Chapter 10
"They don't attack in force at the Stone Bridge. A feint, I think." He stopped before the colour company of the 65th. "Captain Cleave."
"Yes, sir."
"You have hunters from the mountains. After the battle send me the man you think would make the best scout--an intelligent man."
"Very well, sir."
The other turned Little Sorrel's head toward the stream and stood listening. The sound of the distant cannonade increased. The pine wood ran back from the water, grew thinner, and gave place to mere copse and a field of broomsedge. From this edge of the forest came now a noise of mounted men. "Black Horse, I reckon!" said the 65th. "Wish they'd go ask Old Joe what he and Beauregard have got against us!--No, 'taint Black Horse--I see them through the trees--gray slouch hats and no feathers in them! Infantry, too--more infantry than horse. Hampton, maybe--No, they look like home folk--" A horseman appeared in the wood, guiding a powerful black stallion with a light hand between the pines, and checking him with a touch beside the bank upon which Little Sorrel was planted. "General Jackson?" inquired a dry, agreeable voice.
"Yes, sir, I am General Jackson. What troops have you over there?"
"The Virginia Legion."
Jackson put out a large hand. "Then you are Colonel Fauquier Cary? I am glad to see you, sir. We never met in Mexico, but I heard of you--I heard of you!"
The other gave his smile, quick and magnetic. "And I of you, general.
Magruder chanted your praises day and night--our good old Fuss and Feathers, too! Oh, Mexico!"
Jackson's countenance, so rigid, plain, restrained, altered as through some effect of soft and sunny light. The blue of the eye deepened, the iris enlarged, a smile came to his lips. His stiffly held, awkwardly erect figure relaxed, though very slightly. "I loved it in Mexico. I have never forgotten it. _Dear land of the daughters of Spain!_" The light went indoors again. "That demonstration upstream is increasing.
Colonel Evans will need support."
"Yes, we must have orders shortly." Turning in his saddle, Cary gazed across the stream. "Andrew Porter and Burnside are somewhere over there.
I wonder if Burnside remembers the last time he was in Virginia!" He laughed. "Dabney Maury's wedding in '52 at Cleveland, and Burnside happy as a king singing 'Old Virginia never tire!' stealing kisses from the bridesmaids, hunting with the hardest, dancing till c.o.c.kcrow, and asking, twenty times a day, 'Why don't we do like this in Indiana?' I wonder--I wonder!" He laughed again. "Good old Burnside! It's an odd world we live in, general!"
"The world, sir, is as G.o.d made it and as Satan darkened it."
Cary regarded him somewhat whimsically. "Well, we'll agree on G.o.d now, and perhaps before this struggle's over, we'll agree on Satan. That firing's growing louder, I think. There's a cousin of mine in the 65th--yonder by the colours! May I speak to him?"
"Certainly, sir. I have noticed Captain Cleave. His men obey him with readiness." He beckoned, and when Cleave came up, turned away with Little Sorrel to the edge of the stream. The kinsmen clasped hands.
"How are you, Richard?"
"Very well, Fauquier. And you?"
"Very well, too, I suppose. I haven't asked. You've got a fine, tall company!"
Cleave, turning, regarded his men with almost a love-light in his eyes.
"By G.o.d, Fauquier, we'll win if stock can do it! It's going to make a legend--this army!"
"I believe that you are right. When you were a boy you used to dream artillery."
"I dream it still. Sooner or later, by hook or by crook, I'll get into that arm. It wasn't feasible this spring."
His cousin looked at him with the affection, half humorous and wholly tender, with which he regarded most of his belongings in life. "I always liked you, Richard. Now don't you go get killed in this unnatural war!
The South's going to need every good man she's got--and more beside!
Where is Will?"
"In the 2d. I wanted him nearer me, but 'twould
"Yes, adding l.u.s.tre to the ranks. I came upon him yesterday cutting wood for his mess. 'Why don't you make Jeames cut the wood?' I asked. 'Why,'
said he, 'you see it hurts his pride--and, beside, some one must cook.
Jeames cooks.'" Cary laughed. "I left him getting up his load and hurrying off to roll call. Phoebus Apollo swincking for Mars!--I was at Greenwood the other day. They all sent you their love."
A colour came into Cleave's dark cheek. "Thank them for me when you write. Only the ladies are there?"
"Yes. I told them it had the air of a Spanish nunnery. Maury Stafford is with Magruder on the Peninsula."
"Yes."
"Judith had a letter from him. He was in the affair at Bethel.--What's this? Orders for us all to move, I hope!"
A courier had galloped into the wood. "General Jackson? Where is General Jackson?" A hundred hands having pointed out Little Sorrel and his rider, he arrived breathless, saluted, and extended a gauntleted hand with a folded bit of paper. Jackson took and opened the missive with his usual deliberation, glanced over the contents, and pushed Little Sorrel nearer to Fauquier Cary. "_General_," he read aloud, though in a low voice, "_the signal officer reports a turning column of the enemy approaching Sudley Ford two miles above the Stone Bridge. You will advance with all speed to the support of the endangered left. Bee and Barlow, the Hampton Legion and the Virginia Legion will receive like orders. J. E. Johnston, General Commanding._"
The commander of the Virginia Legion gathered up his reins. "Thank you, general! _Au revoir_--and laurels to us all!" With a wave of his hand to Cleave, he was gone, cras.h.i.+ng through the thinning pines to the broomsedge field and his waiting men.
It was nine o'clock, hot and clear, the Stone Bridge three miles away.
The First Brigade went at a double quick, guided by the sound of musketry, growing in volume. The pines were left behind; oak copse succeeded, then the up and down of gra.s.sy fields. Wooden fences stretched across the way, streamlets presented themselves, here and there gaped a ravine, ragged and deep. On and on and over all! Bee and Bartow were ahead, and Hampton and the Virginia Legion. The sound of the guns grew louder. "Evans hasn't got but six regiments. _Get on, men, get on!_"
The fields were very rough, all things uneven and r.e.t.a.r.ding. Only the sun had no obstacles: he rose high, and there set in a scorching day.
The men climbed a bank of red earth, and struck across a great cornfield. They stumbled over the furrows, they broke down the stalks, they tore aside the intertwining small, blue morning-glories. Wet with the dew of the field, they left it and dipped again into woods. The shade did not hold; now they were traversing an immense and wasted stretch where the dewberry caught at their ankles and the sun had an unchecked sway. Ahead the firing grew louder. _Get on, men, get on!_
Allan Gold, hurrying with his hurrying world, found in life this July morning something he had not found before. Apparently there were cracks in the firmament through which streamed a dazzling light, an invigorating air. After all, there was something wide, it seemed, in war, something sweet. It was bright and hot--they were going, clean and childlike, to help their fellows at the bridge. When, near at hand, a bugle blew, high as a lark above the stress, he followed the sound with a clear delight. He felt no fatigue, and he had never seen the sky so blue, the woods so green. Chance brought him for a moment in line with his captain. "Well, Allan?"
"I seem to have waked up," said Allan, then, very soberly. "I am going to like this thing."
Cleave laughed. "You haven't the air of a Norse sea king for nothing!"
They dipped into a bare, red gully, scrambled up the opposite bank, and fought again with the dewberry vines. "When the battle's over you're to report to General Jackson. Say that I sent you--that you're the man he asked for this morning."
The entangling vines abruptly gave up the fight. A soft hillside of pasturage succeeded, down which the men ran like schoolboys. A gray zigzag of rail fence, a little plashy stream, another hillside, and at the top, planted against a horizon of haze and sound, a courier, hatless, upon a reeking horse. "General Jackson?"
"Yes, sir."
"McDowell has crossed at Sudley Ford. The attack on the Stone Bridge is a feint. Colonel Evans has left four companies there, and with the 4th South Carolina and the Louisiana Tigers is getting into position across Young's Branch, upon the Mathews Hill. Colonel Evans's compliments, and he says for G.o.d's sake to come on!"
"Very good, sir. General Jackson's compliments, and I am coming."
The courier turned, spurred his horse, and was gone. Jackson rode down the column. "You're doing well, men, but you've got to do better.
Colonel Evans says for G.o.d's sake to come on!"
That hilltop crossed at a run, they plunged again into the trough of those low waves. The First Brigade had proved its mettle, but here it began to lose. Men gasped, wavered, fell out of line and were left behind. In Virginia the July suns.h.i.+ne is no bagatelle. It beat hard to-day, and to many in these ranks there was in this July Sunday an awful strangeness. At home--ah, at home!--crushed ice and cooling fans, a pleasant and shady ride to a pleasant, shady church, a little dozing through a comfortable sermon, then friends and crops and politics in the twilight dells of an old churchyard, then home, and dinner, and wide porches--Ah, that was the way, that was the way. _Close up, there!
Don't straggle, men, don't straggle!_
They were out now upon another high field, carpeted with yellowing sedge, dotted over with young pines. The 65th headed the column.
Lieutenant Coffin of Company A was a busy officer, active as a jumping-jack, half liked and half distasted by the men. The need of some breathing time, however slight, was now so imperative that at a stake and rider fence, overgrown with creepers, a five minutes' halt was ordered. The fence ran at right angles, and all along the column the men dropped upon the ground, in the shadow of the vines. Coffin threw himself down by the Thunder Run men. "Billy Maydew!"
"Yaas, sir."
"What have you got that stick tied to your gun for? Throw it away! I should think you'd find that old flintlock heavy enough without shouldering a sapling besides!"