The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide, Joseph A. Altsheler [best value ebook reader txt] 📗

figure scarcely able to move, that the great Jackson was going.

They went out oppressed by grief, and sought the Invincibles, whom they at last found encamped in an old orchard. Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire sat beneath an apple tree, and the chessboard was between them.

"They've been sitting there an hour," whispered Langdon, "but they haven't made a single move, nor will they make one if they stay there all day. It's in my mind that neither of them sees the chessmen. Instead they see the General—they visited him this morning."

Harry did not speak to the two colonels, but turned away.

"We found the body of Bertrand yesterday," said Langdon, "and buried it just where he fell."

"I'm glad of that," said Harry.

Harry and Dalton lingered at the Chandler House with the staff to which they belonged. Three days passed and Sunday came. Jackson was sinking all the while, and that morning the doctor informed his wife that he was about to die. Pneumonia had followed the weakness from his wounds and his breathing had grown very faint. Mrs. Jackson herself told him that all hope for him was gone, and he heard the words with resignation.

After a while, as Harry learned, his mind began to wander. He spoke in disjointed sentences of the army, of his battles, of his boyhood and of his friends. This lasted into the afternoon, when he sank into unconsciousness. Then came his death, and it was much like that of Napoleon. He awoke suddenly from a deep stupor and cried out, in a clear voice:

"Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front! Tell Major Hawks—"

He stopped, seemed to sink into a stupor again, but a little later roused suddenly from it once more, and said, in the same clear voice:

"Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."

Then, as his eyes closed, the soul of the great Christian soldier passed into the fathomless beyond, to sit in peace with Cromwell and Washington, and in time with Lee and Grant and Thomas, who were yet to come.

That night a whole army wept.

CHAPTER X THE NORTHERN MARCH

It was days before Harry felt as if life could move on in the usual way. He had loved Jackson next to his father. In fact, in the absence of his own father the great general had stood in that place to him. He had received from him so many marks of approval, and, riding as a trusted member of Jackson's staff, his head had been in such a rosy cloud of glory and victory, that now it seemed for a while as if the world had come to an end.

He was disappointed, too, that they had reaped so little from Chancellorsville. He believed at times that his general had died in vain. He had but to ride a little distance and see the enemy across the Rappahannock, where he had been so many months, with the same bristling guns and the same superior forces.

He had been eager, like all the other young officers, to move directly after the battle and attack the foe on his own ground, but when he talked with the two colonels he realized that their numbers were too small. They must wait for Longstreet's great division, which had been detached from the battle to guard against a possible flank attack upon Richmond. Oh, if Longstreet and his twenty thousand veterans had been at Chancellorsville! And if Jackson had not fallen just at the moment when he was about to complete the destruction of Hooker's right wing! He believed that then they would have annihilated the Army of the Potomac, that only a few fugitives from it would have escaped across the Potomac. The time came to him in after years when he often asked himself would such a result have been a good result for the American people.

But now he was only a boy, as old, it is true, as many boys who led companies, or even regiments, and the days were sufficient for his thoughts. He was not thinking of the distant years and what they might bring. Both he and Dalton felt joy when General Lee sent for them and told them that, having been valued members of General Jackson's staff, they were now to become members of his own. All he asked of them was to serve him as well as they had served General Jackson.

Harry was moved so deeply that he could scarcely thank him. He felt springing up in his breast the same affection and hero-worship for Lee that he had felt for Jackson. And as the close association with Lee continued, this feeling grew both in his heart and in that of Dalton.

The soul of youth cannot be kept down, and Harry's spirits returned as he rode back and forth on Lee's errands. Moreover, spring was in full tide and his blood rose with it. The Wilderness, in which the dead men lay, and all the surrounding country were turning a deep green, and the waters of the Rappahannock often flashed in gold or silver as the sun blazed or grew dim. Pleasant relations between the sentries on the two sides of the river were renewed. Tobacco, newspapers, and other harmless articles were passed back and forth, when the officers conveniently turned their backs. Nor was it always that the younger officers turned away.

Harry was in a boat near the right bank when he saw another boat about thirty yards from the left shore. It contained a half dozen men, and he recognized one of the figures at once. Putting his hands, trumpet-shaped, to his mouth, he shouted:

"Mr. Shepard! Oh, I say, Mr. Shepard!"

The man looked up, and, evidently recognizing Harry, he had the boat rowed a little nearer. Harry had his own moved forward a little, and he stopped at a point where they could talk conveniently.

"You may not believe me," said Shepard, "but I felt pleasure when I heard your voice and recognized your face. I am glad to know that you did not fall in the great battle."

"I do believe you, and I am not merely exchanging compliments when I say that I rejoice that you, too, came out of it alive."

"Nevertheless, luck was against us then," said Shepard, and Harry, even at the distance, saw a shadow cross his face. "I saw the great flank movement of Jackson and I understood its nature. I was on my way to General Hooker with all speed to warn him, and I would have got there in time had it not been for a chance bullet that stunned me. That bullet cost us thousands of men."

"And the bullets that struck General Jackson will cost us a whole army corps."

"We hear that they were fired by your own men."

"So they were. A North Carolina company in the darkness took us for the enemy."

"I don't rejoice over the fall of a great and valiant foe, but whether Jackson lived or died the result would be the same. I told you long ago that the forces of the Union could never be beaten in the long run, and I repeated it to you another time. Now I repeat it once more. We have lost two great battles here, but you make no progress. We menace you as much as ever."

"But your newspapers say you're growing very tired. There's no nation so big that it can't be exhausted."

"But you'll be exhausted first. So long, I see some of our generals coming out on the bluffs with their glasses. I suppose we mustn't appear too friendly."

"Good-bye, Mr. Shepard. We've lost Jackson, but we've many a good man yet. I think our next great battle will be farther north."

They had not spoken as enemies, but as friends who held different views upon an important point, and now they rowed back peacefully, each to his own shore.

With the return of Longstreet, the Southern army was raised to greater numbers than at Chancellorsville. With Stuart's matchless cavalry it numbered nearly eighty thousand men, most of them veterans, and a cry for invasion came from the South. What was the use of victories like Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, if they merely left matters where they were? The fighting hitherto had been done on Southern soil. The South alone had felt the presence of war. It was now time for the North to have a taste of it.

Harry and his comrades heard this cry, and it seemed to them to be full of truth. They ought to strike straight at the heart of the enemy. When their victorious brigades threatened Philadelphia and New York, the two great commercial centers of the North, then the Northern people would not take defeat so easily. It would be a different matter altogether when a foe appeared at their own doors.

Rumors that the invasion would be undertaken soon spread thick and fast. Harry saw his general, Lee now in place of Jackson, in daily conference with his most trusted lieutenants. Longstreet and A. P. Hill were there often, and one day Harry saw riding toward headquarters a man who had only one leg and who was strapped to his saddle. But a strong Roman nose and a sharp, penetrating eye showed that he was a man of force and decision. Once, when he lifted his hat to return a salute, he showed a head almost wholly bald.

Harry looked at him for a moment or two unknowing, and then crying "General Ewell!" ran forward to greet him.

Harry was right. It was what was left of him who had been Jackson's chief lieutenant in the Valley campaigns and who had fallen wounded so terribly at the Second Manassas. After nine months of suffering, here he was again, as resolute and indomitable as ever, able to ride only when he was strapped in his saddle, but riding as much as any other general, nevertheless.

And Ewell, who might well have retired, was one of those who had most to lose by war. He had a great estate in the heart of a rich country near Virginia's ancient capital, Williamsburg. There he had lived in a large house, surrounded by a vast park, all his own. Even as the man, maimed in body but as dauntless of mind as ever, rode back to Lee, his estate was in the hands of Union troops. He had all to lose, but did not hesitate.

Harry saluted him and spoke to him gladly. Ewell turned his piercing eyes upon him, hesitated a moment, and then said:

"It's Kenton, young Harry Kenton of Jackson's staff. I remember you in the Valley now. We've lost the great Jackson, but we'll beat the Yankees yet."

Then he let loose a volley of oaths, much after the fashion of the country gentleman of that time, both in America and England. But Harry only smiled.

"I'm to have command of Jackson's old corps, the second," said Ewell, "and if you're not placed I'll be glad to have you on my staff."

"I thank you very much, General," said Harry with great sincerity, "but General Lee has taken me over, because I was with Jackson."

"Then you'll have all the fighting you want," said the indomitable Ewell. "General Lee never hesitates to strike. But don't be the fool that I was and get your leg shot off. If anything has to go, let it be an arm. Look at me. I could ride with any man in all Virginia, a state of horsemen, and now a couple of men have to come and fasten me in the saddle with straps. But never mind."

He rode cheerily on, and Harry, turning back, met St. Clair and Langdon. Both showed a pleased excitement.

"What is it?" asked Harry.

"Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire are at it again, and there have been results!"

"What has happened?"

"Colonel Talbot has lost a bishop and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire has lost a knight. Each claims that he has gained a technical advantage in position, and they've stopped playing to argue about it. From the way they act you'd think they were Yankee generals. See 'em over there under the boughs of that tree, sitting on camp stools, with the chessmen on another camp stool between them."

Harry looked over a little ridge and saw the two colonels, who were talking with great earnestness, each obviously full