The Long Roll
right pitiful, the men with wives and children at home, and the country
growing to look like a desert.--But that's gloomy talk, and if there's
one thing more than another we've got to avoid it's being gloomy!--Tell
me everything when you write. Write to Winchester--that's our base of
supplies and rendezvous now. Tell me about everybody on Thunder Run, but
most of all tell me about yourselves. Give my very best regards to
Christianna. She surely was good to me in Richmond. I don't know what I
would have done without her. At first, before I--"
Sairy put out her hand. "Give it to me, Tom. I'll read the rest. You're
tired."
"No, I'm not," said Tom.--"At first, before I came up with the Army, I
missed her dreadfully."
Sairy rose, stepped from the porch, and turned the drying apples. Coming
back, she touched the girl on the shoulder--very gently. "They're all
fools, Christianna. Once I met a woman who did not know her thimble
finger. I thought that beat all! But it's hard to match the men."
"You've put me out!" said Tom. "Where was I? Oh--At first, before I came
up with the Army, I missed her dreadfully. Billy reminds me of her at
times.--It's near roll call, and I must stop. God bless you both.
Allan."
Tom folded the letter with trembling hands, laid it carefully atop of
the others in the tin box, and took off and wiped his glasses. "Yes, if
a letter didn't come every two weeks I'd go plumb crazy! I've got to
hear him say 'dear Tom' that often, anyhow--"
Christianna rose, pulling her sunbonnet over her eyes. "Thank you, Mrs.
Cole an' Mr. Cole. I thought I'd like to hear. Now I'll be going back up
the mountain. Violetta an' Rosalinda are pulling fodder and mother is
ploughing for wheat. I do the spinning mostly. You've got lovely china
asters, Mrs. Cole. They have a flower they called magnolia down 't
Richmond--like a great sweet white cup, an' they had pink crape
myrtles. I liked it in Richmond, for all the death an' mourning. Thunder
Run's so far away. Good mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good mahnin', Mr. Cole."
The slight homespun figure disappeared around the bend of the road.
Sairy sewed in silence. Tom went back to the newspaper. The yellow cat
slept on, the bees buzzed and droned, the sweet mountain air brushed
through the trees, a robin sang. Half an hour passed. Tom raised his
head. "I hear some one coming!" He reached for the tobacco box.
It proved to be an old well-loved country doctor, on a white horse, with
his saddle bags before him. Sairy hurried out, too, to the gate.
"Doctor, I want to ask you something about Tom--" "Psha, I'm all right,"
said Tom. "Won't you get down and set a little, doctor?"
The doctor would and did, and after he had prescribed for the tollgate
keeper a two hours' nap every day and not to get too excited over war
news, Tom read him Allan's letter, and they got into a hot discussion of
the next battle. Sairy turned the drying apples, brushed away the bees,
and brought fresh water from the well, then sat down again with her
mending. "Doctor, how's the girl at Three Oaks?"
The doctor came back from Maryland to his own county and to the fold
which he tended without sleep, without rest, and with little pay save in
loving hearts. "Miriam Cleave? She's better, Mrs. Cole, she's better!"
"I'm mighty glad to hear it," said Sairy. "'T ain't a decline, then?"
"No, no! Just shock on shock coming to a delicate child. Her mother will
bring her through. And there's a great woman."
"That's so, that's so!" assented Tom cordially. "A great woman."
Sairy nodded, drawing her thread across a bit of beeswax. "For once you
are both right. He isn't there now, doctor?"
"No. He wasn't there but a week or two."
"You don't--"
"No, Tom. I don't know where he has gone. They have some land in the far
south, down somewhere on the Gulf. He may have gone there."
"I reckon," said Tom, "he couldn't stand it in Virginia. All the earth
beginnin' to tremble under marchin' feet and everybody askin', 'Where's
the army to-day?' I reckon he couldn't stand it. I couldn't. Allan don't
believe he did it, an' I don't believe it either."
"Nor I," said Sairy.
"He came up here," said Tom, "just as quiet an' grave an' simple as you
or me. An' he sat there in his lawyer's clothes, with his back to that
thar pillar, an' he told Sairy an' me all about Allan. He told us how
good he was an' how all the men loved him an' how valuable he was to the
service. An' he said that the wound he got at Gaines's Mill wasn't so
bad after all as it might have been, and that Allan would soon be
rejoining. An' he said that being a scout wasn't as glorious, maybe, but
it was just as necessary as being a general. An' that he had always
loved Allan an' always would. An' he told us about something Allan did
at McDowell and then again at Kernstown--an' Sairy cried an' so did I--"
Sairy folded her work. "I wasn't crying so much for Allan--"
"An' then he asked for a drink of water 'n we talked a little about the
crops, 'n he went down the mountain. An' Sairy an' I don't believe he
did it."
The doctor drew his hand downward over mouth and white beard. "Well,
Mrs. Cole, I don't either. The decisions of courts and judges don't
always decide. There's always a chance of an important witness called
Truth having been absent. I didn't see Richard Cleave but once while he
was at Three Oaks. He looked and acted then just like Richard
Cleave,--only older and graver. It was beautiful to see him and his
mother together." The doctor rose. "But I reckon it's as Tom says and he
couldn't stand it, and has gone where he doesn't hear 'the army--the
army--the army'--all day long. Mrs. Cleave hasn't said anything, and I
wouldn't ask. The last time I saw her--and I think he had just gone--she
looked like a woman a great artist might have met in a dream."
The doctor gazed out over the autumn sea of mountains and up at the pure
serene of the heavens, and then at his old, patient white horse with the
saddle bags across the saddle. "Mrs. Cole, all you've got to do is to
keep Tom from getting excited. I'll be back this way the first of the
week and I'll stop again--"
Tom cleared his throat. "I don't know when Sairy an' me can pay you,
doctor. I never realized till it came how war stops business. I'd about
as well be keeping toll gate in the desert of Sahary."
"I'm not doing it for pay," said the doctor. "It's just the place to
stop and rest and talk, and as for giving you a bit of opinion and
advice, Lord! I'm not so poor that I can't do that. If you want to give
me something in return I certainly could use three pounds of dried
apples."
The doctor rode on down the mountain. Tom and Sairy had a frugal dinner.
Then the former lay down to take the prescribed nap, and the latter set
her washtub on a box in the yard beneath the peach trees. Tom didn't
sleep long; he said every time he was about to drop off he thought he
heard wheels. He came back to his split-bottomed chair on the porch, the
tobacco box for the toll, the tin box with Allan's letters, and the view
across the china asters of the road. The afternoon was past its height,
but bright yet, with the undersong of the wind and of Thunder Run. The
yellow cat had had his dinner, too, and after sauntering around the
yard, and observing the robin on the locust tree again curled himself on
the porch and slept.
Sairy straightened herself from the washtub. "Somebody's comin' up the
road. It's a man!" She came toward the porch, wiping her hands, white
and crinkled, upon her apron. "He's a soldier, Tom! Maybe one of the
boys air come back--"
Tom rose too, quickly. He staggered and had to catch at the sapling that
made the pillar. "Maybe it's--"
"No, no! no, no! Don't you think that, an' have a set-back when you find
it ain't! It ain't tall enough for Allan, an' it ain't him anyhow. It
_couldn't_ be."
"No, I reckon it couldn't," said Tom. "But anyhow it's one of the boys."
He was half way to the gate, Sairy after him, and they were the first to
welcome Steve Dagg back to Thunder Run.
Tom Cole forgot that he had no opinion of Steve anyway. Sairy pursed her
lips, but a soldier was a soldier. Steve came and sat down on the edge
of the porch, beside the china asters, "Gawd! don't Thunder Run sound
natural! Yass'm, I walked from Buford's, an' 't was awful hard to do,
cause my foot is all sore an' gangrened. I've got a furlough till it
gets well. It's awful sore. Gawd! ef Thunder Run had seen what I've
seen, an' heard what I've heard, an' done what I've done, an' been
through what I've been through--"
CHAPTER XLII
SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191
In Lee's tent, pitched in a grove a mile from Frederick, was held a
council of war,--Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, Jeb Stuart. Lee sat
beside the table, Jackson faced him, sabre across knees, Longstreet had
his place a little to one side, and Stuart stood, his shoulder against
the tent pole. The last-named had been speaking. He now ended with "I
think I may say, sir, that hardly a rabbit has gotten past my pickets.
He's a fine fellow, Little Mac is! but he's mighty cautious, and you
couldn't exactly call him swift as lightning. He's still a score of
miles to the east of us, and he knows mighty little what we are about."
Jackson spoke. "General McClellan does not know if the whole army has
crossed or only part of it has crossed. He does not know whether we are
going to move against Washington, or move against Baltimore, or invade
Pennsylvania. Always mystify, mislead, and deceive the enemy as far as
possible."
Longstreet spoke. "Well, by the time he makes those twenty miles the
troops should be rested and in condition. We'll have another battle and
another victory."
Lee spoke, addressing Stuart. "You have done your work most skilfully,
general. It is not every army that has a Jeb Stuart!" He paused, then
spoke to all. "McClellan will not be up for several days. Across the
river, in Virginia, are yet fourteen thousand of the enemy. I had hoped
that, scattered as they are, Washington would withdraw them when it
heard of our crossing. It has not done so, however. It is not well to
have in our rear that entrenched camp at Harper's Ferry. It is my idea,
gentlemen, that it might be possible to repeat the manoeuvre of Second
Manassas."
Stonewall Jackson hitched his chair closer. Stuart chuckled joyously.
Longstreet looked dubious. "Do you mean, general, that you would again
divide the army?"
Lee rested his crossed hands on the table before him. "Gentlemen, did I
have the Northern generals' numbers, I, too, might be cautious. Having
only Robert E. Lee's numbers, I advance another policy. It is my idea
again to divide the army."
"In the enemy's country? We have not fifty-five thousand fighting
strength."
"Yes, in the enemy's country. And I know that we have not fifty-five
thousand fighting strength. My plan is this, gentlemen. General Stuart
has proved his ability to hold all roads and mask all movements. We will
form two columns, and behind the screen which his cavalry provides, one
column will move north and one column will move south. By advancing
toward Hagerstown the first will create the impression that Pennsylvania
is to be invaded. Moreover Catoctin and South Mountain are strong
defensive positions. The other column will move with expedition.
Recrossing the Potomac, it will invest and capture Harper's Ferry. That
done, it will return at once into Maryland, rejoining me before
McClellan is up."
Longstreet swore. "By God, that is a bold plan!--What if McClellan
should learn it?"
"As against that, we must trust in General Stuart. These people must be
driven out of Harper's Ferry. All our communications are threatened."
Longstreet was blunt. "Well, sir, I think it is madness. Pray don't send