Chapter XXXIII: Back Home

Eight thousand strong the Second Corps, Jubal Early at its head, left
the region of the Chickahominy on the thirteenth of June, marched
eighty-odd miles in four days, boarded at Charlottesville the Orange
and Alexandria and so came south to Lynchburg. Here, Breckinridge
being wounded, D.H. Hill, brought to this town on some duty, was found
in command. He had earthworks and a motley force—Breckinridge’s
handful, cavalry ready to fight dismounted, home guard, hospital
convalescents, V.M.I. cadets. Noon of seventeenth in came Early with
Ramseur’s division, Gordon’s following.

Hunter, having burned and harried Rockbridge and a corner of
Botetourt, crossed the Blue Ridge and swept through Bedford toward
Lynchburg, Imboden and McCausland skirmishing with him at New London,
and again and heavily at the Quaker Meeting-House. From this point,
cavalry fell back to Lynchburg, where with Breckinridge’s men they
held the Forrest road. On came the eighteen thousand and found
breastworks across their path, and Ramseur and Gordon with artillery.
Hunter halted, deployed, brought up artillery and thundered for an
hour, then, night appearing in the east, went into camp over against
the grey front. The next day and the next there was thunder of cannon
and cavalry skirmishing, but no battle. Suddenly, on the night of the
nineteenth, Hunter broke camp, and, facing about, marched away to the
westward. His army doubled in numbers the grey force in his front. Why
he went so hastily after nothing but a glancing blow or two the grey
could not tell—though Gordon states, “If I were asked for an opinion
as to this utterly causeless fright and flight I should be tempted to
say that conscience was harrowing General Hunter, and causing him to
see an avenger wrapped in every grey jacket before him.” Be that as it
may, Hunter was gone at midnight, and the grey column took up the
pursuit at dawn, moving by the Liberty turnpike. Behind the Second
Corps lay the giant labour, giant weariness of Wilderness to Cold
Harbour, and on this side of that the forced marching from Tidewater,
and now, rolling on in a dream of weariness, the pursuit after Hunter,
sixty miles in two days and a half.

It was a weary dream and yet it had its interest, for this was new
country to the Second Corps, thrown this way for the first time in all
the war. It knew much of Virginia so exceedingly well—and here was a
new road and the interests of a new road! Here and there in column it
was not new country, it was to soldiers here and there land of old
time, their part of Virginia. Some had had furloughs and had come back
to it, once or twice or thrice; others had missed furloughs, had not
seen these mountains and waters for so long a time that now they
looked at them wistfully as we look with closed eyes at the landscapes
of childhood. The thickness of a life seemed to lie between them and
the countryside; one could not reckon all that had happened since they
had marched from these blue mountains and these sunny fields—marched
to end in one battle the trouble between North and South!

Richard Cleave rode at the head of the Golden Brigade. There were now
no full grey brigades, no complete grey regiments. All were worn to a
wraith of their former seeming. They took not a half, often not a
third, of the space of road they once had covered. The volume of sound
of their marching was diminished, the flags were closer together. Had
the dead come to life, taken their old places, there would have passed
on the Liberty pike a very great army. But scattered like thistledown
from the stem lay the dead in a thousand fields.

The living Sixty-fifth moved with jingle and clank through the heat
and dust and glare. It had men and officers who were at home in this
landscape seen through clefts in the dust cloud. What was left of the
old Company A were all from the rolling hills, the vales between, the
high blue mountains now rising before the column. Thunder Run men
pointed out the Peaks of Otter; there ran a low talk of the James, of
North Mountain and Purgatory, of Mill Creek and Back Creek and Craig
Creek, of village and farm and cabin, smithy and mill. Company A did
not feel tired, it was glad when the halts were ended, glad to hear
the _Column forward_! Matthew Coffin had been home twice since First
Manassas; other men of the region had been home, Thunder Run had seen
a furlough or two, but many of the living of Company A had not
returned in four years’ time. Allan Gold had not been back nor Dave
and Billy Maydew.

The column was moving rapidly. Hunter had a few hours’ start, but this
was the “foot cavalry” that was pursuing him. The road was rough, the
dust blinding, the heat exhausting, but on pressed the “foot cavalry.”
“_Hot! Hot! Hot!_” said the rapid feet, so many of them half-shoeless.
“Heat and dust! Heat and dust! There used to be springs in this
country,—springs to drink and creeks to wade in.... Then we were
boys—long ago—long ago—”

Mouth furred with dust, throat baked with dust and cracked with
thirst, much ground to cover in short time, the column for the most
part kept its lips closed. It went steadily, rhythmically, bent on
getting its business done, no more forever aught but veterans,
seasoned, grey, determined. But in the short halts granted it between
long times it spoke. It lay on the ground beside welcome waters and
babbled of heaven and earth. That portion of the Sixty-fifth whose
shores these were spoke as soldiers immemorially speak when after
years the war road leads past home. The rests were short. _Fall in!
Fall in!_—and on after Hunter swung the Second Corps.

In the hot June dusk, in the small town of Liberty, twenty-five miles
from Lynchburg, they found his rear guard. Ramseur charged and drove
it through the place and out and on into the night. There sprang a
sudden shriek of shells, rear guard joining main body, and the
batteries opening on the grey, heard coming up in the night. The grey
line halted; grey and blue, alike exhausted with much and sore travel,
fell upon the warm earth and slept as they had been dead, through the
short summer night. Grey was in column as the candles of heaven were
going out—on before them they heard the blue striking the flints on
the Liberty and Salem turnpike.

The sun came up hot and glorious. Full before the column rose the Blue
Ridge. The men, moving in a huge dust cloud, talked only between
times. “Hunter’s a swift Hunter or he wants to get away mighty bad!
‘Burner’ Hunter!”—“I could get right hot of heart—but what’s the
use?”—“I don’t bother about the use. You’ve got to have a heart like a
hot coal sometimes, with everything blowing upon it!”—“That’s so!
Life’s right tragic.”—_Press forward, men!_—“Peaks of Otter! Boys from
hereabouts say there’s an awful fine view from the top.”—“Awful fine
view? Should think there was! When you’re up there—if you go alone—you
feel like you’re halfway upstairs to God! Don’t do to go with
anybody—they make a fuss and enjoy it.”—“We’re going straight into the
mountains.”—“Yes, straight into the mountains. Thunder Run Mountain’s
over there.”

The road was now a climbing road. The column moved upon it like a
gleaming dragon—the head in thick woods lifting toward the heights,
the rear far back in the rolling green land just north of Liberty. The
Golden Brigade was near the head. The Sixty-fifth felt the world climb
beneath its feet. Allan and Billy were thinking of Thunder Run;
Matthew Coffin was thinking of the pale blue letter-paper girl.
Allan’s vision was now the toll-gate and now the school-house, and
now, and at last persistently, the road up Thunder Run Mountain and
Christianna Maydew walking on it. Blended with this vision of the road
was a vision of the hospital in Richmond after Gaines’s Mill. He lay
again on a blanket on the floor in a corner of the ward, thirsty and
in pain, with closed eyes, and Christianna came and knelt and gave him
water....

The road climbed steeply. Above ran on to the sky long, wooded, purple
slopes. At one point showed a break, a “gap.” “That’s where we ’re
going! That’s Buford’s Gap!” On and on and up and up—_Halt!_ rang out
from the head of the column, and _Halt!—Halt!—Halt!_ ran from segment
to segment of the mounting length.

Hunter, a week before, had not appeared on Thunder Run Mountain. No
torch came near its scattered “valuable property.” The few men left
upon the mountain were not pressed or shot or marched away to Yankee
prisons. Thunder Run Mountain saw burning buildings in the valleys
below and heard tales of devastation, even heard wind of a rumour that
Hunter’s line of march lay across it, in which case it might expect to
be burned with fire and sowed with salt. It was this rumour that sent
Steve Dagg on a visit to a long-forgotten kinswoman in Bedford.... And
then the line of march had proved to be by the kinswoman’s house!

Steve broke from a band of Federals speaking German and somewhat
blindly plunged into the woods toward the Peaks. “Gawd! I reckon they
ain’t comin’ to the top of Apple Orchard!”

With occasional descents to a hermit’s cabin for food he lay out on
Apple Orchard until he had seen the last horseman of the Federal
column disappear, Lynchburg direction. It was warm and pleasant on
Apple Orchard and the hermit was congenial. Steve stayed on to
recuperate. And then, with suddenness, here again in the distance
appeared the head of the Federal column—coming back! Steve felt the
nightmare redescending.

The hermit, who was really lame, went to the nearest hamlet and
returned with news. “We got army at Lynchburg—big army. Hunter’s
beaten stiff and running this way! He’ll cross at Buford’s again, and
I reckon then he’ll keep to the woods and go west. You’d better wait
right here—”

“Thank you, I thought I would,” said Steve. “A man can have a fightin’
temper, ’n’ yet back off from a locomotive—”

Hunter’s thousands disappeared, the last rear guard horseman of them.
Steve was content. And then of a suddenness, there burst a quarrel
with the hermit. He had a gun and a dog and Steve found it advisable
to leave. It came into his head, “The Yanks ain’t goin’ to make any
stop this side of Salem, if there! ’n’ if the Second Corps comes
along, it’s goin’ to hurry through. If it’s after Hunter it won’t have
no time to come gallivantin’ on Thunder Run! Old Jack would ha’ rushed
it through like greased lightning, ’n’ I reckon Old Dick or Old Jube,
or whatever darn fool’s riskin’ his skin leadin’, ’ll rush it through
too!—I’ll go back to Thunder Run.”

He began to put his intention into execution, moving across miles of
woodland with a certain caution, since there might just possibly be
blue stragglers. He found none, however, and came in good spirits to a
high point from which he could discern distances of the Liberty pike
running southeast to Lynchburg. Upon it, quite far away, was a moving
pillar of dust, moving toward him. Steve knew what it was well enough.
“Second Corps,” he grinned. “_Yaaih! Yaaaihh!_ Reckon I’ll be
travelling along!”

So sure was he that the road before him was clear, and he was in such
good spirits from the consideration that the “foot cavalry” would
hurry incontinently after Hunter, that he quite capered along the road
that now climbed toward Buford’s Gap. It was afternoon, warm, with a
golden light. And then, suddenly, being almost in the gap, he observed
something which gave him pause. It was nothing more or less than trees
cut away from a rocky height overhanging the gorge through which
passed the road, and some metal bores projecting from the ledges.
Steve’s breath came whistlingly. “Gawd! Yankee battery!” In a moment
he saw another, perched on a further ledge and masked by pine boughs.
Steve panted. “Avalanche! Another minute ’n’ they’d ha’ seen me.”

He was already deep in the woods beside the road, his face now turned
quite away from his projected path. Indeed, when he came to himself he
found that he was moving southward, and due, if he kept on, to meet
that dust cloud and the Second Corps. His heart beating violently, he
drew up beneath a hemlock, the vast brown trunk and a mile or so of
blue air between him and the cannon-fringed crags. Here he slid down
upon the scented earth and fell to thinking, his hand automatically
beating to death with a small stick a broken-winged moth creeping over
the needles. Steve thought at first with a countenance of blankness,
and then with a strange, watery smile. His eyes lengthened and
narrowed, his lips widened. “I got an idea,” he whispered. “Make ’em
like me.”

Sitting there he rolled up his trouser leg, removed a rotten shoe and
ragged sock, then took a knife from his pocket and after a shiver of
apprehension scraped and abraded an old, small wound and sore until it
bled afresh. Out of his pocket he took a roll of dirty bandage kept
against just such an emergency as this. Having first carefully stained
it with blood, he rolled it around foot and shin, pinned it with a
rusty pin, donned again sock and shoe, stood up and gave three minutes
to the practice of an alternate limp and shuffle. This over he broke
and trimmed a young dogwood for a staff, and with it in hand he went
southward a considerable distance through the woods, then crossed to
the road. Behind him, a good long way off, showed the gap where was
planted the “avalanche.” Before him came rolling the road from
Liberty. The dust cloud on it was rapidly growing larger. Steve,
leaning heavily on his stick, limped to meet it.

Cavalry ahead took his news, halted and sent back to Jubal Early. That
commander spurred forward. “‘Avalanche?’ What d’ye mean? Guns? Where?
Up there? — — ——! All right. Two can play at that game—_Battery
forward!_”

Steve conceived himself to be neglected. Carefully propped by his
stick and a roadside boulder he hearkened to orders and marked
manœvres until he was aweary. He had saved the Second Corps and it
wasn’t noticing him! He grew palely dogged. “They got ter notice me.
Gawd! I’ve seen a man thanked in General Orders ’n’ promoted right up
for less’n I’ve done!” In addition to a sense of his dues a
fascination kept him where he was. The unwonted feeling of superiority
protected him from fear; no army would too closely question its
saviour! The rag about his foot, as he assured himself every now and
then with a glance, was good and bloody. So well fixed and with such a
vantage-point, he gave way to a desire just to see how the boys looked
after so long a time. Vanguard and artillery had gone forward; down
the road he saw coming at a double an infantry brigade; further back
the main body had been halted. He gathered from a comment of officers
passing that there was a conviction that it was only Hunter’s rear
guard before them in the pass. Cavalry scouts spurring back,
clattering down dangerous paths from adjoining crests, justified the
conviction. The Federal main body was pressing on upon the Salem road
while the rear guard gained time. And here the blue rear guard,
observing from its crags that the ambuscade had been discovered,
opened fire. The grey guns now in battery on a knoll of hemlocks
answered. The Blue Ridge echoed the thunders.

It was near sunset and the brigade coming up was bathed in a slant and
rich light. With a gasp Steve recognized the horse and rider at its
head. He raised and bent his arm and hid his face, only looking forth
with one frightened eye. Cleave and Dundee went by without recognizing
him, without, as far as he could tell, glancing his way. Steve chose
again to feel injury. “Gawd, Colonel! if I did try to get even with
you once, ain’t you a general now, ’n’ ain’t I jest saved your life
’n’ all your men?—’n’ you go by without lookin’ at me any more’n if I
was dirt! If you’d been a Christian ’n’ stopped, I could ha’ told you
you were goin’ home to find your house burned down ’n’ your sister
dyin’! I jest saved your life ’n’ you don’t know it! I jest saved this
army ’n’ don’t any one know it.... O Gawd! here’s the Sixty-fifth!”

Steve could not stand it. “Howdy, boys!” he said. “Howdy, howdy!” The
water came into his eyes. He saw through a mist the colours and the
slanted bayonets and the ragged hats or no hats and the thin, tanned
faces. A drop gathered and rolled down his cheek. There was a
momentary halt of the Sixty-fifth, the last rank abreast of the
boulder by the road. _Forward!_ and the regiment moved on, and Steve
marched with it. “Yaas, you didn’t know it, but I jest saved you boys
’n’ the army! I was comin’ along the road—I got a sore foot—’n’ I
looked up ’n’ seed the guns—”

The sun went down and the night came, with the guns yet baying at one
another, and the well-posted blue yet in possession of the rocks above
the gorge. But in the middle of the night the blue withdrew, hurrying
away upon the Salem road. McCausland, pursuing, captured prisoners and
two pieces of artillery. But the great length of Hunter’s column,
wheeling from Salem toward Lewisburg, plunged into the mountains of
western Virginia. From the grey administration’s point of view it was
better there than elsewhere. Early, under orders now for the main
Valley, rested in Botetourt for one day, then took the pike for
Staunton.

One day! Matthew Coffin spent it with the blue letter-paper young
lady. Allan Gold and Billy and Dave Maydew covered with long strides
the road to Thunder Run. Making all speed up and down, they might have
the middle of the day for _home-at-last_. Richard Cleave rode to
Fincastle and found in a house there his mother and sister. Miriam was
sinking fast. She knew him, but immediately wandered off to talk of
books, of Hector and Achilles and people in the “Morte d’Arthure.” He
had but two hours. At the end he knelt and kissed his sister’s brow,
then came out into the porch with his mother and held her in a parting
embrace. She clung to him with passion. “Richard—Richard!—All is
turned to iron and clay and blood and tears! Love itself is turning to
pure pain—”

Riding back to his troops he went by Three Oaks. There was only a
great blackened chimney stack, a ragged third of a wall, a charred
mass behind. He checked Dundee and stood long in the ragged gap where
the gate had been and looked, then went on by the darkening road to
the Golden Brigade.

Up on Thunder Run, throughout the morning, there was great
restlessness at the toll-gate. Tom knew they couldn’t come this
way—yes, he knew it. Their road lay along other mountains—he wished
that he had the toll-gate at Buford’s. Yes, he knew they wouldn’t be
likely to stop—he knew that, too. He didn’t expect to see any one. He
could have borrowed the sawmill wagon and gone down the mountain and
over to the Salem road and seen them pass just as well.—No, he wasn’t
too weak. He wasn’t weak at all—only he wanted to see the army and
Allan. He hadn’t ever seen the army and now he didn’t reckon he would
ever see it. Yes, he could imagine it—imagine it just as well as any
man—but he didn’t want to imagine it, he wanted to see it! And now he
wouldn’t ever see it—never see it and never see Allan.

“Sho! you will,” said Sairy. “You’ll certainly see Allan.”

But Tom did not believe it, and he wanted intensely to see the army.
“I see it when I dream, and I see it often and often when I’m sitting
here. I see it marching, marching, and I see it going into battle, and
I see it bivouacking. But it won’t look at me, and though sometimes I
take the boys’ hands there ain’t any touch to them, and I can see the
drums beating, but they don’t give any sound—”

Sairy looked away, out and over the great view below the toll-gate. “I
know, Tom. Sometimes in the night-time I sit up an’ say, ‘That was a
bugle blowing.’ An’ I listen, but I can’t hear it then.—But the Lord
tells us to be content, an’ you’d better let him see you’re tryin’ to
mind him! What good’ll it do Allan or the army if I have to set up
with you to-night an’ your heart gives out? You’d better save yourself
so’s to see him when he does come home. My land! the lot of things
he’ll have to tell, settin’ on the porch an’ the war over, an’ school
takin’ in again—”

“Sairy,” said Tom wistfully, “sometimes I get an awful fear that we
ain’t going to beat—”

“Sho!” said Sairy. “If we don’t beat one way we will another! I ain’t
a-worryin’ about that. Nothing’s ever teetotally beaten, not even eggs
when you make cake. It’s an awful safe universe.”

“It ain’t your day,” said Tom, “for a clean apron, but you’ve got one
on.”

“I ain’t never denied that there was a Sunday feel in the air! We
mayn’t see the army and we mayn’t see Allan, but they’re only a few
miles from us.”

“What’s that I smell?—It’s gingerbread baking!”

“I had a pint of molasses saved away an’ a little sugar. I just
thought I might as well make gingerbread. If Allan came he’d like it,
an’ if he didn’t we could eat it talkin’ of him an’ sayin’ we were
keepin’ his birthday.”

She went into the kitchen. Tom rested his forehead on the knob of his
cane. His lips moved. The wind rustled the leaves of the forest, the
sun shone. Thunder Run sang, the bees hummed above the old blush
roses, the yellow cat came up the path and rubbed against Tom’s ankle.
The smell of the gingerbread floated out hot and strong, a redbird in
a gum tree broke into a clear, high carolling.

“O Lord, I’m an old man,” whispered Tom. “I ain’t got much fun or
pleasure before me—”

Sairy, coming back to the doorstep, stood a moment, then struck her
hands together. “Allan’s coming up the road, Tom!”

An hour of happiness had gone by. Then said Allan: “I’ve two hours yet
and the last part of it I’m going to spend telling about the
Wilderness and Spottsylvania and Cold Harbour. But now I want to go up
the mountain and say ‘how d’ ye do’ to the Maydews.”

“Yes, I reckon you’d better,” said Tom. “Only don’t stay too long.
They’ve got Billy and Dave.”

“Bring Christianna down the mountain with you,” said Sairy. “Billy and
Dave can tell her good-bye here just as well as there.”

Up on the mountain Mrs. Maydew made a like suggestion. “Allan, I’d
like to talk to you, but I’ve got to talk to Billy an’ Dave. Violetta
and Rosalinda they’re gettin’ somethin’ for those boys to eat, they
look so thin an’ starved, an’ grandpap an’ the dawgs air jest sittin’
gazin’ for pure gladness!—Christianna, you entertain Allan.”

“I’ve got time,” said Allan, “to go look at the school-house. That’s
what I’d like to do.”

The school-house was partly fallen down and the marigolds and larkspur
that Allan had planted were all one with the tall grass, and a storm
had broken off a great bough of the walnut tree. Allan and Christianna
sat on the doorstep, and listened to a singing that was not of Thunder
Run.

Allan took her hand. “Christianna, I was the stupidest teacher—”

That night the Second Corps lay by the James, under the great shadow
of the Blue Ridge, but at dawn it took the road for Staunton and
thence for the lower Valley. It went to threaten Washington and to
clutch with Sheridan, who was presently sent to the Valley with orders
to lay it waste—orders which he obeyed to the letter.