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Several of the older women were weeping, the younger looked scornful. _Close up, men, close up--close up!_ The First Brigade was glad when it was through the town. Before it, leading southward through the Valley of Virginia, stretched the great pike, a hundred and twenty miles of road, traversing as fair, rich, and happy a region as war ever found
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a paradise and left a desolation. To the east towered the Blue Ridge, to west the Great North and Shenandoah Mountains, twenty miles to the south Massanutton rose like a Gibraltar from the rolling fields of wheat and corn, the orchard lands and pleasant pastures. The region was one of old mills, turning flashing wheels, of comfortable red brick houses
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and well-stored barns, of fair market towns, of a noble breed of horses, and of great, white-covered wagons, of clear waters and sweet gardens, of an honest, thrifty, brave, and intelligent people. It was a fair country, and many of the army were at home there, but the army had at the moment no taste for its beauties. It wanted
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to see Patterson's long, blue lines; it wanted to drive them out of Virginia, across the Potomac, back to where they came from. The First Brigade was dispirited and critical, and as it had not yet learned to control its mood, it marched as a dispirited and critical person would be apt to march in the brazen middle of a
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July day. Every spring and rivulet, every blackberry bush and apple tree upon the road gathered recruits. The halts for no purpose were interminable, the perpetual _Close up, close up, men!_ of the exasperated officers as unavailing as the droning in the heat of the burnished June-bugs. The brigade had no intention of not making known its reluctance to leave
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Patterson. It took an hour to make a mile from Winchester. General Jackson rode down the column on Little Sorrel and said something to the colonel of each regiment, which something the colonels passed on to the captains. The next mile was made in half an hour. The July dust rose from the pike in clouds, hot, choking, thick as
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the rain of ash from a volcano. It lay heavy upon coat, cap, haversack, and knapsack, upon the muskets and upon the colours, drooping in the heat, drooping at the idea of turning back upon Patterson and going off, Heaven and Old Joe knew where! Tramp, tramp over the hot pike, sullenly southward, hot without and hot within! The knapsack
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was heavy, the haversack was heavy, the musket was heavy. Sweat ran down from under cap or felt hat, and made grimy trenches down cheek and chin. The men had too thick underwear. They carried overcoat and blanket--it was hot, hot, and every pound like ten! _To keep--to throw away? To keep--to throw away?_ The beat of feet kept time
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to that pressing question, and to _Just marching to be marching!--reckon Old Joe thinks it's fun_, and to _Where in hell are we going, anyway?_ Through the enormous dust cloud that the army raised the trees of the valley appeared as brown smudges against an ochreish sky. The farther hills and the mountains were not seen at all. The stone
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fences on either side the road, the blackberry bushes, the elder, the occasional apple or cherry tree were all but dun lines and blotches. Oh, hot, hot! A man swung his arm and a rolled overcoat landed in the middle of a briar patch. A second followed suit--a third, a fourth. A great, raw-boned fellow from some mountain clearing jerked
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at the lacing of his shoes and in a moment was marching barefoot, the offending leather swinging from his arm. To right and left he found imitators. A corpulent man, a merchant used to a big chair set in the shady front of a village store, suffered greatly, pale about the lips, and with his breath coming in wheezing gasps.
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His overcoat went first, then his roll of blanket. Finally he gazed a moment, sorrowfully enough, at his knapsack, then dropped it, too, quietly, in a fence corner. _Close up, men--close up!_ A wind arose and blew the dust maddeningly to and fro. In the Colour Company of the 65th a boy began to cough, uncontrollably, with a hollow sound.
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Those near him looked askance. "You'd better run along home, sonny! Yo' ma hadn't ought to let you come. Darn it all! if we march down this pike longer, we'll all land home!--If you listen right hard you can hear Thunder Run!--And that thar Yank hugging himself back thar at Charlestown!--dessay he's telegraphin' right this minute that we've run away--"
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Richard Cleave passed along the line. "Don't be so downhearted, men! It's not really any hotter than at a barbecue at home. Who was that coughing?" "Andrew Kerr, sir." "Andrew Kerr, you go to the doctor the first thing after roll-call to-night. Cheer up, men! No one's going to send you home without fighting." From the rear came a rumble,
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shouted orders, a cracking of whips. The column swerved to one side of the broad road, and the Rockbridge Artillery passed--a vision of horses, guns, and men, wrapped in a dun whirlwind and disappearing in the blast. They were gone in thunder through the heat and haze. The 65th Virginia wondered to a man why it had not chosen the
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artillery. Out of a narrow way stretching westward, came suddenly at a gallop a handful of troopers, black plumed and magnificently mounted, swinging into the pike and disappearing in a pillar of dust toward the head of the column. Back out of the cloud sounded the jingling of accoutrements, the neighing of horses, a shouted order. The infantry groaned. "Ten
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of the Black Horse!--where are the rest of them, I wonder? Oh, ain't they lucky dogs?" "Stuart's men have the sweetest time!--just galloping over the country, and making love, and listening to Sweeney's banjo-- If you want to have a good time-- If you want to have a good time, Jine the cavalry!-- What's that road over there--the cool-looking one?
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The road to Ashby's Gap? Wish this pike was shady like that!" A bugle blew; the command to halt ran down the column. The First Brigade came to a stand upon the dusty pike, in the heat and glare. The 65th was the third in column, the 4th and the 27th leading. Suddenly from the 4th there burst a cheer,
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a loud and high note of relief and exultation. A moment, and the infection had spread to the 27th; it, too, was cheering wildly. Apparently there were several couriers--No! staff officers, the 65th saw the gold lace--with some message or order from the commanding general, now well in advance with his guard of Black Horse. They were riding down the
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line--Old Jack was with them--the 4th and the 27th were cheering like mad. The colonel of the 65th rode forward. There was a minute's parley, then he turned, "Sixty-fifth! It isn't a fox hunt--it's a bear hunt! 'General Johnston to the 65th'--" He broke off and waved forward the aide-de-camp beside him. "Tell them, Captain Washington, tell them what a
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terror to corn-cribs we're going after!" The aide, a young man, superbly mounted, laughed, raised his voice. "Sixty-fifth! The Army of the Valley is going through Ashby's Gap to Piedmont, and from Piedmont by rail to Manassas Junction. General Stuart is still at Winchester amusing General Patterson. At Manassas our gallant army under General Beauregard is attacked by McDowell with
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overwhelming numbers. The commanding general hopes that his troops will step out like men and make a forced march to save the country!" He was gone--the other staff officers were gone--Old Jack was gone. They passed the shouting 65th, and presently from down the line came the cheers of the 2d, 21st, and 33d Virginia. Old Jack rode back alone
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the length of his brigade; and so overflowing was the enthusiasm of the men that they cheered him, cheered lustily! He touched his old forage cap, went stiffly by upon Little Sorrel. From the rear, far down the road, could be heard the voices of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Ardour, elasticity, strength returned to the Army of the Shenandoah. With
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a triumphant cry the First Brigade wheeled into the road that led eastward through the Blue Ridge by Ashby's Gap. Two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock came and passed. Enthusiasm carried the men fast and far, but they were raw troops and they suffered. The sun, too, was enthusiastic, burning with all its might. The road proved neither cool nor
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shady. All the springs seemed suddenly to have dried up. Out of every hour there was a halt of ten minutes, and it was needed. The men dropped by the roadside, upon the parched grass, beneath the shadow of the sumach and the elder bushes, and lay without speaking. The small farmers, the mountaineers, the hunters, the ploughmen fared not
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so badly; but the planters of many acres, the lawyers, the doctors, the divines, the merchants, the millers, and the innkeepers, the undergraduates from the University, the youths from classical academies, county stores, village banks, lawyers' offices, all who led a horseback or sedentary existence, and the elderly men and the very young,--these suffered heavily. The mounted officers were not
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foot-weary, but they also had heat, thirst, and hunger, and, in addition, responsibility, inexperience, and the glance of their brigadier. The ten minutes were soon over. _Fall in--fall in, men!_ The short rest made the going worse, the soldiers rose so stiff and sore. The men had eaten before leaving the camp above Winchester--but that was days ago. Now, as
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they went through Clarke County, there appeared at cross-roads, at plantation gates, at stiles leading into green fields, ladies young and old, bearing baskets of good things hastily snatched from pantry and table. They had pitchers, too, of iced tea, of cold milk, even of raspberry acid and sangaree. How good it all was! and how impossible to go around!
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But, fed or hungry, refreshed or thirsty, the men blessed the donors, and that reverently, with a purity of thought, a chivalrousness of regard, a shade of feeling, youthful and sweet and yet virile enough, which went with the Confederate soldier into the service and abode to the end. The long afternoon wore to a close. The heat decreased, but
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the dust remained and the weariness grew to gigantic proportions. The First Brigade was well ahead of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. It had started in advance and it had increased the distance. If there was any marching in men, Jackson forced it out; they went a league for him where another would have procured but a mile, but even he,
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even enthusiasm and the necessity of relieving Beauregard got upon this march less than two miles an hour. Most happily, McDowell, advancing on Beauregard and Bull Run and fearing "masked batteries," marched much more slowly. At sunset the First Brigade reached the Shenandoah. The mounted officers took up one and sometimes two men beside them, and the horses struggled bravely
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through the cold, rapid, breast-deep current. Behind them, company by company, the men stripped off coat and trousers, piled clothing and ammunition upon their heads, held high their muskets, and so crossed. The guns and wagons followed. Before the river was passed the night fell dark. The heat was now gone by, the dust was washed away, the men had
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drunk their fill. From the haversacks they took the remnant of the food cooked that morning. The biscuit and the bacon tasted very good; not enough of either, it was true, but still something. The road above the river rose steeply, for here was the Blue Ridge, lofty and dark, rude with rock, and shaggy with untouched forests. This was
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the pass through the mountains, this was Ashby's Gap. The brigade climbed with the road, tired and silent and grim. The day had somehow been a foretaste of war; the men had a new idea of the draught and of the depth of the cup. They felt older, and the air, blowing down from the mountains, seemed the air of
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a far country toward which they had been travelling almost without knowing it. They saw now that it was a strange country, much unlike that in which they had hitherto lived. They climbed slowly between dark crag and tree, and wearily. All song and jest had died; they were tired soldiers, hungry now for sleep. _Close up, men, close up!_
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They came to the height of the pass, marked by a giant poplar whose roots struck deep into four counties. Here again there was a ten minutes' halt; the men sank down upon the soft beds of leaf and mould. Their eyelids drooped; they were in a dream at once, and in a dream heard the _Fall in--fall in, men!_
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The column stumbled to its feet and began the descent of the mountain. Clouds came up; at midnight when they reached the lower slope, it was raining. Later they came to the outskirts of the village of Paris, to a grove of mighty oaks, and here the brigade was halted for the night. The men fell upon the ground and
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slept. No food was taken, and no sentries were posted. An aide, very heavy-eyed, asked if guard should not be set. "No, sir," answered the general. "Let them sleep." "And you, sir?" "I don't feel like it. I'll see that there is no alarm." With his cloak about him, with his old cadet cap pulled down over his eyes, awkward
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and simple and plain, he paced out the night beneath the trees, or sat upon a broken rail fence, watching his sleeping soldiers and, the aide thought, praying. The light rain ceased, the sky cleared, the pale dawn came up from the east. In the first pink light the bugles sounded. Up rose the First Brigade, cooked and ate its
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breakfast, swung out from the oak grove upon the highroad, and faced the rising sun. The morning was divinely cool, the men in high spirits, Piedmont and the railway were but six miles down the road. The First Brigade covered the distance by eight o'clock. There was the station, there was the old Manassas Gap railroad, there was the train
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of freight and cattle cars--ever so many freight and cattle cars! Company after company the men piled in; by ten o'clock every car was filled, and the platforms and roofs had their quota. The crazy old engine blew its whistle, the First Brigade was off for Manassas. Bee, Bartow, and Elzey, arriving at Piedmont in the course of the morning,
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were not so fortunate. The railroad had promised, barring unheard-of accident, to place the four brigades in Manassas by sunrise of the twentieth. The accident duly arrived. There was a collision, the track was obstructed, and only the 7th and 8th Georgia got through. The remainder of the infantry waited perforce at Piedmont, a portion of it for two mortal
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days, and that without rations. The artillery and the cavalry--the latter having now come up--marched by the wagon road and arrived in fair time. From ten in the morning until sunset the First Brigade and the Manassas Gap train crept like a tortoise through the July weather, by rustling cornfields, by stream and wood, by farmhouse and village. It was
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hot in the freight and cattle cars, hot, cinderish, and noisy. With here and there an exception the men took off their coats, loosened the shoes from their feet, made themselves easy in any way that suggested itself. The subtle _give_, the slip out of convention and restraint back toward a less trammelled existence, the faint return of the more
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purely physical, the slight withdrawal of the more purely mental, the rapid breaking down of the sheer artificial--these and other marks of one of the many predicates of war began to show themselves in this journey. But at the village stations there came a change. Women and girls were gathered here, in muslin freshness, with food and drink for "our
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heroes." The apparel discarded between stations was assiduously reassumed whenever the whistle blew. "Our heroes" looked out of freight and cattle car, somewhat grimy, perhaps, but clothed and in their right mind, with a becoming bloom upon them of eagerness, deference, and patriotic willingness to die in Virginia's defence. The dispensers of nectar and ambrosia loved them all, sped them
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on to Manassas with many a prayer and God bless you! At sunset the whistle shrieked its loudest. It was their destination. The train jolted and jerked to a halt. Regiment by regiment, out poured the First Brigade, fell into line, and was double-quicked four miles to Mitchell's Ford and a pine wood, where, hungry, thirsty, dirty, and exhausted, the
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ranks were broken. This was the night of the nineteenth. At Piedmont the brigade had heard of yesterday's minor affair at this ford between Tyler's division and Longstreet, the honours of the engagement resting with the Confederate. In the pine wood there was a line of fresh graves; on the brown needles lay boughs that shell had cut from the
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trees; there were certain stains upon the ground. The First Brigade ate and slept--the last somewhat feverishly. The night passed without alarm. An attack in force was expected in the morning, but it did not come. McDowell, amazingly enough, still rested confident that Patterson had detained Johnston in the valley. Possessed by this belief he was now engaged in a
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"reconnoissance by stealth," his object being to discover a road whereby to cross Bull Run above the Stone Bridge and turn Beauregard's left. This proceeding and an afternoon rest in camp occupied him the whole of the twentieth. On this day Johnston himself reached Manassas, bringing with him Bee's 2d Mississippi and 4th Alabama, and Bartow's 7th and 8th Georgia.
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Stuart, having successfully amused Patterson, was also on hand. The remainder of the Army of the Shenandoah, detained by the break upon the Manassas Gap, was yet missing, and many an anxious glance the generals cast that way. The First Brigade, undiscovered by the "reconnoissance by stealth," rested all day Saturday beneath the pines at Mitchell's Ford, and at night
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slept quietly, no longer minding the row of graves. At dawn of Sunday a cannon woke the men, loud and startling, McDowell's signal gun, fired from Centreville, and announcing to the Federal host that the interrupted march, the "On to Richmond" blazoned on banners and chalked on trunks, would now be resumed, willy nilly the "rebel horde" on the southern
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bank of Bull Run. THE DOGS OF WAR In the east was a great flare of pink with small golden clouds floating across, all seen uncertainly between branches of pine. A mist lay above Bull Run--on the high, opposite bank the woods rose huddled, indistinct, and dream-like. The air was still, cool, and pure, a Sunday morning waiting for church
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bells. There were no bells; the silence was shattered by all the drums of the brigade beating the long roll. Men rose from the pine needles, shook themselves, caught up musket and ammunition belt. The echoes from McDowell's signal cannon had hardly died when, upon the wooded banks of Bull Run, the First Brigade stood in arms. Minutes passed. Mitchell's
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Ford marked the Confederate centre. Here, and at Blackburn's Ford, were Bonham, Bee, Bartow, Longstreet, and Jackson. Down the stream, at MacLean's Ford and Union Mills, Early and Ewell and D. R. Jones held the right. To the left, up Bull Run, beyond Bee and beyond Stuart, at the Island, Ball and Lewis fords, were Cocke's Brigade and Hampton's Legion,
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and farther yet, at the Stone Bridge, Evans with a small brigade. Upon the northern bank of the Run, in the thick woods opposite Mitchell's and Blackburn's fords, was believed to be the mass of the invaders. There had been a certitude that the battle would join about these fords. Beauregard's plan was to cross at MacLean's and fall upon
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the Federal left. Johnston had acceded, and with the first light orders had gone to the brigadiers. "Hold yourselves in readiness to cross and to attack." Now suddenly from the extreme left, away in the direction of the Stone Bridge, burst an unexpected sound both of musketry and artillery. It was distant, it waxed and waned and waxed again. The
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First Brigade, nervous, impatient, chilled by the dawn, peered across its own reach of misty stream, and saw naught but the dream-like woods. Tyler's division was over there, it knew. When would firing begin along this line? When would the brigade have orders to move, when would it cross, when would things begin to happen? An hour passed. Ranks were
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broken and the men allowed to cook and eat a hasty breakfast. How good, in the mist-drenched wood, tasted the scalding coffee, how good the cornbread and the bacon! The last crumb swallowed, they waited again, lying on the brown earth beneath the pines. The mounted officers, advanced upon the bank of the stream and seen through the mist, loomed
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larger, man and horse, than life. Jackson sat very quiet upon Little Sorrel, his lips moving. Far up the stream the firing continued. The 2d, 4th, 5th, 27th, 33d, and 65th Virginia fidgeted, groaned, swore with impatience. Suddenly the nearer echoes awoke. A Federal battery, posted on the hills beyond the fringe of thick wood on the northern bank, opened
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a slow and ineffective fire against the hills and woods across the stream. The Confederates kept their position masked, made no reply. The shells fell short, and did harm only to the forest and its creatures. Nearly all fell short, but one, a shell from a thirty-pounder Parrott, entered the pine wood by Mitchell's Ford, fell among the wagons of
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the 65th, and exploded. A driver was killed, a mule mangled so that it must be shot, and an ambulance split into kindling wood. Few in the First Brigade had seen such a thing before. The men brushed the pine needles and the earth from their coats, and looked at the furrowed ground and at the headless body of the
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driver with a startled curiosity. There was a sense of a sudden and vivid flash from behind the veil, and they as suddenly perceived that the veil was both cold and dark. This, then, was one of the ways in which death came, shrieking like this, ugly and resistless! The July morning was warm and bright, but more than one
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of the volunteers in that wood shivered as though it were winter. Jackson rode along the front. "They don't attack in force at the Stone Bridge. A feint, I think." He stopped before the colour company of the 65th. "Captain Cleave." "Yes, sir." "You have hunters from the mountains. After the battle send me the man you think would make
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the best scout--an intelligent man." "Very well, sir." The other turned Little Sorrel's head toward the stream and stood listening. The sound of the distant cannonade increased. The pine wood ran back from the water, grew thinner, and gave place to mere copse and a field of broomsedge. From this edge of the forest came now a noise of mounted
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men. "Black Horse, I reckon!" said the 65th. "Wish they'd go ask Old Joe what he and Beauregard have got against us!--No, 'taint Black Horse--I see them through the trees--gray slouch hats and no feathers in them! Infantry, too--more infantry than horse. Hampton, maybe--No, they look like home folk--" A horseman appeared in the wood, guiding a powerful black stallion
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with a light hand between the pines, and checking him with a touch beside the bank upon which Little Sorrel was planted. "General Jackson?" inquired a dry, agreeable voice. "Yes, sir, I am General Jackson. What troops have you over there?" "The Virginia Legion." Jackson put out a large hand. "Then you are Colonel Fauquier Cary? I am glad to
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see you, sir. We never met in Mexico, but I heard of you--I heard of you!" The other gave his smile, quick and magnetic. "And I of you, general. Magruder chanted your praises day and night--our good old Fuss and Feathers, too! Oh, Mexico!" Jackson's countenance, so rigid, plain, restrained, altered as through some effect of soft and sunny light.
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The blue of the eye deepened, the iris enlarged, a smile came to his lips. His stiffly held, awkwardly erect figure relaxed, though very slightly. "I loved it in Mexico. I have never forgotten it. _Dear land of the daughters of Spain!_" The light went indoors again. "That demonstration upstream is increasing. Colonel Evans will need support." "Yes, we must
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have orders shortly." Turning in his saddle, Cary gazed across the stream. "Andrew Porter and Burnside are somewhere over there. I wonder if Burnside remembers the last time he was in Virginia!" He laughed. "Dabney Maury's wedding in ' at Cleveland, and Burnside happy as a king singing 'Old Virginia never tire!' stealing kisses from the bridesmaids, hunting with the
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hardest, dancing till cockcrow, and asking, twenty times a day, 'Why don't we do like this in Indiana?' I wonder--I wonder!" He laughed again. "Good old Burnside! It's an odd world we live in, general!" "The world, sir, is as God made it and as Satan darkened it." Cary regarded him somewhat whimsically. "Well, we'll agree on God now, and
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perhaps before this struggle's over, we'll agree on Satan. That firing's growing louder, I think. There's a cousin of mine in the 65th--yonder by the colours! May I speak to him?" "Certainly, sir. I have noticed Captain Cleave. His men obey him with readiness." He beckoned, and when Cleave came up, turned away with Little Sorrel to the edge of
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the stream. The kinsmen clasped hands. "How are you, Richard?" "Very well, Fauquier. And you?" "Very well, too, I suppose. I haven't asked. You've got a fine, tall company!" Cleave, turning, regarded his men with almost a love-light in his eyes. "By God, Fauquier, we'll win if stock can do it! It's going to make a legend--this army!" "I believe
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that you are right. When you were a boy you used to dream artillery." "I dream it still. Sooner or later, by hook or by crook, I'll get into that arm. It wasn't feasible this spring." His cousin looked at him with the affection, half humorous and wholly tender, with which he regarded most of his belongings in life. "I
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always liked you, Richard. Now don't you go get killed in this unnatural war! The South's going to need every good man she's got--and more beside! Where is Will?" "In the 2d. I wanted him nearer me, but 'twould have broken his heart to leave his company. Edward is with the Rifles?" "Yes, adding lustre to the ranks. I came
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upon him yesterday cutting wood for his mess. 'Why don't you make Jeames cut the wood?' I asked. 'Why,' said he, 'you see it hurts his pride--and, beside, some one must cook. Jeames cooks.'" Cary laughed. "I left him getting up his load and hurrying off to roll call. Phoebus Apollo swincking for Mars!--I was at Greenwood the other day.
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They all sent you their love." A colour came into Cleave's dark cheek. "Thank them for me when you write. Only the ladies are there?" "Yes. I told them it had the air of a Spanish nunnery. Maury Stafford is with Magruder on the Peninsula." "Yes." "Judith had a letter from him. He was in the affair at Bethel.--What's this?
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Orders for us all to move, I hope!" A courier had galloped into the wood. "General Jackson? Where is General Jackson?" A hundred hands having pointed out Little Sorrel and his rider, he arrived breathless, saluted, and extended a gauntleted hand with a folded bit of paper. Jackson took and opened the missive with his usual deliberation, glanced over the
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contents, and pushed Little Sorrel nearer to Fauquier Cary. "_General_," he read aloud, though in a low voice, "_the signal officer reports a turning column of the enemy approaching Sudley Ford two miles above the Stone Bridge. You will advance with all speed to the support of the endangered left. Bee and Barlow, the Hampton Legion and the Virginia Legion
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will receive like orders. J. E. Johnston, General Commanding._" The commander of the Virginia Legion gathered up his reins. "Thank you, general! _Au revoir_--and laurels to us all!" With a wave of his hand to Cleave, he was gone, crashing through the thinning pines to the broomsedge field and his waiting men. It was nine o'clock, hot and clear, the
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Stone Bridge three miles away. The First Brigade went at a double quick, guided by the sound of musketry, growing in volume. The pines were left behind; oak copse succeeded, then the up and down of grassy fields. Wooden fences stretched across the way, streamlets presented themselves, here and there gaped a ravine, ragged and deep. On and on and
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over all! Bee and Bartow were ahead, and Hampton and the Virginia Legion. The sound of the guns grew louder. "Evans hasn't got but six regiments. _Get on, men, get on!_" The fields were very rough, all things uneven and retarding. Only the sun had no obstacles: he rose high, and there set in a scorching day. The men climbed
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a bank of red earth, and struck across a great cornfield. They stumbled over the furrows, they broke down the stalks, they tore aside the intertwining small, blue morning-glories. Wet with the dew of the field, they left it and dipped again into woods. The shade did not hold; now they were traversing an immense and wasted stretch where the
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dewberry caught at their ankles and the sun had an unchecked sway. Ahead the firing grew louder. _Get on, men, get on!_ Allan Gold, hurrying with his hurrying world, found in life this July morning something he had not found before. Apparently there were cracks in the firmament through which streamed a dazzling light, an invigorating air. After all, there
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was something wide, it seemed, in war, something sweet. It was bright and hot--they were going, clean and childlike, to help their fellows at the bridge. When, near at hand, a bugle blew, high as a lark above the stress, he followed the sound with a clear delight. He felt no fatigue, and he had never seen the sky so
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blue, the woods so green. Chance brought him for a moment in line with his captain. "Well, Allan?" "I seem to have waked up," said Allan, then, very soberly. "I am going to like this thing." Cleave laughed. "You haven't the air of a Norse sea king for nothing!" They dipped into a bare, red gully, scrambled up the opposite
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bank, and fought again with the dewberry vines. "When the battle's over you're to report to General Jackson. Say that I sent you--that you're the man he asked for this morning." The entangling vines abruptly gave up the fight. A soft hillside of pasturage succeeded, down which the men ran like schoolboys. A gray zigzag of rail fence, a little
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plashy stream, another hillside, and at the top, planted against a horizon of haze and sound, a courier, hatless, upon a reeking horse. "General Jackson?" "Yes, sir." "McDowell has crossed at Sudley Ford. The attack on the Stone Bridge is a feint. Colonel Evans has left four companies there, and with the 4th South Carolina and the Louisiana Tigers is
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getting into position across Young's Branch, upon the Mathews Hill. Colonel Evans's compliments, and he says for God's sake to come on!" "Very good, sir. General Jackson's compliments, and I am coming." The courier turned, spurred his horse, and was gone. Jackson rode down the column. "You're doing well, men, but you've got to do better. Colonel Evans says for
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God's sake to come on!" That hilltop crossed at a run, they plunged again into the trough of those low waves. The First Brigade had proved its mettle, but here it began to lose. Men gasped, wavered, fell out of line and were left behind. In Virginia the July sunshine is no bagatelle. It beat hard to-day, and to many
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in these ranks there was in this July Sunday an awful strangeness. At home--ah, at home!--crushed ice and cooling fans, a pleasant and shady ride to a pleasant, shady church, a little dozing through a comfortable sermon, then friends and crops and politics in the twilight dells of an old churchyard, then home, and dinner, and wide porches--Ah, that was
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the way, that was the way. _Close up, there! Don't straggle, men, don't straggle!_ They were out now upon another high field, carpeted with yellowing sedge, dotted over with young pines. The 65th headed the column. Lieutenant Coffin of Company A was a busy officer, active as a jumping-jack, half liked and half distasted by the men. The need of
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some breathing time, however slight, was now so imperative that at a stake and rider fence, overgrown with creepers, a five minutes' halt was ordered. The fence ran at right angles, and all along the column the men dropped upon the ground, in the shadow of the vines. Coffin threw himself down by the Thunder Run men. "Billy Maydew!" "Yaas,
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sir." "What have you got that stick tied to your gun for? Throw it away! I should think you'd find that old flintlock heavy enough without shouldering a sapling besides!" Billy regarded with large blue eyes his staff for a young Hercules. "'Tain't a mite in my way, lieutenant. I air a-goin' to make a notch on it for every
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Yank I kill. When we get back to Thunder Run I air a-goin' to hang it over the fireplace. I reckon it air a-goin' to look right interestin'. Pap, he has a saplin' marked for b'ar an' wolves, an' gran'pap he has one his pap marked for Indians--" "Throw it away!" said Coffin sharply. "It isn't regular. Do as I
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tell you." Billy stared. "But I don't want to. It air my stick, an' I air a-goin' to hang it over the fireplace--" The heat, the sound in front, all things, made Coffin fretful. He rose from the fence corner. "Throw that stick away, or I'll put you in the guardhouse! This ain't Thunder Run--and you men have got to
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learn a thing or two! Come now!" "I won't," said Billy. "An' if 't were Thunder Run, you wouldn't dar'--" Allan Gold drew himself over the grass and touched the boy's arm. "Look here, Billy! We're going into battle in a minute, and you want to be there, don't you? The lieutenant's right--that oak tree surely will get in your
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way! Let's see how far you can throw it. There's plenty more saplings in the woods!" "Let him alone, Gold," said the lieutenant sharply. "Do as I order you, Billy Maydew!" Billy rose, eighteen years old, and six feet tall. "If it's jest the same to you, lieutenant," he said politely, "I'll break it into bits first. Thar are time
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when I jest hone to feel my hands on somethin' brittle!" He put the thick sapling across his knee like a sword, broke it in twain, broke in their turn the two halves, and tossed the four pieces over the fence. "Thar, now! It's did." Moving back to Allan's side, he threw himself down upon the grass. "When's this hell-fired
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fightin' goin' to begin? I don't ask anything better, jest at this minute, than to encounter a rattler!" The sound ahead swelled suddenly into loud and continuous firing. Apparently Evans had met the turning column. _Fall in, men, fall in!_ The First Brigade rose to its feet, left the friendly fence, and found itself upon a stretch of road, in
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