Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Felipa sat on the edge of the low, square-curbed Spanish well, and Drollo stood behind her, his great yellow body and solemn head serving as a background. She wore a brown petticoat barred with bright colors, and a little scarlet bodice fitting her slender waist closely; a chemisette of soft cream-color with loose sleeves covered her neck and arms, and set off the dark hues of her cheeks and eyes; and around her curly hair a red scarf was twisted, its fringed edges forming a drapery at the back of the head, which, more than anything else, seemed to bring out the latent character of her face. Brown moccasins, red stockings and a quantity of bright beads completed her costume.

"By Jove!" cried Edward, "the little thing is almost pretty."

Felipa understood this, and a great light came into her face: forgetting her pose, she bounded forward to Christine's side. "I am pretty, then?" she said with exultation: "I _am_ pretty, then, after all? For now you yourself have said it--have said it."

"No, Felipa," I interposed, "the gentleman said it." For the child had a curious habit of confounding the two identities which puzzled me then as now. But this afternoon, this happy afternoon, she was content, for she was allowed to sit at Christine's feet and look up into her fair face unmolested. I was forgotten, as usual.

"It is always so," I said to myself. But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says, is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman. I knew this, having been blown up myself more than once; so I went back to my painting and forgot the world. Our world down there on the edge of the salt marsh, however, was a small one: when two persons went out of it there was a vacuum at once.

One morning Felipa came sadly to my side. "They have gone away,'" she said.

"Yes, child."

"Down to the beach to spend all the day."

"Yes, I know it."

"And without me!"

This was the climax. I looked up. The child's eyes were dry, but there was a hollow look of disappointment in her face that made her seem old: it was as though for an instant you caught what her old-woman face would be half a century on.

"Why did they not take me?" she said. "I am pretty now: she herself said it."

"They cannot always take you, Felipa," I replied, giving up the point as to who had said it.

"Why not? I am pretty now: she herself said it," persisted the child. "In these clothes, you know: she herself said it. The clothes of the son of Pedro you will never see more: they are burned."

"Burned?"

"Yes, burned," replied Felipa composedly. "I carried them out on the barren and burned them. Drollo singed his paw. They burned quite nicely. But they are gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me! What shall I do?"

"Take these colors and make me a picture," I suggested. Generally, this was a prized privilege, but to-day it did not attract: she turned away, and a few moments after I saw her going down to the end of the plank walk, where she stood gazing wistfully toward the ocean. There she stayed all day, going into camp with Drollo, and refusing to come to dinner in spite of old Dominga's calls and beckonings. At last the patient old grandmother went down herself to the end of the long plank walk where they were with some bread and venison on a plate. Felipa ate but little, but Drollo, after waiting politely until she had finished, devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake of memory. Drollo's hunger was of the chronic kind: it seemed impossible either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the river with the tide, old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails. Felipa sprang up joyfully: I thought she would spring into the boat in her eagerness. What did she receive for her long vigil? A short word or two: that was all. Christine and Edward had quarreled.

How do lovers quarrel ordinarily? But I should not ask that, for these were no ordinary lovers: they were decidedly extraordinary.

"You should not submit to her caprices so readily," I said the next day while strolling on the barren with Edward. (He was not so much cast down, however, as he might have been.)

"I adore the very ground her foot touches, Kitty."

"I know it. But how will it end?"

"I will tell you: some of these days I shall win her, and then--she will adore me."

Here Felipa came running after us, and Edward immediately challenged her to a race: a game of romps began. If Christine had been looking from her window, she might have thought he was not especially disconsolate over her absence; but she was not looking. She was never looking out of anything or for anybody. She was always serenely content where she was. Edward and Felipa strayed off among the pine trees, and gradually I lost sight of them. But as I sat sketching an hour afterward Edward came into view, carrying the child in his arms. I hurried to meet them.

"I shall never forgive myself," he said: "the little thing has fallen and injured her foot badly, I fear."

"I do not care at all," said Felipa: "I like to have it hurt. It is _my_ foot, isn't it?"

These remarks she threw at me defiantly, as though I had laid claim to the member in question. I could not help laughing.

"The other lady will not laugh," said the child proudly. And in truth Christine, most unexpectedly, took up the rôle of nurse. She carried Felipa to her own room--for we each had a little cell opening out of the main apartment--and as white-robed Charity she shone with new radiance. "Shone" is the proper word, for through the open door of the dim cell, with the dark little face of Felipa on her shoulder, her white robe and skin seemed fairly to shine, as white lilies shine on a dark night. The old grandmother left the child in our care and watched our proceedings wistfully, very much as a dog watches the human hands that extract the thorn from the swollen foot of her puppy. She was grateful and asked no questions; in fact, thought was not one of her mental processes. She did not think much: she only felt. As for Felipa, the child lived in rapture during those days in spite of her suffering. She scarcely slept at all--she was too happy: I heard her voice rippling on through the night, and Christine's low replies. She adored her beautiful nurse.

The fourth day came: Edward Bowne walked into the cell. "Go out and breathe the fresh air for an hour or two," he said in the tone more of a command than a request.

"But the child will never consent," replied Christine sweetly.

"Oh yes, she will: I will stay with her," said the young man, lifting the feverish little head on his arm and passing his hand softly over the bright eyes.

"Felipa, do you not want me?" said Christine, bending down.

"He stays: it is all the same," murmured the child.

"So it is. Go, Christine," said Edward with a little smile of triumph.

Without a word Christine left the cell. But she did not go to walk: she came to my room, and throwing herself on my bed fell in a moment into a deep sleep, the reaction after her three nights of wakefulness. When she awoke it was long after dark, and I had relieved Edward in his watch.

"You will have to give it up," he said as our lily came forth at last with sleep-flushed cheeks and starry eyes shielded from the light. "The spell is broken: we have all been taking care of Felipa, and she likes one as well as the other."

Which was not true, in my case at least, since Felipa had openly derided my small strength when I lifted her, and beat off the sponge with which I attempted to bathe her hot face. "They" used no sponges, she said, only their nice cool hands; and she wished "they" would come and take care of her again. But Christine had resigned in toto. If Felipa did not prefer her to all others, then Felipa could not have her: she was not a common nurse. And indeed she was not. Her fair beauty, ideal grace, cooing voice and the strength of her long arms and flexible hands were like magic to the sick, and--distraction to the well; the well in this case being Edward Bowne looking in at the door.

"You love them very much, do you not, Felipa?" I said one day when the child was sitting up for the first time in a cushioned chair.

"Ah, yes: it is so delicious when they carry me," she replied. But it was Edward who carried her.

"He is very strong," I said.

"Yes, and their long soft hair, with the smell of roses in it too," said Felipa dreamily. But the hair was Christine's.

"I shall love them for ever, and they will love me for ever," continued the child. "Drollo too." She patted the dog's head as she spoke, and then concluded to kiss him on his little inch of forehead: next she offered him all her medicines and lotions in turn, and he smelled at them grimly. "He likes to know what I am taking," she explained.

I went on: "You love them, Felipa, and they are fond of you. They will always remember you, no doubt."

"Remember!" cried Felipa, starting up from her cushions like a Jack-in-the-box. "They are not going away? Never! never!"

"But of course they must go some time, for--"

But Felipa was gone. Before I could divine her intent she had flung herself out of her chair down on to the floor, and was crawling on her hands and knees toward the outer room. I ran after her, but she reached the door before me, and, dragging her bandaged foot behind her, drew herself, toward Christine. "You are _not_ going away! You are not! you are not!" she sobbed, clinging to her skirts.

Christine was reading tranquilly: Edward stood at the outer door mending his fishing-tackle. The coolness between them remained unwarmed by so much as a breath. "Run away, child: you disturb me," said Christine, turning over a leaf. She did not even look at the pathetic little bundle at her feet. Pathetic little bundles must be taught some time what ingratitude deserves.

"How can she run, lame as she is?" said Edward from the doorway.

"You are not going away, are you? Tell me you are not," sobbed Felipa in a passion of tears, beating on the floor with one hand, and with the other clinging to Christine.

"I am not going," said Edward. "Do not sob so, you poor little thing!"

She crawled to him, and he took her up in his arms and soothed her into stillness again: then he carried her out on to the barren for a breath of fresh air.

"It is a most extraordinary thing how that child confounds you two," I said. "It is a case of color-blindness, as it were--supposing you two were colors."

"Which we are not," replied Christine carelessly. "Do not stray off into mysticism, Catherine."

"It is not mysticism: it is a study of character--"

"Where there is no character," replied my friend.

I gave it up, but I said to myself, "Fate, in the next world make me one of those long, lithe, light-haired women, will you? I want to see how it feels."

Felipa's foot was well again, and spring had come. Soon we must leave our lodge on the edge of the pine barren, our outlook over the salt marsh, our river sweeping up twice a day, bringing in the briny odors of the ocean: soon we should see no more the eagles far above us or hear the night-cry of the great owls, and we must go without the little fairy flowers of the barren, so small that a hundred of them scarcely made a tangible bouquet, yet what beauty! what sweetness! In my portfolio were sketches and studies of the barrens, and in my heart were hopes. Somebody says somewhere, "Hope is more than a blessing: it is a duty and a virtue." But I fail to appreciate preserved hope--hope put up in cans and served out in seasons of depression. I like it fresh from the tree. And so when I hope it _is_ hope, and not that well-dried, monotonous cheerfulness which makes one long to throw the persistent smilers out of the window. Felipa danced no more on the barrens; her illness had toned her excitable nature; she seemed content to sit at our feet while we talked, looking up dreamily into our faces, but no longer eagerly endeavoring to comprehend. We were there: that was enough.

"She is growing like a reed," I said: "her illness has left her weak."

"-Minded," suggested Christine, smiling.

At this moment Felipa stroked the lady's white hand tenderly and laid her brown cheek against it.

"Do you not feel reproached," I said.

"Why? Must we give our love to whoever loves us? A fine parcel of paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small change! Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour's happiness, or shall I make one soul rich his whole life long?"

"The latter," remarked Edward, who had come up unobserved.

They gazed at each other unflinchingly. They had come to open battle during those last days, and I knew that the end was near. Their words had been cold as ice, cutting as steel, and I said to myself, "At any moment." There would be a deadly struggle, and then Christine would yield. Even I comprehended something of what that yielding would be. There are beautiful velvety panthers in the Asian forests, and in real life too, sometimes.

"Why do they hate each other so?" Felipa said to me sadly.

"Do they hate each other?"

"Yes, for I feel it here," she answered, touching her breast with a dramatic little gesture.

"Nonsense! Go and play with your doll, child." For I had made her a respectable, orderly doll to take the place of the ungainly fetich out on the barren.

Felipa gave me a look and walked away. A moment afterward she brought the doll out of the house before my very eyes, and, going down to the end of the dock, deliberately threw it into the water: the tide was flowing out, and away went my toy-woman out of sight, out to sea.

"Well!" I said to myself. "What next?"

I had not told Felipa we were going: I thought it best to let it take her by surprise. I had various small articles of finery ready as farewell gifts which should act as sponges to absorb her tears. But Fate took the whole matter out of my hands. This is how it happened. One evening in the jessamine arbor, in the fragrant darkness of the warm spring night, the end came: Christine was won. She glided in like a wraith, and I, divining at once what had happened, followed her into her little room, where I found her lying on her bed, her hands clasped on her breast, her eyes open and veiled in soft shadows, her white robe drenched with dew. I kissed her fondly--I never could help loving her then or now--and next I went out to find Edward. He had been kind to me all my poor gray life: should I not go to him now? He was still in the arbor, and I sat down by his side quietly: I knew that the words would come in time. They came: what a flood! English was not enough for him. He poured forth his love in the rich-voweled Spanish tongue also: it has sounded doubly sweet to me ever since.

"Have you felt the wool of the beaver?
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt the bud o' the brier?
Or the nard in the fire?
Or ha' tasted the bag o' the bee?
Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet is she!"

said the young lover again and again; and I, listening there in the dark fragrant night, with the dew heavy upon me, felt glad that the old simple-hearted love was not entirely gone from our tired metallic world.

It was late when we returned to the house. After reaching my room I found that I had left my cloak in the arbor. It was a strong fabric: the dew could not hurt it, but it could hurt my sketching materials and various trifles in the wide inside pockets--_objets de luxe_ to me, souvenirs of happy times, little artistic properties that I hang on the walls of my poor studio when in the city. I went softly out into the darkness again and sought the arbor: groping on the ground I found, not the cloak, but--Felipa! She was crouched under the foliage, face downward: she would not move or answer.

"What is the matter, child?" I said, but she would not speak. I tried to draw her from her lair, but she tangled herself stubbornly still farther among the thorny vines, and I could not move her. I touched her neck: it was cold. Frightened, I ran back to the house for a candle.

"Go away," she said in a low hoarse voice when I flashed the light over her. "I know all, and I am going to die. I have eaten the poison things in your box, and just now a snake came on my neck and I let him. He has bitten me, I suppose, and I am glad. Go away: I am going to die."

I looked around: there was my color-case rifled and empty, and the other articles were scattered on the ground. "Good Heavens, child!" I cried, "what have you eaten?"

"Enough," replied Felipa gloomily. "I knew they were poisons: you told me so. And I let the snake stay."

By this time the household, aroused by my hurried exit with the candle, came toward the arbor. The moment Edward appeared Felipa rolled herself up like a hedgehog again and refused to speak. But the old grandmother knelt down and drew the little crouching figure into her arms with gentle tenderness, smoothing its hair and murmuring loving words in her soft dialect.

"What is it?" said Edward; but even then his eyes were devouring Christine, who stood in the dark, vine-wreathed doorway like a picture in a frame. I explained.

Christine smiled softly. "Jealousy," she said in a low voice. "I am not surprised." And of her own accord she gave back to Edward one of his looks.

But at the first sound of her voice Felipa had started up: she too saw the look, and wrenching herself free from old Dominga's arms, she threw herself at Christine's feet. "Look at _me_ so," she cried--"me too: do not look at him. He has forgotten poor Felipa: he does not love her any more. But _you_ do not forget, señora: _you_ love me--_you_ love me. Say you do or I shall die!"

We were all shocked by the pallor and the wild hungry look of her uplifted face. Edward bent down and tried to lift her in his arms, but when she saw him a sudden fierceness came into her eyes: they shot out yellow light and seemed to narrow to a point of flame. Before we knew it she had turned, seized something and plunged it into his encircling arm. It was my little Venetian dagger.

We sprang forward; our dresses were spotted with the fast-flowing blood; but Edward did not relax his hold on the writhing wild little body he held until it lay exhausted in his arms. "I am glad I did it," said the child, looking up into his face with her inflexible eyes. "Put me down--put me down, I say, by the gracious señora, that I may die with the trailing of her white robe over me." And the old grandmother with trembling hands received her and laid her down mutely at Christine's feet.

* * * * *

Ah, well! Felipa did not die. The poisons wracked but did not kill her, and the snake must have spared the little thin brown neck so despairingly offered to him. We went away: there was nothing for us to do but to go away as quickly as possible and leave her to her kind. To the silent old grandfather I said, "It will pass: she is but a child."

"She is nearly twelve, señora. Her mother was married at thirteen."

"But she loved them both alike, Bartolo. It is nothing: she does not know."

"You are right, lady: she does not know," replied the old man slowly; "but _I_ know. It was two loves, and the stronger thrust the knife."

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.

AT CHICKAMAUGA.

It was the cream of army life in Southern Tennessee that we left to go to Chickamauga. Our brigade had been detached, and lay for some days at the foot of Waldron's Ridge, which runs parallel to the broad Tennessee River, and a few miles north of Chattanooga, then the objective point of the campaign of the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans. Of course we knew that when the movements in progress in the country below were sufficiently advanced there would probably be lively work in effecting a passage of the river in the face of the formidable force which was guarding the ford two or three miles in our front. In fact, for some days we had been preparing for the effort, and up in a sluggish bayou the best of our mechanics were industriously at work fashioning a rude scow out of such material as axes could get from the native forests. In this craft, if it could be made to float, a select party was to cross the river some foggy morning, while the enemy were intently watching the ford below, and then, while the chosen few were being gloriously shot on the other side, the rest of us were to attempt the waist-deep, crooked ford.

For the time we were, however, as has been said, enjoying the cream of army life. The nights were chilly, though the days were hot and the clay roads dusty. The mornings were glorious with their bracing fresh air, their blue mists clinging about far-off Lookout Mountain, and even hiding the top of Waldron's Ridge at our backs, and their bright sunshine, which came flooding over the distant heights of Georgia and North Carolina. The wagon-tracks winding among the low, mound-like hills which filled the valley from the base of the ridge to the river were as smooth and gravelly as a well-kept private roadway, and an ambulance-ride along their tortuous courses was a most enjoyable recreation in those fine September days of 1863. A gallop twenty miles up the valley to where Minty kept watch and ward upon our flank with his trusty horsemen; a dinner at that hospitable mess-table, furnished maybe with a pig which had strayed from its home not wholly through natural perversity; and then a lively ride back in the early evening,--this, indeed, was pleasure.

The charm of campaigning is its rapidly-succeeding surprises. The general of the army may be proceeding regularly in the path he marked out months before. The corps commanders, and even the chiefs of division, may sometimes be able to foresee the movements from day to day. But to their subordinates everything is a surprise: they lie down at night in delightful uncertainty as to where the next sunset will find them, and they sit down to a breakfast of hard bread and bacon, relieved by a little foraging from the country, not sure that their coffee will cool before the bugle sounds a signal to pack and be off, to Heaven knows where. We found this charm of surprise, as we had hundreds of times before in other places, at our camp in the valley of the Tennessee. The alternating quick and droning notes of "the general" made us spring up from the mess-table one morning, and in a moment the lazy encampment was all hurry and bustle. An aide leaped upon his horse at head-quarters and dashed off on the road to the river, and we saw that the servants of General Hazen, our brigade commander, were stripping his baggage of the small impedimenta which accumulate so rapidly even in a few days of rest, but are abandoned when the army starts on an active campaign. It was not to be a mere change of camp, evidently, but a final adieu to the locality and a dash over the Tennessee--if we could make it.

While some of us were yet sipping our hot coffee, saved out of the general wreck in packing up, the bugles called "the assembly," and in ten minutes the brigade was stretching out at a lively rate on the road the aide had taken. At the river was the detail of mechanics who had been at work on the scow in the bayou. Their task had been suddenly abandoned. It was useless: the enemy had left the opposite bank and fallen back from Chattanooga. The crossing was made, and the brigade struck out into the country toward Ringgold and the Georgia line. We belonged to Palmer's division of Crittenden's corps, but we had no idea where our comrades were. Passing over the uninviting country, and by the cornfields wasted by Bragg's men that we might not gather the grain, the brigade fell in with the rest of its division near a lonely grist-mill at a junction of cross-roads, where a battalion of Southern cavalry had just galloped in upon an infantry regiment lying under its stacked arms by the wayside. So the enemy was not entirely out of the country, it appeared. Still, we saw nothing of him, save in a trifling skirmish the next day on the road from Ringgold to Gordon's Mills. Near this place, however, we fell in with General Thomas J. Wood, who had had a little encounter which convinced him that Bragg's infantry was in force near by. The gallant old soldier was in something of a passion because the theories of his superiors did not coincide with his demonstrations, and of course the demonstrations had to give way in that case.

Passing Gordon's Mills, our division stretched away on the road toward La Fayette, and after a day's march bivouacked in a wilderness of wood and on a sluggish stream different enough from the sparkling waters which came down by the old camp below Waldron's Ridge. McCook's corps, they said, having crossed the Tennessee below Chattanooga and advanced southward on the western side of the Lookout range, was to come through a gap opposite our present position and join us. Then the army, being together once more, and having gained Chattanooga by McCook's flank movement, would return to that point. To get Chattanooga was the object of the campaign, and the movements since we crossed the river were simply to assure the safe reunion of the several corps.

The idle days wore on until the afternoon of the 18th of September. Then "the general" was suddenly sounded from brigade head-quarters, the regimental buglers took up the signal, and in twenty minutes we were on the road and moving back toward Gordon's Mills and Chattanooga. No leisurely march this time, however, but a race which tasked even the legs of the veterans. Two hours of this brought the command to the crest of a ridge from which, away to the right, a wide expanse of country lay in view. There was a broad valley running parallel to the road we were traveling and covered by a dense growth of low oaks, which effectually hid roads, streams, and even the few lonely habitations of the people. But, looking from our eminence over the unbroken expanse of tree-tops, we could see a light yellow snake-like line stretching down the valley. It was dust from the road on which Bragg's army was hurrying toward the Rossville Pass, through which was the way to Chattanooga and all our communications and supplies. The line of dust extended miles down the valley, far in advance of the point we had reached. The rest of our army might be ahead of us and ahead of Bragg, or it might be on our left, or even behind us, for aught we knew, but it was plain enough why we were making such haste back toward Chattanooga.

The afternoon passed: darkness came, and still the march continued. Late in the evening we came upon a group of tents by the roadside--Rosecrans's head-quarters, with Rosecrans himself, and not in the best of humors, as some of us discovered on riding up to see friends on his staff. In his petulance and excitability the commanding general forgot to be gentlemanly, some of them said; and they left him not at all relieved of any doubts they had concerning our sudden and forced march.

It was long after midnight when we reached Gordon's Mills. Here the road was full of ambulances, wagons, artillery and infantry, while in the thickets on the left were heard the confused noises of the bivouac. There were no fires, which showed that we were supposed to be in the immediate presence of the enemy, and that our commander did not want his position revealed by camp-fires. At some distance past the mills Palmer's division was halted in the road, and the troops were massed by regiments, and moved some yards into the thicket to pass the few hours before daylight.

In the morning it was said that Bragg had indeed beaten in the race the day before, and had halted at night, if he halted at all, much nearer to the Rossville Pass than we were. The Chickamauga River was supposed to be between the two armies, but it is a stream which is easily fordable in many places, and a mile or two below where we lay was a bridge over which Bragg could cross rapidly with his artillery and trains, and then strike our road to Rossville ahead of us. A division moved out early in the day and went off toward this bridge. Soon after there was lively musketry and some cannonading in that direction. Word came back that the enemy had crossed the river in force too heavy to be successfully encountered by our reconnoitering division. Another division followed in the path of the first, and there was more firing. Finally, General Palmer moved his division out upon the road, and along it for some distance toward Rossville, approaching the firing down by the bridge. Halting near the Widow Glenn's cottage, about which were a little cloud of cavalry and many officers, we saw that Rosecrans was there, directing the movements in person. Palmer got his orders quickly. He was to move down the road toward Rossville to an indicated point, then form his division _en échelon_ by brigade from the left, and move off the road to the right and attack. When he struck the enemy's left flank he was to envelop and crush it. The formation _en échelon_ was to facilitate this enveloping and crushing.

Moving off the road as ordered, the division passed through several hundred yards of forest, and came upon a wide open field of lower ground, through the centre of which ran, parallel to our front, a narrow belt of timber. The skirmishers passed through this belt and a few yards beyond, and were then driven back by an overpowering fire from the enemy's skirmishers. Our main line came up to the timber and passed through it to the farther side; and then the edge of the forest beyond, in front, on the right and on the left, was suddenly fringed with a line of flashing fire, above which rose a thin white smoke. The tremendous crash of musketry was measured by the deep thunder of artillery farther back, and soon columns of dense white smoke rising above the tree-tops indicated the positions of several swift-working batteries. A storm of bullets whizzed through the ranks of the attacking échelons, while shrieking shells filled the air with a horrid din, and, bursting overhead, sent their ragged fragments hurtling down in every direction. In an instant a hundred gaps were opened in the firm ranks as the men sank to the ground beneath the smiting lead and iron. In an instant the gaps were closed, and in another a hundred more were opened. Every yard of the advance was costing the assailants a full company of men--every rod at least half a regiment. They wavered, halted and fell back to the shelter of the narrow belt of timber. The attack had failed, the flank of the enemy had not been struck.

But the other divisions of the army? Sent in as ours had been, some one of them must surely strike the opposing flank, unless Bragg's whole army had crossed the river and was in position before Rosecrans moved. Palmer's division held its place, fired its sixty rounds of cartridges into the wood where the unseen foe was, and waited for the attack of the succeeding division which should strike Bragg's flank. But we waited in vain. When Rosecrans's last division was forming its échelons it was itself enveloped on its outer flank by the active foe. Rosecrans's line, as he formed it a division at a time, had been constantly outflanked.

The battle was a failure thus far. We could all see that, and some of us saw how nearly it became an irretrievable disaster. Hazen's brigade had been withdrawn to replenish its ammunition after the attack, and was lying along the Rossville road. The men were filling their cartridge-boxes, and the captains were counting their diminished ranks and noting who were dead and who but wounded. Out at the front the fight still went on, but in a desultory way. Suddenly there was an ominous sound in front of Van Cleve's division, which was in the main line next on the right of Palmer.

Hazen leaped upon his horse. "Now Van Cleve is in for it!" he exclaimed. "They're coming for him!"

Quickly getting the men under arms, Hazen moved his brigade behind Van Cleve to act as a support, and awaited the coming attack. It came like a whirlwind, and Van Cleve's lines were scattered like fallen leaves. On came the triumphant enemy in heavy masses, while Van Cleve's disordered horde swept back with it Hazen's supporting regiments. All but one. Colonel Aquila Wiley of the Forty-first Ohio Infantry, seeing the coming avalanche of fugitives, broke his line to the rear by companies and allowed the flying mass to pass through the intervals. Then instantly reforming his line, Wiley delivered a volley by battalion upon the advancing foe. The latter, his ranks loose, as usual in a headlong pursuit, was staggered and stopped in Wiley's front, but pressed forward on his right, and had got well to his rear in that direction before the guns of the Forty-first were reloaded. At a double-quick step Wiley changed front to the rear on his left company, and sent another volley among the swarming enemy on his right. Twice he repeated this manoeuvre, and, gaining ground to the rear with each change of front, kept back the enemy from front and flank until he could take his place in good order upon a new line on a ridge to the rear.

Meantime, Hazen was not idle. Seeing the inevitable result when Van Cleve's lines wavered, he dashed down the road to some unemployed batteries. These he got quickly into position to enfilade the enemy as he passed over Van Cleve's abandoned ground, and while Wiley with his Forty-first was striking in front and flank to clear himself of the surrounding foes, Hazen's batteries were pouring shells at short range into the well-ordered supporting troops which the enemy was hurrying forward to improve the success he had gained. Bragg had actually crossed the Rossville road and cut the Army of the Cumberland in two, with nothing in the gap but one regiment of three hundred men. But the enfilading artillery smote asunder the solid ranks which were to follow up the victory and left their advantage a barren triumph. Night fell and ended there the first day's battle.

The blessed night! better for the Army of the Cumberland then than thirty thousand fresh men. Under its sheltering mantle a thousand necessary things were done. We knew well enough that the struggle must be renewed in the morning, but we hoped that it would not be taken up on our side under such disadvantages as had been against us in the day just closed. So when, some time after dark, an order came to move down the road to the left, it was gladly obeyed. We were going into position, it was evident, though where and how none of us could tell in the darkness. The road and the woods on each side of it were full of troops, ambulances, ammunition and head-quarter wagons, artillery, and, lastly, stragglers hunting for their regiments. Now and then a wounded man, whose hurt did not prevent his walking, came along inquiring for the hospitals. There were not many of these, however, for the hospital service was pretty efficient, and the surgeons were located near the ground where the fighting had been.

Winding about through such surroundings for what seemed a long time, so slow was the movement and so frequent the halts to allow the staff-officer who was directing the march to verify the route, Palmer's division at length stacked arms on a slightly rising ground not many hundred yards in front of the Rossville road. There were troops to the left of us, and soon after we halted troops came up on our right. We knew by this that we were in the main line of battle as it was being formed for the next day's fight. There were sounds occasionally from the forest in front which told us that the enemy also was making his preparations for the morning, and there was moving of troops, wagons, artillery, stragglers and mounted officers in rear of us almost all night. Even our troops in line, tired as they were, were not quite still. The men lay upon the ground and talked of the events of the day. Company commanders were inquiring the fate of their missing men, and some of them were even counting up the guns lost by killed and wounded men, and wondering how they could account for them on their next ordnance returns. Waking and sleeping by turns, officers and men passed the chilly night as best they could until it was near the time when the first gray streaks of dawn should come. Then those who were sleeping were quietly aroused; the ranks were noiselessly formed; the stacks of arms were broken; the first sergeants passed along the fronts of their companies to verify the attendance; and then the men were allowed to sit down, guns in hand, to await the daybreak and be in instant readiness for an attack if the enemy should attempt an early surprise.

Daylight came, however, on the memorable 20th of September, and no attack had been made. The first thought, naturally, after apprehension of an early attack had gone, was to appease hunger and thirst. But there was little in the haversacks, and nothing in the canteens. Details of men were sent for water, and never returned. The enemy had possession of the springs we had used the day before, and our details walked unconsciously into his hands. There was not a drop of water on the whole field, and men and officers resigned themselves to the torments of thirst, a thousand times worse than the gnawings of hunger. But with daylight we could at least get some idea of our position. In front was a dense forest, in which nothing was to be seen except our own skirmishers a few yards in advance. Just behind us was an oblong open field, three hundred yards wide and thrice as long. On the other side of this field ran the Rossville road. Beyond our division, to the left, was Johnson's, and then Baird's division, the latter forming the extreme left of the army, and extending off into the woods beyond the lower end of the open field. To our right--though this we could not see, the line being in a dense forest--was the division of Reynolds; beyond him was Brannan, and then came Wood; and so on to the right of the army, in what further order we did not know. It was evident that the line had been hastily formed: the divisions had been placed just as they were picked up in the confusion of the night. No corps was together in the line, but it was made up of a division from one corps, then a division from another, and then one from a third corps, and so on. Thus it happened that the four divisions on the left of the line had with them no corps commander.

In the idle hour after daylight our brigade commander directed the construction of a barricade of rails and logs, a little more than knee-high, along the front of his command. Some of the troops on the left and the right followed the example. The supposition was that the game would be changed this day, and that we should stand for attack as the enemy had done the day before. There was no little satisfaction in thinking that Bragg's men would have a chance to walk up to a fire at least as murderous as we had faced when attacking them. If the haversacks were empty and the canteens had gone for water never to return, the cartridge-boxes were full, and each man had about him an extra package or two of cartridges.

The morning wore slowly away, and on our part of the line everything was remarkably quiet. There was some skirmishing toward the right between eight and nine o'clock, but evidently nothing serious. The barricade was finished, and there was nothing to do but to lie behind it and wish for water as the day grew warmer and thirst became more intense.--But what is that?

There was a sharp rattle of Springfield rifles from Baird's skirmishers, a third of a mile to our left and hidden from sight by the woods. In a moment came a crash of musketry which brought every man to his feet. Baird's skirmishers had been driven in, and his main line had hurled its thousands of bullets as the attacking enemy came into view. Instantly the answering fire was given, and then followed the continuous rattling roar of a fierce general engagement. Wounded men began to come out of the wood where Baird was as they made their way alone toward the hospitals or were carried off by the hospital corps. Suddenly, a hundred men with arms in their hands emerged from the woods into the open field behind Baird, straggling and without order. These were not wounded men. No: it was too plain that Baird's division was giving way. A moment more, and the lower end of the open field was filled with a dense mass of men as Baird's disordered lines poured forth out of the woods, which were swarming with the exultant enemy. Through and behind the retreating mass the mounted officers rode furiously, their swinging sabres flashing in the sun as they alternately commanded and exhorted their men to rally and breast the storm of lead which the enemy was hurling upon them. Then Johnson, whose division was next to Baird's, wheeled a regiment or two backward and opened fire on the enemy engaged with Baird. The troops of the latter were not running, but falling back, firing as they went. Suddenly, one of their colonels seized his regimental standard from the color-bearer and faced his horse toward the enemy, holding the flag high above his head. The men began to rally around this flag, and in a moment an imperfect line had been formed. The enemy's success was at an end. A moment more, and with a wild cheer Baird's men dashed forward and drove the enemy from their front.

Meanwhile, we were not idle spectators of all this. At the moment when Baird's men had been forced into the open field, and it seemed impossible to re-form them under the fire they were receiving, the skirmishers in front of Johnson's and Palmer's divisions broke out into a lively fire and came in at a run. Close behind them were the rapidly-advancing skirmishers of the enemy. As these came in sight of our position they took shelter behind trees and waited for their main force to come up. Soon the woods behind them were filled with the long, sweeping lines of Bragg's infantry, moving swiftly and steadily up to the attack. They reached their skirmishers, and as the latter fell in with the main body the whole broke into the peculiar shrill and fitful yell of the Southern soldiery, and rushed impetuously upon our line. From behind its barricade Hazen's brigade gave the yelling assailants two volleys, by front and rear rank, and then, as the enemy staggered under the regular blows, the command "Load and fire at will!" rang along the line. Out burst a swift storm of lead, before which the wasting ranks of the assailants first wavered, and then stopped to open a rapid but wild and diminishing fire against the barricade. For a moment or two their colors waved defiantly at their front as their officers rode among them in the vain endeavor to hold them to the hopeless effort; and then they turned and vanished into the deep recesses of the forest whence they came. Not as they came, however, but as a flying multitude of panic-stricken men, insensible to authority, conscious only of their defeat and their peril.

Ah! but this was quite different from yesterday's work, thought the men of Hazen's brigade. It is one thing to march up to an enemy waiting to receive you on his chosen ground, and another to lie quietly in position and let your enemy feel his way up until he is within fair range. This was the thought after the successful defence: before the fight it is a question whether it does not require greater steadiness of nerve to wait inactive for an attack than to rush forward in an onslaught. Officers and men in Palmer's division were in excellent spirits. They saw that their comrades on the right and the left had met with equally good fortune. Johnson's division on one side and Reynolds's on the other remained as steady as rocks.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and all had prospered with us thus far. The enemy was getting his share of bloody repulses, of which we had had more than enough the day before. The attacks upon our line had begun upon the left, and were traveling toward our right. The two armies were thus brought together gradually, something after the manner of scissor-blades when they are slowly closed. The four divisions on the left had already successfully withstood the shock, which it was to be supposed the enemy had made as heavy as possible at that point, since the left was the vital point of the whole line. Success there would give him the line of retreat to Chattanooga, with Rosecrans's entire army shut out. Besides, we knew that the line was stronger toward the right, where at least two divisions were in reserve. No one apprehended disaster, therefore, when a long and rapid roll of musketry far to the right told that the enemy was attacking there. "Brannan and Wood are attending to 'em now!" said General Palmer, standing in a group of officers in rear of Hazen's brigade. The talk went on as before--about the successful defences of the morning, the barricade, Baird's splendid recovery, etc. But soon everybody was listening anxiously to the sounds of the battle on the right. The roar of musketry had worked round until it was behind our right shoulders as we stood facing to our front. There could be no doubt about it: the line had given way somewhere on the right, and the enemy was following up. It was not long before stray bullets were singing behind and among us, flying in a direction parallel to our line. Then, all in a moment, a battery far to the right and rear opened a rapid fire, and some of its shells came shrieking into the rear of Palmer's and Johnson's divisions. Meanwhile, the crash and roar of battle came nearer and nearer, until the attack struck Reynolds on the flank and in rear. But he had been forewarned, and his line was swung backward, at right angles with his original position, to face the attack from the new direction. Even then he was forced backward until his men were stretched across the open field in rear of Palmer's division, and the battle was going on directly behind us. Something--a shell perhaps--set fire to a log house at the upper end of this field, not three hundred yards from our brigade. This house had been taken for a hospital the night before. It was filled with wounded men, too badly hurt to be taken farther away in the ambulances, and the regular hospital flag floated above it. This unfortunate house, with its maimed occupants, was brought between Reynolds's men and the attacking enemy when the former were driven into the open field; and, despite the non-combatant flag flying from the gable, it was riddled with shells from the Southern batteries. I do not charge upon those gunners a knowledge of the facts here given: their batteries were some distance away through the forest. However, whether they saw the house and the flag or not, their fire swept mercilessly through the house, while many a stout-hearted soldier, knowing what was there, wished that if he were to be hit at all, he might be struck dead at once, and so avoid such sickening horrors.

For the second time on that memorable day it looked for a few moments as if Palmer would have to face his men about and fight to the rear. Preparations to do this were made on the right of the division, but, fortunately, the appalling disaster which seemed imminent in the complete encompassing of the four divisions of the left was averted. The enemy yielded at last to the stubborn resistance, and Reynolds re-established his line--not upon the old ground entirely, but to conform to the altered situation. He was now the right of the army upon the original field, and four divisions comprised all that was left of the Army of the Cumberland in the position of the morning.

The divisions of the centre and the right--where were they? Brannan, and Wood, and Negley, and Davis, and Van Cleve, and gallant Sheridan, who held stubbornly his division even amid the panic at Stone River--where were they? And Rosecrans, commander of the army; Thomas, the hero in every fight; rash McCook and unfortunate Crittenden, chiefs of corps? Gone with the centre and the right of the army; gone with the reserves and the artillery; gone with the ammunition-trains; gone with everything that belonged to the Army of the Cumberland except four divisions of unconquered soldiers with half-filled cartridge-boxes and with hearts that knew no fear.

All gone? No! In the hush which came after Reynolds's desperate defence, and while hearts were yet beating fast from watching the doubtful fight, there arose far off to the right and rear a roar of musketry, telling that somewhere in the distance the flags of the Army of the Cumberland still waved before the foe, as they did with us. Long afterward we knew that this was Thomas--he who would not leave the field amid the wreck which surrounded him--Thomas, with his fragments, posted on a commanding ridge and bravely beating off the thickening foes about him.