Chapter 42
"That's so. Where've you been anyway, Steve, and how many did you kill on the road?"
"I killed three," said Steve. "General Ewell's over thar in the woods, and he's going to advance 'longside of us, on the Front Royal road.
Rockbridge 'n the rest of the batteries are to hold the ridge up there, no matter what happens! Banks ain't got but six thousand men, and it ought ter be an easy job--"
"Good Lord! Steve's been absent at a council of war--talking familiarly with generals! Always thought there must be more in him than appeared, since there couldn't well be less--"
"Band's playing! 'The Girl I Left Behind Me'!"
"That's Winchester! Didn't we have a good time there 'fore and after Bath and Romney? 'Most the nicest Valley town!--and we had to go away and leave it blue as indigo--"
"I surely will be glad to see Miss f.a.n.n.y again--"
"Company C over there's most crazy. It all lives there--"
"Three miles! That ain't much. I feel rested. There goes the 2d! Don't it swing off long and steady? Lord, we've got the hang of it at last!"
"Will Cleave's got to be sergeant.--'N he's wild about a girl in Winchester. Says his mother and sister are there, too, and he can't sleep for thinking of the enemy all about them. Children sure do grow up quick in war time!"
"A lot of things grow up quick--and a lot of things don't grow at all.
There goes the 4th--long and steady! Our turn next."
Steve again saw from afar the approach of the nightmare. It stood large on the opposite bank of Abraham's Creek, and he must go to meet it. He was wedged between comrades--Sergeant Coffin was looking straight at him with his melancholy, bad-tempered eyes--he could not fall out, drop behind! The backs of his hands began to grow cold and his unwashed forehead was damp beneath matted, red-brown elf locks. From considerable experience he knew that presently sick stomach would set in. When the company splashed through Abraham's Creek he would not look at the running water, but when he looked at the slopes he was expected presently to climb he saw that there was fighting there and that the nightmare attended! Steve closed his eyes. "O Gawd, take care of me--"
Later on, when the ridge was won he found himself, still in the company of the nightmare, cowering close to the lock of a rail fence that zigzagged along the crest. How he got there he really did not know. He had his musket still clutched--his mountaineer's instinct served for that. Presently he made the discovery that he had been firing, had fired thrice, it appeared from his cartridge box. He remembered neither firing nor loading, though he had some faint recollection of having been upon his knees behind a low stone wall--he saw it now at right angles with the rail fence. A clover field he remembered because some one had said something about four-leaved clovers, and then a sh.e.l.l had come by and the clover turned red. Seized with panic he bit a cartridge and loaded.
The air was rocking; moreover, with the heavier waves came a sharp _zzzz-ip! zzzzzz-ip!_ Heaven and earth blurred together, blended by the giant brush of eddying smoke. Steve tasted powder, smelled powder. On the other side of the fence, from a battery lower down the slope to the guns beyond him two men were running--running very swiftly, with bent heads. They ran like people in a pelting rain, and between them they carried a large bag or bundle, slung in an oilcloth. They were tall and hardy men, and they moved with a curious air of determination. "Carrying powder! Gawd! before I'd be sech a fool--" A sh.e.l.l came, and burst--burst between the two men. There was an explosion, ear-splitting, heart-rending. A part of the fence was wrecked; a small cedar tree torn into kindling. Steve put down his musket, laid his forehead upon the rail before him, and vomited.
The guns were but a few yards above him, planted just below the crest, their muzzles projecting over. Steve recognized Rockbridge. He must, he thought, have been running away, not knowing where he was going, and infernally managed to get up here. The nightmare abode with him. His joints felt like water, his heart was straightened, stretched, and corded in his bosom like a man upon the rack. He pressed close into the angle of the fence, made himself of as little compa.s.s as his long and gangling limbs allowed, and held himself still as an opossum feigning death. Only his watery blue eyes wandered--not for curiosity, but that he might see and dodge a coming harm.
Before him the ridge ran steeply down to a narrow depression, a little vale, two hundred yards across. On the further side the land rose again to as high a hill. Here was a stone fence, which even as he looked, leaped fire. Above it were ranged the blue cannon--three batteries, well served. North and South, muzzle to muzzle, the guns roared across the green hollow. The blue musketrymen behind the wall were using minies. Of all death-dealing things Steve most hated these. They came with so unearthly a sound--zzzz-ip! zzzzz-ip!--a devil noise, a death that shrieked, taunted, and triumphed. To-day they made his blood like water.
He crouched close, a mere lump of demoralization, behind a veil of wild buckwheat.
Rockbridge was suffering heavily, both from the opposing Parrotts and from sharpshooters behind the wall. A belated gun came straining up the slope, the horses doing mightily, the men cheering. There was an opening in a low stone wall across the hillside, below Steve. The gate had been wrenched away and thrown aside, but the thick gatepost remained, and it made the pa.s.sage narrow--too narrow for the gun team and the carriage to pa.s.s. All stopped and there was a colloquy.
"We've got an axe?"
"Yes, captain."
"John Agnor, you've felled many a tree. Take the axe and cut that post down."
"Captain, I will be killed!"
"Then you will be killed doing your duty, John. Get down."
Agnor got the axe, swung it and began chopping. The stone wall across the hollow blazed more fiercely; the sharpshooters diverted their attention from the men and horses higher upon the hill. Agnor swung the axe with steadiness; the chips flew far. The post was cut almost through before his bullet came. In
A hundred yards and more to the rear stood a barn. The wounded from all the guns, strung like black beads along the crest, dragged themselves or were carried to this shelter. Hope rose in Steve's heart. "Gawd! I'll creep through the clover and git there myself." He started on hands and knees, but once out of his corner and the shrouding ma.s.s of wild buckwheat, terror took him. The minies were singing like so many birds.
A line of blue musketrymen, posted behind cover, somewhat higher than the grey, were firing alike at gunners, horses, and the men pa.s.sing to and fro behind the fighting line. Steve saw a soldier hobbling to the barn throw up his arms, and pitch forward. Two carrying a third between them were both struck. The three tried to drag themselves further, but only the one who had been borne by the others succeeded. A sh.e.l.l pierced the roof of the barn, burst and set the whole on fire. Steve turned like a lizard and went back to the lock of the fence and the tattered buckwheat. He could hear the men talking around the gun just beyond.
They spoke very loud, because the air was shaken like an ocean in storm.
They were all powder-grimed, clad only in trousers and s.h.i.+rt, the s.h.i.+rt open over the breast, and sleeves rolled up. They stood straight, or bent, or crept about the guns, all their movements swift and rhythmic.
Sometimes they were seen clearly; sometimes the smoke swallowed them.
When seen they looked larger than life, when only heard their voices came as though earth and air were speaking. "Sponge out.--All right.
Fire! Hot while it lasts, but it won't last long. I have every confidence in Old Jack and Old d.i.c.k. Drat that primer! All right!--Three seconds! Jerusalem! that created a sensation. The Louisianians are coming up that cleft between the hills. All the Stonewall regiments in the centre. Ewell to flank their left. Did you ever hear Ewell swear?
Look out! wheel's cut through. Lanyard's shot away. Take handkerchiefs.
Haven't got any--tear somebody's s.h.i.+rt. Number 1! Number 2! Look out!
look out--Give them h.e.l.l. Good Heaven! here's Old Jack. General, we hope you'll go away from here! We'll stay it out--give you our word. Let them enfilade ahead!--but you'd better go back, sir."
"Thank you, captain, but I wish to see--"
A minie ball imbedded itself in a rail beside Steve's cheek. Before he could recover from this experience a sh.e.l.l burst immediately in front of his panel. He was covered with earth, a fragment of sh.e.l.l sheared away the protecting buckwheat and a piece of rail struck him in the back with force. He yelled, threw down his musket and ran.
He pa.s.sed John Agnor lying dead by the gateway, and he reached somehow the foot of the hill and the wide fields between the embattled ridges and the Valley pike, the woods and the Front Royal road. He now could see the Federal line of battle, drawn on both sides of the pike, but preponderantly to the westward. They were there, horse and foot and bellowing artillery, and they did not look panic-stricken. Their flags were flying, their muskets gleaming. They had always vastly more and vastly better bands than had the grey, and they used them more frequently. They were playing now--a brisk and stirring air, sinking and swelling as the guns boomed or were silent. The mist was up, the sun shone bright. "Gawd!" thought Steve. "I'd better be there than here! We ain't a-goin' to win, anyhow. They've got more cannon, and a bigger country, and all the s.h.i.+ps, and pockets full of money. Once't I had a chance to move North--"
He had landed in a fringe of small trees by a little runlet, and now, under this cover, he moved irresolutely forward. "Ef I walked toward them with my hands up, they surely wouldn't shoot. What's that?--Gawd!
Look at Old Jack a-comin'! Reckon I'll stay--Told them once't on Thunder Run I wouldn't move North for nothing! _Yaaaihhhh! Yaaaaihhh_--"
_Yaaihhhhh! Yaaihhhhh! Yaaaihh! Yaaaaaaaihhhh!_ Ten thousand grey soldiers with the sun on their bayonets--
There came by a riderless horse, gentle enough, unfrightened, wanting only to drink at the little stream. Steve caught him without difficulty, climbed into the saddle and followed the army. The army was a clanging, shouting, triumphant thing to follow--to follow into the Winchester streets, into a town that was mad with joy. A routed army was before it, pouring down Loudoun Street, pouring down Main Street, pouring down every street and lane, pouring out of the northern end of the town, out upon the Martinsburg pike, upon the road to the frontier, the road to the Potomac. There was yet firing in narrow side streets, a sweeping out of single and desperate knots of blue. Church bells were pealing, women young and old were out of doors, weeping for pure joy, laughing for the same, praising, blessing, greeting sons, husbands, lovers, brothers, friends, deliverers. A bearded figure, leaf brown, on a sorrel nag, answered with a gravity strangely enough not without sweetness the acclamation with which he was showered, sent an aide to hasten the batteries, sent another with an order to General George H.
Steuart commanding cavalry, jerked his hand into the air and swept on in pursuit out by the Martinsburg pike. The infantry followed him, hurrahing. They tasted to-day the sweets of a patriot soldiery relieving a patriot town. The guns came thundering through, the horses doing well, the proud drivers, cannoneers, officers, waving caps and hats, bowing to half-sobbing hurrahs, thrown kisses, praises, blessings. Ewell's division poured through--Ewell on the flea-bitten grey, Rifle, swearing his men forward, pithily answering the happy people, all the while the church bells clanging. The town was in a clear flame of love, patriotism, martial spirit, every heart enlarged, every house thrown open to the wounded whom, grey and blue alike, the grey surgeons were bringing in.
For fear to keep him, Steve had left his captured horse's back and let him go loose. Now on foot and limping terribly, trying to look equal parts fire-eater and woe-begone, he applied to a grey-headed couple in the dooryard of a small clean home. Would they give a hurt soldier a bed and something to eat? Why, of course, of course they would! Come right in! What command?
"The Stonewall Brigade, sir. You see, 'twas this a-way. I was helping serve a gun, most of the gunners being strewed around dead--and we infantrymen having to take a hand, and a thirty pound Parrott came and burst right over us! I was stooping, like this, my thumb on the vent, like that--and a great piece struck me in the back! I just kin hobble.
Thank you, ma'am! You are better to me than I deserve."
CHAPTER XXIII
MOTHER AND SON
Margaret Cleave drew her arms gently from under the wounded boy she had been tending. He was asleep; had gone to sleep calling her "Maman" and babbling of wild-fowl on the bayou. She kissed him lightly on the forehead "for Will"--Will, somewhere on the Martinsburg pike, battling in heat and dust, battling for the Confederacy, driving the foe out of Virginia, back across the Potomac--Will who, little more than a year ago, had been her "baby," whom she kissed each night when he went to sleep in his little room next hers at Three Oaks. She straightened herself and looked around for more work. The large room, the "chamber"
of the old and quiet house in which she and Miriam had stayed on when in March the army had withdrawn from Winchester, held three wounded. Upon the four-post bed, between white valance and tester, lay a dying officer. His wife was with him, and a surgeon, who had found the ball but could not stop the hemorrhage. A little girl sat on the bed, and every now and then put forth a hand and timidly stroked her father's clay-cold wrist. On the floor, on a mattress matching the one on which the boy lay, was stretched a gaunt giant from some backwoods or mountain clearing. Margaret knelt beside him and he smiled up at her. "I ain't much hurt, and I ain't sufferin' to amount to nothin'. Ef this pesky b.u.t.ternut wouldn't stick in this here hurt place--" She cut the s.h.i.+rt from a sabre wound with the scissors hanging at her waist, then bringing water bathed away the grime and dried blood. "You're right," she said.
"It isn't much of a cut. It will soon heal." They spoke in whispers, not to disturb the central group. "But you don't look easy. You are still suffering. What is it?"
"It ain't nothing. It's my foot, that a sh.e.l.l kind of got in the way of.
But don't you tell anybody--for fear they might want to cut it off, ma'am."
She looked and made a pitying sound. The officer on the bed had now breathed his last. She brought the unneeded surgeon to the crushed ankle, summoned to help him another of the women in the house, then moved to the four-poster and aided the tearless widow, young and soon again to become a mother, to lay the dead calm and straight. The little girl began to shake and shudder. She took her in her arms and carried her out of the room. She found Miriam helping in the storeroom. "Get the child's doll and take her into the garden for a little while. She is cold as ice; if she begins to cry don't stop her. When she is better, give her to Hannah and you go sit beside the boy who is lying on the floor in the chamber. If he wakes, give him water, but don't let him lift himself. He looks like Will."
In the hall a second surgeon met her. "Madam, will you come help? I've got to take off a poor fellow's leg." They entered a room together--the parlour this time, with the windows flung wide and the afternoon sunlight lying in pools among the roses of the carpet. Two mahogany tables had been put together, and the soldier lay atop, the crushed leg bared and waiting. The surgeon had an a.s.sistant and the young man's servant was praying in a corner. Margaret uttered a low, pained exclamation. This young lieutenant had been well liked last winter in Winchester. He had been much at this house. He had a good voice and she had played his accompaniments while he sang--oh, the most sentimental of ditties! Miriam had liked him very well--they had read together--"The Pilgrims of the Rhine"--Goldsmith--Bernardin de Saint Pierre. He had a trick of serenading--danced well. She put her cheek down to his hand.
"My poor, poor boy! My poor, brave boy!"
The lieutenant smiled at her--rather a twisted smile, s.h.i.+ning out of a drawn white face. "I've got to be brave on one leg. Anyhow, Mrs. Cleave, I can still sing and read. How is Miss Miriam?"