Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (6 page)

TWO

July 8, dawn

Monocacy Junction

“Sir, sir!” The orderly shook Wallace, none too gently. “I hear a train. Coming from Baltimore way.”

Wallace brushed off the man’s hand and rose, stiff and groggy, from the floor. He heard the swelling throb of a locomotive. God grant it be the veterans.

He pulled on his boots and fumbled with his coat, forgoing sash and sword. Ross had orders to stop any train that approached the iron bridge, but Wallace feared that his own two stars might be needed to settle matters.

The noise of the great machine grew huge, then screamed to a hissing stop.

Righting his hat, Wallace hurried out of the shack. Sleep’s claws pursued him: He’d known little rest for days. In the foreground, a locomotive steamed, impatient. Dark forms leaned from passenger car platforms and crowded the doors of freight wagons. Mist smoked off the river.

A figure alighted from one of the cars, moving with a haste that betokened anger: a big fellow, blacksmith brawny, followed by stumbling underlings.

Wallace strode toward the tall officer, who looked around as if anxious to land a punch. Sweat prickled Wallace’s back.

“What’s the meaning of this?” the new arrival bellowed at anyone who might hear. “Why has this train been stopped? What damned idiocy is it now?”

Wallace spotted Jim Ross, his senior aide and a newly promoted lieutenant colonel. Ross would be no match for the bull in blue.

Quickening his pace again, Wallace waved to Ross:
Let me handle this.

“And who the hell are you?” the big man, a colonel, snapped. He marked Wallace’s shoulder boards, but didn’t recoil or salute. He merely lowered his voice to a muzzled growl. “You in command here?”

Wallace extended his hand. “Major General Wallace, Middle Department. To whom do I owe the honor?”

The scent of coffee rose from a cook-fire, teasing him. He wished he had been allowed a cup before this confrontation.

The big man paused, then accepted Wallace’s paw, enclosing it. “Bill Henry, Tenth Vermont. Why have my men been stopped?” He freed Wallace’s hand, which hurt. The colonel was short a finger, Wallace noted, and his uniform was hard used.

“You don’t have orders to stop here, then?” Wallace asked. “At Monocacy Junction?”

“None.”

Confined to the train, bleary soldiers eyed the two officers. One man emptied a slop bucket from a freight car.

“And your orders are?”

“Proceed to Point of Rocks. Either continue on the train, or march if the line’s interrupted. Report to Harper’s Ferry for duty at Maryland Heights.”

Wallace tried to judge the man before him, what his temper really signified. “And the Tenth Vermont belongs to?”

“First Brigade, Truex commanding. Third Division, General Ricketts. Sixth Corps.”

“Where’s General Ricketts?”

The colonel shrugged, stretching a bit. His complexion had been burned as brown as a pig turned on a spit. “Doubt he’ll be up before tonight. Hadn’t arrived in port when we entrained. What’s going on?”

A cup of coffee would have been a blessing. He would have liked to offer one to this still-seething colonel, too.

Hundreds of morning-blurred faces watched the exchange now, those on the train and more from the roused camp.

“Colonel Henry,” Wallace began in a confidential tone, “if you proceed to Point of Rocks—and if the line has not been cut by now—you will take yourself and your men away from a battle coming to this place today or, at the latest, tomorrow. General Early is going to sweep over the ridges to our west with a reinforced corps, and his men are going to march as fast as their legs can go for our national capital.”

Fending off sleep’s last grip, Wallace straightened his back. “I have twenty-three hundred raw recruits, and two hundred good cavalry. The enemy’s said to number between twenty and thirty thousand. That number may be exaggerated, but they’re veterans all. Yesterday, we held off their advance guard just west of Frederick. But if you and those coming behind you continue to Point of Rocks, they will overwhelm us and be on their way to Washington. And your regiment will have done no good to anyone.”

Wallace reached out a hand, but withdrew it before touching the other man’s sleeve. “I
need
you, Colonel. I don’t expect to beat Early. Just hold him long enough for Grant to reinforce Washington.” He met the man’s eyes in the seeping light. “I have no authority over your command. I leave the decision to stay or proceed to you.”

The colonel stared down at him for a dreadful stretch of seconds. Off to the side, Ross held still. On the cars, the soldiers, too, were silent, all their routine foolery suspended. As if they sensed—knew—that their fate was in play.

“Let my boys cook up some breakfast,” the Vermonter said at last. “And tell me where you want us.”

July 8, 9:00 a.m.

Fox Gap, Maryland

“They should’ve let us go, John,” Breckinridge said. “They just should’ve let us go.”

Erect in the saddle, as always, Gordon nodded. “Didn’t, though. And here we are.” He smiled. A gentleman always knew just when to smile. “Not a bad place at all, wasn’t for this dust.” He spread an arm toward the ripening fields that graced the valley. “All the bounty of Ceres.”

Before and behind the two generals and their staffs, long gray columns moved through tunnels of dust. Above the dirty air, the sun attacked.

“All the more reason they should have let us go,” Breckinridge told him. “Rich country, bountiful. The North has all it needs. Could’ve even spared us Maryland, way this Kentucky boy reckons.” He coughed. “John, I put it down to New York greed, Boston pride, and damnable Yankee spite. That’s what this war’s about.” He brushed dust from his long, slender mustaches.

Well, Gordon thought, pride and spite on our part, too, if love of a way of life in place of greed. None of them had expected this: the long years of blood and sorrow, of glory increasingly dimmed by lamentation. For months now, he had privately contemplated the possibility that the South might lose. He was in it to the end, all right, partly from pride and unabated anger, and partly in foreknowledge of what would fix a man’s status after the war, win or lose. But the probable end looked different to him now than it had before the slaughter below the Rapidan: The South was bleeding to death.

The man who failed to look ahead fell behind.

He wished he had a confidant to whom he could unburden himself regarding the prospects of the ailing Confederacy. But no man dared utter heresy or hear it; all had to pretend to a flawless belief that by some astonishing run of the cards the game would turn in their favor, even now. Many, like dear Clem Evans, truly believed it, discovering hidden victories in every defeat. Clem believed in miracles, divine or earthly, and Gordon had no wish to weaken his enthusiasm: He needed men who would fight without hesitation.

Gordon
loved
to fight. His concerns about the war’s outcome didn’t alter that. On the contrary, he knew full well that he’d miss all this immeasurably: Nothing so enlivened a man as a battle. A side of Gordon dreaded the end, the demotion back to mundane life and petty concerns. But he meant to be prepared for it.

He thought a bit more on Clem Evans, who planned to become a Methodist preacher and practiced by delivering camp sermons. Immaculate belief was a powerful thing. It was a gift the war had taken from Gordon.

No, he could never talk to Clem, fond as he was of the man.

He even had to be circumspect with Fanny, who possessed blind faith that he, her champion, could not be defeated. Evidence meant nothing to such as her; her confidence shone like Persephone’s in the Underworld. Nor would he deprive his wife of hope. When worse came to worst, her practical side would digest defeat and continue.

His splendid Fanny! She was as fine a woman as ever breathed, demure in the world and passionate in his arms, Penelope to his Ulysses. No, far better than Penelope, since Fanny had left their children in her family’s care to follow him through the war, to nurse his wounds and sew on his latest rank. She would not sit at home working her loom amid the cowards. Fanny believed in a distant Christ, but wanted her husband near.

Beside him, Breckinridge alerted, canting his head like a hound dog figuring things.

“That cannon?”

“Didn’t hear it.”

“Listen now.”

Gordon waited a fair time, then shook his head.

“Imagining things, I suppose,” Breckinridge told him. He mused for a bit, then added, “Johnson’s cavalry ran up against some militia yesterday. On the Frederick road. Gave him a fight, I hear.”

“I doubt Johnson gave anybody much of a fight,” Gordon commented. “I’m in accord with Early on that much. Johnson’s brigands aren’t worth a pail of oats. Cavalry’s not what it was. Best men gone, horses ruined.”

“McCausland, though, he’ll fight. Full of pepper, that boy.”

Gordon lifted a brow and sweat stung his eye. “Wouldn’t stop for a few militia, I’ll give him that.”

“Assuming they’re just militia.”

Gordon smiled, but with no trace of pleasure. “I’ve been pondering that question myself, if truth be told.” He pulled his horse away from the column. “Yankees have to figure this out, at some point. Sooner or later, it won’t be farmers in soldier suits anymore. And we’ll have a real fight on our hands.”

“Well, we’re ready for that, too,” his temporary superior told him. “Let them come on out and get whipped, they’ll find us ready.”

Ever alert to the nuances of companionship, Gordon reassumed his genial tone. “I expect so, General, I expect so. And I
do
hope to host you in Georgia, after the war.…”

Ahead, a soldier staggered to the roadside and collapsed.

“Killing this army,” Breckinridge sputtered. “Just killing it.” He turned his well-formed face toward Gordon. The man’s waxed mustaches were frosted with dust again. “You disagree, I know that, John. But I do believe we’re pushing the men too hard. They’re game enough, but the body’s a sight weaker than the spirit.”

Gordon knew it was fruitless to argue, or at least impolitic. Early brought out his combative nature, but Breckinridge was of a different breed, a gentleman. And like so many of his fellow gentlemen, Breckinridge was willing to push men to their deaths on the battlefield, but would not press them sufficiently hard to get them there before the foe was ready—and thus save far more lives.

No one since Jackson grasped the brute mathematics. Even if you lost one man in ten—or more—on the march, if you got to the fight before the Federals could double or triple their strength, you had the odds. It wasn’t hard figuring. And it was a remarkable thing, how much men delivered if they were soundly led. Soldiers just wanted a little show, a handful of stirring words and a flash of courage from the man giving orders.

Beside the road, the fallen soldier raved as they rode past.

“Poor devil won’t see Washington,” Breckinridge said.

Gordon wanted to tell him, “None of us will see Washington, if we give the Yankees time to shift their beef. We should have been across the Monocacy yesterday, rather than fooling with Sigel and tearing up rails.”

Instead, he said, “Hottest weather we’ve seen, I do believe. Prelude to Hades, and not even ten.” He lifted his hat to the nearest soldiers and poured the Deep South into his sonorous voice. “Weather here’bouts leave you boys mindful of Georgia? Y’all settling thoughts on home, way I am myself? Peaches near to ripe on the branch, and the Lord smiling down on the cotton? Win this war, and we’ll all go home a-grinning, that’s a fact.”

“Sure enough,” a voice returned. “Home,
sweet
home!” called another. A third voice rhapsodized, “Get me some of that sweet well water’n drink it till I bust.…”

Breckinridge sneezed. “I swear, John Gordon, you start in to praising Georgia again…”

Amazing, Gordon thought, that a political man who had been vice president of the United States and had run for the highest office did not understand the value of praising Georgia in front of Georgian troops. Not least when a man intended to go back home and run for a seat, if the bullets veered off. Let the war be lost or won, the political future would belong to veterans, whether they sat in the governor’s chair or stood behind it, out of sight of the Yankees.

Thinking on Washington again, Gordon pondered Early’s likely intentions. Despite Black Davey Hunter’s depredations before they whipped him back into western Virginia, Early kept a strict hand over the soldiers—of which Gordon approved. There had been no reprisals, at least not yet, for the burnings in Lexington and elsewhere, the wanton destruction and barbarism. He knew that Early intended to press the Yankee town fathers for ransoms, wherever he sensed full coffers and Union loyalties, but the soldiers were not to indulge themselves, a prohibition that occasionally demanded the wisdom of Solomon in its enforcement. Gordon approved of maintaining order and discipline—he would have no rampaging—but he also had sense enough to avert his eyes, nose, and salivary glands when his men cooked up fresh pork or a quarter of beef that appeared by magic.

Soldiers were like children, delighted to get away with small transgressions. One of the knacks of leadership was to know which mischief to ignore and when to descend upon a rogue like the Furies. The best leaders weren’t the soft ones who meant to be kind, but those who firmly punished misdeeds the soldiers themselves despised.

If they
did
get to Washington—get inside the city—what did Early intend? Old Jube wouldn’t say. Probably hadn’t decided, Gordon figured. For all his barking and snorting, Early had trouble making big decisions; Gordon had realized that way back at Gettysburg. The revelation had come as a shock, since making decisions came naturally to him, the way what to do in battle just seemed obvious. It had bewildered Gordon to realize that all those fellows with West Point educations did not see things that were plain as Aunt Sally. On a battlefield, what struck others as audacity was only common sense, as far as John Brown Gordon was concerned. And if you did not know what to do, you attacked.