Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (10 page)

“No, sir. I rode the entire line. Poison ivy and water snakes, not a whole lot else. The men are ready, though.”

Wallace nodded. “Early has no interest in Baltimore. But General Tyler can’t let down his guard.”

A round of solid shot thumped onto the hillside, bounding past Wallace like a child’s ball refined in Hell. Wary of seeming fearful to those around him, he did not gee-up his horse to move out of range.

An odd thought made him smile, though: If a shot injured the horse he rode, would he be liable, or would the Federal Government? Matters had been so upended that in his haste to reach the junction days before, he had taken the train, leaving his mount, and had rented a gelding from a Frederick stable. The animal wasn’t bad as such beasts went, but it did seem queer to go to war on a rented horse.

A shell burst down in the marsh, making a splash but doing no damage. Soldiers cursed, as soldiers always did.

The initial Confederate gunnery had caused a number of casualties, but the men were under better cover now, in their rifle pits or shielded by the terrain. And Captain Alexander was putting up a fair duel with his little guns, while the howitzer was giving the Rebs a time of it.

Across the river, puffs of smoke marked the fields where men were doing their best to kill each other, a famine-thin blue line holding Rebel skirmishers at a distance.

By Wallace’s reckoning, Early had squandered three hours.

A party of horsemen cantered across the road, coming toward him, their multi-hued banners teased out by their pace. The spectacle put Wallace in mind of the storybooks about knights that had brightened his childhood.

His mood had been much improved by three hours of sleep.

As Ricketts drew close, Wallace said, “Well, General, the Rebs don’t seem too anxious to cross our river.”

Ricketts bent his big torso toward him. “Would you be? They’re not fools.”

“What do you think they’ll do?” Wallace asked.

Ricketts shrugged. “Come around a flank.”

Wallace nodded. “Our left, I expect. Seems plain.”

“I’m sure they’re prowling around right now, figuring out where they can cross.”

“There’s a ford, a fairly good one,” Ross put in. “Down behind the Worthington place. Clendenin has one of his companies guarding it.”

“W
atching
it,” Wallace corrected. He turned to Ricketts again. “Best we can do, given our numbers. Provide some warning, if they come that way.”

Wallace felt anew how terribly few soldiers he had, even with Ricketts’ division fallen from Heaven. He suspected that all those present were thinking the same thing.

Ricketts leaned toward him again. “Sir, I’d like to push out a skirmish line, a heavy one. Between that brick house and the far one. Can’t quite see the one I mean from here.”

“All right. Good. Just hold back a strong reserve, we’re going to need it. Any word on your other regiments?”

Ricketts’ face darkened, answering the question without speaking. Wallace realized again how weary he remained, despite those three magnificent hours of sleep, and how easily he might slip into foolishness. Of course, he would have been informed immediately had a telegraph message come in. And trains didn’t slip past quietly. It had been a fool’s question.

It promised to be a long day.

As Ricketts saluted and turned back to his duties, a rider galloped over the fields they’d discussed a moment before. He was coming from the direction of the ford.

10:30 a.m.

Worthington Ford

“Tiger John” McCausland gave each of his regimental commanders a no-tomfoolery look.

“Here now,” he said, settling his attention on Jimmy Cochran of the 14th Virginia Cavalry. “How many Yankees down there? And no tall tales.” He gestured toward the contested ford, which lay behind a lip of land and below a fringe of trees. The firing was just intense enough to annoy him.

“Billy Vincent says a troop. Maybe two.”

“Damn it, Jimmy. Handful of Yankees? Holding up your boys?”

“They’re tucked into a runt forest. Maybe half dismounted. With those repeaters. Didn’t want to squander—”

“You get on back down there. Dismount your regiment, every man. You open on them from left and right of the ford, but leave the main approach open. Put all the fire on ’em you can, you pin those blue-belly sumbitches to the ground.” He turned to Henry Bowen of the 22nd Virginia. “Hen, you form up in column of fours again. We’re going over this here bump of dirt and straight across that ford. With sabers.”

Bowen started, an almost imperceptible contraction of the muscles, but McCausland noted it. “And I’m going with you. I am sick and tired of all this dawdling. We are going across that ford, and those blue-bellies are going to run like fire in a cotton barn when we do. Then we are going to get up on that high ground and sweep on over those Sunday-best militia boys. And the infantry can lick our tails and call it molasses.”

Finishing up with Ferguson and Tavenner, he said, “Milt, the Sixteenth will follow the Twenty-second. W.C., your Seventeenth follows after.” He fixed his hard stare back on Cochran, who had disappointed him. “Soon as W.C. clears the ford, you come right on. I want everybody up atop that hill, fast as man and beast can cover the ground. Rally at that high house you saw back a ways. Get your men fixed, and meet me in the yard.” He glanced around a last, fierce time. “Quick now. Go.”

Down by the ford, the skirmishing had a determined sound. McCausland meant to finish it up. Right quick.

The colonels remounted and rode for their regiments. Still a thousand men in the brigade, McCausland figured. Plenty to deal with the uppity militia blocking the army’s way.

Foot in the left stirrup and right leg swinging over his stallion’s haunches, it struck him again that justice was about to be served up hot. Forever berating the cavalry, Early had become just about intolerable. Whether they performed splendidly or poorly made no difference. And McCausland, who had made his name as an infantryman, only to be thrust into cavalry command, was not about to be shunted aside like a poor relation. He’d had enough of playing second fiddle at the Virginia Military Institute, where he’d been junior to mad Tom Jackson on the mathematics faculty, both of them blackboard soldiers teaching the indifferent sons of the gentry. Today, he’d been meant to “support” Early’s latest pet, Dod Ramseur, a pup in scarlet ribbons. Well, Early was going to see who could churn the butter.

He’d
earned
his nickname, Tiger John, and was not about to be mocked by any man living.

As quickened with excitement as their riders, the pawing horses of the 22nd Virginia hardly looked like thoroughbreds, but they’d do. And the faces of the men, brown as walnut oil, had been cut to planes of bone by long campaigning.

Positioning himself just beside the head of the column, McCausland looked at Bowen and drew his blade.

“Sabers!”

“Draw sabers,” Bowen hollered. The command echoed down through the captains and lieutenants commanding the companies.

The rasp and clang of steel rang loud as a foundry. On the whole, McCausland preferred pistols for an attack. But he sensed in his gut that a regiment charging with sabers would panic the handful of Yankees across the ford. He didn’t want a drawn-out fight, he just wanted them out of the way.

Pointing with his sword, he spurred his horse. Hen Bowen drew alongside. They let the front fours pass.

Right on time, Jimmy Cochran’s dismounts opened up, hundreds of rifles dwarfing the sound of the previous skirmishing.

Screened by trees, the head of the column turned onto the wagon track that led, that could only lead, to the ford.

“Charge!” McCausland shouted.

The foremost men did not wait for the command’s repetition, but kicked their horses to life and howled like Furies. Coming to mighty, thundering life, the entire regiment took up the cry.

McCausland and Bowen rode on the left, under trees and through wild grass, not quite keeping pace.

Cochran’s dismounts poured fire on the Yankees.

With another explosive yell, the lead riders burst from shade into sunlight, spurring their horses into the water, splashing madly, wet sabers gleaming as fountains of water threw rainbows. McCausland pulled up short of the bank. Bowen imitated him. Didn’t want to play the fool, miss the ford and go for a swim.

The crashing and thrashing in the river seemed nearly as loud as the gunfire. Another wave of Rebel yells swept forward.

McCausland did not see a single rider fall. In moments, the first rough-clad horsemen were slapping through the mud of the far bank.

The last Yankee cavalrymen took flight, running and leaping to horse, spurring away.

The fight for the ford was over.

“Yanks won’t claim any battlefield brevets from that one,” Bowen said.

11:00 a.m.

Boundary fence of the Thomas and Worthington farms

Ricketts rode the skirmish line he’d put in behind a rail fence. The sun would bake the men, but there was no shade to be had on the killing ground. Terrain was battle’s tyrant.

“Everybody down. Lie down,” he called, voice firm but not harsh. “All of you lie down. And just stay ready.”

Approaching a pair of officers from the 151st New York, he told them, “Dismount. Both of you.
Now.
Send your horses to the rear.”

Only one man would remain mounted along the skirmish line, and that would be him.

The soldiers tucked themselves in, a field of grain behind their line and a struggling cornfield, waist-high, beyond the fence. The breeze had died and the stalks stood ragged and still. Maddened insects leapt, their world disordered. His veterans sought comfort, however brief, but clutched their rifles closely. The earth smelled of crops and heat.

Ricketts rode on, calmly, inspecting the lines of fire his men would enjoy, scanning for trick ground that might betray the surprise he meant to spring on the Confederates. When the skirmishing snapped to life down at the ford, Wallace had given him free rein to emplace his forces, and Ricketts had advanced a skirmish line whose strength was a full third of his First Brigade. The remainder of Truex’s units had taken a position between the river and the brick mansion that Wallace’s man, Ross, called “Araby.”

Whatever the house’s name, it would see its share of bloodshed before the day was out.

The obtuse angle of his main line left the men exposed to enfilading fire from the guns across the river, but nothing could be done. Again, the terrain was their master. Only his Vermonters, tucked into a swale as a reserve, were fully protected.

His skirmishers were settled in, hidden, as close to the earth as men who were not under fire ever got. Their officers knelt behind them, heads held below the top fence rail. He had made any man who wore a high-crowned hat remove it.

The Rebs would see one man, and that would be him.

How he wished he had just a single battery of his own! His Regular cannoneers from the 1st Artillery would have wreaked merry mischief on the Rebs. Half-bedazzled by the perfect fields of fire beyond his line, he could not stop thinking as an old redleg, dreaming of double canister and sudden, barked commands.

Wishes were useless things.

He had followed the clash down at the ford by the noise, first the brisk skirmishing, then the sharp eruption of rifle fire, climaxed by a ruckus and wild Reb cries. As the first fleeing horsemen found the high road and galloped back along it, he warned his men not to jeer, curt when he was briefly disobeyed. He could imagine only too well what that handful of cavalrymen had faced. They’d bought what time they could.

To his rear, down by the bridges, the firing picked up. He could read it well enough not to find it worrisome, but he did spare a thought for what might happen if Early brought the full weight of his forces to bear.

No sign of it yet, thanks be to Providence.

Reversing his course along the line, he let his horse slow. He could not afford to look anxious, either to his own men or to the Rebs, when they appeared. “Just keep yourselves quiet,” he told his men. “And we’ll give the Johnnies a welcome they’ll remember. Just rest and be quiet, I’ll tell you when to stand.”

Ricketts felt no fear—only the usual quickening, the tightening of the muscles, and, yes, the thrill of impending battle. It was a terrible business, and this time the stakes were incalculably high. But there was a part of any true soldier that, against all reason, longed for the game to begin.

He rode past officers down on one knee. “Keep your heads down, boys. And wait for my order.”

All of the faces were earnest now, the jokesters and campfire bullies as taut as the silent sorts, some praying, Ricketts was certain, and others merely bothered by the flies. These were men who had seen not only the elephant, but every hideous beast in war’s menagerie. They knew what they were about. But they could not know if they would live or die in the next half hour.

He preferred setting troops in motion. Activity worked its own charms, while waiting passively led the mind astray.

Even his own thoughts were not strictly disciplined, despite the weight of command upon his shoulders. Frances intruded. And Harriet. Should this day be his last, he would leave some practical matters in disorder, burdens unfair to his present wife. But nothing could be done. Not now.

A wry smile dented the set of his face. If he was killed … and if the priests and parsons were right about the great beyond, be it Purgatory first, or straight to Heaven or Hell, would he be reunited forever with Harriet? Or did a subsequent marriage take precedence before the Judgment Seat? Surely Heaven would not be some sort of Mormon confederacy or a Mussulman’s harem? Would Harriet still be young and fair, while he appeared old and fat? And Frances, with her enormous heart and steadfast will, deserved her due. He had married good women, better than he deserved, his greatest good fortune.

He stopped himself, coming back to the glint of sun-heated steel, of blue cloth on brown earth, of eye-burning sweat. Here and now. This day, this hour. In this field, under this sun. All of his life had aimed him toward this.