Part 3 (1/2)
”Straight ahead, sir; hurrah for Waldron!” responded the soldier, and almost in the same instant fell lifeless with a fresh ball through his head.
”Hurrah for him!” Fitz Hugh answered frantically, plunging on through the underwood. He found Waldron with Colburn, the two conversing tranquilly in their saddles amid hissing bullets and dropping branches.
”Move your regiment forward now,” the brigade commander was saying; ”but halt it in the edge of the wood.”
”Shan't I relieve Gildersleeve if he gets beaten?” asked the subordinate officer eagerly.
”No. The regiments on the left will help him out. I want your men and Peck's for the fight on top of the hill. Of course the rebels will try to retake it; then I shall call for you.”
Fitz Hugh now approached and said, ”Colonel, the Seventh has attacked in force.”
”Good!” answered Waldron, with that sweet smile of his which thanked people who brought him pleasant news. ”I thought I heard his fire.
Gahogan will be on their right rear in ten minutes. Then we shall get the ridge. Ride back now to Major Bradley, and tell him to bring his Napoleons through the wood, and set two of them to sh.e.l.ling the enemy's centre. Tell him my idea is to amuse them, and keep them from changing front.”
Again Fitz Hugh galloped off as before on a comfortably safe errand, safer at all events than many errands of that day. ”This man is sparing my life,” he said to himself. ”Would to G.o.d I knew how to spare his!”
He found Bradley lunching on a gun caisson, and delivered his orders.
”Something to do at last, eh?” laughed the rosy-cheeked youngster. ”The smallest favors thankfully received. Won't you take a bite of rebel chicken, Captain? This rebellion must be put down. No? Well, tell the Colonel I am moving on, and John Brown's soul not far ahead.”
When Fitz Hugh returned to Waldron he found him outside of the wood, at the base of the long incline which rose into the rebel position. About the slope were scattered prostrate forms, most numerous near the bottom, some crawling slowly rearward, some quiescent. Under the brow of the ridge, decimated and broken into a mere skirmish line sheltered in knots and singly, behind rocks and knolls, and bushes, lay the Fourteenth Regiment, keeping up a steady, slow fire. From the edge above, smokily dim against a pure, blue heaven, answered another rattle of musketry, incessant, obstinate, and spiteful. The combatants on both sides were lying down; otherwise neither party could have lasted ten minutes. From Fitz Hugh's point of view not a Confederate uniform could be seen. But the smoke of their rifles made a long gray line, which was disagreeably visible and permanent; and the sharp _whit! whit!_ of their bullets continually pa.s.sed him, and cheeped away in the leaf.a.ge behind.
”Our men can't get on another inch,” he ventured to say to his commander. ”Wouldn't it be well for me to ride up and say a cheering word?”
”Every battle consists largely in waiting,” replied Waldron thoughtfully. ”They have undoubtedly brought up a reserve to face Thomas. But when Gahogan strikes the flank of the reserve, we shall win.”
”I wish you would take shelter,” begged Fitz Hugh. ”Everything depends on your life.”
”My life has been both a help and a hurt to my fellow-creatures,” sighed the brigade commander. ”Let come what will to it.”
He glanced upward with an expression of profound emotion; he was evidently fighting two battles, an outward and an inward one.
Presently he added, ”I think the musketry is increasing on the left.
Does it strike you so?”
He was all eagerness again, leaning forward with an air of earnest listening, his face deeply flushed and his eye brilliant. Of a sudden the combat above rose and swelled into higher violence. There was a clamor far away--it seemed nearly a mile away--over the hill. Then the nearer musketry--first Thomas's on the shoulder of the ridge, next Gildersleeve's in front--caught fire and raged with new fury.
Waldron laughed outright. ”Gahogan has reached them,” he said to one of his staff who had just rejoined him. ”We shall all be up there in five minutes. Tell Colburn to bring on his regiment slowly.”
Then, turning to Fitz Hugh, he added, ”Captain, we will ride forward.”
They set off at a walk, now watching the smoking brow of the eminence, now picking their way among dead and wounded. Suddenly there was a shout above them and a sudden diminution of the firing; and looking upward they saw the men of the Fourteenth running confusedly toward the summit.
Without a word the brigade commander struck spurs into his horse and dashed up the long slope at a run, closely followed by his enemy and aid. What they saw when they overtook the straggling, running, panting, screaming pellmell of the Fourteenth was victory!
The entire right wing of the Confederates, attacked on three sides at once, placed at enormous disadvantage, completely outgeneraled, had given way in confusion, was retreating, breaking, and flying. There were lines yet of dirty gray or b.u.t.ternut; but they were few, meagre, fluctuating, and recoiling, and there were scattered and scurrying men in hundreds. Three veteran and gallant regiments had gone all to wreck under the shock of three similar regiments far more intelligently directed. A strong position had been lost because the heroes who held it could not perform the impossible feat of forming successively two fresh fronts under a concentric fire of musketry. The inferior brain power had confessed the superiority of the stronger one.
On the victorious side there was wild, clamorous, fierce exultation. The hurrying, shouting, firing soldiers, who noted their commander riding among them, swung their rifles or their tattered hats at him, and screamed ”Hurrah!” No one thought of the Confederate dead underfoot, nor of the Union dead who dotted the slope behind. ”What are you here for, Colonel?” shouted rough old Gildersleeve, one leg of his trousers dripping blood. ”We can do it alone.”
”It is a battle won,” laughed Fitz Hugh, almost wors.h.i.+ping the man whom he had come to slay.
”It is a battle won, but not used,” answered Waldron. ”We haven't a gun yet, nor a flag. Where is the cavalry? Why isn't Stilton here? He must have got afoul of the enemy's horse, and been obliged to beat it off.