Westways: A Village Chronicle Part 66

While the Commander wrote orders and despatched aide after aide, Penhallow bent over the map. "You see," said Hanc.o.c.k, "we have unusual luck for us in a short interior line. I judge from the moving guidons that Lee is extending his front-it may be six miles long."

"And ours?"

"Well, from wing to wing across the loop to right, not half of that."

"I see," said Penhallow, and accepting a drink of tepid water he went out to find and report to the chief of artillery, General Hunt.

He met him with General John Gibbon and two aides a few yards from the door, and making his brief report learned as he moved away that there was some trouble on the left wing. Meade coming out with Hanc.o.c.k, they mounted and rode away in haste, too late to correct General Sickles' unfortunate decision to improve General Meade's battle-line. It was not Penhallow's business, nor did he then fully understand that costly blunder. Returning to his guns, he sent, as Hunt had ordered, two of his reserve batteries up to the back of the line of the Second Corps, and finding General Gibbon temporarily in command walked with him to what is now called the "Crest" and stood among Cus.h.i.+ng's guns. Alertly interested, Penhallow saw to the left, half hidden by bushes and a clump of trees, a long line of infantry lying at ease, their muskets in glittering stacks behind them. To the right the ground was more open. A broken stone fence lay in front of the Second Corps. It was patched with fence rails and added stone, and where the clump of trees projected in advance of the line made a right angle and extended thence in front of the batteries on the Crest about thirty yards. Then it met a like right angle of stone fencing and followed the line far to the right. Behind these rude walls lay the Pennsylvania and New York men, three small regiments. Further back on a little higher ground was the silent array of cannon, thus able at need to fire over the heads of the guarding infantry, now idly lying at rest in the baking heat of a July morning. The men about the cannon lounged at ease on the ground in the forty foot inters.p.a.ces between the batteries, some eighteen pieces in all.

Suddenly an aide rode up, and saying, "See you again, Penhallow," Gibbon rode away in haste. Penhallow, who was carefully gathering in all that could then be seen from the locality, moved over to where a young battery captain was leaning against a cannon wheel wiping the sweat from his face or gazing over the vale below him, apparently lost in thought. "Captain Cus.h.i.+ng, I believe," said the colonel. "I am Colonel Penhallow, in command of the reserve artillery."

"Indeed!" said the young officer. "These are some of your guns-"

"Not mine-I was out of it long ago. They still carry the brand of my old iron-mills."

"We shall see, sir, that they do honour to your name."

"I am sure of that," returned the colonel, looking at the face of the officer, who as he spoke patted the gun beside him in an affectionate way.

"It seems very peaceful," he said.

"Yes, yes," returned Penhallow, "very."

They looked for a moment of silence down the vale before them, where a mile away the ground rose to a low ridge, beyond which in woody shelters lay the hostile lines.

"What road is that?" asked Penhallow. "It leaves our right and crosses to enter Lee's right."

"The Emmitsburg Pike, sir."

The Colonel's gla.s.s searched the s.p.a.ce before him. "I see some fine farm-houses-deserted, of course, and wheat fields no man will reap this year." He spoke thoughtfully, and as Woodruff of the nearer battery joined them, the roar of cannon broke the stillness.

"Far on our left," said Woodruff. At the sound, the men sprang to their feet and took their stations. Smoke rose and clouded their view of the distant field where on our left a fury of battle raged, while the rattle of infantry volleys became continuous. No more words were spoken. Through the long afternoon the unseen fight went on in front of the Round Tops. As it came nearer and the grey lines were visible, the guns on the Crest opened a lively fire and kept up their destructive business until the approach of the enemy ceased to extend towards our centre and fell away in death or disorderly flight. About sunset this varied noise subsided and the remote sound of cheering was heard.

"We must have won," said General Webb, the brigade commander. "It was a flanking movement. How little any one man knows of a battle!"

"By George! I am glad of a let up," said the young Captain. "I am vilely dirty." He wiped the grime and sweat from his face and threw himself on the ground as Generals Hunt and Gibbon rode up.

"No great damage here, I see, Webb. They got awfully licked, but it was near to something else."

Questioned by Penhallow, they heard the news of our needless loss and final triumphant repulse of the enemy. Hunt said emphatic things about political generals and their ways. "He lost a leg," said Gibbon, "and I think to have lost his life would have been, fortunate. They are at it still on the right, but the Twelfth Corps has gone back to Culp's Hill and Ewell will get his share of pounding-if it be his corps."

"Then we may get some sleep," said Penhallow, as he moved away. "I have had very little for two nights."

CHAPTER XXIV

It was near to seven when he went down to his parked guns, seeing as he went that the ways were kept clear, and finding ready hot coffee and broiled chicken.

"Where did you get this, Josiah?" he asked.

"Kind of came in, sir-know'd he was wanted-laid two eggs." The colonel laughed and asked no further questions.

"Pull off my boots. Horses all right?"

"Yes, sir."

Without-undressing he fell on his camp-bed and, towards dusk thinking with grim humour of his wife and the Penhallow guns, fell asleep. About four in the morning the mad clamour of battle awakened him. He got up and went out of the tent. The night air was hot and oppressive. Far to our right there was the rattle of musketry and the occasional upward flare of cannon flashes against low-lying clouds. From the farthest side of the Taneytown road at the rear he heard the rattle of ambulances arriving from the field of fight to leave the wounded in tent hospitals. They came slowly, marked by their flickering lanterns, and were away again more swiftly. He gave some vague thought to the wounded and to the surgeons, for whom the night was as the day. At sunrise he went up past the already busy headquarters and came to the bush-hidden lines, where six thousand men of the Second Corps along a half mile of the irregular far-stretched Crest were up and busy. Fires were lighted, coffee boiled and biscuits munched. An air of confidence and gaiety among the men pleased him as he paused to give a sergeant a pipe light and divided his tobacco among a thankful group of ragged soldiers. All was quiet. An outpost skirmish on the right, as a man said, "was petering out." He paused here and there to talk to the men, and was interested to hear them discussing with intelligence the advantage of our short line. Now and then the guns far to left or right quarrelled, but at eleven in the morning this third of July all was quiet except the murmurous noise of thousands of men who talked or lay at rest in the bushes or contrived a refuge from the sun under shelter of a canvas hung on ramrods.

Generals Gibbon and Webb, coming near, promised him a late breakfast, and he went with them to the little peach orchard near the headquarters on the Taneytown road. They sat down on mess-chests or cracker-boxes, and to Penhallow's amus.e.m.e.nt Josiah appeared with John, the servant of Gibbon, for Josiah was, as he said, on easy terms with every black servant in the line. Presently Hanc.o.c.k rode up with Meade. Generals Newton and Pleasanton also appeared, and with their aides joined them. These men were officially Penhallow's superiors, and although Hanc.o.c.k and Gibbon were his friends, he made no effort to take part in the discussion in regard to what the pa.s.sing day would bring. He had his own opinion, but no one asked for it and he smoked in an undisturbed private council of war.

At last, as he rose, Newton said, "You knew John Reynolds well, Penhallow. A moment before he fell, his aide had begged him to fall back to a less dangerous position."

"He was my friend-a soldier of the best."

"The Pennsylvanians are in force to-day-you and I and-"

"Oh, colonels don't count," laughed Penhallow; "but there are Meade, Hanc.o.c.k, Gregg, Humphreys, Hays, Gibbon, Geary, Crawford-"

Hanc.o.c.k said, "We Pennsylvanians hold the lowest and weakest point of our line-all Pennsylvanians on their own soil."

"Yes, but they will not attack here," said Newton.

"Oh, do you think so?" said Hanc.o.c.k. "Wait a little."

The headquarters' ambulance drove up with further supplies. The chickens were of mature age, but every one was hungry. Cigars and pipes were lighted, and Newton chaffed Gibbon as the arrogant young brigadier in command for the time of Hanc.o.c.k's Corps. The talk soon fell again upon the probabilities of the day. Penhallow listened. Meade grave and silent sat on a cracker-box and ate in an absent way, or scribbled orders, and at last directed that the picked body of men, the provost's guards, should join their regimental commands. About a quarter to noon the generals one by one rode away.

Having no especial duty, Penhallow walked to where on the Crest the eighteen guns were drawn up. The sky was clear as yet, a windless, hot day. Gibbon joined him.

"What next?" said Gibbon, as Penhallow clambered up and stood a tall figure on the limber of one of Cus.h.i.+ng's guns, his field gla.s.s searching the valley and the enemy's position. "Isn't it like a big chess-board?"

"Yes-their skirmishers look like grey posts, and our own blue. They seem uneasy."

"Aren't they just like p.a.w.ns in the game!" remarked Captain Haskell of the Staff.

Penhallow, intent, hardly heard them, but said presently, "There are guidons moving fast to their right."

"Oh, artillery taking position. We shall hear from them," returned Gibbon. "Hanc.o.c.k thinks that being beaten on both flanks, Lee will attack our centre, and this is the lowest point."

"Well," said Haskell, "it would be madness-can Lee remember Malvern Hill?"

"I wonder what Grant is doing?" remarked Gibbon. At that time, seated under an oak, watched at a distance by John Penhallow and a group of officers, he was dictating to unlucky Pemberton the terms of Vicksburg's surrender.

Penhallow got down from his perch and wandered among the other guns, talking to the men who were lying on the sod, or interested in the battery horses behind the shelter of trees quietly munching the thin gra.s.ses. He returned to Cus.h.i.+ng's guns, and being in the mental att.i.tude of intense attention to things he would not usually have noticed, he was struck with the young captain's manly build, and then with his delicacy of feature, something girl-like and gentle in his ways.

Penhallow remarked that the guns so hot already from the sun would be too easily overheated when they were put to use. "Ah," returned Cus.h.i.+ng, "but will they be asked to talk today?" The innocent looking smile and the quick flash of wide-opened eyes told of his wish to send messages across the vale.

"Yes, I think so," said the colonel; "I think so,"-and again observant he saw the slight figure straighten and a quite other look of tender sadness come upon his face.

"How quiet they are-how very quiet!" Then he laughed merrily. "See that dog on the Emmitsburg road. He doesn't know which side he's on."

Penhallow looked at his watch. "It is one o'clock." Then his gla.s.s was up. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as he closed it, "now we shall catch it. I thought as much."