The Long Roll
Staunton (and the young ladies) wished to see how the V. M. I. did
things, why, of course! In the rich afternoon light, band playing, Major
Smith at their head, the newly-arrived Corps of Defence marched down the
street toward a green field fit for evolutions. With it, on either
sidewalk, went the town at large, specifically the supremely happy,
small boy. The pretty girls were already in the field, seated, full
skirted beneath the sweet locust trees.
V. M. I., Home Guard, and attendant throng neared the Virginia Central.
A whistle shrieked down the line, shrieked with enormous vigour--"What's
that? Train due?"--"No. Not due for an hour--always late then! Better
halt until it pulls in. Can't imagine--"
The engine appeared, an old timer of the Virginia Central, excitedly
puffing dark smoke, straining in, like a racer to the goal. Behind it
cars and cars--_cars with men atop_! They were all in grey--they were
all yelling--the first car had a flag, the battle-flag of the
Confederacy, the dear red ground, and the blue Saint Andrew's Cross and
the white stars. There were hundreds of men! hundreds and hundreds,
companies, regiments, on the roof, on the platforms, half out of the
windows, waving, shouting--no! singing--
"We're the Stonewall.
Zoom! Zoom!
We're the openers of the ball.
Zoom! Zoom!
"Fix bayonets! Charge!
Rip! Rip!
N. P. Banks for our targe.
Zip! Zip!
"We wrote it on the way.
Zoom! Zoom!
Hope you like our little lay.
Zoom! Zoom!
For we didn't go to Richmond and we're coming home to stay!"
Four days later, on Sitlington's Hill, on the Bull Pasture Mountain,
thirty miles to the west of Staunton, a man sat at nightfall in the
light of a great camp-fire and wrote a dispatch to his Government. There
waited for it a swift rider--watching the stars while the general wrote,
or the surgeons' lanterns, like fireflies, wandering up and down the
long green slopes where the litter bearers lifted the wounded, friend
and foe.
The man seated on the log wrote with slow precision a long dispatch,
covering several pages of paper. Then he read it over, and then he
looked for a minute or two at the flitting lanterns, and then he slowly
tore the dispatch in two, and fed the fire with the pieces. The courier,
watching him write a much shorter message, half put forth his hand to
take it, for his horse whinnied upon the road far below, and the way to
Staunton was long and dark. However, Jackson's eyes again dwelt on the
grey slopes before him and on the Alleghenies, visited by stars, and
then, as slowly as before, he tore this dispatch also across and across
and dropped the pieces on the brands. When they were burned he wrote a
single line, signed and folded it, and gave it to the courier. The
latter, in the first pink light, in the midst of a jubilant Staunton,
read it to the excited operator in the little telegraph station.
"God blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday.
"T. J. JACKSON
"_Major-General._"
CHAPTER XIX
THE FLOWERING WOOD
"Thank you, ma'am," said Allan. "I reckon just so long as there are such
women in the Valley there'll be worth-while men there, too! You've all
surely done your share."
"Now, you've got the pot of apple butter, and the bucket with the
honeycomb, and the piece of bacon and the light bread. If you'd come a
little earlier I could have let you have some eggs--"
"I've got a feast for a king.--All these fighting men going up and down
the Valley are going to eat you out of house and home.--I got some pay
two months ago, and I've enough left to make it fairer--"
He drew out a Confederate note. The woman on the doorstep looked at it
admiringly, and, taking it from him, examined either side. "They make
them pretty as a picture," she said. "Once't I was in Richmond and saw
the Capitol. That's a good picture of it. And that statue of General
Washington!--My! his horse's just dancing as they say Ashby's does to
music. One of those bronze men around the base is a forbear of mine."
She gave back the note. "I had a little mite of real coffee that I'd
have liked to give you--but it's all gone. Howsoever, you won't go
hungry with what you've got. Have you a nice place to sleep in?"
"The nicest in the world. A bed of oak leaves and a roof all stars."
"You could stay here to-night. I've got a spare room."
"You're just as good as gold," said Allan. "But I want to be out where I
can hear the news. I'm a scout, you see."
"I thought that, watching you come up the path. We're learning fast.
Used to be I just thought a soldier was a soldier! I never thought of
there being different kinds. Do you think the army'll come this way?"
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Allan. "Indeed, I'm rather expecting
it. But you never know. How many of your people are in it?"
"A lot of cousins. But my sons are with Johnston. Richmond's more'n a
hundred miles away, I reckon, but all last night I thought I heard the
cannon. Well, good-bye! I'm mighty glad to see you all again in the
Valley. Be sure to come back for your breakfast--and if the army passes
I've got enough for one or two besides. Good-bye--God bless you."
Allan left behind the small brick farmhouse, stopped for a drink at the
spring, then climbed a rail fence and made across a rolling field of
bright green clover to a width of blossoming woods, beyond which ran the
Mt. Solon and Bridgewater road. From the forest issued a curl of blue
vapour and a smell of wood smoke. The scout, entering, found a cheerful,
unnecessarily large fire. Stretched beside it, upon the carpet of last
year's leaves, lay Billy Maydew, for whose company he had applied upon
quitting, a week before, the army between McDowell and Franklin. Allan
snuffed the air. "You build too big a fire, Billy! 'Tisn't a good
scout's way of doing."
Billy laid down horizontally upon the leaves the stick he had been
whittling. "Thar ain't anybody but home folks to smell it. Didn't we see
Ashby on the black stallion draw a line like that thar stick across the
Valley with a picket post for every knot?" He sat up. "Did you get
anything to eat?"
"I certainly did. There surely are good women in the land!" Allan
disburdened himself. "Rake the coals out and get the skillet."
Afterwards they lay prone upon the leaves and talked. They had much of
life in common; they were as at home with each other as two squirrels
frequenting the same tree. Now, as they lay beneath two clouds from two
briar-roots, they dwelt for some time upon Thunder Run, then from that
delectable region turned to the here and now. Allan had taught Billy,
finding him a most unsatisfactory pupil. Billy had in those days
acquired little book learning, but a very real respect for the blond
giant now lying opposite to him. Since coming to the army he had been
led to deplore his deficiencies, and, a week ago, he had suggested to
Allan that in the interim of active scouting the latter should continue
his education. "When thar air a chance I want to swap into the
artillery. Three bands of red thar," he drew a long finger across his
sleeve, "air my ambition. I reckon then Christianna and all the Thunder
Run girls would stop saying 'Billy.' They'd say 'Sergeant Maydew.' An
artillery sergeant's got to be head in ciphering, and he's got to be
able to read words of mor'n one--one--"
"Syllable."
"That's it. Now they aren't any printed books hereabouts, but you've got
it all in your head--"
"I can't teach you much," Allan had said soberly, "whispering under
bushes and listening for Schenck's cavalry! We might do something,
though. You were an awful poor speller. Spell 'sergeant'--now
'ordnance'--now 'ammunition'--'battery'--'caisson'--'Howitzer'--
'Napoleon'--'Tredegar'--'limber'--'trail'--'cannon-powder'--"
In the week Billy had made progress--more progress than in a session on
Thunder Run. Now, lying in the woods a little west of Mt. Solon, waiting
for the army moving back to the Valley, this time from the west, from
the Allegheny fastnesses, he accomplished with eclat some oral
arithmetic--"If two Yankee Parrotts are fired every eight minutes, and
in our battery we serve the howitzer every nine minutes, the Napoleon
every ten, the two six-pounders every eleven, and if the Yankees limber
up and leave at the end of an hour, how many shells will have been
thrown?"--"If it is a hundred and ten miles from Harrisonburg to the
Potomac, and if Old Jack's foot cavalry advances twenty-two miles a day,
and if we lay off a day for a battle, and if we have three skirmishes
each occupying two hours, and if Banks makes a stand of half a day at
Winchester, and if Fremont executes a flank movement and delays us six
hours, just how long will it be before Old Jack pushes Banks into the
Potomac?"--"If Company A had ninety men when it started ('thar war a
full hundred') and five men died of measles and pneumonia (''t were
six'), and if we recruited three at Falling Springs, and six were killed
at Manassas and sixteen wounded, half of whom never came back, and we
got twelve recruits at Centreville and seven more at Winchester, and if
five straggled on the Bath and Romney trip and were never heard of more,
and if five were killed at Kernstown and a dozen are still in the
hospital, and if ten more recruits came in at Rude's Hill and if we left
four sick at Magaheysville, and if we lost none at McDowell, not being
engaged, but two in a skirmish since, and if Steve Dagg straggled three
times but was brought back and tried to desert twice but never got any
further than the guardhouse--how many men are in Company A?"--"If"--this
was Billy's--"if I have any luck in the next battle, and if I air found
to have a speaking acquaintance with every damned thousand-legged word
the captain asks me about, and I get to be a sergeant, and I air swapped
into the artillery, and thar's a big fight, and my battery and Company A
are near, and Sergeant Mathew Coffin gets into trouble right next door
to me, and he cried out a hundred times (lying right thar in the zone of
fire), 'Boys, come take me out of hell!' and the company all was forced
back, and all the gunners, and I was left thar serving my gun, just as
pretty and straight, and he cried out anoth'r hundred times, 'Billy
Maydew, come pick me up and carry me out of hell'--and I just served on
a hundred times, only looking at him every time the gun thundered and I
straightened up--"
"For shame!" cried Allan. "I've heard Steve Dagg say something like that
about Richard Cleave." Billy sat up indignant. "It air not like that at
all! The major air what he is, and Steve Dagg air what he is! Sergeant
Mathew Coffin air what somebody or other called somebody else in that
thar old history book you used to make us learn! He air 'a petty
tyrant.' He air that, and Thunder Run don't like that kind. He air not
going to tyrannize much longer over Billy Maydew. And don't you be
comparing me to Steve Dagg. I ain't like that, and I never was."
He lay prone again, insulted, and would not go on with the lesson. Allan
took it calmly, made a placating remark or two, and lapsed into a
friendly silence. It was pleasant in the woods, where the birds flitted
to and fro, and the pink honeysuckle grew around, and from a safe
distance a chipmunk daintily watched the intruders. The scout lay,
drowsily happy, the sunshine making spun gold of his hair and beard, his