The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln Part 87

A division of negro troops were hurried in and the sight of them drove the Southerners to desperation. It took but a moment's grim charge to hurl these black regiments back into the pit on the bodies of their fallen white comrades. The crater became a butcher's shambles.

When the smoke cleared four thousand more of Grant's men lay dead and wounded in the grave in which had been buried three hundred grey defenders.

Lee's losses were less than one third as many. Grant asked for a truce to bury his dead and from five until nine next morning there was no firing along the grim lines of siege for the first time since the day Petersburg had been invested.

So confident now was Lee that he could hold his position against any a.s.sault his powerful opponent could make, he detached Jubal Early with twenty thousand men and sent him through the Shenandoah Valley to strike Was.h.i.+ngton.

Grant was compelled to send Sheridan after him. In the meantime he determined to take advantage of Lee's reduced strength and cut the Weldon railroad over which were coming all supplies from the South.

Warren's corps was sent on this important mission. His attack failed and he was driven back with a loss of three thousand men. He entrenched himself and called for reinforcements. Hanc.o.c.k's famous corps was hurried to the a.s.sistance of Warren.

John Vaughan's regiment was now attached to Hanc.o.c.k's army. As they were strapping on their knapsacks for this march, to his amazement Julius suddenly appeared, grinning and bustling about as if he had never strayed from the fold. His clothes were in shreds and tatters.

"Where have you been all this time, n.i.g.g.e.r?" John asked.

"Who, me?"

"And where'd you get that new suit of clothes?"

"Well, I'm gwine tell ye Gawd's truf, Ma.r.s.e John. Atter dat Cold Harbor business I lit out fur de odder side. I wuz gittin' 'long very well dar wid General Elliot in de Confederacy when all of er sudden somfin'

busted an' blowed me clean back inter de Union. An' here I is--ya.s.sah.

An' I'se gwine ter stick by you now. 'Pears lak de ain't no res' fur de weary no whar."

John was glad to have his enterprising cook once more and received the traitor philosophically.

Lee threw A. P. Hill's corps between Warren and Hanc.o.c.k's advancing division. Hanc.o.c.k entrenched himself along-the railroad which he was destroying.

Hill trained his artillery on these trenches and charged them with swift desperation late in the afternoon. The Union lines were broken and crushed and the men fled in panic. In vain "Hanc.o.c.k the Superb," who had seen his soldiers fall but never fail, tried to rally them. In agony he witnessed their utter rout. His trenches were taken, his guns captured and turned in a storm of death on his fleeing men. He lost twelve stands of colors, nine big guns and twenty-five hundred men.

As the darkness fell General Nelson A. Miles succeeded in rallying a new line and stayed the panic by a desperate countercharge.

Once more the grapple was hand to hand, man to man, in the darkness.

John Vaughan had fired the last load, save one, from his revolver, and sword in hand, was cheering his men in a mad effort to regain their lost entrenchments. Blue and grey were mixed in black confusion. Only by the light of flas.h.i.+ng guns could friend be distinguished from foe. A musket flamed near his face and through the deep darkness which followed a sword thrust pierced his side. He sprang back with an oath and clinched with his antagonist, feeling for his throat in silence. For a minute they wheeled struggled and fought in desperation, stumbling over underbrush, slipping to their knees and rising. Every instinct of the fighting brute in man was up now and the battle was to the death for one--perhaps both.

John succeeded at last in releasing his right hand and drawing his revolver. His enemy sprang back at the same moment and through the darkness again came the sword into his breast. He felt the blood following the blade as it was s.n.a.t.c.hed away, raised his revolver and fired his last shot squarely at his foe. The muzzle was less than two feet from his face and in the flash he saw Ned's look of horror, both brothers recognizing each other in the same instant.

"John--my G.o.d, it's you!"

"Yes--yes--and it's you--G.o.d have mercy if I've killed you!"

In a moment the older brother had caught Ned's sinking body and lowered it gently on the leaves.

"It's all right, John, old man," he gasped. "If I had to die it's just as well by your hand. It's war--it's h.e.l.l--all h.e.l.l--anyhow--what's the difference----"

"But you mustn't die, Boy!" John whispered fiercely. "You mustn't, I tell you!"

"I didn't want to die," Ned sighed. "Life was--just--becoming--real--beautiful--wonderful----"

He stopped and drew a deep breath.

John bent lower and Ned's arm slipped toward his neck and his fingers touched the warm blood soaking his clothes.

"I'm--afraid--I--got--you,--too,--John----"

"No, I'm all right--brace up, Boy. Pull that devil will of yours together--we've both got it--and live!"

The younger man's head had sunk on his brother's blood-stained breast.

"Now, look here, Ned, old man--this'll never do--don't--don't--give up!"

The answer came faint and low:

"Tell--Betty--when--you--see--her--that--with--my--last--breath--I--spoke --her--name--her--face--lights--the--dark--way----"

"You're going, Ned?"

"Yes----"

"Say you forgive me!"

"There's--nothing--to--forgive--it's--all--right--John--good-bye----"

The voice stopped. The battle had ceased. The woods were still. The older brother could feel the slow rising and falling of the strong young chest as if the muscles in the glory of their perfect life refused to hear the call of Death.

He bent in the darkness and kissed the trembling lips and they, too, were still. He drew himself against the trunk of a tree and through the beautiful summer night held the body of his dead brother in his arms.

His fevered eyes were opened at last and he saw war as it is for the first time. It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and wounded after battle--sixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in thirty days--ten thousand five hundred in the futile dash against Petersburg--four thousand in the crater--five thousand five hundred more now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure--not an inch of ground gained.

These torn and mangled bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only loathsome things to be hidden from sight before the bugles called the army to move.

Now he saw a vision. Over every dark bundle on those blood-soaked fields bent a brother, a father, a mother, a sister or sweetheart. He heard their cries of anguish until all other sounds were dumb.

The heaps of amputated legs and arms he had seen so often without a sigh were bathed now in tears. The surgeons with their hands and arms and clothes soaked with red--he saw them with the eyes of love--scene on scene in hideous review--the young officer at Cold Harbor whose leg they were cutting off without the use of chloroform, his face convulsed, his jaws locked as the knife crashed through nerve and sinew, muscle and artery. And those saws gnawing through bones--G.o.d in heaven, he could hear them all now--they were cutting and tearing those he loved.

He heard their terrible orders with new ears. For the first time he realized what they meant.

"Give them the bayonet now----"

The low, savage, subdued tones of the officer had once thrilled his soul. The memory sickened him.

He could hear the impa.s.sioned speech of the Colonel as the men lay flat on their faces in the gra.s.s--the click of bayonets in their places--the look on the faces of the men eager, fierce, intense, as they sprang to their feet at the call:

"Charge!"

And the fight. A big, broad-shouldered brute is trying to bayonet a boy of fifteen. The boy's slim hand grips the steel with an expression of mingled rage and terror. He holds on with grim fury. A comrade rushes to his rescue. His bayonet misses the upper body of the strong man and crashes hard against his hip bone. The man with his strength seizes the gun, s.n.a.t.c.hes it from his bleeding thigh and swings it over his head to brain his new antagonist, when the first boy, with a savage laugh, plunges his bayonet through the strong man's heart and he falls with a dull crash, breaking the steel from the musket's muzzle and lies quivering, with the blood-spouting point protruding from his side. He understood now--these were not soldiers obeying orders--they were fathers and brothers and playmates, killing and maiming and tearing each other to pieces.

Lord G.o.d of Love and Mercy, the pity and horror of it all!

It was one o'clock before Julius, searching the field with a lantern, came on him huddled against the tree with Ned's body still in his arms, staring into the dead face.