The Long Roll Part 40

"Awful. 'T is going to be like running the gauntlet, to run that town, and we're most there. If I don't get out alive, and if you ever go to New Bedford--Whoa, there! Look out!"

Steve, thrust by the press away from the pike into a Middletown street, looked for a cellar door through which he might descend and be in darkness. All the street was full of struggling forms. A man on horseback, tall and horrible in the nightmare, cut at him with a sabre as long as himself. Steve ducked, went under the horse's belly, and came up to have a pistol shot take the cap from his head. With a yell he ran beneath the second horse's arching neck. The animal reared; a third horseman raised his carbine. There was an overturned Conestoga wagon in the middle of the street, its white top like a bubble in all the wild swirl and eddy of the place. Steve and the ball from the carbine pa.s.sed under the arch at the same instant, the bullet lodging somewhere in the wagon bed.

Steve at first thought he might be dead, for it was cool and dark under the tilted canvas, and there was a momentary effect of quietness. The carbine had been fired; perhaps the bullet was in his brain. The uncertainty held but a second; outside the fracas burst forth again, and beneath him something moved in the straw. It proved to be the driver of the wagon, wounded, and fallen back from the seat in front. He spoke now in a curious, dreamy voice. "Get off the top of my broken leg--d.a.m.n you to everlasting h.e.l.l!" Steve squirmed to one side. "Sorry. Gawd knows I wish I wasn't any nearer it than the Peaks of Otter!" There was a triangular tear in the canvas. He drew down the flap and looked out.

"They were Ashby's men--all those three!" He began to cry, though noiselessly. "They hadn't ought to cut at me like that--shooting, too, without looking! They ought to ha' seen I wasn't no d.a.m.ned Yank--" The figure in the straw moved. Steve turned sick with apprehension. "Did you hear what I said? I was just a-joking. Gawd! It's enough to make a man wish he was a Johnny Reb--Hey, what did you say?"

But the figure in blue said nothing, or only some useless thing about wanting water. Steve, rea.s.sured, looked again out of window. His refuge lay a few feet from the pike, and the pike was a road through pandemonium. He could see, upon a height, dimly, through the dust and smoke the Rockbridge battery. Yellow flashes came from it, then ear-splitting sound. A Federal force, horse, foot and guns, had hastily formed in the opposite fields, seized a crest, planted cannon. These sent screaming sh.e.l.ls. In between the iron giants roared the melee--Ashby jousting with Hatch's convoying cavalry--the Louisiana troops firing in a long battle line, from behind the stone fences--a horrible jam of wagons, overturned or overturning, panic-stricken mules, drivers raving out oaths, using mercilessly long, snaky, black whips--heat, dust, thirst and thunder, wild excitement, blood and death!

There were all manner of wagons. Ambulances were there with inmates,--fantastic sickrooms, with glare for shade, Tartarean heat for coolness, cannon thunder and shouting for quietness, grey enemies for nursing women, and for home a battlefield in a hostile land. Heavy ordnance wagons, far from the guns they were meant to feed, traces cut and horses gone, rested reef-like for the tides to break against.

Travelling forges kept them company, and wagons bearing officers'

luggage. Beneath several the mules were pinned; dreadful sight could any there have looked or pitied! Looming through there were the great supply wagons, with others of lighter stores, holding boxes and barrels of wines and fruits, commodities of all sorts, gold-leafed fripperies, luxuries of all manner, poured across the Potomac for her soldiers by the North. Sutlers' wagons did not lack, garishly stocked, forlorn as Harlequin in the day's stress. In and around and over all these stranded hulls roared the opposing forces. Steve saw Ashby, on the black stallion, directing with a gauntleted hand. Four great draught horses, drawing a loaded van, without a driver, maddened with fright, turned into this street up and down which there was much fighting. A shout arose. Carbines cracked. One of the leaders came down upon his knees.

The other slipped in blood and fell. The van overturned, pinning beneath it one of the wheel horses. Its fall, immediately beside the Conestoga, blocked Steve's window. He turned to crawl to the other side. As he did so the wounded soldier in the straw had a remark to make. He made it in the dreamy voice he had used before. "Don't you smell cloth burning?"

Steve did; in an instant saw it burning as well, first the corner of the canvas cover, then the straw beneath. He gave a screech. "We're on fire!

Gawd! I've got to get out of this!"

The man in the straw talked dreamily on. "I got a bullet through the end of my backbone. I can't sit up. I been lying here studying the scoop of this here old wagon. It looks to me like the firmament at night, with all the stars a-shining. There's no end of texts about stars. 'Like as one star differeth from another--'" He began to cough. "There seems to be smoke. I guess you'll have to drag me out, brother."

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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.p.a.ce! 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 sh.e.l.l in the middle of that room."

The captain returned once more. "Well?"

"They said, 'Go to h.e.l.l,' 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.u.mbered 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 gra.s.s 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 bra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s 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 d.a.m.ned 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 ragam.u.f.fin 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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.n 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 Ma.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sing 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, pa.s.sing two of the Rockbridge guns planted on a hillock and hurling sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 remained. Fatigue was the abominable thing. "Gawd!" thought Steve. "I can't stand it any longer. I got ter quit, and ef I could shoot that lieutenant, I would." The man whom the closing of the ranks had brought upon his left began to speak in a slow, refined voice. "There was a book published in England a year or so ago. It brings together old observations, shoots and theories, welds them, and produces a Thor's hammer that's likely to crack some heads. Once upon a time, it seems, we went on four feet. It's a pity to have lost so valuable a faculty. Oh, Jupiter! we are tired!"

A man behind put in his word. "To-morrow's Sunday. Two Sundays ago we were at Meechum's River, and since then we've marched most two hundred miles, and fought two battles and a heap of skirmishes! I reckon there'll be a big fight to-morrow, with Old Jack jerking his hand in the air as they say he's been doing! 'N all to the sound of church bells!