The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 78

"Thank G.o.d!"

A far-off look stole into his eyes.

"It will be a good one though when it comes, I reckon."

"There can be no _good_ one--if my boy's in it."

"Well, I'll be in it!"

"Yes. I know."

She kissed him and turned back into the house, with the old fear gripping her heart.

CHAPTER XL

The early months of the war were but skirmishes. The real work of killing and maiming the flower of the race had not begun.

The defeat had given the sad-eyed President unlimited power to draw on the resources of the nation for men and money. His call for half a million soldiers met with instant response. The fighting spirit of twenty-two million Northern people had been roused. They felt the disgrace of Bull Run and determined to wipe it out in blood.

Three Northern armies were hurled on the South in a well-planned, concerted movement to take Richmond. McDowell marched straight down to Fredericksburg with forty thousand. Fermont, with Milroy, Banks and s.h.i.+elds, was sweeping through the Shenandoah Valley. McClellan, with his grand army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, had moved up the Peninsula in resistless force until he lay on the banks of the Chickahominy within sight of the spires of Richmond.

To meet these three armies aggregating a quarter of a million men, the South could marshall barely seventy thousand. Jackson was despatched with eighteen thousand to baffle the armies of McDowell, Fremont, Milroy, s.h.i.+elds and Banks in the Valley and prevent their union with McClellan.

The war really began on Sunday, the second of June, 1862, when Robert E. Lee was sent to the front to take command of the combined army of seventy thousand men of the South.

The new commander with consummate genius planned his attack and flung his gray lines on McClellan with savage power. The two armies fought in dense thickets often less than fifty yards apart. Their muskets flashed sheets of yellow flame. The sound of ripping canvas, the fire of small arms in volleys, could no longer be distinguished. The sullen roar was endless, deafening, appalling. Over the tops of oak, pine, beech, ash and tangled undergrowth came the flaming thunder of two great armies equally fearless, the flower of American manhood in their front ranks, daring, scorning death, fighting hand to hand, man to man.

The people in the churches of Richmond as they prayed could hear the awful roar. They turned their startled faces toward the battle. It rang above the sob of organ and the chant of choir.

The hosts in blue and gray charged again and again through the tangle of mud and muck and blood and smoke and death. Bayonet rang on bayonet.

They fought hand to hand, as naked savages once fought with bare hands.

The roar died slowly with the shadows of the night, until only the crack of a rifle here and there broke the stillness.

And then above the low moans of the wounded and dying came the distant notes of the church bells in Richmond calling men and women again to the house of G.o.d.

There was no shout of triumph--no cheering hosts--only the low moan of death and the sharp cry of a boy in pain. The men in blue could have moved in and bivouaced on the ground they had lost. The men in gray had no strength left.

The dead and the dying were everywhere. The wounded were crawling through the mud and brush, like stricken animals; some with their legs broken; some with arms dangling by a thread; some with hideous holes torn in their faces.

The front was lighted with the unclouded splendor of a full Southern moon. Down every dim aisle of the woods they lay in awful, dark heaps.

In the fields they lay with faces buried in the dirt or eyes staring up at the stars, twisted, torn, mangled. The blue and the gray lay side by side in death, as they had fought in life. The pride and glory of a mighty race of freemen.

The shadows of the details moved in the moonlight. They were opening the first of those long, deep trenches. They were careful in these early days of war. They turned each face downward as they packed them in. The grave diggers could not then throw the wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. Aching hearts in far-off homes couldn't see; but these boys still had hearts within their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The fog-rimmed lanterns flickered over the fields peering into the faces on the ground.

The ambulance corps did its best at the new trade. It was utterly inadequate on either side. It's always so in war. The work of war is to maim, to murder--not to heal or save.

The long line of creaking wagons began to move into Richmond over the mud-cut roads. Every hospital was filled. The empty wagons rolled back in haste over the cobble stones and out on the muddy roads to the front again.

At the hospital doors the women stood in huddled groups--wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters, praying, hoping, fearing, s.h.i.+vering. Far away in the field hospitals, the young doctors with bare, b.l.o.o.d.y arms were busy with saw and knife. Boys who had faced death in battle without a tremor stood waiting their turn trembling, crying, cursing. They could see the piles of legs and arms rising higher as the doctors hurled them from the quivering bodies. They stretched out their hands in the darkness to feel the touch of loved ones. They must face this horror alone, and then battle through life, maimed wrecks. They peered through the shadows under the trees where the dead were piled and envied them their sleep.

The armies paused next day to gird their loins for the crucial test.

Jackson was still in the Shenandoah Valley holding three armies at bay, defeating them in detail. His swift marches had so paralyzed his enemies that McDowell's forty thousand men lay at Fredericksburg unable to move.

Lee summoned Stuart.

When the conference ended the young Cavalry Commander threw himself into the saddle and started Northward with a song. Determined to learn the strength of McClellan's right wing and confuse his opponent, Lee had sent Stuart on the most daring adventure in the history of cavalry warfare. Stuart had told him that he could ride around McClellan's whole army, cut his communications and strike terror in his rear.

With twelve hundred picked hors.e.m.e.n, fighting, singing, dare-devil riders, Stuart slipped from Lee's lines and started toward Fredericksburg.

On the second day he surprised and captured the Federal pickets without a shot. He dreaded a meeting with the Cavalry. His father-in-law, General Cooke, was in command of a brigade of blue riders. He thought with a moment's pang of the little wife at home praying that they should never meet. Let her pray. G.o.d would help her. He couldn't let such a thing happen.

He suddenly confronted a squadron of Federal Cavalry. With a yell his troops charged and cleared the field. They must ride now with swifter hoofbeat than ever. The news would spread and avengers would be on their heels. They were now far in the rear of McClellan's grand army. They had felt out his right wing and knew to a mile where its lines ended.

They dashed toward the York River Railroad which supplied the Northern army, surprised the company holding Tunstall's Station, took them prisoners, cut the wires and tore up the tracks.

On his turn toward Richmond when he reached the Chickahominy River, its waters were swollen and he couldn't cross. He built a bridge out of the timbers of a barn, took his last horse over and destroyed it, as the shout of a division of Federal Cavalry was heard in the distance.

With twelve hundred men he had made a raid which added a new rule to cavalry tactics. He had ridden around a great army, covering ninety miles in fifty-six hours with the loss of but one man. He had established the position of the enemy, destroyed enormous quant.i.ties of war material, captured a hundred and sixty-five prisoners and two hundred horses. He had struck terror to the hearts of a st.u.r.dy foe, and thrilled the South with new courage.

Jackson's victorious little army joined Lee at Gaines' Mill on the twenty-seventh of June, and on the following day McClellan was in full retreat.

On the first of July it ended at Malvern Hill on the banks of the James.

Of the one hundred and ten thousand men who marched in battle line on Richmond, eighty-six thousand only reached the shelter of his gunboats.

The first great battle of the war had raged from the first of June until the first of July. Fifty thousand brave boys were killed or mangled on the red fields of death. Was.h.i.+ngton was in gloom. The Grand Army of more than two hundred thousand had gone down in defeat. It was incredible.

Richmond had been saved. The glory of Lee, Jackson and Stuart filled the South with a new radiance. But the celebration of victory was in minor key. Every home was in mourning.

Six days later Stuart once more clasped his wife to his heart. It had been a month since he had seen her. The thunder of guns she had heard without pause. She knew that both her father and her lover were somewhere in the roaring h.e.l.l below the city. Stuart never told her how close they had come to a charge and counter charge at the battle of Gaines' Mill.

The old, tremulous question she couldn't keep back:

"You didn't see my daddy, did you, dear?"

Stuart shouted in derision at the idea.

"Of course not, honey girl. It's not written in the book of life. Forget the silly old fear."

"And they didn't even scratch my soldier man?"

"Never a scratch!"

She kissed him again.