The Rock of Chickamauga, Joseph A. Altsheler [best book club books txt] 📗

thicket of scrub. But Dick meanwhile

saw increasing numbers of men there. They were beyond the line of battle

and were not obscured by the clouds of smoke. As he stared he saw a

weazened figure under an enormous, broad-brimmed hat, and, although he

could not discern the face at the distance, he knew that it was Slade,

come with a new and perhaps larger body of riflemen to burn away the

extreme left flank of the Union force.

 

As the colonel and the sergeant crawled back Dick told them what he had

seen, and they recognized at once the imminence of the danger. Colonel

Winchester looked at the great columns of fire and smoke in front of

him. He did not know when the main attack would sweep down upon them

again, but he took his resolution at once.

 

He ordered his men to wheel about, and, using Slade's own tactics, to

creep forward with their rifles. Most of his men were sharpshooters and

he felt that they would be a match for those whom the guerrilla led.

Sergeant Whitley kept by his side, and out of a vast experience in

border warfare advised him.

 

Dick, Warner and Pennington armed themselves with rifles of the fallen,

and they felt fierce thrills of joy as they crept forward. Burning with

the battle fever, and enraged against this man Slade, Dick put all his

soul in the man-hunt. He merely hoped that Victor Woodville was not

there. He would fire willingly at any of the rest.

 

Before they had gone far Slade and his riflemen began to fire. Bullets

pattered all about them, clipping twigs and leaves and striking sparks

from stones.

 

Had the fire been unexpected it would have done deadly damage, but all

of the Winchesters, as they liked to call themselves, had kept under

cover, and were advancing Indian fashion. And now a consuming rage

seized them all. They felt as if an advantage had been taken of them.

While they were fighting a great battle in front a sly foe sought to

ambush them. They did not hate the Southern army which charged directly

upon them, but they did hate this band of sharpshooters which had

come creeping through the woods to pick them off, and they hated them

collectively and individually.

 

It was Dick's single and fierce desire at that moment to catch sight

of Slade, whom he would shoot without hesitation if the chance came.

He looked for him continually as he crept from bush to bush, and he

withheld his fire until fortune might bring into his view the flaps of

that enormous hat. The whole vast battle of Chickamauga passed from his

mind. He was concentrated, heart and soul, upon this affair of outposts

in the thickets.

 

Men around him were firing, and the bullets in return were knocking up

the leaves about him, but Dick's finger did not yet press the trigger.

The great hat was still hidden from view, but he heard Slade's whistle

calling to his men. Sergeant Whitley was by the lad's side, and he

glanced at him now and then. The wise sergeant read the youth's face,

and he knew that he was upon a quest, a deadly one.

 

"Is it Slade you're looking for, Mr. Mason?" he asked.

 

"Yes, I want him!"

 

"Well, if we see him, and you miss him, I think I'll take a shot at him

myself."

 

But Slade, crafty and cunning, kept himself well hidden. The two bands

fighting this Indian combat, while the great battle raged so near them,

were now very near to each other, but as they had both thickets and a

rocky outcrop for refuge, they fought from hiding. Nevertheless many

fell. Dick, the ferocity of the man-hunt continuing to burn his brain,

sought everywhere for Slade. Often he heard his silver whistle directing

his troop, but the man himself remained invisible. In his eagerness the

lad rose too high, but the sergeant pulled him down in time, a bullet

whistling a second later through the air where his head had been.

 

"Careful, Mr. Mason! Careful!" said Sergeant Whitley. "It won't do you

much good for one of his men to get you while you are trying to get

him!"

 

Dick became more cautious. At last he caught a glimpse of the great hat

that he could not mistake, and, aiming very carefully, he fired. Then he

uttered an angry cry. He had missed, and when the sergeant was ready to

pull the trigger also Slade was gone.

 

Now, the colonel called to his men, and rising they charged into the

wood. It was evidently no part of Slade's plan to risk destruction as he

blew a long high call on his whistle, and then he and all his men save

the dead melted away like shadows. The Winchesters stood among the

trees, gasping and staunching their wounds, but victorious.

 

Now they had only a few moments for rest. Bugles called and they rushed

back to their old position just as the Southern cavalry, sabers circling

aloft swept down upon them again. They went once more through that

terrible turmoil of fire and flashing steel, and a second time the

Winchesters were victorious. But they could have stood no more, and

Thomas watching everything hurried to their relief a regiment, which

formed up before them to give them breathing time.

 

The young soldiers threw themselves panting upon the ground, and were

assailed by a burning thirst. The canteens were soon emptied, and still

their lips and throats were parched. Exhausted by their tremendous

exertions, many of them sank into a stupor, although the battle was at

its zenith and the earth shook with the crash of the heavy batteries.

 

"General Thomas has had news that we're driven in elsewhere," said Dick.

 

"And we've yielded ground here, too," said Warner.

 

"But so slowly that it's been only a glacial movement. We've made 'em

pay such a high price that I think old 'Pap' can boast he has held his

ground."

 

Dick did not know it then nor did the general himself, but 'Pap' Thomas

could boast of far more than having held his ground. His long and

stubborn resistance, his skill in moving his troops from point to point

at the right time, his coolness and judgment in weighing and measuring

everything right, in all the vast turmoil, confusion and uncertainty of

a great battle, had saved the Northern army from destruction.

 

Now, as the Winchester men lay gasping behind the fresh regiment,

Thomas, who continually passed along the line of battle, came among

them. He was a soldier's soldier, a soldier's general, and he spoke

encouraging words, most of which they could not hear amid the roar of

the battle, but his calm face told their import, and fresh courage came

into their hearts.

 

The news spread gradually that Thomas only was holding fast, but now his

men instead of being discouraged were filled with pride. It was they and

they alone whom the Southerners could not overwhelm, and Thomas and his

generals inspired them with the belief that they were invincible. Charge

after charge broke against them. More ground was yielded, but at the

same immense price, and the corps, sullen, indomitable, maintained its

order, always presenting a front to the foe, blazing with death.

 

Thomas stood all day, while the Southern masses, flushed by victory

everywhere else, pressed harder. Terrible reports of defeat and

destruction came to him continually, but he did not flinch. He turned

the same calm face to everything, and said to the generals that whatever

happened they would keep their own front unbroken.

 

The day closed with the men of Thomas still grim and defiant. The dead

lay in heaps along their front, but as the darkness settled down on the

unfinished battle they meant to fight with equal valor and tenacity on

the morrow. The first day had favored the South, had favored it largely,

but on the Union left hope still flamed high.

 

Darkness swept over the sanguinary field. A cold wind of autumn blew off

the hills and mountains, and the men shivered as they lay on the ground,

but Thomas allowed no fires to be lighted. Food was brought in the

darkness, and those who could find them wrapped themselves in blankets.

Between the two armies lay the hecatombs of dead and the thousands of

wounded.

 

Dick, his comrades and the rest of the regiment sat together in a

little open space behind a thicket. It was to be their position for

the fighting next day. Thomas, passing by, had merely given them an

approving look, and then had gone on to re-form his lines elsewhere.

Dick knew that all through the night he would be conferring with his

commander, Rosecrans, McCook and the others, and he knew, too, that

many of the Union soldiers would be at work, fortifying, throwing up

earthworks, and cutting down trees for abattis. He heard already the

ring of the axes.

 

But the Winchester men rested for the present. Nature had made their own

position strong with a low hill, and a thicket in front. They lay upon

the ground, sheltering themselves from the cold wind, which cut through

bodies relaxed and almost bloodless after such vast physical exertions

and excitement so tremendous.

CHAPTER XIV. THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA

 

Dick, after eating the cold food which was served to him, sank into a

state which was neither sleep nor stupor. It was a mystic region between

the conscious and the unconscious, in which all things were out of

proportion, and some abnormal.

 

He saw before him a vast stretch of dead blackness which he knew

nevertheless was peopled by armed hosts ready to spring upon them at

dawn. The darkness and silence were more oppressive than sound and

light, even made by foes, would have been. It numbed him to think there

was so little of stirring life, where nearly two hundred thousand men

had fought.

 

Then a voice arose that made him shiver. But it was only the cold wind

from the mountains whistling a dirge. Nevertheless it seemed human to

Dick. It was at once a lament and a rebuke. He edged over a little and

touched Warner.

 

"Is that you, Dick?" asked the Vermonter.

 

"What's left of me. I've one or two wounds, mere scratches, George, but

I feel all pumped out. I'm like one of those empty wine-skins that you

read about, empty, all dried up, and ready to be thrown away."

 

"Something of the same feeling myself, Dick. I'm empty and dried up,

too, but I'm not ready to be thrown away. Nor are you. We'll fill up in

the night. Our hearts will pump all our veins full of blood again,

and we'll be ready to go out in the morning, and try once more to get

killed."

 

"I don't see how you and Pennington and I, all three of us, came out of

it alive to-day."

 

"That question is bothering me, too, Dick. A million bullets were fired

at each of us, not to count thousands of pieces of shell, shrapnel,

canister, grape, and slashes of swords. Take any ratio of percentage

you please and something should have got us. According to every rule of

algebra, not more than one of us three should be alive now. Yet here we

are."

 

"Maybe your algebra is wrong?"

 

"Impossible. Algebra is the most exact of all sciences. It does not

admit of error. Both by algebra and by the immutable law of averages at

least two of us are dead."

 

"But we don't know which two."

 

"That's true. Nevertheless it's certain that those two, whoever they may

be, are here on borrowed time. What do your wounds amount to, Dick?"

 

"Nothing, I had forgotten 'em. I've lost a little blood, but what does

it amount to on a day like this, when blood is shed in rivers?"

 

"That's true. My own skin has been broken, but just barely, four times

by bullets. I've a notion that those bullets were coming straight for

some vital part of me, but seeing who it was, and knowing that such a

noble character ought not to be slain, they turned aside as quickly as

possible, but not so quickly that