The Long Roll Part 85

"Stay any longer and I will be killed or taken."

The hand closed desperately, both hands now. "For G.o.d's sake! I don't believe you've got so hard a heart. Take it and stamp it and mail it. If they don't know they'll never understand and I'll die knowing they'll never understand. For G.o.d's sake!"

Stafford knelt beside him, opened the grey jacket, and took out the letter. Blood was upon it, but the address was legible. "Die easy. I'll stamp and mail it. I will send a word with it, too, if you like."

A light came into the boy's face. "Tell them that I was like the prodigal son, but that I'm going home--I'm going home--"

The arms fell, the breast ceased to heave, the head drew backward. Death came and stamped the light upon the face. Before Stafford could get to his feet, the blue wave had plunged into the trough. He remembered using his pistol, and he remembered a dizziness of being borne backward. He remembered that a phrase had gone through his mind "the instability of all material things." Then came a blank. He did not a.s.sume that he had lost consciousness, but simply he could not remember. He had been wrecked in a turbulent, hostile ocean. It had made him and others captives, and now they were together at a place which he remembered was called the Roulette House. An hour might have pa.s.sed, two hours; he really could not tell. There were a number of prisoners, most of them badly wounded. They lay in the back yard of the place, on the steps of out-houses, with blue soldiers for guards. A surgeon came through the yard, and helped a little the more agonizedly hurt. He glanced at Stafford's star and sash, came across and offered to bind up the cut across his forehead. "An awful field," he said. "This war is getting horrible. You're a Virginian, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Used to know a lot of Virginia doctors. Liked them first rate! Now we are enemies, and it seems to me a pity. Guess it's as Shakespeare says, 'What fools these mortals be!' I know war's getting to seem to me an awful foolishness. That cornfield out there is sickening--Now! that bleeding's stopped--"

On the left, around and before the Dunkard church, the very fury of the storm brought about at last a sudden failing, a stillness and cessation that seemed like those of death. Sound enough there was undoubtedly, and in the centre the battle yet roared, but by comparison there seemed a dark and sultry calm. Far and near lay the fallen. It was now noon, and since dawn twelve thousand men had been killed or wounded on this left, attacked by Fighting Joe Hooker, held by Stonewall Jackson. Fifteen general officers were dead or disabled. Hardly a brigade, not many regiments, were officered as they had been when the sun rose. There was an exhaustion. Franklin had entered on the field, and one might have thought that the grey would yet be overpowered. But all the blue forces were broken, disorganized; there came an exhaustion, a la.s.situde.

McClellan sent an order forbidding another attack. Cornfield and wood lay heavy, hot, and dark, and by comparison, still.

Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. They brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their great numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to him.

"General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all the fields of the world had given tribute. I know that you do not like hospitals--but would you come and look, sir?"

The general shook his head. "What is the use of looking? There have to be wounded. Do the utmost that you can, doctor."

"I have thought, sir, that, seeing the day is not ended, and they are so overwhelmingly in force, and the Potomac is not three miles in our rear--I have thought that we might manage to get the less badly hurt across. If they attack again and the day should end in defeat--"

"What have you got there?" asked Jackson. "Apples?"

"Yes, sir. I pa.s.sed beneath a tree and gathered half a dozen. Would you like--"

"Yes. I breakfasted very early." He took the rosy fruit and began to eat. His eyes, just glinting under the forage cap, surveyed the scene before him,--trampled wood where the sh.e.l.ls had cut through bough and branch, trampled cornfields where it seemed that a whirlwind had pa.s.sed, his resting, shattered commands, the dead and the dying, the dead horses, the disabled guns, the drifting sulphurous smoke, and, across the turnpike, in the fields and by the east wood, the ma.s.ses of blue, overcanopied also by sulphurous smoke. He finished the apple, took out a handkerchief, and wiped fingers and lips. "Dr. McGuire, they have done their worst. And never use the word defeat."

He jerked his hand into the air. "Do your best for the wounded, doctor, do all that is humanly possible, but do it _here_! I am going now to the centre to see General Lee."

Behind the wood, in a gra.s.sy hollow moderately sheltered from the artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medical director. "Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General McLaws.

They've just brought their colonel in--Fauquier Cary, you know. I wish you would look at his arm."

The two looked. "There's but one thing, colonel."

"Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with." He straightened himself on the boards where the men had laid him. "Sedgwick, too!

Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two savages decked with beads and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever there was fratricidal strife! All right, doctor. I had a great-uncle lost his arm at Yorktown. Can't remember him,--my father and mother loved to talk of him--old Uncle Edward. All right--it's all right."

The two doctors were talking together. "Only a few ounces left. Better use it here?"

"Yes, yes!--One minute longer, colonel. We've got a little chloroform."

The bottle was brought. Cary eyed it. "Is that all you've got?"

"Yes. We took a fair quant.i.ty at Mana.s.sas, but G.o.d only knows the amount we could use! Now."

The man stretched on the boards motioned with the hand that had not been torn by the exploding sh.e.l.l. "No, no! I don't want it. Keep it for some one with a leg to cut off!" He smiled, a charming, twisted smile, shading into a grimace of pain. "No chloroform at Yorktown! I'll be as much of a man as was my great-uncle Edward! Yes, yes, I'm in earnest, doctor. Put it by for the next. All right; I'm ready."

On the knoll by Sharpsburg Lee and Jackson stood and looked toward the right. McClellan had apparently chosen to launch three battles in one day; in the early morning against the Confederate left, at midday against its centre, now against its right. A message came from Longstreet. "Burnside is in motion. I've got D. R. Jones and twenty-five hundred men."

It was evident that Burnside was in motion. With fourteen thousand men he came over the stone bridge across the Antietam. They were fresh troops; their flags were flying, their drums were beating, their bugles braying. The line moved with huzzahs toward the ridge held by Longstreet. From the left came tearing past the knoll the Confederate batteries. Lee was ma.s.sing them in the centre, training them against the eastern foot of the ridge. There had been a lull in the storm, now Pelham opened with loud thunders. Other guns followed. The Federal batteries began to blaze; there broke out a madness of sound. In the midst of it D. R. Jones with his twenty-five hundred men clashed with Burnside's leading brigades.

Stonewall Jackson pulled the forage cap lower, jerked his hand into the air. "Good! good! I will go, sir, and send in my freshest troops."

"Look," said Lee. "Look, general! On the Harper's Ferry road."

All upon the knoll turned and gazed. Air and light played with the battle smoke, drove it somewhat to one side and showed for a few seconds a long and sunlit road, the road from Harper's Ferry. One of the staff began a low uncontrollable laughter. "By G.o.d! I see his red battle s.h.i.+rt! By G.o.d! I see his red battle s.h.i.+rt!"

Lee with a glance checked the sound. He himself looked n.o.bly lifted, grave and thankful. The battle smoke closed, obscuring the road, but the sound of marching men came along it, distinguishable even beneath the artillery fire. "Good, good!" said Jackson. "A. P. Hill is a good soldier."

Tawny with the dust of the seventeen miles, at a double quick and yelling, the crimson battle flags slanting forward, in swung the Light Division! D. R. Jones rallied. Decimated, out-worn, but dangerous, the aiding regiments from the left did well. The grey guns worked with a certain swift and steadfast grimness. From all the ridges of the Antietam the blue cannon thundered, thundered. Blue and grey, the musketry rolled. Sound rose into terrific volume, the eddying smoke blotted out the day. Artillery h.e.l.l--Infantry Inferno--the field of Sharpsburg roared now upon the right.

The Horse Artillery occupied a low ridge like a headland jutting into a gra.s.sy field. Below, above, behind, the smoke rolled; in front the flame leaped from their guns, the sh.e.l.ls sped. There was a great background of battle cloud, lit every ten seconds by the glare from an opposing battery. John Pelham stood directing. Six guns were in fierce and continuous action. The men serving them were picked artillery men. To and fro they moved, down they stooped, up they stood, stepped backward from the gun at fire, moved forward at recoil, fell again to the loading with the precision of the drill ground. They were half naked, they were black with powder, glistening with sweat, some were bleeding. In the light from the guns all came boldly into relief; in the intermediate deep murk they sank from sight, became of the clouds, cloudy, mere shapes in the semi-darkness.

Stonewall Jackson, returning to the Dunkard church and pa.s.sing behind this headland, turned Little Sorrel's head and came upon the plateau.

Pelham met him. "Yes, general, we're doing well. Yes, sir, it's holding out. Caissons were partly filled during the lull."

"Good, good!" said Jackson. He dismounted and walked forward to the guns. Pelham followed. "I don't think you should be out here, general.

They've got our range very accurately--"

The other apparently did not notice the remark. He stood near one of the guns and turned his eyes upon the battle on the right. "Longstreet strikes a heavy blow. He and Hill will push them back. Colonel Pelham, train two guns upon that body of the enemy at the ford."

Pelham moved toward the further guns. The howitzer nearest Jackson was fired, reloaded, fired again. The men beside it stood back. It blazed, thundered, recoiled. A great, black, cylindrical sh.e.l.l came with a demoniac shriek. At the moment the platform was lit with the battle glare. Its fall was seen. It fell, smoking, immediately beside Stonewall Jackson. Such was the concussion of the air that for a moment he was stunned. Involuntarily his arm went up before his eyes; he made a backward step. Pelham, returning from the further guns and still some yards away, gave a shout of warning and horror; from all the men who had seen the thing there burst a similar cry. With the motion almost of the sh.e.l.l itself, a man of the crew of the howitzer reached the torn earth and the cylinder. His body half naked, blackened, brushed, in pa.s.sing, the general. He put his hands beneath the heated, smoking bottle of death, lifted it, and rushed on to the edge of the escarpment fifty feet away. Here he swung it with force, threw it from him with burned hands.

Halfway to the field below it exploded.

Pelham, very pale, protested with some sternness. "You can't stay here, general! My men can't work with you here. It doesn't matter about us, but it does matter about you. Please go, sir."

"I am going, colonel. I have seen what I wished to see. Who is the man who took up the sh.e.l.l?"

Pelham turned to the howitzer. "Which of you was it?"

Half a dozen voices were raised in answer. "Deaderick, sir. But he burned his hands badly and he asked the lieutenant if he could go to the rear--"

"Good, good!" said Stonewall Jackson. "He did well. But there are many brave men in this army." He went back to Little Sorrel, where he stood cropping the dried gra.s.s, and stiffly mounted. As he turned from the platform and the guns, all lit again by the orange glare, there came from the right an accession of sound, then high, shrill, and triumphant the Confederate yell. A shout arose from the Horse Artillery. "They're breaking! they're breaking! Burnside, too, is breaking! Yaaaii!

Yaaaaiiihh! Yaaaaaiiihhh!"

CHAPTER XLIV

BY THE OPEQUON

The battle of Sharpsburg was a triumph neither for blue nor grey, for North nor South. With the sinking of the sun ceased the b.l.o.o.d.y, prolonged, and indecisive struggle. Blue and grey, one hundred and thirty thousand men fought that battle. When the pale moon came up she looked on twenty-one thousand dead and wounded.

The living ranks sank down and slept beside the dead. Lee on Traveller waited by the highroad until late night. Man by man his generals came to him and made their report--their ghastly report. "Very good, general.

What is your opinion?"--"I think, sir, that we should cross the Potomac to-night."--"Very well, general. What is your opinion?"--"General Lee, we should cross the Potomac to-night."--"Yes, general, it has been our heaviest field. What is your advice?"--"General Lee, I am here to do what you tell me to do."