The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1896-06-19

back. IL was an lrOQlcdl secret. Gull,
they saw no hesitation in each others
aces and they nodded mute and I'M
protesting assent when a shaggy man
near them said in a meek voice: Wen
git swallered."
CHAPTER XIV.
The youth stared at the land in front
of him. Its foliages now seemed to
veil powers and horrors. He was una
ware of the machinery of orders that
started the charge, although from tho
corners of his eyes he saw an officer,
who looked like boy horseback,
come galloping, waving his hat. Sud-
denly he felt straining and heaving
among the men. The line fell slowly
forward like toppling wall and, with
convulsive gasp that was intended
for a cheer, the regiment began its
journey. The youth was pushed and
jostled for moment before he under
stood the movement at all, but directly
he lunged ahead and began to run.
lie fixed his eye upon distant and
prominent clump of trees where he had
concluded the enemy were to be met,
and he ran toward it as toward a goal.
He had believed throughout that it
was a mere question of getting over an
unpleasant matter as quickly as posi-
BILE. and he ran desperately as if pur-
sued for a murder. His face was drawn
hard and tight with the stress of his
endeavor. His eyes were fixed in a
lurid glare. And with his soiled and
disordered dress, his red and infiamed
features surmounted by the dingy rag
with its spot of blood, his wildly
swinging rifle and banging accoutre-
ments, he looked to be an insane SOL
der.
AS the regiment swung from It's posi-
ton out into cleared space, the woods
and thickets before it awakened. yell
low flames leaped toward it from
many directions. The forest made a
tremendous objection.
The line lurched straight for mo-
ment Then the right wing swung for
ward; it in turn was surpassed by the
| left. Afterward the center careered
to the front until the regiment was a
wedge-shaped mass; but an instant
later the opposition of the bushes,
trees and uneven places on the ground
split the command and scattered it into
detached clusters.
The youth, light-footed. was uncon-
| sciously in advance. His eyes still
kept note of the clump of trees. From
all places near it the clannish yell of
the enemy could be heard. The little
flames of rifles leaped from it. The
song of the bullets was in the air and
shells snarled from the sky. One
! tunOled directly into the middle of a
hurrying group and exploded in Grim
son fury. There was an instant's spec
/ tacle OF man. almost over it, throw
ing up his hands to shield his eyes.
Other men, punched by bullets, fell
in grotesque agonies. The regiment
left a coherent trail of bodies.
They had passed into clearer at
mosphere. There was an effect like a
revelation in the new appearance of
! the landscape. Some men working
madly at battery were plain to them
and the opposing infantry's lines were
defined by the gray walls and fringes
Of smoke.
II seemed TO the youth that ne saw
everything. Each blade of the green
grass was bold and clear. He thought
he was aware of every change in the
thin, transparent vapor that hoated
idly in sheets The brown or gray
trunks of the trees showed each rough
ness of their surfaces. And the men OF
the regiment, with their starting eyes
and sweating faces, running madly or
falling, as if thrown headlong, to
| queer, heaped up corpses, all were COM
pretended. His mind took a mechan'
ical but firm impression, so that after
ward everything was pictured and ex-
planned to him, save why he himself
was there.
But there was a frenzy made from
his furious rush. The men, pitching
forward insanely, had burst into cheer
ings, mobilize and barbaric, but tuned
in strange keys that can arouse the
dullard and the.stoic. 1t made a mad
enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be
incapable of checking itself before
granite and brass. There was the de
lirium that encounters despair ant
death, and is needless and blind to the
odds. 1t is temporary but sublime
absence of selfishness. And because il
was of this order was the reason, per
haps, why the youth wondered, after
ward, what reasons he could have haC
for being there.
Presently the straining pace ate VI
the energies of the men. AS if by