The Long Roll Part 36

The small town of Strasburg pulsed with flaring lights and with the manifold sounds of the encamped army. Sutlers showed their wares, guard details went by, cavalrymen clanked their spurs through the streets, laughter and talk rang through the place. A company of strolling players had come down from the North, making its way from Washington to Harper's Ferry, held by three thousand Federals; from Harper's Ferry to Winchester, held by fifteen hundred; and from Winchester to Strasburg.

The actors had a canvas booth, where by guttering candles and to the sound of squeaking fiddles they gave their lurid play of the night, and they played to a crowded house. Elsewhere there was gambling, elsewhere praying, elsewhere braggarts spoke of Ajax exploits, elsewhere there was moaning and tossing in the hospitals, elsewhere some private, raised above the heads of his fellows, read aloud the Northern papers.

_McClellan has one hundred and twelve thousand men. Yesterday his advance reached the White House on the Pamunkey. McDowell has forty thousand men, and at last advice was but a few marches from the treasonable capital. Our gunboats are hurrying up the James. Presumably at the very hour this goes to press Richmond is fallen._

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from her high estate, And weltering in her blood.

Elsewhere brave, true, and simple men attended to their duties, wrote their letters home, and, going their rounds or walking their beats, looked upward to the silver stars. They looked at the stars in the west, over the Alleghenies where Fremont, where Milroy and Schenck should be; and at those in the south, over the long leagues of the great Valley, over Harrisonburg, somewhere the other side of which Stonewall Jackson must be; and at those in the east, over the Ma.s.sanuttons, with the Blue Ridge beyond, and Front Royal in between, where Colonel Kenly was; and at the bright stars in the North, over home, over Connecticut and Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts, over Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maine.

They who watched the stars from Strasburg dwelt least of all, perhaps, upon the stars in the east. Yet under those lay that night, ten miles from Front Royal, Stonewall Jackson and seventeen thousand men.

CHAPTER XX

FRONT ROYAL

In the hot, bright morning, Cleave, commanding four companies of the 65th thrown out as skirmishers, entered the band of forest lying between the Blue Ridge and Front Royal. The day was hot, the odour of the pines strong and heady; high in heaven, in a still and intense blue, the buzzards were slowly sailing. A long, thin line of picked men, keen, watchful, the reserve a hundred yards or two behind, the skirmishers moved forward over a rough cart track and over the opposing banks. Each man stepped lightly as a cat, each held his gun in the fashion most convenient to himself, each meant to do good hunting. Ahead was a thicker belt of trees, and beyond that a gleam of sky, a promise of a clearing. Suddenly, out of this blue s.p.a.ce, rose the neigh of a horse.

The skirmishers halted beneath the trees. The men waited, bent forward, holding breath, recognizing the pause on the rim of action, the moment before the moment. The clearing appeared to be several hundred yards away. Back from it, upon the idle air, floated loud and careless talking, then laughter. Allan Gold came out of the thicker wood, moved, a tawny shadow, across the moss and reported to Cleave. "Two companies, sir--infantry--scattered along a little branch. Arms stacked."

The line entered the wood, the laughter and talking before it growing louder. Each grey marksman twitched his cartridge box in place, glanced at his musket, glanced toward his immediate officer. Across the intervals ran an indefinable spark, a bracing, a tension. Some of the men moistened their lips, one or two uttered a little sigh, the hearts of all beat faster. The step had quickened. The trees grew more thinly, came down to a mere bordering fringe of sumach. Cleave motioned to the bugler; the latter raised the bugle to his lips. _Forward!--Commence--Firing!_ The two companies in blue, marched down that morning superfluously to picket a region where was no danger, received that blast and had their moment of stupour. Laughter died suddenly. A clock might have ticked twice while they sat or stood as though that were all there was to do. The woods blazed, a long crackle of musketry broke the spell. A blue soldier pitched forward, lay with his head in the water. Another, seated in the shade, his back to a sugar maple, never more of his own motion left that resting place; a third, undressing for a bath, ran when the others ran, but haltingly, a red mark upon his naked thigh. All ran now, ran with cries and oaths toward the stacked rifles. Ere they could s.n.a.t.c.h the guns, drop upon their knees, aim at the shaken sumach bushes and fire, came a second blaze and rattle and a leaden hail.

Out of the wood burst the long skirmish line. It yelled; it gave the "rebel yell." It rushed on, firing as it came. It leaped the stream, it swallowed up the verdant mead, it came on, each of its units yelling death, to envelop the luckless two companies. One of these was very near at hand, the other, for the moment more fortunate, a little way down the stream, near the Front Royal road. Cleave reached, a grey brand, the foremost of the two. "Surrender!"

The blue captain's sword lay with other paraphernalia on the gra.s.s beneath the trees, but he signified a.s.sent to the inevitable. The reserve, hurrying down from the wood, took the captured in charge. The attack swept on, tearing across the meadow to the Front Royal road, where the second company had made a moment's stand, as brave as futile.

It fired two rounds, then broke and tore down the dusty road or through the bordering fields toward Front Royal. Cleave and his skirmishers gained. They were mountain men, long of limb; they went like Greek runners, and they tossed before them round messengers of death. The greater number of blue soldiers, exhausted, slackened in their pace, halted, threw down their arms. Presently, trailing their feet, they returned to the streamlet and their companions in misfortune.

The grey swept on, near now to Front Royal; before them a few blue fugitives, centre of a swiftly moving cloud of dust, a cloud into which the Thunder Run men fired at short intervals. Behind them they heard the tramp of the army. The Louisiana Brigade, leading, was coming at a double-quick. On a parallel road to the left a dust cloud and dull thunder proclaimed a battery, making for the front. Out of the wood which the skirmishers had left came like a whirlwind the 65th Virginia, Jackson riding with Flournoy at the head.

Little Sorrel swerved toward the skirmishers and paused a moment abreast of Cleave. Jackson spoke from the saddle. "How many?"

"Two companies, sir. Several killed, the rest prisoners, save six or eight who will reach the town."

"Good! Press on. If they open with artillery, get under cover until our guns are placed." He jerked his hand into the air and rode on, galloping stiffly, his feet stuck out from the nag's sides. The cavalry disappeared to the right in a storm of yellow dust.

The village of Front Royal that had been dozing all the summer forenoon, woke with a vengeance. Kenly's camp lay a mile or two west, but in the town was quartered a company or so. Soldiers off duty were lounging on the shady side of the village street, missing the larger delights of Strasburg, wondering if Richmond had fallen and where was Stonewall Jackson, when the fracas, a mile away, broke upon their ears. Secure indolence woke with a start. Front Royal buzzed like an overturned hive.

In the camp beyond the town bugles blared and the long roll was furiously beaten. The lounging soldiers jerked up their muskets; others poured out of houses where they had been billeted. All put their legs to good use, down the road, back to the camp! Out, too, came the village people, though not to flee the village. In an instant men and women were in street or porch or yard, laughing, crying, hurrahing, clapping hands, waving anything that might serve as a welcoming banner. "Stonewall Jackson! It's Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Bless the Lord, O my soul!--Can't you all stop and tell a body?--No; you can't, of course. Go along, and G.o.d bless you!--Their camp's this side the North Fork--about a thousand of them.--Guns? Yes, they've got two guns. Cavalry? No, no cavalry.--Don't let them get away! If they fall back they'll try to burn the bridges. Don't let them do that. The North Fork's awful rough and swollen. It'll be hard to get across.--Yes, the railroad bridge and the wagon bridge. I can't keep up with you any longer. I ain't as young as I once was. You're welcome, sir."

Cleave and his men came out of the village street at a run. Before them stretched level fields, gold with sunshine and with blossoming mustard, crossed and c.u.mbered with numerous rail fences. Beyond these, from behind rolling ground lightly wooded, rang a great noise of preparation, drums, trumpets, confused voices. As the skirmishers poured into the open and again deployed, a cannon planted on a knoll ahead spoke with vehemence. The sh.e.l.l that it sent struck the road just in front of the grey, exploded, frightfully tore a man's arm and covered all with a dun mantle of dust. Another followed, digging up the earth in the field, uprooting and ruining clover and mustard. A third burst overhead. A stone wall, overtopped by rusty cedars, ran at right angles with the road. To this cover Cleave brought the men, and they lay behind it panting, welcoming the moment's rest and shelter, waiting for the battery straining across the fields. The Louisianians, led by Taylor, were pouring through the village--Ewell was behind--Jackson and the cavalry had quite disappeared.

Lying in the shadow of the wall, waiting for the order forward, Cleave suddenly saw again and plainly what at the moment he had seen without noting--Stafford's face, very handsome beneath soft hat and plume, riding with the 6th. It came now as though between eyelid and ball. The eyes, weary and tragic, had rested upon him with intentness as he stood and spoke with Jackson. Maury Stafford--Maury Stafford! Cleave's hand struck the sun-warmed stone impatiently. He was not fond of deep unhappiness--no, not even in the face of his foe! Why was it necessary that the man should have felt thus, have thought thus, acted thus? The fact that he himself could not contemplate without hot anger that other fact of Stafford's thought still dwelling, dwelling upon Judith had made him fight with determination any thought of the man at all. He could not hurt Judith, thank G.o.d! nor make between them more misunderstanding and mischief! Then let him go--let him go! with his beauty and his fatal look, like a figure out of an old, master canvas!--Cleave wrenched his thought to matters more near at hand.

The battery first seen and heard was now up. It took position on a rise of ground and began firing, but the guns were but smoothbore six-pounders and the ammunition was ghastly bad. The sh.e.l.ls exploded well before they reached the enemy's lines. The opposing blue battery--Atwell's--strongly posted and throwing canister from ten-pounder Parrotts--might have laughed had there not been--had there not been more and more and yet more of grey infantry! Taylor with his Louisianians, the First Maryland, Ewell, Winder with the Stonewall, grey, grey, with gleaming steel, with glints of red, pouring from the woods, through the fields--the Pennsylvanians, working the battery, did not laugh; they were pale, perhaps, beneath the powder grime. But pale or sanguine they bravely served their guns and threw their canister, well directed, against the mediaeval engines on the opposite knoll.

Shouting an order, there now galloped to these Jackson's Chief of Artillery, Colonel Crutchfield. The outcla.s.sed smoothbores limbered up and drew sulkily away; Courtenay's Battery, including a rifled gun, arrived in dust and thunder to take their place. Behind came Brockenborough. The reeking battery horses bent to it; the drivers yelled. The rumbling wheels, the leaping harness, the dust that all raised, made a cortege and a din as of Dis himself. The wheel stopped, the men leaped to the ground, the guns were planted, the limbers dropped, the horses loosed and taken below the hill. A loud cannonade began.

Behind the screen of smoke, in the level fields, four Louisiana regiments formed in line of battle. A fifth moved to the left, its purpose to flank the Federal battery. As for the cavalry, it appeared to have sunk into the earth--and yet, even with the thought, out of the blue distance toward McCoy's Ford, on the South Fork arose a tremendous racket! A railway station, Buckton--was there, and a telegraph line, and two companies of Pennsylvania infantry, and two locomotives with steam up. At the moment there were also Ashby and the 7th Virginia, bent upon burning the railroad bridge, cutting the telegraph, staying the locomotives, and capturing the Pennsylvanians. The latter tried to escape by the locomotives; tried twice and failed twice. The forming infantry before Front Royal knew by the rumpus that Ashby was over there, below the Ma.s.sanuttons. There ran a rumour, too, that the 2d Virginia cavalry under Munford was somewhere to the northeast, blocking the road to Mana.s.sas Gap, closing the steel trap on that quarter. The 6th with Jackson remained sunken.

In the hot sunshine blared the Louisianian trumpets. An aide, stretched like an Indian along the neck of his galloping horse, came to the skirmishers. "All right, Cleave! Go ahead! The Louisianians are pawing the ground!--Shade of Alexander Hamilton, listen to that!"

"That" was the "Ma.r.s.eillaise," grandly played. _Tramp, tramp!_ the Louisianians came on to its strains. The skirmish line left the sunny stone fence where slender ferns filled the c.h.i.n.ks, and lizards ran like frightened flames, and brown ants, anxious travellers, sought a way home. Cleave, quitting the shadow of a young locust tree, touched with his foot a wren's nest, shaken from the bough above. The eggs lay in it, unbroken. He stooped swiftly, caught it up and set it on the bough again, then ran on, he and all his men, under a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l.

Kenly, a gallant soldier, caught, through no fault of his, in a powerful trap, manoeuvred ably. His guns were well served, and while they stayed for a moment the Confederate advance, he made dispositions for a determined stand. The longer delay here, the greater chance at Strasburg! A courier dispatched in hot haste to warn the general there encountered and hurried forward a detachment of the 7th New York Cavalry as well as a small troop of picked men, led by a sometime aide of General Banks. These, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah and coming down the road at a double, reported to Kenly and were received by the anxious troops with cheering. The ground hereabouts was rolling, green eminences at all points breaking the view. Kenly used the cavalry skilfully, making them appear now here, now there between the hills, to the end that to the attackers they might appear a regiment. His guns thundered, and his few companies of infantry fired with steadiness, greeting with hurrahs every fall of a grey skirmisher.

But the skirmishers pressed on, and behind them came the chanters of the "Ma.r.s.eillaise." Moreover a gasping courier brought news to Kenly. "A great force of cavalry, sir--Ashby, I reckon, or the devil himself--on the right! If they get to the river first--" There was small need of further saying. If Ashby or the devil got to the river first, then indeed was the trap closed on the thousand men!

_Face to the Rear! March!_ ordered Kenly. Atwell's Battery limbered up in hot haste, turned, and dashed in thunder up the road. It must cross the bridge, seize some height, from there defend the crossing. Where the battery had been the cavalry now formed the screen, thin enough and ragged, yet menacing the grey infantry.

The grey skirmishers rallied, fixed bayonets and advanced, the Louisianians close behind. The blue hors.e.m.e.n attempted a charge, an action more bold than wise, they were so small a force. The men in grey sprang at the bridles of the foremost, wrapped long mountain arms about the riders. Despite sabre, despite pistol, several were dragged down, horse and man made captive. The most got back to safer ground. Kenly's bugles rang out again, palpably alarmed, shrilly insistent. Horse and foot must get across the Shenandoah or there would be the devil to pay!

Beside the imperious trumpet came something else, an acrid smell and smoke, then a great flame and crackle. Torch had been put to the camp; all the Federal tents and forage and stores were burning. _To the rear!

To the rear!_

In the middle of the road, out of one of the scuffling groups, a whirling pillar of dust and clamour, sabre strokes, rifle and pistol cracks, oaths, cries, plunging of a maddened horse, Cleave saw a flushed face lift itself from the ground, a powerful shoulder thrust away the surging grey shapes, a sabre flash in the sun, a hand from which blood was streaming catch at the horse's mane. The owner of the hand swung himself again into the saddle from which Dave Maydew had plucked him.

Remounted, he made a downward thrust with his sabre. Dave, keeping warily out of reach of the horse's lashing heels, struck up the arm with his bayonet. The sabre clattered to the ground; with an oath the man--an officer--drew a revolver. The ball whizzed past Cleave's temple; a second might have found his heart but that Allan Gold, entering somehow the cleared circle made by the furious horse, hung upon the arm sleeved in fine blue cloth, and wrenched the Colt's from the gauntleted hand.

Cleave, at the bridle, laughed and took his hands away. "Christmas Carols again!" he said.

G.o.d save you, merry gentlemen!

Let nothing you dismay--

"Give him way, men! He's a friend of mine."

Marchmont's horse bounded. "Lieutenant McNeill," said the rider. "I profess that in all this dust and smoke I did not at first recognize you. I am your obedient servant. If my foe, sir, then I dub you my dearest foe! To our next meeting!"

He backed the furious horse, wheeled and was gone like a bolt from a catapult toward his broken and retiring troop. As he rode he turned in his saddle, raised his cap, and sang,--

"As the Yankees were a-marching, They heard the rebel yell--"

Close at the heels of Kenly's whole command poured, resistlessly, the skirmish line, the Louisiana troops, the First Maryland. A light wind blew before them the dun and rolling smoke from the burning camp. For all their haste the men found tongue as they pa.s.sed that dismal pyre. They sniffed the air. "Coffee burning!--good Lord, ain't it a sin?--Look at those boxes--shoes as I am a Christian man!--And all the wall tents--like 'Laddin's palaces! Geewhilikins! what was that? That was oil. There might be gunpowder somewhere! Captain, honey, don't you want us to _treble-quick_ it?" They pa.s.sed the fire and waste and ruin, rounded a curve, and came upon the long downward slope to the river. "Oh, here we are! Thar they are!

Thar's the river. Thar's the Shenandoah! Thar's the covered bridge! They're on it--they're halfway over! Their guns are over!--We ain't ever going to let them all get across?--Ain't we going down the hill at them?--Yes.

_Forward!_--Yaaaih!--Yaaih!--Yaaaaaaaihh!--Yaaaaaih!--Thar's the cavalry!

Thar's Old Jack!"

Jackson and the 6th Virginia came at a gallop out of the woods, down the eastern bank of the stream. The skirmishers, First Maryland,--Louisiana, --poured down the slope, firing on Kenly as they ran. A number of his men dropped, but he was halfway across and he pressed on, the New York cavalry and Marchmont's small troop acting as rear guard. The battery was already over. The western bank rose steep and high, commanding the eastern. Up this strained the guns, were planted, and opened with canister upon the swarming grey upon the other sh.o.r.e. Company by company Kenly's infantry got across --got across, and once upon the rising ground faced about and opened a determined fire under cover of which his cavalry entered the bridge. The last trooper over, his pioneers brought brush and hay, thrust it into the mouth of the bridge and set all on fire.

Jackson was up just in time to witness the burst of flames. He turned to the nearest regiment--the 8th Louisiana, Acadians from the Attakapas.

There was in him no longer any slow stiffness of action; his body moved as though every joint were oiled. He looked a different creature. He pointed to the railroad bridge just above the wagon bridge. "Cross at once on the ties." The colonel looked, nodded, waved his sword and explained to his Acadians. "_Mes enfans! Nous allons traverser le pont la-bas. En avant!_" In column of twos he led his men out on the ties of the trestle bridge. Below, dark, rapid, cold, rushed the swollen Shenandoah. Musketry and artillery, Kenly opened upon them. Many a poor fellow, who until this war had never seen a railroad bridge, threw up his arms, stumbled, slipped between the ties, went down into the flood and disappeared.

Stonewall Jackson continued his orders. "Skirmishers forward! Clear those combustibles out of the bridge. Cross, Wheat's Battalion! First Maryland, follow!" He looked from beneath the forage cap at the steep opposite sh.o.r.e, from the narrow level at the water's edge to the ridge top held by the Federal guns. Rank by rank on this staircase, showed Kenly's troops, stubbornly firing, trying to break the trap.

"Artillery's the need. We must take more of their guns."

It was hot work, as the men of the 65th and Wheat's Tigers speedily found, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah! One span was all afire. The flooring burned their feet, flames licked the wooden sides of the structure, thick, choking smoke canopied the rafters. With musket b.u.t.ts the men beat away the planking, hurled into the flood below burning scantling and brand, and trampled the red out of the charring cross timbers. Some came out of the western mouth of the bridge stamping with the pain of burned hands, but the point was that they did come out--the four companies of the 65th, Wheat's Tigers, the First Maryland.

Back to Jackson, however, went a messenger. "Not safe, sir, for horse!

We broke step and got across, but at one place the supports are burned away--"

"Good! good!" said Jackson. "We will cross rougher rivers ere we are done." He turned to Flournoy's bugler. "_Squadrons. Right front into line. March!_"

Kenly, stubbornly firing upon the two columns, that one now quitting, with a breath of relief, the railway bridge, and that issuing under an arch of smoke from the wagon bridge, was hailed by a wild-eyed lieutenant. "Colonel Kenly, sir, look at that!" As he spoke, he tried to point, but his hand waved up and down. The Shenandoah, below the two bridges, was thick with swimming horses.