The Long Roll Part 41

Oh, Moses, I'm tired!"

At sunset the bugles blew halt. The men dropped down on the tarnished earth, on the vast, spectacular road to Winchester. They cared not so much for supper, faint as they were; they wanted sleep. Supper they had--all that could be obtained from the far corners of haversacks and all that, with abounding willingness, the neighbouring farmhouses could sc.r.a.pe together--but when it came to sleep--. With nodding heads the men waited longingly for roll call and tattoo, and instead there came an order from the front. "_A night march!_ O Lord, have mercy, for Stonewall Jackson never does." _Fall in! Fall in! Column Forward!_

When they came to the Opequon they had a skirmish with a Ma.s.sachusetts regiment which fired a heavy volley into the cavalry ahead, driving it back upon the 33d Virginia, next in column. The 33d broke, then rallied.

Other of the Stonewall regiments deployed in the fields and the 27th advanced against the opposing force, part of Banks's rearguard. It gave way, disappearing in the darkness of the woods. The grey column, pushing across the Opequon, came into a zone of Federal skirmishers and sharpshooters ambushed behind stone fences.

Somewhere about midnight Steve, walking in about the worst dream he had ever had, determined that no effort was too great if directed toward waking. It was a magic lantern dream--black slides painted only with stars and fireflies, succeeded by slides in which there was a moment's violent illumination, stone fences leaping into being as the musket fire ran along.

A halt--a company deployed--the foe dispersed, streaming off into the darkness--the hurt laid to one side for the ambulances--_Column Forward!_ Sometimes a gun was unlimbered, trained upon the threatening breastwork and fired. Once a sh.e.l.l burst beneath a wagon that had been drawn into the fields. It held, it appeared, inflammable stores. Wagon and contents shot into the air with a great sound and glare, and out of the light about the place came a frightful crying. Men ran to right and left to escape the rain of missiles; then the light died out, and the crying ceased. The column went on slowly, past dark slides. Its progress seemed that of a snail army.

Winchester lay the fewest of miles away, but somewhere there was legerdemain. The fewest of miles stretched like a rubber band. The troops marched for three minutes, halted, marched again, halted, marched, halted.

To sleep--to sleep! _Column Forward!--Column Forward!_

There was a bridge to cross over a wide ditch. Steve hardly broke his dream, but here he changed the current. How he managed he could scarce have told, but he did find himself under the bridge where at once he lay down. The mire and weed was like a blissful bed. He closed his eyes.

Three feet above was the flooring, and all the rearguard pa.s.sing over.

It was like lying curled in the hollow of a drum, a drum beaten draggingly and slow. "Gawd!" thought Steve. "It sounds like a Dead March."

He slept, despite the canopy of footsteps. He might have lain like a log till morning but that at last the flooring of the bridge rebelled. A section of a battery, kept for some hours at Middletown, found itself addressed by a courier, jaded, hoa.r.s.e as a raven of the night. "General Jackson says, 'Bring up these guns.' He says, 'Make haste.'" The battery limbered up and came with a heavy noise down the pike, through the night. Before it was the rearguard; the artillery heard the changed sound as the men crossed the wooden bridge. The rearguard went on; the guns arrived also at the ditch and the overtaxed bridge. The Tredegar iron gun went over and on, gaining on the foot, with intent to pa.s.s. The howitzer, following, proved the last straw. The bridge broke. A gun wheel went down, and amid the oaths of the drivers a frightened screech came from below. "O Gawd! lemme get out of this!"

Pulled out, he gave an account of his cut foot, piteous enough. The lieutenant listened. "The 65th? Scamp, I reckon, but flesh is weak!

Hasn't been exactly a circus parade for any of us. Let him ride, men--if ever we get this d.a.m.ned wheel out! Keep an eye on him, Fleming!--Now, all together!--Pull, White Star!--Pull, Red Star!"

The column came to Kernstown about three o'clock in the morning. Dead as were the troops the field roused them. "Kernstown! Kernstown! We're back again."

"Here was where we crossed the pike--there's the old ridge. Griffin tearing up his cards--and Griffin's dead at McDowell."

"That was Fulkerson's wall--that shadow over there! There's the bank where the 65th fought.--Kernstown! I'm mighty tired, boys, but I've got a peaceful certainty that that was the only battle Old Jack's ever going to lose!"

"Old Jack didn't lose it. Garnett lost it."

"That ain't a Stonewall man said that! General Garnett's in trouble. I reckon didn't anybody lose it. Shields had nine thousand men, and he just gained it!--Shields the best man they've had in the Valley.

Kernstown!--Heard what the boys at Middletown called Banks? _Mr.

Commissary Banks._ Oh, law! that pesky rearguard again!"

The skirmish proved short and sharp. The Federal rearguard gave way, fell back on Winchester; the Confederate column, advance, main and rear, heard in the cold and hollow of the night the order: _Halt. Stack arms!

Break ranks!_ From regiment to regiment ran a further word. "One hour.

You are to rest one hour, men. Lie down."

In the first grey streak of dawn a battery which had pa.s.sed in turn each segment of the column, came up with the van, beyond Kernstown battlefield, and halted upon a little rise of ground. All around stretched grey, dew-wet fields and woods, and all around lay an army, sleeping, strange sight in the still and solemn light, with the birds cheeping overhead! The guns stopped, the men got down from limber and caisson, the horses were unhitched. "An hour's sleep--Kernstown battlefield!"

An officer whose command lay in the field to the left, just beyond a great breach that had been made in the stone fence, arose from the cloak he had spread in the opening and came over to the guns. "Good-morning, Randolph! Farmers and soldiers see the dawn!

Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.

The poor guns! Even they look overmarched." As he spoke he stroked the howitzer as though it had been a living thing.

"We've got with us a stray of yours," said the artilleryman. "Says he has a cut foot, but looks like a skulker. Here you, Mr.

Under-the-Bridge! come from behind that caisson--"

Out of a wood road, a misty opening overarched by tall and misty trees, came two or three hors.e.m.e.n, the foremost of whom rode up to the battery.

"Good-morning, Randolph! General Jackson will be by in a moment. General Ewell lies over there on the Front Royal road. He has eaten breakfast, and is clanking his spurs and swearing as they swore in Flanders." He pointed with his gauntleted hand, turning as he did so in the saddle.

The action brought recognition of Cleave's presence upon the road.

Stafford ceased speaking and sat still, observing the other with narrowed eyes.

Cleave addressed the figure, which, there being no help for it, had come from behind the caisson. "You, Dagg, of course! Straggling or deserting--I wonder which this time! Are you not ashamed?"

"Gawd, major! I just couldn't keep up. I got a cut foot--"

"Sit down on that rock.--Take off your shoe--what is left of it. Now, let me see. Is that the cut, that scratch above the ankle?"

"It ain't how deep it is. It's how it hurts."

"There is no infantryman to-day who is not footsore and tired. Only the straggler or deserter has as few marks as you to show. There is the company, down the road, in the field. To-night I shall find out if you have been with it all the day. Go! You disgrace the very mountains where you were born--"

Beyond the guns was a misty bend of the road. The light was stronger, in the east a slender streamer of carnation; the air dank, cool and still.

On the edge of Kernstown battlefield a c.o.c.k crew; a second horn came faintly. Very near at hand sounded a jingle of accoutrement; Stonewall Jackson, two or three of the staff with him, came around the turn and stopped beside the guns. The men about them and the horses, and on the roadside, drew themselves up and saluted. Jackson gave his slow quiet nod. He was all leaf bronze from head to foot, his eyes just glinting beneath the old forage cap. He addressed the lieutenant. "You will advance, sir, in just three quarters of an hour. There are batteries in place upon the ridge before us. You will take position there, and you will not leave until ordered." His eyes fell upon Stafford. "Have you come from General Ewell?"

"Yes, general. He sends his compliments, and says he is ready."

"Good! Good!--What is this soldier doing here?" He looked at Steve.

"It is a straggler, sir, from my regiment. Lieutenant Randolph picked him up--"

"Found him under a bridge, sir. I'd call him a deserter--"

Steve writhed as though, literally, the eyes were cold steel and had pinned him down. "Gawd, general! I didn't desert! Cross my heart and may I go to h.e.l.l if I did! I was awful tired--hungry and thirsty--and my head swimming--I just dropped out, meaning to catch up after a bit! I had a sore foot. Major Cleave's awful hard on me--"

"You're a disgrace to your company," said Cleave. "If we did not need even shadows and half men you would be drummed home to Thunder Run, there to brag, loaf, and rot--"

Steve began to whine. "I meant to catch up, I truly did!" His eyes, shifting from side to side, met those of Stafford. "Gawd, I'm lost--"

Stafford regarded his quondam prisoner curiously enough. His gaze had in it something of cruelty, of pondering, and of question. Steve writhed.

"I ain't any better 'n anybody else. Life's awful! Everybody in the world's agin me. Gawd knows Major Cleave's so--" Cleave made a sound of contempt.

Stafford spoke. "I do not think he's actually a deserter. I remember his face. I met him near Middletown, and he gave me his regiment and company. There are many stragglers."

Steve could have fallen and worshipped. "Don't care whether he did it for me, or jest 'cause he hates that other one! He does hate him! 'N I hate him, too--sending me to the guardhouse every whip-st.i.tch!" This to himself; outside he tried to look as though he had carried the colours from Front Royal, only dropping them momentarily at that unfortunate bridge. Jackson regarded him with a grey-blue eye unreconciled, but finally made his peculiar gesture of dismissal. The Thunder Run man saluted and stumbled from the roadside into the field, the dead Tiger's musket in the hollow of his arm, his face turned toward Company A. Back in the road Jackson turned his eyes on Cleave. "Major, in half an hour 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 gra.s.s. Far away the c.o.c.ks 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 a.s.sured 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!"