The lines went right up northward, as far as that other city--the first one I'd ever seed when I came up from the South with Marse Robert. I recognized it soon as we got back there, and the big river where I'd first heared enemy fire. I'll tell you, Tom, 'twas a hard day's journey up there and back, from one city to t'other, over so much broken ground. I don't believe any other horse could have done it--no, not Skylark hisself. When we got back at night, I'd get a rub and a feed and then I'd sleep through enemy shellfire, horses coming and going-- anything.
The enemy shells was likely to fall anywhere and any time. Our headquarters was in the yard of a house a little ways outside the city, jest 'longside a river. It belonged to an old lady who was an invalid and couldn't get about much at all. She was real pleased to have Marse Robert and his officers, and did all she could for them. But 'course Marse Robert didn't live in the house; he had the tents put up in the yard, same's he'd always done everywheres else. He'd had the same old tent ever since I'd been with him, and I remember 'twas 'bout this time that he finally agreed that it had got so battered and full of holes he'd have to get another one. The stables was comfortable 'nuff, but you never knowed when the shells'd start coming over. Everyone got used to 'em after a time and jest took no notice, though I can recall one particular night when we was all led out in the pouring rain and taken a fair ways off, on account of they'd begun dropping a little too close.
Another day, when Marse Robert and me was riding out to the lines, we'd come a ways out of town when he stopped to talk to a little girl tending a baby beside a garden gate. An enemy shell fell in the field nearby, but this little girl took no notice of it at all. Marse Robert asked her who she was and whose baby it was, and when she'd told him he told her to go back home and take the baby to a safer place.
We often came under fire, of course, riding up and down the lines. Marse Robert never took no notice on our 'count, but he was quick 'nuff to tell off anyone else, officers or men, if he reckoned they was risking theirselves unnecessarily. I remember one time when he stopped to talk to some of our fellas that had their guns set up in the yard of a house we'd taken over. 'Course, soon's they knowed he was there, all the soldiers come a-crowding round to see him, and talk to him, too, if'n they could get the chance. The Blue men must 'a been able to spot us, 'cause pretty soon their shells started falling close around. Marse Robert told the men to leave him and go to the rear; they warn't to expose theirselves to unnecessary danger. So off they went. I stayed where I'd been hitched, of course, and from where I was I seed Marse Robert walk acrost the yard and bend down. There was a fledgling sparrow had fallen on the ground, and he picked it up and put it back in the nest. When he came back to unhitch me, be patted my neck and muttered something 'bout me being of more value than many sparrows. Well, I thought, I should jest 'bout hope I was; and I reckoned at that rate maybe we could hightail it out of the way of the durned shells. But Marse Robert always took care not to let anyone see we was in any hurry to do that.
There was plenty of fighting all that summer--more'n I can recall now--but the time I 'specially remember is the battle we fought after the big bang--the biggest bang of the lot. I still don't know what made it. 'Twas well on into the night--early morning, in fact--and I was sound asleep at headquarters. When the bang came, 'twas a long ways off, but it fair shook the ground, real heavy: a monstrous great bang! That was no gun made that. I'd never heared the like. All the other horses was awake and real scared with the shaking. We couldn't none of us tell what to make of it, you see. Real soon nearly all of us was saddled up and led out. All the same, 'twas some time before headquarters started into action. I guess Marse Robert was waiting for news of what had happened. When a mounted officer finally reached us, Marse Robert listened to what he had to tell him and then gave out his orders right away.
Far as I could make out from this officer's horse, the Blue men had somehow or other managed to blow a great hole--kind of a huge pit--right in the middle of our lines on t'other side of the river, 'bout a couple of mile from where we was at. A lot of our men had been killed, and now the enemy was doing their best to fight their way through the gap. I couldn't make it out at all, but anyways I didn't have long to wait around thinking 'bout it, 'cause Marse Robert and me set off right away, entirely by ourselves. Everywhere was soldiers staring and talking and trying to make out what was going on. When we got to Red Shirt's headquarters, we found he'd already left to get his fellas together, so me and Marse Robert followed after him. 'Twas all a jumble and a confusion, but after a while we got out of town into the open, and then we came to a place where we could actually see this here hole the enemy had made. 'Twas as big as the field out here, Tom--bigger, I reckon-- and a great mass of thick smoke hanging over it. There was fighting all around--bursting shells and musket fire--but so much confusion that you couldn't tell which was our men and which was the enemy.
There was a young officer with Marse Robert--one of Red Shirt's headquarters people. Marse Robert told him that at all costs the Blue men had got to be stopped and we must go back and hurry our fellas forward. We went back, but the men was already coming up as fast as they could, so Marse Robert rode me off to a house a little ways from where the hole was and waited to see what would happen.
From what I could make out, there must 'a been thousands of Blue men crowded into that there hole, ready to beat us to pieces and go on into the city. They'd begun to spread out either side, too, along our lines. But by this time our guns had started firing and that was holding 'em up. We was so close to the hole, Marse Robert and me, that we could see the Blue men moving 'bout and getting ready to come on. Suddenly they began jumping down and running forward, and jest at the same moment our fellas advanced to meet them.
Well, you couldn't hardly see what was going on for the smoke and the dirt throwed up by the shellfire. That was as near as I ever come to going wild in a battle, I reckon. If'n I could, I'd have bolted, 'cause Marse Robert had gone up to the top of the house, where he could see best, and there was no one near us horses at all.
The fighting went on a long time, and no one could tell who was winning. Marse Robert never moved from where he was, and I reckoned he meant to stay till either we'd driven the Blue men out or else we hadn't no more soldiers left. 'Twas the middle of the afternoon afore things died down. Big bunches of the enemy had begun to surrender, and the rest had come out of the hole and skedaddled back to their own lines. When Marse Robert finally came down and mounted me again, I could tell at once't that he was wore out. But he was mighty cheered, too, that we'd beat 'em back. He must 'a been real anxious for hours--maybe more anxious than he'd ever been in a battle before. I reckon we'd never come so close to being beat.
We never rode right up to that big hole, Marse Robert and me. But Marse Taylor did, after the fighting, and later on his horse told me 'twas the worst thing he'd ever seed in his life. There was guns and weapons and bodies all laying together, half in and half out of the earth. The whole bottom of the crater, as they called it, was covered with dead men, this horse said. He'd thought he'd got used to bad things, but he hoped he'd never see nothing like that again.
I still don't know jest how the enemy blowed that there crater, but we'd evidently made them give up the idea, 'cause they never tried nothing like it again.
Old Pete came back to the Army in the fall. I was surprised to see him, 'cause I'd figured he must 'a died after being shot in the wilderness battle. But now he 'peared to be jest the same as ever in his spirits, though the wound had left him lookin' awful bad. He sure was a real tough soldier, even if he was given to argufying, and I reckon Marse Robert was glad to see him again.
The winter came on, but still there was no let-up in the siege. Conditions in the trenches was bad as could be, and 'twas plain 'nuff that the men was getting 'most nothing to eat; they all looked mighty puny--jest skin and bones, a lot of 'em. Us horses didn't do no better. Many a time I'd have to make the best of a night in stables with less'n half a fe
ed in my stomach. But 'twas worse for the horses and mules on the lines. There was a plenty died, Tom, I can tell you.
There was mighty little to burn, too. We 'most never seed a fire when we was riding down the lines. All the wood there was had been burned up long ago. The men got real filthy, too, living in them soaking-wet trenches and dugouts. There was no soap, and 'course they couldn't heat no water for washing. I could tell how much it upset Marse Robert to see them in sech a bad way. He'd stop to talk to groups of fellas here and there, and one'd say, "I got no boots, General," or, "I ain't had a meal in two days, General." "Oh, Traveller," he said to me once't, when we was riding away from a bunch of 'em on the lines, "what can I do? Where's it going to end? Jest got to go on, that's all." He was beginning to look grayer hisself and a durned sight older, and often at the end of a day I could tell from the way he dismounted that he was wore out. 'Twas a strange life. Sometimes we'd be out all day on the lines in all sorts o' wind and weather, and then again we'd ride up to the big city and spend a few hours at Marse Robert's home with the old lady. Even in them days she was a cripple: she was in a rolling chair. She used to do all she could to persuade Marse Robert to give hisself an easier life. 'Twas her and Major Taylor between them that finally got Marse Robert to agree, for his own sake, to move headquarters out of tents and into a house with stables. This house belonged to a man called Mr. Turnbull and 'twas 'bout two mile outside the city where the Blue men had blowed the hole in the ground. I felt better when we'd moved in there. Everyone was more comfortable, horses and men.
Not that there was any more to eat. People used to send Marse Robert presents of food, but he'd never accept them. I heared him tell Colonel Marshall one day that he wouldn't eat any blamed thing that was better'n what the men had. As for the horses, I know 'twas a hard business for the Army to keep any cavalry together at all. Every scrap of fodder was gone and the horses had to be sent miles away, all over the country, jest to find 'nuff to survive.
Things went on like this for months, till at last the leaves started to show on the trees again and the weather took a turn for the better. I was glad to see the spring coming, 'cause I knowed it would bring on the time when we'd settle with the Blue men once't and for all. Oh, sure, I knowed it was going to be a hard 'nuff job, but even I didn't foresee what it would cost us or what a desperate business 'twas going to turn out.
XIX
Late March, 1865. The tattered, starving Army of Northern Virginia, reduced to some 50,000 effectives and those irreplaceable, with no lack of men ailing from prolonged exposure to mud and rain, of men carrying in their pockets letters from wives or parents telling of conditions at home grown desperate on account of their long absence, continues to hold forty miles of half-flooded earthworks against the overwhelming numbers of General Grant. With the irretrievable loss of the Shenandoah Valley in early March, General Sheridan's cavalry have perforce become free--spreading destruction on their way--to join the Union forces besieging Richmond and Petersburg. The Confederate troops are so thin on the ground and so short of ammunition that if it were not for the dread with which their past fighting power has filled the hearts of the enemy, the line would long ago have been broken. General Lee, whose courage and endurance continue to inspire his men as no other general's since Alexander, has far too much military discernment to be under any delusion. Both his men and his horses are worn out and he has no reserves whatever. With the ending of winter, either the breaking of his line or the turning of his flank-- most probably, he thinks, the southern, Petersburg flank--is inevitable. "You must not be surprised if calamity befalls us," he wrote in early February to the Secretary of War. His advice that he should withdraw the army westward into mountain terrain, where it could subsist indefinitely as a fighting force, having been rejected by President Davis with the insistence that at all costs Richmond must be held to the last, what can he do but put his trust in God, set a daily example of staunchness and valor to officers and men and await what his young aide, Colonel Taylor, has termed "the dread contingency"?
My goodness, Tom, I never 'spected anything like this, did you? 'Course, I'd seed they was building a new house for Marse Robert, but I never dreamt part of it was going to be this big new stable for me. I can't get over it! Marse Robert led me in hisself s'afternoon and made sure everything was jest the way it ought to be. Ain't it mighty fine? Not a draft in the place, and Marse Robert's quarters right 'longside! I've never been so well stabled in all my born days, and all I can say is I hope Marse Robert feels the same. Do you know what he said when he brung me in here this evening? He said it was going to be real fine to be under the same roof with his old friend. 'Going to make a lot of difference to both of us, these new quarters are, 'cause the truth is we're neither of us as young as we was and we can both do with some extra comfort. Why don't you settle down there in the straw and make yourself at home? This is a sight better'n them lines I was telling you 'bout--the lines we was holding opposite the Blue men in the siege, with next to nothing to eat and shells likely to start dropping any time of the day or night. Yes, we've certainly seed some hard times, me and Marse Robert, so maybe we're entitled to feel we've earned a home even as good as this 'un.
I promised to tell you, didn't I, 'bout our very last campaign, after the siege ended? Well, an' that sure was a bad time--'bout the worst I can remember, but the way it finally ended was jest bout the most surprising thing that happened in all the years me and Marse Robert's been together. You see, Marse Robert had decided--I knowed he had--that by this time we'd all done more'n 'nuff of this here fighting, and that now the spring was coming we had to finish those people off once and for all. Yeah, but that warn't so easy done--no, not even by Marse Robert hisself. You see, first of all 'twas a question of picking the best place--where to go about it. That's what us soldiers call strategy, you know, Tom--picking the right time and place to fight. Well, you've done it yourself, han't you? And that spring we had to try a whole lot of times, and a whole lot of places, looking for the right one.
I remember--oh, yeah, I remember this all right--being woke up in the pitch dark at that there Turnbull headquarters of ours and being saddled up by Dave. What the heck's coming now, I thought; some shenanigans, I'll lay. Well, if'n I'm not used to that by now I don't know a horse in the Army that is. I could make out Marse Robert standing outside the door, all dressed and ready, with Marse Taylor and a lot more. I was led up, he mounted me and off we rode in the dark.
We didn't go all that far, though; we went jest acrost to a hill behind our lines, where another of our commanders, General Gordon, was stood waiting for Marse Robert. Down in front of us the trenches was crowded with our fellas, getting ready to attack. I could feel it. Before an attack, you see, Tom, there's always something--well, real uneasy--in the air, and the horses can feel it as much as the men. But this was the most silent thing I'd ever knowed. 'Twas all along of doing it at night, I guess; the Blue men didn't know what we was up to and we didn't want em to find out.
Then, away off in the dark, some fella fired a gun, and that was the signal for our men to advance. There was plenty of yelling and firing started up then all right, but me and Marse Robert, we jest stood and waited where we was at, As it growed light, you could make out the fighting, way out at a kind of fort on the Blue men's line, but as Marse Robert still didn't move, I figured it couldn't be going too well. I could feel as much, too, from the look of the officers coming back to report to Marse Robert, and the way they spoke. We stayed where we was about four hours, I guess, till finally Marse Robert, he give the order to stop the fighting and come back. But my land! Tom, coming back, there was a power of our poor fellas knocked over by musket fire. The Blue men had brung up reinforcements, you see, and they was jest too many for us. Oh, yeah, they was fine and dandy as long as we was going t'other way. 'Parently this was one time when we hadn't been able to beat 'em like we usually did.
So that was the first time. Natcherly, Marse Robert was disappointed and I could tel
l, like I always could, that he felt sad and upset. I remember how we rode back, him and me, almost by ourselves, and how we met young Marse Rob and Marse Rooney coming to meet us. Soon as he seed them, he smiled and showed how glad he was. He did his best to act like there was nothing gone wrong; thanked them for coming so quick, and said he was sorry to have to tell them their cavalry wouldn't be needed after all. It didn't fool Marse Rob's horse none, though. "My stars, Traveller!" he says to me when we was side by side. What the heck's gone wrong?" I told him I reckoned our attack must a failed. Oh, well," he says, "then 1 guess we shan't have to be killed jest yet, shall we?"
There warn't very long to wait till the second time. Best as I can recall, it come 'bout four days later, and it happened a good way to the west, outside the city. 'Twas a real nasty morning, pouring with rain, and Marse Robert rode me out--I remember the mud over my fetlocks; jiminy, how I hate deep mud!--to meet General Ringlets. 'Course, I couldn't understand all they said to each other, but 'fore Marse Robert and me rode back to headquarters, I'd got it that General Ringlets had been ordered to attack those people. So this'll be it, I thought. Ringlets'll hammer them to bits, like he did with his charge that time in the big battle up north.
All the same, Marse Robert didn't seem in a very good humor. I couldn't tell why; but 'course, he always knowed everything, and maybe he'd already figured it out that we might not be able to finish the Blue men off this time--'cause the way things turned out, we didn't.
Next morning it was still raining, and out we went, Marse Robert and me--I remember how hungry I was, and wondering whether Marse Robert felt the same; there was never more'n half of nothing to eat, you know, Tom--to see how Ringlets was getting on. There was a whole chance of fighting going on up ahead, but I couldn't make things out all that clearly. We didn't meet Ringlets, but Marse Robert told some of the other generals they was to go on and attack. He was jest finishing the talking when our fellas started in on their own account--that's how keen they was! This time we did go forward, Marse Robert and me, 'cause we could see the Blue men dashing away like crazy acrost a little creek. We came up to the creek and I remember we come on a whole crowd of enemy prisoners there. Marse Robert walks me over to 'em. There was one officer bleeding something terrible; he couldn't hardly stand. "Are you badly wounded, Major? "asks Marse Robert. "Yes, sir," answers the major, "I figure I am." "Oh, I'm sorry. I am sorry, Major," says Marse Robert. Then he turns to the fellas in charge of the prisoners and says, "Be sure and take good care of him, gentlemen." It reminded me of that time after the battle up north, when that other enemy fella had been shouting out, "Hurrah for the Union!"