Part 8 (1/2)
”What do you think of it, Harry?” said Sherburne.
”Banks must be getting ready to move forward.”
”I think so, too. I wish we had his numbers.”
”More men are coming for us. We'll have Ewell's corps soon, and General Jackson himself is worth ten thousand men.”
”That's so, Harry, but ten thousand men are far too few. McDowell's whole corps is available, and with it the Yankees can now turn more than seventy thousand men into the valley.”
”And they can fight, too, as we saw at Kernstown,” said St. Clair.
”That's so, and I'm thinking they'll get their stomachs full of it pretty soon,” said Langdon. ”Yesterday about dusk I went out in some bushes after firewood, and I saw a man kneeling. It struck me as curious, and I went up closer. What do you think? It was Old Jack praying. Not any mock prayer, but praying to his Lord with all his heart and soul. I'm not much on praying myself, but I felt pretty solemn then, and I slid away from there as quick and quiet as you please. And I tell you, fellows, that when Stonewall Jackson prays it's time for the Yankees to weep.”
”You're probably right, Langdon,” said Captain Sherburne, ”but it's time for us to be going back, and we'll tell what we've seen to General Jackson.”
As they turned away a crunching in the snow on the other slope caused them to stop. The faces of men and then their figures appeared through the bushes. They were eight or ten in number and all wore blue uniforms. Harry saw the leader, and instantly he recognized Shepard. It came to him, too, in a flash of prescience, that Shepard was just the man whom he would meet there.
Sherburne, who had seen the blue uniforms, raised a pistol and fired. Two shots were fired by the Union men at the same instant, and then both parties dropped back from the crest, each on its own side.
Sherburne's men were untouched and Harry was confident that Shepard's had been equally lucky-the shots had been too hasty-but it was nervous and uncomfortable work, lying there in the snow, and waiting for the head of an enemy to appear over the crest.
Harry was near Captain Sherburne, and he whispered to him: ”I know the man whose face appeared first through the bushes.”
”Who is he?”
”His name is Shepard. He's a spy and scout for the North, and he is brave and dangerous. He was in Montgomery when President Davis was inaugurated. I saw him in Was.h.i.+ngton when I was there as a spy myself. I saw him again in Winchester just before the battle of Kernstown, and now here he is once more.”
”Must be a Wandering Jew sort of a fellow.”
”He wanders with purpose. He has certainly come up here to spy us out.”
”In which he is no more guilty than we are.”
”That's true, but what are we going to do about it, captain?”
”Blessed if I know. Wait till I take a look.”
Captain Sherburne raised himself a little, in order to peep over the crest of the ridge. A rifle cracked on the other side, a bullet clipped the top of his cap, and he dropped back in the snow, unhurt but startled.
”This man, Shepard, is fully as dangerous as you claim him to be,” he said to Harry.
”Can you see anything of them?” asked St. Clair.
”Not a thing,” said Harry.
”If we show they shoot, and if they show we shoot,” said Langdon. ”Seems to me it's about the most beautiful case of checkmate that I've known.”
”Perhaps we can stalk them,” said St. Clair.
”And perhaps they can stalk us,” said Langdon. ”But I think both sides are afraid to try it.”
”You're right, Langdon,” said Captain Sherburne, ”It's a case of checkmate. I confess that I don't know what to do.”
”We could wait here while they waited too, and if we waited long enough it would get so dark we couldn't see each other. But captain, you are a kind-hearted and sympathetic man, do you see any fun in sitting in the snow on top of a mountain, waiting to kill men whom you don't want to kill or to be killed by men who don't want to kill you?”
”No, Tom, I don't,” replied Captain Sherburne with a laugh, ”and you're talking mighty sound sense. This is not like a regular battle. We've nothing to gain by shooting those men, and they've nothing to gain by shooting us. The Ma.s.sanuttons extend a long distance and there's nothing to keep scouts and spies from climbing them at other places. We'll go away from here.”
He gave the order. They rose and crept as softly as they could through the snow and bushes down the side of the mountain. Harry looked back occasionally, but he saw no faces appear on the crest. Soon he heard Langdon who was beside him laughing softly to himself.
”What's the matter, Tom?” he asked.
”Harry, if I could take my pistol and shoot straight through this mountain the bullet when it came out on the other side would hit a soldier in blue clothes, going at the same rate of speed down the mountain.”
”More than likely you're right, Tom, if they're sensible, and that man Shepard certainly is.”
Further down they met some of their own men climbing up. The troop had heard the shots and was on the way to rescue, if rescue were needed. Captain Sherburne explained briefly and they continued the descent, leading their horses all the way, and breathing deep relief, when they stood at last in the plain.
”I'll remember that climb,” said Langdon to Harry as he sprang into the saddle, ”and I won't do it again when there's snow up there, unless General Jackson himself forces me up with the point of a bayonet.”
”The view was fine.”
”So it was, but the shooting was bad. Not a Yank, not a Reb fell, and I'm not unhappy over it. A curious thing has happened to me, Harry. While I'm ready to fight the Yankee at the drop of the hat I don't seem to hate 'em as much as I did when the war began.”
”Same here. The war ought not to have happened, but we're in it, and to my way of thinking we're going to be in it mighty deep and long.”
Langdon was silent for a little while, but nothing could depress him long. He was soon chattering away as merrily as ever while the troop rode back to General Jackson. Harry regarded him with some envy. A temperament that could rejoice under any circ.u.mstances was truly worth having.
Sherburne reported to Ashby who in return sent him to the commander, Harry going with him to resume his place on the staff. Jackson heard the report without comment and his face expressed nothing. Harry could not see that he had changed much since he had come to join him. A little thinner, a little more worn, perhaps, but he was the same quiet, self-contained man, whose blue eyes often looked over and beyond the one to whom he was talking, as if he were maturing plans far ahead.
Harry occupied a tent for the time with two or three other young officers, and being permitted a few hours off duty he visited his friends of the Invincibles, Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire. The two old comrades already had heard the results of the scout from St. Clair and Langdon, but they gave Harry a welcome because they liked him. They also gave him a camp stool, no small luxury in an army that marches and fights hard, using more gunpowder than anything else.
Harry put the stool against a tree, sat on it and leaned back against the trunk, feeling a great sense of luxury. The two men regarded him with a benevolent eye. They, too, were enjoying luxuries, cigars which a cavalry detail had captured from the enemy. It struck Harry at the moment that although one was of British descent and the other of French they were very much alike. South Carolina had bred them and then West Point had cast them in her unbreakable mold. Neat, precise, they sat rigidly erect, and smoked their cigars.
”Do you like it on the staff of General Jackson, Harry,” asked Colonel Talbot.
”I felt regrets at leaving the Invincibles,” replied Harry truthfully, ”but I like it. I think it a privilege to be so near to General Jackson.”
”A leader who has fought only one battle in independent command and who lost that,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, thoughtfully-he knew that Harry would repeat nothing, ”and who nevertheless has the utmost confidence of his men. He does not joke with them as the young Napoleon did with his soldiers. He has none of the quality that we call magnetic charm, and yet his troops are eager to follow him anywhere. He has won no victories, but his men believe him capable of many. He takes none of his officers into his confidence, but all have it. Incredible, but true. Why is it?”
He put his cigar back in his mouth and puffed meditatively. Colonel Leonidas Talbot, who also had been puffing meditatively while Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire was speaking, now took his cigar from his mouth, blew away the delicate rings of smoke, and said in an equally thoughtful tone: ”It occurs to me, Hector, that it is the power of intellect. Stonewall Jackson has impressed the whole army down to the last and least little drummer with a sense of his mental force. I tell you, sir, that he is a thinker, and thinkers are rare, much more rare than people generally believe. There is only one man out of ten thousand who does not act wholly according to precedent and experience. Habit is so powerful that when we think we are thinking we are not thinking at all, we are merely recalling the experiences of ourselves or somebody else. And of the rare individuals who leave the well-trod paths of thought to think new thoughts, only a minutely small percentage think right. This minutely small fraction represents genius, the one man in a million or rather ten million, or, to be more accurate, the one man in a hundred million.”
Colonel Leonidas Talbot put the cigar back in his mouth and puffed with regularity and smoothness. Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, in his turn, took his cigar from his mouth once more, blew away the fine white rings of smoke and said: ”Leonidas, it appears to me that you have hit upon the truth, or as our legal friends would say, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am in the middle of life and I realize suddenly that in all the years I have lived I have met but few thinkers, certainly not more than half a dozen, perhaps not more than three or four.”
He put his cigar back in his mouth and the two puffed simultaneously and with precision, blowing out the fine, delicate rings of smoke at exactly the same time. Gentlemen of the old school they were, even then, but Harry recognized, too, that Colonel Leonidas Talbot had spoken the weighty truth. Stonewall Jackson was a thinker, and thinkers are never numerous in the world. He resolved to think more for himself if he could, and he sat there trying to think, while he absently regarded the two colonels.