On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
I let him win a certain success. "Head laid wide open!" he said
gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.
I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
"Come, tell me what this means."
In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
pencilled her name.
I asked if he had seen her. "Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?"
"Lieutenant," I replied, choking with dismay, "why mind her meanings
now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
which she would never say or mean at any other time!" But my tone must
have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.
"The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story."
"Yes, and that helps to account--"
"Richard, it helps the wrong way; _I know that story_. After hearing
that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me _this_."
I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
"_Keep thy heart_," it read; "_Keep thy heart_ with all diligence; for
out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte _Oliver_."
"Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--"
"You think so? But I _have done_. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier." No bugle had
sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
though he clung to the same theme. "I have _her_ heart now, Smith, and I
will keep _that_ with all diligence, for out of _that_ are the issues
of _my_ life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees."
Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.
Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling "Saddle up! saddle
up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!" The bugles had begun the
reveillé; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry "Throw down
your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
to the public road!"
And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. "Tis yours!" he cried
in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.
I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
left with oaths and curses "Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
fa'--_here_, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
stops to plunder!"
Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.
But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.