“You do yourselves ill, gentlemen,” said he, “to create such a disturbance. Must we win battles from the enemy and lose them among ourselves? Fie that there should be such dissension! Come now, what’s the root of all this?”

The silence was so heavy that the crackling of wood on a near-by fire echoed like gunshots in the frosty air. A voice sang out--

“Jemmy Rice, you speak for us.”

Jukes waited several moments to hear the man’s voice. At last he turned and sought through the crowd until his eyes fell upon Rice--a tumultuous character of his own company who had the readiest tongue for grievances in all the camp. But Jemmy Rice was silent now in face of the brigadier. For this was akin to mutiny and he had no stomach to put himself up as a ringleader to be shot.

Jukes, waiting further, closed his fist and took a pace forward where the brigadier’s searching eyes might find him. The wild rush of feeling that sprang upward, had it been allowed to escape, would have sent a torrent of angry words upon the officer. Jukes checked it, lips turning thin from the effort. His somber face met the brigadier not defiantly but as an equal speaking to an equal.

“A man died in my hut this afternoon fer lack o’ food an’ lack o’ blankets. Died on the ground with nary a straw beneath him. There’s four others in that hut an’ none fit to be abroad. That’s what we raise Cain about.”

The brigadier inclined his head.

“I am aware of the misfortunes of this camp. Every officer worth a grain of salt is aware of them. Don’t you think we spend our days trying to make conditions a little better? But what help d’you expect by this conduct?”

Jukes, looking beyond the brigadier, caught sight of his captain, an angry man indeed that one of his own company should be spokesman of rebellion. He squared his shoulders and proceeded:

“We ain’t doubtin’ your efforts. But it don’t seem in the power o’ officers to help us, so we try raisin’ our own voices. We ain’t had meat fer six days. Last rations o’ bread were plumb moldy. Clothes--well, we don’t expect none, never havin’ had an issue since October. There’s half o’ this company in the hospital an’ more waitin’ to get in when beds are empty. As fer pay, I ain’t seen a scrap o’ money fer fourteen months. Now we hear there’s a committee of the Congress comin’ down to see why we ain’t satisfied. Well, sir, God grant they come to this company fer information!”

The swelling echo behind him told Jukes he had spoken the brigade’s mind. The captain’s face was black as thunder but the brigadier never changed a whit.

“You are mild enough. Were I inclined I could add to that tale of misfortune and make it darker still. Gentlemen, your grievances are my own. But it will never do to break down like this. It only gives our enemies a chance to strengthen their position. Nothing will ever convince me you are the kind to sully your honor by sedition. I want you all to disperse to your huts. Meanwhile I may tell you there is at this moment wagon-trains bound for camp with warm clothes and fresh beef. Now, gentlemen, retire to your quarters.”

The brigadier, looking over their thoughtful countenances, knew he had broken the back of resistance. They had given his words attention and that meant they were still reasonable. Being a kindly man, he clinched his victory with mildness.

“Many of you are very weak. Considering that, we will omit grand parade tonight. The guards will be posted informally.”

The men broke from the ring one by one, slowly returning to their huts. The brigadier and his staff rode away. Jukes, profoundly affected, trudged down the street, breasted the snow bank and caught the handle of his ax. A dozen blows brought the tree down and he set to cutting off branches and sections. Perhaps a half-hour passed at this occupation and the gray dusk fell without warning while he meditated over the plight of his comrades. His recent speech had made him aware of his own personal troubles, too, and as he chopped at the log he thought again of his folks at home.

“That Bige,” he muttered, “allus was a no-’count. As fer them braggin’ Neely boys, they never was worth powder to blow ’em up. Paw must be doin’ poorly.”

He drove the ax into the log and loaded his arms with split wood. Stumbling back to the hut, he began shaving a stick of kindling. He built a teepee of the splinters and went to the adjoining fire for a burning brand to start his own blaze. A flame shot upward and caught the sticks. Some one in the hut called to him:

“That you, Jukes? Didn’t you see the notice?”

Jukes piled more wood on the fire.

“What notice?”

“Fella come down from captain’s quarters with a notice an’ posted it to our hut while you was gone. Better see what it says.”

Jukes took up a flaming branch and carried it to the hut wall. There, stuck to a log where the company orders were usually put, he found the following announcement, written in the clerk’s bold hand:

From this day Jem Rice will be sergeant of the company, taking place of Alva Jukes, returned to the ranks.

--Fleming, Captain.

He stood there for a long time, reading the notice thrice over, making sure of its import. The captain’s dark, angry glance had borne fruit and he, Alva Jukes, was to lose the tabard of authority he had won by his own reckless effort. To lose it for speaking nothing but truth; and, what was more unfair, to lose it to a man who had not the courage of his beliefs.

The wild, Scotch-Irish rage gave power to his hand. The burning stick smashed against the notice and sputtered, lighting and consuming the paper.

“Let ’em fight their own war, then!” he cried, ducking into the hut. “I’ve done my share!” He went to his corner of the gloomy place, rolled together his bundle of belongings and took his rifle. Going out, he stopped to add fresh fuel to the fire. “Better come an’ take care o’ this now,” he called back.

Ploughing through the snow, he was swallowed by the night. But he hadn’t gone twenty yards before he stopped, put down his rifle and bundle and went back to the fallen tree. He collected another armful of wood and packed it to the fire, grumbling--

“Ain’t a blessed one o’ them boys able to lift a stick.”

A moment later he had vanished again, turning his course to pass the pickets, bound homeward, a deserter from Valley Forge.

The farther he traveled the more powerfully did the bitter resentment affect him. At last he cried out to the black winter sky.

“May the Lord strike me dead if ever I see the army again. ---- the Congress! Let ’em fight fer their own freedom if they’re so sot on it. A pack o’ shilly-shally lawyers an’ argufyers!”

* * * * *

He was a tough, canny fellow, Alva Jukes, and capable of sustaining himself through hard affairs. That night, a great deal later, he turned off the road and slept in a barn. At the first crack of day he was away, bearing in his pouch two ears of dried corn, which was his only food for the next ten hours. His course led him northwesterly along a pike, aiming straight for the backwoods part of the State, toward that land he had left better than two years before.

As he traveled he kept good watch behind for patrols that swept the environs of Valley Forge. He was not of a mind to be taken and marched back before a summary court. And so it was that, when his eyes spied horsemen coming along the road, he dropped into a stand of trees and let them pass. They were a few officers on a reconnoitering party and after they vanished around a bend he came from concealment.

At the joining of highways some distance farther along, he chose the lesser used route and soon was slogging through drifts of snow. The sky was lowering and beyond noon the flakes began to drift slantwise through the air. It was about this time, too, that he considered himself removed sufficiently from the army to abandon his precaution and to give all his attention to the road ahead.

The fact that he had left camp without leave bothered his conscience not at all. He was only doing what hundreds of others had done before him. Indeed, members of that army regarded their enlistment agreements as flexible contracts.

Active campaigning kept them together, but when winter set in and the chance of battle was remote they sat before their fires and listened to the call of the home people who needed their help. Then the brigades dwindled. Jukes, bending against the drifts, defended his course with arguments that seemed to him perfectly valid.

“Two years ’thout a single leave,” said he. “Ain’t that enough fer one man? Let some o’ these proud fire-eaters at home try their luck. I done my share.”

He was shrewd enough to know that there were many thousands of able-bodied citizens who had never answered the call to colors and who were perfectly content to let others do their share of fighting. To men of Jukes’ nature, endowed with a keen sense of justice, this was only an added argument as to the propriety of his act. He had done far more than his share. Now let some other take his place.

Even so, his thoughts turned now and then, as the afternoon advanced and he found himself in strange country, to that dark and miserable hut where his comrades rested, all but helpless.