None shall look back, p.26
None Shall Look Back, page 26
* Stonewall Jackson.
11
THE last wagon had lumbered up and the men had all got their ration of cooked beef and cold pone. They ate standing, in an irregular battle line. Some of them occupied the same ground on which they had slept last night. It was littered with empty cartridge boxes, belt buckles, playing cards, here and there a rifle that had not been gathered up. The fighting had been hot in this part of the field. There were other souvenirs of battle. The stiffened body of a fair-haired, blue-coated farm boy lay at the foot of a mound just back of the lines, and another dead Yankee was propped up against a tree a hundred yards away, his gun resting across his knees.
One of the men, still chewing, stepped out of line and absent-mindedly but expertly rifled the dead boy’s pockets. They yielded nothing but a piece of string and he got to his feet with a shake of the head for his own foolishness. As he stepped back to his place he gave a glance at the other dead Yankee.
“That feller must be tired sitting down and here we been standing in line since daybreak.”
The man next to him did not answer. He had long ago wolfed down his bread and meat and stood gazing straight ahead. You could not see far. A curious red fog enveloped all the trees and the smell of gunpowder was still in the air. The men, rising before daybreak, had expected to go straight into battle. Indeed it had seemed to them, moving in this red fog with the foul smoke thick in their nostrils, that they had only lain down long enough to rest between fights. But that had been several hours ago and the battle had not yet begun.
There were rumors afloat. General Bragg in a plain uniform had been seen galloping back of the lines an hour ago. It was said that he had gone to see why the battle had not begun, as he had ordered, at dawn. That was the interpretation some put on it. Others whispered that the plans for the battle had all gone wrong. The enemy had made a night march and had got in the rear. Two men were talking in undertones of these matters when the would-be looter stepped back into line. One of them as he talked kept his eyes fixed on a knot of officers a few feet away. The big man on the bay horse was his own colonel. The other, more impressive figure that had just galloped up he surmised to be General Breckinridge himself. He cut short his companion’s complainings with a finger jerked over his shoulder and a laconic: “Well, looks like they going to do something now.”
A moment later the captain of the company was in front of the line waving his sword and shouting, “Move forward, men!” The lieutenants bustled about, straightening the line with parrot cries of “Dress on the right. Dress on the right!”
The regiment on the instant was transformed. Men straightened up, gripped their rifles, went forward at a quick march. Eyes that had been vacant and staring glinted in grimy faces as stepping faster and faster they looked down the line, saw the whole division unroll like mist moving over a field.
They had progressed not a hundred yards into the woods when the command came to double-quick. A fool race it seemed, jumping over stumps and gullies and crashing through brambles and all the time no enemy in sight.
They came to a little glade, a pretty spot where in a happier time a man might have stopped to rest. Much clearing had gone on here and only the nobler trees were left. The space between them was filled with blackberry thickets. In the deep shade the leaves were still green. A lank Tennesseean, an inveterate blackberry straggler, saw a bunch of late berries hanging heavily, put out his hand as he ran and was cramming some into his mouth when the ground at his feet suddenly dislodged itself and broke into a million flying particles.
The blackberries fell from the man’s hand. He stood, staring. Figures that a moment before had been running now lay on the ground in a variety of attitudes, as if a hand carelessly shuffling a deck of cards had splayed them out upon a table. Some were perfectly quiet, some ceaselessly contorted their bodies and moaned. One man who had had his leg taken off at the knee lay and with bright, intelligent eyes regarded two officers who came riding upon the scene.
These officers, a captain and his colonel, rode slowly and with apparent indifference among the bodies of the dead and dying. The colonel was looking at the Yankee barricade, a stout line of breastworks crowning a low ridge, clearly visible now through the eddying smoke.
“Pretty well fixed up there,” he said.
The captain’s eyes were as bright, as intent as those of the dying man at his feet. “Send ’em right up, sir?” he asked cheerfully.
The colonel nodded and the captain rode in among the men and suddenly was bellowing. “All right, boys. Straight ahead now! Get into ’em!”
Men who had been looking at one another as if wondering what to do next bent their heads this way and that. There was hesitation, a slight surging backwards then loud, indignant voices were heard. A handful of men broke from the ranks and rushed forward. Others followed. Soon the whole line was in motion up the slope.
The Yankees greeted them with a storm of bullets. Some men fell under it, others dodged to the rear but most of them came on. One big corporal, running lightly ahead of the whole line, kept his head up like a man who finds exposure to the elements bracing and fired wildly into the air. They had reached the crest, were almost up to the breastworks. All along the Yankee line men were standing up or leaping on top of rails to fire down into blind, uplifted faces. One man who sat firing easily and steadily until the Confederates were upon him suddenly threw his rifle aside and quivering as if with rage hurled himself fifty feet down the slope.
The big corporal, still in the forefront, looked over his shoulder, saw his colors fluttering behind him. He lifted the standard from the bearer, bent over, and with clumsy intentness drove it into the interstices between two rails. He had straightened up, was looking about as if uncertain what to do next when a Yankee bashed his head in with a clubbed musket.
There had been all this time a demoniac yelling that rose even above the screech of shells. The young captain had not realized that it came from his own men until it ceased suddenly. He looked about, saw that they were falling back, some men doggedly, others making for the rear at top speed. His mouth opened to roar at them, then almost as if without his volition it closed. He stood perfectly still in the midst of flying, cursing men, his eyes seeming to be fixed on a tall tree of beautiful proportions that crowned the opposite hill. Suddenly he was flying down the slope as fast as any of his men. They were eddying about a big oak tree. He rushed in among them, slashing with his sword, howling, “You got to get back up that hill. Want to stay here and be mown down by canister?”
The men dodged backwards and forwards, melted away before him, sought the shelter of another tree. Two officers at the rear saw what he was about, bore down, grimacing and cursing. The men milled for a moment, then started up again. The first advance had been simultaneous, a wave of men that rolled up the slope. Now as they advanced more slowly individual posture and mental attitude was revealed. Some moved crouching like dogs that beaten know there is no turning back. Others as they went hitched up their pants, tightened their belts, futile gestures that served only to show that they washed their hands of the affair. Here and there was to be seen the wry grimace, the sightless eye of a man who knew that in an instant he would be killed.
They went up slowly, reached the height again. Dead Yankees lay thick but others had sprung up to take their places. The newcomers fired with ease and fury, running out, some of them, beyond the breastworks and down the slope.
The Confederates doggedly sustained the fire and were pushing on when a battery was seen just moving into position where the ridge turned. The arrogant gunners leaped from the still bouncing carriages, slid to their places and began sending round after round of grape into the surging mass of besiegers. Men fell thickly. Those who were left turned and ran at top speed for the foot of the slope. They passed the oak where they had been rallied for the second charge, pushed pell-mell through briar thickets and undergrowth to fall sobbing with exhaustion on the ground.
The captain was there, leaning against a tree, drawing rasping breaths. As the men rolled apprehensive eyes toward him he jerked himself to his feet, went forward to salute the colonel who just then galloped up. Those men who were lying near heard the colloquy between the two, heard the young captain sob out disgustedly the colonel’s order:
“General Hill says to hold this position and await fresh troops.”
12
GENERAL DESHLER’S heart, and the ribs that so stoutly enclosed it, were torn from his body by a shell that came ripping out of the woods at noon. George Rowan was with him when it happened.
The Tenth Texas arrived on the ground they were to occupy at ten o’clock. It was a wooded ridge two hundred yards from the Yankee breastworks. Colonel Mills had dismounted and was running alongside of his men when they came up to the crest. Semple’s battery at the left of the ridge was still firing then. Mills swore savagely when he saw the gunners limber up and lash their horses to ride away.
“They want us to hold it without artillery, boys. Well, we God damn will!”
A shell bursting ten feet below threw up a black geyser that covered him from his men’s sight. He emerged, wiping his face free of cinders and ordered the men to fall back a little and fire lying down. Then he went down the hill, still swearing, to see if he could get Douglas’ battery up.
The Yankee fire got hotter instead of decreasing. The ridge was just within range of canister. But the grape was the worst. Under it men dodged backward and forward like jack-in-the boxes, or plastered themselves to the hill so tight that only the upward reaching of the arm told the living from the dead. Toward noon the Texans’ supply of ammunition ran low. George was lying behind a stump trying to pick off a Yankee gunner when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and Mills told him to go find General Deshler and tell him the ammunition was giving out.
George plunged down the hillside through a cloud of hot smoke just in time to see his little mare break her tether and go snorting off. He cut a horse loose from a captured gun, mounted, and using part of a rope trace as his riding whip rode off in search of Deshler.
The young brigadier was sitting his horse beside a clump of sumac bushes. Two of his staff officers were with him. Hearne was telling the General that the place was too exposed, when Rowan rode up. Deshler kept his eyes fixed on the ridge as Rowan was giving the message. It was perhaps the sight of a man who suddenly fell sidewise from behind a stump, spread-eagling as he fell that decided him not to ask a staff officer to risk his life up there. He had half turned to Hearne when he shook his head and murmuring something—George thought it was “Can’t send that boy”—rode off at a gallop.
He went so fast that George on his winded horse had trouble in keeping up with him. It was hotter now than it had been a few minutes ago. And Mills did not seem to be in the place where he had left him. Or was it that the place itself had changed, with the black geysers springing up everywhere, keeping the very ground under your feet in motion? The fire and brimstone Aunt Charlotte’s preacher talked so much about, he thought, and he dodged his horse desperately through the smoke, trying not to lose sight of Deshler.
Deshler’s big back was just in front of him when the shell struck the oak a few feet away. George’s horse danced and George swayed involuntarily far to the right. When he came up Deshler was out of the saddle and flat on the ground. George looked down, saw the red sponge that had been Deshler’s chest. He got off his horse, put his hands to his face and cried out. It seemed a long time before men came running with stretchers.
Mills was standing there as they carried Deshler’s body off. He would not look. His face was black as a fiend’s with powder and he kept shouting to men who were so far up the hill that they could not hear him. “Ammunition out? Get up and bay’net ’em then!”
Rowan tethered his horse to a sapling and followed Mills back into the fight. The men were down to their last round now. George ran about over the field gathering up cartridge boxes from the dead and wounded. He had just taken a pistol from a dead Yankee when he heard his own name called. He looked up and saw Ned Allard in a hand-to-hand struggle with a Yankee. George ran a few steps forward then stopped. He passed a hand before his forehead to clear his sight. Ned’s arm was locked around the Yankee’s body but above that arm George could see blue cloth. He levelled the pistol barrel, took careful aim. The hammer clicked. George threw the pistol away and ran on. He was within a few feet of the combatants when a bullet from a sharpshooter’s rifle hit him. He fell, then after a second got up and staggered forward. The Yankee soldier had hit Ned over the head with the butt of his musket and was dragging him off the field. Ed Johnson coming up saw only George staggering and ran forward to help him. George, who was suffering no pain, saw no sense to that and resisted, but he was suddenly unable to see and collapsed against his helper’s shoulder. When he came to himself he was being carried on a stretcher through a grove of scrub oaks. They passed Mills, who was still roaring.
One of the bearers stumbled over a rock. The stretcher tilted forward. Mills’ red face, with the mouth stretched to an O under the straggling moustache, was for a moment within George’s field of vision. It seemed to him somehow not so red but he thought that was the smoke. He had forgotten about Ned. He did not know that he was dying. He was thinking of the captaincy that would be his tomorrow when he looked at his colonel and smiled before he was borne from the field.
13
RIVES rode to General Ector with a message at ten o’clock. When he got back they had dismounted Armstrong’s men and were sending them in. He sat under a sycamore tree behind the lines and watched them stream past, a jostling mass of swinging arms and legs, faces that turned to grin, emit messages: “Tell him I’ll see him at sundown . . . Where’s Bill? . . . Tell him I was looking . . .” A tall Tennesseean had gone waving his hat over his head and whooping: “Well, boys, we’ll all meet at the hatter’s!”*
Major Anderson had told Rives to wait under this tree so that he could be found if wanted. Messages had been going back and forth all morning, mostly to General Ector who had been uneasy first about his right, then his left flank. Old Bedford had reared up on his hind legs when Rives came sweating up with the last message. “Tell General Ector that by God I am here and will take care of both his flanks.” A private running by, hearing words not in his own vocabulary, had rolled white eyes admiringly over his shoulder.
Rives recalled the obscene phrase, grinned, turned his eyes to the front. The fog had come back, settled under the trees. The shells burst through it like something blooming. Armstrong’s men must be catching hell, but from here you couldn’t see a one of them. The battle existed only as sound. Riding back of the lines a while ago he had got his ears a little free of it. Now he knew what the sound was—planks that kept clattering down continually from some great height.
Armstrong’s men had gone in far to the right, but they must have worked over. They were bringing the wounded back on stretchers along this path. One man, strangely cocky, with his dead white face, had something red sticking out of his side. He waved his hand, shouted “Boys, when I left we were driving ’em,” then collapsed on the canvas.
The bushes to the right parted. More wounded men taking the short-cut to the spring. The one coming now was on hands and knees, tongue lolling, a crawling dog with hanging what’s-its-name. Rives got impatiently off his horse, went over and put his canteen to the lips that were freckled with little white blisters. The man drank with greedy, sucking noises then slithered over on his back. His features swam grayly with fatigue then his mouth puckered. He might have been going to cry, but produced instead a smile for his own astuteness. “You’re Allard,” he wheezed and when Rives nodded. “Your—pardner out there. . . . Better get him.”
Rives dragged the man off the path into the bushes, went back to his mare. As he pulled a limb down, slip-noosed the bridle, he was thinking that she could stand or not just as she pleased. He knew whom the man meant: the scout, Ben Bigstaff. Ben had gone in at ten o’clock with Armstrong’s men. He had known earlier in the day that he was going to be put in the line and had fumed while he cooked breakfast. “I don’t like this close work.” The corners of his mouth were pinched. There had been a beading of perspiration on his forehead as he looked up, skillet in hand.
The mist eddied, revealed a man crouching behind a tree firing steadily. Rives went up behind him. “You seen Ben Bigstaff?” The man drew his sleeve over his black face. “Damned hot in here,” he said. “Naw, I ain’t seen nothing but this.” And he patted his rifle slyly and was crouching again.
Rives ran on. He was talking to himself. They had trained Ben Bigstaff, just as you train a bird dog or a beagle. Sent him out night after night to creep up on men in the dark, shoot them down. Ben had learned all that business but he had been as clean about it, as kindly as a seasoned hunter. He would shoot a picket down in a flash but he would wait five or ten minutes, then crawl back to see if the man was dead. He himself, Rives knew, had always expected to go like that, picked off from behind a tree or shot down in some lonely field. But to be sent in, one of a squirming mass, to be mowed down by grape . . .
It was not grape that had killed Ben. He knew that as soon as he passed the next tree, came to the blackened hole in the ground. The shell had killed two men as it burst and in the same instant had dug one grave for them. There were two heads protruding over the edge of the crater. One would have been bald if shining, black particles had not been grained everywhere into the skin.
Ben lay on his back, one hand upflung. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth, but except for that his face had a wise, kindly expression. Rives’ eyes slid away, went to the man underneath. Matted, auburn hair on a ridged skull. An Alabaman they called Sloppy Jim. A thief and so dirty and lousy besides that nobody would mess with him. One hand was dug into Ben’s side. Strange to see the fingers clutching as if the man had died of a gunshot wound. He stooped and with one hand on Ben’s shoulder was about to turn the body over when he saw grimed into the pit the tangle of blackened skin, loose flesh, bloody bones.
11
THE last wagon had lumbered up and the men had all got their ration of cooked beef and cold pone. They ate standing, in an irregular battle line. Some of them occupied the same ground on which they had slept last night. It was littered with empty cartridge boxes, belt buckles, playing cards, here and there a rifle that had not been gathered up. The fighting had been hot in this part of the field. There were other souvenirs of battle. The stiffened body of a fair-haired, blue-coated farm boy lay at the foot of a mound just back of the lines, and another dead Yankee was propped up against a tree a hundred yards away, his gun resting across his knees.
One of the men, still chewing, stepped out of line and absent-mindedly but expertly rifled the dead boy’s pockets. They yielded nothing but a piece of string and he got to his feet with a shake of the head for his own foolishness. As he stepped back to his place he gave a glance at the other dead Yankee.
“That feller must be tired sitting down and here we been standing in line since daybreak.”
The man next to him did not answer. He had long ago wolfed down his bread and meat and stood gazing straight ahead. You could not see far. A curious red fog enveloped all the trees and the smell of gunpowder was still in the air. The men, rising before daybreak, had expected to go straight into battle. Indeed it had seemed to them, moving in this red fog with the foul smoke thick in their nostrils, that they had only lain down long enough to rest between fights. But that had been several hours ago and the battle had not yet begun.
There were rumors afloat. General Bragg in a plain uniform had been seen galloping back of the lines an hour ago. It was said that he had gone to see why the battle had not begun, as he had ordered, at dawn. That was the interpretation some put on it. Others whispered that the plans for the battle had all gone wrong. The enemy had made a night march and had got in the rear. Two men were talking in undertones of these matters when the would-be looter stepped back into line. One of them as he talked kept his eyes fixed on a knot of officers a few feet away. The big man on the bay horse was his own colonel. The other, more impressive figure that had just galloped up he surmised to be General Breckinridge himself. He cut short his companion’s complainings with a finger jerked over his shoulder and a laconic: “Well, looks like they going to do something now.”
A moment later the captain of the company was in front of the line waving his sword and shouting, “Move forward, men!” The lieutenants bustled about, straightening the line with parrot cries of “Dress on the right. Dress on the right!”
The regiment on the instant was transformed. Men straightened up, gripped their rifles, went forward at a quick march. Eyes that had been vacant and staring glinted in grimy faces as stepping faster and faster they looked down the line, saw the whole division unroll like mist moving over a field.
They had progressed not a hundred yards into the woods when the command came to double-quick. A fool race it seemed, jumping over stumps and gullies and crashing through brambles and all the time no enemy in sight.
They came to a little glade, a pretty spot where in a happier time a man might have stopped to rest. Much clearing had gone on here and only the nobler trees were left. The space between them was filled with blackberry thickets. In the deep shade the leaves were still green. A lank Tennesseean, an inveterate blackberry straggler, saw a bunch of late berries hanging heavily, put out his hand as he ran and was cramming some into his mouth when the ground at his feet suddenly dislodged itself and broke into a million flying particles.
The blackberries fell from the man’s hand. He stood, staring. Figures that a moment before had been running now lay on the ground in a variety of attitudes, as if a hand carelessly shuffling a deck of cards had splayed them out upon a table. Some were perfectly quiet, some ceaselessly contorted their bodies and moaned. One man who had had his leg taken off at the knee lay and with bright, intelligent eyes regarded two officers who came riding upon the scene.
These officers, a captain and his colonel, rode slowly and with apparent indifference among the bodies of the dead and dying. The colonel was looking at the Yankee barricade, a stout line of breastworks crowning a low ridge, clearly visible now through the eddying smoke.
“Pretty well fixed up there,” he said.
The captain’s eyes were as bright, as intent as those of the dying man at his feet. “Send ’em right up, sir?” he asked cheerfully.
The colonel nodded and the captain rode in among the men and suddenly was bellowing. “All right, boys. Straight ahead now! Get into ’em!”
Men who had been looking at one another as if wondering what to do next bent their heads this way and that. There was hesitation, a slight surging backwards then loud, indignant voices were heard. A handful of men broke from the ranks and rushed forward. Others followed. Soon the whole line was in motion up the slope.
The Yankees greeted them with a storm of bullets. Some men fell under it, others dodged to the rear but most of them came on. One big corporal, running lightly ahead of the whole line, kept his head up like a man who finds exposure to the elements bracing and fired wildly into the air. They had reached the crest, were almost up to the breastworks. All along the Yankee line men were standing up or leaping on top of rails to fire down into blind, uplifted faces. One man who sat firing easily and steadily until the Confederates were upon him suddenly threw his rifle aside and quivering as if with rage hurled himself fifty feet down the slope.
The big corporal, still in the forefront, looked over his shoulder, saw his colors fluttering behind him. He lifted the standard from the bearer, bent over, and with clumsy intentness drove it into the interstices between two rails. He had straightened up, was looking about as if uncertain what to do next when a Yankee bashed his head in with a clubbed musket.
There had been all this time a demoniac yelling that rose even above the screech of shells. The young captain had not realized that it came from his own men until it ceased suddenly. He looked about, saw that they were falling back, some men doggedly, others making for the rear at top speed. His mouth opened to roar at them, then almost as if without his volition it closed. He stood perfectly still in the midst of flying, cursing men, his eyes seeming to be fixed on a tall tree of beautiful proportions that crowned the opposite hill. Suddenly he was flying down the slope as fast as any of his men. They were eddying about a big oak tree. He rushed in among them, slashing with his sword, howling, “You got to get back up that hill. Want to stay here and be mown down by canister?”
The men dodged backwards and forwards, melted away before him, sought the shelter of another tree. Two officers at the rear saw what he was about, bore down, grimacing and cursing. The men milled for a moment, then started up again. The first advance had been simultaneous, a wave of men that rolled up the slope. Now as they advanced more slowly individual posture and mental attitude was revealed. Some moved crouching like dogs that beaten know there is no turning back. Others as they went hitched up their pants, tightened their belts, futile gestures that served only to show that they washed their hands of the affair. Here and there was to be seen the wry grimace, the sightless eye of a man who knew that in an instant he would be killed.
They went up slowly, reached the height again. Dead Yankees lay thick but others had sprung up to take their places. The newcomers fired with ease and fury, running out, some of them, beyond the breastworks and down the slope.
The Confederates doggedly sustained the fire and were pushing on when a battery was seen just moving into position where the ridge turned. The arrogant gunners leaped from the still bouncing carriages, slid to their places and began sending round after round of grape into the surging mass of besiegers. Men fell thickly. Those who were left turned and ran at top speed for the foot of the slope. They passed the oak where they had been rallied for the second charge, pushed pell-mell through briar thickets and undergrowth to fall sobbing with exhaustion on the ground.
The captain was there, leaning against a tree, drawing rasping breaths. As the men rolled apprehensive eyes toward him he jerked himself to his feet, went forward to salute the colonel who just then galloped up. Those men who were lying near heard the colloquy between the two, heard the young captain sob out disgustedly the colonel’s order:
“General Hill says to hold this position and await fresh troops.”
12
GENERAL DESHLER’S heart, and the ribs that so stoutly enclosed it, were torn from his body by a shell that came ripping out of the woods at noon. George Rowan was with him when it happened.
The Tenth Texas arrived on the ground they were to occupy at ten o’clock. It was a wooded ridge two hundred yards from the Yankee breastworks. Colonel Mills had dismounted and was running alongside of his men when they came up to the crest. Semple’s battery at the left of the ridge was still firing then. Mills swore savagely when he saw the gunners limber up and lash their horses to ride away.
“They want us to hold it without artillery, boys. Well, we God damn will!”
A shell bursting ten feet below threw up a black geyser that covered him from his men’s sight. He emerged, wiping his face free of cinders and ordered the men to fall back a little and fire lying down. Then he went down the hill, still swearing, to see if he could get Douglas’ battery up.
The Yankee fire got hotter instead of decreasing. The ridge was just within range of canister. But the grape was the worst. Under it men dodged backward and forward like jack-in-the boxes, or plastered themselves to the hill so tight that only the upward reaching of the arm told the living from the dead. Toward noon the Texans’ supply of ammunition ran low. George was lying behind a stump trying to pick off a Yankee gunner when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and Mills told him to go find General Deshler and tell him the ammunition was giving out.
George plunged down the hillside through a cloud of hot smoke just in time to see his little mare break her tether and go snorting off. He cut a horse loose from a captured gun, mounted, and using part of a rope trace as his riding whip rode off in search of Deshler.
The young brigadier was sitting his horse beside a clump of sumac bushes. Two of his staff officers were with him. Hearne was telling the General that the place was too exposed, when Rowan rode up. Deshler kept his eyes fixed on the ridge as Rowan was giving the message. It was perhaps the sight of a man who suddenly fell sidewise from behind a stump, spread-eagling as he fell that decided him not to ask a staff officer to risk his life up there. He had half turned to Hearne when he shook his head and murmuring something—George thought it was “Can’t send that boy”—rode off at a gallop.
He went so fast that George on his winded horse had trouble in keeping up with him. It was hotter now than it had been a few minutes ago. And Mills did not seem to be in the place where he had left him. Or was it that the place itself had changed, with the black geysers springing up everywhere, keeping the very ground under your feet in motion? The fire and brimstone Aunt Charlotte’s preacher talked so much about, he thought, and he dodged his horse desperately through the smoke, trying not to lose sight of Deshler.
Deshler’s big back was just in front of him when the shell struck the oak a few feet away. George’s horse danced and George swayed involuntarily far to the right. When he came up Deshler was out of the saddle and flat on the ground. George looked down, saw the red sponge that had been Deshler’s chest. He got off his horse, put his hands to his face and cried out. It seemed a long time before men came running with stretchers.
Mills was standing there as they carried Deshler’s body off. He would not look. His face was black as a fiend’s with powder and he kept shouting to men who were so far up the hill that they could not hear him. “Ammunition out? Get up and bay’net ’em then!”
Rowan tethered his horse to a sapling and followed Mills back into the fight. The men were down to their last round now. George ran about over the field gathering up cartridge boxes from the dead and wounded. He had just taken a pistol from a dead Yankee when he heard his own name called. He looked up and saw Ned Allard in a hand-to-hand struggle with a Yankee. George ran a few steps forward then stopped. He passed a hand before his forehead to clear his sight. Ned’s arm was locked around the Yankee’s body but above that arm George could see blue cloth. He levelled the pistol barrel, took careful aim. The hammer clicked. George threw the pistol away and ran on. He was within a few feet of the combatants when a bullet from a sharpshooter’s rifle hit him. He fell, then after a second got up and staggered forward. The Yankee soldier had hit Ned over the head with the butt of his musket and was dragging him off the field. Ed Johnson coming up saw only George staggering and ran forward to help him. George, who was suffering no pain, saw no sense to that and resisted, but he was suddenly unable to see and collapsed against his helper’s shoulder. When he came to himself he was being carried on a stretcher through a grove of scrub oaks. They passed Mills, who was still roaring.
One of the bearers stumbled over a rock. The stretcher tilted forward. Mills’ red face, with the mouth stretched to an O under the straggling moustache, was for a moment within George’s field of vision. It seemed to him somehow not so red but he thought that was the smoke. He had forgotten about Ned. He did not know that he was dying. He was thinking of the captaincy that would be his tomorrow when he looked at his colonel and smiled before he was borne from the field.
13
RIVES rode to General Ector with a message at ten o’clock. When he got back they had dismounted Armstrong’s men and were sending them in. He sat under a sycamore tree behind the lines and watched them stream past, a jostling mass of swinging arms and legs, faces that turned to grin, emit messages: “Tell him I’ll see him at sundown . . . Where’s Bill? . . . Tell him I was looking . . .” A tall Tennesseean had gone waving his hat over his head and whooping: “Well, boys, we’ll all meet at the hatter’s!”*
Major Anderson had told Rives to wait under this tree so that he could be found if wanted. Messages had been going back and forth all morning, mostly to General Ector who had been uneasy first about his right, then his left flank. Old Bedford had reared up on his hind legs when Rives came sweating up with the last message. “Tell General Ector that by God I am here and will take care of both his flanks.” A private running by, hearing words not in his own vocabulary, had rolled white eyes admiringly over his shoulder.
Rives recalled the obscene phrase, grinned, turned his eyes to the front. The fog had come back, settled under the trees. The shells burst through it like something blooming. Armstrong’s men must be catching hell, but from here you couldn’t see a one of them. The battle existed only as sound. Riding back of the lines a while ago he had got his ears a little free of it. Now he knew what the sound was—planks that kept clattering down continually from some great height.
Armstrong’s men had gone in far to the right, but they must have worked over. They were bringing the wounded back on stretchers along this path. One man, strangely cocky, with his dead white face, had something red sticking out of his side. He waved his hand, shouted “Boys, when I left we were driving ’em,” then collapsed on the canvas.
The bushes to the right parted. More wounded men taking the short-cut to the spring. The one coming now was on hands and knees, tongue lolling, a crawling dog with hanging what’s-its-name. Rives got impatiently off his horse, went over and put his canteen to the lips that were freckled with little white blisters. The man drank with greedy, sucking noises then slithered over on his back. His features swam grayly with fatigue then his mouth puckered. He might have been going to cry, but produced instead a smile for his own astuteness. “You’re Allard,” he wheezed and when Rives nodded. “Your—pardner out there. . . . Better get him.”
Rives dragged the man off the path into the bushes, went back to his mare. As he pulled a limb down, slip-noosed the bridle, he was thinking that she could stand or not just as she pleased. He knew whom the man meant: the scout, Ben Bigstaff. Ben had gone in at ten o’clock with Armstrong’s men. He had known earlier in the day that he was going to be put in the line and had fumed while he cooked breakfast. “I don’t like this close work.” The corners of his mouth were pinched. There had been a beading of perspiration on his forehead as he looked up, skillet in hand.
The mist eddied, revealed a man crouching behind a tree firing steadily. Rives went up behind him. “You seen Ben Bigstaff?” The man drew his sleeve over his black face. “Damned hot in here,” he said. “Naw, I ain’t seen nothing but this.” And he patted his rifle slyly and was crouching again.
Rives ran on. He was talking to himself. They had trained Ben Bigstaff, just as you train a bird dog or a beagle. Sent him out night after night to creep up on men in the dark, shoot them down. Ben had learned all that business but he had been as clean about it, as kindly as a seasoned hunter. He would shoot a picket down in a flash but he would wait five or ten minutes, then crawl back to see if the man was dead. He himself, Rives knew, had always expected to go like that, picked off from behind a tree or shot down in some lonely field. But to be sent in, one of a squirming mass, to be mowed down by grape . . .
It was not grape that had killed Ben. He knew that as soon as he passed the next tree, came to the blackened hole in the ground. The shell had killed two men as it burst and in the same instant had dug one grave for them. There were two heads protruding over the edge of the crater. One would have been bald if shining, black particles had not been grained everywhere into the skin.
Ben lay on his back, one hand upflung. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth, but except for that his face had a wise, kindly expression. Rives’ eyes slid away, went to the man underneath. Matted, auburn hair on a ridged skull. An Alabaman they called Sloppy Jim. A thief and so dirty and lousy besides that nobody would mess with him. One hand was dug into Ben’s side. Strange to see the fingers clutching as if the man had died of a gunshot wound. He stooped and with one hand on Ben’s shoulder was about to turn the body over when he saw grimed into the pit the tangle of blackened skin, loose flesh, bloody bones.
