DAY IN THE WILDERNESS
Helen Harley saw the sun rise in a shower of red and gold on a May
morning, and then begin a slow and quiet sail up a sky of silky blue. It
even touched the gloomy shades of the Wilderness with golden gleams, and
shy little flowers of purple, nestling in the scant grass, held up their
heads to the glow. From the window in the log house in which she had
nursed her brother she looked out at the sunrise and saw only peace, and
the leaves of the new spring foliage moving gently in the wind.
The girl's mind was not at rest. In the night she had heard the rumbling
of wheels, the tread of feet, and many strange, muffled sounds. Now the
morning was here and the usual court about her was missing. Gone were
the epaulets, the plumes and the swords in sheath. The generals, Raymond
and Winthrop, who had come only the day before. Talbot, Prescott and
Wood, were all missing.
The old house seemed desolate, abandoned, and she was lonely. She looked
through the window and saw nothing that lived among the bushes and the
scrub oaks only the scant grass and the new spring foliage waving in the
gentle wind. Here smouldered the remains of a fire and there another,
and yonder was where the tent of the Commander had stood; but it was
gone now, and not a sound came to her ears save those of the forest. She
was oppressed by the silence and the portent.
Her brother lay upon the bed asleep in full uniform, his coat covering
his bandages, and Mrs. Markham was in the next room, having refused to
return to Richmond. She would remain near her husband, she said, but
Helen felt absolutely alone, deserted by all the world.
No, not alone! There, coming out of the forest, was a single horseman,
the grandest figure that she had ever seen--a man above six feet in
height, as strong and agile as a panther, his head crowned with
magnificent bushy black hair, and his face covered with a black beard,
through which gleamed eyes as black as night. He rode, a very king, she
thought.
The man came straight toward the window of the log house, the feet of
his horse making no sound upon the turf. Here was one who had come to
bid her good-by.
She put her hand through the open window, and General Wood, the
mountaineer, bending low over his horse's neck, kissed it with all the
grace and gallantry of an ancient knight.
"I hope that you will come back," she said softly.
"I will, I must, if you are here," he said.
He kissed her hand again.
"Your brother?" he added.
"He is still asleep."
"What a pity his wounds are so bad! We'll need him to-day."
"Is it coming? Is it really coming to-day, under these skies so peaceful
and beautiful?" she asked in sudden terror, though long she had been
prepared for the worst.
"Grant is in the Wilderness."
She knew what that meant and asked no more.
Wood's next words were those of caution.
"There is a cellar under this house," he said. "If the battle comes near
you, seek shelter in it. You promise?"
"Yes, I promise."
"And now good-by."
"Good-by," she said.
He kissed her hand again and, without another word, turned and rode
through the forest and away. She watched him until he was quite out of
sight, and then her eyes wandered off toward the east, where the new
sun was still piling up glowing bands of alternate red and gold.
Her brother stirred on the bed and awoke. He was fretful that morning.
"Why is the place so silent?" he asked, with the feeling of a vain man
who does not wish to be left alone.
"I do not know," she replied, though well she knew.
There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Markham entered, dressed as if
for the street--fresh, blonde and smiling.
"You two are up early, Helen," she said. "What do you see there at the
window?"
"Nothing," replied Helen. She did not tell any one of the parting with
Wood. That belonged to her alone.
A coloured woman came with the breakfast, which was served on a little
table beside Harley's bed. He propped himself up with a pillow and sat
at the table with evident enjoyment. The golden glory of the new sun
shone there through the window and fell upon them.
"How quiet the camp is!" said Mrs. Markham after awhile. "Surely the
army sleeps late. I don't hear any voices or anything moving."
"No," said Helen.
"No, not a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.
"Eh?" cried Harley.
His military instinct leaped up. Silence where noise has been is
ominous.
"Helen," he said, "go to the window, will you?"
"No. I'll go," said Mrs. Markham, and she ran to the window, where she
uttered a cry of surprise.
"Why, there is nothing here!" she exclaimed. "There are no tents, no
guns, no soldiers! Everything is gone! What does it mean?"
The answer was ready.
From afar in the forest, low down under the horizon's rim, came the
sullen note of a great gun--a dull, sinister sound that seemed to roll
across the Wilderness and hang over the log house and those within it.
Harley threw himself on the bed with a groan of grief and rage.
"Oh, God," he cried, "that I should be tied here on such a day!"
Helen ran to the window but saw nothing--only the waving grass, the
somber forest and the blue skies and golden sunshine above. The echo of
the cannon shot died and again there was silence, but only for a moment.
The sinister note swelled up again from the point under the horizon's
rim far off there to the left, and it was followed by another, and more
and more, until they blended into one deep and sullen roar.
Unconsciously Constance Markham, the cynical, the worldly and the
self-possessed, seized Helen Harley's hand in hers.
"The battle!" she cried. "It is the battle!"
"Yes," said Helen; "I knew that it was coming."
"Ah, our poor soldiers!"
"I pity those of both sides."
"And so do I. I did not mean it that way."
The servant was cowering in a corner of the room. Harley sprang to his
feet and stood, staggering.
"I must be at the window!" he said.
Helen darted to his support.
"But your wounds," she said. "You must think of them!"
"I tell you I shall stay at the window!" he exclaimed with energy. "If I
cannot fight, I must see!"
She knew the tone that would endure no denial, and they helped him to
the window, where they propped him in a chair with his eyes to the
eastern forest. The glow of battle came upon his face and rested there.
"Listen!" he cried. "Don't you hear that music? It's the big guns, not
less than twenty. You cannot hear the rifles from here. Ah if I were
only there!"
The three looked continually toward the east, where a somber black line
was beginning to form against the red-and-gold glow of the sunrise.
Louder and louder sounded the cannon. More guns were coming into action,
and the deep, blended and violent note seemed to roll up against the
house until every log, solid as it was, trembled with the concussion.
Afar over the forest the veil of smoke began to grow wider and thicker
and to blot out the red-and-gold glory of the sunrise.
Harley bent his head. He was listening--not for the thunder of the great
guns, but for the other sounds that he knew went with it--the crash of
the rifles, the buzz and hiss of the bullets flying in clouds through
the air, the gallop of charging horsemen, the crash of falling trees cut
through by cannon shot, and the shouts and cries. But he heard only the
thunder of the great guns now, so steady, so persistent and so
penetrating that he felt the floor tremble beneath him.
He searched the forest with eyes trained for the work, but saw no human
being--only the waving grass, the somber woods, and a scared lizard
rattling the bark of a tree as he fled up it.
In the east the dull, heavy cloud of smoke was growing, spreading along
the rim of the horizon, climbing the concave arch and blotting out all
the glory of the sunrise. The heavy roar was like the sullen, steady
grumbling of distant thunder, and the fertile fancy of Harley, though
his eyes saw not, painted all the scene that was going on within the
solemn shades of the Wilderness--the charge, the defense, the shivered
regiments and brigades; the tread of horses, cannon shattered by cannon,
the long stream of wounded to the rear, and the dead, forgotten amid the
rocks and bushes. He had beheld many such scenes and he had been a part
of them. But who was winning now? If he could only lift that veil of the
forest!
Every emotion showed on the face of Harley. Vain, egotistic, and often
selfish, he was a true soldier; his was the military inspiration, and he
longed to be there in the field, riding at the head of his horsemen as
he had ridden so often, and to victory. He thought of Wood, a cavalry
leader greater than himself, doing a double part, and for a moment his
heart was filled with envy. Then he flushed with rage because of the
wounds that tied him there like a baby. What a position for him,
Vincent Harley, the brilliant horseman and leader! He even looked with
wrath upon his sister and Mrs. Markham, two women whom he admired so
much. Their place was not here, nor was his place here with them. He was
eaten with doubt and anxiety. Who was losing, who was winning out there
beyond the veil of the forest where the pall of smoke rose? He struck
the window-sill angrily with his fist.
"I hate this silence and desolation here around us," he exclaimed, "with
all that noise and battle off there where we cannot see! It chills me!"
But the two women said nothing, still sitting with their hands in each
other's and unconscious of it; forgetting now in this meeting of the two
hundred thousand the petty personal feelings that had divided them.
Louder swelled the tumult. It seemed to Helen, oblivious to all else,
that she heard amid the thunder of the cannon other and varying notes.
There was a faint but shrill incessant sound like the hum of millions of
bees flying swiftly, and another, a regular but heavier noise, was
surely the tread of charging horsemen. The battle was rolling a step
nearer to them, and she began to see, low down under the pall of smoke,
flashes of fire like swift strokes of lightning. Then it rolled another
step nearer and its tumult beat heavily and cruelly on the drums of her
ears. Yet the deathly stillness in the scrub oaks around the house
continued. They waved as peacefully as ever in the gentle wind from the
west. It was still a battle heard but not seen.
She would have left the window to cower in the corner with the coloured
woman who served them, but this struggle, of which she could see only
the covering veil, held her appalled. It was misty, intangible, unlike
anything of which she had read or heard, and yet she knew it to be real.
They were in conflict, the North and the South, there in the forest, and
she sat as one in a seat in a theatre who looked toward a curtained
stage.
When she put her free hand once on the window-sill she felt beneath her
fingers the faint, steady trembling of the wood as the vast, insistent
volume of sound beat upon it. The cloud of smoke now spread in a huge,
somber curve across all the east, and the swift flashes of fire were
piercing through it faster and faster. The volume of sound grew more and
more varied, embracing many notes.
"It comes our way," murmured Harley, to himself rather than to the
women.
Helen felt a quiver run through the hand of Mrs. Markham and she looked
at her face. The elder woman was pale, but she was not afraid. She, too,
would not leave the window, held by the same spell.
"Surely it is a good omen!" murmured Harley; "the field of
Chancellorsville, where we struck Hooker down, is in this same
Wilderness."
"But we lost there our right arm--Jackson," said Mrs. Markham.
"True, alas!" said Harley.
The aspect of the day that had begun so bright and clear was changing.
The great pall of smoke in the east gave its character to all the sky.
From the west clouds were rolling up to meet it. The air was growing
close, sultry and hot. The wind ceased to blow. The grass and the new
leaves hung motionless. All around them the forest was still heavy and
somber. The coloured woman in the corner began to cry softly, but from
her chest. They could hear her low note under the roar of the guns, but
no one rebuked her.
"It comes nearer and nearer," murmured Harley.
There was relief, even pleasure in his tone. He had forgotten his sister
and the woman to whom his eyes so often turned. That which concerned him
most in life was passing behind the veil of trees and bushes, and its
sound filled his ears. He had no thought of anything else. It was
widening its sweep, coming nearer to the house where he was tied so
wretchedly by wounds; and he would see it--see who was winning--his own
South he fiercely hoped.
The thoughts of brother and sister at that moment were alike. All the
spirit and fire of the old South flushed in every vein of both. They
were of an old aristocracy, with but two ambitions, the military and the
political, and while they prayed for complete success in the end, they
wanted another great triumph on the field of battle. Gettysburg, that
insuperable bar, was behind them, casting its gloomy memory over the
year between; but this might take its place, atoning for it, wiping it
out. But there was doubt and fear in the heart of each; this was a new
general that the North had, of a different kind from the old--one who
did not turn back at a defeat, but came on again and hammered and
hammered. They repeated to themselves softly the name "Grant." It had to
them a short, harsh, abrupt sound, and it did not grow pleasant with
repetition.
An odour, the mingled reek of smoke, burnt gunpowder, trampled dust and
sweating men, reached them and was offensive to their nostrils. Helen
coughed and then wiped her face with her handkerchief. She was surprised
to find her cheeks damp and cold. Her lips felt harsh and dry as they
touched each other.
The trembling of the house increased, and the dishes from the breakfast
which they had left on the table kept up an incessant soft, jarring
sound. The battle was still spreading; at first a bent bow, then a
semi-circle, the horns of the crescent were now extending as if they
meant to meet about the house, and yet they saw not a man, not a horse,
not a gun; only afar off the swelling canopy of smoke, and the flashes
of light through it, and nearer by the grass and the leaves, now hanging
dull and lifeless.
Harley groaned again and smote the unoffending window-sill with his
hand.
"Why am I here--why am I here," he repeated, "when the greatest battle
of all the world is being fought?"
The clouds of smoke from the cannon and the clouds from the heated and
heavy air continued to gather in both heavens and were now meeting at
the zenith. The skies were dark, obscure and somber. Most trying of all
was the continuous, heavy jarring sound made by the thunder of the
guns. It got upon the nerves, it smote the brain cruelly, and once Helen
clasped her hands over her ears to shut it out, but she could not; the
sullen mutter was still there, no less ominous because its note was
lower.
A sudden tongue of flame shot up in the east above the forest, but
unlike the others did not go out again; it hung there a red spire,
blood-red against the sky, and grew taller and broader.
"The forest burns!" murmured Harley.
"In May?" said Helen.
"What a cannonade it must be to set green trees on fire!" continued
Harley.
The varying and shriller notes heard through the steady roar of the
great guns now grew more numerous and louder; and most persistent among
them was a nasty buzz, inconceivably wicked in its cry.
"The rifles! A hundred thousand of them at least!" murmured Harley, to
whose ear all these sounds were familiar.
New tongues of fire leaped above the trees and remained there, blood-red
against the sky; sparks at first fugitive and detached, then in showers
and millions, began to fly. Columns of vapour and smoke breaking off
from the main cloud floated toward the house and assailed those at the
window until eyes and nostrils tingled. The strange, nauseous odour, the
mingled reek of blood and dust, powder and human sweat grew heavier and
more sickening.
Helen shuddered again and again, but she could not turn away. The whole
look of the forest had now changed to her. She saw it through a red
mist: all the green, the late green of the new spring, was gone. All
things, the trees, the leaves, the grass and the bushes, seemed burnt,
dull and dead.
"Listen!" cried Harley. "Don't you hear that--the beat of horses' feet!
A thousand, five thousand of them! The cavalry are charging! But whose
cavalry?"
His soul was with them. He felt the rush of air past him, the strain of
his leaping horse under him, and then the impact, the wild swirl of
blood and fire and death when foe met foe. Once more he groaned and
struck the window-sill with an angry hand.
Nearer and nearer rolled the battle and louder and shriller grew its
note. The crackle of the rifles became a crash as steady as the thunder
of the great guns, and Helen began to hear, above all the sound of human
voices, cries and shouts of command. Dark figures, perfectly black like
tracery, began to appear against a background of pallid smoke, or ruddy
flame, distorted, shapeless even, and without any method in their
motions. They seemed to Helen to fly back and forth and to leap about as
if shot from springs like jumping-jacks and with as little of life in
them--mere marionettes. The great pit of fire and smoke in which they
fought enclosed them, and to Helen it was only a pit of the damned. For
the moment she had no feeling for either side; they were not fellow
beings to her--they who struggled there amid the flame and the smoke and
the falling trees and the wild screams of the wounded horses.
The coloured woman cowering in the corner continued to cry softly, but
with deep sobs drawn from her chest, and Helen wished that she would
stop, but she could not leave the window to rebuke her even had she the
heart to do so.
The smoke, of a close, heavy, lifeless quality, entered the window and
gathered in the rooms, penetrating everything. The floor and the walls
and the furniture grew sticky and damp, but the three at the window did
not notice it. They had neither eyes nor heart now save for the
tremendous scene passing before them. No thought of personal danger
entered the mind of either woman. No, this was a somber but magnificent
panorama set for them, and they, the spectators, were in their proper
seats. They were detached, apart from the drama which was of another age
and another land, and had no concern with them save as a picture.
Helen could not banish from her mind this panoramic quality of the
battle. She was ashamed of herself; she ought to draw from her heart
sympathy for those who were falling out there, but they were yet to her
beings of another order, and she remained cold--a spectator held by the
appalling character of the drama and not realizing that those who played
the part were human like herself.
"The battle is doubtful," said Harley.
"How do you know?"
"See how it veers to and fro--back and forth and back and forth it goes
again. If either side were winning it would all go one way. Do you know
how long we have been here watching?"
"I have no idea whatever."
He looked at his watch and then pointed upward at the heavens where in
the zenith a film of light appeared through the blur of cloud and smoke.
"There's the sun," he said; "it's noon. We've been sitting here for
hours. The time seems long and again it seems short. Ah, if I only knew
which way fortune inclined! Look how that fire in the forest is
growing!"
Over in the east the red spires and pillars and columns united into one
great sheet of flame that moved and leaped from tree to tree and shot
forth millions of sparks.
"That fire will not reach us," said Harley. "It will pass a half-mile to
the right."
But they felt its breath, far though hot, and again Helen drew her
handkerchief across her burning face. The deadly, sickening odour
increased. A light wind arose, and a fine dust of ashes, borne on its
breath, began to enter the window and sweep in at every possible crevice
and cranny of the old house. It powdered the three at the window and
hung a thin, gray and pallid veil over the floor and the scanty
furniture. The faint jarring of the wood, so monotonous and so
persistent, never ceased. And distinctly through the sounds they heard
the voice of the coloured woman, crying softly from her chest, always
the same, weird, unreal and chilling.
The struggle seemed to the three silent watchers to swing away a little,
the sounds of human voices died, the cries, the commands were heard no
more; but the volume of the battle grew, nevertheless. Harley knew that
new regiments, new brigades, new batteries were coming into action;
that the area of conflict was spreading, covering new fields and holding
the old. He knew by the rising din, ever swelling and beating upon the
ear, by the vast increase in the clouds of smoke, the leaping flashes of
flame and the dust of ashes, now thick and drifting, that two hundred
thousand men were eye to eye in battle amid the gloomy thickets and
shades of the Wilderness, but God alone knew which would win.
Some of the awe that oppressed the two women began to creep over Harley
and to chill the blood in his veins. He had gone through many battles;
he had been with Pickett in that fiery rush up Cemetery Hill in the face
of sixty thousand men and batteries heaped against each other; but there
he was a part of things and all was before him to see and to hear: here
he only sat in the dusk of the smoke and the ashes and the clouds, while
the invisible battle swung to and fro afar. He heard only the beat of
its footsteps as it reeled back and forth, and saw only the mingled
black and fiery mists and vapours of its own making that enclosed it.
The dun clouds were still rolling up from both heavens toward the
zenith, shot now and then with yellow streaks and scarlet gleams.
Sometimes they threw back in a red glare the reflection of the burning
forest, and then again the drifting clouds of smoke and ashes and dust
turned the whole to a solid and dirty brown. It was now more than a
battle to Harley. Within that cloud of smoke and flashing flame the fate
of a nation hung--the South was a nation to him--and before the sun set
the decree might be given. He was filled with woe to be sitting there
looking on at so vast an event. Vain, selfish and superficial, depths in
his nature were touched at last. This was no longer a scene set as at a
theatre, upon which one might fight for the sake of ambition or a
personal glory. Suddenly he sank into insignificance. The fortunes or
the feelings of one man were lost in mightier issues.
"It's coming back!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.
The battle again approached the old house, the clouds swept up denser
and darker, the tumult of the rifles and the great guns grew louder; the
voices, the cries and the commands were heard again, and the human
figures, distorted and unreal, reappeared against the black or fiery
background. To Helen's mind returned the simile of a huge flaming pit in
which multitudes of little imps struggled and fought. She was yet unable
to invest them with human attributes like her own, and the mystic and
unreal quality in this battle which oppressed her from the first did not
depart.
"It is all around us," said Mrs. Markham.
Helen looked up and saw that her words were true. The battle now made a
complete circuit of the house, though yet distant, and from every point
came the thunder of the cannon and the rifles, the low and almost
rhythmic tread of great armies in mortal struggle, and the rising clouds
of dust, ashes and smoke shot with the rapid flame of the guns, like
incessant sheet-lightning.
The clouds had become so dense that the battle, though nearer, grew
dimmer in many of its aspects; but the distorted and unreal human
figures moved like shadows on a screen and were yet visible, springing
about and crossing and recrossing in an infinite black tracery that the
eye could not follow. But to neither of the three did the thought of
fear yet come. They were still watchers of the arena, from high seats,
and the battle was not to take them in its coils.
The flame, the red light from the guns, grew more vivid, and was so
rapid and incessant that it became a steady glare, illuminating the vast
scene on which the battle was outspread; the black stems of the oaks and
pines, the guns--some wheelless and broken now, the charging lines,
fallen horses scattered in the scrub, all the medley and strain of a
titanic battle.
The sparks flew in vast showers. Bits of charred wood from the burning
forest, caught up by the wind, began to fall on the thin roof of the old
house, and kept up a steady, droning patter. The veil of gray ashes upon
the floor and on the scanty furniture grew thicker. The coloured woman
never ceased for a moment to cry drearily.
"It is still doubtful!" murmured Harley.
His keen, discerning eye began to see a method, an order in all this
huge tumult--signs of a design, and of another design to defeat it--the
human mind seeking to achieve an end. One side was the North and another
the South--but which was his own he could not tell. For the present he
knew not where to place his sympathies, and the fortunes of the battle
were all unknown to him.
He looked again at his watch. Mid-afternoon. Hours and hours had passed
and still the doubtful battle hung on the turning of a hair; but his
study of it, his effort to trace its fortune through all the intricate
maze of smoke and flame, did not cease. He sought to read the purposes
of the two master minds which marshaled their forces against each other,
to evolve order from chaos and to read what was written already.
Suddenly he uttered a low cry. He could detect now the colour of the
uniforms. There on the right was the gray, his own side, and Harley's
soul dropped like lead in water. The gray were yielding slowly, almost
imperceptibly, but nevertheless were yielding. The blue masses were
pouring upon them continually, heavier and heavier, always coming to the
attack.
Harley glanced at the women. They, too, saw as he saw. He read it in the
deathly pallor of their faces, their lips parted and trembling, the
fallen look of their eyes. It was not a mere spectacle now--something to
gaze at appalled, not because of the actors in it, but because of the
spectacle itself. It was beginning now to have a human interest, vital
and terrible--the interest of themselves, their friends and the South to
which they belonged.
Helen suddenly remembered a splendid figure that had ridden away from
her window that morning--the figure of the man who alone had come to bid
her good-by, he who had seemed to her a very god of war himself; and she
knew he must be there in that flaming pit with the other marionettes who
reeled back and forth as the master minds hurled fresh legions anew to
the attack. If not there, one thing alone had happened, and she refused
to think of that, though she shuddered; but she would not picture him
thus. No; he rode triumphant at the head of his famous brigade, sword in
hand, bare and shining, and there was none who could stand before its
edge. It was with pride that she thought of him, and a faint blush crept
over her face, then passed quickly like a mist before sunshine.
The battle shifted again and the faces of the three who watched at the
window reflected the change in a complete and absolute manner. The North
was thrust back, the South gained--a few feet perhaps, but a gain
nevertheless, and joy shone on the faces where pallor and fear had been
before. To the two women this change would be permanent. They could see
no other result. The North would be thrown back farther and farther,
overwhelmed in rout and ruin. They looked forward to it eagerly and in
fancy saw it already. The splendid legions of the South could not be
beaten.
But no such thoughts came to Harley. He felt all the joy of a momentary
triumph, but he knew that the fortune of the battle still hung in doubt.
Strain eye and ear as he would, he could see no decrease in the tumult
nor any decline in the energy of the figures that fought there, an
intricate tracery against the background of red and black. The afternoon
was waning, and his ears had grown so used to the sounds without that he
could hear everything within the house. The low, monotonous crying of
the coloured woman was as distinct as if there were no battle a
half-mile away.
The dense fine ashes crept into their throats and all three coughed
repeatedly, but did not notice it, having no thought for anything save
for what was passing before them. They were powdered with it, face, hair
and shoulders, until it lay over them like a veil, but they did not know
nor care.
The battle suddenly changed again and the South was pressed back anew.
Once more their faces fell, and the hearts of the women, raised to such
heights, sank to the depths. It was coming nearer, too. There was a
fierce hiss, a shrill scream and something went by.
"A shell passed near us then," said Harley, "and there's another. The
battle is swinging close."
Still the element of fear did not enter into the minds of any of the
three, not even into those of the women, although another shell passed
by and then others, all with a sharp, screaming note, full of malignant
ferocity. Then they ceased to come and the battle again hovered in the
distance, growing redder and redder than ever against a black background
as the day darkened and the twilight approached. Its sound now was a
roar and a hum--many varying notes blending into a steady clamour, which
was not without a certain rhythm and music--like the simultaneous
beating of a million mighty bass drums.
"They still press us back," murmured Harley; "the battle is wavering."
With the coming of the twilight the light in the forest of scrub oaks
and pines, the light from so many cannon and rifles, assumed vivid and
unearthly hues, tinged at the edges with a yellow glare and shot through
now and then with blue and purple streaks. Over it hung the dark and
sullen sky.
"It comes our way again," said Harley.
It seemed now to converge upon them from all sides, to contract its
coils like a python, but still the house was untouched, save by the
drifting smoke and ashes. Darker and darker the night came down, a black
cap over all this red struggle, but with its contrast deepening the
vivid colours of the combat that went on below.
Nearer it came, and suddenly some horsemen shot from the flame-cloud and
stood for a moment in a huddled group, as if they knew not which way to
turn. They were outlined vividly against the red battle and their
uniforms were gray. Even Helen could see why they hesitated and doubted.
Riderless horses galloped out of the smoke and, with the curious
attraction that horses have for the battlefield, hovered near, their
empty saddles on their backs.
A groan burst from Harley.
"My God," he cried, "those cavalrymen are going to retreat!"
Then he saw something that struck him with a deeper pang, though he was
silent for the moment. He knew those men. Even at the distance many of
the figures were familiar.
"My own troop!" he gasped. "Who could have thought it?"
Then he added, in sad apology: "They need a leader."
The horsemen were still in doubt, although they seemed to drift backward
and away from the field of battle. A fierce passion lay hold of Harley
and inflamed his brain. He saw his own men retreating when the fate of
the South hung before them. He thought neither of his wounds nor of the
two women beside him, one his sister. Springing to his feet while they
tried in vain to hold him back, he cried out that he had lingered there
long enough. He threw off their clinging hands, ran to the door, blood
from his own wounds streaking his clothes, and they saw him rush across
the open space toward the edge of the forest where the horsemen yet
lingered. They saw him, borne on by excitement, seize one of the
riderless horses, leap into the saddle and turn his face toward the
battle. They almost fancied that they could hear his shout to his
troops: "Come on, men; the way is here, not there!"
The horse he had seized was that of a slain bugler, and the bugle, tied
by a string to the horn of the saddle, still hung there. Harley lifted
it to his lips, blew a note that rose, mellow and inspiring, above all
the roar of the cannon and the rifles, and then, at the head of his men,
rode into the heart of the battle.