AND A "DEMONSTRATION" ON THE ENEMY'S POSITION.
"RUSSELL, that ain't going to heal without a A scar," Alf Russell
consoled himself, as he studied his hurt with a little round pocket
looking-glass, a screen of bushes concealing him from his unappreciative
comrades. "It's more than Monty Scruggs nor Harry Joslyn nor Sandy
Baker'll have to show for the fight. It's even more than Gid Mackall
has, even though he is knocked out. I ought to be sent to the hospital,
too. It'll be something to write home to father and mother, and they'll
put it in the paper and the folks'll talk about it. Gracious, there's a
bugle blowing again. Wonder what that means?"
"That's the Headquarters bugle," said Si, pricking up his ears. "That's
'Attention.' Git your traps together, boys. 'Assembly' 'll come next."
"Good gracious!" gasped Alf Russell, coming out from behind the bushes,
"they don't expect us to do any more fighting today, do they?"
"Very likely," said Shorty, helping Pete Skidmore on with his
blanket-roll. "The job ain't done till it is done, and there's lots o'
rebels over there yit who need lickin'. Now's the best time to finish
it. This ain't nothin' to Stone River and Chickamaugy. Got your canteen
full, Pete? Better fill it before we start. Take mine, too. Don't go any
further'n that first spring there, for I don't want to take no chances
on losin' you again."
The cannonading in the distance grew fiercer, and regiments could be
seen rushing up at the doublequick. Long, shrill rebel yells came from
the hilltops, and were answered by volleys and deep-toned cheers.
Another bugle-call rang out from Brigade Headquarters.
"Fall in, Co. Q," sharply commanded the Orderly-Sergeant.
With a shiver of apprehension, with a nervous memory of the bitter hours
just past, with the sight before their eyes of the scarcely-cold dead,
the remainder of the company fell in with sadly-shrunken ranks.
"Orderly, we need some more cartridges," suggested Shorty.
"I've been thinking of that," replied the Orderly, "and wondering where
to go for them."
"I saw some boxes of Enfields up there toward the battery," said Si.
"The rebels left 'em. They'll fit our guns, and them English cartridges
is just as good as ours."
"Pike over and get them, quick, before the other fellows drop on to
'em," said the Orderly.
"Gracious! going to shoot the rebels with their own bullets," remarked
Monty, who had nearly recovered, and came up pluckily to take his place
in the ranks. "Isn't that great medicine! How I should like to pop one
into that fellow that belted me with that bowlder."
"Hello, Monty," called Shorty jovially to drive out the sad thoughts.
"Got that kink out o' your backbone? Bully boy. You've got the right
kind of nerve. You'll be a man before your mother yet."
"Yes, and I'm here, too, and don't you forget it," said Alf Russell, not
to be outdone by Monty nor unnoticed. "By rights, I ought to be in the
hospital."
"By rights, I ought to be a Jigadier-Brindle," retorted Shorty, "but I
never could git Abe Lincoln to take that view of it. Here, fill up your
cartridgebox. You'll need lots of 'em, if you're only goin' to shoot to
crease your rebels, as that feller did you."
It was not brilliant pleasantry, but it served. It set them to thinking
of something else. They hastily filled their cartridge-boxes, adjusted
their blankets, and when the bugle sounded forward they started with
something of their original nerve.
The regiment moved off at the head of the brigade, and after a march of
a mile or so came out upon a hill from which they could see one of our
batteries having an unequal fight with several of the rebel batteries
in a fort far to its front. Our cannoneers were standing up bravely
to their work, but the rebel shells were bursting about them in a wild
storm of crashing, deafening explosions, and hurtling, shrieking masses
of iron. The sharp crack of their own rifles was at times drowned by the
ear-splitting din of the bursting shells.
"Goodness!" murmured Monty Scruggs, with colorless lips, as the regiment
came into line and moved forward to the battery's line of caissons at
the bottom of the hill. "I'm so glad I didn't enlist in the artillery. I
don't see how anybody up there can live a minute."
"Yes, it looks like as if those artillery boys are earnin' their $13 a
month about every second of their lives," remarked Shorty. "There ought
to be some other batteries loafin' around somewhere that could join in."
The boys leaned on their muskets and watched the awful spectacle with
dazed eyes. It seemed far more terrible even than the ordeal through
which they had just been.
The battery was one of the oldest and best in the army, and its "fire
discipline" was superb.
The Captain stood on a little elevation to the rear and somewhat apart,
intently studying the rebel line through his field-glasses. After a
few words of direction as to the pointing of the guns, and the command,
"Begin firing," he had given no orders, scarcely spoken. He could not
have been heard in that terrible turmoil. He had simply brought his
terrible engine of destruction--the engine upon which he and his men had
lavished years of laborious drilling and training--into position, and
set it going.
What the result would be fate alone would determine. That was a matter
that neither he nor his men regarded. If it destroyed or crippled its
opponents it was simply doing the work for which it had been created.
If its opponents destroyed it, that was a contingency to be accepted. It
was there to endure that fate if so ordered.
Behind the wings of the battery stood the Lieutenants, leaning on their
sabers, and gazing with fixed, unmoving eyes on the thunderous wrack and
ruin.
They said nothing. There was no reason for saying anything. Everything
was working systematically and correctly. Every man was doing his best,
and in the best way. Nobody needed reminder, reprimand, direction or
encouragement.
Similarly, the Sergeants stood behind their sections, except that one
after another they stepped forward to the guns to take the places of
men who had fallen and could not be replaced. At the guns the men were
working with the swiftness of light flashes, and the unerring certainty
of machines. To the watchers at the base of the slope they seemed to
weave back and forth like some gigantic, demoniac loom, as they sprang
at their guns, loaded them, "broke away" as they fired, leaped back
again, caught the gun in its recoil, hurled it forward, again reloaded,
"broke away" and fired, all quicker than thought. A shell took off a
sponger's head, but the sponge-staff was caught by another before it
fell, and the gun fired again without a pause. A shrapnel swept away
every man about one gun. The Lieutenant looked inquiringly at the
Sergeant, and in an instant another squad seemed to spring up from the
ground to continue the firing without missing a note in the battery's
rhythm.
The groups about each gun thinned out, as the shrieking fragments of
shell mowed down man after man, but the rapidity of the fire did not
slacken in the least. One of the Lieutenants turned and motioned with
his saber to the riders seated on their horses in the line of limbers
under the cover of the slope. One rider sprang from each team and ran up
to take the place of men who had fallen.
The next minute the Lieutenant turned and motioned again, and another
rider sprang from each team and ran up the hill. But one man was now
left to manage the six horses attached to each limber. He soon left,
too, in obedience to the Lieutenant's signal, and a faint, bleeding man
came back and climbed into his place.
A shrapnel shell burst almost under the left gun and lifted it up in the
air. When the smoke opened a little not a man could be seen about the
cannon. A yell of exultation floated over from the rebel line.
The Lieutenant unbuckled his saber, dropped it to the ground, and ran
forward to the cannon. Two or three men rose slowly from the ground,
upon which they had been prostrated, and joined the Lieutenant in
running the gun back to its place, and reloading it.
[Illustration: HOORAY FOR THE OLD BATTERY. 231]
"Hooray for the old battery! Bully boys! Made o' right stuff," shouted
Shorty enthusiastically. "Never ketch me saying nothin' agin' the
artillery agin. Men who act like that when they're standin' right in the
middle o' hell with the lid off are 18karat fine."
"Captain," suggested Si, who was fidgeting under the excitement of a
scene in which he was taking no part, "wouldn't it be well for some
of us to go up there and help the battery boys out? I could sponge and
ram."
"No," answered the Captain; "help has been sent for for them, and there
it comes."
He pointed back over the hill to where two batteries were coming from
different directions on a dead run. It was a magnificent sight. One
battery was following the road, and the other cutting across the open
space in a hot race to get ahead and be in action first.
The Captains were galloping ahead to point out the way. The Sergeants
were alongside, seconding the whips of the drivers with strokes of the
flats of their sabers on the animals' hanches. The six horses to each
gun were galloping like mad, snatching the heavy piece over gullies,
bumps, logs, and rocks as if it were a straw. The gunners had abandoned
their usual calm pose with folded arms on the limber chests, and were
maintaining their seats only by a desperate clutch on the side-irons.
The boys turned even from the storm in front to watch the thrilling
spectacle.
The two Captains were fairly abreast as they led their batteries up the
long slope, crushing the brush, sending sticks and stones flying from
the heavy, flying wheels. Both reached the crest at the same time, and
the teams, wheeling around at a gallop, flung the muzzles of the cannon
toward the enemy. Without waiting for them to stop the nimble cannoneers
sprang to ground, unlimbered the guns, rolled them into position, sent
loads down their black throats, and before it was fairly realized that
they had reached the crest hurled a storm of shells across the valley at
the rebel batteries.
"Hooray! Hooray! They're gittin' some o' their own medicine now,"
yelled the excited regiment. "Sock it to 'em. How do you like that, you
ill-begotten imps of rebels?"
The rebel cannoneers seemed to lose heart at once under the storm of
fire that beat upon them. The volume of their fire diminished at once,
and then became fitful and irregular. Two of their limbers were blown up
in succession, with thunderous noise, and this further discouraged them.
Obeying a common impulse, the 200th Ind., regardless of the dropping
shells, had left its position, and pressed forward toward the crest,
where it could see what was going on.
The Colonel permitted this, for he anticipated that a charge on the
rebel works would follow the beating down of the artillery fire, and he
wanted his regiment to be where it would get a good start in the race to
capture a rebel battery. He simply cautioned the Captains to keep
their men in hand and ready. As Capt. McGillicuddy called Co. Q closer
together, it occurred to Shorty that in the interest he had taken in the
artillery duel he had not looked after Pete Skidmore for some time, and
he began casting his eyes around for that youth. He was nowhere to be
seen, and, of course, no one knew anything about him.
"Why don't you get a rope. Shorty, and tie the blamed kid to you, and
not be pestering yourself and everybody else about him all the time?"
asked the Orderly-Sergeant irritably, for he was deeply intent upon the
prospective charge, and did not want to be bothered. "He's more worry
than he's worth."
"Shut up!" roared Shorty. "If you wasn't Orderly-Sergeant I'd punch your
head. I won't have nobody sayin' that about little Pete. He's the best
boy that ever lived. If I could only git hold of him I'd shake the
plaguey life out o' him. Drat him!"
Shorty anxiously scanned the field in every direction, but without his
eyes being gladdened by the sight of the boy.
The wounded being carried back from the batteries impressed him sadly
with the thought that Pete might have been struck by a piece of shell.
"Him and Sandy Baker are both gone," said the Orderly, looking over the
company. "I'll buck-and-gag both of 'em when I catch 'em, to learn 'em
to stay in ranks."
"Indeed you won't," said Shorty, under his breath.
The rebel fire had completely died down, and our own ceased, to allow
the guns to cool for a few minutes, in preparation for an energetic
reopening when the anticipated charge should be ordered.
To be in readiness for this, the Colonel drew the regiment forward
through the batteries, to lie down on the slope in front, that he might
have a start on the other Colonels. As they passed through the batteries
a little imp, about the size of Pete Skidmore, but with face as black
as charcoal, pulled off the leather bag in which cartridges are carried
from the limber to the gun, and handed it to one of the cannoneers, who
said:
"Well, good-by, if you must be going. You done well. You ought to belong
to the artillery. You're too good for a dough-boy. I'm going to ask the
Captain to have you detailed to us."
A similar scene was taking place at the next gun, with a little
blackamoor about the size of Sandy Baker.
The boys picked up their guns and belts from the ground, and fell in
with Co. Q.
"Hello, Corporal," said Pete, with a capacious grin rifting the powder
grime on his face. "We've just bin having lots o' fun."
"Pete, you aggravatin' little brat," said Shorty, giving him a cuff
that started the boy's tears to making little white streaks through the
black, "where in the world have you bin, and what've you bin doin'?"
"Why," whimpered Pete, "me and Sandy crept forward to a rock where we
thought we could see better, and then we thought we could see better
from another, and we kept a-goin' until we got clear up to where
the limbers was, afore we knowed it. Just then a couple o' them
powder-monkeys, as you call 'em, come runnin' back for cartridges, but
they was both hit, and was all bloody, and both of 'em fell down and
couldn't go no further, when they got the cartridges, though they wanted
to. Me and Sandy thought it was too bad that the men up there at the
guns shouldn't have no cartridges, when they was fighting so hard, so
we picked up the boys' bags and run up to the cannon with 'em. The men
there was so glad to git 'em, and told us to lay down our guns and run
back for some more. They kept us goin' till the rebels was knocked out,
and we thought we was doin' right and helpin', and they told us we was,
and now you slap me. Boo-hoo-hoo!"
"Don't cry, Pete. I done wrong," said Shorty, melting instantly, and
putting his arm around the boy. "You done right, and you're a brave,
good little boy. Only you must not go away from the company without
lettin' me know."
"Good God," groaned the Colonel, as he halted the regiment down the
slope, and studied the opposite side with his glass. "There's another
abatis, and it looks worse than the one in which we have just left half
the regiment. But we'll go through if there's only one man left to carry
the flag over the works. I don't suppose that we are any better than
those who have already died, or got any better right to live."
"This is the dumbedest country for cuttin' down trees the wrong way,"
Si sadly remarked, as he surveyed the abatis. "It's meaner'n midnight
murder. I'd like to git hold o' the pizen whelp what invented it."
"The devil invented abatis, just after he invented hell, and as an
improvement on it, and just before he invented secession," Shorty
judged hotly. "When we git through them abatis there I'm goin' to kill
everything I find, just to learn 'em to stop sich heathenish work. It's
sneakin' murder, not war."
"When we get through," murmured Alf Russell dolefully. "How many of us
will ever get through?"
"Who'll be the Jim Humphreys and Gid Mackals this time?" said Monty
Scruggs, looking at the tangled mass of tree-tops.
"Can you see any path through this abatis, Sergeant?" nervously asked
Harry Joslyn.
"No, Harry," said Si, kindly and encouragingly. "But we'll find some way
to git through. There's probably a path that we kin strike. Stay close
by me, and we'll try our best."
"Well, I for one am goin' through, and I'm goin' to take Pete and
Sandy with me," said Shorty, in a loud, confident tone, to brace up the
others. "I've always gone through every one o' them things I've struck
yit, and this ain't no worse'n the others. But we ought to jump 'em at
once, while they're shiverin' over the shelling' we give 'em. They must
be shakin' up there yit like a dog on a January mornin'. Why don't we
start, I wonder?"
The batteries behind them began throwing shells slowly and deliberately,
as if testing their range, before beginning a general cannonade.
All along the crest, to their right and to their left, could be seen
regiments moving up and going into line of battle.
"It's goin' to be a big smash this time, sure," said Si. "And the 200th
Injianny's got a front seat at the performance. We'll show them how to
do it, and we're just the ones that kin. Brace up, boys. The eyes of the
whole army's on us. They expect big things from us."
"Here she goes, I guess," he continued, as a bugle sounded at
headquarters. "Everybody git ready to jump at the word, and not stop
goin' till we're inside the works."
The lines stiffened, every one drew a long breath, gripped his gun, and
braced himself for the fiery ordeal. There was an anxious wait, and then
the Adjutant came walking quietly down the line, with his horse's bridle
over his arm.
"It seems," he explained to Capt. McGillicuddy, loud enough for the
company to hear, "that we are not to make an assault, after all. There's
enough rebels over there in the works to eat us up without salt. We are
ordered to only make a demonstration, and hold them, while the rest work
down on their flanks toward Calhoun, which is six miles below, and get
in their rear. You can let your men rest in place till further orders."
"Take the company Orderly," said the Captain, walking off with the
Adjutant.
"'Tention! Stack arms; Place rest!" commanded the Orderly.
The revulsion of feeling among the keenly-wrought-up men was almost
painful.
"Demonstration be blamed," said Si, sinking upon a convenient rock. "I
always did hate foolin'. Gracious, how tired I am."
"Only a demonstration--only powow, noise, show and bluff," sneered
Shorty, flinging his gun against the stack. "Why didn't they tell us
this an hour ago, and save me all this wear and tear that's makin' me
old before my time? When I git ready for a fight I want it to come off,
without any postponement on account of weather. Come, Pete, go wash your
face and hands, and then we'll spread our blankets and lay down. I'm
tireder'n a mule after crossin' Rocky Face Ridge. I don't want to take
another step, nor even think, till I git a good sleep."
"We don't have to go over that brush, then?" said Alf Russell, with an
expression of deep relief. "I'm so glad. Great Jerusalem, how my wound
begins to ache again. You fellows oughtn't to laugh at my wound. You
don't know how it hurts to have all those delicate nerves torn up."
So it was with every one. The moment the excitement of the impending
fight passed away, every one was sinking with fatigue, and all his other
troubles came back. Monty Scruggs suddenly remembered how badly he had
been hurt, and started to drag himself off in search of the Surgeon,
while Harry Joslyn and Sandy Baker, chumming together for the first
time, snuggled together in their blankets, and sought that relief from
the excitement and fatigues of the day which kindly Nature never refuses
to healthy young bodies.