The long winding lines of the two armies spread over a maze of fields,
woods and thickets, with here and there a stone wall and scattered low
hills, which could be used as points of strength. Jackson's men, led by
able officers, were pushing forward with all their might. The woods, the
thickets and the mud nullified to some extent the superior power of
the Northern artillery, but the rifles were pouring forth shattering
volleys, many at close range.
Harry felt his horse stagger just after he reached the crest of the
hill, but he took no notice of it until a few minutes later, when the
animal began to shiver. He leaped clear just in time, for when the
shiver ceased, the horse plunged forward, fell on his side and lay dead.
As Harry straightened himself on his feet a bullet went through the brim
of his cap, and another clipped his epaulet.
“Those must be western men shooting at you, Harry,” said a voice beside
him. “But it could have been worse. You're merely grazed, when you could
have been hit and hit deep.”
It was Langdon, cool and imperturbable, who was speaking. He was
regarding Harry rather quizzically, as the boy mechanically brushed the
mud from his clothes.
“Force of habit,” said Langdon, and then he suddenly grasped Harry and
pulled him to his knees. There was a tremendous crash in front of them,
and a storm of bullets swept over their heads.
“I saw a Yankee officer give the word, and then a million riflemen rose
from the bushes and fired straight at us!” shouted Langdon. “You stay
here! See the Invincibles are all about you!”
Harry saw that he had in truth fallen among the Invincibles. There was
St. Clair, immaculate, a blazing red spot in either cheek, gazing at
the great swarms of riflemen in front. Colonel Leonidas Talbot and
Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, those veteran West Pointers, were
stalking up and down in front of their lines, fiercely bidding their men
to lie down. But Harry knew that his duty was elsewhere.
“I belong to the general!” he exclaimed. “I must join him!”
Casting one glance of regret at the fallen horse that had served him so
well he rushed toward General Jackson, who with the rest of his staff
had dismounted. The general, showing no emotion or anxiety, was watching
the doubtful combat.
Along the whole line the battle was deepening. The able West Pointers
on the Northern side were hurrying forward fresh troops. Shields himself
was coming with new battalions. The men from Ohio and the states further
west, expert like the Southerners in the use of the rifle, and confident
of victory, were pouring a heavy and unbroken fire upon the thinner
Southern lines. They, too, knew the value of cover and, cool enough to
think about it, they used every thicket, and grove and ridge that they
could reach.
The roar of the battle was heard plainly in Winchester, and the people
of the town, although it was now held by the North, wished openly for
the success of the South. The Northern troops, as it happened, nearly
all through the war, were surrounded by people who were against them.
The women at the windows and on the house tops looked eagerly for the
red flare in the South which should betoken the victorious advance of
Jackson, sweeping his enemies before him.
But Jackson was not advancing. All the valor and courage of the South so
far had been in vain. Harry, standing near his commander, and awaiting
any order that might be given him, saw new masses of the enemy advancing
along every road and through the fields. The Union colors, held aloft in
front of the regiments, snapped defiantly in the wind. And those western
riflemen, from their cover, never ceased to pour showers of bullets
upon the Southern lines. They had already cut a swath of dead, and many
wounded were dragging themselves to the rear.
It seemed to Harry, looking over the field, that the battle was lost.
The Northern troops were displaying more tenacity than the Southern
officers had expected. Moreover, they were two to one, in strong
positions, and with a much superior artillery. As he looked he saw one
of the Virginia regiments reel back before the attack of much greater
numbers and retreat in some disorder. The victors came on, shouting
in triumph, but in a few minutes their officers rallied them, another
Virginia regiment rushed to their relief, and the two, united, hurled
themselves upon the advancing enemy. The Union troops were driven back
with great loss, and Harry noticed that the fire from their two great
batteries was weakening. He could not keep from shouting in joy, but he
was glad that the sound of his voice was drowned in the thunder of the
battle.
General Jackson had no orders for him at present, and Harry watched with
extraordinary fascination the battle which was unrolling itself in film
after film before him. He saw a stone fence running down the center of
a field, and then he saw beyond it a great mass of Northern infantry
advancing with bayonets shining and colors waving. From his own side a
regiment was running toward it.
Who would reach the fence first? The pulses in Harry's temple beat so
hard that they hurt. He could not take his eyes from that terrible race,
a race of human beings, a race of life and death. The sun blazed down
on the rival forces as they sped across the field. But the Southerners
reached the wall first. Not in vain had Jackson trained his foot cavalry
to march faster anywhere than any other troops in the world.
Harry saw the Virginians sink down behind the fence, the crest of which
a moment later blazed with fire for a long distance. He saw the whole
front line of the Northern troops disappear, while those behind were
thrown into confusion. The Southerners poured in a second volley before
they could recover and the whole force broke and retreated. Other troops
were brought up but in the face of everything the Virginians held the
fence.
But Shields was an able officer. Moreover he and Jackson had been
thrown together in former years, and he knew him. He divined some of the
qualities of Jackson's mind, and he felt that the Southern general, the
field being what it was, was going to push hardest at the center. He
accumulated his own forces there in masses that increased continually.
He had suffered a wound the previous day in a skirmish, and he could not
be at the very front, but he delivered his orders through Kimball, who
was in immediate command upon the field. Five regiments in reserve were
suddenly hurled forward and struck the Confederates a tremendous blow.
Harry saw these regiments emerge from the woods and thickets and he saw
the gray lines reel before them. Jackson, pointing toward this new and
furious conflict, said to Harry:
“Jump on the horse there and tell the officer in command that he must
stand firm at all hazards!”
Harry sprang upon a horse not his own, and galloped away. The moment he
came into view the western riflemen began to send bullets toward him.
His horse was struck, but went on. Another bullet found him, and then a
third, which was mortal. Harry leaped clear of the second horse that
had been killed under him, and ran toward the officer in charge of the
stricken troops. But they were retreating already. They moved slowly,
but they moved backward.
Harry joined with the officers in their entreaties to the men to stand,
but the pressure upon them was too great. General Garnett, the commander
of the Stonewall Brigade, had given an order of his own accord to
retreat, and all that part of the line was falling back. The Northern
leader, seeing the breach, continually pushed forward fresh troops and
more cannon, while the deadly riflemen in the thickets did more harm
than the great guns.
The Southerners were compelled to fall back. One gun was lost. Jackson
from the crest of the hill had seen with amazement the retreat of the
famous Stonewall Brigade that he had once led in person. He galloped
across the field, reckless of bullets, and fiercely bade Garnett turn
and hold his ground. A drummer stood near and Jackson, grasping him by
the shoulder with a firm right hand, fairly dragged him to the crest of
a little hill, and bade him beat the rally.
While Jackson still held him he gave the call to stand and fight. But
the Southerners could not. The men in blue, intoxicated with victory,
pushed forward in thousands and thousands. Their heavy masses overbore
all resistance. Jackson, Garnett, Harry and all the officers, young
and old were swept from the field by that flood, crested with fire and
steel. It was impossible to preserve order and cohesion. The broken
regiments were swept back in a confused mass.
Jackson galloped about, trying to rally his men, and his staff gave all
the help they could. Harry was on foot once more, waving the sword of
which he was so proud. But nothing could stay the tremendous pressure of
the Union army. Their commanders always pushed them forward and always
fresh men were coming. Skilled cannoneers sent grape shot, shell and
round shot whistling through the Southern ranks. The Northern cavalry
whipped around the Southern flanks and despite the desperate efforts of
Ashby, Sherburne, and the others, began to clip off its wings.
Harry often wondered afterward how his life was preserved. It seemed
impossible that he could have escaped such a storm from rifle and
cannon, but save for the slight scratches, sustained earlier in the
action, he remained untouched. He did not think of it at the time, only
of the avalanche that was driving them back. He saw before him a vast
red flame, through which bayonets and faces of men showed, ever coming
nearer.
Now the North was sure of victory. The shouts of joy ran up and down
their whole front. The batteries were pushed nearer and nearer, and
sent in terrible volleys at short range. The riflemen who had done
such deadly work rose from the woods and thickets, and rushed forward,
loading and firing as they came. The Southern force seemed to be nothing
but a hopeless mass of fugitives.
Anyone save Jackson would have despaired even of saving his army. But
he dreamed yet of victory. He galloped back for a strong detachment of
Virginians who had not yet come upon the field, but could not get them
up in time to strike a heavy blow.
It was apparent even to Harry and all the other young lieutenants that
the battle was lost. He must have shed tears then, because afterward he
found furrows in the mud and burned gunpowder on his face. The combat
now was not for victory, but for existence. The Southerners fought to
preserve the semblance of an army, and it was well for them that they
were valiant Virginians led by a great genius, and dauntless officers.
Stonewall Jackson, in this the only defeat he ever sustained in
independent command, never lost his head for a moment. By gigantic
exertions he formed a new line at last. The fresher troops covered the
shattered regiments. The retreating artillery was posted anew.
Jackson galloped back and forth on Little Sorrel. Everywhere his courage
and presence of mind brought the men back from despair to hope. Once
anew was proved the truth of Napoleon's famous maxim that men are
nothing, a man everything. The soldiers on the Northern side were as
brave as those on the Southern but they were not led by one of those
flashing spirits of war which emerge but seldom in the ages, men who in
all the turmoil and confusion of battle can see what ought to be done
and who do it.
The beaten Southern army, but a few thousands, now was formed anew for
a last stand. A portion of them seized a stone fence, and others took
position in thick timber. The cavalry of Turner Ashby raged back and
forth, seeking to protect the flanks, and in the east, coming shadows
showed that the twilight might yet protect the South from the last blow.
Harry, in the thick of furious battle, had become separated from his
commander. He was still on foot and his sword had been broken at the
hilt by a bullet, but he did not yet know it. Chance threw him once more
among the Invincibles. He plunged through the smoke almost into the arms
of Langdon.
“And here is our Harry again!” shouted the irrepressible South
Carolinian. “Stonewall Jackson has lost a battle, but he hasn't lost an
army. Night and our courage will save us! Here, take this rifle!”
He picked up a loaded rifle which some falling soldier had dropped and
thrust it into Harry's hand.
The boy took the rifle and began mechanically to fire and load and fire
again at the advancing blue masses. He resolved himself for a minute
into a private soldier, and shouted and fired with the rest. The
twilight deepened and darkened in the east, but the battle did not
cease. The Northern leaders, grim and determined men, seeing their
victory sought to press it to the utmost, and always hurried forward
infantry, cavalry and artillery. Had the Southern army been commanded by
any other than Jackson it would have been destroyed utterly.
Jackson, resourceful and unconquerable, never ceased his exertions.
Wherever he appeared he infused new courage into his men. Harry had
seized a riderless horse and was once more in the saddle, following his
leader, taking orders and helping him whenever he could. The Virginians
who had seized the stone fence and the wood held fast. The eye of
Jackson was on them, and they could do nothing else. An Ohio and a
Virginia regiment on either side lost and retook their colors six times
each. One of the flags had sixty bullets through it. An Indiana regiment
gave way, but reinforced by another from the state rallied and returned
anew to the attack. A Virginia regiment also retreated but was brought
back by its colonel, and fought with fresh courage.
The numerous Northern cavalry forced its way around the Southern
flanks, and cut in on the rear, taking many prisoners. Then the horsemen
appeared in a great mass on the Southern left, and had not time and
chance intervened at the last moment Stonewall Jackson might have passed
into obscurity.
The increasing twilight was now just merging into night, and a wood
stretched between the Northern cavalry and the Southern flank. The
Northern horsemen hesitated, not wishing to become entangled among
trees and brush in the dark, and in a few minutes the Southern infantry,
falling back swiftly after beating off the attacks on their front,
passed out of the trap. Sherburne and Funsten, two of Ashby's most
valiant cavalry leaders, came up with their squadrons, and covered the
retreat, fighting off the Northern horsemen as Jackson and his army
disappeared in the woods, and night came over the lost field.
The Southern army retired, beaten, but sullen and defiant. It did not
go far, but stopped at a point where the supply train had been placed.
Fires were built and some of the men ate, but others were so much
exhausted that without waiting for food they threw themselves upon the
ground, and in an instant were fast asleep.
Harry, for the moment, a prey to black despair, followed his general.
Only one other officer, a major, was with him. Harry watched him
closely, but he did not see him show any emotion. Little Sorrel like
his master, although he had been under fire a hundred times, had passed
through the battle without a scratch. Now he walked forward slowly, the
reins lying loose upon his neck.
Harry was not conscious of weariness. He had made immense exertions, but
his system was keyed so high by excitement that the tension held firmly
yet a little longer. The night had come on heavy and dark. Behind him he
could hear the fitful sounds of the Northern and Southern cavalry
still skirmishing with each other. Before him he saw dimly the Southern
regiments, retreating in ragged lines. It was almost more than he could
stand, and his feelings suddenly found vent in an angry cry.
General Jackson heard him and understood.
“Don't be grieved, my boy,” he said quietly. “This is only the first
battle.”
The calm, unboastful courage strengthened Harry anew. If he should
grieve how much more should the general who had led in the lost battle,
and upon whom everybody would hasten to put the blame! He felt once more
that flow of courage and fire from Jackson to himself, and he felt also
his splendid fortune in being associated with a man whose acts showed
all the marks of greatness. Like so many other young officers, mere
boys, he was fast maturing in the furnace of a vast war.
The general ceased to follow the troops, but turned aside into what
seemed to be a thin stretch of forest. But Harry saw that the trees grew
in rows and he exclaimed:
“An orchard!”
It seemed to strike Jackson's fancy.
“Well,” he said, “an orchard is a good place to sleep in. Can't we
make a fire here? I fear that we shall have to burn some fence rails
tonight.”
Harry and the major--Hawks was his name--hitched the horses, and
gathered a heap of dry fence rails. The major set fire to splinters with
matches and, in a few minutes a fine fire was crackling and blazing,
taking away the sharp chill of the March night.
Harry saw other fires spring up in the orchard, and he went over to one
of them, where some soldiers were cooking food.
“Give me a piece of meat and bread,” he said to a long Virginian.
“Set, Sonny, an' eat with us!”
“I don't want it for myself.”
“Then who in nation are you beggin' fur?”
“For General Jackson. He's sitting over there.”
“Thunderation! The gen'ral himself! Here, boy!”
Bearing a big piece of meat in one hand and a big piece of bread in the
other Harry returned to Jackson, who had not yet tasted food that day.
The general ate heartily, but almost unconsciously. He seemed to be in a
deep study. Harry surmised that his thoughts were on the morrow. He had
learned already that Stonewall Jackson always looked forward.
Harry foraged and obtained more food for himself, and other officers
of the staff who were coming up, some bearing slight wounds that they
concealed. He also secured the general's cloak, which was strapped to
his saddle and insisted upon his putting it on.
The fire was surrounded presently by officers. Major Hawks had laid
together and as evenly as possible a number of fence rails upon which
Jackson was to sleep, but as yet no one was disposed to slumber. They
had finished eating, but they remained in a silent and somber circle
about the fire.
Jackson stood up presently and his figure, wrapped in the long cloak was
all dark. The light did not fall upon his face. All the others looked at
him. Among them was one of Ashby's young troopers, a bold and reckless
spirit. It was a time, too, when the distinction between officers and
privates in the great citizen armies was not yet sharply defined. And
this young trooper, some spirit of mockery urging him on, stood up and
said to his general:
“The Yankees didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave Winchester, did
they, general?”
Harry drew a quick, sharp breath, and there was a murmur among the
officers, but Stonewall Jackson merely turned a tranquil look upon the
presumptuous youth. Then he turned it back to the bed of coals and said
in even tones:
“Winchester is a pleasant town to stay in, sir.”
The young cavalryman, not abashed at all, continued:
“We heard the Yankees were retreating, but I guess they're retreating
after us.”
Harry half rose and so did several of the older officers, but Jackson
replied quietly:
“I think I may tell you, young sir, that I am satisfied with the
result.”
The audacity of the youthful trooper could not carry him further. He
caught threatening looks from the officers and slipped away in the
darkness. Silence fell anew around the fire, and Jackson still stood,
gazing into the coals. Soon, he turned abruptly, strode away into the
darkness, but came back after a while, lay down on the fence rails and
slept soundly.
Harry put four or five rails side by side to protect his body from the
cold ground, lay down upon them and threw a cloak over himself. Now he
relaxed or rather collapsed completely. The tension that had kept him
up so long was gone, and he felt that he could not have risen from the
rails had he wished. He saw wavering fires and dusky figures beside
them, but sleep came in a few minutes to soothe and heal.
Bye and bye all the army, save the sentinels, slept and the victorious
Northern army only two or three miles away also slept, feeling that it
had done enough for one day.
Shields that night was sending messages to the North announcing his
victory, but he was cherishing no illusions. He told how fierce had
been the attack, and with what difficulty it had been beaten off, and in
Washington, reading well between the lines they felt that another attack
and yet others might come from the same source.
Harry sleeping on his bed of fence rails did not dream of the
extraordinary things that the little army of Jackson, beaten at
Kernstown was yet to do. McClellan was just ready to start his great
army by sea for the attack on Richmond, when suddenly the forgotten
or negligible Jackson sprang out of the dark and fixed himself on his
flank.
The capital, despite victory, was filled with alarm and the President
shared it. The veteran Shields knew this man who had led the attack,
and he did not seek to hide the danger. The figure of Stonewall Jackson,
gigantic and menacing, showed suddenly through the mists. If McClellan
went on to Richmond with the full Northern strength he might launch
himself on Washington.
The great scheme of invasion was put out of joint. Shields, although
victorious for the time, could not believe that Jackson would attack
with so small an army unless he expected reinforcements, and he sent
swift expresses to bring back a division of 8,000 men which was
marching to cover Washington. Banks, his superior officer, on the way to
Washington, too, heard the news at Harper's Ferry and halted there, and
Lincoln, detaching a whole corps of nearly 40,000 men from McClellan's
army, ordered them to remain at Manassas to protect the capital against
Jackson. A dispatch was sent to Banks ordering him to push the valley
campaign with his whole strength.
But when Harry rose the next morning from his fence rails he knew
nothing of these things. Nor did anyone else in the Southern army,
unless it was Stonewall Jackson who perhaps half-divined them. Harry
thought afterward that he had foreseen much when he said to the impudent
cavalryman that he was satisfied with the result at Kernstown.
They lingered there a little and then began a retreat, unharrassed by
pursuit. Scouts of the enemy were seen by Ashby's cavalry, who hung like
a curtain between them and the army, but no force strong enough to do
any harm came in sight. Harry had secured another horse and most of his
duty was at the rear, where he was often sent by the general to get the
latest news from Ashby.
He quickly met Sherburne over whose dress difficulties had triumphed
at last. His fine cloak, rent in many places, was stained with mud and
there was one large dark spot made by his own blood. His face was lined
deeply by exhaustion and deep disappointment.
“They were too much for us this time, Harry,” he said bitterly. “We
can't beat two to one all the time. How does the general take it?”
“As if it were nothing. He'll be ready to fight again in a few days, and
we must have struck a hard blow anyhow. The enemy are not pursuing.”
“That's true,” said Sherburne more cheerfully. “Your argument is a good
one.”
The army came to a ridge called Rude's Hill and stopped there. Harry was
already soldier enough to see that it was a strong position. Before it
flowed a creek which the melting snows in the mountains had swollen to
a depth of eight or ten feet, and on another side was a fork of the
Shenandoah, also swollen. Here the soldiers began to fortify and prepare
for a longer stay while Jackson sent for aid.
Harry was not among the messengers for help. Jackson had learned his
great ability as a scout, and now he often sent him on missions of
observation, particularly with Captain Sherburne, to whom St. Clair and
Langdon were also loaned by Colonel Talbot. Thus the three were together
when they rode with Sherburne and a hundred men a few days after their
arrival at the ridge.
They were well wrapped in great coats, because the weather, after
deceiving for a while with the appearance of spring, had turned cold
again. The enemy's scouts and spies were keeping back, where they could
blow on their cold fingers or walk a while to restore the circulation to
their half frozen legs.
Sherburne was his neat and orderly self again and St. Clair was fully
his equal. Langdon openly boasted that he was going to have a dressing
contest between them for large stakes as soon as the war was over. But
all the young Southerners were in good spirits now. They had learned
of the alarm caused in the North by Kernstown, and that a third of
McClellan's army had been detached to guard against them. Nor had Banks
and Shields yet dared to attack them.
“There's what troubles Banks,” said Sherburne, pointing with his saber
to a towering mass of mountains which rose somber and dark in the very
center of the Shenandoah Valley. “He doesn't know which side of the
Massanuttons to take.”
Harry looked up at these peaks and ridges, famous now in the minds of
all Virginians, towering a half mile in the air, clothed from base to
summit with dense forest of oak and pine, although today the crests were
wrapped in snowy mists. They cut the Shenandoah valley into two smaller
valleys, the wider and more nearly level one on the west. Only a single
road by which troops could pass crossed the Massanuttons, and that road
was held by the cavalry of Ashby.
“If Banks comes one way and he proves too strong for us we can cross
over to the other,” said Sherburne. “If he divides his force, marching
into both valleys, we may beat one part of his army, then pass the
mountain and beat the other.”
Sherburne had divined aright. It was the mighty mass of the Massanuttons
that weighed upon Banks. As he looked up at the dark ridges and misty
crests his mind was torn by doubts. His own forces, great in number
though they were, were scattered. Fremont to his right on the slopes
of the Alleghanies had 25,000 men; there were other strong detachments
under Milroy and Schenck, and he had 17,000 men under his own eye. So he
was hesitating while the days were passing and Jackson growing stronger.
“I suppose the nature of the country helps us a lot,” said Harry as he
looked up at the Massanuttons, following Sherburne's pointing saber.
“It does, and we need help,” said Sherburne. “Even as it is they would
have been pushing upon us if it hadn't been for the cavalry and the
artillery. Every time a detachment advanced we'd open up on it with a
masked battery from the woods, and if pickets showed their noses too
close horsemen were after them in a second. We've had them worried to
death for days and days, and when they do come in force Old Jack will
have something up his sleeve.”
“I wonder,” said Harry.