The Long Roll
Rising to his feet, he glanced about him with quick, furtive,
squirrel-like motions of his head. Cool shade, stillness, a creepy
loneliness. Taking the haversack, he left the thicket and went back to
the brink of Chickahominy. Here he sat down between the cypress knees
and drew out of the haversack the prize of prizes. It fixed a grin upon
his lean, narrow face, the sight and smell of it, the black, squat
bottle. He held it up to the light; it was three quarters full. The cork
came out easily; he put it to his lips and drank. "Gawd! it ain't so
damned lonely, after all!"
The sun climbed to the meridian. The pioneers wrought as best they might
on the Grapevine Bridge. The blue battery and the blue sharpshooters
persisted in their hindering, and the grey battery continued to
interfere with the blue. In the woods and over the low hills back of the
Chickahominy the grey brigades of Stonewall Jackson rested, impatiently
wondering, staring at the river, staring at the smoke of conflagrations
on the other side and the dust streaks moving southward. Down on the
swampy bank, squat between the cypress knees, Steve drank again, and
then again,--in fact, emptied the squat, black bottle. The stuff filled
him with a tremendous courage, and conferred upon him great fluency of
thought. He waxed eloquent to the cypress roots upon the conduct of the
war. "Gawd! if they'd listen ter me I'd te--tell them how!--I'd
bui--build a bridge for the whole rotten army to cross on! Ef it broke
I'd bui--build another. Yah! They don't 'pre--'preciate a man when they
see him. Gawd! they're damn slow, and ain't a man over here got anything
to drink! It's all over there." He wept a little. "O Gawd, make them
hurry up, so's I kin git across." He put the bottle to his lips and
jerked his head far back, but there was not a drop left to trickle
forth. He flung it savagely far out into the water. "Ef I thought there
was another like you over there--" His courage continued to mount as he
went further from himself. He stood up and felt a giant; stretched out
his arm and admired the muscle, kicked a clod of black earth into the
stream and rejoiced in the swing of his leg. Then he smiled, a
satyr-like grin wrinkling the cheek to the ear; then he took off his
grey jacket, letting it drop upon the cypress roots; then he waded into
the Chickahominy and began to swim to the further shore. The stream was
deep but not swift; he was lank and lean but strong, and there was on
the other side a pied piper piping of bestial sweetnesses. Several times
arms and legs refused to cooperate and there was some likelihood of a
death by drowning, but each time instinct asserted herself, righted
matters, and on he went. She pulled him out at last, on the southern
bank, and he lay gasping among the tree roots, somewhat sobered by the
drenching, but still on the whole a courageous giant. He triumphed.
"Yah! I got across! Goo'--goo-'bye, ye darned fools squattin' on the
hillside!"
He left the Chickahominy and moved through the woods. He went quite at
random and with a peculiar gait, his eyes on the ground, looking for
another haversack. But just hereabouts there showed nothing of the kind;
it was a solemn wood of pines and cedars, not overtrampled as yet by
war. Steve shivered, found a small opening where the sun streamed in,
planted himself in the middle of the warmth, and presently toppled over
on the pine needles and went to sleep. He slept an hour or more, when he
was waked by a party of officers riding through the wood. They stopped.
Steve sat up and blinked. The foremost, a florid, side-whiskered,
magnificently soldierly personage, wearing a very fine grey uniform and
the stars of a major-general, addressed him. "What are you doing here,
thir? Thraggling?--Anther me!"
Steve saluted. "I ain't the straggling kind, sir. Any man that says I
straggle is a liar--exceptin' the colonel, and he's mistaken. I'm one of
Stonewall's men."
"Thtonewall! Ith Jackthon acwoss?"
"They're building a bridge. I don't know if they air across yet. I
swum."
"What did you thwim for? Where'th your jacket? What's your
wegiment?--'65th Virginia?'--Well, 65th Virginia, you appear to me a
detherter--"
Steve began to whine. "Gawd, general, I ain't no deserter. If you'll
jest have patience and listen, I kin explain--"
"Time'th lacking, thir. You get up behind one of my couriers, and if
Jackthon's crothed I'll return you to your colonel. Take him up,
O'Brien."
"General Magruder, sor, can't I make him trot before me face like any
other water-spaniel? He's wet and dhirty, sor."
"All wight, all wight, O'Brien. Come on, Gwiffith. Nine-Mile road and
Thavage Thation!"
The officers rode on. The courier regarded with disfavour the unlucky
Steve. "Forward march, dhirty, desartin', weak-kneed crayture that ye
be! Thrott!"
Beyond the pine wood the two came into an area which had been
overtrampled. Indescribably dreary under the hot sun looked the
smouldering heaps and mounds of foodstuffs, the wrecked wagons, the
abandoned picks and spades and shovels, the smashed camp equipage,
broken kettles, pots and pans, the blankets, bedding, overcoats, torn
and trampled in the mire, or piled together and a dull red fire slow
creeping through the mass. Medicine-chests had been split by a blow of
the axe, the vials shivered, and a black mire made by the liquids.
Ruined weapons glinted in the sun between the furrows of a ruined
cornfield; bags of powder, boxes of cartridges, great chests of shot and
shell showed, half submerged in a tortuous creek. At the edge of the
field, there was a cannon spiked and overturned. Here, too, were dead
horses, and here, too, were the black, ill-omened birds. There was a
trench as well, a long trench just filled, with two or three little head
boards bearing some legend. "Holy Virgin!" said the courier, "if I was a
horse, a child, or a woman, I'd hate war with a holy hathred!"
Steve whined at his stirrup. "Look a-here, sir, I can't keep up! My
foot's awful sore. Gawd don't look my way, if it ain't! I ain't
desertin'. Who'd I desert to? They've all gone. I wanted a bath an' I
swum the river. The regiment'll be over directly an' I'll rejoin. Take
my oath, I will!"
"You trot along out of this plundering mess," ordered the courier. "I'm
thinking I'll drop you soon, but it won't be just here! Step lively
now!"
The two went on through the blazing afternoon sunshine, and in a
straggling wood came upon a deserted field hospital. It was a ghastly
place. The courier whistled reflectively, while the imaginative Steve
felt a sudden sinking at the pit of the stomach, together with a cold
dizziness and perspiration on the backs of his hands. The mind of the
courier, striking out vigorously for some kind of a stimulant, laid hold
of anger as the nearest efficient. "Bedad," he cried, "ye desartin',
dhirty hound! it's right here I'll be afther lavin' ye, with the naked
dead and the piles of arms and legs! Let go of my bridle or I'll strike
you with my pistol butt! Ughrrrrr!--Get out of this, Peggy!"
They left, mare and man, in a cloud of pine needles and parched earth.
Steve uttered something like a howl and went too, running without regard
to an in truth not mythical sore foot. He ran after the disappearing
courier, and when presently he reached a vast patch of whitened
raspberry bushes giving on a not wide and very dusty road and halted
panting, it was settled forever that he couldn't go back to the
plundering possibilities or to his original station by the Chickahominy,
since to do so would be to pass again the abandoned field hospital. He
kept his face turned from the river and somewhat to the east, and
straggled on. A signpost told him that the dusty ribbon was the
Nine-Mile road. Presently, among the berry bushes, he came upon a grey
artilleryman sitting winding a strip of cloth around a wound in his leg.
The artilleryman gave him further information. "Magruder's moving this
way. I was ahead with my battery,--Griffith's brigade,--and some
stinking sharpshooters sitting with the buzzards in the trees let fly at
us! Result, I've got to hobble in at the end of the parade!--What's the
matter with you?"
"Captain," said Steve, "asked for a volunteer to swim the river (we're
on the other side) and find out 'bout the currents. I swam it, and Gawd!
jest then a Yankee battery opened and I couldn't get back! Regiment'll
be over after awhile I reckon."
The two sat down among the berry bushes. The road was visible, and upon
it a great approaching pillar of dust. "Head of our column," said the
artilleryman. "Four roads and four pursuing forces, and if we can only
all strike Mac at once there'll be a battle that'll lay over Friday's,
and if he gets to his gunboats at all it will be in a damaged condition.
Magruder's bearing toward Savage Station, and if Jackson's across the
Chickahominy we might do for Fitz John Porter--eh?"
"We might," agreed Steve. "I'll lie a little flatter, because the sun
and the wetting has made my head ache. They're fine troops."
The grey regiments went by, long swinging tread and jingling
accoutrements. A major-general, riding at the head of the column, had
the air of a Roman consul, round, strong, bullet head, which he had
bared to the breeze that was springing up, close-cropped black hair,
short black beard, high nose, bold eyes, a red in his cheeks. "That's
General Lafayette McLaws," volunteered the artilleryman. "That's General
Kershaw with him. It's Kershaw's brigade. See the palmetto on the
flags."
Kershaw's went by. Behind came another high and thick dust cloud. "Cobb
and Toombs and Barksdale and Kemper and Semmes," said the artilleryman.
"Suppose we canter on? I'll break a staff from those little heaven trees
there. We might get to see the show, after all. York River Railroad's
just over there."
They went on, first to the ailanthus bushes, then, leaving the road to
the troops, they struck across a ruined cornfield. Stalk and blade and
tassel, and the intertwining small, pale-blue morning-glory, all were
down. Gun-wheels, horses' hoofs, feet of men had made of naught the
sower's pains. The rail fence all around was burning. In a furrow the
two found a knapsack, and in it biscuit and jerked beef. "My Aunt Eliza!
I was hungry!" said the artilleryman. "Know how the Israelites felt when
they gathered manna off the ground!" Out of the cornfield they passed
into a shaggy finger of forest. Suddenly firing broke out ahead. Steve
started like a squirrel. "That's close to us!"
"There's the railroad!" said the other. "There's Fair Oaks Station. They
had entrenchments there, but the scouts say they evacuated them this
morning. If they make a stand, reckon it'll be at Savage Station. That
musketry popping's down the line! Come on! I can go pretty fast!"
He plied his staff. They came into another ragged field, narrow and
sloping to a stretch of railroad track and the smoking ruins of a wooden
station. Around were numerous earthworks, all abandoned. Beyond the
station, on either side the road, grey troops were massing. The firing
ahead was as yet desultory. "Just skirmishers passing the time of day!"
said the artilleryman. "Hello! What're they doing on the railroad track?
Well, I should think so!"
Across the track, immediately below them, had been thrown by the
retreating army a very considerable barricade. Broken wagons, felled
trees, logs and a great mass of earth spanned it like a landslide. Over
and about it worked a grey company detailed to clear the way. From the
edge of a wood, not many yards up the track, came an impatient chorus.
"Hurry up, boys! hurry up! hurry up! We want to get by--want to get
by--"
"A railroad gun on a flat car placed--"