The Long Roll Part 39

She raised a strong young voice. "Help! Help! Stop, please! O soldiers!

Soldiers! Help! Soldiers! There! I've made them hear and waked the baby!"

"Won't you let me go, ma'am? I didn't mean no harm."

"No more did the Indian great-grandmother killed when he broke in the door! You're a coward and a deserter, and the South don't need you! Bye, bye, baby--bye, bye!"

A hand tried the door. "What's the matter here? Open!"

"It's locked, sir. Come round to the window--Bye, baby, bye!"

The dismounted cavalryman--an officer--appeared outside the open window. His eyes rested a moment upon the interior; then he put hands upon the sill and swung himself up and into the room.

"What's all this? Has this soldier annoyed you, madam?"

The girl set down the musket and took up the baby. "I'm downright glad somebody came, sir. He's a coward and a deserter and a drunkard and a frightener of women! He says he's had pneumonia, and I don't believe him. If I was the South I'd send every man like him right across Mason and Dixon as fast as they'd take them!--I reckon he's my prisoner, sir, and I give him up to you."

The officer smiled. "I'm not the provost, but I'll rid you of him somehow." He wiped the dust from his face. "Have you anything at all that we could eat? My men and I have had nothing since midnight."

"That coward's eaten all I had, sir. I'm sorry--If you could wait a little, I've some flour and I'll make a pan of biscuits--"

"No. We cannot wait. We must be up with the army before it strikes the Valley pike."

"I've got some cold potatoes, and some sc.r.a.ps of bread crust I was saving for the chickens--"

"Then won't you take both to the four men out there? Hungry soldiers _like_ cold potatoes and bread crusts. I'll see to this fellow.--Now, sir, what have you got to say for yourself?"

"Major, my feet are so sore, and I was kind of light-headed! First thing I knew, I just somehow got separated from the brigade--"

"We'll try to find it again for you. What were you doing here?"

"Major, I just asked her for a little licker. And, being light-headed, maybe I happened to say something or other that she took up notions about. The first thing I knew--and I just as innocent as her baby--she up and turned my own musket against me--"

"Who locked the door?"

"Why--why--"

"Take the key out of your pocket and go open it. Faugh!--What's your brigade?"

"The Stonewall, sir."

"Humph! They'd better stone you out of it. Regiment?"

"65th, sir. Company A.--If you'd be so good just to look at my foot, sir, you'd see for yourself that I couldn't march--"

"We'll try it with the Rogue's March.--65th. Company A. Richard Cleave's old company."

"He ain't my best witness, sir. He's got a grudge against me--"

Stafford looked at him. "Don't put yourself in a fury over it. Have you one against him?"

"I have," said Steve, "and I don't care who knows it! If he was as steady against you, sir, as he has proved himself against me--"

"I would do much, you mean. What is your name?"

"Steven Dagg."

The woman returned. "They've eaten it all, sir. I saved you a piece of bread. I wish it was something better."

Stafford took it from her with thanks. "As for this man, my orderly shall take him up behind, and when we reach Middletown I'll turn him over with my report to his captain. If any more of his kind come around, I would advise you just to shoot them at once.--Now you, sir! In front of me.--March!"

The five hors.e.m.e.n, detail of Flournoy's, sent upon some service the night before, mounted a hill from which was visible a great stretch of country. From the east came the Front Royal road; north and south stretched that great artery, the Valley turnpike. Dust lay over the Front Royal road. Dust hung above the Valley pike--hung from Strasburg to Middletown, and well beyond Middletown. Out of each extended cloud, now at right angles, came rumblings as of thunder. The column beneath the Front Royal cloud was moving rapidly, halts and delays apparently over, la.s.situde gone, energy raised to a forward blowing flame. That on the Valley pike, the six-mile-long retreat from Strasburg, was making, too, a progress not unrapid, considering the immensity of its wagon train and the uncertainty of the commanding general as to what, on the whole, it might be best to do. The Confederate advance, it was evident, would strike the pike at Middletown in less than fifteen minutes.

Stafford and his men left the hill, entered a body of woods running toward the village, and three minutes later encountered a detachment of blue hors.e.m.e.n, flankers of Hatch's large cavalry force convoying the Federal wagon train. There was a shout, and an interchange of pistol shots. The blue outnumbered the grey four to one. The latter wheeled their horses, used spur and voice, outstripped a shower of bullets and reached Middletown. When, breathless, they drew rein before a street down which grey infantry poured to the onslaught, one of the men, pressing up to Stafford, made his report. "That d.a.m.ned deserter, sir!--in the scrimmage a moment ago he must have slipped off. I'm sorry--but I don't reckon he's much loss."

Steve had taken refuge behind the lock of a rail fence draped with creeper. On the whole, he meant to stay there until the two armies had wended their ways. When it was all done and over, he would make a change somehow and creep to the southward and get a doctor's certificate. All this in the first gasp of relief, at the end of which moment it became apparent that the blue cavalry had seen him run to cover. A couple of troopers rode toward the rail fence. Steve stepped from behind the creepers and surrendered. "Thar are Daggs up North anyway," he explained to the man who took his musket. "I've a pack of third cousins in them parts somewhere. I shouldn't wonder if they weren't fighting on your side this dog-goned minute! I reckon I'd as lief fight there myself."

The soldier took him to his officer. "It's a d.a.m.ned deserter, sir. Says he's got cousins with us. Says he'd as soon fight on one side as the other."

"I can't very well fight nowhere," whined Steve. "If you'd be so good as to look at my foot, sir--"

"I see. You deserted and they picked you up. Very well, Mr. Deserter, I want some information and you're the man to give it to me."

Steve gave it without undue reluctance. "What in h.e.l.l does it matter, anyway?" he thought, "they'll find out d.a.m.ned quick anyhow about numbers and that we aren't only Ewell. Gawd! Old Jack's struck them this very minute! I hear the guns."

So did the company to which he had deserted. "h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation!

Artillery to shake the earth! Middletown. All the wagons to pa.s.s and the cavalry.--It isn't just Ewell's division, he says. He says it's all of them and Stonewall Jackson!--Take the fellow up somebody and bring him along!--_Fours right! Forward!_"

Five minutes later they reached the pike, south of Middletown. It proved a seething stream of horse and foot and wagon train, forms shadowy and umber, moving in the whirling dust. Over all hung like a vast and black streamer a sense of panic. Underneath it every horse was restive and every voice had an edge. Steve gathered that there were teamsters who wished to turn and go back to Strasburg. He saw wagon masters plying long black whips about the shoulders of these unwilling; he heard officers shouting. The guns ahead boomed out, and there came a cry of "Ashby"! The next instant found him violently unseated and hurled into the dust of the middle road, from which he escaped by rolling with all the velocity of which he was capable into the depression at the side. He hardly knew what had happened--there had been, he thought, a runaway team dragging an ordnance wagon. He seemed to remember a moving thickness in the all-pervading dust, and, visible for an instant, a great U. S. painted on the wagon side. Then shouts, general scatteration, some kind of a crash--He rubbed a b.u.mp upon his forehead, large as a guinea hen's egg. "Gawd! I wish I'd never come into this here world!"

The world was, indeed, to-day rather like a bad dream--like one of those dim and tangled streams of things, strange and frightful, at once grotesquely unfamiliar and sickeningly real, which one neighbours for a time in sleep. Steve picked himself out of the ditch, being much in danger, even there, of trampling hoofs or wagons gone amuck, and attained, how he could not tell, a rank wayside clump of Jamestown weed and pokeberry. In the midst of this he squatted, gathered into as small a bunch as was physically possible. He was in a panic; the sweat cold upon the back of his hands. Action or inaction in this world, sitting, standing, or going seemed alike ugly and dangerous.

First of all, this world was blue-clad and he was dressed in grey. It was in a wild hurry; the main stream striving somehow to gain Middletown, which must be pa.s.sed, hook or crook, aid of devil or aid of saint, while a second current surged with increasing strength back toward Strasburg. All was confusion. They would never stop to listen to explanations as to a turned coat! Steve was sure that they would simply shoot him or cut him down before he could say "I am one of you!" They would kill him, like a stray bee in the hive, and go their way, one way or the other, whichever way they were going! The contending motions made him giddy.

An aide in blue, galloping madly from the front, encountered beside the pokeberry clump an officer, directing, with his sword. Steve was morally a.s.sured that they had seen him, had stopped, in short, to hale him forth. As they did not--only excitedly shouted each at the other--he drew breath again. He could see the two but dimly, close though they were, because of the dust. Suddenly there came to him a rose-coloured thought. That same veil must make him well-nigh invisible; more than that, the dust lay so thickly on all things that colour in any uniform was a debatable quality. He didn't believe anybody was noticing. The extreme height to which his courage ever attained, was at once his. He felt almost dare-devil.

The aide was shouting, so that he might be heard through the uproar.

"Where are the guns? Colonel Hatch says for the good Lord's sake hurry them up! h.e.l.l's broke loose and occupied Middletown. Ashby's there, and they say Jackson! They've planted guns--they've strung thousands of men behind stone fences--they're using our own wagons for breastworks! The cavalry was trying to get past. Listen to that!"

The other officer shouted also, waving his sword. "There's a battery behind--Here it comes!--We ought to have started last night. The general said he must develop the forces of the enemy--"

"He's developing them all right. Well, good-bye! Meet in Was.h.i.+ngton!"

The battery pa.s.sed with uproar, clanging toward the front, scattering men to either side like spray. Steve's wayside bower was invaded. "Get out of here! This ain't no time to be sitting on your tail, thinking of going fis.h.i.+ng! G'lang!"

Steve went, covered with dust, the shade of the uniform below never noticed in the furious excitement of the road. Life there was at fever point, aware that death was hovering, and struggling to escape. In the dust and uproar, the blare and panic, he was aware that he was moving toward Middletown where they were fighting. Fighting was not precisely that for which he was looking, and yet he was moving that way, and he could not help it. The noise in front was frightful. The head of the column of which he now formed an unwilling part, the head of the snake, must be somewhere near Newtown, the rattling tail just out of Strasburg.

The snake was trying to get clear, trying to get out of the middle Valley to Winchester, fifteen miles away. It was trying to drag its painful length through the village just ahead. There were scorpions in the village, on both sides the pike, on the hills above. Stonewall Jackson with his old sabre, with his "Good! Good!" was hacking at the snake, just there, in its middle. The old sabre had not yet cut quite through, but there was hope--or fear--(the deserter positively did not know which) that presently it would be done. A tall soldier, beside whom, in the dream torrent, Steve found himself, began to talk. "Got any water? No. n.o.body has. I guess it's pouring down rain in New Bedford this very minute! All the little streams running." He sighed. "'T ain't no use in fussing. I don't remember to have ever seen you before, but then we're all mixed up--"

"We are," said Steve. "Ain't the racket awful?"