ASHBY
Flournoy and Munford, transferred to Ashby's command, kept with him in
the Confederate rear. The army marching from the Shenandoah left the
cavalry behind in the wind and rain to burn the bridge and delay
Fremont. Ashby, high on the eastern bank, watched the slow flames seize
the timbers, fight with the wet, prevail and mount. The black stallion
planted his fore feet, shook his head, snuffed the air. The wind blew
out his rider's cloak. In the light from the burning bridge the scarlet
lining glowed and gleamed like the battle-flag. The stallion neighed.
Ashby's voice rose ringingly. "Chew, get the Blakeley ready! Wyndham's
on the other side!"
The flames mounted high, a great pyre streaming up, reddening the night,
the roaring Shenandoah, the wet and glistening woods. Out of the
darkness to the north came Maury Stafford with a scouting party. He
saluted. "There is a considerable force over there, sir, double-quicking
through the woods to save the bridge. Cavalry in front--Wyndham, I
suppose, still bent on 'bagging' you."
"Here they are!" said Ashby. "But you are too late, Colonel Sir Percy
Wyndham!"
The blazing arch across the river threw a wine-red light up and down and
showed cavalry massing beneath walnut, oak, and pine. There were trumpet
signals and a great trampling of hoofs, but the roaring flames, the
swollen torrent, the pattering rain, the flaws of wind somewhat dulled
other sounds. A tall man with sash and sabre, thigh boots and
marvellously long moustaches, sat his horse beneath a dripping,
wind-tossed pine. He pointed to the grey troopers up and down the
southern bank. "There's the quarry! _Fire!_"
Two could play at that game. The flash from the northern bank and the
rattle of the carbines were met from the southern by as vivid a leaping
spark, as loud a sound. With the New Jersey squadrons was a Parrott gun.
It was brought up, placed and fired. The shell exploded as it touched
the red-lit water. There was a Versailles fountain costing nothing. The
Blakeley answered. The grey began to sing.
"If you want to have a good time--
If you want to have a good time--
If you want to catch the devil,
Jine the cavalry!"
A courier appeared beside Ashby. "General Jackson wants to know, sir, if
they can cross?"
"Look at the bridge and tell him, No."
"Then he says to fall back. Ammunition's precious."
The cavalry leader put to his lips the fairy clarion slung from his
shoulder and sounded the retreat. The flaming bridge lit all the place
and showed the great black horse and him upon it. The English adventurer
across the water had with him sharpshooters. In the light that wavered,
leaped and died, and sprang again, these had striven in vain to reach
that high-placed target. Now one succeeded.
The ball entered the black's side. He had stood like a rock, now he
veered like a ship in a storm. Ashby dropped the bugle, threw his leg
over the saddle, and sprang to the earth as the great horse sank. Those
near him came about him. "No! I am not hurt, but Black Conrad is. My
poor friend!" He stroked Black Conrad, kissed him between the eyes and
drew his pistol. Chew fired the Blakeley again, drowning all lesser
sound. Suddenly the supports of the bridge gave way. A great part of the
roaring mass fell into the stream; the remainder, toward the southern
shore, flamed higher and higher. The long rattle of the Federal carbines
had an angry sound. They might have marched more swiftly after all,
seeing that Stonewall Jackson would not march more slowly! Build a
bridge! How could they build a bridge over the wide stream, angry
itself, hoarsely and violently thrusting its way under an inky,
tempestuous sky! They had no need to spare ammunition, and so they fired
recklessly, cannon, carbine, and revolvers into the night after the
grey, retiring squadrons.
Stafford, no great favourite with the mass of the men, but well liked by
some, rode beside a fellow officer. This was a man genial and shrewd,
who played the game of war as he played that of whist, eyes half closed
and memory holding every card. He spoke cheerfully. "Shenandoah
beautifully swollen! Don't believe Fremont has pontoons. He's out of the
reckoning for at least a day and a night--probably longer. Nice for us
all!"
"It has been a remarkable campaign."
"'Remarkable'! Tell you what it's like, Stafford. It's like
1796--Napoleon's Italian campaign."
"You think so? Well, it may be true. Hear the wind in the pines!"
"Tell you what you lack, Stafford. You lack interest in the war. You are
too damned perfunctory. You take orders like an automaton, and you go
execute them like an automaton. I don't say that they're not
beautifully executed; they are. But the soul's not there. The other day
at Tom's Brook I watched you walk your horse up to the muzzle of that
fellow Wyndham's guns, and, by God! I don't believe you knew any more
than an automaton that the guns were there!"
"Yes, I did--"
"Well, you may have known it with one half of your brain. You didn't
with the other half. To a certain extent, I can read your hand. You've
got a big war of your own, in a country of your own--eh?"
"Perhaps you are not altogether wrong. Such things happen sometimes."
"Yes, they do. But I think it a pity! This war"--he jerked his head
toward the environing night--"is big enough, with horribly big stakes.
If I were you, I'd drum the individual out of camp."
"Think only of the general? I wish I could!"
"Well, can't you?"
"No, not yet."
"There are only two things--barring disease--which can so split the
brain in two--send the biggest part off, knight-errant or Saracen, into
some No-Man's Country, and keep the other piece here in Virginia to
crack invaders' skulls! One's love and one's hate--"
"Never both?"
"Knight-errant and Saracen in one? That's difficult."
"Nothing is so difficult as life, nor so strange. And, perhaps, love and
hate are both illnesses. Sometimes I think so."
"A happy recovery then! You are too good a fellow--"
"I am not a good fellow."
"You are not at least an amiable one to-night! Don't let the fever get
too high!"
"Will you listen," said Stafford, "to the wind in the pines? and did you
ever see the automatic chess-player?"
Two days later, Fremont, having bridged the Shenandoah, crossed, and
pushed his cavalry with an infantry support southward by the pike. About
three in the afternoon of the sixth, Ashby's horses were grazing in the
green fields south of Harrisonburg, on the Port Republic road. To the
west stretched a belt of woodland, eastward rose a low ridge clad with
beech and oak. The green valley lay between. The air, to-day, was soft
and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an
amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses;
others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid,
short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear
pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the
soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or
turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four played poker
beneath a tree, one read a Greek New Testament, six had found a small
turtle, and with the happy importance of boys were preparing a brushwood
fire and the camp kettle. Others slept, head pillowed on arm, soft felt
hat drawn over eyes. The rolling woodland toward Harrisonburg and
Fremont was heavily picketed. A man rose from beside the pool,
straightened himself, and holding up the shirt he had been washing
looked at it critically. Apparently it passed muster, for he
painstakingly stretched it upon the grass and taking a pair of cotton
drawers turned again to the water. A blue-eyed Loudoun youth whistling
"Swanee River" brought a brimming bucket from the stream that made the
pool and poured it gleefully into the kettle. A Prince Edward man, lying
chest downward, blew the fire, another lifted the turtle. The horses
moved toward what seemed lusher grass, one of the poker players said
"Damn!" the reader turned a leaf of the Greek Testament. One of the
sleepers sat up. "I thought I heard a shot--"
Perhaps he had heard one; at any rate he now heard many. Down the road
and out from under the great trees of the forest in front burst the
pickets driven in by a sudden, well-directed onslaught of blue
cavalry--Fremont's advance with a brigade of infantry behind. In a
moment all was haste and noise in the green vale. Men leaped to their
feet, left their washing, left the turtle simmering in the pot, the gay
cards upon the greensward, put up the Greek Testament, the home letters,
snatched belt and carbine, caught the horses, saddled them with speed,
swung themselves up, and trotted into line, eyes front--Ashby's men.
The pickets had their tale to tell. "Burst out of the wood--the damned
Briton again, sir, with his squadrons from New Jersey! Rode us
down--John Ferrar killed--Gilbert captured--You can see from the hilltop
there. They are forming for a charge. There's infantry behind--Blinker's
Dutch from the looks of them!"
"Blinker's Dutch," said the troopers. "'Hooney,' 'Nix furstay,' 'Bag
Jackson,' 'Kiss und steal,' 'Hide under bed,' 'Rifle bureau drawers,'
'Take lockets und rings'--Blinker's Dutch! We should have dog whips!"
To the rear was the little ridge clothed with beech and oak. The road
wound up and over it. Ashby's bugle sounded. "_Right face. Trot!
March!_" The road went gently up, grass on either side with here and
there a clump of small pines. Butterflies fluttered; all was gay and
sweet in the June sunshine. Ashby rode before on the bay stallion. The
Horse Artillery came also from the meadow where it had been
camped--Captain Chew, aged nineteen, and his three guns and his
threescore men, four of them among the best gunners in the whole army.
All mounted the ridge, halted and deployed. The guns were posted
advantageously, the 6th, the 7th, and the 2d Virginia Cavalry in two
ranks along the ridge. Wide-spreading beech boughs, growing low, small
oak scrub and branchy dogwood made a screen of the best; they looked
down, hidden, upon a gentle slope and the Port Republic road. Ashby's
post was in front of the silver bole of a great beech. With one
gauntleted hand he held the bay stallion quiet, with the other he shaded
his eyes and gazed at the westerly wood into which ran the road. Chew,
to his right, touched the Blakeley lovingly. Gunner number 1 handed the
powder. Number 2 rammed it home, took the shell from Number 1 and put it
in. All along the ridge the horsemen handled their carbines, spoke each
in a quiet, genial tone to his horse. Sound of the approaching force
made itself heard and increased.
"About a thousand, shouldn't you think, sir?" asked an aide.
"No. Between seven and eight hundred. Do you remember in 'Ivanhoe'--"
Out of the western wood, in order of charge, issued a body of horse. It
was yet a little distant, horses at a trot, the declining sun making a
stirring picture. Rapidly crescent to eye and ear, they came on. Their
colours flew, the sound of their bugles raised the blood. Their pace
changed to a gallop. The thundering hoofs, the braying trumpets, shook
the air. Colours and guidons grew large.
"By God, sir, Wyndham is coming to eat you up! This time he knows he's
caught the hare."
"Do all John Bulls ride like that? Shades of the Revolution! did we all
ride like that before we came to Virginia?"
"God! what a noise!"
Ashby spoke. "Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes."
The charge began to swallow up the gentle slope, the sunny road, the
green grass to either hand. The bugles blew at height, the sabres
gleamed, the tall man in front rode rising in his stirrups, his sabre
overhead. "Huzzah! huzzah! huzzah!" shouted the blue cavalry.
"Are you ready, Captain Chew?" demanded Ashby. "Very well, then, let
them have it!"
The Blakeley and the two Parrott guns spoke in one breath. While the
echoes were yet thundering, burst a fierce volley from all the
Confederate short rifles. Down went the Federal colour-bearer, down went
other troopers in the front rank, down went the great gaunt horse
beneath the Englishman! Those behind could not at once check their
headlong gallop; they surged upon and over the fallen. The Blakeley
blazed again and the grey carbines rang. The Englishman was on his feet,
had a trooper's horse and was shouting like a savage, urging the
squadrons on and up. For the third time the woods flamed and rang. The
blue lines wavered. Some horsemen turned. "Damn you! On!" raged Wyndham.
Ashby put his bugle to his lips. Clear and sweet rose the notes, a
silver tempest. "_Ashby! Ashby!_" shouted the grey lines and charged.
"_Ashby! Ashby!_" Out of the woods and down the hill they came like
undyked waters. The two tides met and clashed. There followed a wild
melee, a shouting, an unconscious putting forth of great muscular
energy, a seeing as through red glasses besmirched with powder smoke, a
poisonous odour, a sense of cotton in the mouth, a feeling as of
struggle on a turret, far, far up, with empty space around and below.
The grey prevailed, the blue turned and fled. For a moment it seemed as
though they were flying through the air, falling, falling! the grey had
a sense of dizziness as they struck spur in flank and pursued headlong.
All seemed to be sinking through the air, then, suddenly, they felt
ground, exhaled breath, and went thundering up the Port Republic road,
toward Harrisonburg. In front strained the blue, presently reaching the
wood. A gun boomed from a slope beyond. Ashby checked the pursuit and
listened to the report of a vedette. "Fremont pushing forward. Horse
and guns and the German division. Hm!" He sat the bay stallion, looking
about him, then, "Cuninghame, you go back to General Ewell. Rear guard
can't be more than three miles away. Tell General Ewell about the
Germans and ask him to give me a little infantry. Hurry now, and if he
gives them, bring them up quickly!"
The vedette galloped eastward. Ashby and his men rode back to the ridge,
the Horse Artillery, the dead, the wounded, and the prisoners. The
latter numbered four officers and forty men. They were all in a group in
the sunshine, which lay with softness upon the short grass and the
little pine trees. The dead lay huddled, while over them flitted the
butterflies. Ashby's surgeons were busy with the wounded. A man with a
shattered jaw was making signs, deliberately talking in the
deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which perhaps he had learned for some friend or
relative's sake. A younger man, his hand clenched over a wound in the
breast, said monotonously, over and over again, "I am from Trenton, New
Jersey, I am from Trenton, New Jersey." A third with glazing eyes made
the sign of the cross, drew himself out of the sun, under one of the
little pine trees, and died. Some of the prisoners were silent. Others
talked with bravado to their captors. "Salisbury, North Carolina! That's
not far. Five hundred miles not far--Besides, Fremont will make a rescue
presently. And if he doesn't, Shields will to-morrow! Then off you
fellows go to Johnson's Island!" The officer who had led the charge sat
on a bank above the road. In the onset he had raged like a Berserker,
now he sat imperturbable, ruddy and stolid, an English philosopher on a
fallen pine. Ashby came back to the road, dismounting, and leading the
bay stallion, advanced. "Good-day, Colonel Wyndham."
"Good-day, General Ashby. War's a game. Somebody's got to lose. Only way
to stop loss is to stop war. You held the trumps--Damn me! You played
them well, too." His sword lay across his knees. He took it up and held
it out. Ashby made a gesture of refusal. "No. I don't want it. I am
about to send you to the rear. If there is anything I can do for you--"
"Thank you, general, there is nothing. Soldier of fortune. Fortune of
war. Bad place for a charge. Ought to have been more wary. Served me
right. You've got Bob Wheat with you? Know Bob Wheat. Find him in the
rear?"
"Yes. With General Ewell. And now as I am somewhat in haste--"
"You must bid me good-day! See you are caring for my wounded. Much
obliged. Dead will take care of themselves. Pretty little place!
Flowers, butterflies--large bronze one on your hat.--This our escort?
Perfectly true you'll have a fight presently. There's the New York
cavalry as well as the New Jersey--plenty of infantry--Pennsylvania
Bucktails and so forth. Wish I could see the scrimmage! Curious world!
Can't wish you good luck. Must wish you ill. However, good luck's
wrapped up in all kinds of curious bundles. Ready, men! General Ashby,
may I present Major Markham, Captain Bondurant, Captain Schmidt,
Lieutenant Colter? They will wish to remember having met you.--Now,
gentlemen, at your service!"
Prisoners and escort vanished over the hill. Ashby, remounting,
proceeded to make his dispositions, beginning with the Horse Artillery
which he posted on a rise of ground, behind a mask of black thorn and
dogwood. From the east arose the strains of fife and drum. "Maryland
Line," said the 6th, the 7th, and the 2d Virginia Cavalry.
I hear the distant thunder hum,
Maryland!
The old line bugle, fife and drum,
Maryland!
She breathes! She burns! she'll come! she'll come--
"Oh! here's the 58th, too! Give them a cheer, boys! Hurrah! 58th
Virginia! Hurrah! The Maryland Line!"
The two infantry regiments came forward at a double-quick, bright and
brisk, rifle barrels and bayonets gleaming in the now late sunshine,
their regimental flags azure and white, and beside them streaming the
red battle-flag with the blue cross. As they approached there also
began to show, at the edge of the forest which cut the western horizon,
the Federal horse and foot. Before these was a space of rolling fields,
then a ragged line of timber, a straggling copse of underbrush and tall
trees cresting a wave of earth. A body of blue cavalry started out of
the wood, across the field. At once Chew opened with the Blakeley and
the two Parrotts. There ensued confusion and the horse fell back. A blue
infantry regiment issued at a run, crossed the open and attained the
cover of the coppice which commanded the road and the eastern stretch of
fields. A second prepared to follow. The Maryland Line swung through the
woods with orders to flank this movement. Ashby galloped to the 58th.
"Forward, 58th, and clear that wood!" He rode on to Munford at the head
of the squadrons. "I am going to dislodge them from that cover. The
moment they leave it sound the charge!"
The 58th advanced steadily over the open. When it was almost upon the
coppice it fired, then fixed bayonets. The discharge had been aimed at
the wood merely. The shadows were lengthening, the undergrowth was
thick; they could not see their opponents. Suddenly the coppice blazed,
a well-directed and fatal volley. The regiment that held this wood had a
good record and meant to-day to better it. Its target was visible
enough, and close, full before it in the last golden light. A grey
officer fell, the sword that he had brandished described a shining curve
before it plunged into a clump of sumach. Five men lay upon the earth;
the colour-bearer reeled, then pitched forward. The man behind him
caught the colours. The 58th fired again, then, desperately, continued
its advance. Smoke and flame burst again from the coppice. A voice of
Stentor was heard. "Now Pennsylvania Bucktails, you're making history!
Do your durndest!"
"Close ranks!" shouted the officer of the 58th. "Close ranks! Forward!"
There came a withering volley. The second colour-bearer sank; a third
seized the standard. Another officer was down; there were gaps in the
ranks and under feet the wounded. The regiment wavered.
From the left came a bay stallion, devouring the earth, legs and head
one tawny line, distended nostril and red-lit eye. The rider loosened
from his shoulders a scarlet-lined cloak, lifted and shook it in the
air. It flared out with the wind of his coming, like a banner, or a
torch. He sent his voice before him, "Charge, men, charge!"
Spasmodically the 58th started forward. The copse, all dim and smoky,
flowered again, three hundred red points of fire. The sound was
crushing, startling, beating at the ear drum. The Bucktails were
shouting, "Come on, Johnny Reb! Go back, Johnny Reb! Don't know what you
want to do, do you, Johnny Reb?"
Ashby and the bay reached the front of the regiment. There was disorder,
wavering, from underfoot groans and cries. So wrapped in smoke was the
scene, so dusk, with the ragged and mournful woods hiding the low sun,
that it was hard to distinguish the wounded. It seemed as though it was
the earth herself complaining.
"On, on, men!" cried Ashby. "Help's coming--the Maryland Line!" There
was a wavering answer, half cheer, half-wailing cry, "_Ashby! Ashby!_"
Two balls pierced the bay stallion. He reared, screamed loudly, and fell
backward. Before he touched the earth the great horseman of the Valley
was clear of him. In the smoke and din Ashby leaped forward, waving the
red-lined cloak above his head. "Charge, men!" he cried. "For God's
sake, charge!" A bullet found his heart. He fell without a groan, his
hand and arm wrapped in the red folds.
From rank to rank there passed something like a sobbing cry. The 58th
charged. Bradley Johnson with the Maryland Line dislodged the Bucktails,
captured their colonel and many others, killed and wounded many. The
coppice, from soaked mould to smoky treetop, hung in the twilight like a
wood in Hades. It was full dusk when Fremont's advance drew back,
retreating sullenly to its camp at Harrisonburg. The stars were all out
when, having placed the body on a litter, Ashby's men carried Ashby to
Port Republic.
He lay at midnight in a room of an old house of the place. They had laid
him upon a narrow bed, an old, single four-poster, with tester and
valance. The white canopy above, the fall of the white below had an
effect of sculptured stone. The whole looked like an old tomb in some
dim abbey. The room was half in light, half in darkness. The village
women had brought flowers; of these there was no lack. All the blossoms
of June were heaped about him. He lay in uniform, upon the red-lined
cloak, his plumed hat beside him, his sword in his hand. His staff
watched in the room, seated with bowed heads beside the open window. An
hour before dawn some one spoke to the sentry without the door, then
gently turned the handle and entered the chamber. The watchers arose,
stood at salute. "Kindly leave General Ashby and me alone together for a
little while, gentlemen," said the visitor. The officers filed out. The
last one turning softly to close the door saw Jackson kneel.