Part 17 (1/2)
”If I were as well fixed as you are, Arthur,” said Langdon, who appeared at this moment on the other side of the wagon, ”I'd stay where I was. But it's so long since I've been hauled that I'm afraid the luxury would overpower me. Think of lying on your back and letting the world float peacefully by! Did I say 'think of it'? I was wrong. It is unthinkable. Now, Harry, what plans has Old Jack got for us?”
”I don't know.”
”Well, he'll get us out of this. We're sure of that. But when? That's the question.”
The question remained without an answer. Early the next morning they were on the march again under lowering skies. The heavens from horizon to horizon were a sodden gray and began to drip rain. Harry was sent again to the rear-guard, where Ashby's cavalry hung like a curtain, backed by the Invincibles and one or two other skeleton regiments.
Harry joined Sherburne and now the drip of the rain became a steady beat. Chilling winds from the mountains swept over them. He had preserved through thick and thin, through battle and through march that big cavalry cloak, and now he b.u.t.toned it tightly around him.
He saw down the road puffs of smoke and heard the las.h.i.+ng fire of rifles, but it did not make his pulses beat any faster now. He had grown so used to it that it seemed to be his normal life. A bullet fired from a rifle of longer range than the others plumped into the mud at the feet of his horse, but he paid no attention to it.
He joined Sherburne, who was using his gla.s.ses, watching through the heavy, thick air the Northern advance. The brilliant young cavalryman, while as bold and enduring as ever, had changed greatly in the last two or three weeks. The fine uniform was stained and bedraggled. Sherburne himself had lost more than twenty pounds and his face was lined and anxious far more than the face of a mere boy of twenty-three should have been.
”I think they'll press harder than ever,” said Sherburne.
”Why?”
”The Shenandoah river, or rather the north fork of it, isn't far ahead. They'd like to coop us up against it and make us fight, while their army under s.h.i.+elds and all their other armies-G.o.d knows how many they have-are coming up.”
”The river is bridged, isn't it?”
”Yes, but it takes a good while to get an army such as ours, loaded down with prisoners and spoil, across it, and if they rushed us just when we were starting over it, we'd have to turn and give battle. Jupiter, how it rains! Behold the beauties of war, Harry!”
The wind suddenly veered a little, and with it the rain came hard and fast. It seemed to blow off the mountains in sheets and for a moment or two Harry was blinded. The beat of the storm upon leaves and earth was so hard that the cracking of the rifles was dulled and deadened. Nevertheless the rifle fire went on, and as well as Harry could judge, without any decrease in violence.
”Hear the bugles now!” said Sherburne. ”Their scouts are warning them of the approach to the Shenandoah. They'll be coming up in a minute or two in heavier force. Ah, see, Ashby understands, too! He's ma.s.sing the men to hold them back!”
The rain still poured with all the violence of a deluge, but the Northern force, horse and cannon, pushed forward through the mud and opened with all their might. Ashby's cavalry and the infantry in support replied. There was something grim and awful to Harry in this fight in the raging storm. Now and then, he could not see the flame of the firing for the rain in his eyes. By a singular chance a bullet cut the b.u.t.ton of his cloak at the throat and the cloak flew open there. In a minute he was soaked through and through with water, but he did not notice it.
The cavalry, the Invincibles and the other regiments were making a desperate stand in order that the army might cross the bridge of the Shenandoah. Harry was seized with a sort of fury. Why should these men try to keep them from getting across? It was their right to escape. Presently he found himself firing with his pistols into the great pillar of fire and smoke and rain in front of him. Mud splashed up by the horses struck him in the face now and then, and stung like gunpowder, but he began to shout with joy when he saw that Ashby was holding back the Northern vanguard.
Ahead of him the Southern army was already rumbling over the bridge, while the swollen and unfordable waters of the Shenandoah raced beneath it. But the Northern brigades pressed hard. Harry did not know whether the rain helped them or hurt them, but at any rate it was terribly uncomfortable. It poured on them in sheets and sheets and the earth seemed to be a huge quagmire. He wondered how the men were able to keep their ammunition dry enough to fire, but that they did was evident from the crash that went on without ceasing.
”In thinking of war before I really knew it,” said Harry, ”I never thought much of weather.”
”Does sound commonplace, but it cuts a mighty big figure I can tell you. If it hadn't rained so hard just before Waterloo Napoleon would have got up his big guns more easily, winning the battle, and perhaps changing the history of the world. Confound it, look at that crowd pus.h.i.+ng forward through the field to take us in the flank!”
”Western men, I think,” said Harry. ”Here are two of our field guns, Sherburne! Get 'em to throw some grape in there!”
It was lucky that the guns approached at that moment. Their commander, as quick of eye as either Harry or Sherburne, unlimbered and swept back the western men who were seeking to turn their flank. Then Sherburne, with a charge of his cavalry, sent them back further. But at the call of Ashby's trumpet they turned quickly and galloped after Jackson's army, the main part of which had now pa.s.sed the bridge.
”I suppose we'll burn the bridge after we cross it,” said Harry.
”Of course.”
”But how on earth can we set fire to it with this Noah's flood coming down?”
”I don't know. They'll manage it somehow. Look, Harry, see the flames bursting from the timbers now. Gallop, men! Gallop! We may get our faces scorched in crossing the bridge, but when we're on the other side it won't be there for the Yankees!”
The Invincibles and the other infantry regiments all were advancing at the double quick, with the cavalry closing up the rear. Behind them many bugles rang and through the dense rain they saw the Northern cavalry leaders swinging their sabers and cheering on their men, and they also saw behind them the heavy ma.s.ses of infantry coming up.
Harry knew that it was touch-and-go. The bulk of the army was across, and if necessary they must sacrifice Ashby's cavalry, but that sacrifice would be too great. Harry had never seen Ashby and his gallant captains show more courage. They fought off the enemy to the very last and then galloped for the bridge, under a shower of sh.e.l.l and grape and bullets. Ashby's own horse was killed under him, falling headlong in the mud, but in an instant somebody supplied him with a fresh one, upon which he leaped, and then they thundered over the burning bridge, Ashby and Sherburne the last two to begin the crossing.
Harry, who was just ahead of Ashby and Sherburne, felt as if the flames were licking at them. With an involuntary motion he threw up his hands to protect his eyes from the heat, and he also had a horrible sensation lest the bridge, its supporting timbers burned through, should fall, sending them all into the rus.h.i.+ng flood.
But the bridge yet held and Harry uttered a gasp of relief as the feet of his horse struck the deep mud on the other side. They galloped on for two or three hundred yards, and then at the command of Ashby turned.
The bridge was a majestic sight, a roaring pyramid that shot forth clouds of smoke and sparks in myriads.
”How under the sun did we cross it?” Harry exclaimed.
”We crossed it, that's sure, because here we are,” said Sherburne. ”I confess myself that I don't know just how we did it, Harry, but it's quite certain that the enemy will never cross it. The fire's too strong. Besides, they'd have our men to face.”
Harry looked about, and saw several thousand men drawn up to dispute the pa.s.sage, but the Northern troops recognizing its impossibility at that time, made no attempt. Nevertheless their cannon sent sh.e.l.ls curving over the stream, and the Southern cannon sent curving sh.e.l.ls in reply. But the burning bridge roared louder and the pyramid of flame rose higher. The rain, which had never ceased to pour in a deluge, merely seemed to feed it.
”Ah, she's about to go now,” exclaimed Sherburne.
The bridge seemed to Harry to rear up before his eyes like a living thing, and then draw together a ma.s.s of burning timbers. The next moment the whole went with a mighty crash into the river, and the blazing fragments floated swiftly away on the flood. The deep and rapid Shenandoah flowed a barrier between the armies of Jackson and Fremont.
”A river can be very beautiful without a bridge, Harry, can't it?” said a voice beside him.
It was St. Clair, a heavy bandage over his left shoulder, but a smoking rifle in his right hand, nevertheless.
”I couldn't stand it any longer, Harry,” he said. ”I had to get up and join the Invincibles, and you see I'm all right.”
Harry was compelled to laugh at the sodden figure, from which the rain ran in streams. But he admired St. Clair's spirit.
”It was by a hair's breadth, Arthur,” he said.
”But we won across, just the same, and now I'm going back to that wagon to finish my cure. I fancy that we'll now have a rest of six or eight hours, if General Jackson doesn't think so much time taken from war a mere frivolity.”
The Southern army drew off slowly, but as soon as it was out of sight the tenacious Northern troops undertook to follow. They attempted to build a bridge of boats, but the flood was so heavy that they were swept away. Then Fremont set men to work to rebuild the bridge, which they could do in twenty-four hours, but Jackson, meanwhile, was using every one of those precious hours.
CHAPTER XIV. THE DOUBLE BATTLE
The twenty-four hours were a rest, merely by comparison. There was no pursuit, at least, the enemy was not in sight, but the scouts brought word that the bridge over the Shenandoah would be completed in a day and night, and that Fremont would follow. Jackson's army triumphantly pa.s.sed the last defile of the Ma.s.sanuttons and the army of s.h.i.+elds did not appear issuing from it. It was no longer possible for them to be struck in front and on the flank at the same time, and the army breathed a mighty sigh of relief. At night of the next day Harry was sitting by the camp of the Invincibles, having received a brief leave of absence from the staff, and he detailed the news to his eager friends.
”General Jackson is stripping again for battle,” he said to Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire. ”He's sent all the sick and wounded across a ferry to Staunton, and he's dispatched his prisoners and captured stores by another road. So he has nothing left but men fit for battle.”
”Which includes me,” said St. Clair proudly, showing his left shoulder from which the bandage had been taken, ”I'm as well as ever.”
”Men get well fast with Stonewall Jackson,” said Colonel Talbot. ”I'll confess to you lads that I thought it was all up with us there in the lower valley, when we were surrounded by the ma.s.ses of the enemy, and I don't see yet how we got here.”
”But we are here, Leonidas,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, ”and that's enough for us to know.”