The Long Roll
serenading and the flowers--we never thought war could be ugly." He
glanced disconsolately down at a torn cuff and a great smear of frozen
mire adorning his coat. "I'm rather glad the ladies can't see us."
The Stonewall Brigade went by. There was again a stretch of horribly cut
road, empty save for here and there poor stragglers, sitting dismally
huddled together beneath a cedar, or limping on painful feet, hoping
somewhere to overtake "the boys." A horse had fallen dead and had been
dragged out of the road and through a gap in the fencing into a narrow
field. Beyond this, on the farther boundary of grey rails, three
buzzards were sitting, seen like hobgoblins through the veiling snow.
The afternoon was closing in; it could only be said that the world was a
dreary one.
The Army of the Kanawha, Loring's three brigades, with the batteries
attached, came into view a long way off, grey streaks upon the road.
Before the two horsemen reached it it had halted for the night, broken
ranks, and flowed into the desolate fields. There was yet an hour of
daylight, but discontent had grown marked, the murmuring loud, and the
halt was made. A few of the wagons were up, and a dark and heavy wood
filling a ravine gave fagots for the gathering. The two aides found
Loring himself, middle-aged and imposing, old Indian fighter, hero of
Contreras, Churubusco, Chapultepec, and Garita de Belen, commander,
since the transference of General Robert E. Lee to South Carolina, of
the Army of the Kanawha, gallant and dashing, with an arm left in
Mexico, with a gift for picturesque phrases, with a past full of variety
and a future of a like composition, with a genuine tenderness and care
for his men, and an entire conviction that both he and his troops were
at present in the convoy of a madman--they found Loring seated on a log
beside a small fire and engaged in cooling in the snow a too-hot tin cup
of coffee. His negro servant busily toasted hardtack; a brigadier seated
on an opposite log was detailing, half fiercely, half plaintively, the
conditions under which his brigade was travelling. The two from Jackson
dismounted, crunched their way over the snow and saluted. The general
looked up. "Good-evening, gentlemen! Is that you, Stafford? Well, did
you do your prettiest--and did he respond?"
"Yes, sir, he responded," replied Stafford, with grimness. "But not by
me.--Major Cleave, sir, of his staff."
Cleave came forward, out of the whirling snow, and gave Jackson's
missive. It was so dull and dark a late afternoon that all things were
indistinct. "Give me a light here, Jupiter!" said Loring, and the negro
by the fire lit a great sliver of pine and held it like a torch above
the page. Loring read, and his face grew purple. With a suppressed oath
he sat a moment, staring at the paper, then with his one hand folded it
against his knee. His fingers shook, not with cold, but with rage. "Very
good, very good! That's what he says, isn't it, all the time? 'Very
good!' or is it 'Good, good!'" He felt himself growing incoherent,
pulled himself sharply together, and with his one hand thrust the paper
into his breast pocket. "It's all right, Stafford. Major Cleave, the
Army of the Kanawha welcomes you. Will you stay with us to-night, or
have you fifty miles to make ere dawn?"
Cleave, it appeared, had not fifty miles to make, but four. He must
report at the appointed bivouac. Loring tore with his one hand a leaf
from his pocket-book, found his pencil, and using a booted knee for a
table, wrote a line, folded and superscribed it. "This for General
Jackson. Ugh, what freezing weather! Sit down and drink a cup of coffee
before you go. You, too, Maury. Here, Jupiter! hot coffee. Major Cleave,
do you remember Aesop's fables?"
"Yes, sir,--a number of them."
"A deal of knowledge there of damned human nature! The frog that swelled
and swelled and thought himself an ox. Curious how your boyhood books
come back into your mind! Sit down, gentlemen, sit down! Reardon's got a
box of cigars tucked away somewhere or he isn't Reardon--"
Along the edge of the not-distant ravine other small fires had been
built. From the circle about one of these arose a quavering voice--a
soldier trying to sing cheer into company.
Dere was an old niggah, dey called him Uncle Ned--
He's dead long ago, long ago!
He had no wool on de top ob his head,
De place whar de wool ought to grow.
Den lay down de shubble an de hoe,
Hang up de fiddle an de bow--
CHAPTER XIII
FOOL TOM JACKSON
The Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood, chaplain to one of Loring's regiments,
coming down from the hillside where he had spent the night, very
literally like a shepherd, found the little stream at its foot frozen to
the bottom. No morning bath for a lover of cleanliness! There had been
little water, indeed, to expend on any toilet since leaving Winchester.
Corbin Wood tried snow for his face and hands, but the snow was no
longer soft, as it had fallen the day before. It was frozen and harsh.
"And the holy hermits and the saints on pillars never had a
bath--apparently never wanted one!"
Reveille sounded drearily enough from the surrounding mountains. The
fires sprang up, but they did not burn brightly in the livid day. The
little there was to eat was warmed and eaten. When, afterwards, the
rolls were called, there were silences. Mr. Ready-to-halt, Mr. Faint
Heart, Mr. Fearing, and also Mr. Honesty, really too ill to march, were
somewhere on the backward road to Winchester. Length by length, like a
serpent grey and cold, sluggish, unburnished, dull, and bewildered, the
column took the road. Deeply cut the day before by the cavalry, by
Garnett's brigade, and by the artillery, the road was horrible. What had
been ridged snow was now ridged ice.
Corbin Wood and his old grey horse were loved by their regiment. The
chaplain was not, physically, a strong man, and his ways were those of a
scholar, but the regiment found them lovable. Pluto the horse was very
wise, very old, very strong and gentle. Upon the march he was of use to
many beside his master. The regiment had grown accustomed to the sight
of the chaplain walking through dust or mud at the bridle of the grey,
saying now and then a word in a sober and cheerful fashion to the
half-sick or wholly weary private seated in his saddle. He was forever
giving some one a lift along the road. Certain things that have had
small place in the armies of the world were commonplaces in the
Confederate service. The man on horseback was a more fortunate, but not
a better man--not even a better born or educated man--than he on foot.
The long grey lines saw nothing strange in a dismounted officer giving a
cast of the road to a comrade in the ranks. So, to-day, the chaplain's
horse was rather for everybody than for the chaplain himself. An old
college mate slipping stiffly to earth after five inestimable minutes,
remonstrated. "I'd like to see you riding, Corbin! Just give yourself a
lift, won't you? Look at Pluto looking at that rent in your shoe! You'll
never be a bishop if you go on this way."
The sleet fell and fell, and it was intensely cold. The wagons were
invisible. It was rumoured that they had taken another road. The country
was almost a wilderness. At long intervals the troops came upon a
lonely farmhouse, or a wayside cabin, a mill, a smithy. Loring sent
ahead a foraging party, with orders to purchase all supplies. Hardly
anything was gotten. Little had been made this year and little stored.
Moreover, latterly, the Yankees at Bath had taken all the stock and
poultry and corn--and without paying for it either. "Yes, sir, there are
Yankees at Bath. More'n you can shake a stick at!"
The foragers brought back the news. "There are Yankees at Bath--eight
miles away! Any number of them. Just as certain as it's sleeting, that's
where Old Jack's going!"
The news running along the column awoke a small flare of interest. But
it filled no empty stomachs, nor dissipated the numbing cold. The
momentary enthusiasm passed. "Eight miles! Have we got to go eight miles
to-day? We haven't made three miles since dawn. If George Washington,
Napoleon Bonaparte, and Julius Caesar were here they couldn't get this
army eight miles to-day!"
The cavalry, the artillery, the Stonewall Brigade, Meems and Carson's
Militia, the three brigades of Loring--on wound the sick and sluggish
column. The hills were now grey glass, and all the horses smooth-shod.
In advance a corps of pioneers broke with pickaxes the solid and
treacherous surface, roughening the road so that the poor brutes might
gain foothold. The vanguard, stumbling around a bend of the road,
stumbled upon a Federal ambush, horse and foot. To either side a wood of
cedars blazed and rang. A lieutenant of the 21st Virginia threw up his
arms and pitched forward, dead. A private was badly wounded. The company
charged, but the blue outposts fired another volley and got away,
crashing through the woods to some by-road. It was impossible to follow;
chase could not be given over grey glass.
With the closing in of the ghostly day, in a stretch of fields beside a
frozen stream, the column halted. There were no tents, and there was
scarcely anything to eat. One of the fields was covered by stacked corn,
and it was discovered that the ear had been left. In the driving sleet
the men tore apart the shocks and with numbed fingers stripped from the
grain the sere, rough, and icy husks. They and the horses ate the yellow
corn. All night, stupid with misery, the soldiers dozed and muttered
beside the wretched fires. One, a lawyer's clerk, cried like a child,
with his hands scored till they bled by the frozen corn husks. Down the
stream stood a deserted sawmill, and here the Rockbridge men found
planks with which they made for themselves little pens. The sleet
sounded for hours on the boards that served for roof, but at last it
died away. The exhausted army slept, but when in the grey dawn it
stirred and rose to the wailing of the bugles, it threw off a weight of
snow. All the world was white again beneath a livid sky.
This day they made four miles. The grey trees were draped with ice, the
grey zigzag of the fences was gliding ice under the hands that caught at
it, the hands of the sick and weak. Motion resolved itself into a Dead
March; few notes and slow, with rests. The army moved and halted, moved
and halted with a weird stateliness. Couriers came back from the man
riding ahead, cadet cap drawn over eyes that saw only what a giant and
iron race might do under a giant and iron dictatorship. General Jackson
says, "Press Forward!" General Jackson says, "Press Forward, men!"
They did not reach Bath that night. They lay down and slept behind a
screen of hills and awoke in an amethyst dawn to a sky of promise. The
light, streaming from the east, made glorious the ice-laden trees and
the far and dazzling wastes of snow. The sunshine cheered the troops.
Bath was just ahead--Bath and the Yankees! The 1st Tennessee and the
48th Virginia suddenly swung from the main road, and moved across the
fields to the ridges overlooking the town. Apparently they had gathered
their strength into a ball, for they went with energy, double-quickening
over the snow. The afternoon before Carson and Meems had been detached,
disappearing to the right. A rumour ran through the ranks. This force
would be now on the other side of Bath. "It's like a cup, all of us on
the rim, and the Yanks at the bottom. If Carson can hold the roads on
the other side we've got them, just like so many coffee grounds! Fifteen
hundred of them in blue, and two guns?--Boys, I feel better!"
Old Jack--the men began with suddenness again to call him Old Jack--Old