The Long Roll
At the end of the village a stone fence ran between two houses, on the
other side of a little garden slope planted with potatoes. In the shadow
of the wall a line of men, kneeling, rested rifle barrel upon the coping
and fired on Hatch's cavalry, now much broken, wavering toward
dispersion. At first the line was hidden by a swirl of smoke; this
lifted, and Steve recognized a guidon they had planted, then the men
themselves. They were the Louisiana Tigers, Wheat's Battalion,
upgathered from levee and wharf and New Orleans purlieu, among many of a
better cast, not lacking rufflers and bravos, soldiers of fortune whom
Pappenheim might not have scorned. Their stone wall leaped fire again.
Steve looked to heaven and earth and as far around as the dun cloud
permitted, then moved with swiftness across the potato patch. All about
in the mingled dust and smoke showed a shifting pageantry of fighting
men; upon the black earth below the rank green leaves and purple blooms
lay in postures hardly conceivable the dead and wounded. In the line by
the stone fence was here and there a gap. Steve, head between shoulders,
made for the breastwork and sank into one of these openings, his
neighbour upon one hand an Irish roustabout, on the other a Creole from
a sugar plantation. He explained his own presence. "I got kind of
separated from my company--Company A, 65th Virginia. I had an awful
fight with three damned Yanks, and a fourth came in and dragged my gun
away! If you don't mind I'll just stay here and help you--"
"Sorra an objection," said the Irishman. "Pick up Tim's musket behind
you there and get to wurruk!"
"Bon jour!" said the other side. "One camarade ees always zee welcome!"
An order rang down the line. "Sthop firing, is it?" remarked the
Irishman. "And that's the first dacint wurrud I've heard this half hour!
Wid all the plazure in life, captin!" He rested his musket against the
stones, drew himself up, and viewed the prospect. "Holy Saint Pathrick!
look at them sthramin' off into space! An' look at the mile of wagons
they're afther lavin! Refrishmint in thim, my frind, for body and sowl!"
Steve pulled himself up beside the other. "Thar ain't any danger now of
stray bullets, I reckon? There's something awful in seeing a road like
that. There's a man that his mother wouldn't know!--horse stepped on his
face, I reckon. Gawd! we have gangs of prisoners!--Who's that coming out
of the cloud?"
"Chew's Horse Artillery--with Ashby, the darlint!"
Ashby stopped before the stone house to the right. "There are men in
here--officers with them. Captain, go bid them surrender."
The captain, obeying, found a barred door and no answer. An approach to
the window revealed behind the closed blinds the gleam of a musket
barrel. "Go again! Tell them their column's cut and their army
dispersed. If they do not surrender at once I will plant a shell in the
middle of that room."
The captain returned once more. "Well?"
"They said, 'Go to hell,' sir. They said General Banks would be here in
a moment, and they'd taken the house for his headquarters. They've got
something in there beside water, I think."
A sergeant put in a word. "There's a score of them. They seized this
empty house, and they've been picking off our men--"
"Double canister, point-blank, Allen.--Well, sergeant?"
"It's not certain it was an empty house, sir. One of the Tigers, there,
thinks there are women in it."
"Women!"
"He don't know--just thinks so. Thinks he heard a cry when the Yanks
broke in--Ah!--Well, better your hat than you, sir! We'll blow that
sharpshooter where he can look out of window sure enough! Match's ready,
sir."
Ashby put back on his head the soft wide hat with a bullet hole beside
the black plume. "No, no, West! We can't take chances like that! We'll
break open the door instead."
"The others think that the Tiger was mistaken, sir. They say all the
women went out of the other houses, and they're sure they went out of
this one, too. Shan't we fire, sir?"
"No, no! We can't take chances. Limber up, lieutenant, and move on with
the others.--Volunteers to break open that door!"
"Ain't nobody looking," thought Steve, behind the wall. "Gawd! I reckon
I'll have to try my luck again. 'T won't do to stay here." To the big
Irishman he said, "Reckon I'll try again to find my company! I don't
want to be left behind. Old Jack's going to drive them, and he needs
every fighter!"
CHAPTER XXII
THE VALLEY PIKE
As he moved away from the stone house, the vicinity of Ashby and the
line of Tigers behind the fence, he became aware that not a small
portion of Wheat's Battalion had broken ranks and was looting the
wagons. There were soldiers like grey ants about a sutler's wagon.
Steve, struggling and shouldering boldly enough now, managed to get
within hailing distance. Men were standing on the wheels, drawing out
boxes and barrels and throwing them down into the road, where the ants
swarmed to the attack. Not the Tigers alone, but a number of Ashby's men
as well engaged in the general business. The latter, either not so
hungry or more valiant to abstain from the smaller rifling, turned to
the plunder of horses. There were horses enough, dead and wounded, along
that frightful road. Others were unhurt, still harnessed to wagons, or
corralled in fence corners, or huddled with prisoners in the trodden
fields. Horses, to the trooper of the Valley, were as horses in the ten
years' war at Troy--the prized spoil of battle, the valued trophies,
utilities outweighing all filagree spoil. Each man of Ashby's owned the
horse he rode, burned to provide himself with a second mount, and flamed
to be able to say at home, "This horse I took at Middletown, just before
we drove the Yankees out of the Valley and ended the war!" "Home," for
many of them was not at all distant--gallop a few miles, deposit the
prize, return, catch up before Winchester! Wild courage, much manliness,
much chivalry, ardent devotion to Ashby and the cause, individualism of
a citizen soldiery, and a naive indiscipline all their own--such were
Ashby's men! Not a few now acted upon the suggestion of the devil who
tempts through horse flesh. In the dust they went by Steve like figures
of a frieze.
Inefficient even in plundering, he found himself possessed of but a
handful of crackers, a tin of sardines--a comestible he had never seen
before and did not like when he tasted it--and a bottle of what he
thought wine but proved vinegar. Disgusted, he moved to the next wagon,
overswarmed like the first by grey ants. This time it was ale,
unfamiliar still, but sufficiently to his liking. "Gawd! Jest to drink
when you're thirsty, and eat when you're hungry, and sleep when you're
sleepy--"
A drum beat, a bugle blew. _Fall in! Fall in!_ Officers passed from
wagon to wagon. They were ready enough with the flats of their swords.
"For shame, men, for shame! _Fall in! Fall in!_ General Jackson is
beyond Newtown by now. You don't want him to have to _wait_ for you, do
you? _Fall in!_"
The Valley pike, in the region of Middletown, proved a cumbered path.
From stone fence to stone fence, in the middle trough of dust, and on
the bordering of what had been, that morning, dew-gemmed grass and
flower, War the maniac had left marks. Overturned wagons formed
barriers around which the column must wind. Some were afire; the smoke
of burning straw and clothing and foodstuffs mingling with the yet
low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay
stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was
like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All
along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta--knapsacks,
belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths,
canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange postures, and on
all the dust was thick. There were many wounded; the greater number of
these had somehow reached the foul grass and trampled flowers of the
wayside. Prisoners were met; squads brought in from the road, from
fields and woods. There was one group, men and horses covered with the
dust of all time, disarmed, hatless, breathless, several bleeding from
sabre cuts. One among them--a small man on a tall horse--indulged in
bravado. "What are you going to do with us now you've got us? You've
nowhere to take us to! Your damned capital's fallen--fell this morning!
Yes, it did! News certain. Rebellion's over and Jack Ketch's waiting for
you--waiting for every last dirty ragamuffin and slave-driver that calls
himself general or president, and for the rest of you, too! Pity you
didn't have just one neck so's he could do the whole damn thirteen
millions of you at once!--Jeff Davis and Lee and Johnston were hanged at
noon. This very moment Little Mac's in Richmond, marching down whatever
your damned Pennsylvania Avenue's called--"
A negro body servant marching in the rear of one of the contemptuous
companies broke ranks and rushed over to the reviling soldier. "You damn
po' white trash, shet yo' mouf or I'll mek you! Callin' Main Street
'Pennsylvania Avenue,' and talkin' 'bout hangin' gent'men what you ain't
got 'bility in you ter mek angry enuff ter swear at you! 'N Richmon'
fallen! Richmon' ain' half as much fallen as you is! Richmon' ain' never
gwine ter fall. I done wait on Marse Robert Lee once't at Shirley, an he
ain't er gwine ter let it! '_Pennsylvania_ Avenue!'"
Half a mile from Middletown they came up with a forlorn little company.
On a high bank above the road, huddled beneath three cedars, appeared
the theatrical troupe which had amused General Banks's army in
Strasburg. Men and women there were, a dozen actors, and they had with
them a cart bearing their canvas booth and the poor finery of their
wardrobe. One of the women nursed a baby; they all looked down like
wraiths upon the passing soldiers.
Firing broke out ahead. "Newtown," said the men beside Steve. "I've got
friends there. Told 'em when we came up the Valley after Kernstown we'd
come down again! 'N here we are, bigger 'n life and twice as natural!
That's Rockbridge making that awful noise. Must be a Yankee
battery--There it opens! Oh, we're going to have a chance, too!"
They were moving at double-quick. Steve simulated a stumble, caught
himself, groaned and fell out of line. The wall to the left blazed. He
uttered a yell and sprang back. "That's right!" said the man. "It's
taken most a year to learn it, but you feel a whole heap safer in line
than out of it when firing's going on. That's a nice little--what d'ye
call it?--they've planted there--"
"Avalanche," panted Steve. "O Gawd!" A minie ball had pierced the
other's brain. He fell without a sound, and Steve went on.
The troops entered the hamlet at a run, passing two of the Rockbridge
guns planted on a hillock and hurling shell against a Federal battery at
the far end of the street. There was hot fighting through the place,
then the enemy, rallied here, broke again and dispersed to the westward.
The grey soldiers swept through the place, and the people with tears and
laughter cried them welcome. On the porch of a comfortable house stood a
comfortable, comely matron, pale with ardent patriotism, the happy tears
running down her cheeks. Parched as were their throats the troops found
voice to cheer, as always, when they passed through these Valley towns.
They waved their colours vigorously; their ragged bit of a band played
"Old Virginny never tire." The motherly soul on the porch, unconscious
of self, uplifted, tremulous with emotion, opened wide her arms, "All of
you run here and kiss me!"
Late afternoon came and the army yet skirmished, marched, marched,
skirmished on the Valley pike. The heat decreased, but dust and thirst