The Long Roll
you will advance with your skirmishers. Do as well as you have done
heretofore and you will do well--very well. The effect of Colonel
Brooke's wound is graver than was thought. He has asked to be retired.
After Winchester you will have your promotion."
With his staff he rode away--a leaf brown figure, looming large in the
misty half light, against the red guidons of the east. Stafford went
with him. Randolph, his cannoneers and drivers dropped beside the pieces
and were immediately asleep--half an hour now was all they had. The
horses cropped the pearled wayside grass. Far away the cocks were
crowing. In the east the red bannerols widened. There came a faint
blowing of bugles. Cleave stooped and took up his cloak.
Steve, stumbling back over the wet field, between the ranks of sleeping
men, found Company A--that portion of it not with the skirmishers. Every
soul was asleep. The men lay heavily, some drawn into a knot, others
with arms flung wide, others on their faces. They lay in the dank and
chilly dawn as though death had reaped the field. Steve lay down beside
them. "Gawd! when will this war be over?"
He dreamed that he was back at Thunder Run, crouching behind a certain
boulder at a turn of the road that wound up from the Valley. He had an
old flintlock, but in his dream he did not like it, and it changed to
one of the beautiful modern rifles they were beginning to take from the
Yankees. There were no Yankees on Thunder Run. Steve felt assured of
that in his dream; very secure and comfortable. Richard Cleave came
riding up the road on Dundee. Steve lifted the rifle to his shoulder and
sighted very carefully. It seemed that he was not alone behind the
boulder. A shadowy figure with a sword, and a star on his collar, said,
"Aim at the heart." In the dream he fired, but before the smoke could
clear so that he might know his luck the sound of the shot changed to
clear trumpets, long and wailing. Steve turned on his side. "Reveille! O
Gawd!"
The men arose, the ranks were formed. _No breakfast?_--Hairston
Breckinridge explained the situation. "We're going to breakfast in
Winchester, men! All the dear old cooks are getting ready for us--rolls
and waffles and broiled chicken and poached eggs and coffee--and all the
ladies in muslin and ribbons are putting flowers on the table and
saying, 'The Army of the Valley is coming home!'--Isn't that a Sunday
morning breakfast worth waiting for? The sooner we whip Banks the sooner
we'll be eating it."
"All right. All right," said the men. "We'll whip him all right."
"We're sure to whip him now we've got Steve back!"
"That's so. Where've you been anyway, Steve, and how many did you kill
on the road?"
"I killed three," said Steve. "General Ewell's over thar in the woods,
and he's going to advance 'longside of us, on the Front Royal road.
Rockbridge 'n the rest of the batteries are to hold the ridge up there,
no matter what happens! Banks ain't got but six thousand men, and it
ought ter be an easy job--"
"Good Lord! Steve's been absent at a council of war--talking familiarly
with generals! Always thought there must be more in him than appeared,
since there couldn't well be less--"
"Band's playing! 'The Girl I Left Behind Me'!"
"That's Winchester! Didn't we have a good time there 'fore and after
Bath and Romney? 'Most the nicest Valley town!--and we had to go away
and leave it blue as indigo--"
"I surely will be glad to see Miss Fanny again--"
"Company C over there's most crazy. It all lives there--"
"Three miles! That ain't much. I feel rested. There goes the 2d! Don't
it swing off long and steady? Lord, we've got the hang of it at last!"
"Will Cleave's got to be sergeant.--'N he's wild about a girl in
Winchester. Says his mother and sister are there, too, and he can't
sleep for thinking of the enemy all about them. Children sure do grow up
quick in war time!"
"A lot of things grow up quick--and a lot of things don't grow at all.
There goes the 4th--long and steady! Our turn next."
Steve again saw from afar the approach of the nightmare. It stood large
on the opposite bank of Abraham's Creek, and he must go to meet it. He
was wedged between comrades--Sergeant Coffin was looking straight at him
with his melancholy, bad-tempered eyes--he could not fall out, drop
behind! The backs of his hands began to grow cold and his unwashed
forehead was damp beneath matted, red-brown elf locks. From considerable
experience he knew that presently sick stomach would set in. When the
company splashed through Abraham's Creek he would not look at the
running water, but when he looked at the slopes he was expected
presently to climb he saw that there was fighting there and that the
nightmare attended! Steve closed his eyes. "O Gawd, take care of me--"
Later on, when the ridge was won he found himself, still in the company
of the nightmare, cowering close to the lock of a rail fence that
zigzagged along the crest. How he got there he really did not know. He
had his musket still clutched--his mountaineer's instinct served for
that. Presently he made the discovery that he had been firing, had fired
thrice, it appeared from his cartridge box. He remembered neither firing
nor loading, though he had some faint recollection of having been upon
his knees behind a low stone wall--he saw it now at right angles with
the rail fence. A clover field he remembered because some one had said
something about four-leaved clovers, and then a shell had come by and
the clover turned red. Seized with panic he bit a cartridge and loaded.
The air was rocking; moreover, with the heavier waves came a sharp
_zzzz-ip! zzzzzz-ip!_ Heaven and earth blurred together, blended by the
giant brush of eddying smoke. Steve tasted powder, smelled powder. On
the other side of the fence, from a battery lower down the slope to the
guns beyond him two men were running--running very swiftly, with bent
heads. They ran like people in a pelting rain, and between them they
carried a large bag or bundle, slung in an oilcloth. They were tall and
hardy men, and they moved with a curious air of determination. "Carrying
powder! Gawd! before I'd be sech a fool--" A shell came, and
burst--burst between the two men. There was an explosion, ear-splitting,
heart-rending. A part of the fence was wrecked; a small cedar tree torn
into kindling. Steve put down his musket, laid his forehead upon the
rail before him, and vomited.
The guns were but a few yards above him, planted just below the crest,
their muzzles projecting over. Steve recognized Rockbridge. He must, he
thought, have been running away, not knowing where he was going, and
infernally managed to get up here. The nightmare abode with him. His
joints felt like water, his heart was straightened, stretched, and
corded in his bosom like a man upon the rack. He pressed close into the
angle of the fence, made himself of as little compass as his long and
gangling limbs allowed, and held himself still as an opossum feigning
death. Only his watery blue eyes wandered--not for curiosity, but that
he might see and dodge a coming harm.
Before him the ridge ran steeply down to a narrow depression, a little
vale, two hundred yards across. On the further side the land rose again
to as high a hill. Here was a stone fence, which even as he looked,
leaped fire. Above it were ranged the blue cannon--three batteries, well
served. North and South, muzzle to muzzle, the guns roared across the
green hollow. The blue musketrymen behind the wall were using minies. Of
all death-dealing things Steve most hated these. They came with so
unearthly a sound--zzzz-ip! zzzzz-ip!--a devil noise, a death that
shrieked, taunted, and triumphed. To-day they made his blood like water.
He crouched close, a mere lump of demoralization, behind a veil of wild
buckwheat.
Rockbridge was suffering heavily, both from the opposing Parrotts and
from sharpshooters behind the wall. A belated gun came straining up the
slope, the horses doing mightily, the men cheering. There was an opening
in a low stone wall across the hillside, below Steve. The gate had been
wrenched away and thrown aside, but the thick gatepost remained, and it
made the passage narrow--too narrow for the gun team and the carriage to
pass. All stopped and there was a colloquy.
"We've got an axe?"
"Yes, captain."
"John Agnor, you've felled many a tree. Take the axe and cut that post
down."
"Captain, I will be killed!"
"Then you will be killed doing your duty, John. Get down."
Agnor got the axe, swung it and began chopping. The stone wall across
the hollow blazed more fiercely; the sharpshooters diverted their
attention from the men and horses higher upon the hill. Agnor swung the
axe with steadiness; the chips flew far. The post was cut almost through
before his bullet came. In falling he clutched the weakened obstruction,
and the two came down together. The gun was free to pass, and it passed,
each cannoneer and driver looking once at John Agnor, lying dead with a
steady face. It found place a few yards above Steve in his corner, and
joined in the roar of its fellows, throwing solid shot and canister.
A hundred yards and more to the rear stood a barn. The wounded from all
the guns, strung like black beads along the crest, dragged themselves or
were carried to this shelter. Hope rose in Steve's heart. "Gawd! I'll
creep through the clover and git there myself." He started on hands and
knees, but once out of his corner and the shrouding mass of wild
buckwheat, terror took him. The minies were singing like so many birds.
A line of blue musketrymen, posted behind cover, somewhat higher than
the grey, were firing alike at gunners, horses, and the men passing to
and fro behind the fighting line. Steve saw a soldier hobbling to the
barn throw up his arms, and pitch forward. Two carrying a third between
them were both struck. The three tried to drag themselves further, but
only the one who had been borne by the others succeeded. A shell pierced
the roof of the barn, burst and set the whole on fire. Steve turned like
a lizard and went back to the lock of the fence and the tattered
buckwheat. He could hear the men talking around the gun just beyond.
They spoke very loud, because the air was shaken like an ocean in storm.
They were all powder-grimed, clad only in trousers and shirt, the shirt
open over the breast, and sleeves rolled up. They stood straight, or
bent, or crept about the guns, all their movements swift and rhythmic.
Sometimes they were seen clearly; sometimes the smoke swallowed them.
When seen they looked larger than life, when only heard their voices
came as though earth and air were speaking. "Sponge out.--All right.
Fire! Hot while it lasts, but it won't last long. I have every
confidence in Old Jack and Old Dick. Drat that primer! All right!--Three
seconds! Jerusalem! that created a sensation. The Louisianians are
coming up that cleft between the hills. All the Stonewall regiments in
the centre. Ewell to flank their left. Did you ever hear Ewell swear?
Look out! wheel's cut through. Lanyard's shot away. Take handkerchiefs.
Haven't got any--tear somebody's shirt. Number 1! Number 2! Look out!
look out--Give them hell. Good Heaven! here's Old Jack. General, we hope
you'll go away from here! We'll stay it out--give you our word. Let
them enfilade ahead!--but you'd better go back, sir."
"Thank you, captain, but I wish to see--"
A minie ball imbedded itself in a rail beside Steve's cheek. Before he
could recover from this experience a shell burst immediately in front of
his panel. He was covered with earth, a fragment of shell sheared away
the protecting buckwheat and a piece of rail struck him in the back with
force. He yelled, threw down his musket and ran.