KERNSTOWN
The brigade was halted before a stretch of forest white with dogwood.
Ahead began a slow cannonade. Puffs of smoke rose above the hill that
hid the iron combatants. "Ashby's Horse Artillery," said the men.
"That's the Blakeley now! Boys, I reckon we're in for it!"
An aide passed at a gallop. "Shields and nine thousand men. Ashby was
misinformed--more than we thought--Shields and nine thousand men."
Along the line the soldiers slightly moved their feet, moistened their
lips. The 65th occupied a fairy dell where Quaker ladies, blue as the
heavens, bloomed by every stone. A Federal battery opened from a hill to
the right. A screaming shell entered the wood, dug into earth, and
exploded, showering all around with mould. There came a great burst of
music--the Northern bands playing as the regiments deployed. "That's
'Yankee Doodle!'" said the men. "Everybody's cartridge-box full? Johnny
Lemon, don't you forgit to take your ramrod out before you fire!"
The colonel came along the line. "Boys, there is going to be a
considerable deer drive!--Now, I am going to tell you about this quarry.
Its name is Banks, and it wants to get across country to the Shenandoah,
and so out of the Valley to join McClellan. Now General Johnston's
moving from the Rapidan toward Richmond, and he doesn't want Banks
bothering him. He says, 'Delay the enemy as long as you can.' Now
General Jackson's undertaken to do it. We've got thirty-five hundred
men, and that ought to be enough.--_Right face! Forward march!_"
As the troops crossed the Valley pike the men hailed it. "Howdy, old
Road! Pleased to meet you again. Lord! jest as fresh as a daisy--jest as
though we hadn't tramped them thirty-six miles from New Market since
yesterday daybreak! My Lord! wish I had your staying qualities--_Au
re-vo-ree!_"
Stone fences bordered the pike. The infantry, moving in double column,
climbed them and entered another strip of springtime woods. The
artillery--McLaughlin's, Carpenter's, and Waters's batteries--found a
cross-roads and thundered by, straining to the front. Ashby, together
with Chew's battery of horse artillery, kept the pike the other side of
Kernstown. In front of the infantry stretched a great open marshy
meadow, utterly without cover. Beyond this to the north, rose low hills,
and they were crowned with Federal batteries, while along the slopes and
in the vales between showed masses of blue infantry, clearly visible, in
imposing strength and with bright battle-flags. It was high noon,
beneath a brilliant sky. There were persistent musicians on the northern
side; all the blue regiments came into battle to the sound of first-rate
military bands. The grey listened. "They sure are fond of 'Yankee
Doodle!' There are three bands playing it at once.... There's the 'Star
Spangled Banner'--
Oh, say can you see,
Through the blue shades of evening--
I used to love it!... Good Lord, how long ago!"
Hairston Breckinridge spoke, walking in front of his company. "We're
waiting for the artillery to get ahead. We're going to turn the enemy's
right--Shields's division, Kimball commanding. You see that wooded ridge
away across there? That's our objective. That's Pritchard's Hill, where
all the flags are--How many men have they got? Oh, about nine
thousand.--There goes the artillery now--there goes Rockbridge!--Yes,
sir!--_Attention! Fall in!_"
In double column almost the entire fighting force of the Army of the
Valley crossed the endless open meadow beneath Kimball's batteries. That
the latter's range was poor was a piece of golden fortune. The shells
crossed to the wood or exploded high in blue air. Harmless they might
be, but undeniably they were trying. Involuntarily the men stared,
fascinated, at each round white cloud above them; involuntarily jerked
their heads at each rending explosion. From a furrowed ridge below the
guns, musketry took a hand. The Army of the Valley here first met with
minie balls. The sound with which they came curdled the blood. "What's
that? What's that?... That's something new. _The infernal things!_"
Billy Maydew, walking with his eyes on the minies, stumbled over a
fairy's ring and came to his knees. Lieutenant Coffin swore at him.
"---- ----! Gawking and gaping as though 'twere Christmas and Roman
candles going off! Getup!" Billy arose and marched on. "I air a-going to
kill him. Yes, sir; I air a-going to kill him yet." "Shoo!" said the man
beside him. "He don't mean no harm. He's jest as nervous as a two-year
filly, and he's got to take it out on some one! Next 'lection of
officers he'll be down and out.--Sho! how them things do screech!"
The meadow closed with a wooded hill. The grey lines, reaching shelter,
gasped with relief. The way was steep, however, and the shells still
rained. An oak, struck and split by solid shot, fell across the way. A
line of ambulances coming somehow upon the hillside fared badly. Up the
men strained to the top, which proved to be a wide level. The
Rockbridge battery passed them at a gallop, to be greeted by a shell
thrown from a thirty-two pounder on the Federal right. It struck a wheel
horse of one of the howitzers, burst, and made fearful havoc. Torn flesh
and blood were everywhere; a second horse was mangled, only less
horribly than the first; the third, a strong white mare, was so covered
with the blood of her fellows and from a wound of her own, that she
looked a roan. The driver's spine was crushed, the foot of a gunner was
taken off--clean at the ankle as by a scythe. The noise was dreadful;
the shriek that the mare gave echoed through the March woods. The other
guns of the battery, together with Carpenter's and Waters's, swept round
the ruin and over the high open ground toward a stone wall that ran
diagonally across. The infantry followed and came out on an old field,
strewn with rocks and blackberry bushes. In the distance stretched
another long stone wall. Beyond it, on the gentle slopes, were guns
enough and blue soldiers enough--blue soldiers, with bright flags above
them and somewhere still that insistent music. They huzzahed when they
saw the Confederates, and the Confederates answered with that strangest
battle shout, that wild and high and ringing cry called the "rebel
yell."
In the woods along the ridge and in the old field itself the infantry
deployed. There were portions of three brigades,--Fulkerson's, Burk's,
and the Stonewall. Fulkerson held the left, Burk with the Irish
Battalion the right, and Garnett the centre. The position was
commanding, the Confederate strength massed before the Federal right,
Shields's centre well to the eastward, and his left under Sullivan in
the air, on the other side of the pike. It was Stonewall Jackson's
desire to turn that right flank, to crumple it back upon the centre, and
to sweep by on the road to Winchester--the loved valley town so near
that one might see its bourgeoning trees, hear its church bells.
He rode, on Little Sorrel, up and down the forming lines, and he spoke
only to give orders, quiet and curt, much in his class-room tone. He was
all brown like a leaf with Valley dust and sun and rain. The old cadet
cap was older yet, the ancient boots as grotesquely large, the curious
lift of his hand to Heaven no less curious than it had always been. He
was as awkward, as hypochondriac, as literal, as strict as ever.
Moreover, there should have hung about him the cloud of disfavour and
hostility raised by that icy march to Romney less than three months ago.
And yet--and yet! What had happened since then? Not much, indeed. The
return of the Stonewall Brigade to Winchester, Loring's representations,
the War Department's interference, and Major-General T. J. Jackson's
resignation from the service and request to be returned to the Virginia
Military Institute. General Johnston's remonstrance, Mr. Benjamin's
_amende honorable_, and the withdrawal of "Old Jack's" resignation.
There had been some surprise among the men at the effect upon themselves
of this withdrawal. They had greeted the news with hurrahs; they had
been all that day in extraordinary spirits. Why? To save them they could
not have told. He had not won any battles. He had been harsh, hostile,
pedantic, suspected, and detested upon that unutterable Bath and Romney
trip. And yet--and yet! He was cheered when, at Winchester, it was known
that the Army of the Valley and not the Virginia Military Institute was
to have Major-General T. J. Jackson's services. He was cheered when, at
short intervals, in the month or two there in camp, he reviewed his
army. He was cheered when, a month ago, the army left Winchester, left
the whole-hearted, loving, and loved town to be occupied by the enemy,
left it and moved southward to New Market! He was cheered loudly when,
two days before, had come the order to march--to march northward, back
along the pike, back toward Winchester.
He was cheered now as he rode quietly to and fro, forming his line of
battle--Fulkerson's 23d and 37th Virginia on the left, then the 27th
supported by the 21st, in the second line the 4th, the 33d, the 2d, the
65th, a little back the Irish Battalion, and at the bottom of the ridge
the 5th, keeping touch with Ashby toward the pike. It was two of the
afternoon, beautiful and bright. A brigadier, meeting him, said, "We
were not sure, general, that you would fight to-day! It is Sunday."
The other fastened upon him his steady grey-blue eyes. "The God of
Battles, sir, as a great general, will understand. I trust that every
regiment may have service to-morrow in Winchester. Advance your
skirmishers, and send a regiment to support Carpenter's battery."
The 27th Virginia, target for a withering artillery fire, crossed the
open and disappeared in a strip of March wood, high and keen and brown
against the fleckless sky. Behind it two long grey lines moved slowly
forward, out now in the old field. The men talked as they went. "Wish
there was nice ripe blackberries on these bushes! Wish I was a little
boy again with a straw hat and a tin bucket, gathering blackberries and
listenin' to the June bugs! _Zoon--Zoon--Zoon!_ O Lord! listen to that
shell!--Sho! that wasn't much. I'm getting to kind of like the fuss.
There ain't so many of them screeching now, anyhow!"
A lieutenant raised his voice. "Their fire is slackening.--Don't reckon
they're tired of it, sir? Hope their ammunition's out!"
From the rear galloped a courier. "Where's General Jackson?--They're
drawing off!--a big body, horse and foot, is backing toward
Winchester--"
"Glory hallelujah!" said the men. "Maybe we won't have to fight on
Sunday after all!"
Out of the March woods ahead broke a thunderclap of sound, settling into
a roar of musketry. It endured for some minutes, then forth from the
thickets and shadow of the forest, back from Barton's Woods into the
ragged old field, reeled the 27th Virginia. Its colonel, Colonel John
Echols, was down; badly hurt and half carried now by his men; there were
fifty others, officers and men, killed or wounded. The wounded, most of
them, were helped back by their comrades. The dead lay where they fell
in Barton's Woods, where the arbutus was in bloom and the purple
violets.
The 21st swept forward. The 27th rallied, joined the 21st. The two
charged the wood that was now filling with clouds of blue skirmishers.
Behind came hurrying Garnett with the 2d, the 4th, and the 33d.
Fulkerson on the left, facing Tyler, had two regiments, the 23d and 37th
Virginia. He deployed his men under cover, but now they were out in a
great and ragged field, all up and down, with boggy hollows, scarred too
by rail fences and blurred by low-growing briar patches. Diagonally
across it, many yards away, ran one of the stone fences of the region, a
long dike of loosely piled and rounded rock. Beyond it the ground kept
the same nature, but gradually lifted to a fringe of tall trees.
Emerging from this wood came now a Federal line of battle. It came with
pomp and circumstance. The sun shone on a thousand bayonets; bright
colours tossed in the breeze, drums rolled and bugles blew. Kimball,
commanding in Shields's absence, had divined the Confederate intention.
He knew that the man they called Stonewall Jackson meant to turn his
right, and he began to mass his regiments, and he sent for Sullivan from
the left.
The 23d and 37th Virginia eyed the on-coming line and eyed the stone
fence. "That's good cover!" quoth a hunter from the hills. "We'd a long
sight better have it than those fellows!--Sh! the colonel's speaking."
Fulkerson's speech was a shout, for there had arisen a deafening noise
of artillery. "Run for your lives, men--toward the enemy! Forward, and
take the stone fence!"
The two regiments ran, the Federal line of battle ran, the stone cover
the prize. As they ran the grey threw forward their muskets and fired.
That volley was at close range, and it was discharged by born marksmen.
The grey fired again; yet closer. Many a blue soldier fell; the
colour-bearer pitched forward, the line wavered, gave back. The charging
grey reached and took the wall. It was good cover. They knelt behind it,
laid their musket barrels along the stones, and fired. The blue line
withstood that volley, even continued its advance, but a second
fusillade poured in their very faces gave them check at last. In
disorder, colours left upon the field, they surged back to the wood and
to the cover of a fence at right angles with that held by the
Confederates. Now began upon the left the fight of the stone wall--hours
of raging battle, of high quarrel for this barrier. The regiments
composing the grey centre found time to cheer for Fulkerson; the rumour
of the fight reached the right where Ashby's squadron held the pike.
Jackson himself came on Little Sorrel, looked at the wall and the line
of men, powder grimed about the lips, plying the ramrods, shouldering
the muskets, keeping back Tyler's regiments, and said "Good! good!"
Across a mile of field thundered an artillery duel, loud and prolonged.
The blue had many guns; the grey eighteen in action. There were indeed
but seventeen, for a Tredegar iron gun was disabled in crossing the
meadow. The blue were the stronger cannon, modern, powerful. The grey
were inferior there; also the grey must reach deeper and deeper into
caisson and limber chest, must cast anxious backward glances toward
ordnance wagons growing woefully light. The fire of the blue was
extremely heavy; the fire of the grey as heavy as possible considering
the question of ammunition. Rockbridge worked its guns in a narrow
clearing dotted with straw stacks. A section under Lieutenant Poague was
sent at a gallop, half a mile forward, to a point that seemed of
vantage. Here the unlimbering guns found themselves in infantry company,
a regiment lying flat, awaiting orders. "Hello, 65th!" said the gunners.
"Wish people going to church at home could see us!"
A shell fell beside the howitzer and burst with appalling sound. The gun
was blown from position, and out of the smoke came a fearful cry of
wounded men. "O God!--O God!" The smoke cleared. All who had served that
gun were down. Their fellows about the six-pounder, the other gun of the
section, stood stupefied, staring, their lips parted, sponge staff or
rammer or lanyard idle in their hands. A horse came galloping. An aide
of Jackson's--Sandy Pendleton it was said--leaped to the ground. He was
joined by Richard Cleave. The two came through the ring of the wounded
and laid hold of the howitzer. "Mind the six-pounder, Poague! We'll
serve here. Thunder Run men, three of you, come here and help!"
They drew the howitzer in position, charged it, and fired. In a very few
moments after the horror of the shell, she was steadily sending canister
against the great Parrott on the opposite hill. The six-pounder beside
her worked as steadily. A surgeon came with his helpers, gathered up the
wounded, and carried them beneath a whistling storm of shot and shell to
a field hospital behind the ridge.
Out of the woods came fresh regiments of the enemy. These bore down upon
the guns and upon the 5th Virginia now forming behind them. Poague's
section opened with canister at one hundred and fifty yards. All the
Valley marksmen of the 5th let fall the lids of their cartridge boxes,
lifted their muskets, and fired. The blue withstood the first volley and
the second, but at the third they went back to the wood. An order
arrived from McLaughlin of the Rockbridge, "Lieutenant Poague back to
the straw stacks!" The battery horses, quiet and steadfast, were brought
from where they had stood and cropped the grass, the guns were limbered
up, Jackson's aide and the men of the 65th fell back, the six-pounder
shared its men with the howitzer, off thundered the guns. There was a
stir in the 65th. "Boys, I heard say that when those fellows show again,
we're going to charge!"
The battle was now general--Fulkerson on the left behind the stone wall,
Garnett in the centre, the artillery and Burk with three battalions on
the right. Against them poured the regiments of Kimball and Tyler, with
Sullivan coming up. The sun, could it have been seen through the rolling
smoke, would have showed low in the heavens. The musketry was
continuous, and the sound of the cannon shook the heart of Winchester
three miles away.
The 65th moved forward. Halfway up the slope, its colonel received an
ugly wound. He staggered and sank. "Go on! go on, men! Fine hunt! Don't
let the stag--" The 65th went on, led by Richard Cleave.
Before it stretched a long bank of springtime turf, a natural breastwork
seized by the blue soldiers as the stone fence on the left had been
taken by Fulkerson. From behind this now came a line of leaping flame.
Several of the grey fell, among them the colour-bearer. The man nearest
snatched the staff. Again the earthwork blazed and rang, and again the
colour-bearer fell, pitching forward, shot through the heart. Billy
Maydew caught the colours. "Thar's a durned sharpshooter a-settin' in
that thar tree! Dave, you pick him off."
Again the bank blazed. A western regiment was behind it, a regiment of
hunters and marksmen. Moreover a fresh body of troops could be seen
through the smoke, hurrying down from the tall brown woods. The grey
line broke, then rallied and swept on. The breastwork was now but a few
hundred feet away. A flag waved upon it, the staff planted in the soft
earth. Billy, moving side by side with Allan Gold, clutched closer the
great red battle-flag with the blue cross. His young face was set, his
eyes alight. Iron-sinewed he ran easily, without panting. "I air
a-goin'," he announced, "I air a-goin' to put this here one in the place
of that thar one."
"'T isn't going to be easy work," said Allan soberly. "What's the use of
ducking, Steve Dagg? If a bullet's going to hit you it's going to hit
you, and if it isn't going to hit you it isn't--"
A minie ball cut the staff of the flag in two just above Billy's head.
He caught the colours as they came swaying down, Allan jerked a musket
from a dead man's grasp, and together he and Billy somehow fastened the
flag to the bayonet and lifted it high. The line halted under a
momentary cover, made by the rising side of a hollow rimmed by a few
young locust trees. Cleave came along it. "Close ranks!--Men, all of
you! that earthwork must be taken. The 2d, the 4th, and the 33d are
behind us looking to see us do it. General Jackson himself is looking.
_Attention! Fix bayonets! Forward! Charge!_"
Up out of the hollow, and over the field went the 65th in a wild charge.
The noise of a thousand seas was in the air, and the smoke of the
bottomless pit. The yellow flashes of the guns came through it, and a
blur of colour--the flag on the bank. On went their own great
battle-flag, slanting forward as Billy Maydew ran. The bank flamed and
roared. A bullet passed through the fleshy part of the boy's arm. He
looked sideways at the blood. "Those durned bees sure do sting! I air
a-goin' to plant this here flag on that thar bank, jest the same as if
't was a hop pole in Christianna's garden!"
Fulkerson fought on grimly by the stone wall; Garnett and the other
Stonewall regiments struggled with desperation to hold the centre, the
artillery thundered from every height. The 65th touched the earthwork.
Cleave mounted first; Allan followed, then Billy and the Thunder Run
men, the regiment pouring after. Hot was the welcome they got, and
fierce was their answering grip. In places men could load and fire, but
bayonet and musket butt did much of the work. There was a great clamour,
the acrid smell of powder, the indescribable taste of battle. The flag
was down; the red battle-flag with the blue cross in its place. There
was a surge of the western regiment toward it, a battle around it that
strewed the bank and the shallow ditch beneath with many a blue figure,
many a grey. Step by step the grey pushed the blue back, away from the
bank, back toward the wood arising, shadowy, from a base of eddying
smoke.
Out of the smoke, suddenly, came hurrahing. It was deep and loud,
issuing from many throats. The western regiment began to hurrah, too.
"They're coming to help! They're coming to help! Indiana, ain't
it?--Now, you rebs, you go back on the other side!"
The blue wave from the wood came to reinforce the blue wave in front.
The 65th struggled with thrice its numbers, and there was a noise from
the wood which portended more. Back, inch by inch, gave the grey,
fighting desperately. They loaded, fired, loaded, fired. They used
bayonet and musket stock. The blue fell thick, but always others came to
take their places. The grey fell, and the ranks must close with none to
reinforce. In the field to the left the 4th and the 33d had their hands
very full; the 2d was gone to Fulkerson's support, the 5th and the 42d
were not yet up. Out of the wood came a third huzzahing blue line.
Cleave, hatless, bleeding from a bayonet thrust in the arm, ordered the
retreat.
On the crest of the bank there was confusion and clamour, shots and
shouts, the groans of the fallen, a horrible uproar. Out of the storm
came a high voice, "It air a-goin' to stay, and I air a-goin' to stay
with it!"
Billy Maydew had the flag. He stood defiant, half enveloped in its
folds, his torn shirt showing throat and breast, his young head thrown
back against the red ground. "I ain't a-goin' to quit--I ain't a-goin'
to quit! Thunder Run and Thunder Mountain hear me what I am a-sayin'! I
ain't a-goin' to quit!"
Allan Gold laid hold of him. "Why, Billy, we're coming back! There's got
to be a lot of times like this in a big war! You come on and carry the
colours out safe. You don't want those fellows to take them!"
Billy chanted on, "I ain't a-goin' to quit! I put it here jest like I
was putting a hop pole in Christianna's garden, and I ain't a-goin' to
dig it up again--"
Dave appeared. "Billy boy, don't be such a damned fool! You jest
skeedaddle with the rest of us and take it out of them next time. Don't
ye want to see Christianna again, an' maw an' the dogs?--Thar, now!"
A bullet split the standard, another--a spent ball coming from the
hillside--struck the bearer in the chest. Billy came to his knees, the
great crimson folds about him. Cleave appeared in the red-lit murk.
"Pick him up, Allan, and bring him away."
It was almost dusk to the green and rolling world about the field of
Kernstown. Upon that field, beneath the sulphurous battle cloud, it was
dusk indeed. The fighting line was everywhere, and for the Confederates
there were no reinforcements. Fulkerson yet held the left, Garnett with
conspicuous gallantry the centre with the Stonewall regiments. The
batteries yet thundered upon the right. But ammunition was low, and for
three hours Ashby's mistake as to the enemy's numbers had received full
demonstration. Shields's brigadiers did well and the blue soldiers did
well.
A body of troops coming from the wood and crowding through a gap in a
stone fence descended upon the Rockbridge battery. Four regiments of the
Stonewall brigade clung desperately to the great uneven field which
marked the centre. The musket barrels were burningly hot to the touch of
the men, their fingers must grope for the cartridges rattling in the
cartridge boxes, their weariness was horrible, their eyes were glazed,
their lips baked with thirst. Long ago they had fought in a great,
bright, glaring daytime; then again, long ago, they had begun to fight
in a period of dusk, an age of dusk. The men loaded, fired, loaded,
rammed, fired quite automatically. They had been doing this for a long,
long time. Probably they would do it for a long time to come. Only the
cartridges were not automatically supplied. It even seemed that they
might one day come to an end. The dusk deepened. They had, beneath the
red-lit battle clouds, a glimpse of Garnett, a general chivalric and
loved, standing in his stirrups, looking out and upward toward the dark
wood and Sullivan's fresh regiments.
A sergeant came along the line stretching a haversack open with his
hands. In it were cartridges. "I gathered all the dead had. 'T isn't
many. You've got to shoot to kill, boys!" A man with a ball through the
end of his spine, lying not far from a hollow of the earth, half pool,
half bog, began to cry aloud in an agonizing fashion. "Water! water! Oh,
some one give me water! Water! For the love of God, water!" A grey
soldier started out of line toward him; in a second both were killed.
Garnett settled down in his saddle and came back to the irregular,
smoke-wreathed, swaying line. He spoke to his colonels. "There are three
thousand fresh bayonets at the back of these woods. General Jackson does
not wish a massacre. I will withdraw the brigade."
The troops were ready to go. They had held the centre very long; the
cartridges were all but spent, the loss was heavy, they were deadly
tired. They wanted water to drink and to hear the command, _Break
ranks!_ Garnett was gallant and brave; they saw that he did what he did
with reason, and their judgment acquiesced. There was momently a fresh
foe. Without much alignment, fighting in squads or singly, firing as
they went from thicket and hollow at the heavy on-coming masses, the
Stonewall Brigade fell back upon the wood to the south. The blue wave
saw victory and burst into a shout of triumph. Kimbal's batteries, too,
began a jubilant thunder.
Over the field, from Fulkerson on the left to the broken centre and the
withdrawing troops came a raw-bone sorrel urged to a furious gallop;
upon it a figure all dusk in the dusk, a Cromwell-Quixote of a man,
angered now to a degree, with an eye like steel and a voice like ice. He
rode up to Garnett, as though he would ride him down. "General Garnett,
what are you doing? Go back at once, sir!"
As he spoke he threw himself from the saddle and closed his gauntleted
hand with force on the arm of a drummer boy. "Beat the rally!" he
commanded.
The rapid and continuous rolling filled like a sound of the sea the ears
of the Stonewall Brigade. Garnett, in a strange voice, gave the
counter-order. The men uttered a hard and painful gasp. They looked and
saw Stonewall Jackson lifted above them, an iron figure in a storm of
shot and shell. He jerked his hand into the air; he shouted, "Back, men!
Give them the bayonet!" The drum beat on. Colonels and captains and
lieutenants strove to aid him and to change the retreat into an advance.
In vain! the commands were shattered; the fighting line all broken and
dispersed. The men did not shamefully flee; they retreated sullenly,
staying here and there where there were yet cartridges, to fire upon the
on-coming foe, but they continued to go back.
The 5th and the 42d with Funsten's small cavalry command came hastening
to the broken centre and there made a desperate fight. The 5th Virginia
and the 5th Ohio clanged shields. The 84th Pennsylvania broke twice,
rallied twice, finally gave way. Two Indiana regiments came up; the 5th
Virginia was flanked; other blue reinforcements poured in. The last grey
commands gave way. Fulkerson, too, on the left, his right now uncovered,
must leave his stone fence and save his men as best he might. Rockbridge
and Carpenter and Waters no longer thundered from the heights. The grey
infantry, wildly scattered, came in a slow surge back through the woods
where dead men lay among the spring flowers, and down the ridge and
through the fields, grey and dank in the March twilight, toward the
Valley pike. Night and the lost battle weighed upon the army. The
shadowy ambulances, the lights of the gatherers of the wounded flitting
few and far over the smoke-clouded field, made for a ghastly depression.
Sick at heart, in a daze of weariness, hunger and thirst, drunk with
sleep, mad for rest, command by command stumbled down the pike or
through the fields to where, several miles to the south, stretched the
meadows where their trains were parked. There was no pursuit. Woods and
fields were rough and pathless; it was now dark night, and Ashby held
the pike above.
A camp-fire was built for Stonewall Jackson in a field to the right of
the road, three miles from Kernstown. Here he stood, summoned Garnett,
and put him under arrest. The army understood next day that heavy
charges would be preferred against this general.
To right and left of the pike camp-fires flamed in the windy night.
Passing one of these, Richard Cleave cut short some bewailing on the
part of the ring about it. "Don't be so downcast, people! Sometimes a
defeat in one place equals a victory in another. I don't believe that
General Banks will join General McClellan just now. Indeed, it's not
impossible that McClellan will have to part with another division. Their
government's dreadfully uneasy about Washington and the road to
Washington. They didn't beat us easily, and if we can lead them up and
down this Valley for a while--I imagine that's what General Johnston
wants, and what General Jackson will procure.--And now you'd better all
go to sleep."
"Where are you going, Cleave?"
"To see about the colonel. They've just brought him to the farmhouse
yonder. Dr. McGuire says he will get well--dear old Brooke!"
He went, striding over the furrowed field past groups of men sleeping
and moaning as they slept. The stars were very bright in the clear,
cold, windy night. He looked at them and thought of the battle and of
the dead and the wounded, and of Judith and of his mother and sister,
and of Will in the 2d, and of to-morrow's movements, and of Stonewall
Jackson. A dark figure came wandering up to him. It proved to be that of
an old negro. "Marster, is you seen Marse Charlie?"
"Marse Charlie whom, uncle?"
"Marse Charlie Armetage, sah, mah young marster. I 'spec you done seed
him? I 'spec he come marchin' wif you down de pike f'om dat damn
battlefield? I sure would be 'bleeged ef you could tell me, sah."
"I wish I could," said Cleave, with gentleness. "I haven't seen him, but
maybe some one else has."
The old negro drew one hand through the other. "I's asked erbout fifty
gent'men ... Reckon Marse Charlie so damn tired he jes' lain down
somewhere an' gone ter sleep. Reckon he come down de pike in de mahnin',
shoutin' fer Daniel. Don' you reckon so, marster?"
"It's not impossible, Daniel. Maybe you'll find him yet."
"I 'specs ter," said Daniel. "I 'spec ter fin' him howsomever he's
a-lyin'." He wandered off in the darkness, and Cleave heard him speaking
to a picket, "Marster, is you seen Marse Charlie?"