Part 44 (1/2)

The dull red of the July sun was just coloring the sky with its flame when the second and third divisions crossed Bull Run at Sudley's Ford and began their swift descent upon the rear of the unsuspecting Southern army.

As the sun burst above the hills, a circle of white smoke suddenly curled away from a cannon's mouth above the Stone Bridge and slowly rose in the still, clear morning air. Its sullen roar echoed over the valley.

The gray figures on the hill beyond leaped to their feet and looked.

Only the artillery was engaged and their shots were falling short.

The Confederates appeared indifferent. The action was too obviously a feint. Colonel Evans was holding his regiment for a clearer plan of battle to develop. From the hilltop on which his men lay he scanned with increasing uneasiness the horizon toward the west. In the far distance against the bright Southern sky loomed the dark outline of the Blue Ridge. The heavy background brought out in vivid contrast the woods and fields, hollows and hills of the great Mana.s.sas plain in the foreground.

Suddenly he saw it--a thin cloud of dust rising in the distance. As the rus.h.i.+ng wall of sixteen thousand men emerged from the ”Big Forest,”

through which they had worked their way along the crooked track of a rarely used road, the dust cloud flared in the sky with ominous menace.

Colonel Evans knew its meaning. Beauregard's army had been flanked and the long thin lines of his left wing were caught in a trap. When the first rush of the circling host had swept his little band back from the Stone Bridge Tyler's army would then cross and the three divisions swoop down on the doomed men.

Evans suddenly swung his regiment and two field pieces into a new line of battle facing the onrus.h.i.+ng host and sent his courier flying to General Bee to ask that his brigade be moved instantly to his support.

When the shock came there were five regiments and six little field pieces in the Southern ranks to meet McDowell's sixteen thousand troops.

With deafening roar their artillery opened. The long dense lines of closely packed infantry began their steady firing in volleys. It sounded as if some giant hand had grasped the hot Southern skies and was tearing their blue canvas into strips and shreds.

For an hour Bee's brigade withstood the onslaught of the two Federal divisions--and then began to slowly fall back before the resistless wall of fire. The Union army charged and drove the broken lines a half mile before they rallied.

Tyler's division now swept across the Stone Bridge and the shattered Confederate left wing was practically surrounded by overwhelming odds.

Again the storm burst on the unsupported lines of Bee and drove them three quarters of a mile before they paused.

The charging Federal army had struck something they were destined to feel again on many a field of blood.

General T. J. Jackson had suddenly swung his brigade of five regiments into the breach and stopped the wave of fire.

Bee rushed to Jackson's side.

”General,” he cried pathetically, ”they are beating us back!”

The somber blue eyes of the Virginian gleamed beneath the heavy lashes:

”Then sir, we will give them the bayonet!”

Bee turned to his hard-pressed men and shouted:

”See Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone wall! Let us conquer or die!”

The words had scarcely pa.s.sed his lips when Bee fell, mortally wounded.

Four miles away on the top of a lonely hill sat Beauregard and Johnston befogged in a series of pitiable blunders.

The flanking of the Southern army was a complete and overwhelming surprise. Johnston, unacquainted with the ground, had yielded the execution of the battle to his subordinate.

While the two puzzled generals were waiting on their hill top for their orders of battle to be developed on the right they looked to the left and the whole valley was a boiling h.e.l.l of smoke and dust and flame.

Their left flank had been turned and the triumphant enemy was rolling their long line up in a shroud of flame and death.