( PDF ) An Affair Of Outposts

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An Affair Of Outposts

Ambrose Bierce

Two men sat in conversation. One was the Governor of the State. The year was 1861; the

war was on and the Governor already famous for the intelligence and zeal with which he

directed all the powers and resources of his State to the service of the Union.

"What! you?" the Governor was saying in evident surprise--"you too want a military

commission? Really, the fifing and drumming must have effected a profound alteration in

your convictions. In my character of recruiting sergeant I suppose I ought not to be

fastidious, but"--there was a touch of irony in his manner--"well, have you forgotten that an

oath of allegiance is required?"

"I have altered neither my convictions nor my sympathies," said the other, tranquilly.

"While my sympathies are with the South, as you do me the honor to recollect, I have never

doubted that the North was in the right. I am a Southerner in fact and in feeling, but it is my

habit in matters of importance to act as I think, not as I feel."

The Governor was absently tapping his desk with a pencil; he did not immediately reply.

After a while he said: "I have heard that there are all kinds of men in the world, so I suppose

there are some like that, and doubtless you think yourself one. I've known you a long time

and--pardon me--I don't think so."

"Then I am to understand that my application is denied?"

"Unless you can remove my belief that your Southern sympathies are in some degree a

disqualification, yes. I do not doubt your good faith, and I know you to be abundantly fitted

by intelligence and special training for the duties of an officer. Your convictions, you say,

favor the Union cause, but I prefer a man with his heart in it. The heart is what men fight

with."

"Look here, Governor," said the younger man, with a smile that had more light than

warmth: "I have something up my sleeve--a qualification which I had hoped it would not be

necessary to mention. A great military authority has given a simple recipe for being a good

soldier: ‘Try always to get yourself killed.' It is with that purpose that I wish to enter the

service. I am not, perhaps, much of a patriot, but I wish to be dead."

The Governor looked at him rather sharply, then a little coldly. "There is a simpler and

franker way," he said.

"In my family, sir," was the reply, "we do not do that--no Armisted has ever done that."

A long silence ensued and neither man looked at the other. Presently the Governor lifted his

eyes from the pencil, which had resumed its tapping, and said:

"Who is she?"

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"My wife."

The Governor tossed the pencil into the desk, rose and walked two or three times across the

room. Then he turned to Armisted, who also had risen, looked at him more coldly than

before and said: "But the man--would it not be better that he--could not the country spare

him better than it can spare you? Or are the Armisteds opposed to ‘the unwritten law'?"

The Armisteds, apparently, could feel an insult: the face of the younger man flushed, then

paled, but he subdued himself to the service of his purpose.

"The man's identity is unknown to me," he said, calmly enough.

"Pardon me," said the Governor, with even less of visible contrition than commonly

underlies those words. After a moment's reflection he added: "I shall send you to-morrow a

captain's commission in the Tenth Infantry, now at Nashville, Tennessee. Good night."

"Good night, sir. I thank you."

Left alone, the Governor remained for a time motionless, leaning against his desk. Presently

he shrugged his shoulders as if throwing off a burden. "This is a bad business," he said.

Seating himself at a reading-table before the fire, he took up the book nearest his hand,

absently opening it. His eyes fell upon this sentence:

"When God made it necessary for an unfaithful wife to lie about her husband in justification

of her own sins He had the tenderness to endow men with the folly to believe her."

He looked at the title of the book; it was, His Excellency the Fool.

He flung the volume into the fire.

How to Say What is Worth Hearing

The enemy, defeated in two days of battle at Pittsburg Landing, had sullenly retired to

Corinth, whence he had come. For manifest incompetence Grant, whose beaten army had

been saved from destruction and capture by Buell's soldierly activity and skill, had been

relieved of his command, which neverthless had not been given to Buell, but to Halleck, a

man of unproved powers, a theorist, sluggish, irresolute. Foot by foot his troops, always

deployed in line-of-battle to resist the enemy's bickering skirmishers, always entrenching

against the columns that never came, advanced across the thirty miles of forest and swamp

toward an antagonist prepared to vanish at contact, like a ghost at cock-crow. It was a

campaign of "excursions and alarums," of reconnoissances and counter-marches, of cross-

purposes and countermanded orders. For weeks the solemn farce held attention, luring

distinguished civilians from fields of political ambition to see what they safely could of the

horrors of war. Among these was our friend the Governor. At the headquarters of the army

and in the camps of the troops from his State he was a familiar figure, attended by the

several members of his personal staff, showily horsed, faultlessly betailored and bravely

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silk-hatted. Things of charm they were, rich in suggestions of peaceful lands beyond a sea

of strife. The bedraggled soldier looked up from his trench as they passed, leaned upon his

spade and audibly damned them to signify his sense of their ornamental irrelevance to the

austerities of his trade.

"I think, Governor," said General Masterson one day, going into informal session atop of

his horse and throwing one leg across the pommel of his saddle, his favorite posture--"I

think I would not ride any farther in that direction if I were you. We've nothing out there but

a line of skirmishers. That, I presume, is why I was directed to put these siege guns here: if

the skirmishers are driven in the enemy will die of dejection at being unable to haul them

away--they're a trifle heavy."

There is reason to fear that the unstrained quality of this military humor dropped not as the

gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath the civilian's silk hat. Anyhow he abated

none of his dignity in recognition.

"I understand," he said, gravely, "that some of my men are out there--a company of the

Tenth, commanded by Captain Armisted. I should like to meet him if you do not mind."

"He is worth meeting. But there's a bad bit of jungle out there, and I should advise that you

leave your horse and"--with a look at the Governor's retinue--"your other impedimenta."

The Governor went forward alone and on foot. In a half-hour he had pushed through a

tangled undergrowth covering a boggy soil and entered upon firm and more open ground.

Here he found a half-company of infantry lounging behind a line of stacked rifles. The men

wore their accoutrements--their belts, cartridge-boxes, haversacks and canteens. Some lying

at full length on the dry leaves were fast asleep: others in small groups gossiped idly of this

and that; a few played at cards; none was far from the line of stacked arms. To the civilian's

eye the scene was one of carelessness, confusion, indifference; a soldier would have

observed expectancy and readiness.

At a little distance apart an officer in fatigue uniform, armed, sat on a fallen tree noting the

approach of the visitor, to whom a sergeant, rising from one of the groups, now came

forward.

"I wish to see Captain Armisted," said the Governor.

The sergeant eyed him narrowly, saying nothing, pointed to the officer, and taking a rifle

from one of the stacks, accompanied him.

"This man wants to see you, sir," said the sergeant, saluting. The officer rose.

It would have been a sharp eye that would have recognized him. His hair, which but a few

months before had been brown, was streaked with gray. His face, tanned by exposure, was

seamed as with age. A long livid scar across the forehead marked the stroke of a sabre; one

cheek was drawn and puckered by the work of a bullet. Only a woman of the loyal North

would have thought the man handsome.

"Armisted--Captain," said the Governor, extending his hand, "do you not know me?"

"I know you, sir, and I salute you--as the Governor of my State."

Lifting his right hand to the level of his eyes he threw it outward and downward. In the code

of military etiquette there is no provision for shaking hands. That of the civilian was

withdrawn. If he felt either surprise or chagrin his face did not betray it.

"It is the hand that signed your commission," he said.

"And it is the hand--"

The sentence remains unfinished. The sharp report of a rifle came from the front, followed

by another and another. A bullet hissed through the forest and struck a tree near by. The

men sprang from the ground and even before the captain's high, clear voice was done

intoning the command "Atten-tion!" had fallen into line in rear of the stacked arms. Again--

and now through the din of a crackling fusillade--sounded the strong, deliberate singsong of

authority: "Take...arms!" followed by the rattle of unlocking bayonets.

Bullets from the unseen enemy were now flying thick and fast, though mostly well spent

and emitting the humming sound which signified interference by twigs and rotation in the

plane of flight. Two or three of the men in the line were already struck and down. A few

wounded men came limping awkwardly out of the undergrowth from the skirmish line in

front; most of them did not pause, but held their way with white faces and set teeth to the

rear.

Suddenly there was a deep, jarring report in front, followed by the startling rush of a shell,

which passing overhead exploded in the edge of a thicket, setting afire the fallen leaves.

Penetrating the din--seeming to float above it like the melody of a soaring bird--rang the

slow, aspirated monotones of the captain's several commands, without emphasis, without

accent, musical and restful as an evensong under the harvest moon. Familiar with this

tranquilizing chant in moments of imminent peril, these raw soldiers of less than a year's

training yielded themselves to the spell, executing its mandates with the composure and

precision of veterans. Even the distinguished civilian behind his tree, hesitating between

pride and terror, was accessible to its charm and suasion. He was conscious of a fortified

resolution and ran away only when the skirmishers, under orders to rally on the reserve,

came out of the woods like hunted hares and formed on the left of the stiff little line,

breathing hard and thankful for the boon of breath.

III

The Fighting of One Whose Heart Was Not in the Quarrel

Guided in his retreat by that of the fugitive wounded, the Governor struggled bravely to the

rear through the "bad bit of jungle." He was well winded and a trifle confused. Excepting a

single rifle-shot now and again, there was no sound of strife behind him; the enemy was

pulling himself together for a new onset against an antagonist of whose numbers and

tactical disposition he was in doubt. The fugitive felt that he would probably be spared to

his country, and only commended the arrangements of Providence to that end, but in

leaping a small brook in more open ground one of the arrangements incurred the mischance

of a disabling sprain at the ankle. He was unable to continue his flight, for he was too fat to

hop, and after several vain attempts, causing intolerable pain, seated himself on the earth to

nurse his ignoble disability and deprecate the military situation.

A brisk renewal of the firing broke out and stray bullets came flitting and droning by. Then

came the crash of two clean, definite volleys, followed by a continuous rattle, through

which he heard the yells and cheers of the combatants, punctuated by thunderclaps of

cannon. All this told him that Armisted's little command was bitterly beset and fighting at

close quarters. The wounded men whom he had distanced began to straggle by on either

hand, their numbers visibly augmented by new levies from the line. Singly and by twos and

threes, some supporting comrades more desperately hurt than themselves, but all deaf to his

appeals for assistance, they sifted through the underbrush and disappeared. The firing was

increasingly louder and more distinct, and presently the ailing fugitives were succeeded by

men who strode with a firmer tread, occasionally facing about and discharging their pieces,

then doggedly resuming their retreat, reloading as they walked. Two or three fell as he

looked, and lay motionless. One had enough of life left in him to make a pitiful attempt to

drag himself to cover. A passing comrade paused beside him long enough to fire, appraised

the poor devil's disability with a look and moved sullenly on, inserting a cartridge in his

weapon.

In all this was none of the pomp of war--no hint of glory. Even in his distress and peril the

helpless civilian could not forbear to contrast it with the gorgeous parades and reviews held

in honor of himself--with the brilliant uniforms, the music, the banners, and the marching. It

was an ugly and sickening business: to all that was artistic in his nature, revolting, brutal, in

bad taste.

"Ugh!" he grunted, shuddering--"this is beastly! Where is the charm of it all? Where are the

elevated sentiments, the devotion, the heroism, the--"

From a point somewhere near, in the direction of the pursuing enemy, rose the clear,

deliberate singsong of Captain Armisted.

"Stead-y, men--stead-y. Halt! Commence firing."

The rattle of fewer than a score of rifles could be distinguished through the general uproar,

and again that penetrating falsetto:

"Cease fir-ing. In re-treat...maaarch!"

In a few moments this remnant had drifted slowly past the Governor, all to the right of him

as they faced in retiring, the men deployed at intervals of a half-dozen paces. At the extreme

left and a few yards behind came the captain. The civilian called out his name, but he did

not hear. A swarm of men in gray now broke out of cover in pursuit, making directly for the

spot where the Governor lay--some accident of the ground had caused them to converge

upon that point: their line had become a crowd. In a last struggle for life and liberty the

Governor attempted to rise, and looking back the captain saw him. Promptly, but with the

same slow precision as before, he sang his commands:

"Skirm-ish-ers, halt!" The men stopped and according to rule turned to face the enemy.

"Ral-ly on the right!"--and they came in at a run, fixing bayonets and forming loosely on the

man at that end of the line.

"Forward...to save the Gov-ern-or of your State...doub-le quick...maaarch!"

Only one man disobeyed this astonishing command! He was dead. With a cheer they sprang

forward over the twenty or thirty paces between them and their task. The captain having a

shorter distance to go arrived first--simultaneously with the enemy. A half-dozen hasty

shots were fired at him, and the foremost man--a fellow of heroic stature, hatless and bare-

breasted--made a vicious sweep at his head with a clubbed rifle. The officer parried the

blow at the cost of a broken arm and drove his sword to the hilt into the giant's breast. As

the body fell the weapon was wrenched from his hand and before he could pluck his

revolver from the scabbard at his belt another man leaped upon him like a tiger, fastening

both hands upon his throat and bearing him backward upon the prostrate Governor, still

struggling to rise. This man was promptly spitted upon the bayonet of a Federal sergeant

and his death-grip on the captain's throat loosened by a kick upon each wrist. When the

captain had risen he was at the rear of his men, who had all passed over and around him and

were thrusting fiercely at their more numerous but less coherent antagonists. Nearly all the

rifles on both sides were empty and in the crush there was neither time nor room to reload.

The Confederates were at a disadvantage in that most of them lacked bayonets; they fought

by bludgeoning--and a clubbed rifle is a formidable arm. The sound of the conflict was a

clatter like that of the interlocking horns of battling bulls--now and then the pash of a

crushed skull, an oath, or a grunt caused by the impact of a rifle's muzzle against the

abdomen transfixed by its bayonet. Through an opening made by the fall of one of his men

Captain Armisted sprang, with his dangling left arm; in his right hand a full-charged

revolver, which he fired with rapidity and terrible effect into the thick of the gray crowd:

but across the bodies of the slain the survivors in the front were pushed forward by their

comrades in the rear till again they breasted the tireless bayonets. There were fewer

bayonets now to breast--a beggarly half-dozen, all told. A few minutes more of this rough

work--a little fighting back to back--and all would be over.

Suddenly a lively firing was heard on the right and the left: a fresh line of Federal

skirmishers came forward at a run, driving before them those parts of the Confederate line

that had been separated by staying the advance of the centre. And behind these new and

noisy combatants, at a distance of two or three hundred yards, could be seen, indistinct

among the trees a line-of-battle!

Instinctively before retiring, the crowd in gray made a tremendous rush upon its handful of

antagonists, overwhelming them by mere momentum and, unable to use weapons in the

crush, trampled them, stamped savagely on their limbs, their bodies, their necks, their faces;

then retiring with bloody feet across its own dead it joined the general rout and the incident

was at an end.

The Great Honor The Great

The Governor, who had been unconscious, opened his eyes and stared about him, slowly

recalling the day's events. A man in the uniform of a major was kneeling beside him; he

was a surgeon. Grouped about were the civilian members of the Governor's staff, their faces

expressing a natural solicitude regarding their offices. A little apart stood General

Masterson addressing another officer and gesticulating with a cigar. He was saying: "It was

the beautifulest fight ever made--by God, sir, it was great!"

The beauty and greatness were attested by a row of dead, trimly disposed, and another of

wounded, less formally placed, restless, half-naked, but bravely bebandaged.

"How do you feel, sir?" said the surgeon. "I find no wound."

"I think I am all right," the patient replied, sitting up. "It is that ankle."

The surgeon transferred his attention to the ankle, cutting away the boot. All eyes followed

the knife.

In moving the leg a folded paper was uncovered. The patient picked it up and carelessly

opened it. It was a letter three months old, signed "Julia." Catching sight of his name in it he

read it. It was nothing very remarkable--merely a weak woman's confession of unprofitable

sin--the penitence of a faithless wife deserted by her betrayer. The letter had fallen from the

pocket of Captain Armisted; the reader quietly transferred it to his own.

An aide-de-camp rode up and dismounted. Advancing to the Governor he saluted.

"Sir," he said, "I am sorry to find you wounded--the Commanding General has not been

informed. He presents his compliments and I am directed to say that he has ordered for to-

morrow a grand review of the reserve corps in your honor. I venture to add that the

General's carriage is at your service if you are able to attend."

"Be pleased to say to the Commanding General that I am deeply touched by his kindness. If

you have the patience to wait a few moments you shall convey a more definite reply."

He smiled brightly and glancing at the surgeon and his assistants added: "At present--if you

will permit an allusion to the horrors of peace--I am ‘in the hands of my friends.' "

The humor of the great is infectious; all laughed who heard.

"Where is Captain Armisted?" the Governor asked, not altogether carelessly.

The surgeon looked up from his work, pointing silently to the nearest body in the row of

dead, the features discreetly covered with a handkerchief. It was so near that the great man

could have laid his hand upon it, but he did not. He may have feared that it would bleed.

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