The Long Roll
cavalry are already at Newtown. ('What in hell do I care if they air?')
Campbell and Taliaferro and Elzey and Scott and the Stonewall and the
balance of the guns form the main column, and at Middletown we're going
to turn and meet Banks. ('Gawd! more fighting, on an empty stomach, and
dog-tired!') General Jackson says, '_Men, we're going to rid the Valley
of Virginia of the enemy. Press on._' You know what an avalanche is.
('Knowed it before you was born. It's a place where you hide till the
man you hate worse than pison oak comes by!') Let the Stonewall now
turn avalanche; fall on Banks at Middletown and grind him small!--_Fours
right! Forward! March!_ ('Oh, Gawd! my cut foot! It's my lasting hope
that--sh!--Fool Tom Jackson'll break you same as he broke Garnett')."
The morning, at first divinely cool and sweet, turned hot and languid,
humid and without air. It made the perspiration stream, and then the
dust rose from the road, and the two together caused the most
discomfortable grime! It marked all faces, and it lodged between neck
and neckband and wrist and wristband where it chafed the skin. It got
deep into the shoes--through holes enough, God knows!--and there the
matter became serious, for many a foot was galled and raw. It got into
eyes and they grew red and smarting. It stopped ear and nostril. It
lined the mouth; it sifted down the neck and made the body miserable. At
the starting, as the men quit the green banks of Shenandoah, several of
the aesthetic sort had been heard to comment upon the beauty of the
scenery. Possibly the soul for beauty lasted, but as for the scenery, it
vanished. The brigade was now upon the Front Royal and Winchester pike,
moving in the foot and wheel prints of the advance, and under and
through an extended cirrhus cloud of dirty saffron. The scenery could
not be viewed through it--mere red blotches and blurs. It was so heavy
that it served for darkness. Men saw each other dimly at the distance of
ten feet, and mounted officers and couriers went by, dun and shapeless,
through the thick powder.
Steve could not be said to mind grime (Sergeant Mathew Coffin did; he
was forever wiping it away with what remained to him of a handkerchief),
but the stuff in his shoes made his feet hurt horribly. It was in his
mouth besides, where it made him thirsty. He eyed an object dangling
from the belt of the man next him, and since from long habit it had
become easy to him to break the tenth commandment he broke it
again--into a thousand pieces. At last, "Where did you get that
canteen?"
"Picked it up at McDowell. Ef 't warn't covered with dust you could see
the U. S."
"Empty, I reckon?"
"Nop. Buttermilk."
"O Gawd! I could drink Thunder Run dry!"
"Sorry. Reckon we'll come to a stream bimeby. Saving the milk 'gainst an
emergency."
It did not appear that we would come to a stream, or a spring, or a
well, or anything liquid--to anything but awful miles of dust and heat,
trudged over by anything but three-leagued boots. Despite the spur of
Winder's speech the brigade moved with dispiriting slowness. It was not
the first in column; there were troops ahead and troops behind, and it
would perhaps have said that it was not its part to overpass the one and
outstrip the other. The whole line lagged. "Close up, men! close up!"
cried the officers, through dust-lined throats. "If it's as hot as
ginger, then let the ginger show! Step out!" Back from the head of the
column came peremptory aides. "Press on! General Jackson says, 'Press
on!'--Yes; he knows you marched twenty-six miles yesterday, and that
it's hot weather! All the same we've got to get there!--Thank you,
colonel, I will take a swallow! I'm damned tired myself."
Between nine and ten they came to a village. Boys and women stood in the
dusty street with buckets of water--a few buckets, a little water. The
women looked pale, as though they would swoon; beads of sweat stood on
the boys' brows and their lips worked. Thousands of soldiers had passed
or were passing; all thirsty, all crying, "Water, please! water,
please!" Women and boys had with haste drawn bucket after bucket from
the wells of the place, pumped them full from a cistern, or run to a
near-by spring and come panting back to the road--and not one soldier in
ten could get his tin cup filled! They went by, an endless line, a few
refreshed, the vast majority thirstier for the Tantalus failure. The
water bearers were more deadly tired than they; after it was all over,
the last regiment passed, the women went indoors trembling in every
limb. "O Jesus! this war is going to be a dreadful thing!" The column
marching on and passing a signpost, each unit read what it had to say.
"_Seven miles to Middletown._--Seven miles to hell!"
Some time later, the brigade made a discovery. "They are willows--yes,
they are!--running cross field, through the blur! Whoever's toting the
water bucket, get it ready!"
The halt came--Jackson's ten minutes out of an hour "lie-down-men.
You-rest-all-over-lying-down" halt. The water buckets were ready, and
there were the willows that the dust had made as sere as autumn,--but
where was the stream? The thin trickle of water had been overpassed,
churned, trampled into mire and dirt, by half the army, horse and foot.
The men stared in blank disappointment. "A polecat couldn't drink here!"
"Try it up and down," said the colonel. "It will be clearer away from
the road. But every one of you listen for the _Fall-In_."
Steve wandered off. He did not wait for clean water. There was a puddle,
not half so bad as thirst! Settling down upon his hands, he leaned
forward and well-nigh drank it up. Refreshed, he rose, got out of the
mire back to the bank, and considered a deeper belt of willows farther
down the stream. They were on the edge of the dust belt, they had an air
faintly green, extremely restful. Steve looked over his shoulder. All
the boys were drinking, or seeking a place to drink, and the dust was
like a red twilight! Furtively swift as any Thunder Run "crittur," he
made for the willows. They formed a deep little copse; nobody within
their round and, oh joy! shade and a little miry pool! Steve sat down
and drew off his shoes, taking some pains lest in the action side and
sole part company. Undoubtedly his feet were sore and swollen, red and
fevered. He drank from the miry pool, and then, trousers rolled to his
knees, sunk foot and ankle in the delicious coolness. Presently he lay
back, feet yet in mud and water, body flat upon cool black earth,
overhead a thick screen of willow leaves. "Ef I had a corn pone and
never had to move I wouldn't change for heaven. O Gawd! that damned
bugle!"
_Fall in! Fall in!--Fall in! Fall in!_ With a deep groan Steve picked up
his shoes and dragged himself to the edge of the copse. He looked out.
"Danged fools! running back to line like chicks when the hen squawks
'Hawk!' O Gawd! my foot's too sore to run." He stood looking cautiously
out of an opening he had made in the willow branches. The regiments were
already in column, the leading one, the 4th, formed and disappearing in
the dust of the turnpike. "Air ye going now and have every damned
officer swearing at you? What do they care if your foot's cut and your
back aches? and you couldn't come no sooner. _I ain't a-going._" Steve's
eyes filled with tears. He felt sublimely virtuous; a martyr from the
first. "What does anybody there care for _me_! They wouldn't care if I
dropped dead right in line. Well, I ain't a-going to gratify them!
What's war, anyhow? It's a trap to catch decent folk in! and the
decenter you are the quicker you try to get out of it!" He closed the
willow branches and stepped back to his lair. "Let 'em bellow for Steve
just as loud as they like! I ain't got no call to fight Banks on this
here foot. If a damned provost-guard comes along, why I just fell asleep
and couldn't help it."
So tired was he, and so soothing still his retreat, that to fall asleep
was precisely what he did. The sun was twenty minutes nearer the zenith
when noise roused him--voices up and down the stream. He crawled across
the black earth and looked out. "Taliaferro's Brigade getting watered!
All I ask is you'll just let me and my willows alone."
He might ask, but Taliaferro's seemed hardly likely to grant.
Taliaferro's had a harder time even than the Stonewall finding water.
There was less there to find and it was muddier. The men, swearing at
their luck, ranged up and down the stream. It was presently evident that
the search might bring any number around or through Steve's cool
harbour. He cursed them, then, in a sudden panic, picked up his shoes
and slipped out at the copse's back door. Able-bodied stragglers, when
caught, were liable to be carried on and summarily deposited with their
rightful companies. Deserters fared worse. On the whole, Steve concluded
to seek safety in flight. At a little distance rose a belt of woods
roughly parallel with the road. Steve took to the woods, and found
sanctuary behind the bole of an oak. His eye advanced just beyond the
bark, he observed the movement of troops with something like a grin. On
the whole he thought, perhaps, he wouldn't rejoin. Taliaferro's men
hardly seemed happy, up and down the trodden, miry runlet. "Wuz a time
they wouldn't think a dog could drink there, and now just look at them
lapping it up! So many fine, stuck-up fellows, too--gentlemen and
such.--Yah!"
The brigade moved on as had done the Stonewall. There grew in the wood a
sound. "What's that?" Scrambling up, he went forward between the trees
and presently came full upon a narrow wood road, with a thin growth of
forest upon the other side. The sound increased. Steve knew it well. He
stamped upon the moss with the foot that hurt him least. "Artillery
coming!--and all them damned gunners with eyes like lynxes--"
He crossed the road and the farther strip of woods. Behind him the
approaching wheels rumbled loudly; before him a narrow lane stretched
through a ploughed field, to a grassy dooryard and a small house. On the
edge of the wood was a mass of elderbush just coming into bloom. He
worked his way into the centre of this, squatted down and regarded the
house from between the green stems. Smoke rose from the chimney. "It
must be near eleven o'clock," thought Steve. "She's getting dinner."
Behind him, through the wood, on toward Middletown rumbled the passing
battery. The heavy sound brought a young woman to the door. She stood
looking out, her hands shading her eyes; then, the train disappearing,
went back to her work. Steve waited until the sound was almost dead,
then left the elder, went up the lane and made his appearance before the
open door. The woman turned from the hearth where she was baking bread.
"Good-morning, sir."
"Morning, miss," said Steve. "Could you spare a poor sick soldier a bite
to eat?"
He ended with a hollow groan and the weight of his body against the
lintel. The young woman dragged forward a split-bottomed armchair. "Sit
right down there! Of course I'll give you something to eat. It ain't
anything catching, is it?"
Steve sank into the chair. "It was pneumonia, and my strength ain't come
back yet."
"I only asked because I have to think of my baby." She glanced toward a
cradle by the window. "Pneumonia is dreadful weakening! How come they
let you march?"
"Why, I didn't," said Steve, "want to be left behind. I wanted to be in
the fight with the rest of the boys. So the captain said, says he,
'Well, you can try it, for we need all the good fighters we've got, but
if you find you're too weak to go on, fall out! Maybe some good Seraphim
will give you 'commodation--'"
"I can't give you 'commodation, because there's just the baby and
myself, James being with Ashby. But I can give you dinner (I haven't got