The Long Roll Part 9

At noon the Army of the Valley, the First Brigade leading, uncoiled itself, regiment by regiment, from the wide meadow and the chestnut wood, swept out upon the turnpike--and found its head turned toward the south! There was stupefaction, then tongues were loosed. "What's this--what's this, boys? Charlestown ain't in this direction. Old Joe's lost his bearings! Johnny Lemon, you go tell him so--go ask Old Jack if you can't. Whoa, there! The fool's going!! Come back here quick, Johnny, afore the captain sees you! O h.e.l.l! we're going right back through Winchester!"

A wave of anger swept over the First Brigade. The 65th grew intractable, moved at a snail's pace. The company officers went to and fro. "Close up, men, close up! No, I don't know any more than you do--maybe it's some roundabout way. Close up--close up!" The colonel rode along the line. "What's the matter here? You aren't going to a funeral! Think it's a fox hunt, boys, and step out lively!" A courier arrived from the head of the column. "General Jackson's compliments to Colonel Brooke, and he says if this regiment isn't in step in three minutes he'll leave it with the sick in Winchester!"

The First Brigade, followed by Bee, Bartow, and Elzey, marched sullenly down the turnpike, into Winchester, and through its dusty streets. The people were all out, old men, boys, and women thronging the brick sidewalks. The army had seventeen hundred sick in the town. Pale faces looked out of upper windows; men just recovering from dysentery, from measles, from fever, stumbled out of shady front yards and fell into line; others, more helpless, started, then wavered back. "Boys, boys!

you ain't never going to leave us here for the Yanks to take?

Boys--boys--" The citizens, too, had their say. "Is Winchester to be left to Patterson? We've done our best by you--and you go marching away!" Several of the older women were weeping, the younger looked scornful. _Close up, men, close up--close up!_

The First Brigade was glad when it was through the town. Before it, leading southward through the Valley of Virginia, stretched the great pike, a hundred and twenty miles of road, traversing as fair, rich, and happy a region as war ever found a paradise and left a desolation. To the east towered the Blue Ridge, to west the Great North and Shenandoah Mountains, twenty miles to the south Ma.s.sanutton rose like a Gibraltar from the rolling fields of wheat and corn, the orchard lands and pleasant pastures. The region was one of old mills, turning flashing wheels, of comfortable red brick houses and well-stored barns, of fair market towns, of a n.o.ble breed of horses, and of great, white-covered wagons, of clear waters and sweet gardens, of an honest, thrifty, brave, and intelligent people. It was a fair country, and many of the army were at home there, but the army had at the moment no taste for its beauties. It wanted to see Patterson's long, blue lines; it wanted to drive them out of Virginia, across the Potomac, back to where they came from.

The First Brigade was dispirited and critical, and as it had not yet learned to control its mood, it marched as a dispirited and critical person would be apt to march in the brazen middle of a July day. Every spring and rivulet, every blackberry bush and apple tree upon the road gathered recruits. The halts for no purpose were interminable, the perpetual _Close up, close up, men!_ of the exasperated officers as unavailing as the droning in the heat of the burnished June-bugs. The brigade had no intention of not making known its reluctance to leave Patterson. It took an hour to make a mile from Winchester. General Jackson rode down the column on Little Sorrel and said something to the colonel of each regiment, which something the colonels pa.s.sed on to the captains. The next mile was made in half an hour.

The July dust rose from the pike in clouds, hot, choking, thick as the rain of ash from a volcano. It lay heavy upon coat, cap, haversack, and knapsack, upon the muskets and upon the colours, drooping in the heat, drooping at the idea of turning back upon Patterson and going off, Heaven and Old Joe knew where! Tramp, tramp over the hot pike, sullenly southward, hot without and hot within! The knapsack was heavy, the haversack was heavy, the musket was heavy. Sweat ran down from under cap or felt hat, and made grimy trenches down cheek and chin. The men had too thick underwear. They carried overcoat and blanket--it was hot, hot, and every pound like ten! _To keep--to throw away? To keep--to throw away?_ The beat of feet kept time to that pressing question, and to _Just marching to be marching!--reckon Old Joe thinks it's fun_, and to _Where in h.e.l.l are we going, anyway?_

Through the enormous dust cloud that the army raised the trees of the valley appeared as brown smudges against an ochreish sky. The farther hills and the mountains were not seen at all. The stone fences on either side the road, the blackberry bushes, the elder, the occasional apple or cherry tree were all but dun lines and blotches. Oh, hot, hot! A man swung his arm and a rolled overcoat landed in the middle of a briar patch. A second followed suit--a third, a fourth. A great, raw-boned fellow from some mountain clearing jerked at the lacing of his shoes and in a moment was marching barefoot, the offending leather swinging from his arm. To right and left he found imitators. A corpulent man, a merchant used to a big chair set in the shady front of a village store, suffered greatly, pale about the lips, and with his breath coming in wheezing gasps. His overcoat went first, then his roll of blanket.

Finally he gazed a moment, sorrowfully enough, at his knapsack, then dropped it, too, quietly, in a fence corner. _Close up, men--close up!_

A wind arose and blew the dust maddeningly to and fro. In the Colour Company of the 65th a boy began to cough, uncontrollably, with a hollow sound. Those near him looked askance. "You'd better run along home, sonny! Yo' ma hadn't ought to let you come. Darn it all! if we march down this pike longer, we'll all land home!--If you listen right hard you can hear Thunder Run!--And that thar Yank hugging himself back thar at Charlestown!--dessay he's telegraphin' right this minute that we've run away--"

Richard Cleave pa.s.sed along the line. "Don't be so downhearted, men!

It's not really any hotter than at a barbecue at home. Who was that coughing?"

"Andrew Kerr, sir."

"Andrew Kerr, you go to the doctor the first thing after roll-call to-night. Cheer up, men! No one's going to send you home without fighting."

From the rear came a rumble, shouted orders, a cracking of whips. The column swerved to one side of the broad road, and the Rockbridge Artillery pa.s.sed--a vision of horses, guns, and men, wrapped in a dun whirlwind and disappearing in the blast. They were gone in thunder through the heat and haze. The 65th Virginia wondered to a man why it had not chosen the artillery.

Out of a narrow way stretching westward, came suddenly at a gallop a handful of troopers, black plumed and magnificently mounted, swinging into the pike and disappearing in a pillar of dust toward the head of the column. Back out of the cloud sounded the jingling of accoutrements, the neighing of horses, a shouted order.

The infantry groaned. "Ten of the Black Horse!--where are the rest of them, I wonder? Oh, ain't they lucky dogs?"

"Stuart's men have the sweetest time!--just galloping over the country, and making love, and listening to Sweeney's banjo--

If you want to have a good time-- If you want to have a good time, Jine the cavalry!--

What's that road over there--the cool-looking one? The road to Ashby's Gap? Wish this pike was shady like that!"

A bugle blew; the command to halt ran down the column. The First Brigade came to a stand upon the dusty pike, in the heat and glare. The 65th was the third in column, the 4th and the 27th leading. Suddenly from the 4th there burst a cheer, a loud and high note of relief and exultation. A moment, and the infection had spread to the 27th; it, too, was cheering wildly. Apparently there were several couriers--No! staff officers, the 65th saw the gold lace--with some message or order from the commanding general, now well in advance with his guard of Black Horse. They were riding down the line--Old Jack was with them--the 4th and the 27th were cheering like mad. The colonel of the 65th rode forward. There was a minute's parley, then he turned, "Sixty-fifth! It isn't a fox hunt--it's a bear hunt! 'General Johnston to the 65th'--" He broke off and waved forward the aide-de-camp beside him. "Tell them, Captain Washington, tell them what a terror to corn-cribs we're going after!"

The aide, a young man, superbly mounted, laughed, raised his voice.

"Sixty-fifth! The Army of the Valley is going through Ashby's Gap to Piedmont, and from Piedmont by rail to Mana.s.sas Junction. General Stuart is still at Winchester amusing General Patterson. At Mana.s.sas our gallant army under General Beauregard is attacked by McDowell with overwhelming numbers. The commanding general hopes that his troops will step out like men and make a forced march to save the country!"

He was gone--the other staff officers were gone--Old Jack was gone. They pa.s.sed the shouting 65th, and presently from down the line came the cheers of the 2d, 21st, and 33d Virginia. Old Jack rode back alone the length of his brigade; and so overflowing was the enthusiasm of the men that they cheered him, cheered l.u.s.tily! He touched his old forage cap, went stiffly by upon Little Sorrel. From the rear, far down the road, could be heard the voices of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Ardour, elasticity, strength returned to the Army of the Shenandoah. With a triumphant cry the First Brigade wheeled into the road that led eastward through the Blue Ridge by Ashby's Gap.

Two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock came and pa.s.sed. Enthusiasm carried the men fast and far, but they were raw troops and they suffered. The sun, too, was enthusiastic, burning with all its might.

The road proved neither cool nor shady. All the springs seemed suddenly to have dried up. Out of every hour there was a halt of ten minutes, and it was needed. The men dropped by the roadside, upon the parched gra.s.s, beneath the shadow of the sumach and the elder bushes, and lay without speaking. The small farmers, the mountaineers, the hunters, the ploughmen fared not so badly; but the planters of many acres, the lawyers, the doctors, the divines, the merchants, the millers, and the innkeepers, the undergraduates from the University, the youths from cla.s.sical academies, county stores, village banks, lawyers' offices, all who led a horseback or sedentary existence, and the elderly men and the very young,--these suffered heavily. The mounted officers were not foot-weary, but they also had heat, thirst, and hunger, and, in addition, responsibility, inexperience, and the glance of their brigadier. The ten minutes were soon over. _Fall in--fall in, men!_ The short rest made the going worse, the soldiers rose so stiff and sore.

The men had eaten before leaving the camp above Winchester--but that was days ago. Now, as they went through Clarke County, there appeared at cross-roads, at plantation gates, at stiles leading into green fields, ladies young and old, bearing baskets of good things hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed from pantry and table. They had pitchers, too, of iced tea, of cold milk, even of raspberry acid and sangaree. How good it all was! and how impossible to go around! But, fed or hungry, refreshed or thirsty, the men blessed the donors, and that reverently, with a purity of thought, a chivalrousness of regard, a shade of feeling, youthful and sweet and yet virile enough, which went with the Confederate soldier into the service and abode to the end.

The long afternoon wore to a close. The heat decreased, but the dust remained and the weariness grew to gigantic proportions. The First Brigade was well ahead of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. It had started in advance and it had increased the distance. If there was any marching in men, Jackson forced it out; they went a league for him where another would have procured but a mile, but even he, even enthusiasm and the necessity of relieving Beauregard got upon this march less than two miles an hour. Most happily, McDowell, advancing on Beauregard and Bull Run and fearing "masked batteries," marched much more slowly. At sunset the First Brigade reached the Shenandoah.

The mounted officers took up one and sometimes two men beside them, and the horses struggled bravely through the cold, rapid, breast-deep current. Behind them, company by company, the men stripped off coat and trousers, piled clothing and ammunition upon their heads, held high their muskets, and so crossed. The guns and wagons followed. Before the river was pa.s.sed the night fell dark.

The heat was now gone by, the dust was washed away, the men had drunk their fill. From the haversacks they took the remnant of the food cooked that morning. The biscuit and the bacon tasted very good; not enough of either, it was true, but still something. The road above the river rose steeply, for here was the Blue Ridge, lofty and dark, rude with rock, and s.h.a.ggy with untouched forests. This was the pa.s.s through the mountains, this was Ashby's Gap. The brigade climbed with the road, tired and silent and grim. The day had somehow been a foretaste of war; the men had a new idea of the draught and of the depth of the cup. They felt older, and the air, blowing down from the mountains, seemed the air of a far country toward which they had been travelling almost without knowing it. They saw now that it was a strange country, much unlike that in which they had hitherto lived. They climbed slowly between dark crag and tree, and wearily. All song and jest had died; they were tired soldiers, hungry now for sleep. _Close up, men, close up!_

They came to the height of the pa.s.s, marked by a giant poplar whose roots struck deep into four counties. Here again there was a ten minutes' halt; the men sank down upon the soft beds of leaf and mould.

Their eyelids drooped; they were in a dream at once, and in a dream heard the _Fall in--fall in, men!_ The column stumbled to its feet and began the descent of the mountain.

Clouds came up; at midnight when they reached the lower slope, it was raining. Later they came to the outskirts of the village of Paris, to a grove of mighty oaks, and here the brigade was halted for the night. The men fell upon the ground and slept. No food was taken, and no sentries were posted. An aide, very heavy-eyed, asked if guard should not be set.

"No, sir," answered the general. "Let them sleep." "And you, sir?" "I don't feel like it. I'll see that there is no alarm." With his cloak about him, with his old cadet cap pulled down over his eyes, awkward and simple and plain, he paced out the night beneath the trees, or sat upon a broken rail fence, watching his sleeping soldiers and, the aide thought, praying.

The light rain ceased, the sky cleared, the pale dawn came up from the east. In the first pink light the bugles sounded. Up rose the First Brigade, cooked and ate its breakfast, swung out from the oak grove upon the highroad, and faced the rising sun. The morning was divinely cool, the men in high spirits, Piedmont and the railway were but six miles down the road. The First Brigade covered the distance by eight o'clock.

There was the station, there was the old Mana.s.sas Gap railroad, there was the train of freight and cattle cars--ever so many freight and cattle cars! Company after company the men piled in; by ten o'clock every car was filled, and the platforms and roofs had their quota. The crazy old engine blew its whistle, the First Brigade was off for Mana.s.sas. Bee, Bartow, and Elzey, arriving at Piedmont in the course of the morning, were not so fortunate. The railroad had promised, barring unheard-of accident, to place the four brigades in Mana.s.sas by sunrise of the twentieth. The accident duly arrived. There was a collision, the track was obstructed, and only the 7th and 8th Georgia got through. The remainder of the infantry waited perforce at Piedmont, a portion of it for two mortal days, and that without rations. The artillery and the cavalry--the latter having now come up--marched by the wagon road and arrived in fair time.

From ten in the morning until sunset the First Brigade and the Mana.s.sas Gap train crept like a tortoise through the July weather, by rustling cornfields, by stream and wood, by farmhouse and village. It was hot in the freight and cattle cars, hot, cinderish, and noisy. With here and there an exception the men took off their coats, loosened the shoes from their feet, made themselves easy in any way that suggested itself. The subtle _give_, the slip out of convention and restraint back toward a less trammelled existence, the faint return of the more purely physical, the slight withdrawal of the more purely mental, the rapid breaking down of the sheer artificial--these and other marks of one of the many predicates of war began to show themselves in this journey. But at the village stations there came a change. Women and girls were gathered here, in muslin freshness, with food and drink for "our heroes." The apparel discarded between stations was a.s.siduously rea.s.sumed whenever the whistle blew. "Our heroes" looked out of freight and cattle car, somewhat grimy, perhaps, but clothed and in their right mind, with a becoming bloom upon them of eagerness, deference, and patriotic willingness to die in Virginia's defence. The dispensers of nectar and ambrosia loved them all, sped them on to Mana.s.sas with many a prayer and G.o.d bless you!

At sunset the whistle shrieked its loudest. It was their destination.

The train jolted and jerked to a halt. Regiment by regiment, out poured the First Brigade, fell into line, and was double-quicked four miles to Mitch.e.l.l's Ford and a pine wood, where, hungry, thirsty, dirty, and exhausted, the ranks were broken.

This was the night of the nineteenth. At Piedmont the brigade had heard of yesterday's minor affair at this ford between Tyler's division and Longstreet, the honours of the engagement resting with the Confederate.

In the pine wood there was a line of fresh graves; on the brown needles lay boughs that sh.e.l.l had cut from the trees; there were certain stains upon the ground. The First Brigade ate and slept--the last somewhat feverishly. The night pa.s.sed without alarm. An attack in force was expected in the morning, but it did not come. McDowell, amazingly enough, still rested confident that Patterson had detained Johnston in the valley. Possessed by this belief he was now engaged in a "reconnoissance by stealth," his object being to discover a road whereby to cross Bull Run above the Stone Bridge and turn Beauregard's left.

This proceeding and an afternoon rest in camp occupied him the whole of the twentieth. On this day Johnston himself reached Mana.s.sas, bringing with him Bee's 2d Mississippi and 4th Alabama, and Bartow's 7th and 8th Georgia. Stuart, having successfully amused Patterson, was also on hand.

The remainder of the Army of the Shenandoah, detained by the break upon the Mana.s.sas Gap, was yet missing, and many an anxious glance the generals cast that way.

The First Brigade, undiscovered by the "reconnoissance by stealth,"

rested all day Sat.u.r.day beneath the pines at Mitch.e.l.l's Ford, and at night slept quietly, no longer minding the row of graves. At dawn of Sunday a cannon woke the men, loud and startling, McDowell's signal gun, fired from Centreville, and announcing to the Federal host that the interrupted march, the "On to Richmond" blazoned on banners and chalked on trunks, would now be resumed, w.i.l.l.y nilly the "rebel horde" on the southern bank of Bull Run.

CHAPTER VII

THE DOGS OF WAR

In the east was a great flare of pink with small golden clouds floating across, all seen uncertainly between branches of pine. A mist lay above Bull Run--on the high, opposite bank the woods rose huddled, indistinct, and dream-like. The air was still, cool, and pure, a Sunday morning waiting for church bells. There were no bells; the silence was shattered by all the drums of the brigade beating the long roll. Men rose from the pine needles, shook themselves, caught up musket and ammunition belt. The echoes from McDowell's signal cannon had hardly died when, upon the wooded banks of Bull Run, the First Brigade stood in arms.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Mitch.e.l.l's Ford marked the Confederate centre. Here, and at Blackburn's Ford, were Bonham, Bee, Bartow, Longstreet, and Jackson.

Down the stream, at MacLean's Ford and Union Mills, Early and Ewell and D. R. Jones held the right. To the left, up Bull Run, beyond Bee and beyond Stuart, at the Island, Ball and Lewis fords, were c.o.c.ke's Brigade and Hampton's Legion, and farther yet, at the Stone Bridge, Evans with a small brigade. Upon the northern bank of the Run, in the thick woods opposite Mitch.e.l.l's and Blackburn's fords, was believed to be the ma.s.s of the invaders. There had been a cert.i.tude that the battle would join about these fords. Beauregard's plan was to cross at MacLean's and fall upon the Federal left. Johnston had acceded, and with the first light orders had gone to the brigadiers. "Hold yourselves in readiness to cross and to attack."

Now suddenly from the extreme left, away in the direction of the Stone Bridge, burst an unexpected sound both of musketry and artillery. It was distant, it waxed and waned and waxed again. The First Brigade, nervous, impatient, chilled by the dawn, peered across its own reach of misty stream, and saw naught but the dream-like woods. Tyler's division was over there, it knew. When would firing begin along this line? When would the brigade have orders to move, when would it cross, when would things begin to happen?

An hour pa.s.sed. Ranks were broken and the men allowed to cook and eat a hasty breakfast. How good, in the mist-drenched wood, tasted the scalding coffee, how good the cornbread and the bacon! The last crumb swallowed, they waited again, lying on the brown earth beneath the pines. The mounted officers, advanced upon the bank of the stream and seen through the mist, loomed larger, man and horse, than life. Jackson sat very quiet upon Little Sorrel, his lips moving. Far up the stream the firing continued. The 2d, 4th, 5th, 27th, 33d, and 65th Virginia fidgeted, groaned, swore with impatience.

Suddenly the nearer echoes awoke. A Federal battery, posted on the hills beyond the fringe of thick wood on the northern bank, opened a slow and ineffective fire against the hills and woods across the stream.

The Confederates kept their position masked, made no reply. The sh.e.l.ls fell short, and did harm only to the forest and its creatures. Nearly all fell short, but one, a sh.e.l.l from a thirty-pounder Parrott, entered the pine wood by Mitch.e.l.l's Ford, fell among the wagons of the 65th, and exploded.

A driver was killed, a mule mangled so that it must be shot, and an ambulance split into kindling wood. Few in the First Brigade had seen such a thing before. The men brushed the pine needles and the earth from their coats, and looked at the furrowed ground and at the headless body of the driver with a startled curiosity. There was a sense of a sudden and vivid flash from behind the veil, and they as suddenly perceived that the veil was both cold and dark. This, then, was one of the ways in which death came, shrieking like this, ugly and resistless! The July morning was warm and bright, but more than one of the volunteers in that wood shivered as though it were winter. Jackson rode along the front.