Part 70 (1/2)

Cleave, following, found his leader indeed before Jackson, just finis.h.i.+ng his representations whatever they were, and somewhat perturbed by the commanding general's highly developed silence. This continuing unbroken, Winder, after an awkward minute of waiting, fell a little back, a flush on his cheeks and his lips hard together. The action disclosed Cleave, just come up, his hand checking Dundee, his grey eyes earnestly upon Jackson. When the latter spoke, it was not to the brigadier but to the colonel of the 65th. ”Why are you not with your regiment, sir?”

”I left it but a moment ago, sir, to bring information I thought it my duty to bring.”

”What information?”

”The 65th is on General Winder's extreme right, sir. The stream before it is fordable.”

”How do you know, sir?”

”I forded it. The infantry could cross without much difficulty. The 65th would be happy, sir, to lead the way.”

Winder opened his lips. ”The whole Stonewall Brigade is ready, sir.”

Jackson, without regarding, continued to address himself to Cleave. His tone had been heard before by the latter--in his own case on the night of the twenty-seventh as well as once before, and in the case of others where there had been what was construed as remonstrance or negligence or disobedience. He had heard him speak so to Garnett after Kernstown. The words were simple enough--they always were. ”You will return to your duty, sir. It lies where your regiment is, and that is not here. Go!”

Cleave obeyed. The ford was there. His regiment might have crossed, the rest of the Stonewall following. Together they might traverse the swamp and the bit of open, pa.s.s the hillside, and strike Franklin upon the flank, while, brigade by brigade, the rest of the division followed by that ford. Rout Franklin, and push forward to help A. P. Hill. It had appeared his duty to give the information he was possessed of. He had given it, and his skirts were cleared. There was anger in him as he turned away; he had a compressed lip, a sparkling eye. Not till he turned did he see Stafford, sitting his horse in the shadow behind Jackson. The two men stared full at each other for a perceptible moment.

But Stafford's face was in the shadow, and as for Cleave his mind was full of anger for the tragedy of the inaction. At the moment he gave small attention to his own life, its heights or depths, past or future.

He saw Stafford, but he could not be said to consider him at all. He turned from the road into the wood, and pushed the great bay over spongy ground toward the isolated 65th. Stafford saw that he gave him no thought, and it angered him. On the highroad of his life it would not have done so, but he had left the road and was lost in the jungle. There were few things that Richard Cleave might do which would not now work like madness on the mind astray in that place.

The cannonading over White Oak Swamp continued, and the sound of the battle of Frayser's Farm continued. On a difficult and broken ground Longstreet attacked, driving back McCall's division. McCall was reinforced and Longstreet hard pressed. Lee loosed A. P. Hill, and the battle became furious. He looked for Jackson, but Jackson was at White Oak Swamp; for Huger, but a road covered with felled trees delayed Huger; for Magruder, but in the tangle of wood and swamp Magruder, too, went astray; for Holmes, but Fitz John Porter held Holmes in check.

Longstreet and A. P. Hill strove unsupported, fifty thousand grey troops in hearing of their guns. The battle swayed to and fro, long, loud, and sanguinary, with much hand-to-hand work, much use of bayonets, and, over all, a shriek of grape and canister.

Back on White Oak Swamp, Franklin on the southern side, Jackson on the northern, blue and grey alike caught the noise of battle. They themselves were cannonading loudly and continuously. One Federal battery used fifteen hundred rounds. The grey were hardly less lavish. Not much damage was done except to the trees. The trough through which crept the sluggish water was filled with smoke. It drifted through the swamp and the woods and along the opposing hillsides. It drifted over and about the idle infantry, until one command was hidden from another.

Stonewall Jackson, seated on the stump of a felled oak, his sabre across his knees, his hands rigid upon it, his great booted feet squarely planted, his cap drawn low, sent the aide beside him with some order to the working party at the bridge. A moment later the courier went, too, to D. H. Hill, with a query about prisoners. The thunders continued, the smoke drifted heavily, veiling all movements. Jackson spoke without turning. ”Whoever is there--”

No one was there at the moment but Maury Stafford. He came forward. ”You will find the 1st Brigade,” said Jackson. ”Tell General Winder to move it nearer the stream. Tell him to cross from his right, with caution, a small reconnoitring party. Let it find out the dispositions of the enemy, return and report.”

Stafford went, riding westward through the smoke-filled forest, and came presently to the Stonewall Brigade and to Winder, walking up and down disconsolately. ”An order from General Jackson, sir. You will move your brigade nearer the stream. Also you will cross, from your right, with caution, a small reconnoitring party. It will discover the dispositions of the enemy, return and report.”

”Very good,” said Winder. ”I'll move at once. The 65th is already on the brink--there to the right, beyond the swamp. Perhaps, you'll take the order on to Colonel Cleave?--Very good! Tell him to send a picked squad quietly across and find out what he can. I hope to G.o.d there'll come another order for us all to cross at its heels!”

Stafford, riding on, presently found himself in a strip of bog and thicket and tall trees masking a narrow, sluggish piece of water. The brigade behind him was hidden, the regiment in front not yet visible.

Despite the booming of the guns, there was here an effect of stillness.

It seemed a lonely place. Stafford, traversing it slowly because the ground gave beneath his horse's feet, became aware of a slight movement in a laurel thicket and of two eyes gleaming behind the leaves. He reined in his horse. ”What are you doing in there? Straggling or deserting? Come out!” There was a pause; then Steve Dagg emerged.

”Major, I ain't either stragglin' or desertin'. I was just seperated--I got seperated last night. The regiment's jes' down there--I crept down an' saw it jes' now. I'm goin' back an' join right away--send me to h.e.l.l if I ain't!--though Gawd knows my foot's awful sore--”

Stafford regarded him closely. ”I've seen you before. Ah, I remember! On the Valley pike, moving toward Winchester.... Poor scoundrel!”

Steve, his back against a swamp magnolia, undertook to show that he, too, remembered, and that gratefully. ”Yes, sir. You saved me from markin' time on a barrel-head, major--an' my foot _was_ sore--an' I wasn't desertin' that time any more'n this time--an' I was as obleeged to you as I could be. The colonel's awful hard on the men.”

”Is he?” said Stafford gratingly. ”They seem to like him.”

He sat his horse before the laurel thicket and despised himself for holding conference with this poor thief; or, rather, some fibre in his brain told him that, out of this jungle, if ever he came out of it, he would despise himself. Had he really done so now, he would have turned away. He did not so; he sat in the heart of the jungle and compared hatreds with Steve.

The latter glanced upward a moment with his ferret eyes, then turned his head aside and spat. ”If there's any of my way of thinkin' they don't like him--But they're all fools! Crept down through the swamp a little ago an' heard it! 'Colonel, get us across, somehow, won't you? We'll fight like h.e.l.l!' 'I can't, men. I haven't any orders.' Yaah! I wish he'd take the regiment over without them, and then be court-martialled and shot for doing it!” Steve spat again. ”I seed long ago that you didn't like him either, major. He gets along too fast--all the prizes come his way.”

”Yes,” said Stafford, from the heart of the jungle. ”They come his way.... And he's standing there at the edge of the water, hoping for orders to cross.”