Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/8

the gloom. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“High Private Cole Wickett,” I replied. A prisoner could say that much. If he asked about my regiment, or the conditions of the army—But he didn’t. His next question was: “How old are you?”

“Fifteen next birthday.” Again no reason to lie, though I’d told the recruiting sergeant eighteen.

“Fourteen years, and some months,” the big man figured it out. “Come with me.”

He put a hand the size of a hay-fork on my shoulder, and steered me into a back yard full of soldiers playing cards by firelight. He paused, and scolded them for gambling. Any sergeant in Forrest’s command who had tried that would have been hooted at, maybe struck at—we Confederates respected God and General Johnston and Bedford Forrest, and scorned everyone else. But these men put away the cards and said, “Yes sir,” as if he had been an officer. He marched me on into the house beyond the yard, and sat me in a chair in what had been the kitchen.

There he left me. I could hear him talking to someone in the next room. There was a window through which I might have climbed. But it was dark, and I was tired, hungry, sick, and not yet fifteen. I couldn’t have fought my way back through Grant, Sherman and the rest of the Yankees. I waited where I was until the sergeant opened the door and said, “Come in here, Wickett.”

THE front room was lighted by one candle, stuck in its own grease on a table. There sat a tall, gray officer with a chaplain’s cross for insignia. He was eating supper—bread, bacon and coffee. My eyes must have been wolfish, for he asked if I’d have some. I took enough to make a sandwich, and thanked him kindly. Then the chaplain said, “My boy, is it true what Sergeant Jaeger heard? That you’re only a child, and never had a sweetheart?”

I stuck my chin out and stood up straight. The Yankees must be worse than all our Southern editors and speech-makers claimed, if even a preacher among them made jokes about such things. “Sir,” I said, keeping my voice deep in my chest, “it’s none of your business.”

“But it is my business,” he replied solemnly, "and the business of many people. Upon your answer, Cole, depends an effort to help some folk out of awful trouble—northern and southern both—and to right a terrible wrong. Now will you reply?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I returned, “but I never even thought much about girls. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” answered the big sergeant named Jaeger. “You should be proud to say that thing, Wickett, if it’s really true.”

“Sergeant,” I sputtered, “I’m a southern gentleman. If you and I were alone, with horses and sabers, I’d teach you to respect my word.”

His face grew as dark as his beard, and he said, “Respect your elders and betters, youngster. So says the Bible.”

“The catechism, not the Bible, Sergeant,” corrected the chaplain. “Cole, it’s only that we must be dead sure.” He pushed a black-bound book across the table toward me. “This is the Bible. Do you believe in the sanctity of an oath.”

“My word’s good, sir, sworn on the Bible or not,” I told him, but I put my hand on the book. “Must I swear something?”

“Only that you told the truth about never having a sweetheart,” he said, and I did so. The chaplain put away the book, and looked at Sergeant Jaeger.

“Something tells me that we have the help we needed, and couldn’t be sure of in our own forces,” he said. “Take care of this boy, for we’re lost without him.”

He went out. Sergeant Jaeger faced me.