V
Blood in the Night
Neither Lanark nor the others remembered that they began to fight for their lives; they only knew all at once that they were doing it. There was a prolonged harsh rattle of gunshots like a blast of hail upon hard wood; Lanark, by chance or unconscious choice, snatched at and drew his sword instead of his revolver.
A horse’s flying shoulder struck him, throwing him backward but not down. As he reeled to save his footing, he saved also his own life; for the rider, a form all cascading black beard and slouch hat, thrust a pistol almost into the lieutenant’s face and fired. The flash was blinding, the ball ripped Lanark’s cheek like a whiplash, and then the saber in his hand swung, like a scythe reaping wheat. By luck rather than design, the edge bit the guerrilla’s gun-wrist. Lanark saw the hand fly away as though on wings, its fingers still clutching the pistol, all agleam in the firelight. Blood gushed from the stump of the rider’s right arm, like water from a fountain, and Lanark felt upon himself a spatter as of hot rain. He threw himself in, clutched the man’s legs with his free arm and, as the body sagged heavily from above upon his head and shoulder, he heaved it clear out of the saddle.
The horse was plunging and whinnying, but Lanark clutched its reins and got his foot into the stirrup. The bonfire seemed to be growing strangely brighter, and the mounted guerrillas were plainly discernible, raging and trampling among his disorganized men. Corporal Gray went down, dying almost under Lanark’s feet. Amid the deafening drum-roll of shots, Sergeant Jager’s bull-like voice could be heard: “Stop, thieves and horsemen, in the name of God!” It sounded like an exorcism, as though the Confederate raiders were devils.
Lanark had managed to climb into the saddle of his captured mount. He dropped the bridle upon his pommel, reached across his belly with his left hand, and dragged free his revolver. At a little distance, beyond the tossing heads of several horses, he thought he saw the visage of Quantrill, clean-shaven and fierce. He fired at it, but he had no faith in his own left-handed snap-shooting. He felt the horse frantic and unguided, shoving and striving against another horse. Quarters were too close for a saber-stroke, and he fired again with his revolver. The guerrilla spun out of the saddle. Lanark had a glimpse he would never forget, of great bulging eyes and a sharp-pointed mustache.
Again the rebel yell, flying from mouth to bearded mouth, and then an answering shout, deeper and more sustained; some troopers had run out of the house and, standing on the porch, were firing with their carbines. It was growing lighter, with a blue light. Lanark did not understand that.
Quantrill did not understand it, either. He and Lanark had come almost within striking distance of each other, but the guerrilla chief was gazing past his enemy, in the direction of the house. His mouth was open, with strain-lines around it. His eyes glowed. He feared what he saw.
“Remember me, you thieving swine!” yelled Lanark, and tried to thrust with his saber. But Quantrill had reined back and away, not from the sword but from the light that was growing stronger and bluer. He thundered an order, something that Lanark could not catch but which the guerrillas understood and obeyed. Then Quantrill was fleeing. Some guerrillas dashed between him and Lanark. They, too, were in flight. All the guerrillas were in flight. Somebody roared in triumph and fired with a carbine—it sounded like Sergeant Jager. The battle was over, within moments of its beginning.
Lanark managed to catch his reins, in the tips of the fingers that held his revolver, and brought the horse to a standstill before it followed Quantrill’s men into the dark. One of his own party caught and held the bits, and Lanark dismounted. At last he had time to look at the house.
It was afire, every wall and sill and timber of it, burning all at once, and completely. And it burnt deep blue, as though seen through the glass of an old-fashioned bitters-bottle. It was falling to pieces with the consuming heat, and they had to draw back from it. Lanark stared around to reckon his losses.
Nearest the piazza lay three bodies, trampled and broken-looking. Some men ran in and dragged them out of danger; they were Persil Mandifer, badly battered by horses’ feet, and the two who had held him, Josserand and Lanark’s orderly, Suggs. Both the troopers had been shot through the head, probably at the first volley from the guerrillas.
Corporal Gray was stone-dead, with five or six bullets in him, and three more troopers had been killed, while four were wounded, but not critically. Jager, examining them, pronounced that they could all ride if the lieutenant wished it.
“I wish it, all right,” said Lanark ruefully. “We leave first thing in the morning. Hmm, six dead and four hurt, not counting poor Newton, who’s there in the fire. Half my command—and, the way I forgot the first principles of military vigilance, I don’t deserve as much luck as that. I think the burning house is what frightened the guerrillas. What began it?”
Nobody knew. They had all been fighting too desperately to have any idea. The three men who had been picketing the gulley, and who had dashed back to assault the guerrillas on the flank, had seen the blue flames burst out, as it were from a hundred places; that was the best view anybody had.
“All the killing wasn’t done by Quantrill,” Jager comforted his lieutenant. “Five dead guerrillas, sir—no, six. One was picked up a little way off, where he’d been dragged by his foot in the stirrup. Others got wounded, I’ll be bound. Pretty even thing, all in all.”
“And we still have one prisoner,” supplemented Corporal Googan.
He jerked his head toward Enid Mandifer, who stood unhurt, unruffled almost, gazing raptly at the great geyser of blue flame that had been the house and temple of her stepfather’s nameless deity.
It was a gray morning, and from the first streaks of it Sergeant Jager had kept the unwounded troopers busy, making a trench-like grave halfway between the spot where the house had stood and the gulley to the east. When the bodies were counted again, there were only twelve; Persil Mandifer’s was missing, and the only explanation was that it had been caught somehow in the flames. The ruins of the house, that still smoked with a choking vapor as of sulfur gas, gave up a few crisped bones that apparently had been Newton, the sentry who had died from unknown causes; but no giant skeleton was found to remind one of the passing of Persil Mandifer’s son.
“No matter,” said Lanark to Jager. “We know that they were both dead, and past our worrying about. Put the other bodies in—our men at this end, the guerrillas at the other.”
The order was carried out. Once again Lanark asked about a prayerbook. A lad by the name of Duckin said that he had owned one, but that it had been burned with the rest of his kit in the blue flame that destroyed the house.
“Then I’ll have to do it from memory,” decided Lanark.
He drew up the surviving ten men at the side of the trench. Jager took a position beside him, and, just behind the sergeant, Enid Mandifer stood.
Lanark self-consciously turned over his clutter of thoughts, searching for odds and ends of his youthful religious teachings. “ ‘Man that is born of woman hath but short time to live, and is full of misery,’ ” he managed to repeat. “ ‘He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower.’ ” As he said the words “cut down,” he remembered his saber-stroke of the night before, and how he had shorn away a man’s hand. That man, with his heavy black beard, lay in this trench before them, with the severed hand under him. Lanark was barely able to beat down a shudder. “ ‘In the midst of life,’ ” he went on, “ ‘we are in death.’ ”
There he was obliged to pause. Sergeant Jager, on inspiration, took one pace forward and threw into the trench a handful of gritty earth.
“ ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ ” remembered Lanark. “ ‘Unto Almighty God we commit these bodies’ ”—he was sure that that was a misquotation worthy of Jager himself, and made shift to finish with one more tag from his memory: “ ‘… in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life.’ ”
He faced toward the file of men. Four of them had been told to fall in under arms, and at his order they raised their carbines and fired a volley into the air. After that, the trench was filled in.
Jager then cleared his throat and began to give orders concerning horses, saddles and what possessions had been spared by the fire. Lanark walked aside, and found Enid Mandifer keeping pace with him.
“You are going back to your army?” she asked.
“Yes, at once. I was sent here to see if I could find and damage Quantrill’s band. I found him, and gave at least as good as I got.”
“Thank you,” she said, “for everything you’ve done for me.”
He smiled deprecatingly, and it hurt his bullet-burnt cheek.
“I did nothing,” he protested, and both of them realized that it was the truth. “All that has happened—it just happened.”
He drew his eyes into narrow gashes, as if brooding over the past twelve hours.
“I’m halfway inclined to believe what your stepfather said about a supernatural influence here. But what about you, Miss Mandifer?”
She tried to smile in turn, not very successfully.
“I can go back to my home. I’ll be alone there.”
“Alone?”
“I have a few servants.”
“You’ll be safe?”
“As safe as anywhere.”
He clasped his hands behind him. “I don’t know how to say it, but I have begun to feel responsible for you. I want to know that all will be well.”
“Thank you,” she said a second time. “You owe me nothing.”
“Perhaps not. We do not know each other. We have spoken together only three or four times. Yet you will be in my mind. I want to make a promise.”
“Yes?”
They had paused in their little stroll, almost beside the newly filled grave trench. Lanark was frowning, Enid Mandifer nervous and expectant.
“This war,” he said weightily, “is going to last much longer than people thought at first. We—the Union—have done pretty well in the West here, but Lee is making fools of our generals back East. We may have to fight for years, and even then we may not win.”
“I hope, Mr.—I mean, Lieutenant Lanark,” stammered the girl, “I hope that you will live safely through it.”
“I hope so, too. And if I am spared, if I am alive and well when peace comes, I swear that I shall return to this place. I shall make sure that you, too, are alive and well.”
He finished, very certain that he could not have used stiffer, more stupid words; but Enid Mandifer smiled now, radiantly and gratefully.
“I shall pray for you, Lieutenant Lanark. Now, your men are ready to leave. Go, and I shall watch.”
“No,” he demurred. “Go yourself, get away from this dreadful place.”
She bowed her head in assent, and walked quickly away. At some distance she paused, turned, and waved her hand above her head.
Lanark took off his broad, black hat and waved in answer. Then he faced about, strode smartly back into the yard beside the charred ruins. Mounting his bay gelding, he gave the order to depart.