Part 94 (1/2)

The aides lifted the wounded general. ”No one,” said Hill, ”must tell the troops who was wounded.” The other opened his eyes. ”Tell them simply that you have a wounded officer. General Hill, you are in command now. Press right on.”

With a gesture of sorrow Hill went, returning to the front. The others rested at the edge of the road. At that moment the Federal batteries opened, a hissing storm of shot and sh.e.l.l, a tornado meant measurably to r.e.t.a.r.d that antic.i.p.ated, grey onrush. The range was high. Aides and couriers laid the wounded leader on the earth and made of their bodies a screen. The trees were cut, the earth was torn up; there was a howling as of unchained fiends. There pa.s.sed what seemed an eternity and was but ten minutes. The great blue guns slightly changed the direction of their fire. The storm howled away from the group by the road, and the men again lifted Jackson. He stood now on his feet; and because troops were heard approaching, and because it must not be known that he was hurt, all moved into the darkness of the scrub. The troops upon the road came on--Pender's brigade. Pender, riding in advance, saw the group and asked who was wounded. ”A field officer,” answered one, but there came from some direction a glare of light and by it Pender knew. He sprang from his horse. ”Don't say anything about it, General Pender,” said Jackson.

”Press on, sir, press on!”

”General, they are using all their artillery. It is a very deadly fire.

In the darkness it may disorganize--”

The forage cap was gone. The blue eyes showed full and deep. ”You must hold your ground, General Pender. You must hold out to the last, sir.”

”I will, general, I will,” said Pender.

A litter was found and brought, and Stonewall Jackson was laid upon it.

The little procession moved toward Dowdall's Tavern. A shot pierced the arm of one of the bearers, loosening his hold of the litter. It tilted.

The general fell heavily to the ground, injuring afresh the wounded limb, striking and bruising his side. They raised him, pale, now, and silent, and at last they struggled through the wood to a little clearing, where they found an ambulance. Now, too, came the doctor, a man whom he loved, and knelt beside him. ”I hope that you are not badly hurt, general?”

”Yes, I am, doctor. I am badly hurt. I fear that I am dying.”

In the ambulance lay also his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield, painfully injured. Crutchfield pulled the doctor down to him. ”He isn't badly hurt?”

”Yes. Badly hurt.”

Crutchfield groaned. ”Oh, my G.o.d!” Stonewall Jackson heard and made the ambulance stop. ”You must do something for Colonel Crutchfield, doctor.

Don't let him suffer.”

A. P. Hill, riding back to the front, was wounded by a piece of sh.e.l.l.

Boswell, the chief engineer, to whom had been entrusted the guidance through the night of the advance upon the roads to the fords, was killed. That was a fatal cannonade from the ridge of Chancellorsville, fatal and fateful! It continued. The Wilderness chanted a battle chant indeed to the moon, the moon that was pale and wan as if wearied with silvering battlefields. Hill, lying in a litter, just back of his advanced line, dispatched couriers for Stuart. Stuart was far toward Ely's Ford, riding through the night in plume and fighting jacket. The straining horses, the recalling order, reached him.

”General Jackson badly wounded! A. P. Hill badly wounded! I in command!

My G.o.d, man! all changed like that? _Right about face! Forward! March!_”

There was, that night, no grey a.s.sault. But the dawn broke clear and found the grey lines waiting. The sky was a glory, the Wilderness rolled in emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d Corps were yet two miles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and all the strong entrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker's courageous men.

Now followed Jeb Stuart's fight. In the dawn, the 2nd Corps, swung from the right by a master hand, struck full against the Federal centre, struck full against Chancellorsville. In the clear May morning broke a thunderstorm of artillery. It raged loudly, peal on peal, crash on cras.h.!.+ The grey sh.e.l.ls struck the Chancellor house. They set it on fire.

It went up in flames. A fragment of sh.e.l.l struck and stunned Fighting Joe Hooker. He lay senseless for hours and Couch took command. The grey musketry, the blue musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire.

In places it was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through the scrub; the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart ordered the ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack against his left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His right and Anderson's left now touched. The Army of Northern Virginia was again a unit.

Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. His beautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were very grimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson was badly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day and this Wilderness remembered. ”_Forward. Charge!_” cried Jeb Stuart. ”Remember Jackson!” He swung his plumed hat. _Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaiihhh! Yaaaaaii!

Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled the grey lines, and charged. Stuart went at their head, and as he went he raised in song his golden, ringing voice. ”_Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_”

By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced, Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all, was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowers bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army of Northern Virginia cheered him! ”Men, men!” he said, ”you have done well, you have done well! Where is General Jackson?”

He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field hospital near Dowdall's Tavern. ”_General:--I cannot express my regret. Could I have directed events I should have chosen for the good of the country to be disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which is due to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee._”

An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in the deeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then he said, ”General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to G.o.d.”

For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, at the Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then they rested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of the Rappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the southern sh.o.r.e and the road to Richmond--Richmond no nearer for McDowell, no nearer for McClellan, no nearer for Pope, no nearer for Burnside, no nearer for Hooker, no nearer after two years of war! In the Wilderness and thereabouts Hooker lost seventeen thousand men, thirteen guns, and fifteen hundred rounds of cannon ammunition, twenty thousand rifles, three hundred thousand rounds of infantry ammunition. The Army of Northern Virginia lost twelve thousand men.

On the fifth of May Stonewall Jackson was carefully moved from the Wilderness to Guiney's Station. Here was a large old residence--the Chandler house--within a sweep of gra.s.s and trees; about it one or two small buildings. The great house was filled, crowded to its doors with wounded soldiers, so they laid Stonewall Jackson in a rude cabin among the trees. The left arm had been amputated in the field hospital. He was thought to be doing well, though at times he complained of the side which, in the fall from the litter, had been struck and bruised.