24.

We crowded into the covered wagon and found room for knees and elbows around the dial. For light we had a single candle, but he assured me that was enough. It was a few minutes past midnight and I was anxious to be unburdened of my bad news.

The telegrapher, though, took his time getting set up, and even with his machine in operation, was much delayed. Cursing and fussing, he turned the indicator back and forth on the face of his dial, which was inscribed with two rounds of letters and numbers, and some few commands such as WAIT and STOP. He could not seem to get a good signal out, for messages kept coming in. He assured me this was normal, and set back to his work, but again with little success. I produced a small bottle from inside my coat and offered it to him, and this did much for his disposition, but did not help his machine.

“It’s these new electro-magnetos, they’re s’posed to be better than an honest man’s telegraph key, but I don’t see it. No fluids or acids to burn me, no salts to keep straight, that’s fine and well. But this type picks up too many ghosts.”

I must have raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “After every battle we get ’em. They crowd the wires, you see. Dead men breathing out their last.”

I watched in amazement as the indicator moved on the dial, of its own accord. The messages were picked out letter by letter so that even I could read them. The missives were never long or overly complex. M-O-T-H-E-R was the most common, and L-O-R-DJ-E-S-U-S, and S-A-V-E-M-Y-S-O-U-L and W-A-T-E-R. All the cries of the battlefield, tapped out in an invisible hand.

We managed to get my urgent news out, eventually, though two o’clock had come and gone. I was climbing out of the wagon, glad to be shut of that cramped and eerie conveyance, when the telegrapher called me back. “Another message, sir.”

“What now, more news from the other side?”

“No, sir, this one’s got your name on it. ‘Received in full,’ it says, and then, ‘New orders. Gum Spring forthwith.’ Where’s that, then?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. It was the first I’d heard of the place.

—THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER