The Long Roll
which death came, shrieking like this, ugly and resistless! The July
morning was warm and bright, but more than one of the volunteers in that
wood shivered as though it were winter. Jackson rode along the front.
"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 cockcrow, 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 God made it and as Satan darkened it."
Cary regarded him somewhat whimsically. "Well, we'll agree on God 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 God, 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 have broken his heart to
leave his company. Edward is with the Rifles?"
"Yes, adding lustre 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, crashing 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 grassy 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 retarding. 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 God'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 God'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 sunshine 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!"
Billy regarded with large blue eyes his staff for a young Hercules.
"'Tain't a mite in my way, lieutenant. I air a-goin' to make a notch on
it for every Yank I kill. When we get back to Thunder Run I air a-goin'
to hang it over the fireplace. I reckon it air a-goin' to look right
interestin'. Pap, he has a saplin' marked for b'ar an' wolves, an'
gran'pap he has one his pap marked for Indians--"
"Throw it away!" said Coffin sharply. "It isn't regular. Do as I tell
you."
Billy stared. "But I don't want to. It air my stick, an' I air a-goin'
to hang it over the fireplace--"
The heat, the sound in front, all things, made Coffin fretful. He rose
from the fence corner. "Throw that stick away, or I'll put you in the
guardhouse! This ain't Thunder Run--and you men have got to learn a
thing or two! Come now!"
"I won't," said Billy. "An' if 't were Thunder Run, you wouldn't dar'--"
Allan Gold drew himself over the grass and touched the boy's arm. "Look
here, Billy! We're going into battle in a minute, and you want to be
there, don't you? The lieutenant's right--that oak tree surely will get