The Long Roll
"I am an officer bearing dispatches--"
"That air not the point! Give the countersign!"
"I have a pass from General Whiting--"
"This air a Stonewall picket. Ef you've got the word, give it, and ef
you haven't got it my hand air getting mighty wobbly on this gun!"
"I am upon an important mission from General Jackson--"
"It air not any more important than my orders air! You get down from
that thar horse and mark time!"
"That is not necessary. Call your officer of guard."
"Thank you for the sug-ges-tion," said Billy politely. "And don't you
move while I carry it out!" He put his fingers to his lips and whistled
shrilly. A sergeant and two men came tumbling out of the darkness. "What
is it, Maydew?"
"It air a man trying to get by without the countersign."
The first horseman moved a little to one side. "Come here, sergeant!
Have you got a light? Wait, I will strike a match."
He struck it, and it flared up, making for an instant a space of light.
Both the sergeant and Billy saw his face. The sergeant's hand went up to
his cap with an involuntary jerk; he fell back from the rein he had been
holding. Billy almost dropped his musket. He gasped weakly, then grew
burning red. Jackson threw down the match. "Good! good! I see that I can
trust my pickets. What is the young man named?"
"Billy Maydew, sir. Company A, 65th Virginia."
"Good! good! Obedience to orders is a soldier's first, last, and best
lesson! He will do well." He gathered up the reins. "There are four men
here. You will all forget that you have seen me, sergeant."
"Yes, sir."
"Good! Good-night."
He was gone, followed by the courier. Billy drew an almost sobbing
breath. "I gave him such a damned lot of impudence! He was hiding his
voice, and not riding Little Sorrel, or I would have known him."
The sergeant comforted him. "Just so you were obeying orders and
watching and handling your gun all right, he didn't care! I gather you
didn't use any cuss words. He seemed kind of satisfied with you."
The night was dark, Louisa County roads none of the best. As the cocks
were crowing, a worthy farmer, living near the road, was awakened by the
sound of horses. "Wonder who's that?--Tired horses--one of them's gone
lame. They're stopping here."
He slipped out of bed and went to the window. Just light enough to see
by. "Who's there?"
"Two Confederate officers on important business. Our horses are tired.
Have you two good fresh ones?"
"If I've got them, I don't lend them to every straggler claiming to be a
Confederate officer on important business! You'd better go further.
Good-night!"
"I have an order from General Whiting authorizing me to impress horses."
The farmer came out of the house, into the chill dawn. One of the two
strangers took the stable key and went off to the building looming in
the background. The other sat stark and stiff in the grey light. The
first returned. "Two in very good condition, sir. If you'll dismount
I'll change saddles and leave our two in the stalls."
The officer addressed took his large feet out of the stirrups, tucked
his sabre under his arm, and stiffly dismounted. Waiting for the fresh
horses, he looked at the angry farmer. "It is for the good of the State,
sir. Moreover, we leave you ours in their places."
"I am as good a Virginian as any, sir, with plenty of my folks in the
army! And one horse ain't as good as another--not when one of yours is
your daughter's and you've ridden the other to the Court House and to
church for twelve years--"
"That is so true, sir," answered the officer, "that I shall take
pleasure in seeing that, when this need is past, your horses are
returned to you. I promise you that you shall have them back in a very
few days. What church do you attend?"
The second soldier returned with the horses. The first mounted stiffly,
pulled a forage cap over his eyes, and gathered up the reins. The light
had now really strengthened. All things were less like shadows. The
Louisa County man saw his visitor somewhat plainly, and it came into his
mind that he had seen him before, though where or when--He was all
wrapped up in a cloak, with a cap over his eyes. The two hurried away,
down the Richmond road, and the despoiled farmer began to think:
"Where'd I see him--Richmond? No, 't wasn't Richmond. After Manassas,
when I went to look for Hugh? Rappahannock? No, 't wasn't there.
Lexington? Good God! That was Stonewall Jackson!"
CHAPTER XXIX
THE NINE-MILE ROAD
In the golden afternoon light of the twenty-third of June, the city of
Richmond, forty thousand souls, lay, fevered enough, on her seven hills.
Over her floated the stars and bars. In her streets rolled the drum.
Here it beat quick and bright, marking the passage of some regiment from
the defences east or south to the defences north. There it beat deep
and slow, a muffled drum, a Dead March--some officer killed in a
skirmish, or dying in a hospital, borne now to Hollywood. Elsewhere,
quick and bright again, it meant Home Guards going to drill. From the
outskirts of the town might be heard the cavalry bugles blowing,--from
the Brook turnpike and the Deep Run turnpike, from Meadow Bridge road
and Mechanicsville road, from Nine-Mile and Darbytown and Williamsburg
stage roads and Osborne's old turnpike, and across the river from the
road to Fort Darling. From the hilltops, from the portico or the roof of
the Capitol, might be seen the camp-fires of Lee's fifty thousand
men--the Confederate Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Rappahannock,
the Army of Norfolk, the Army of the Peninsula--four armies waiting for
the arrival of the Army of the Valley to coalesce and become the Army of
Northern Virginia. The curls of smoke went up, straight, white, and
feathery. With a glass might be seen at various points the crimson flag,
with the blue St. Andrew's cross and the stars, eleven stars, a star for
each great State of the Confederacy. By the size you knew the arm--four
feet square for infantry, three feet square for artillery, two and a
half by two and a half for cavalry.
The light lay warm on the Richmond houses--on mellow red brick, on pale
grey stucco. It touched old ironwork balconies and ivy-topped walls, and
it gilded the many sycamore trees, and lay in pools on the heavy leaves
of the magnolias. Below the pillared Capitol, in the green up and down
of the Capitol Square, in Main Street, in Grace Street by St. Paul's,
before the Exchange, the Ballard House, the Spotswood, on Shockoe Hill
by the President's House, through all the leafy streets there was vivid
movement. In this time and place Life was so near to Death; the ocean of
pain and ruin so evidently beat against its shores, that from very
contrast and threatened doom Life took a higher light, a deeper
splendour. All its notes resounded, nor did it easily relinquish the
major key.
In the town were many hospitals. These were being cleaned, aired, and
put in order against the impending battles. The wounded in them now,
chiefly men from the field of Seven Pines, looked on and hoped for the
best. Taking them by and large, the wounded were a cheerful set. Many
could sit by the windows, in the perfumed air, and watch the women of
the South, in their soft, full gowns, going about their country's
business. Many of the gowns were black.
About the hotels, the President's House, the governor's mansion, and the
Capitol, the movement was of the official world. Here were handsome men
in broadcloth, grown somewhat thin, somewhat rusty, but carefully
preserved and brushed. Some were of the old school and still affected
stocks and ruffled shirts. As a rule they were slender and tall, and as
a rule wore their hair a little long. Many were good Latinists, most
were good speakers. One and all they served their states as best they
knew how, overworked and anxious, facing privation here in Richmond with
the knowledge that things were going badly at home, sitting long hours
in Congress, in the Hall of Delegates, in courts or offices, struggling
there with Herculean difficulties, rising to go out and listen to
telegrams or to read bulletins. Sons, brothers, kinsmen, and friends
were in the field.
This golden afternoon, certain of the latter had ridden in from the
lines upon this or that business connected with their commands. They
were not many, for all the world knew there would be a deadly fighting
presently, deadly and prolonged. Men and officers must stay within
drum-beat. Those who were for an hour in Richmond, in their worn grey
uniforms, with the gold lace grown tarnished (impossible of
replacement!), with their swords not tarnished, their netted silk
sashes, their clear bright eyes and keen thin faces, found friends
enough as they went to and fro--more eager questioners and eager
listeners than they could well attend to. One, a general officer, a man
of twenty-nine, in a hat with a long black plume, with the most charming
blue eyes, and a long bronze, silky, rippling beard which he constantly
stroked, could hardly move for the throng about him. Finally, in the
Capitol Square, he backed his horse against the railing about the great
equestrian Washington. The horse, a noble animal, arched his neck. There
was around it a wreath of bright flowers. The rider spoke in an
enchanting voice. "Now if I tell you in three words how it was and what
we did, will you let me go? I've got to ride this afternoon to Yellow
Tavern."
"Yes, yes! Tell us, General Stuart."
"My dear people, it was the simplest thing in the world! A man in the
First has made a song about it, and Sweeney has set it to the banjo--if
you'll come out to the camp after the battle you shall hear it! General
Lee wanted to know certain things about the country behind McClellan.
Now the only way to know a thing is to go and look at it. He ordered a
reconnoissance in force. I took twelve hundred cavalrymen and two guns
of the horse artillery and made the reconnoissance. Is there anything
else that you want to know?"
"Be good, general, and tell us what you did."
"I am always good--just born so! I rode round McClellan's army--Don't
cheer like that! The town'll think it's Jackson, come from the Valley!"
"Tell us, general, how you did it!"
"Gentlemen, I haven't time. If you like, I'll repeat the man in the
First's verses, and then I'm going. You'll excuse the metre? A poor,
rough, unlearned cavalryman did it.
"Fitz Lee, Roony Lee, Breathed and Stuart,
Martin to help, and Heros von Borcke,
First Virginia, Fourth, Ninth, two guns and a Legion--
From Hungary Run to Laurel Hill Fork,
"By Ashland, Winston, Hanover, Cash Corner,
Enon Church, Salem Church, Totopotomoy, Old Church,
"You observe that we are trotting.
"By Hamstead, Garlick, Tunstall Station, Talleyville,
Forge Mill, Chickahominy, Sycamore, White Birch.
"Here we change gait.
"By Hopewell and Christian, Wilcox and Westover,
Turkey Bridge, Malvern Hill, Deep Bottom and Balls
Four days, forty leagues, we rode round McClellan
As Jeremiah paced round Jericho's walls.--"
"It wasn't Jeremiah, general! It was Joshua."
"Is that so? I'll tell Sweeney. Anyhow, the walls fell.
"Halt! Advance! Firing! Engagement at Hanover.
Skirmish at Taliaferro's. Skirmish at Hawes.
Tragic was Totopotomoy, for there we lost Latane
Hampden-like, noble, dead for his Cause.
"At Old Church broke up meeting. Faith! 'twas a pity
But indigo azure was pulpit and pew!
Fitz Lee did the job. Sent his love to Fitz Porter.
Good Lord! Of Mac's Army the noble review!
"There isn't anything our horses can't do.
"Tunstall Station was all bubbly white with wagons.