The Long Roll
way! An out-worn company raised a cry, "They're flanking us!" Something
like a shiver passed over the thinning lines, then, grey and haggard,
they tore another cartridge. Stonewall Jackson's voice came from behind
a reef of smoke. "Stand fast, men! Stand fast. There are troops on the
road from Harper's Ferry. It is General McLaws. Stand fast!"
It was McLaws, with his black bullet head, his air of a Roman Consul! In
he thundered with his twenty-five hundred men, tawny with the dust of
the seventeen miles from Harper's Ferry. He struck Sedgwick full. For
five minutes there was brazen clangour and shouting and an agony of
effort, then the blue streamed back, past the Dunkard wood and church,
back into the dreadful cornfield.
Maury Stafford, sent with a statement to the commander-in-chief, crossed
in one prolonged risk of life from the wild left to the only less
stormed-against centre. Here a strong blue current, French and
Richardson, strove against a staunch grey ledge--a part of D. H. Hill's
line, with Anderson to support. Here was a sunken road, that, later, was
given a descriptive name. Here was the Bloody Lane. Lee was found
standing upon a knoll, calm and grand. "I yet look for A. P. Hill," he
said. "He has a talent for appearing at identically the right moment."
Stafford gave his statement. All over the field the staff had suffered
heavily. Some were dead, many were wounded. Those who were left did
treble duty. Lee sent this officer on to Longstreet, holding the long
ridge on the right.
Stafford rode through the withering storm across that withered field.
There seemed no light from the sky; the light was the glare from the
guns. He marked, through a rift in the smoke, a battery where it stood
upon a height, above felled trees. He thought it was Pelham's--the Horse
Artillery. It stood for a moment, outlined against the orange-bosomed
cloud, then, like an army of wraiths, the smoke came between and hid it.
His horse frightened at a dead man in his path. The start and plunging
were unusual, and the rider looked to see the reason. The soldier had
drawn letters from his breast and had died with them in his hands. The
unfolded, fluttering sheets stirred as though they had life. Stafford,
riding on, found the right and found Longstreet looking sombrely, like
an old eagle from his eyrie. "I told General Lee," he said "that we
ought never to have divided. I don't see A. P. Hill. You tell General
Lee that I've only got D. R. Jones and the knowledge that we fight like
hell, and that Burnside is before me with fourteen thousand men."
Stafford retraced his way. The ground beneath was burned and scarred,
the battle cloud rolled dark, the minies sang beside his ear. Now he was
in a barren place, tasting of powder, smelling of smoke, now lit, now
darkened, but vacant of human life, and now he was in a press of men,
grey forms advancing and retreating, or standing firing, and now he was
where fighting had been and there was left a wrack of the dead and
dying. He reached the centre and gave his message, then turned toward
the left again. A few yards and his horse was killed under him. He
disengaged himself and presently caught at the bridle and stayed
another. There were many riderless horses on the field of Sharpsburg,
but he had hardly mounted before this one, too, was killed. He went on
afoot. He entered a sunken road, dropped between rough banks overhung by
a few straggling trees. The road was filled with men lying down, all in
shadow beneath the rolling battle smoke. Stafford thought it a regiment
waiting for orders; then he saw that they were all dead men. He must go
back to the Dunkard wood, and this seemed his shortest way. He entered
the lane and went up it as quickly as he might for the forms that lay
thick in the discoloured light. It looked as though the earth were
bleeding, and all the people were fantastic about him. Some lay as
straight as on a sculptured tomb, and some were hooped, and some lay
like a cross, and some were headless. As he stepped with what care he
might, a fierce yelling broke out on the side that was the grey side.
There was a charge coming--already he saw the red squares tossing! He
moved to the further side of the sunken road and braced himself against
the bank, putting his arm about a twisted, protruding cedar. D. H.
Hill's North Carolinians hung a moment, tall, gaunt, yelling, then
swooped down into the sunken lane, passed over the dead, mounted the
other ragged bank and went on. Stafford waited to hear the shock. It
came; full against a deep blue wave. Richardson had been killed and
Hancock commanded here. The blue wave was strong. The sound of the melee
was frightful; then out of it burst a loud huzzahing. Stafford
straightened himself. The grey were coming back, and after them the
blue. Almost before he could unclasp his arm from the cedar, the first
spray of gaunt, exhausted, bleeding men came over and down into the
sunken lane. All the grey wave followed. At the moment there outburst a
renewed and tremendous artillery battle. The smoke drifting across the
Bloody Lane was like the fall of night, a night of cloud and storm.
Orange flashes momentarily lit the scene, and the sullen thunders
rolled. The grey, gaunt and haggard, but their colours with them,
overpassed the dead and wounded, now choking the sunken road. Behind
them were heard the blue, advancing and huzzahing. The grey wave
remounted the bank down which it plunged fifteen minutes before. At the
top it stayed a moment, thin and grey, spectral in the smoke pall, the
battle flags like hovering, crimson birds. A line of flame leaped, one
long crackle of musketry, then it resumed its retreat, falling back on
the west wood. The blue, checked a moment by that last volley, now
poured down into the sunken road, overpassed the thick ranks of the dead
and wounded, mounted, and swept on in a counter charge.
Maury Stafford had left the cedar and started across with the last
broken line of the grey. Going down the crumbling bank his spur caught
in a gnarled and sprawling root. The check was absolute, and brought
him violently to his knees. Before he could free himself the grey had
reached the opposite crest, fired its volley, and gone on. He started to
follow. He heard the blue coming, and it was expedient to get out of
this trap. Before him, from the figures covering the earth like thrown
jackstraws, an arm was suddenly lifted. The hand clutched at him,
passing. He looked down. It was a boy of nineteen with a ghastly face.
The voice came up: "Whoever you are, you're alive and well, and I'm
dying. You'll take it and put a stamp on it and mail it, won't you? I'm
dying. People ought to do things when the dying ask them to."
Stafford looked behind him, then down again. "Do what? Quick! They're
coming."
The hand would not relax its clasp, but its fellow fumbled at the grey
jacket. "It's my letter. They won't know if they don't get it. My side
hurts, but it don't hurt like knowing they won't know ... that I was
sorry." The face worked. "It's here but I can't--Please get it--"
"You must let me go," said Stafford, and tried to unclasp the hand.
"Stay any longer and I will be killed or taken."
The hand closed desperately, both hands now. "For God's sake! I don't
believe you've got so hard a heart. Take it and stamp it and mail it. If
they don't know they'll never understand and I'll die knowing they'll
never understand. For God's sake!"
Stafford knelt beside him, opened the grey jacket, and took out the
letter. Blood was upon it, but the address was legible. "Die easy. I'll
stamp and mail it. I will send a word with it, too, if you like."
A light came into the boy's face. "Tell them that I was like the
prodigal son, but that I'm going home--I'm going home--"
The arms fell, the breast ceased to heave, the head drew backward. Death
came and stamped the light upon the face. Before Stafford could get to
his feet, the blue wave had plunged into the trough. He remembered using
his pistol, and he remembered a dizziness of being borne backward. He
remembered that a phrase had gone through his mind "the instability of
all material things." Then came a blank. He did not assume that he had
lost consciousness, but simply he could not remember. He had been
wrecked in a turbulent, hostile ocean. It had made him and others
captives, and now they were together at a place which he remembered was
called the Roulette House. An hour might have passed, two hours; he
really could not tell. There were a number of prisoners, most of them
badly wounded. They lay in the back yard of the place, on the steps of
out-houses, with blue soldiers for guards. A surgeon came through the
yard, and helped a little the more agonizedly hurt. He glanced at
Stafford's star and sash, came across and offered to bind up the cut
across his forehead. "An awful field," he said. "This war is getting
horrible. You're a Virginian, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Used to know a lot of Virginia doctors. Liked them first rate! Now we
are enemies, and it seems to me a pity. Guess it's as Shakespeare says,
'What fools these mortals be!' I know war's getting to seem to me an
awful foolishness. That cornfield out there is sickening--Now! that
bleeding's stopped--"
On the left, around and before the Dunkard church, the very fury of the
storm brought about at last a sudden failing, a stillness and cessation
that seemed like those of death. Sound enough there was undoubtedly, and
in the centre the battle yet roared, but by comparison there seemed a
dark and sultry calm. Far and near lay the fallen. It was now noon, and
since dawn twelve thousand men had been killed or wounded on this left,
attacked by Fighting Joe Hooker, held by Stonewall Jackson. Fifteen
general officers were dead or disabled. Hardly a brigade, not many
regiments, were officered as they had been when the sun rose. There was
an exhaustion. Franklin had entered on the field, and one might have
thought that the grey would yet be overpowered. But all the blue forces
were broken, disorganized; there came an exhaustion, a lassitude.
McClellan sent an order forbidding another attack. Cornfield and wood
lay heavy, hot, and dark, and by comparison, still.
Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. They
brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their great
numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to him.
"General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all the
fields of the world had given tribute. I know that you do not like
hospitals--but would you come and look, sir?"
The general shook his head. "What is the use of looking? There have to
be wounded. Do the utmost that you can, doctor."
"I have thought, sir, that, seeing the day is not ended, and they are so
overwhelmingly in force, and the Potomac is not three miles in our
rear--I have thought that we might manage to get the less badly hurt
across. If they attack again and the day should end in defeat--"
"What have you got there?" asked Jackson. "Apples?"
"Yes, sir. I passed beneath a tree and gathered half a dozen. Would you
like--"
"Yes. I breakfasted very early." He took the rosy fruit and began to
eat. His eyes, just glinting under the forage cap, surveyed the scene
before him,--trampled wood where the shells had cut through bough and
branch, trampled cornfields where it seemed that a whirlwind had passed,
his resting, shattered commands, the dead and the dying, the dead
horses, the disabled guns, the drifting sulphurous smoke, and, across
the turnpike, in the fields and by the east wood, the masses of blue,
overcanopied also by sulphurous smoke. He finished the apple, took out a
handkerchief, and wiped fingers and lips. "Dr. McGuire, they have done