes.” Their eyes said, “I have seen a new thing. In the deep cells Below the paltry clockwork of the ticked heart, I have seen something neither light nor night, A new thing, a new picture. It may mean The lifting of a shut latch. It may mean nothing.”

She made an escaping gesture with her right hand. “You didn’t say who you were,” she said. “You just fell. You better tell who you are, Pop’ll want to know.” A shadow crossed her. “Pop won’t want to keep you,” she said. “But I reckon we’ll have to keep you here for a piece, You’re not fit to travel yet and that’s a fact. You look a little bit like Young Seward,” she said Reflectively, “But sometimes you look more like Oliver. I dunno. What’s your name?” Ellyat put forth his hand Toward being alive again, slowly, hauling it down. He remembered. He was Jack Ellyat. He had been lost. He had lain with hel-shoes on in Nibelung Hall For twenty years. This was the girl with the swine Whose loud sweet calling had come to him in the wood And lifted him back to warmth and a cooking world. He had lost a piece of himself, a piece of life, He must find it, but now— “What’s your name?” he said in a whisper.

This is the hidden place that hiders know. This is where hiders go. Step softly, the snow that falls here is different snow, The rain has a different sting. Step softly, step like a cloud, step softly as the least Whisper of air against the beating wing, And let your eyes be sealed With two blue muscadines Stolen from secret vines, Or you will never find in the lost field The table spread, the signs of the hidden feast.

This is where hiders live. This is the tentative And outcast corner where hiders steal away To bake their hedgehogs in a lump of clay, To raise their crops and children wild and shy, And let the world go by In accidental marches of armed wrath That stumble blindly past the buried path. Step softly, step like a whisper, but do not speak Or you will never see The furriness curled within the hollow tree, The shadow-dance upon the wilderness-creek. This is the hiders’ house. This is the ark of pine-and-willow-boughs. This is the quiet place. You may call now, but let your call be sweet As clover-honey strained through silver sieves And delicate as the dust upon the moth Or you will never find your fugitives. Call once, and call again, Then, if the lifted strain Has the true color and substance of the wild, You may perceive, if you have lucky eyes, Something that ran away from being wise And changed silk ribbons for a greener cloth, Some budding-horned and deer-milk-suckled child Some lightness, moving toward you on light feet, Some girl with indolent passion in her face.

Jack Ellyat wondered about things, six days later. The world had come back to its shape. He was well and strong. He had seen the old man with the burnt dreams in his eyes, Who had fallen from something years ago in his youth Or risen from something with an effort too stark; The runaway who had broken the pasture-bars To test the figments of life on a wild stone. You could see the ultimate hardness of that strange stone Cut in his face—but then, there was something else, That came at moments and went, and answered no questions. Had the feel of the stone been worth it, after all? It puzzled Ellyat. He couldn’t figure it out. Going West to get fat acres was common enough, But, once you got the acres, you settled down, You sent your children to school. You put up a fence. When a war came along, you fought on your proper side; You didn’t blast both sides with Mercutio’s curse And hide in a wilderness. The man was all wrong, And yet the man was not weak. It was very strange. If the man had been weak, you could understand him all right.

The woman was more easy to understand. He liked the woman—he liked the rough shaggy boy Who had lived so much in the woods to keep from the armies That his ears were sharp as a squirrel’s, and all his movements Had something untamed about them, something leafy and strange. Of course he ought to be fighting for the North, He was really a skulk—but things were different here. You couldn’t reason about the difference in words But you felt it inside your skin. Things were different here. Like Nibelung Hall in the rain of his fever-dream, But with no terror, with an indolent peace.

He’d have to get back to the regiment pretty soon. He couldn’t stay here. They none of them wanted him here. He’d have to get back. But he didn’t know where to go. They could tell him how to get back to Pittsburg Landing But how did he know if the army was there or not? He didn’t even know who’d won in the battle, And, if the Rebs had won, he’d be captured again As soon as he got on a road. Well, he’d have to chance it. He couldn’t stay here and fall in love with Melora.

Melora came walking down the crooked path With a long shadow before her. It was the hour When the heat is out of the gold of afternoon And the cooled gold has not yet turned into grey, The hour of the paused tide, neither flow nor ebb, The flower beginning to close but not yet closed.

He saw her carry her fairy head aloft Against that descending gold, He saw the long shadow that her slight body made.

When she came near enough to him, she heard him humming A tune he had thought forgotten, the weaver’s tune. “And the only harm that I’ve ever done, Was to love a pretty maid.”

She halted, trying to listen. He stopped the tune. “What’s that you were singing?” she said. “Oh, just trash,” he said. “I liked it. Sing it some more.” But he would not sing it.

They regarded each other a foot or so apart. Their shadows blotted together into one shadow.

She put her hand to both cheeks, and touched them lightly, As if to cool them from something. A soft, smooth shock Inexplicable as the birth of a star And terrible as the last cry of the flesh Ran through his cords and struck. He stared at the shadows. Then she took her shadow into the house with her But he still stood looking where the shadows had touched.

John Vilas watched them go off through the wood To get the water from the other spring, The big pail clanking between them. His hard mouth Was wry with an old nursery-rhyme, but his eyes Looked somewhere beyond hardness. Let them go. Harriet said and Harriet always said And Harriet was right, but let them go. Men who go looking for the wilderness-stone And find it, should not marry or beget, But, having done so, they must take the odds As the odds are. Faustus and I are old. We creep about among the hollow trees Where the bright devils of our youth have gone Like a dissolving magic, back to earth. But in our tarnished and our antique wands And in the rusty metal of our spells There still remain such stubbornness and pith As may express elixirs from a rock Or pick a further quarrel with the gods Should we find cause enough. I know this girl, This boy, this youth, this honey in the blood, This kingly danger, this immediate fire. I know what comes of it and how it lies And how, long afterwards, at the split core Of the prodigious and self-eaten lie, A little grain of truth lies undissolved By all the acids of philosophy. Therefore, I will not seek a remedy Against a sword but in the sword itself Nor medicine life with anything but life. I am too old to try the peddler’s tricks, Too wise, too foolish, too long strayed in the wood, The custom of the world is not my custom, Nor its employments mine. I know this girl As well as if I never lay with her mother. I know her heart touched with that wilderness-stone That turns good money into heaps of leaves And builds an outcast house of apple-twigs Beside a stream that never had a name. She will forget what I cannot forget, And she may learn what I shall never learn, But, while the wilderness-stone is strong in her, I’d have her use it for a touchstone yet And see the double face called good and bad With her own eyes. So, if she stares it down, She is released, and if it conquers her, She was not weighted with a borrowed shield.

We are no chafferers, my daughter and I. We give what pleases us and when we choose, And, having given, we do not take back. But once we shut our fists upon a star It will take portents to unloose that grip And even then the stuff will keep the print. It is a habit of living. For the boy I do not know but will not stand between. He has more toughness in him than he thinks. —I took my wife out of a pretty house. —I took my wife out of a pleasant place. —I stripped my wife of comfortable things. —I drove my wife to wander with the wind. —And we are old now, Faustus. Let it be so. There was one man who might have understood, Because he was half-oriole and half-fox, Not Emerson, but the man by Walden Pond. But he was given to the birds in youth And never had a woman or a daughter.

The filled pail stood on a stone by the lip of the spring, But they had forgotten the pail. The spring was a cool Wavering mirror that showed them their white, blurred faces And made them wonder to see the faces so like And yet so silent and distant. Melora turned. “We ought to go back,” she said in a commonplace voice. “Not yet, Melora.” Something, as from the spring Rising, in silver smoke, in arras of silvers, Drifting around them, pushed by a light, slow wind. “Not yet Melora.” They sat on a log above. Melora’s eyes were still looking down at the spring. Her knees were hunched in her arms. “You’ll be going,” she said, Staring at the dimmed glass. “You’ll be going soon.” The silver came closer, soaking into his body, Soaking his flesh with bright, impalpable dust. He could smell her hair. It smelt of leaves and the wind. He could smell the untaken whiteness of her clean flesh, The deep, implacable fragrance, fiercer than sleep, Sweeter than long sleep in the sun. He touched her shoulder. She let the hand stay but still she gazed at the spring. Then, after a while, she turned. The mirrored mouths Fused in one mouth that trembled with the slow waters.

Melora, in the room she had to herself Because they weren’t white-trash and used to be Eastern, Let the rain of her hair fall down, In a stream, in a flood, on the white birch of her body. She was changed, then. She was not a girl any more. She was the white heart of the birch, Half hidden by a fleece that a South wind spun Out of bronze air and light, on a wheel of light. Her sharp clear breasts Were two young victories in the hollow darkness And when she stretched her hands above her head And let the spun fleece ripple to her loins, Her body glowed like deep springs under the sun.

She had no song to sing herself asleep Tonight, but she would need no song to sing. A thousand thoughts ran past her in a brief Unhurrying minute, on small, quiet feet But did not change her. Nothing could change her now. —Black winter night against the windowpane And she, a child, singing her fear to sleep With nursery-rhymes and broken scraps of tunes. How well she could remember those old songs. But this night she would sleep without a song Except the song the earth knows in the night After the huge embrace of the bright day, And that was better. She thought to herself. “I don’t know. I can’t think. I ought to be scared. I ought to have lots of maybes. I can’t find them. It’s funny. It’s different. It’s a big pair of hands Pushing you somewhere—but you’ve got to go. Maybe you’re crazy but you’ve got to go. That’s why Mom went. I know about Mom now. I know how she used to be. It’s pretty sweet. It’s rhymes, it’s hurting, it’s feeling a bird’s heart Beat in your hand, it’s children growing up, It’s being cut to death with bits of light, It’s wanting silver bullets in your heart, It’s not so happy, but it’s pretty sweet, I’ve got to go.” She passed her narrow hands Over her body once, half-wonderingly.

“Divide this transitory and temporal flesh Into twelve ears of red and yellow corn And plant each ear beside a different stream. Yet, in the summer, when the harvesters Come with their carts, the grain shall change again And turn into a woman’s body again And walk across a heap of sickle-blades To find the naked body of its love.”

She slipped her dress back on and stole downstairs. The bare feet, whispering, made little sound. A sleeper breathed, a child turned in its sleep. She heard the tiny breathings. She shut the door. The moon rode a high heaven streaked with cloud. She watched it for a moment. Then she drank That moon from its high heaven with her mouth And felt the immaculate burning of that frost Run from her fingers in such corporal silver Her whole slight body was a corposant Of hollow light and the cold sap of the moon.

She knew the dark grass cool beneath her feet. She knew the opening of the stable door. It shut behind her. She was in darkness now.

Jack Ellyat, lying in a warm nest of hay, Stared at the sweet-smelling darkness with troubled eyes. He was going tomorrow. He couldn’t skulk any more. —Oh, reasonless thirst in the night, what can slake your thirst, Reasonless heart, why will you not let me rest? I have seen a woman wrapped in the grace of leaves, I have kissed her mouth with my mouth, but I must go— He was going back to find a piece of himself That he had lost in a tent, in a red loud noise, Under a sack of tobacco. Until he found it He could never be whole again —but the hunger creeps Like a vine about me, crushing my narrow wisdom, Crushing my thoughts— He couldn’t stay with Melora. He couldn’t take her back home. If he were Bailey He would know what to do. He would follow the weaver’s tune. He would keep Melora a night from the foggy dew And then go off with the sunrise to tell the tale Sometime for a campfire yarn. But he wasn’t Bailey. He saw himself dead without ever having Melora And he didn’t like it. Maybe, after the war. Maybe he could come back to the hider’s place, Maybe—it is a long time till after the war And this is now—you took a girl when you found her— A girl with flags on her garters or a new girl— It didn’t matter—it made a good campfire yarn— It was men and women—Bailey—the weaver’s tune—

He heard something move and rustle in the close darkness. “What’s that?” he said. He got no answering voice But he knew what it was. He saw a light-footed shadow Come toward the nest where he lay. For a moment then He felt weak, half-sickened almost. Then his heart began To pound to a marching rhythm that was not harsh Nor sweet, but enormous cadence. “Melora,” he said. His hand went out and touched the cup of her breast.

What things shall be said of you, Terrible beauty in armor? What things shall be said of you, Horses riding the sky? The fleetness, the molten speed, The rhythm rising like beaten Drums of barbaric gold Until fire mixes with fire?

The night is a sparkling pit Where Time no longer has power But only vast cadence surging Toward an instant of tiny death. Then, with the slow withdrawal Of seas from a rock of moonlight, The clasping bodies unlock And the lovers have little words.

What is this spear, this burnished Arrow in the deep waters That is not quenched by them Until it has found its mark? What is this beating of wings In the formless heart of the tempest? This wakening of a sun That was not wakened before?

They have dragged you down from the sky And broken you with an ocean Because you carried the day, Phaëton, charioteer. But still you loose from the cloud The matched desires of your horses And sow on the ripened earth The quickened, the piercing flame.

What things shall be said of you, Terrible beauty in armor? Dance that is not a dance, Brief instant of welded swords. For a moment we strike the black Door with a fist of brightness. And then it is over and spent, And we sink back into life.

Back to the known, the sure, The river of sleep and waking, The dreams floating the river, The nearness, the conquered peace. You have come and smitten and passed, Poniard, poniard of sharpness. The child sleeps in the planet. The blood sleeps again.

He wasn’t going away when he went to the wood. He told himself that. They had broken the dime together. They had cut the heart on the tree. The jack-knife cut Two pinched half-circles of white on the green bark. The tree-gum bled from the cuts in sticky, clear drops, And there you were. And shortly the bark would dry Dead on the living wood and leave the white heart All through the winter, all through the rain and snow, A phantom-blaze to guide a tall phantom-hunter Who came in lightness along a leaf-buried path. All through the snowing winter it would be white. It would take many springs to cover that white again. What have I done in idleness, in sweet idleness, What have I done to the forest? I have marked A tree to be my own with a jack-knife blade In idleness, in sweet idleness. I have loosed A dryad out of the tree to chain me with wild Grapevines and forest trailers forever and ever To the hider’s place, to the outcast house of the lost, And now, when I would be free, I am free no more. He thought of practical matters. There ought to be A preacher and a gold ring and a wedding-dress, Only how could there be? He rolled hard words Over his tongue. “A shotgun wedding,” he said. It wasn’t like that, it never could be like that, But there was a deadly likeness. He saw the bored Shamfaced seducer in the clean Sunday collar, The whining, pregnant slut in the cheesecloth veil. They weren’t like that—but the picture colored his mind.

If he only could go away without going away And have everything turn out just as it ought to be Without rings or hiding! He told himself “I’m all right. I’m not like Bailey. I wouldn’t sleep with a girl Who never slept with anybody before And then just go off and leave her.” But it was Melora. It wasn’t seducing a girl. It was all mixed up. All real where it ought to be something told in a sermon, And all unreal when you had to do something about it, His thoughts went round and round like rats in a cage, But all he knew was— he was sick for a room And a red tablecloth with tasselled fringes, Where a wife knitted on an end of a scarf, A father read his paper through the same Unchanging spectacles with the worn bows And a young girl beneath a nickeled lamp Soundlessly conjugated Latin verbs, “Amo, amas, amat,” and still no sound—

Slight dryad, trailing the green, curled vines of the Spring, I hate you for this moment, I hate your white breast And idleness, sweet, hidden idleness—

He started awake. He had been walking through dreams. How far had he come? He studied the sun and the trees. Was he lost? No, there was the way. He turned back slowly, To the dryad, the idleness—to the cheesecloth veil, The incredible preacher, the falling out of life. He’d ask her this evening where you could find such preachers. The old man mustn’t know till the thing was done Or he would turn to a father out of a cheap Play, a cheap shotgun father with a wool beard Roaring gilt rhetoric—and loading a musket. He got the dry grins. If the property-father shot him Would they carve his name on the soldiers’ monument After the war? There should be a special tablet. “Here lies John Ellyat Junior, shot and killed By an angry father for the great cause of Union. ‘How sleep the brave.’ ” He stumbled and looked around him. “Well, I might go on as far as the road,” he said.

A little while later he burst through the screen of brush. And saw the highroad below him. He wiped his face. The road dipped down a hill to a little bridge. He was safe enough now. What was it Melora had said? The highroad was six miles away from the farm, Due west, and he could tell the west by the sun. He must have covered a dozen, finding the road, But getting back would be easy. The sun was high. He ought to be starting soon. But he lay down And stared for a while at the road. It was good to see A road in the open again, a dust-bitten road Where people and horses went along to a town. —Dryad, deep in the woods, your trails are small, Winding and faint—they run between grass and flowers— But it is good once more to come on a road That is not drowsy with your idleness—

He looked down toward the bridge. There were moving blobs of dust Crossing it—men on horses. His heart gave a strange Throb of desire. What were they? They looked like soldiers. Blue coats or grey? He could not tell for the dust. He’d have to get back in the woods before they passed, He was a hider now. But he kept on staring A long two minutes, trying to make them out, Till his eyes stung. One man had a yellow beard And carried his rifle slung the Missouri way But there were Missouri troops on either side. In a minute he could tell—and wriggle away—

A round stick jabbed in his back. A slow voice said “Reach for the sky, Yank, or I’ll nachully drill yuh.” His hands flew up. “Yuh’re the hell of a scout,” said the voice With drawling scorn. “Yuh h’ain’t even got a gun. I could have picked yuh off ten minutes ago, Yuh made more noise than a bear, bustin thru’ that bresh. What’d yuh ust to work at—wrappin’ up corsets? Yeah—yuh kin turn around.” Jack Ellyat turned Incredulously. “Well, I’ll be damned,” said the boy In butternut clothes with the wrinkled face of a leaf. “Yuh’re a young ’un all right—aw, well, don’t take it so hard. Our boys get captured, too. Hey, Billy!” he called, “Got a Yankee scout.” The horse-hoofs stopped in the road. “Well, bring him along,” said a voice. Jack Ellyat slid Down a little bank and stood in front of the horses. He was dazed. This was not happening. But the horses Were there, the butternut men on the horses were there.

A gaunt old man with a sour, dry mouth was talking, “He’s no scout,” he said. “He’s one of their lousy spies. Don’t he look like a spy? Let’s string him up to a tree.” His eye roved, looking for a suitable branch, His mouth seemed pleased. Ellyat saw two little scooped dishes, Hung on a balance, wavering in the air. One was bright tin and carried his life and breath, The other was black. They were balanced with dreadful evenness. But now the black dish trembled, starting to fall.

“Hell, no,” said the boy with the face like a wrinkled leaf. “He’s a scout all right. What makes yuh so savage, Ben? Yuh’re always hankerin’ after a necktie-party. Who captured the bugger anyhow?” “Oh, well,” Said the other man. “Oh, well.” He spat in the dust. “Anyhow,” he said, with a hungry look at Ellyat, “He’s got good boots.” The boy with the wrinkled face Remarked that, as for the boots, no Arkansaw catfish Was going to take them away from their lawful captor.

The rest sat their horses loosely and looked at him With mild curiosity, ruminating tobacco. Ellyat tried to think. He could not think. He was free, These stuffless men on stuffless horses had freed him From dryads and fathers, from cheesecloth veils and Melora. He began to talk fast. He didn’t hear what he said. “But I’ve got to get back,” he said. Then he stopped. They laughed. “Oh, yuh’ll get over it, Bub,” said the wrinkled boy, “It ain’t so bad. You won’t have to fight no more. Maybe yuh’ll git exchanged. Git up on that horse. No, take off them boots first, thanks.” He slung the boots Around his neck. “Now I got some good boots,” he said. And grinned at the gaunt man with the sour mouth. “Now, Bub, I’ll just tie yuh a little with this yere rope And then you won’t be bustin’ loose from the gang. Grab the pommel as well as yuh kin.” The gaunt man coughed. “I tell you,” he said, in a disappointed voice, “If we just strung him up it’d make things a hull lot easier. He’s a spy for sure, and everyone strings up spies. We got a long piece to go yet and he’s a nuisance.”

“Aw, shut yore face,” said Jim Breckinridge in a drawl, “Yuh kin hang any Yanks yuh ketch on a piece uh dishrag, Yuh ain’t caught no armies yit.” The gaunt man was silent. Ellyat saw the little tin dish that carried the life Slowly sink down, to safety, the black dish rise. “Come on,” said Billy. The horses started to move, Stirring a dust that rose for a little while In a faint cloud. But after the horses had gone, The cloud settled, the road went to sleep again.