The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 16 March 1911, Page 459

The Storyteller

THE STUFF OF HEROES Above the steady grinding of wheels through sand and the straining creak of harness taxed almost to the breaking point, rose the voice of Ezra Butters, teamster of the first blue-bodied waggon of the long train. Oh, Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land, As on thy highest mount I stand ! There was no variation in Butters' selection. Two members of the cavalry escort who had been relegated by fate to a position in waggons two hundred yards distant from Butters', estimated that Ezra had sung that particular Gospel hymn every quarter of a mile for thirty miles. They were tired of the racket, and, had it not been for the fact that an army needs teamsters for various purposes, they would probably have shot Ezra while he sang", both of them being short of ethical scruples. Even Lieutenant; Cadrnan, in the advance party, could hear the hoarse voice and was annoyed. Why is it,' he asked of Stevens, his second in command, ' that there is always something offensive about a teamster? They invariably sing or do something equally bad.' ' Probably,' suggested Stevens sagely, ' because the teamsters as a rule are such an exquisitely rum lot of beings.' 'I know it,' agreed Cadman. 'They are a worthless lot. They can drive horses, grease axles, and that sort of thing. As long as you keep them far enough from the firing line, they are all very well, but let one bullet whistle overhead, and they are cutting the traces and getting away, leaving the waggons where they stand. ' Never yet,' supplemented Stevens, ' have I known one to be equal to an emergencyoutside the four sides of his waggon.' Butters did not look like a man who would deliberately sing Gospel hymns, nor did his attitude express any degree of devoutness. He lolled at ease on the hard seat of the waggon, his long legs hanging down over the low dashboard, his felt hat pushed on. the back of his head. The sweat rolled down his cheeks and matted his long unkempt moustache. From time to time he struck the plodding horses mercilessly with his long whip, accompanying the act with much profanity. The horses, worn by long miles of plodding, almost crazed by the steady, burning heat, were incapable of any greater effort and only quivered under the strokes of the lash.

On every side of him stretched interminable reaches of yellow sand, with the little blue dots of the cavalry escort pricked out against the yellow sky line. Behiiid Butters’ waggon the others extended across the waste in a long line, like a gigantic snake. Sprawled out in an effort at ease on the blue boxes of ammunition in the waggon, back of Butters, lay a trooper whose horse had gone hopelessly lame earlier in the day. Ezra had attempted to engage this man in conversation, but he had proved taciturn. Wearily the teamster’s eye roved about the hideously monotonous . landscape; not a feature of it changed. The cavalry escort was always just as far away, the next waggon just as far behind. The chances of the speech which Butters craved were as remote as ever. 1 Oh, Beulah Land——’ he commenced. The trooper behind him rolled over on the boxes with a groan of misery. If you start that again,’ he warned, ‘ I’m going to throw you into the desert.’ Butters stared at him weakly. ‘ All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t but if you was to whistle a bit, I dunno’s I’d mind.’ ‘ Why in blazes should I whistle?’ demanded the trooper angrily. ‘ There is no reason for it.’ ‘ Wells,’ explained Butters, ‘ I’ve heard the same sounds now for three days, an’ I’d like a change.’ The trooper grunted and rolled back on to the boxes. Butters looked at him longingly, but the man seemed to have passed again into the state of absolute quiet which he had maintained for hours. Again Butters’ eye wheeled around the glaring circle of the horizon in search of something different failed to find it. He was on the point of singing again when he recalled the trooper’s threat. _ A glance at the angles of the man’s chin did away with the thought of the possible emptiness of the .words. Ezra considered calling out in his lonely misery to the man on the next wagon, only to remember that he was as deaf as a post. He looked appealingly at the prostrate cavalryman. The man’s eyes were open. Butters whipped his horses, swore forcibly, relapsed into silence for five interminable minutes, and then said over his shoulder:

Was you ever in Throe Rivers, Michigan?’ ‘No.’ answered the man, drowsily. ‘Why?’ To Butters that single interrogation was worth everything. It meant a break in the mpnotony—a chance for speech. Ho crossed his legs and thrust an empty pipe between his teeth to increase his feeling of comfort. ‘Well, sir,’ he said importantly, ‘I lived there. The finest little town you ever saw.’He waited breathlessly for the trooper to answer. He did not, but he neither closed his eyes nor ordered silence, and Ezra took heart.

' Used, to drive a truck for the Sheffield people,' he went on. " 'Drove that truck every day for five years. Yes, sir, never missed a day in five years! Them Sheffield people is a great bunch; always give us Saturday afternoon off! An' you've never been there?' Just the. shadow of a smile crept around the. trooper's mouth, and ho answered, imitating Butters's sober tone: 'No, sir, I never have!' ' Well, well,' commented Ezra, and then he launched with his full powers upon a description of his native heath and of the thirty odd years of his colorless life. The trooper lay stretched out at full length under the rain of trivialities and tried to sleep, but Butters's nasal tones were not soothing. Now and then he drowsed away, but Ezra's voice would rise and the unhappy trooper would awake into the glare of the sand and the sky with a start. Finally he sat bolt upright and faced his tormentor. 'For heaven's sake!' he ejaculated, 'sing "Beulah Land' or anything else! There may be two people in that world that care about hearing that but who cares about whether your boss gave you five or six dollars a week? I don't.' The trooper slid abruptly over the tailpiece, and Butters saw him climb into the next waggon. ' Now I wonder,' he mused, ' what's the matter with him. Heat, I guess. I was just tryin' to amuse him.' He relapsed again into uncomfortable silence, and abuse of his horses. The line of wagons crawled on across the plain, following only the shifting, shallow ruts which had been cut by other trains before them. Butters drooped his' head and silently regretted the moment in which lie had thrown away a job and the proximity of Dolan's free lunches because the government offered him more than he had been getting. At the head of the column Lieutenants Cadman and Stevens began consulting their watches and assuming expressions of care and thoughtfulness. It happened that it was Cadman's first independent command, and his responsibilities rested heavily upon him. ' It's time we came in sight of timber,' said Stevens. In reply Cadman held up a hand for silence, and both checked their horses and listened. The creaking of axles sounded loud behind them in the hot silence, but far in front there throbbed another sound—a sound they both knew. 'They're at it!' shouted Cadman. 'And the Lord knows how long they've been at it!' Stevens scratched his head in perplexity. ' Now I wonder what we ought to do,' he mused. ' Run our waggons right smack into the fighting and risk getting in the way or even losing them ? Or just sit tight here and wait for something to happen '_ In the inmost recesses of his being First Lieutenant Cadman was perplexed by the same question; but he had no intention that Second Lieutenant Stevens should guess it. Indeed, he welcomed the manifest perplexity of his subordinate. ' My orders,' he said, with a certain amount of stiffness, are perfectly explicit. lam to bring up this ammunition with all possible speedand that's what J shall do. Lieutenant Stevens, will you order the rear guard to close in, and decrease the intervals between your flankers Stevens saluted and rode away, while the waggon-train, men and beasts pricking up their ears at the sound of the distant firing, ploughed steadily on through the sand. As Stevens passed the first waggon, Butters shouted at him : Say, jwe ain't goin' up where all that racket is, are we ?' At the moment Stevens' contempt for teamsters was intensified by a certain irritation at the sudden stiffening of his superior's discipline. Butters' question hit him across the grain. 'You'll go where you are ordered,' ho snapped. The waggon train assumed a more compact form. The members of the escort closed up on the flanks and at the rear, while a few troopers scouted still further out on the plain. Stevens and Cadman endeavored to be everywhere at once, searching zealously for some danger to be met and avoided, but they encountered nothing save the increasing sounds of firing ahead. To increase the compactness of his column, Cadman threw his waggons into two lines, and Butters found himself driving beside the deaf teamster. This was an added grievance, but lie remembered the trooper in the back of the waggon. 'They won't make us get into this, will they?' he called across anxiously. The trooper stuck his head above the side of the waggon and glowered at him. 'This battle,' he growled, ' was designed and is being carried out solely for the torture and destruction of teamsters.' Butters stared at him vacantly and shook his head. ' I hired out to drive my team,' he objected. ' I ain't no soldier.' The sandy nature of the ground changed somewhat, and a thin growth of bushes and stunted trees appeared! The ground commenced to slope and the surface grew rockier. Gradually the glare of the sun decreased, and men and horses gasped their relief. Butters took the empty pipe from his mouth and gazed into the empty bowl despairingly. 'Ain't got any 'baccy, have ye?' he called across to the cavalryman.

The other shook his head. ' There's plenty of it up there where they're fighting, though,' he added with a grin. . Butters seemed to consider the matter deeply. ' I guess they can keep it,' he said finally. Mingled with the distant roar and cackle of the firing came a new sound—a deeper, steadier roar. Cadman heard it and scowled. 'The river's higher!' he muttered. The column hurried forward, spurred on by. Cadman's nervous orders. A trooper from the advance party came riding Back to where the two lieutenants were holding a hurried consultation. ' The bisdge is gone, sir,' he announced. Cadman stared at him incredulously. 'Gone?' he demanded. The trooper nodded. Cadman and Stevens looked at each other and then at the trooper, as though he were the cause of the disaster. . 'We'll have to wait, that's all,' Stevens said. . ' There's a signal corps man on the other side of the river,' the trooper went on, but there's none of us up there can read the wig-wag.' With a muttered exclamation Cadman spurred forward his horse and rode toward the point where the little knot of horsemen had gathered on the edge of the river. He took a private's carbine, tied a handkerchief to it, and held mute converse with the figure on the other side of. the stream. The cavalryman and the distant waggontrain watched them in uncomprehending interest. Cadman's face grew more and more serious as the signals fluttered back and forth. Finally he lowered his improvised flag and turned to Stevens with a helpless expression. ' We're licked if we can't get these waggons across the river,' ho announced in a dull voice. 'They've been fighting here for fourteen hours,' and the ammunition's nearly gone. They can't hold out more than an hour longer. This freshet came along two days ago and washed out the old bridge and the pontoons.' The men looked at the river. It roared past them brimming from bank to banka hundred and fifty yards wide. The signal man on the other bank leaned on his flag and watched them curiously. Through the rush of the waters they heard the rattle of firing that would die out in defeat unless they could get the blue boxes across. ' How about fords ?' Cadman asked. The troopers shook their heads. ' We've been five miles up and down stream,' explained one of them whose trousers were wet to the waist and whose bay horse was black with the water, ' and there ain't a place better than this!' Cadman pushed his horse to the bank, but the beast refused to enter the water. He used his spur and the flat of his sabre —and was nearly unsaddled for his pains. 'Did you try the depth here he demanded of the drenched soldier. 'I couldn't get ten feet from the shore,' answered the man. The two officers and the little group of soldiers continued to stare helplessly at the rushing water, seemingly obsessed by the consciousness of their own powerlessness. The signal-man on the opposite bank shouted something unintelligible, waved his arms, and sat down. Presently they saw the clouds of smoke arising from his pipe. ''Gee!' exclaimed a voice in Cadman's ear.- 'That fellow over there's got some smokin'.' Cadman whirled to see Butters long figure leaning eagerly against a tree, his hands in his trousers' pockets, his pipe, bowl downward, hanging from his lips contemplating the distant smoker with an expression of the keenest envy. Cadman's helpless indignation found a vent. ' Why did you leave your team ' he stormed. Ezra turned upon him a glance of mild astonishment. 'Well, they'll stand all right,' he explained. 'Can't go very far,' he added, with a cheerful grin at the river. 'You get back to them!' shouted Cadman. 'All right, all right!' murmured Butters, with the air of a man quieting a weeping child, as he went back to his horses. The column commenced to lose all semblance of military order and straggled to the edge of the river to watch the thing that had stopped it. Cadman recovered from the first shock, which had reduced him to blind inactivity, and became feverishly busy. Men galloped up and down the bank looking for boats. He himself tried to find fords in a dozen places he sent the best swimmers of his halfcompany into the water with their horses. In the meantime the teamsters stood about in knots and watched the fruitless effort of the cavalry without attempting to hide their scorn. Occasionally men appeared on the other shore. The sound of firing continued without slackeningit was evident that the engagement was still too hot for men to be spared. After a while Cadman sat down on the ground in a dejected heap, and watched his distant horsemen scurrvine along the distant banks of the stream. Stevens, whose supply of wild schemes for forcing a passage was not exhausted stood at his side and offered further suggestions to all of which Cadman shook his head despondently 'And now ' he groaned, 'that we are hung upon the edge of tins silly brook, they'll probably get into our rear/

throw their own pontoons across, and gobble us up with the rest of the troops!' , Stevens 'nodded in grim sympathy. ' Down here,' Cadman went on, ' it only looks foolish \ and annoying, but up there, where good men are being ' shot to pieces because they haven't got lead to sling back — it's tragic' . . . . . 'Wan't to get 'cross, don't ye?' inquired the drawling voice of Butters. Cadman flopped limply over on to the earth, between laughter and tears at the words, and glanced up to find an expression of perfect seriousness on Ezra's face. His sense of humor stood off his natural resentment. 'No,' he answered whimsically; 'but I'm willing to take you over if you really want to go!' Ezra scratched his chin. 'Guess I'll do it,' he announced finally. 'I want some o' that feller's smokin'.' ''Of course you'll take the rest of us?' inquired Stevens, checking an almost hysterical burst of. laughter. ' Can't get them horses and waggons over,' replied Butters, ' but I might manage it with them blue boxes in the waggons.' Cadman's mouth dropped open. He got to his feet and grasped Ezra roughly by the shoulder. 'This is no time "for fooling, my man,' he reminded him. ' I ain't foolin',' insisted Butters. . The two officers looked at him intently. There was nothing in the lean figure, the hopelessly ordinary face, and the weak chin to arouse confidence, nor had the man ever given indication that' he could do anything other than drive his team. ' All right, take 'em across,' said Cadman suddenly, with an air of washing his hands of the whole matter. Stevens stared at his superior in amazement, but Cadman turned his back and walked toward the bank of the river. ' Kin I boss them other chaps inquired Ezra, with a wave of the hand toward his fellow teamsters. Cadman turned on his heel and made a wide, allincluding gesture. ' You can do anything,' he sputtered angrily. ' I can fight men, but 1 can't fight nature. If you can jump that ditch ' and he jerked a gauntleted thumb toward the. water —' and take those boxes with you, go on and do it!' Butters walked back to his own waggon, summoned two other teamsters, and commenced to unload the heavy, squat boxes. They piled them in a pyramid on the ground. Once in a while Cadman took his moody glance from the river long enough to glance at Butters' operations; the rest of the time he stared straight ahead of him, listening to the- distant rattle of guns. 'Shucks!' exclaimed Ezra, working at the wheel of his waggon, with a wrench. 'This ain't nothin'. 'We'll be across here in a jiffy. I got stuck once down at ■ Three Rivers with a dray-load- o' castings.' The cavalrymen, under Cadman's orders, were now attempting the construction of a raft. They had got an axe from one of the waggons and were pecking impotently at the gnarled trunk of a tree standing close to the water. Stevens was estimating the chances of taking waggons and all, trying a forced march to the nearest bridge—an indefinite distance to the north —and possibly becoming a first lieutenant, or even a captain. 'Here, 3-011 fellers!' exclaimed Butters. 'Unload two more waggons and bust up the boxes —the; waggon-boxes.' The teamsters looked at him. in uncertainty. ' Go ondo it!' he commanded, with a sudden stiffening of his weak under jaw. He saw them at work, then set two other men to splicing together all the halters to be found and piecing out the result with the tugs and lines from the different teams. 'Save the nails!' he shouted to the men, who were rapidly breaking two of the waggons to pieces. The two officers and their men began to glance oftener in the direction of the busy throng about the waggons. Ezra, his empty pipe sticking straight out, was hopping about everywhere. Under his orders the boards from the dismantled waggon-boxes had been nailed to the box of his own waggon, which he had taken off the wheels and lowered to the ground. 'By George!' exclaimed Cadman, in astonishment. 'A boat!' He turned to his men, his face Hushing, and began to give orders. In ten minutes the remodelled waggon, a clumsy and by no means seaworthy-looking craft, was at the. edge of the water. ' Now,' exclaimed Butters, as he stripped off his clothes, 'somebody hold my pipe. 'I ain't goin' to lose that after all this bother!' He stood on _ the bank, knotting about his waist the long rope which he had constructed of harness and halters. 'Don't nobody go hailing me back till I give the word,' he commanded. 'I ain't near a bad swimmer as I look to be.' He walked along the shore to a point two hundred yards above the waggons. 'When I'm acrost,' he said 'tie that there rope to the wagon-box, and we'll see!' He shivered slightly as lie stood on the brink, his long, ungainly limbs twitching as he looked at the cold,

black water. ' I don't like this here business none too much,' he admitted, ' but I can't stand watchin' that feller smokin' over there, an' me with an empty pipe.' With a. mighty splash he struck the _ water. The first rush of the current caught him, and he rolled and tumbled down stream, awkwardly striving to get into position to breast the current. The men with the ropes started to haul him back. ' Let him go a bit further,' commanded Cadman, without looking away from the spot where Ezra's black head bobbed in the current. , 'They ought to haul him in,' suggested Stevens presently, looking anxious. 'There isn't a man of us could swim across there.' 'I don't know,' answered Cadman; 'l'm getting my eyes open to a few things.' The teamster was swimming. The current beat him down swiftly, but he gained. Breathlessly the men watched his efforts. His progress was slow. Once they thought lie had signalled them to pull back, but discovered their mistake when his angry shouts to 'Let go!' came bubbling from the river. ' Stevens,' commanded Cadman sharply, ' signal that chap over there that they can have their ammunition as fast as they can send for it.' Stevens looked hard at his superior, and then began wigwagging busily to the other shore, where the signalman woke into life at the first flutter of the handkerchief. 'The man's a fish!' exclaimed Stevens, as he watched Butters' head popping over the surface of the water twenty yards from the opposite shore line. 'I suppose,' said Cadman, that's what's called a hero!' The trooper who had ridden in Butters' waggon suddenly spoke. ' His name,' he said thoughtfully, 'is Ezra Butters. He used to drive a truck in Three Rivers, Michigan. His wife's name is Molly. He told me so. They have no children. He is very fond of the free lunches provided by a citizen of Three Rivers named Dolan.' Cadman glanced in surprise at. the speaker, caught the , expression on his face, and nodded his head slowly several times. The men saw Butters reach shallow water, stagger a bit, then flounder somehow on to shore. In the excitement of tying the ropes to the bow and stern of his extemporized boat, they forgot to cheer him. He lay gasping like a fish on the other shore, the signal-man working over him anxiously. After a moment the latter rose to his knees and commenced signalling. Cadman watched the fluttering flag and then shouted: 'Butters wants his pipe sent over with the first load!' he cried. Fifteen minutes later, the waggon-box pitched, tossed, and creaked across on its first trip. It reached the other shore half full of water, but the two blue boxes in it were uninjured, and Ezra's pipe bobbed on the surface of the water inside the boat. • On the next trip Butters, stark naked but with his pipe going full blast, sat astride one of the boxos and bailed diligently with the nose-bag of one of his horses. As the third load reached the shore with Cadman and Stevens on board, a dozen pack-mules, under escort of a little squad of cavalry, came clattering down to the shore of the river, where Butters was busy superintending the landing. Cadman stood near, watching the operations with an air of abstraction. Visions of a captaincy were dispelled by the visions of a weak-faced, long-limbed teamster, naked save for a flapping felt hat. 'What brand o' tobacco d'ye smoke, anyway 'Butters asked the signal-man, as he landed on the fifth trip. ' I kind o' like it.' An hour later the infantrymen dotting a line of hills two miles beyond the river, where they had lain for hours holding back their ammunition— only when to fire was to killheard rumors of cartridges. A few minutes later men began to spill the shining yellow objects out of the blue boxes on to the earth, and a yell went up that was heard at the river. The enemy, encountering a fire which in some unaccountable fashion trebled in volume within a few minutes, backed off after the fashion of a man who has received an unexpected blow in the solar plexus. In the glow of sunset, the Brigadier walked his horse slowly down to the river, having won a'battle that he had despaired of ever doing anything but lose. He approached the place where 'The Ark,' with its rope and harnesscable, was moored. Cadman rose and saluted. ' Lieutenant,' commenced the Brigadier, but Cadman raised a deferentially silencing hand. ' There's the man who brought it across, General,' he explained with a gesture. ' I didn't do it.' The Brigadier looked, arched his eyebrows, and got off his horse.- He went to where Butters sat oil an empty blue-box, puffing contentedly at his pipe. 'My man,' he commenced, with an air befitting the occasion, in the name of the army and of your country I wish to thank you publicly. It is due to your heroism that the battle has been won.' Ezra removed bis pipe' and stared at the Brigadier uncomprehendingly. Battle?' he "asked blankly. 'What battle?'—Everybody's Magazine. ' "