Chapter: When the youth awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep for a
thousand years, and he felt sure that he opened his eyes upon an
unexpected world.  Gray mists were slowly shifting before the first
efforts of the sun rays.  An impending splendor could be seen in the
eastern sky.  An icy dew had chilled his face, and immediately upon
arousing he curled farther down into his blanket.  He stared for a
while at the leaves overhead, moving in a heraldic wind of the day.

The distance was splintering and blaring with the noise of fighting.
There was in the sound an expression of a deadly persistency, as if it
had not begun and was not to cease.

About him were the rows and groups of men that he had dimly seen the
previous night.  They were getting a last draught of sleep before the
awakening.  The gaunt, careworn features and dusty figures were made
plain by this quaint light at the dawning, but it dressed the skin of
the men in corpselike hues and made the tangled limbs appear pulseless
and dead.  The youth started up with a little cry when his eyes first
swept over this motionless mass of men, thick-spread upon the ground,
pallid, and in strange postures.  His disordered mind interpreted the
hall of the forest as a charnel place.  He believed for an instant that
he was in the house of the dead, and he did not dare to move lest these
corpses start up, squalling and squawking.  In a second, however, he
achieved his proper mind. He swore a complicated oath at himself.  He
saw that this somber picture was not a fact of the present, but a mere
prophecy.

He heard then the noise of a fire crackling briskly in the cold air,
and, turning his head, he saw his friend pottering busily about a small
blaze.  A few other figures moved in the fog, and he heard the hard
cracking of axe blows.

Suddenly there was a hollow rumble of drums.  A distant bugle sang
faintly.  Similar sounds, varying in strength, came from near and far
over the forest.  The bugles called to each other like brazen
gamecocks.  The near thunder of the regimental drums rolled.

The body of men in the woods rustled.  There was a general uplifting of
heads.  A murmuring of voices broke upon the air.  In it there was much
bass of grumbling oaths.  Strange gods were addressed in condemnation
of the early hours necessary to correct war.  An officer's peremptory
tenor rang out and quickened the stiffened movement of the men.  The
tangled limbs unraveled.  The corpse-hued faces were hidden behind
fists that twisted slowly in the eye sockets.

The youth sat up and gave vent to an enormous yawn.  "Thunder!" he
remarked petulantly. He rubbed his eyes, and then putting up his hand
felt carefully of the bandage over his wound. His friend, perceiving
him to be awake, came from the fire.  "Well, Henry, ol' man, how do yeh
feel this mornin'?" he demanded.

The youth yawned again.  Then he puckered his mouth to a little pucker.
His head, in truth, felt precisely like a melon, and there was an
unpleasant sensation at his stomach.

"Oh, Lord, I feel pretty bad," he said.

"Thunder!" exclaimed the other.  "I hoped ye'd feel all right this
mornin'.  Let's see th' bandage--I guess it's slipped."  He began to
tinker at the wound in rather a clumsy way until the youth exploded.

"Gosh-dern it!" he said in sharp irritation; "you're the hangdest man I
ever saw!  You wear muffs on your hands.  Why in good thunderation
can't you be more easy?  I'd rather you'd stand off an' throw guns at
it.  Now, go slow, an' don't act as if you was nailing down carpet."

He glared with insolent command at his friend, but the latter answered
soothingly. "Well, well, come now, an' git some grub," he said.  "Then,
maybe, yeh'll feel better."

At the fireside the loud young soldier watched over his comrade's wants
with tenderness and care.  He was very busy marshaling the little black
vagabonds of tin cups and pouring into them the streaming, iron colored
mixture from a small and sooty tin pail.  He had some fresh meat, which
he roasted hurriedly upon a stick.  He sat down then and contemplated
the youth's appetite with glee.

The youth took note of a remarkable change in his comrade since those
days of camp life upon the river bank.  He seemed no more to be
continually regarding the proportions of his personal prowess.  He was
not furious at small words that pricked his conceits.  He was no more a
loud young soldier.  There was about him now a fine reliance.  He
showed a quiet belief in his purposes and his abilities.  And this
inward confidence evidently enabled him to be indifferent to little
words of other men aimed at him.

The youth reflected.  He had been used to regarding his comrade as a
blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience,
thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage.  A
swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard.  The youth
wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made
the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be
subjected by him.  Apparently, the other had now climbed a peak of
wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a very wee thing.  And
the youth saw that ever after it would be easier to live in his
friend's neighborhood.

His comrade balanced his ebony coffee-cup on his knee.  "Well, Henry,"
he said, "what d'yeh think th' chances are?  D'yeh think we'll wallop
'em?"

The youth considered for a moment.  "Day-b'fore-yesterday," he finally
replied, with boldness, "you would 'a' bet you'd lick the hull
kit-an'-boodle all by yourself."

His friend looked a trifle amazed.  "Would I?" he asked.  He pondered.
"Well, perhaps I would," he decided at last.  He stared humbly at the
fire.

The youth was quite disconcerted at this surprising reception of his
remarks.  "Oh, no, you wouldn't either," he said, hastily trying to
retrace.

But the other made a deprecating gesture. "Oh, yeh needn't mind,
Henry," he said.  "I believe I was a pretty big fool in those days." He
spoke as after a lapse of years.

There was a little pause.

"All th' officers say we've got th' rebs in a pretty tight box," said
the friend, clearing his throat in a commonplace way.  "They all seem
t' think we've got 'em jest where we want 'em."

"I don't know about that," the youth replied. "What I seen over on th'
right makes me think it was th' other way about.  From where I was, it
looked as if we was gettin' a good poundin' yestirday."

"D'yeh think so?" inquired the friend.  "I thought we handled 'em
pretty rough yestirday."

"Not a bit," said the youth.  "Why, lord, man, you didn't see nothing
of the fight.  Why!" Then a sudden thought came to him.  "Oh! Jim
Conklin's dead."

His friend started.  "What?  Is he?  Jim Conklin?"

The youth spoke slowly.  "Yes.  He's dead. Shot in th' side."

"Yeh don't say so.  Jim Conklin. . . . poor cuss!"

All about them were other small fires surrounded by men with their
little black utensils. From one of these near came sudden sharp voices
in a row.  It appeared that two light-footed soldiers had been teasing
a huge, bearded man, causing him to spill coffee upon his blue knees.
The man had gone into a rage and had sworn comprehensively.  Stung by
his language, his tormentors had immediately bristled at him with a
great show of resenting unjust oaths. Possibly there was going to be a
fight.

The friend arose and went over to them, making pacific motions with his
arms.  "Oh, here, now, boys, what's th' use?" he said.  "We'll be at
th' rebs in less'n an hour.  What's th' good fightin' 'mong ourselves?"

One of the light-footed soldiers turned upon him red-faced and violent.
"Yeh needn't come around here with yer preachin'.  I s'pose yeh don't
approve 'a fightin' since Charley Morgan licked yeh; but I don't see
what business this here is 'a yours or anybody else."

"Well, it ain't," said the friend mildly.  "Still I hate t' see--"

There was a tangled argument.

"Well, he--," said the two, indicating their opponent with accusative
forefingers.

The huge soldier was quite purple with rage. He pointed at the two
soldiers with his great hand, extended clawlike.  "Well, they--"

But during this argumentative time the desire to deal blows seemed to
pass, although they said much to each other.  Finally the friend
returned to his old seat.  In a short while the three antagonists could
be seen together in an amiable bunch.

"Jimmie Rogers ses I'll have t' fight him after th' battle t'-day,"
announced the friend as he again seated himself.  "He ses he don't
allow no interferin' in his business.  I hate t' see th' boys fightin'
'mong themselves."

The youth laughed.  "Yer changed a good bit.  Yeh ain't at all like yeh
was.  I remember when you an' that Irish feller--"  He stopped and
laughed again.

"No, I didn't use t' be that way," said his friend thoughtfully.
"That's true 'nough."

"Well, I didn't mean--" began the youth.

The friend made another deprecatory gesture. "Oh, yeh needn't mind,
Henry."

There was another little pause.

"Th' reg'ment lost over half th' men yestirday," remarked the friend
eventually.  "I thought a course they was all dead, but, laws, they
kep' a-comin' back last night until it seems, after all, we didn't lose
but a few.  They'd been scattered all over, wanderin' around in th'
woods, fightin' with other reg'ments, an' everything.  Jest like you
done."

"So?" said the youth.

 When Henry wakes up he hears a distant battle raging. He looks around and sees the other sleeping men whom he momentarily mistakes for dead bodies. Also, his head is the size of a basketball . Henry is helped by Wilson, a.k.a. "the Loud Soldier," who is no longer the loud soldier, but rather the "newly mature, and more like a man" soldier. Henry explains that their friend Jim Conklin has died. Some rowdy soldiers nearby start to fight, but Wilson breaks them up. He tells Henry that their regiment was split up during battle but that the men keep trickling back, just like Henry did.

