The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln Part 74

"You've got the biggest set I ever saw then!" the Captain said, helping him to clear his eyes.

A sh.e.l.l exploded squarely against the gun carriage, hurling it into junk and piling all four horses on the ground. Their dying cries rang pitifully through the smoke-wreathed woods. One horse lifted his head, placed both fore feet on the ground and tried to rise. His hind legs were only shreds of torn flesh. He neighed a long, quivering, soul-piercing shriek of agony and a merciful officer drew his revolver and killed him.

A cannoneer lay by this horse's side with both his legs hopelessly crushed so high in the thick flesh of the thighs there was no hope. He was moaning horribly. He turned his eyes in agony to the officer who had shot the horse:

"Please, Captain--for the love of G.o.d--shoot me, too, I can't live----"

The Captain shook his head.

"Have mercy on me--for Jesus' sake--kill me--you were kind to my horse--can't you do as much for me?"

The Captain turned away in anguish. He couldn't even send for morphine.

The South had no more morphine. The blockade's iron hand was on her hospitals now.

Ned fought for half an hour behind a tree. Twice the bullets striking the hark knocked pieces into his eyes. He was sure at least fifty Minie b.a.l.l.s struck it.

A bald-headed Colonel rushed by at double quick leading a fresh regiment into action to support them. The h.e.l.l of battle was not so hot the Southern soldier had lost his sense of humor. They were glad to see this dashing old fighter and they told him so in no uncertain way.

"Hurrah for Baldy!"

"Sick 'em, Baldy--sick 'em----"

"I'll bet on old man Baldy every time----"

"Hurrah for the bald-headed man!"

The Colonel paid no attention to their shouts. The flash of his muskets in the deepening twilight turned the tide in their favor. The big guns had been unlimbered and pulled back deeper into the blue lines.

John Vaughan's line was swung to support the charge of Hooker's old division which first halted the rush of Jackson's men. In the field beyond the Chancellor House stood a huge straw stack. As the regiment rushed by at double quick the Colonel spied a panic-stricken officer crouching in terror behind the pile.

The Colonel slapped him across the shoulders with his sword:

"What sort of a place is this for you, sir?"

Through chattering teeth came the trembling response:

"W-w-hy, m-my G.o.d, do you think the bullets can come through?"

The Colonel threw up his hands in rage and pressed on with his men.

A wagon loaded with entrenching tools, on which sat half a dozen negroes rattled by on its way to the rear. A solid shot plumped squarely into the load.

John saw picks, spades, shovels and negroes suddenly fill the air. Every negro lit on his feet and his legs were running when he struck the ground. They reached the tall timber before the last pick fell.

The regiments were going into battle double quick, but they were not going so fast they couldn't laugh.

"Hurry up men!" the Colonel called. "Hurry up, let's get in there and help 'em!"

A moment more and they were in it.

The man beside John threw up both hands and dropped with the dull, unmistakable thud of death--the soldier who has been in battle knows the sickening sound.

They were thrown around the Third Corps battery to protect their guns which had been dragged to a place more securely within the lines. Still their gunners kept falling one by one--falling ominously at the crack of a single gun in the woods. A Confederate sharpshooter had climbed a tree and was picking them off.

A tall Westerner spoke to the Colonel:

"Let me go huntin' for him!"

The Commander nodded and John went with him--why? He asked himself the question before he had taken ten steps through the shadowy underbrush.

The answer was plain. He knew the truth at once. The elemental brutal instinct of the hunter had kindled at the flash in that Westerner's eye.

It would be a hunt worth while--the game was human.

For five minutes they crept through the bushes hiding from tree to tree in the open s.p.a.ces. They searched the tops in vain, when suddenly a piece of white oak bark fluttered down from the sky and struck the ground at their feet.

The Westerner smiled at John and stood motionless:

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!"

They waited breathlessly, afraid to look up into the boughs of the towering oak beneath which they were standing.

"Don't move now!" the man from the West cried, "and I'll pot him."

Slowly he stepped backward, softly, noiselessly, his eye fixed in the treetop, his gun raised and finger on the trigger.

He stopped, aimed, and fired.

John looked up and saw the grey figure fall back from the tree trunk and plunge downward, bounding from limb to limb and striking the ground within ten feet of where he stood with heavy thud. The blood was gushing in red streams from his nose and mouth.

They turned and hurried back to their lines--another fierce attack was being made on those guns. The men in grey charged and drove them a hundred feet before they rallied and pushed them back with frightful loss on both sides.

John's Captain fell, dangerously wounded, and lay fifty feet beyond their battle line. The dry leaves in the woods had taken fire from a sh.e.l.l and the blaze was nearing the wounded men. The Westerner coolly leaped from his position behind a tree, walked out in a hail of lead, picked up his wounded Commander, and carried him safely to the rear. He had just stepped back to take his stand in line by John's side when a flying piece of shrapnel tore a hole in his side. He dropped to his knees, sank lower to his elbow, turned his blue eyes to the darkening sky and slowly muttered as if to himself:

"Poor--little--wife--and--babies!"

The night was drawing her merciful veil over the scene at last. Jackson having crushed and mangled Hooker's right wing and rolled it back in red defeat over five miles in two hours, was slowly feeling his way on his last reconnaissance for the day to make his plans for the next. Through a fatal misunderstanding he was fired on by his own men and borne from the field fatally wounded.

A shiver of horror thrilled the Southerners when the news of Jackson's fall was whispered through the darkness.

At midnight Sickles led his division back into the dense woods and for three terrible hours the men on both sides fought as demons in the shadows. The long lines of blazing muskets in the darkness looked like the onward rush of a forest fire. At times two solid walls of flame seemed to leap through the tree tops into the starlit heavens. A small portion of the captured ground was recovered at a frightful loss--and no man knows to this day how many gallant men in blue were shot down by their own comrades in the darkness and confusion of that mad a.s.sault.

Hooker sent a desperate call to Sedgwick to hurry to his relief by carrying out his plan of sweeping Marye's Heights and falling on Lee's rear.

At dawn Stuart in command of Jackson's corps led the new charge on Hooker's lines, his grey veterans shouting:

"Remember Jackson!"

Through the long hours of the terrible third day of May the fierce combat of giants raged. During the morning Hooker's headquarters were reached by the Confederate artillery and the old Chancellor House, filled with the wounded, was knocked to pieces and set on fire. The women and children and slaves of the Chancellor family were shivering in its cellar while the sh.e.l.ls were hurling its bricks and timbers in murderous fury on the helpless wounded who lay in hundreds in the yard.

The men from both armies rushed into this h.e.l.l and carried the wounded to a place of safety.