House Divided (114 page)

He pointed to where a little group of civilians stood watching the passing troops; and Major Taylor rode toward them to inquire, and presently returned. “General Early's men burned the furnace a few days ago,” he reported.

“I forbade any unnecessary destruction of property.”

“The furnace belonged to Congressman Thaddeus Stevens,” the Major explained. “You know he is one of the bitterest enemies of the South.” He added appeasingly: “After all, General, there's been plenty of malicious destruction in Virginia; and you remember the Federals burned Mr. Bell's furnace in Tennessee.”

“We need not follow a bad example.” Lee spoke sternly. Taylor fell back, and Lee said to Longstreet: “Yet I think we have done as little damage as those people could expect.”

“I heard no complaints in Chambersburg,” Longstreet agreed.

They pushed on, and the road and the dwindling stream still kept company as the gorge narrowed more and more; but the grade was not severe. A mile beyond the furnace, Colonel Fremantle brought his horse beside Longstreet's.

“A compliment for you, General,” he said. “The soldiers we're passing want to know who you are; and when they hear your name they watch you out of sight.”

Longstreet was pleased. “They're Ewell's men,” he explained. “My own men know me.” Then he saw General Lee, a little ahead, pull up his horse, and Longstreet paused at his side.

“Do you hear that, General?” Lee asked.

Longstreet listened, shook his head. “My hearing is somewhat impaired.”

“I hear guns.” Lee made an exasperated gesture. “What does it mean?”

“Powell Hill must have struck the enemy.”

“I warned him not to involve us.” Lee fell silent, listening. Just ahead of where they stood, the road crossed the stream; and the men wading through the shallows or leaping across the narrow trickle at a stride, made some noise. Longstreet called to them to halt and be still. Lee said thoughtfully: “If that's just skirmishing, it's of no consequence; but if those people are by any possible chance here in front of us, we must fight them. I'll ride on and see for myself.”

“I'll wait to make sure of the situation behind us, let my men understand that they may be needed.”

“Join me when you can,” Lee directed; and he pushed on. Longstreet summoned Moxley Sorrel.

“You and Major Currain go back,” he directed. “Tell McLaws and Hood to waste no time. As soon as McLaws is moving, send Major Currain to report to me; and you go on to General Hood and ask him to push his men.”

Sorrel wheeled his horse, calling Major Currain's name, and Longstreet went slowly on; but he paused often, anxious for word that his divisions were in motion. Once he pulled up his horse to let some guns pass. They were three-inch rifles, and he spoke to one of the men.

 

“That looks like a Yankee gun.” The man looked up, and Longstreet exclaimed in recognition: “Dewain!”

Brett laughed in quick pleasure. “General! Yes sir, this is one of the guns we captured at Winchester.” And he added: “Here's something curious. This piece was taken from Company D, First Virginia Artillery. That's a Western Virginia company; but we're Company D of the real First Virginia!”

Longstreet chuckled. “Most of our guns were furnished by the Yankees. If they didn't supply us, I don't know how we'd manage. You're in Ewell's corps, aren't you? You stole our road from us back there.”

“Yes sir, we countermarched to Shippensburg day before yesterday, camped at Scotland last night, came on to Fayetteville this morning. Is Trav with you?”

“I sent him back with orders. He'll be up presently.”

Brett went on to overtake his guns, and Longstreet more slowly followed him. He judged the summit was not far ahead. Once over the divide, wagons and guns would make quick time. The ascent of the pass from this side was surprisingly easy. He wondered whether the road dropped more steeply beyond.

It was an hour after General Lee left him—though he had come no more than a mile or so—before Longstreet heard the rumble of those distant guns. Fairfax and Moses had heard them long before, and the others of the staff, and had told him so; but now the distant sound made him impatient. He went on more rapidly, finding the last pitch steeper than the approach had been, and so came to the summit. He paused there, looking down and out across the level Pennsylvania farm lands, spread below him like the sea and faintly tinted blue. Battle
sounds were now clear even to his ears; but he could see no smoke rising, nor any sign to mark the scene of the distant conflict. Probably it was hidden behind that spur of the mountain here near at hand which closed his view.

He saw an ambulance climbing the steep road that led up to where he stood. It must be coming from the battle yonder. The marching men descending toward Cashtown swerved to let the ambulance pass; and when the driver at the summit pulled up to breathe his horses, Longstreet moved nearer to question the hurt men.

They were of Heth's division, Hill's corps; and one of them, grinning with the pain of a shattered foot, explained what had happened.

“The General said we'd go to Gettysburg to get ourselves some shoes,” he told Longstreet. “But the Yankees got there first.” He looked at his bloody foot. “A hell of a lot of good a pair of shoes will do me now!”

“Was the enemy in force?”

“It felt like it to me.” The man added proudly: “But we're giving them what-for!”

Longstreet turned away, and his jaw set. This was Powell Hill, forgetting his orders, plunging prematurely into battle. At such an hour as this, there should be no mistakes to complicate Lee's task! Hill's orders had been absolute: he must not precipitate an engagement. But he had done sol And Ewell, sliding his damned trains into the road back there, had clogged the turnpike for God knows how long! This army was out of hand. Lee no longer had it in control. The army commanded him, not he the army; not now!

Longstreet sat his restless horse, waiting for word from the rear, listening to the distant guns; and up the road, against the flow of marching men and rumbling wagons, came an increasing stream of wounded. Hill had found hard contention, that was clear. Then Currain appeared, on that great black stallion of his, breasting the last pitch at a smart trot, and Longstreet swung to meet him.

Trav reported that McLaws was on the road. “The turnpike was not clear for him till four o'clock. We told him to keep well closed up.”

That was good as far as it went, but in what was to come every man would be needed. Law, back at New Guilford, had better come on. Longstreet scrawled a note. “Take this to General Law,” he directed.
“I'll go on, join General Lee.” Then, remembering: “No, I'll have Fairfax take that dispatch. Your brother-in-law, Mr. Dewain, is not far ahead of us. You'll want a word with him. You come with me.”

The descent was steep and tortuous, the road winding dizzily downward; and they had to hold their horses hard against a fall. When they overtook Brett, Trav stopped only for a moment. As he came up with Longstreet again, someone called: “Howdy, Major Currain.” Longstreet saw Trav swing down from his horse to greet a man with a healed stump where his left hand should have been, but whose right arm now was wrapped in a soiled and bloody rag. Trav gripped the man's good shoulder, spoke to him warmly; and Longstreet asked: “Who's this, Major?”

“Bob Grimm, General,” Trav explained. “An old neighbor of mine in Martinston. He lost one hand at Williamsburg, but he volunteered again.”

“I could shoot as straight with one hand as with two,” Grimm said calmly. “But I dunno as I'd be much good with none at all.” Longstreet looked at the wounded arm. The bones were certainly broken; the arm would have to go. “We hate to lose men like you, Grimm. What command?”

“Eleventh North Carolina, sir. Pettigrew's brigade, Heth's division.”

“You found the bluebellies?”

“Yes sir. Our brigade went to Gettysburg yesterday, but the Yanks were there, so we drew back four-five miles and camped; but today the whole division went on. The Yanks were on some high ground this side of town. We piled into 'em, but they gave us some trouble, sir. Colonel Leventhorpe was hurt, and I think they nabbed him; and I saw Major Ross killed.”

Longstreet's teeth gritted. Damn Hill and his headlong folly! Trav asked: “Any Martinston men with you, Bob?”

“Yes sir, Ed Blandy, Lonn Tyler, Tom Shadd. They——”

But Longstreet, in a fierce impatience, wheeled his horse. “Come along, Currain.” He spurred away.

 

They had paused in a deep gorge cut by a trickling little stream; but as they went on, the horses labored up a steep and rocky climb to another crest, then settled back on their haunches and cautiously began
the last precipitous descent. When they came to more level ground, the mountain behind them, Longstreet loosed the reins, lifting his mount to a gallop. That great black beast which Currain rode held to a single-foot, yet easily kept pace.

They passed half a dozen houses, and Longstreet wondered whether this inconsiderable hamlet was Cashtown; but he did not pause to inquire. The road, now almost exactly straight, led eastward across softly undulating farm lands. Ripe wheat in some of the fields had already been cradled and bound; and Longstreet's eye noted more than one position ideal for defensive battle. Place this army along one of these low ridges overlooking the smooth reaped fields; then the assaulting enemy would have no cover, the guns would have a perfect field of fire. Another Fredericksburg!

Lee could not take position here till he had extricated Hill from that contention ahead; but to discover this terrain so suited to their plans was reassuring. Longstreet checked Hero to a trot. The heat, even thus late in the day, was oppressive; and certainly there was no need for haste, no necessity to kill their horses. No matter how the battle went today, he could not help till his First Corps reached the field. But as he rode he memorized the countryside; and from each rise of ground he studied the drift of smoke and dust above the battle that was nearer all the time. Presently he saw over intervening groves and low ridges the wooded crest of what seemed to be a lofty hill, somewhat south of the smoke of the guns. Such a hill might play an important part in any battle near its base.

His attention turned from the terrain to the increasing number of wounded men filing along the road. They were almost universally pale beneath the sweaty grime that covered their faces, nursing a hurt arm, or limping and faltering, or with heads swathed in a soiled rag of bandage, or with open wounds in cheeks and jaws where dust had dulled the raw red of torn flesh. Some, finding themselves too weak to walk, sat by the roadside, or sprawled on the ground; and no matter what cheerful pretense they made, nor what jest they called to passing comrades, their helplessness was plain.

The wounded men wore an almost identical expression. Their eyes were unnaturally wide open, as though something pulled their eyebrows upward; their nostrils were dilated, their lips drawn away from
their teeth, their teeth exposed in a grimace like a snarl, and deep lines curved from nostrils downward to frame mouth-corners. Longstreet had seen on many a battlefield that same characteristic grimace. It was as though each hurt man were listening, his mouth a little open, for some sound that would announce the onset of new agony.

These were the flesh-and-blood debris of battle, but suddenly to one side he saw material wreckage; a dismounted gun and a wrecked limber. Here, back of a cross road, batteries had been placed to play on the shallow valley ahead, where scattering single trees marked the track of a meandering little brook. Beyond the cross road and nearer the battle, a building on the right seemed to be a tavern. On the left of the pike stood two or three houses, and an orchard ran down to the stream side. Under the apple trees surgeons were at work among the wounded, and Longstreet heard a man scream, and felt his throat fill with pity. But he turned his eyes away. A soldier must ignore such sights and sounds, must never remember that he too might presently lie writhing in torment under the surgeon's probe, screaming to the rasping grate of saw on bone.

Along the gentle slope to the right of the road, scattered singly and by twos and threes all the way from the cross road down to the brook, lay lifeless bodies. Theirs was the nondescript garb which with most Confederate soldiers passed for a uniform. Longstreet's accustomed eye read the story. A Confederate line of battle, formed among some trees a little off the road, had advanced down that slope and across the brook and into tangled woods beyond. A single dead man meant that a bullet had found its mark. Where two or three lay close together, an enemy shell had torn a gap in the advancing ranks. The Confederate advance to strike the enemy had been a costly one; to that the dead could testify.

As he and Trav crossed the bridge, Longstreet discovered the first blue-clad bodies, almost hidden in bullet-riddled underbrush in the wood that fringed the brook; and up the slope beyond there were more. At one point a broken line of them extended from the road southward past a small house to another patch of woods. The Yankee flank had rested on the road; for here lay many dead, and groaning wounded had propped themselves against the fence posts and with dulled eyes watched the riders pass. They had that same expression,
with wide eyes and open mouths and lips drawn upward, like men listening. He saw one, a boy with a mop of curly black hair, who had died as he sat against the fence and slumped to one side.

A little farther on he checked his horse to look more closely at traces that marked the scene of bitter battle. A Yankee regiment, or perhaps two, had crossed the road to charge what seemed to be a railroad cut, a hundred yards to the north. To do so they had had to climb two fences, one on either side of the road; and the fences were a windrow of blue uniforms. The Confederates in the railroad cut were marksmen, that was clear; for from the road to the cut scores of Yankees, dead or helplessly wounded, lay sprawled in the trampled grass. He saw beyond the railroad cut what looked like a Confederate line of battle, fronting some heavy woods; but these men were lying down, so they too were dead or disabled. A single volley from among the trees had obliterated a regiment of Southerners. Oh, this had been a bloody day.