The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE "MEANEST WORD."

  Mose Whipple had lifted his head in apprehensive inquiry at the soundof the footsteps outside the door of the cabin. He sprang to his feetwhen the sharp knock on the door followed. Holding a hand downward withoutspread fingers as a warning to silence, he tiptoed out to the middleof the room, then paused and listened.

  The knock came again, bolder and more peremptory still.

  Vague notions of resistance were shaping themselves in Mose's mind. Heglanced up at the shot-gun hanging on the chimney behind the stovepipe,and in another instant had it down, with his thumb on the hammer.

  "Loaded?" he asked in a whisper, testing the percussion-cap with hisnail.

  The old man nodded. Then he, too, laboriously rose to his feet. Bent ashis form was, he stood a taller man than his son. He rested one hand onthe table for support, and stretched out the other with a masterfulgesture.

  "GIMME THAT GUN!"]

  "Gimme that gun!" he said, in brusque command. Then covering Mose fromhead to foot, he added, slowly, "I'd ruther have starved a hundredtimes over than had you do this sort o' thing!"

  Mose had sheepishly laid the weapon on the table. He walked now with asullen air to the door, lifted the hook, and put his hand on the latch.

  "Let me in out of the cold, can't ye?" a shrill voice complainedoutside. "It's only me, you gump!"

  Mose's face brightened. "Why, it's only young Job Parshall, after all!"he said, and threw the door wide open.

  The boy pushed past Mose without a word, and marching across the roomto the stove held his red fingers over the griddles. He lifted them alittle for inspection after a minute's silence, and screwed hisshoulders about in token of the pain they gave him.

  "I couldn't run with my hands in my pockets," he said. "I shouldn'twonder if they was froze. That's just my luck."

  Mose advanced to the stove, and looked at Job's hands critically. "Thatlittle finger there is a trifle tetched, I guess," he said. "It'll besore for a day or two, that's all. The rest are all right." Then headded, noting the boy's crimson cheeks and panting breast, "Why, sonny,you must 'a' run the whole way!"

  Job nodded assent, and turned his hands palm upward. "Every inch of theway," he said between heavy breaths.

  Old Asa had sunk again into a chair, and sat gazing in turn at Mose andthe boy. The fire which had glowed in his eyes when he had confrontedhis son had died away again. He was visibly striving not to tremble,and the glance he bent from one to the other was wistful andshame-faced.

  "I suppose you've brought some news," he remarked at last to Job.

  The boy nodded again, twisting his fingers experimentally in the heat."When I catch my breath, I'll tell ye," he said.

  There was a moment's awkward silence; then Asa Whipple, speaking inlow, deliberate tones, rid his mind of some of its burden.

  "My son Mose here," he said gravely, "didn't use to be a coward. Ididn't bring him up to be no coward. Seems to me you can bring up a boyso't he'll be honest and straightforward and square right up to thelast minute, and then lo and behold! he cuts up some low-down, meandido or other that makes you 'shamed to look folks in the face.

  "My father fit in the Revolution, and so did my mother's father and hisbrothers,--their name was Lapham, and they lived in Rhode Island,--andmy older brother, Jason, he was killed up at Sackett's Harbor in the1812 War before he come of age; and they ain't one of 'em but 'ud turnin his grave to think they was a coward and a deserter in the family!"

  Mose stood behind the stove, stealing furtive glances at the old manduring this harangue. Once or twice he opened his lips as if to speak,but either no words would come, or he thought better of it.

  But Job listened with obvious impatience. He had quite regained hisbreath. "Mose ain't no coward!" he broke in vehemently. "It took amighty sight more pluck to light out there, of a night, and come wayoff up here just to see how you were gettin' on, and have to hide forhis life, than it would to have stayed right still where he was, withno fightin' and no work, and three square meals a day."

  "You might say four, a'most, countin' supper," Mose suggested softly.

  Old Asa Whipple seemed impressed with this view of the situation, andpondered it for a little in silence.

  "What I come over to say was," remarked Job, more placidly, "thatthey're out lookin' for you, Mose. Two men drove up in a cutter justafter breakfast--one of 'em's Norm' Hazzard, the deputy marshal down atOctavius, and the other fellow's name is Moak, I b'lieve, and they'vestopped to Teachout's to breakfast. They started from Octavius beforedaylight, and they was about froze solid by the time they got to'Lishe's. They took out their horse, and they've got so much thawin'out to do themselves, I reckon they ain't more'n about started now, ifthey have that."

  "You come straight?" asked Mose.

  "Well, you'd better believe I did! I scooted 'cross lots like greasedlightnin' the minute they went in t' the house. It's a good hour 'roundby the road, even when it's all open. It's drifted now all the way fromthe sash factory down to Taft's place, and it's slow work gettin'through the fields. As I figure it, you've got more'n an hour'sleeway."

  The two men looked at each other as they listened, and they kept up themutual gaze after the boy had stopped.

  "'Pears to me, dad," Mose finally ventured in a deferential way, "thatyou don't seem to take this thing quite in the right spirit. I tell youstraight out, if it was the last word I ever spoke, I ain't donenothin' I'm ashamed of. A man can't say no more'n that."

  "Accordin' to the way I was brought up," replied old Asa, doggedly,"they ain't no other such an all-fired, pesky mean name for a man inthe dictionary as 'desarter.'"

  "Well, anyway," retorted Mose, "I'd ruther be called 'desarter' myselfthan have you be called 'starved to death.' So far's I can make out, ifit hadn't ben one, it 'ud ben t'other."

  The old man's glance abruptly sought the floor, and lingered there. Theothers, as they watched him, could see the muscles of his down-bentface twitching.

  "Besides, they didn't need me down there just now," Mose went on inmore voluble self-defence, "no more'n a frog needs a tail. An' besidesthat, they played it monstrous low-down on me. That German fellow thatused to work at the tannery, he was my sergeant, and he kept them bigeyes of his skinned for me all day long. Him and me never hitched verywell down at the mills, you know, and he took it out of me whenever hegot a chance.

  "He got all the officers down on me. One day they'd say I'd burnt thecoffee, and the next day that my gun was dirty, and after that that Iwas a 'malingerer,'--that's officers' slang for a shirk,--and so on;and every time it meant that some of my pay got stopped. That's why Inever sent you any money.

  "They worked it so't I never got more'n about ten shillings out of mythirteen dollars, and that I owed twice over before I got it."

  Old Asa was looking into his son's face once more, and he noddedcomprehendingly as the other paused. "We never did git a fair show,like other men," he remarked.

  "But I could 'a' stood all that," continued Mose. "What riled me waswhen Bill Rood got a letter sayin' that you was poorly, and you stoppedwritin'; and then I took pains and behaved extra well, so't even theDutchman couldn't put his finger on me. And then I got a chance oneday, and I asked one of the lieutenants that I'd kind o' curried favorwith, doin' odd jobs for him and so on, if he couldn't git me afurlough, just to run home and see how you was gittin' on."

  "I reckon _you_ never got that, Mose."

  "No, dad. They was givin' 'em right and left to other fellows, and thelieutenant said he guessed he could manage it. I don't know how hard hetried, but a few days after that I see the Dutchman grinnin' at me, andI felt in my bones that the jig was up. Sure enough, they wouldn't letme have a furlough because I'd been euchred out of my pay. They wa'n'tno other reason."

  "No," said the old man, "that was always the way. I guess me and youought to be pretty well used to gittin' the worst of it, by this time.There's a text in the Bible that's our own private fam
ily property, asmuch as if it had 'Whipple' marked on it in big letters. It's that onethat says that when a man ain't got anything, he gits took away fromhim even what he's got. That's me, Mose, and it's you, too."

  Mose had quite recovered his confidence now.

  "Of course, if there'd ben any fightin' goin' on, it'd ben different,"he explained, "but right in the middle of our winnin' everything alongin November, after we'd chased the Johnnies across the Rappahannock andthe Rapidan, and was havin' it all our own way--and in spite of therain freezin' as it fell, and no shelter and marchin' till your feetwas ready to fall off, we all liked it first-rate--along come ordersfor us to go back again to winter quarters around Brandy Station. Sofar as I could see, it was all station and no brandy. And then the newdrafted men, they behaved like sin in camp, and orders got stricter,and my Dutchman piled it onto me thicker and thicker, and I got tofrettin' about you--and so--so I--I lit out."

  "You'd better begin figgerin' on lightin' out agin," said the practicalJob. "I suppose you'll take to the woods, won't you?"

  Mose nodded, and reached his hand out for the gun. "Yes," he said,"five minutes' start'll be all I need. Once I git across the creek I'mall right. One thing's lucky, there's plenty of powder and shot in thecupboard there, I see. I suppose, if worst comes to worst, I could getthrough the woods up to Canada. But see here,--this is a good deal moreimportant,--what are you going to do, dad, after I'm gone?"

  Old Asa had hardly given this important question a thought before. Asit was forced upon him now, his mind reverted mechanically to thatstrange awakening, when he lay in the starved half-stupor on the verythreshold of death, and Mose came in, like some good angel of a dream,to bring him back to life again. A rush of tenderness, almost of pride,suddenly suffused the old man's brain.

  "Mose," he said, all at once, "I guess I talked more or less like afool, here awhile back. Perhaps some folks are entitled to blame youfor turnin' up here, this mornin'--but I ain't one of 'em, and I oughtto known better. I'm stronger, my boy, ever so much stronger, forseein' you and--eatin' a good meal again. You'll see--I'll be as soundagain as a butternut. I bet I could walk this minute to the bridgewithout a break."

  "But that wouldn't feed you, after you got there," objected Mose. "Ofcourse if I could hang around in the neighborhood, and drop in everynow and then to keep an eye on you, it 'ud be different. But they'resure to watch the place, and with me caught you'd be worse off thanever. I'd give myself up this minute if only I knew you'd be all right.But that's the hang of it. There's no mistake, dad," he added, with arueful sort of grin, "the last bell was a-ringin' for you when I turnedup here, this mornin'."

  It was characteristic of these two men, born and bred here in therobust air of the forest's borders, that as they confronted thisdilemma, not the shadow of a notion of that standing alternative, thecounty-house, crossed either mind. Even if Mose could have thought ofit, he would never have dared suggest it to Asa.

  "Come, you'd better be gittin' together what you're goin' to take withyou," broke in Job, peremptorily. "You've got none too much time tospare."

  "Yes, I know," said Mose, with hesitation; "but the old man here--thatworries me."

  "You just 'tend to your own knittin'," was the boy's reply. "Asa andme'll manage for ourselves all right."

  Old Asa Whipple opened his eyes wide--not at surprise at hearing hisChristian name fall so glibly from the boy's tongue, for that is thecustom of the section, but with bewilderment at his meaning.

  "What on earth are you drivin' at?" demanded Mose, no whit lesspuzzled.

  "Well," said Job, with deliberation, "I've kind o' soured on thatTeachout job of mine. I've had it in my mind to quit all along, when Igot the chance, and I guess this is about as good as any. I've gotalong toward twenty dollars saved up, and there's three days' work aweek for me at the cheese-factory whenever I want to take it, and Icould go to school the other days, and both places are handier to gitat from here than they are from Teachout's. So I'll rig up a bed and soon here, and I'll look out for the old man. But do you go ahead, andgit out!"

  It is another custom of these parts to be undemonstrative in the faceof the unexpected.

  Mose merely clapped his hand on Job's shoulder, and said, "You won'tever be sorry for it, sonny," which had much more of loose predictionthan of pledge about it, yet seemed quite sufficient for them both.

  The old man said nothing at all, but sat bending forward in his chair,his gaze fastened upon every move his son made about the room. Foreverything Mose did now spoke plainly of another parting, more sombreand sinister than the last. A soldier may come back, but how can onehope for the return of a deserter?

  Mose's old instincts as a woodsman rose superior to the exigencies of alife and death flight. He prepared as if for a holiday camping jauntinto the wilderness--in a hurried manner, but forgetting nothing.

  He made a pile of things on the table--all the powder and shot in thehouse, most of the salt, some old stockings, a tin cup, fork and spoon,and what matches he could find--and then stowed them away in flasks andhis pockets, along with a whole tangled mass of lines, hooks and catgutfishing gear.

  From under the snow in the dismantled shed he unearthed a smallerfrying-pan and two steel traps, and slung these with a string throughhandle and chains across his shoulder. Then he took up the gun and wasready.

  "I guess this'll see me through," he said lightly.

  Old Asa gazed at him through dimmed eyes. "No, you must take a blanket,Mose," he said. "I won't hear no for an answer--you must! There'splenty more for us. If they ain't, we can git more. They're cheap asdirt. And Mose," the old man rose from his chair as he spoke, "I wasa-goin' to ask you to sing for me afore you went, but I--I guess we'dbetter let that go till we meet again. You'll be all right in thewoods----"

  "Why, I know twenty places," put in Mose, "where I'll be as snug as abug in a rug. I'll make straight for a deer yard. Mebbe"--he chuckledat the thought--"I'll be bringing you in some venison some o' thesenights. Prob'ly I'll hang it up on a tree--the old butternut by thefork--so't Job can come out and git it in the mornin'. And in thespring--why you must come in the spring and--and be with me in thewoods."

  The old man's strength had waned once more, and he seated himself.

  "Mebbe," was all he said, in a dubious voice, and with his head bowedon his breast.

  He did not lift his head, when Mose shook hands with him; he did notraise his glance to follow him, either, when, with the traps andfrying-pan clattering about his neck, Mose let himself out by the sheddoor and was gone.

  He did not even seem to hear when, two or three minutes later, thereverberating crack of revolver shots--one! two! three! four!five!--set the echoes clamoring all around the Whipple house.