Fix Bay'nets: The Regiment in the Hills

“Yes, sir; that’s it, sir,” said the lad bitterly; “bit o’ common brass as got into the service, and you orficers and old Gee and the rest of you drilled up and polished and dressed up and put some gilt on; but when yer comes to rub it off, I’m on’y a bit o’ brass after all.”

“Yes, you know exactly – coward! – dog!”

“Don’t, sir!” cried the poor fellow in a choking voice; “don’t! It’s like laying it on to a chap with a wire whip.”

“Then do your duty. Go.”

“I can’t, sir; I can’t,” cried the lad, literally writhing, as if the blows were falling upon his back and sides. “I dessay I am a coward, but I’d follow you anywheres, sir, if the bullets was whistling round us, and them devils were waiting for us with their knives; but I can’t go and leave you now, sir. You ain’t fit to leave. It’d be like killing you – murdering of you, sir, with the cold and starvation.”

“It is your duty to go.”

“But you don’t know how bad you are, sir,” pleaded the lad, with the great sobs struggling to escape from his breast. “You don’t know, sir; but I do, sir. You’d be frozen stiff before it was light again.”

“Perhaps; but I should die knowing that an effort was being made to save those we have left behind.”

“You’ve done all you can do, sir,” pleaded Gedge passionately. “We can’t do no more.”

“I can’t, but you can. I call upon you once more to go and do this thing. If you have any manhood in you, go.”

“I can’t, sir,” groaned Gedge.

“You coward! – it’s your duty to go.”

“It ain’t, sir; it can’t be, to leave my orficer to die like this. I know it can’t. Why, if I did, and got the help, and took the men back, and the Colonel got to know how, he’d think it warn’t worth getting it at such a price. He’d call me a cowardly dog and a hound, and the lads would groan and spit at me. Why, they’d cob me when they got me alone, and I couldn’t say a word, because I should feel, as I always should to the last day I lived, that I’d been a miserable sneak.”

“I tell you it is your duty, my man,” cried Bracy again.

“Don’t send me, sir! I ain’t afraid,” pleaded Gedge once more. “It’s leaving you to die in the cold and dark. I can’t go! – I can’t go!”

Bracy struggled up at this, supporting himself with his left hand, moved now as he was by his companion’s devotion; but he choked down all he longed to say in the one supreme effort he was making to fulfil the mission he had failed in by another hand.

“I am your officer, sir. You are a soldier, sworn to serve your country and your Queen.”

Gedge looked down at the speaker through the gloom, and saw him fumbling beneath his sheepskin coat with his right hand. The next minute he had drawn his revolver, and Gedge heard it click.

“You hear me, sir?” cried Bracy sternly.

“Yes, sir, I hear.”

“Then obey your officer’s orders.”

“You ain’t an officer now, sir; you’re a patient waiting to be carried to the rear, after going down in front.”

“How dare you!” cried Bracy fiercely. “Obey my orders.”

“They ain’t your orders, and it ain’t my dooty to obey a poor fellow as has gone stick stark raving mad.”

“Obey my orders, dog, or – ”

“I won’t!” cried Gedge passionately. “I’ll be drummed out if I do.”

“You dog!” roared Bracy, and the pistol clicked.

“Shoot me, then, for a dog,” cried Gedge passionately, “and if I can I’ll try to lick yer hand, but I won’t leave you now.”

The pistol fell with a dull sound as Bracy sank back, and in that terrible darkness and silence, amid the icy snow, a hoarse groan seemed to tear its way from the young officer’s breast.

Chapter Thirty Four

A Wild Idea

How long that silence lasted neither could have afterwards said, but after a time Bracy felt a couple of hands busy drawing the spare poshtin more about him. Then a face was placed close to his, and a hand touched his forehead softly. “I’m not asleep, Gedge,” he said. “Ha!” sighed the lad, with a long drawn breath: “getting afraid, sir; you lay so still.”

“It’s all over, my man,” said Bracy wearily.

“No, no; don’t say that, sir,” cried Gedge. “I was obliged to – ”

“Hush! I don’t mean that. I only feel now that I can sleep.”

“Yes, sir; do, sir. Have a good try.”

“I cannot while I know that I have your coat.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, sir; and I’ve got to be sentry.”

“We want no sentry here, my lad. Take the coat from under me.”

“But – ”

“Come, obey me now,” said Bracy quietly. “Get close to me, then, and cover it over us both.”

“You mean that, sir?”

“Yes. – There, my lad, all men are equal at a time like this. I have striven to the last, but Fate has been against me from the first. I give up now.”

“I didn’t want to run against you, sir; but I was obliged.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You wouldn’t have gone and left me, sir?”

“I don’t know,” said Bracy slowly.

“I do, sir; I know you wouldn’t.”

“Let it rest, my lad, and we’ll wait for day. God help the poor creatures at the fort, and God help us too!”

“Amen!” said Gedge to himself; and as the warmth began to steal through his half-frozen limbs he lay gazing at the distant glow of the enemy’s fire far away below, till it grew more and more faint, and then seemed to die right out – seemed, for it was well replenished again and again through the night, and sent up flames and sparks as if to give a signal far away, for the supply of fir-branches was abundant, and the fire rose in spirals up into the frosty sky.