The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign, Altsheler [best non fiction books of all time txt] 📗

Harry bowed and withdrew, and the aide, Charlie Gordon, gave him a hearty welcome. He was three or four years Harry's senior, something of a scholar, but frank and open. When they had exchanged names, Gordon said:

“Stretch out a bit on this old sofa. You look tired. You've been riding a long distance. How many miles have you come?”

“I don't know,” replied Harry, as he lay luxuriously on the sofa, “but we started at one o'clock this morning and it is now three o'clock in the afternoon.”

“Fourteen hours. It's like what we've been hearing of Stonewall Jackson. I took a peep at him from the window as you rode up.”

“I suppose you didn't see much but dust.”

“They certainly tell extraordinary things of General Jackson. It can't be possible that all are true!”

“It is possible. They're all true—and more. I tell you, Gordon, when you hear anything wonderful about Stonewall Jackson just you believe it. Don't ask any questions, or reasons but believe it.”

“I think I shall,” said Gordon, convinced, “but don't forget, Kenton, that we've got a mighty man here, too. You can't be with General Lee long without feeling that you're in the presence of genius.”

“And they're friends, not jealous of each other. You could see that at a glance.”

“The coming of Jackson is like dawn bursting from the dark. I feel, Kenton, that McClellan's time is at hand.”

Harry slept a little after a while, but when he awoke the generals were still in council in the great room.

“I let you sleep because I saw you needed it,” said Gordon with a smile, “but I think they're about through in there now. I hear them moving about.”

General Jackson presently called Harry and they rode away. The young aide was sent back to the valley army with a message for it to advance as fast as possible in order that it might be hurled on McClellan's flank. Others carried the same message, lest there be any default of chance.

While the army of Jackson swept down by Richmond to join Lee it was lost again to the North. At Washington they still believed it in the valley, advancing on Fremont or Shields. Banks and McDowell had the same belief. McClellan was also at a loss. Two or three scouts had brought in reports that it was marching toward Richmond, but he could not believe them.

The Secretary of War at Washington telegraphed to McClellan that the Union armies under McDowell, Banks, Fremont and Shields were to be consolidated in one great army under McDowell which would crush Jackson utterly in the valley. At the very moment McClellan was reading this telegram the army of Jackson, far to the south of McDowell, was driving in the pickets on his own flank.

Jackson's men had come into a region quite different from the valley. There they marched and fought over firm ground, and crossed rivers with hard rocky banks. Now they were in a land of many deep rivers that flowed in a slow yellow flood with vast swamps between. Most of it was heavy with forest and bushes, and the heat was great. At night vast quantities of mosquitoes and flies and other insects fed bounteously upon them.

The Invincibles lifted up their voices and wept.

“Can't you persuade Old Jack to take us back to the valley, Harry?” said Happy Tom. “If I'm to die I'd rather be shot by an honest Yankee soldier than be stung to death by these clouds of bloodsuckers. Oh, for our happy valley, where we shot at our enemy and he shot at us, both standing on firm ground!”

“You won't be thinking much about mosquitoes and rivers soon,” said Harry. “Listen to that, will you! You know the sound, don't you?”

“Know it! Well, I ought to know it. It's the booming of cannon, but it doesn't frighten these mosquitoes and flies a particle. A cannon ball whistling by my head would scare me half to death, but it wouldn't disturb them a bit. They'd look with an evil eye at that cannon ball as it flew by and say to it in threatening tones: 'What are you doing here? Let this fellow alone. He belongs to us.'”

“Which way is McClellan coming, Harry?” asked St. Clair.

“Off there to the east, where you hear the guns.”

“How many men has he?”

“Anywhere from a hundred thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand. There are various reports.”

Langdon, who had been listening, whistled.

“It doesn't look like a picnic for the Invincibles,” he said. “When I volunteered for this war I didn't volunteer to fight a pitched battle every day. What did you volunteer for, Harry?”

“I don't know.”

The three laughed. Jackson's famous order certainly fitted well there.

“And you don't know, either,” said Happy Tom, “what all that thunder off there to the south and east means. It's the big guns, but who are fighting and where?”

“There's to be a general attack on McClellan along the line of the Chickahominy river,” said Harry, “and our army is to be a part of the attacking force, but my knowledge goes no further.”

“Then I'm reckoning that some part of our army has attacked already,” said Happy Tom. “Maybe they're ahead of time, or maybe the rest are behind time. But there they go! My eyes, how they're whooping it up!”

The cannonade was growing in intensity and volume. Despite the sunset they saw an almost continuous flare of red on the horizon. The three boys felt some awe as they sat there and listened and looked. Well they might! Battle on a far greater scale than anything witnessed before in America had begun already. Two hundred thousand men were about to meet in desperate conflict in the thickets and swamps along the Chickahominy.

Richmond had already heard the crash of McClellan's guns more than once, but apprehension was passing away. Lee, whom they had learned so quickly to trust, stood with ninety thousand men between them and McClellan, and with him was the redoubtable Jackson and his veterans of the valley with their caps full of victories.

McClellan had the larger force, but Lee was on the defensive in his own country, a region which offered great difficulties to the invader.

Harry and his comrades wondered why Jackson did not move, but he remained in his place, and when Harry fell asleep he still heard the thudding of the guns across the vast reach of rivers and creeks, swamps and thickets. When he awoke in the morning they were already at work again, flaring at intervals down there on the eastern horizon. The whole wet, swampy country, so different from his own, seemed to be deserted by everything save the armies. No rabbits sprang up in the thickets and there were no birds. Everything had fled already in the presence of war.

But the army marched. After a