The Long Roll
Jack divulged nothing. Information, if information it was, came from
scouts, couriers, Ashby's vedettes, chance-met men and women of the
region. Something electric flashed from van to rear. The line went up
the hill with rapidity. When they reached the crest the men saw the
cavalry far before and below them, charging upon the town and shouting.
After the horse came a body of skirmishers, then, pouring down the
hillside the 1st Tennessee and the 48th Virginia, yelling as they ran.
From the town burst a loud rattle of musketry, and from a height beyond
a cannon thundered. All the white sides of the cup echoed the sound.
The infantry swerved to let the artillery by. The guns, grim beneath
their ice coats, the yelling men, the drivers loudly encouraging the
horses, the horses, red-nostrilled, wide-eyed--all came somehow,
helter-skelter down the long windings of the ridge. The infantry
followed; the town was entered; the Federals retreated, firing as they
went, streaming out by two roads. One led toward Sir John's Run, the
other direct to the Potomac with Hancock on the Maryland shore, and at
Hancock General Lander with a considerable force. Carson's men, alack!
had found the winter hills no bagatelle. They were not in time to secure
the roads.
The Confederate cavalry, dividing, followed, full tilt, the retreating
foe. A courier brought back to the artillery a curt order from Jackson
to push on by the Hancock road. As he turned, his mare slipped, and the
two came crashing down upon the icy road. When they had struggled up and
out of the way the batteries passed rumbling through the town. Old men
and boys were out upon the trampled sidewalks, and at window and door
women and children waved handkerchiefs, clapped hands. At a corner, in
the middle of the street, lay a horse, just lifeless, covered with
blood. The sight maddened the battery horses. They reared and plunged,
but at last went trembling by. From the patriarchs and the eager boys
came information. The Yankees were gone, but not their baggage and
stores. Everything had been left behind. There were army blankets,
tents, oilcloths, clothing, _shoes_, cords of firewood, forage for the
horses, flour, and fresh meat, sugar, coffee, sutlers' stores of every
kind, wines, spirits, cigars--oh, everything! The artillery groaned and
swore, but obeyed orders. Leaving Capua behind, it strained along the
Hancock road in the wake of the pursuing cavalry and the fleeing
Federals.
The main body of the latter, well in advance and with no exhausting
march behind them to weaken horse and man, reached the Potomac by the
Hancock road at a point where they had boats moored, and got clean away,
joining Lander on the Maryland shore. The lesser number, making for Sir
John's Run and the Big Cacapon and followed by some companies of
Ashby's, did not so quickly escape. The Confederate advance came,
artillery, horse, and skirmishers, upon the river bank at sunset. All
around were great rolling hills, quite bare of trees and covered with
snow, over which the setting sun threw a crimson tinge. Below was the
river, hoarsely murmuring, and immediately upon the other side, the
clustering Maryland village, with a church spire tall and tapering
against the northern sky. About the village was another village of
tents, and upon a hilltop frowned a line of guns. Dusk as it was, the
Confederate batteries unlimbered, and there opened an artillery duel,
shells screaming from north to south and south to north across the river
yet stained with the sunset glow.
That night the infantry remained at Bath, warmed and comforted by the
captured stores. They came like a gift from the gods, and as is usual
with that gift they disappeared in a twinkling. In the afternoon the
three arms met on the river bank. The sky was again a level grey; it was
evident that a snowstorm was brewing. There was not a house; except for
the fringe along the water's edge there was hardly a tree. The hills
were all bare. The snow was packed so hard and so mingled with ice that
when, in the cannonading, the Federal missiles struck and tore it up the
fragments were as keen and troublesome, almost, as splinters of shell.
There was no shelter, little wood for burning. The men gazed about them
with a frown of uneasiness. The storm set in with a whirl of snow and
with a wind that raved like a madman and broke the spectral white arms
of the sycamores by the river. In a short time there was a shifting,
wonderful, numbing veil streaming silent from the grey heavens. It was
almost a relief when dark came and wrapped the great, lonely, ghostly
countryside. This night the men disregarded the taboo and burned every
available fence rail.
In the morning a boat was put across the half-frozen river. It bore a
summons to Lander to surrender, the alternative being a bombardment of
the town. "Retaliation for Shepherdstown" read Jackson's missive. Ashby
bore the summons and was led blindfold through the streets to
headquarters. Lander, looking momently for reinforcements from
Williamsport, declined to surrender. Ashby passed blindfolded out of the
town, entered the boat, and came back to Stonewall Jackson. The latter
waited two hours, then began to throw shells into the town. Since early
morning a force had been engaged in constructing, two miles up the
river, a rude bridge by which the troops might cross. The evening before
there had been skirmishes at Sir John's Run and at the Big Cacapon. A
regiment of Loring's destroyed the railroad bridge over the latter
stream. The Federals withdrew across the river, leaving no command in
Morgan County.
Throughout the afternoon McLaughlin's battery dropped shells into
Hancock, but an hour before dark came orders to cease firing. A
scout--Allan Gold--brought tidings of heavy reinforcements pouring into
the town from Williamsport and Hagerstown. So heavy were they that
Jackson, after standing for five minutes with his face to the north,
sent orders to discontinue work upon the bridge. Romney, when all was
said, not Hancock, was his destination--Kelly's eight thousand in
Virginia, not Lander's brigades across the line. Doubtless it had been
his hope to capture every Federal in Bath, to reach and cross the
Potomac, inflict damage, and retire before those reinforcements could
come up. But the infantry which he commanded was not yet his "foot
cavalry," and neither knew nor trusted him as it was to know and trust.
The forces about him to-day were not homogeneous. They pulled two ways,
they were not moulded and coloured as they were to be moulded and
coloured, not instinct with the one man view as they were to become
instinct. They were not iron as he was iron, nor yet thunderbolts of
war. They could not divine the point and hour of attack, and, sooth to
say, they received scant assistance from the actual wizard. They were
patriot forces, simple and manly souls ready enough to die for their
cause, but few were yet at the arrowhead of concentration as was this
man. They were to attain it, but not yet. He looked at the north and he
looked at his complaining legions, and he strode off to his bivouac
beneath a solitary tree. Here, a little later he gave orders to his
brigadiers. The Army of the Northwest would resume the march "at early
dawn."
In the harsh coldness of the morning they retraced the road to Bath, a
frightful road, a road over which an army had passed. At noon they came
to Bath, but there was hardly a pause in the town. Beneath a sky of
lead, in a harsh and freezing wind, the troops swung slowly into a
narrow road running west through a meagre valley. Low hills were on
either side--low and bleak. Scrub oak and pine grew sparsely, and along
the edges of the road dead milkweed and mullein stood gaunt above the
snow. The troops passed an old cider press and a cabin or two out of
which negroes stared.
Before long they crossed a creek and began to climb. All the landscape
was now mountainous. To the right, as the way mounted, opened a great
view, white dales and meadows, far winter forests, and the long, long
wall of North Mountain. There was small care for the view among the
struggling soldiers. The hills seemed perpendicular, the earth
treacherous glass. Going up, the artillerymen must drag with the horses
at gun and caisson; going down the carriages must be held back, else
they would slide sideways and go crashing over the embankment. Again and
again, going down, the horses slipped and fell. The weight of metal
behind coming upon them, the whole slid in a heap to the bottom. There
they must be gotten to their feet, the poor trembling brutes! and set to
the task of another hill. The long, grey, halting, stumbling, creeping
line saw no beauty in the winter woods, in the arched fern over the
snow, in the vivid, fairy plots of moss, in the smooth, tall ailanthus
stems by the wayside, in the swinging, leafless lianas of grape, pendent
from the highest trees, in the imposing view of the mountains. The line
was sick, sick to the heart, numbed and shivering, full of pain. Every
ambulance and wagon used as ambulance was heavy laden; at every
infrequent cabin or lonely farmhouse were left the too ill to travel
farther. The poor servants, of whom there were some in each company,
were in pitiable plight. No negro likes the cold; for him all the hot
sunshine he can get! They shivered now, in the rear of the companies,
their bodies drawn together, their faces grey. The nature of most was of
an abounding cheerfulness, but it was not possible to be cheerful on
this January road to Romney.
The army crossed Sleepy Creek. It was frozen to the bottom. The cedars
along its shore stood so funereally, so crape-like and dark, the
sycamores were so clay-white and long of arm, the great birds slowly
circling above a neighbouring wood of so dreary a significance, that the
heart sank and sank. Was this war?--war, heroic and glorious, with
banners, trumpets, and rewarded enterprise? Manassas had been war--for
one brief summer day! But ever since there was only marching, tenting,
suffering, and fatigue--and fatigue--and fatigue.
Maury Stafford and the Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood found themselves riding
side by side, with other mounted officers, in advance of Loring's
leading regiment. The chaplain had experienced, the day before, an ugly
fall. His knee was badly wrenched, and so, perforce, he rode to-day,
though, as often as he thought the grey could stand it, he took up a man
behind him. Now, however, he was riding single. Indeed, for the last
mile he had uttered no pitiful comment and given no invitation.
Moreover, he talked persistently and was forever calling his companion's
attention to the beauty of the view. At last, after a series of short
answers, it occurred to Stafford to regard him more closely. There was a
colour in the chaplain's cheek and he swayed ever so slightly and
rhythmically in his saddle. Stafford checked his horse, drew his hand
out of an ice-caked gauntlet, and leaning over laid it on the other's
which was bare. The chaplain's skin was burning hot. Stafford made a
sound of concern and rode forward to the colonel. In a minute he
returned. "Now you and I, Mr. Wood, will fall out here and just quietly
wait until the wagons come by. Then the doctor will fix you up nicely in
the ambulance.... Oh, yes, you are! You're ill enough to want to lie
down for awhile. Some one else, you know, can ride Pluto."
Corbin Wood pondered the matter. "That's true, that's very true, my dear
Maury. Fontaine, now, behind us in the ranks, his shoes are all worn
out. Fontaine, eh? Fontaine knows more Greek than any man--and he'll be
good to Pluto. Pluto's almost worn out himself--he's not immortal like
Xanthius and Balius. Do you know, Maury, it's little wonder that