The Long Roll
side, one hand on mane, or knees upgathered, and carbine held high,
squatting in the saddle on the crossed stirrups, kept up a stream of
encouragement--soft words, pet names, cooing mention of sugar (little
enough in the commissariat!) and of apples. The steed responded. The god
above or beside him wished it thus, and certainly should be obeyed, and
that with love. The rough torrent, the eddies, the violent current were
nothing--at least, not much! In column of twos the horses breasted the
river, the gods above them singing of praise and reward. They neared the
western shore and the green, overhanging trees, touched bottom, plunged
a little and came out, wet and shining, every inch of metal about them
glinting in the level rays of the sun.
High on the bank Stonewall Jackson with Flournoy and his aides, the
first to cross, watched that passage of the squadrons. Little Sorrel,
slow and patient, had perhaps been, in his own traversing, the one steed
to hear no especial word of endearment nor much of promise. He did not
seem to miss them; he and Jackson apparently understood each other. The
men said that he could run only one way and that toward the enemy.
Far down the Front Royal and Winchester turnpike, through a fair farming
country, among cornfields and orchards, the running fight continued. It
was almost sunset; long shadows stretched across the earth. Scene and
hour should have been tranquil-sweet--fall of dew, vesper song of birds,
tinkling of cow bells coming home. It was not so; it was filled with
noise and smoke, and in the fields and fence corners lay dead and
wounded men, while in the farmhouses of the region, women drew the
blinds, gathered the children about them and sat trembling.
The blue cavalry was hard put to it. The grey infantrymen were good
marksmen, and their line was long, drawn across the road and the up and
down of the fields. Here and there, now and again, a trooper went down
to the dust, and the riderless horse, galloping to the rear, brought
small comfort to Kenly's retreating companies. At last there rode back
the major commanding the New York squadron. "We're losing too heavily,
colonel! There's a feverishness--if they're reinforced I don't know if I
can hold the men--"
Kenly debated within himself, then. "I'll make a stand at the
cross-roads yonder. Atwell shall plant the guns and give them canister.
It is nearly night--if we could hold them off one hour--"
Richard Cleave, pressing very close with his skirmishers, lost sight of
the blue infantry now behind an orchard-clad undulation. "Billy Maydew!
come climb this tree and tell me what you see."
Billy went up the roadside locust like a squirrel. "Thar air a man just
tumbled off a black horse with a white star! 'T was Dave hit him, I
reckon. They look powerful droopy, them cavalrymen! The big man you
wouldn't let us take, he air waving his sabre and swearing--"
"The infantry?"
"The infantry air halted. The road air stuffed with them.
One--two--three--six companies, stretched out like a black horse's
tail."
"Faced which way?"
"That way. No! by Jiminy, they ain't! They air faced this way! They air
going to make a stand!"
"They have done well, and they've got a brave officer, whoever he is.
The guns?"
"Away ahead, but they air turning! They air making for a hilltop that
hangs over the road. Thar's another man off his horse! Threw up his arm
and fell, and his foot caught in the stirrup. I don't know if 't war
Dave this time shot him--anyhow, 't war not Sergeant Coffin--"
"Is the infantry deploying?"
"They air still in column--black as flies in the road. They air tearing
down the fence, so they can get into the fields."
"Look behind--toward the river."
Billy obediently turned upon the branch. "We air coming on in five
lines--like the bean patch at home. I love them Lou-is-iana Tigers!
What's that?"
"What?"
"An awful cloud of dust--and a trumpet out of it! The First Maryland's
getting out of the way--Now the Tigers!--Oh-h-h!"
He scrambled down. "By the left flank!" shouted Cleave. "Double quick.
March!"
The 65th, the Louisiana troops, the First Maryland, moved rapidly west
of the road, leaving a space of trampled green between themselves and
it. Out of the dust cloud toward the river now rose a thud of many
hoofs--a body of horse coming at a trot. The sound deepened, drew
nearer, changed measure. The horses were galloping, though not at full
speed. They could be seen now, in two lines, under bright guidons,
eating up the waves of earth, galloping toward the sunset in dust and
heat and thunder. At first sight like toy figures, men and horses were
now grown life-size. They threatened, in the act of passing, to become
gigantic. The sun had set, but it left walls and portals of cloud tinged
and rimmed with fire. The horsemen seemed some home-returning aerial
race, so straight they rode into the west. The ground shook, the dust
rose higher, the figures enlarged, the gallop increased. Energy at its
height, of a sudden all the trumpets blew.
Past the grey infantry, frantically yelling its welcome, swept a
tremendous charge. Knee to knee, shouting, chanting, horse and man one
war shaft, endued with soul and lifted to an ecstasy, they went by,
flecked with foam, in a whirlwind of dust, in an infernal clangour, with
the blare and fury, the port and horror of Mars attended. The horses
stretched neck, shook mane, breathed fire; the horsemen drained to the
lees the encrusted heirloom, the cup of warlike passion. Frenzied they
all rode home.
The small cavalry force opposed, gasped at the apparition. Certainly
their officers tried to rally the men, but certainly they knew it for
futility! Some of the troopers fired their carbines at the approaching
tide, hoar, yelling, coming now so swiftly that every man rode as a
giant and every steed seemed a spectre horse--others did not. All
turned, before the shock, and fled, in a mad gallop of their own.
Kenly's infantry, yet in column, was packed in a road none too wide,
between ragged banks topped by rail fences. Two panels of these had been
taken down preparatory to deploying in the fields, but the movement was
not yet made. Kenly had his face turned to the west, straining his eyes
for the guns or for the reinforcements which happily General Banks might
send. A shout arose. "Look out! Look out! Oh, good Lord!"
First there was seen a horrible dust cloud, heard a great thunder of
hoofs. Then out of all came bloodshot eyes of horses, stiffened manes,
blue figures downward bent on the sweat-gleaming necks, oaths, prayers,
sounds of unnerved Nature, here and there of grim fury, impotent in the
torrent as a protesting straw. Into the blue infantry rode the blue
cavalry. All down the soldier-crammed road ensued a dreadful confusion,
danger and uproar. Men sprang for their lives to this side and that.
They caught at jutting roots and pulled themselves out of the road up
the crumbling banks. Where they could they reached the rail fences,
tumbled over them and lay, gasping, close alongside. The majority could
not get out of the road. They pressed themselves flat against the
shelving banks, and let the wedge drive through. Many were caught,
overturned, felt the fierce blows of the hoofs. Regardless of any wreck
behind them, on and over and down the Winchester road tore the maddened
horses, the appalled troopers.
The luckless infantry when, at last, their own had passed, had no time
to form before the Confederate charge was upon them. At the highest key,
the fiercest light, the extremest motion, sound and sight procuring for
them a mighty bass and background, came Jackson's charging squadrons.
They swallowed the road and the fields on either hand. Kenly, with the
foremost company, fired once, a point-blank volley, received at twenty
yards, and emptying ten saddles of the central squadron. It could not
stay the unstayable; in a moment, in a twinkling of the eye, with
indescribable noise, with roaring as of undammed waters, with a lapse of
all colours into red, with smell of sweat and powder, hot metal and
burning cloth, with savour of poisoned brass in furred mouths, with an
impact of body, with sabre blow and pistol shot, with blood spilled and
bone splintered, with pain and tremendous horror and invading nausea,
with delirium, with resurgence of the brute, with jungle triumph,
Berserker rage and battle ecstasy came the shock--then, in a moment, the
melee.
Kenly, vainly striving to rally a handful about the colours, fell, all
but mortally wounded. In the wild quarter of an hour that elapsed before
the surrender of the whole, many of the blue were killed, many more
wounded. Far and wide the men scattered, but far and wide they were
ridden down. One of the guns was taken almost at once, the other a
little later, overtaken a mile or two down the road. A few artillerymen,
a squad or two of cavalry with several officers, Marchmont among them,
got away. They were all who broke the trap. Kenly himself, twenty
officers and nine hundred men, the dead, the wounded, the surrendered,
together with a section of artillery, some unburned stores, and the
Northern colours and guidons, rested in Jackson's hands. That night in
Strasburg, when the stars came out, men looked toward those that shone
in the east.
CHAPTER XXI
STEVEN DAGG
Steven Dagg, waked by the shrill reveille, groaned, raised himself from
his dew-drenched couch, ran his fingers through his hair, kneaded neck,
arms, and ankles, and groaned more heavily yet. He was dreadfully stiff
and sore. In five days the "foot cavalry" had marched more than eighty
miles. Yesterday the brigade had been afoot from dawn till dark. "And
we didn't have the fun of the battle neither," remarked Steve, in a
savagely injured tone. "Leastwise none of us but the damned three
companies and a platoon of ours that went ahead to skirmish 'cause they
knew the type of country! Don't I know the type of country, too? Yah!"
The man nearest him, combing his beard with ostentation, burst into a
laugh. "Did you hear that, fellows? Steve's grumbling because he wasn't
let to do it all! Poor Steve! poor Hotspur! poor Pistol!" He bent,
chuckling, over the pool that served him for mirror. "You stop calling
me dirty names!" growled Steve, and, his toilet ended well-nigh before
begun, slouched across to fire and breakfast. The former was large, the
latter small. Jackson's ammunition wagons, double-teamed, were up with
the army, but all others back somewhere east of Front Royal.
Breakfast was soon over--"sorry breakfast!" The _assembly_ sounded, the
column was formed, Winder made his brigade a short speech. Steve
listened with growing indignation. "General Banks, falling back from
Strasburg, is trying to get off clear to Winchester. ('Well, let him! I
don't give a damn!') We want to intercept him at Middletown. ('Oh, do
we?') We want to get there before the head of his column appears, and
then to turn and strike him full. ('O Lord! I ain't a rattler!') We want
to beat him in the middle Valley--never let him get to Winchester at
all! ('I ain't objecting, if you'll give the other brigades a show and
let them do it!') It's only ten miles to Middletown. ('Only!') A forced
march needed. ('O Gawd!') Ashby and Chew's Battery and a section of the
Rockbridge and the skirmishers and Wheat's Tigers are ahead. ('Well, if
they're so brash, let them wipe out Banks and welcome! And if one damned
officer that's ahead gits killed, I won't mourn him.') Ewell with
Trimble's Brigade and the First Maryland, Courtenay and Brockenborough
are off, making as the bird flies for Winchester! ('We ain't birds.
We're men, and awful tired men, too.') Steuart with the 2d and 6th