Flags in the Dust (3 page)

“I am distressed to inconvenience you thus, Sir,” he began with his exquisite courtesy. “If you will indicate the general location of your nearest horse picket I shall be most happy to capture a mount for you.”

“Thank you, General,” the major replied, “but majors can be replaced much easier than horses. I shall not trouble you.”

“Just as you wish, Sir,” Stuart agreed stiffly. He spurred on to the head of the column again. They now galloped along a faint trace that was once a road. It wound on between vernal palisades of undergrowth and they followed it at a rapid controlled gait and debouched suddenly upon a glade, and a squadron of Yankee cavalry reined back with shocked amazement, then hurled forward again.

Without faltering Stuart whirled his party and plunged back into the forest. Pistol-balls were thinly about their heads and the flat tossing reports were trivial as snapping twigs above the converging thunder of hooves. Stuart swerved from the road and they crashed headlong through undergrowth. The Federal horsemen came yelling behind them and Stuart led his party in a tight circle and halted it panting in a dense swampy copse and they heard the pursuit sweep past.

They pushed on and regained the road and retraced their former course, silently and utterly alert. To the left the sound of the immediate pursuit crashed on, dying away. Then they cantered again. Presently the woods thickened and they were forced to slow to a trot, then to a walk. Although there was no more firing and the bugles too had ceased, into the silence, above the strong and rapid breathing of the horses and the sound of their own hearts in their ears, was a nameless something—a tenseness seeping from tree to tree like an invisible mist, filling the dewy morning woods with portent though birds flashed swooping from tree to tree, unaware or disregardful of it.

A gleam of white through the trees ahead; Stuart raised his hand and they halted and sat their horses, watching him quietly and holding their breaths with listening. Then the General advanced again and broke through the undergrowth into another glade and they followed, and before them rose the knoll with the deserted breakfast-table and the rifled commissary tent. They trotted warily across the glade and halted at the table while the General scribbled hastily upon a scrap of paper. The glade dreamed quiet and empty of threat beneath the mounting golden day; laked within it lay a deep and abiding peace like golden wine; yet beneath this solitude and permeating it was that nameless and waiting portent, patient and brooding and sinister.

“Your sword, Sir,” Stuart commanded, and the prisoner removed his weapon and Stuart took it and pinned his scribbled note to the table-top with it. The note read:

“General Stuart’s compliments to General Pope, and he is sorry to have missed him again. He will call again tomorrow.”

Stuart gathered up his reins. “Forward,” he said.

They descended the knoll and crossed the empty glade and at an easy canter they took the road they had traversed that dawn—the road that led toward home. Stuart glanced back at
his captive, at the gallant black with its double burden. “If you will direct us to the nearest cavalry picket I will provide you with a proper mount,” he offered again.

“Will General Stuart, cavalry leader and General Lee’s eyes, jeopardise his safety and that of his men and his cause in order to provide for the temporary comfort of a minor prisoner of his sword? This is not bravery: it is the rashness of a heedless and headstrong boy. There are fifteen thousand men within a radius of two miles of this point; even General Stuart cannot conquer that many, though they are Yankees, single-handed.”

“Not for the prisoner, Sir,” Stuart replied haughtily, “but for the officer suffering the fortune of war. No gentleman would do less.”

“No gentleman has any business in this war,” the major retorted. “There is no place for him here. He is an anachronism, like anchovies. At least General Stuart did not capture our anchovies,” he added tauntingly. “Perhaps he will send Lee for them in person?”

“Anchovies,” repeated Bayard Sartoris who galloped nearby, and he whirled his horse. Stuart shouted at him, but he lifted his reckless stubborn hand and flashed on; and as the General would have turned to follow a Yankee picket fired his piece from the roadside and dashed into the woods, shouting the alarm. Immediately other muskets exploded on all sides and from the forest to the right came the sound of a considerable body put suddenly into motion, and behind them in the direction of the invisible knoll, a volley crashed. A third officer spurred up and caught Stuart’s bridle.

“Sir, Sir,” he exclaimed. “What would you do?”

Stuart held his mount rearing, and another volley rang behind them, dribbling off into single scattered reports, crashed focalized again, and the noise to the right swelled nearer. “Let go, Allan,” Stuart said. “He is my friend.”

But the other clung on. “It is too late,” he said. “Sartoris can only be killed: you would be captured.”

“Forward, Sir, I beg,” the captive major added. “What is one man, to a paladin out of romance?”

“Think of Lee, for God’s sake, General!” the aide implored. “Forward!” he shouted to the troop, spurring his own mount and dragging the General’s onward as a body of Federal horse broke from the woods behind them.

“And so,” Aunt Jenny finished, “Mister Stuart went on and Bayard rode back after those anchovies, with all Pope’s army shooting at him. He rode yelling ‘Yaaaiiiiih, Yaaaiiiih, come on, boys!’ right up the knoll and jumped his horse over the breakfast table and rode it into the wrecked commissary tent, and a cook who was hidden under the mess stuck his arm out and shot Bayard in the back with a derringer.

“Mister Stuart fought his way out and got back home without losing but two men. He always spoke well of Bayard. He said he was a good officer and a fine cavalryman, but that he was too reckless.”

They sat quietly for a time, in the firelight. The flames leaped and popped on the hearth and sparks soared in wild swirling plumes up the chimney, and Bayard Sartoris’ brief career swept like a shooting star across the dark plain of their mutual remembering and suffering, lighting it with a transient glare like a soundless thunder-clap, leaving a sort of radiance when it died. The guest, the Scottish engineer, had sat quietly, listening. After a time he spoke.

“When he rode back, he was no actually cer-rtain there wer-re anchovies, was he?”

“The Yankee major said there were,” Aunt Jenny replied.

“Ay.” The Scotsman pondered again. “And did Muster-r Stuart retur-rn next day, as he said in’s note?”

“He went back that afternoon,” Aunt Jenny answered,
“looking for Bayard.” Ashes soft as rosy feathers
shaled glowing onto the hearth, and faded to the softest gray. John Sartoris leaned forward into the firelight and punched at the blazing logs with the Yankee musket-barrel.

“That was the god-damdest army the world ever saw, I reckon,” he said.

“Yes,” Aunt Jenny agreed. “And Bayard was the god-damdest man in it.”

“Yes,” John Sartoris admitted soberly, “Bayard was wild.” The Scotsman spoke again.

“This Musterr Stuart, who said your brother was reckless: Who was he?”

“He was the cavalry general Jeb Stuart,” Aunt Jenny answered. She brooded for a while upon the fire; her pale indomitable face held for a moment a tranquil tenderness. “He had a strange sense of humor,” she said. “Nothing ever seemed quite so diverting to him as General Pope in his night-shirt.” She dreamed once more on some far away place beyond the rosy battlements of the embers. “Poor man,” she said. Then she said quietly: “I danced a valse with him in Baltimore in ’58,” and her voice was proud and still as banners in the dust.

……. But the door was closed now, and what light passed through the colored panes was richly solemn. To his left was his grandsons’ room, the room in which his grandson’s wife and her child had died last October. He stood beside this door for a moment, then he opened it quietly. The blinds were closed and the room had that breathless tranquillity of unoccupation, and he closed the door and tramped on with that heavy-tooted obliviousness of the deaf and entered his own bedroom and crashed the door behind him, as was his way of shutting doors.

He sat down and removed his shoes, the shoes that were
made to his measure twice a year by a Saint Louis house, then he rose and went in his stockings to the window and looked down upon his saddle-mare tethered to a mulberry tree in the back yard and a negro lad lean as a hound, richly static beside it. From the kitchen, invisible from this window, Elnora’s endless minor ebbed and flowed unheard by him upon the lazy scene.

He crossed to his closet and drew out a pair of scarred riding-boots and stamped into them and took a cigar from the humidor on his night table, and he stood for a time with the cold cigar between his teeth, having forgotten to light it. Through the cloth of his pocket his hand touched the pipe there, and he took it out and looked at it again, and it seemed to him that he could still hear old man Falls’ voice in roaring recapitulation: “Cunnel was settin’ thar in a cheer, his sock feet propped on the po’ch railin’, smokin’ this hyer very pipe. Old Louvinia was settin’ on the steps, shellin’ a bowl of peas fer supper. And a feller was glad to git even peas sometimes, in them days. And you was settin’ back agin’ the post. They wa’nt nobody else thar ’cep’ yo’ aunt, the one ’fo’ Miss Jenny come. Cunnel had sont them two gals to Memphis to yo’ gran’pappy when he fust went to Virginny with that ’ere regiment that turnt right around and voted him outen the colonelcy. Voted ’im out because he wouldn’t be Tom, Dick and Harry with ever’ skulkin’ camp-robber that come along with a salvaged muskit and claimed to be a sojer. You was about half-grown then, I reckon. How old was you then, Bayard?”

“Fourteen.”

“Hey?”

“Fourteen. Do I have to tell you that everytime you tell me this damn story?”

“And thar you all was a-settin’ when they turned in at the gate and come trottin’ up the carriage drive.

“Old Louvinia drapped the bowl of peas and let out one squawk, but Cunnel shet her up and told her to run and git his boots and pistols and have ’em ready at the back do’, and you lit out fer the barn to saddle that stallion. And when them Yankees rid up and stopped—they stopped right whar that flower bed is now—they wa’nt nobody in sight but Cunnel, a-settin’ thar like he never even heerd tell of no Yankees.

“The Yankees they sot thar on the hosses, talkin’ ’mongst theyselves if this was the right house or not, and Cunnel settin’ thar with his sock feet on the railin’, gawkin’ at ’em like a hillbilly. The Yankee officer he tole one man to ride back to the barn and look fer that ’ere stallion, then he says to Cunnel:

“ ‘Say, Johnny, whar do the rebel, John Sartoris, live?’

“ ‘Lives down the road a piece,’ Cunnel says, not battin’ a eye even. ‘’Bout two mile,’ he says. ‘But you wont find ’im now. He’s away fightin’ the Yanks agin.’

“ ‘Well, I reckon you better come and show us the way, anyhow,’ the Yankee officer says.

“So Cunnel he got up slow and tole ’em to let ’im git his shoes and walkin’ stick, and limped into the house, leavin’ ’em a-settin’ thar waitin’.

“Soon’s he was out of sight he run. Old Louvinia was wait-in’ at the back do’ with his coat and boots and pistols and a snack of cawn bread. That ’ere other Yankee had rid into the barn, and Cunnel taken the things from Louvinia and wropped ’em up in the coat and started acrost the back yard like he was jest takin’ a walk. ’Bout that time the Yankee come to the barn do’.

“ ‘They aint no stock hyer a-tall,’ the Yank says.

“ ‘I reckon not,’ Cunnel says. ‘Cap’m says fer you to come on back,’ he says, goin’ on. He could feel that ’ere Yank a-watchin’ ’im, lookin’ right ’twixt his shoulder blades, whar the bullet would hit. Cunnel says that was the hardest thing he
ever done in his life, walkin’ on thar acrost that lot with his back to’ads that Yankee without breakin’ into a run. He was aimin’ to’ads the corner of the barn, whar he could git the house between ’em, and Cunnel says hit seemed like he’d been a-walkin’ a year without gittin’ no closer and not darin’ to look back. Cunnel says he wa’nt even thinkin’ of nothin’ ’cep’ he was glad the gals wa’nt at home. He says he never give a thought to yo’ aunt back thar in the house, because he says she was a full-blood Sartoris and she was a match fer any jest a dozen Yankees.

“Then the Yank hollered at him, but Cunnel kep’ right on, not lookin’ back nor nothin’. Then the Yank hollered agin and Cunnel says he could hyear the hoss movin’ and he decided hit was time to stir his shanks. He made the corner of the barn jest as the Yank shot the fust time, and by the time the Yank got to the corner, he was in the hawg-lot, a-tearin’ through the jimson weeds to’ads the creek whar you was waitin’ with the stallion hid in the willers.

“And thar you was a-standin’, holdin’ the hoss and that ’ere Yankee patrol yellin’ up behind, until Cunnel got his boots on. And then he tole you to tell yo’ aunt he wouldn’t be home fer supper.”

“But what are you giving it to me for, after all this time?” he had asked, fingering the pipe, and old man Falls had said a poorhouse was no fit place for it.

“A thing he toted in his pocket and got enjoyment outen, in them days. Hit ’ud be different, I reckon, while we was a-buildin’ the railroad. He said often enough in them days we was all goin’ to be in the po’house by Sat’d’y night. Only I beat him, thar. I got thar fo’ he did. Or the cemetary he meant, mo’ likely, him ridin’ up and down the survey with a saddlebag of money night and day, keepin’ jest one cross tie ahead of the po’house, like he said. That ’us when hit changed. When he
had to start killin’ folks. Them two cyarpet baggers stirrin’ up niggers, that he walked right into the room whar they was a-settin’ behind a table with they pistols layin’ on the table, and that robber and that other feller he kilt, all with that same dang der’nger. When a feller has to start killin’ folks, he ’most always has to keep on killin’ ’em. And when he does, he’s already dead hisself.”

It showed on John Sartoris’ brow, the dark shadow of fatality and doom, that night when he sat beneath the candles in the dining room and turned a wine glass in his fingers while he talked to his son. The railroad was finished, and today he had been elected to the state legislature after a hard and bitter fight, and doom lay on his brow, and weariness.