The Master of Warlock Part 9

"I remember that he gave me no chance to answer, no opportunity to protest again my innocence of such intent as he had imputed to me in his pa.s.sionate speech, but turned his back and stalked away, with that stride which I saw again to-day, as he paced his beat. That was two years ago--and to-day I have seen him again in such company as he would never have sought but for me,--the willing companion of ruffians, the a.s.sociate of desperadoes, the messmate of thieves!"

Agatha was on her feet now, and nervously laying aside one after another of the little fripperies with which she had decorated her person that day. She found herself presently half-unconsciously searching for the gown that she must wear at dinner, though her never-failing maid had laid it out long before her home-coming, that it might be in readiness for her need.

A sudden thought came into the suffering girl's mind.

"These two men, whose lives are hurt by their love for me, will suffer far less than I shall. They are soldiers as strong to endure as they are strong to dare. They have occupation for all their waking hours. They will be upon the march, in battle, or otherwise actively employed all the time. In remembering more strenuous things they will forget their sorrows and throw aside their griefs as they cast away everything when they go into battle that may in any wise hinder their activity or embarra.s.s their freedom. I must sit still here at Willoughby, and think, and think, and think."

Then like a lightning flash another thought came into her mind, and she spoke it aloud:

"Why should I be idler than they are? Why should I sit here brooding while they are toiling and fighting for Virginia? I am no more afraid of death or of danger than they are, and while women may not fight, there are other ways in which a woman of courage may render quite as good a service. I'll do it. I'll take the risks. I'll endure the hardships.

I'll render my country a _service that shall count_."

With that she rang for her maid and bade her prepare a cold plunge bath.

When she descended to dinner, an hour later, Agatha no longer chattered frivolously, as she had done in the carriage, by way of concealing her emotions, but bore herself seriously, as became her in view of the prospect of battle on the morrow.

In that hour of agonising thought, Agatha Ronald had ceased to be a girl, and had become an earnest, resolute woman, strong to do, strong to endure, and, if need be, strong to dare. Life had taken on a new meaning in her eyes.

X

_IN ACTION_

It was midnight when the battery to which Baillie was attached reached Mana.s.sas Junction. The men were weary and half-starved after three days of fighting and marching, and the horses, worn out with dragging the guns and caissons over well-nigh impa.s.sable roads, were famishing for water. But an effort to secure water and forage for them failed, and so did an effort to secure water and rations for the men.

For on the eve of the first great battle of the war the Southern army was in a state of semi-starvation which grew worse with every hour that brought fresh relays of troops but no new supplies of food. Already had begun that course of extraordinary mismanagement in the supply departments at Richmond which throughout the war kept the Army of Northern Virginia constantly half-starving or wholly starving, even when, as at Mana.s.sas, it lay in the midst of a land of abounding plenty.

All the efforts of the generals commanding in the field to remedy this state of things by drawing upon the granaries and smoke-houses round about them for supplies that were in danger of presently falling into the enemy's hands, were thwarted by the stupid obstinacy of a crack-brained commissary-general. It was his inexplicable policy, while the army lay at Mana.s.sas with an unused railroad reaching into the rich fields to the west, to forbid the purchase of food and forage there except by his own direct agents, who were required to send it all to Richmond, whence it was transported back again, in such meagre quant.i.ties as an already overtaxed single track railroad could manage to carry.

Red-tape was choking the army to death from the very beginning, and it continued to do so to the end, in spite of all remonstrances.

Even in the matter of water the men at Mana.s.sas were restricted to a few pints a day to each man for all uses, simply because the commanding general was not allowed the simple means of procuring a more adequate supply.

This, however, is not the place in which to set forth in detail those facts of perverse stupidity which have been fully stated in official reports, in General Beauregard's memoirs, and in other authoritative works. Such matters are mentioned herein only so far as they affected the events that go to make up the present story.

When the Army of the Shenandoah began to add its numbers to that already gathered at Mana.s.sas, a way out was found, so far at least as water was concerned, by sending the regiments and batteries, as fast as they came, to positions near Bull Run, some miles in front, where water at least was to be had. Baillie's command, worn out as it was, and suffering from hunger, was hurried through the camp and forced to march some weary miles farther before taking even that small measure of rest and sleep that the rapidly waning night allowed. It was nearly morning when the men and horses were permitted to drink together out of the muddy stream which was presently to mark the fighting-line between two armies in fierce battle for the mastery.

It was nearly sunrise when a cannon-shot broke the stillness of a peculiarly brilliant Sunday morning and summoned all the weary men to their posts. A little later the battery with which we are concerned received its orders and was moved into position on the line. Its complement of commissioned officers being short, Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram had command of the two guns which const.i.tuted the left section, and had a lieutenant's work to do.

Troops were being hurried hither and thither in what seemed to Baillie's inexperienced eyes a hopeless confusion. But as he watched, he saw order grow out of the chaos,--a manifestation of the fact that there was one mind in control, and that every movement, however meaningless it might seem, was part and parcel of a concerted plan, and was intended to have its bearing upon the result.

In the meanwhile the occasional report of a rifle had grown into a continuous rattle of musketry on the farther side of the stream, where the skirmishers were hotly at work, their firing being punctuated now and then by the deeper exclamation of a cannon. But the work of the day had not yet begun in earnest. The main line was not yet engaged, and would not be until the skirmishers should slowly fall back upon it from their position beyond the stream.

To men in line of battle this is the most trying of all war's experiences. Then it is that every man questions himself closely as to his ability to endure the strain. Nerves are stretched to a tension that threatens collapse. Speech is difficult even to the bravest men, and the longing to plunge into the fray and be actively engaged is well-nigh irresistible.

All this and worse is the experience even of war-seasoned veterans when they must stand or lie still during these endless minutes of waiting, while the skirmishers are engaged in front. What must have been the strain upon the nerves and brains of men, not one of whom had as yet seen a battle, and not one in ten of whom had even received his "baptism of fire" in a skirmish, as the men in Baillie's battery had done during the week before! It is at such a time, and not in the heat of battle, that men's courage is apt to falter, and that discipline alone holds them to their duty.

The strain was rather relieved of its intensity by the shrieking of a Hotchkiss sh.e.l.l, which presently burst in the midst of Baillie Pegram's section and not far from his person. Then came the less noisy but more nerve-racking patter of musket-b.a.l.l.s,--few and scattering still, as the skirmish-lines were still well in front,--but deadly in their force, as was seen when two or three of the men suddenly sank to the ground in the midst of a stillness which was broken only by the whiz of the occasional bullets.

One man cried out with pain. The rest of those struck were still. The one who cried out was slightly wounded. The others were dead. And the battle was not yet begun.

At this moment came a courier with orders. Upon receiving them the captain hurriedly turned to Baillie, and said:

"Take your section across the Run, at the ford there just to the left.

Take position with the skirmish-line and get your orders from its commander. Leave your caissons behind, and move at a gallop."

Baillie Pegram was too new to the business of war to understand precisely what all this meant. Had he seen a little more of war he would have guessed at once that the enemy was moving upon the Confederate left along the road that lay beyond the stream, and that his guns were needed to aid the skirmishers in the work to be done in front in preparation for the battle that had not yet burst in all its fury. He would have understood, too, from the order to leave his caissons behind, that the stand beyond the stream was not meant to be of long duration.

The fifty shots he carried in each of his limber-chests would be quite enough to last him till orders should come to fall back across the stream again.

But he did not understand all this clearly. What he did understand was that he was under orders to take his guns across the stream and use them there as vigorously as he could till further orders should come.

As he emerged from the woods a few hundred yards beyond Bull Run, he found a skirmish-line of men lying down and contesting the ground inch by inch with another line like their own, beyond which he could see the heavy columns of the enemy marching steadily to turn the Confederate left flank and force it from its position. Notwithstanding his lack of experience in such matters, he saw instantly what was happening, and realised that this left wing of Beauregard's army was destined to receive the brunt of the enemy's attack. He wondered, in his ignorance, if Beauregard knew all this, and if somebody ought not to go and tell him of it.

He had no time to think beyond this, for at that moment the skirmish-line, under some order which he had not heard, gave way to the right and left, leaving a little s.p.a.ce open for his guns. Planting them there he opened fire with shrapnel, which he now and then changed to canister when the enemy, in his eagerness, pressed forward to within scant distance of the slowly retiring skirmish-line of the Confederates.

Under orders Baillie fell back with the skirmishers, moving the guns by hand, and continuing to fire as he went.

As the Confederate skirmishers drew near the stream which they were to cross, the officer in command of them said to Pegram:

"Advance your guns a trifle, Sergeant-Major, and give them your heaviest fire for twenty-five seconds or so. When they recoil, limber up and take your guns across the creek as quickly as possible. I'll cover your movement."

Baillie did not perfectly understand the purpose of this, but he understood his orders, and very promptly obeyed them. Advancing his guns quickly to a little knoll thirty or forty yards in front, he opened fire with double charges of canister, each gun firing at the rate of three or four times a minute, and each vomiting a gallon of iron b.a.l.l.s at each discharge into the faces of a line of men not a hundred yards away. At the same moment the riflemen of the skirmish-line rose to their feet, rushed forward with a yell that impressed Baillie as truly demoniacal, and delivered a murderous volley of Minie b.a.l.l.s in aid of his canister.

The combined fire was irresistible, as it was meant to be, and the Federal skirmishers fell back in some confusion in face of it.

Then the cool-headed leader of the skirmishers turned to Baillie and commanded:

"Now be quick. Take your guns across the creek at once. They'll be on us again in a minute with reinforcements, but I'll hold them back till you get the guns across--"

He had not finished his order when he fell, with a bullet in his brain, and his men, picking him up, laid him limply across his horse, which two of them hurried to the rear, pa.s.sing within ten feet of Baillie Pegram as he struggled to get his guns across the run without wetting his ammunition.

"Poor, gallant fellow!" thought Baillie, as the corpse was borne past him. "He was only a captain, but he would have made himself a major-general presently, with his coolness and his determination. He died too soon!"

Meanwhile Baillie was busy executing the order that the dead man had given with his last breath, while some other was in command out there in front and struggling to protect the guns till they could pa.s.s the stream.

It is always so in life. No man is indispensable. When one man falls at the post of duty, there is always some other to take his place. "Men may come and men may go," but the work that men were born to do "goes on for ever."

As Baillie was directing the struggles of his drivers in the difficult task of recrossing the stream, three sh.e.l.ls burst over him in so quick a succession that he did not know from which of them came the fragment that cut a great gash in his head and rendered him for the moment senseless. He recovered himself quickly, and this was fortunate, for his untrained and inexperienced men were far less steady in retreat under fire than they had been out there in front, and Baillie's direction was needed now to prevent them from abandoning in panic the guns with which they had fought so gallantly a few minutes before.

Under his sharply given commands they recovered their morale, and a few minutes later Baillie brought his powder-grimed guns again into position on the left of the battery. Then, half-blinded by the blood that was flowing freely over his face and clothing, he sought his captain, raised his hand in salute, and said, feebly:

"Captain, I beg to report that I have executed my orders. My men have behaved well, every--"

A heavy musketry fire from the enemy at that moment began, and Baillie Pegram's horse--the beautiful sorrel mare on which Agatha had once ridden--sank under him, in that strange, limp way in which a horse falls when killed instantly by a bullet received in any vital part.

By good fortune the sergeant-major was not caught under the animal, but as he tried to walk toward the new mount which he had asked for, he staggered and fell, much as the mare had done, but from a different cause. Complete unconsciousness had overtaken him, as a consequence of the shock of his wound and the resultant loss of blood.

When he came to consciousness again, he was lying on the gra.s.s under a tree, with a young surgeon kneeling beside him, busy with bandages. For a time his consciousness did not extend beyond his immediate surroundings and the terrific aching of his head. Presently the heavy firing which seemed to be all about him, and the zip, zip, zip of bullets as they struck the earth under the hospital tree brought him to a realisation of the fact that battle was raging there, and that he, somehow,--he could not make out how,--was absent from his post with the guns. He made a sudden effort to rise, but instantly fell back again, unconscious.