Free The Proud and the Free by Howard Fast Page A

sure as there’s a God in the heavens above.
    Now will we? grinned Dennis.
    Pack that! I snapped. He was going to arrest me so I arrested him instead, and you can take off those nice clothes of his and gag him and tie him up, but no manhandling and no taking out grudges here and no talk. Tie him up and put some sacking over him, and we’ll bear him to the hospital, where they’re making ready for the sick.
    This they did. We trussed him, wrapped him in sacking, and bore him to the hospital like a sack of potatoes, only of less use in any way. Sullivan and Gruen and a Pole named Krakower came with me, after I had warned those left in the hut to stay in the straw and keep their mouths shut. Two others, Kent and O’Malley, unsaddled the horse and then led it to the Artillery stable, with a story of a stray mount.
    The old hospital hutment was supply dump and dispensary for the 4th, 10th and 11th Regiments. No doctors were assigned to it, since at that time we had only three doctors for the whole Line, and two of them were fine gentlemen with Philadelphia practices, which at the moment they were attending. The third doctor, a Jew from Charlestown in South Carolina, was brigade officer at the General Hospital, which was at the further end of the encampment. Some thought we might trust him, seeing that he was a Jew, but others said, Jew or not, he was an officer and gentry and would therefore best be left alone. Here at the dispensary were two barbers from Edinburgh, Andrew MacPherson and William Hunt, and they tended the odds and ends of hurts, distempers and minor sicknesses that took the three regiments. For all that theirs was a rough-and-ready practice, picked up as porters at the medical school and as staunchers on the battlefield, I would rather have had them than the cruel and offhand gentry; if you died, you died at least with a warm hand on your shoulder – and when one of our lads stopped a large-bore ball from a British gun, it was short odds that he died whether you had a physician or a barber to bleed him.
    MacPherson opened the door for us. He was a tiny, wizened imp of a man, clean-shaven, a sharp, filthy tongue in an ugly little head, a randy goat of a little man and never without a woman, whether in camp or on the march. And not an old bag either, but the fairest lass in camp would be his and how that was none of us could ever make out; except that his was a joy in life not matched in that grim and sorrowful encampment. Hunt, on the other hand, was a dour, unhappy Scot, dark and humorless, and slowly dying away with longing for the streets and taverns and fog of Glasgow.
    Now welcome, Jamie Stuart! cried MacPherson. You would not think business to be this good when we have only set up some few hours past, but already the lads of the 10th have brought us two white-livered sergeants, and that’s not bad for the first of a darg. Now what have ye there?… Not Chester, the dirty little dog!
    Chester it is, sang Dennis Sullivan.
    Then roll him in and make him snug and warm.
    And like a sack of potatoes, we rolled the lieutenant to where two sergeants, trussed and gagged, sat against the wall. Already the hospital was crowded, and the day had only begun – and it was hot. A huge blaze roared in the hearth, and six women crouched before it, so close that the loose ends of their hair crackled, melting lead and spooning it into bullet molds. The hutment being supply depot as well as dispensary, a good third of the space was taken by bar lead, stacked as high as a man’s head. Only the two barbers had sleeping quarters there; but in addition to them, the six women, the three prisoners and a white-faced lad from the 4th who was being bled for the shakes, there were Arnold and Simpkins Gary making a high bid for the girls, and with me and my four lads and the heat, and the sharp smell of molten lead, the bitter smell of medicine and the sweet odor of blood, the air was near unbreathable. But