Books: The Red Acorn
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John McElroy >> The Red Acorn
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"Poor thing," said Rachel sympathetically. "This is only the
beginning. Heaven knows what we won't have to go through with
before the sun rises."
She tried to mount, but her watery garments were too much for
her agility, and with the wet skirts fettering her limbs she began
toiling painfully over the spongy, plowed ground, in search of
a stump or a rock. She thought she saw many around her, but on
approaching one after another found they were only large cotton
plants, with a boll or two of ungathered cotton on them, which
aided the darkness in giving them their deceptive appearance. She
prevented herself from traveling in a circle, by remembering this
aptitude of benighted travelers, and keeping her eye steadily fixed
on a distant camp-fire. When she at last came to the edge of the
field she had to lean against the fence for some minutes before she
could recover from her fatigue sufficiently to climb upon it. While
she sat for a minute there she heard some cocks, at a neighboring
farm-house, crow the turn of night.
"It is midnight," she said feverishly, "and I have only begun the
journey. Now let every nerve and muscle do its utmost."
She rode along the fence until she came to an opening which led
into what appeared in the darkness to be another cotton field, but
proved to be a worn-out one, long ago abandoned to the rank-growing
briars, which clung to and tore her skirts, and seamed the mare's
delicate skin with bleeding furrows. The flinching brute pressed
onward, in response to her mistress's encouragement, but the progress
was grievously slow.
Presently Rachel began to see moving figures a little way ahead
of her, and hear voices in command. She eralized that she was
approaching the forces moving to the attack on the Union right.
There was something grotesque, weird, even frightful in the sounds
and the aspect of the moving masses and figures, but she at last
made out that they were batteries, regiments and mounted men. She
decided that her best course was to mingle with and move along with
them, until she could get a chance to ride away in advance. For
hours that seemed weeks she remained entangled in the slow-moving
mass, whose bewildering vagaries of motion were as trying to the
endurance of her steed as they were exasperating to her own impatience.
Occasionally she caught glimpses of the Union camp-fires in the
distance, that, low and smoldering, told of the waning night, and
she would look anxiously over her left shoulder for a hint of the
coming of the dreaded dawn. Her mare terrified her with symptoms
of giving out.
At last she saw an unmistakable silvery break in the eastern
clouds. Half-frantic she broke suddenly out of the throng by an
abrupt turn to the right, and lashing her mare savagely, galloped
where a graying in the dense darkness showed an opening between
two cedar thickets, that led to the picket-fires, half a mile away.
The mare's hoofs beat sonorously on the level limestone floor,
which there frequently rises through the shallow soil and starves
out the cedar.
"Halt! Go back," commanded a hoarse voice in front of her, which
was accompanied with the clicking of a gunlock. "Ye can't pass
heah."
"Lemme pass, Mister," she pleaded. "I'm on'y a gal, with medicine
fur my mammy, an' I'm powerful anxious ter git home."
"No, ye can't git out heah. Orders are strict; besides, ef ye did
the Yankees 'd cotch ye. They're jest out thar."
She became aware that there were heavy lines of men lying near,
and fearing to say another word, she turned and rode away to the
left. She became entagled with a cavalry company moving toward
the extreme Union right, and riding with it several hundred yards,
turned off into a convenient grove just as the light began to be
sufficient to distinguish her from a trooper. She was now, she was
sure, outside of the Rebel lines, but she had gone far to the south,
where the two lines were wide apart. The Union fifes and drums,
now sounding what seemed an unsuspicous and cheerful reveille, were
apparently at least a mile away. It was growing lighter rapidly,
and every passing moment was fraught with the weightiest urgency.
She concentrated all her energies for a supreme effort, and lashed
her mare forward over the muddy cotton-field. The beast's hoofs
sank in the loose red loam, as if it were quicksand, and her pace
was maddeningly slow. At last Rachel came in sight of a Union
camp at the edge of a cedar thicket. The arms were stacked, the
men were cooking breakfast, and a battery of cannon standing near
had no horses attached.
Rachel beat the poor mare's flanks furiously, and shouted.
"Turn out! The Rebels are coming! The Rebels are coming!"
Her warning came too late. Too late, also, came that of the pickets,
who were firing their guns and rushing back to camp before an awful
wave of men that had rolled out of the cedars on the other side of
the cotton field.
A hundred boisterous drums were now making the thickets ring with
the "long roll." Rachel saw the men in front of her leave their
coffee-making, rush to the musket stacks and take their places in
line. In another minute they were ordered forward to the fence in
front of them, upon which they rested their muskets. Rachel rode
through their line and turned around to look. The broad cotton
field was covered with solid masses of Rebels, rushing forward with
their peculiar fierce yell.
"Fire!" shouted the Colonel in front of her. The six field-pieces
to her right split her ears with their crash. A thousand muskets
blazed out a fire that withered the first line of the advancing
foe. Another crash, and the Rebels had answered with musketry and
artillery, that tore the cedars around her, sent the fencerails
flying into the air, and covered the ground with blue-coats. Her
faithful mare shied, caught her hoof in a crack in the limestone,
and fell with a broken leg.
So began that terrible Wednesday, December 31, 1862.
Bragg's plan of battle was very simple. Rosencrans had stretched
out a long thin wing through the cedars to the right of the pike.
At the pike it was very strong, but two miles away it degenerated
into scattered regiments, unskilfully disposed. Bragg threw against
these three or four to one, with all the fury of the Southern soldier
in the onset. The line was crumbled, and before noon crushed back
to the pike.
Rachel disengaged herself from her fallen steed, and leaning against a
sapling, watched the awful collision. She forgot the great danger
in the fascination of the terrible spectacle. She thought she
had seen men scale the whole gamut of passion, but their wildest
excesses were tame and frothy beside this ecstacy of rage in the fury
of battle. The rustic Southerners whom she had seen at ball-play,
the simple-hearted Northerners whom she had alarmed at their
coffee-making, were now transformed into furies mad with the delirium
of slaughter, and heedless of their own lives in the frenzy of
taking those of others.
"You had better run back, young woman," said some one touching her
elbow. "The whole line's going to fall back. We're flanked."
A disorderly stream of men, fragments of the shattered right,
caught her in its rush, and she was borne back to the open fields
lying along the pike. There, as when a turbulent river empties
into a bay, the force of the current subsided, and she was dropped
like silt. The cowardly ones, hatless and weaponless, ran off
toward the pike, but the greater portion halted, formed in line,
called for their comrades to join them, and sent for more cartridges.
Almost dropping with fatigue, Rachel made her way to a pile of
cracker-boxes by an Osage-orange hedge, on a knoll, and sat down.
Some fragments of hard-bread, dropped on the trampled sod while
rations were being issued, lay around. She was so hungry that she
picked up one or two that were hardly soiled, and nibbled them.
The dreadful clamor of battle grew louder continually. The musketry
had swollen into a sullen roar, with the artillery pulsating high
above it. Crashing vollies of hundreds of muskets fired at once,
told of new regiments joining in the struggle. Rebel brigades
raised piercing treble yells as they charged across the open fields
against the Union positions. The latter responded with deep-lunged
cheers, as they hurled their assailants back. Clouds of slowly
curling smoke rose above thickets filled with maddened men, firing
into one another's breasts. Swarms of rabbits and flocks of birds
dashed out in terror from the dark coverts in which they had hitherto
found security.
No gallantry could avail against such overwhelming numbers as
assailed the Union right. The stream of disorganized men flowing
back from the thickets became wider and swifter every minute; every
minute, too, the din of the conflict came closer; every minute the
tide of battle rolled on to regiments lying nearer the pike.
A Surgeon with a squad of stretcher-bearers came up to where Rachel
was sitting.
"Pull down some of those boxes, and fix a place to lay the Colonel
till we can make other arrangements," said a familiar voice. Rachel
looked up, and with some difficulty reconciled a grimy-faced man
in torn clothes with the trim Hospital Surgeon she had known.
"Can that be you, Dr. Denslow?" she said.
He had equal difficulty in recognizing her.
"Is it possible that it is you, Miss Bond?" he said in amazement,
after she had spoken to him again. "Yes, this is I, or as much as
is left of me. And here," and his voice trembled, "is about all
that is left of the regiment. The rest are lying about the roots
of those accursed cedars, a full mile from here."
"And Harry Glen--where is he?" she said, rising hurriedly from the
boxes and passing along the line of stretchers, scanning each face.
A new pain appeared in the Doctor's face, as he watched her.
"You'll not find him there," he said. "The last I saw of him
he was forming a handful of the regiment that were still on their
feet, to retake cannon which the Rebels had captured. I was starting
off with the Colonel here, when they dashed away."
"Come," he said, after making some temporary provisions for the
comfort of his wounded. "You must get away from here as quickly
as possible. I fear the army is badly defeated, and it may be a
rout soon. You must get away before the rush begins, for then it
will be terrible."
He took her over the pike, and across it to where some wagons were
standing. As he was about to put Rachel in one of these their
attention was arrested by an officer, apparently acting as Provost
Marshal, dragging from behind a huge rock a Lieutenant who was
skulking there. They were too far away to hear what was said, but
not so far that they could not recognize the skulker as Lieutenant
Jacob Alspaugh. The Provost Marshal apparently demanded the
skulker's name, and wrote it in a book. Alspaugh seemed to give
the information, and accompanied it with a lugubrious pointint to
a bandage around his knee. The Provost Marshal stooped and took the
handkerchief off, to find that not even the cloth of the pantaloons
had been injured. He contemptuously tore the straps from Alspaugh's
shoulders, and left him.
"The rascal's cowardice is like the mercy of God," said Denslow,
"for it endureth forever."
He put Rachel in the wagon, and ordered the driver to start at once
for Nashville with her. She pressed his hand, as they separated
with fatigue and grief.
How had it been faring all this time with Harry Glen and those with
him?
The fierce wave had dashed against the regiment early in the
morning, and although the first fire received from the Rebels made
gaps in the ranks where fifty men fell, it did not recoil a step,
but drove its assailants back with such slaughter that their dead,
lying in the open ground over which they crossed, were grimly compared
by Abe Bolton to "punkins layin' in a field where the corn's been
cut off."
Then the fight settled into a murderous musketry duel across the
field, in which the ranks on both sides melted away like frost in
the sun. In a few minutes all the field officers were down, and the
only Captain that remained untouched took command of the regiment,
shouting to Harry Glen at the same moment to take command of the
two companies on the right, whose Captains, and Lietenants had
fallen. Two guns escaping from the crush at the extreme right,
had galloped down, and opened gallantly to assist the regiment.
Almost instantly horses and men went down under the storm of bullets.
An Aide broke through the cedars behind.
"Fall back--fall back, for God's sake!" he shouted. "The Rebels
have got around the right, and will cut you off."
"Fall back, boys," shouted the Captain in command, "but keep
together, listen to orders, and load as you go." The same instant
he fell with a ball through his chest.
"Sergeant Glen, you're in command of the regiment, now," shouted
a dozen voices.
The Lieutenant of the battery--a mere boy--ran up to Harry. A
stream of blood on his jacket matched its crimson trimmings.
"Don't go off and leave my guns, after I've helped you. Do not,
for the love of Heaven! I've saved them so far. Bring them off
with you."
Harry looked inquiringly around upon the less than one hundred
survivors, who gathered about him, and had heard the passionate
appeal. Every face was set with mortal desperation. An Irish boy
on the left was kissing a cross which he had drawn from his bosom.
The tears which strong men shed in wild fits of rage were rolling
down the cheeks of Edwards, Bolton, and others.
"I don't want to live always!" shouted Kent with an oath; "let's
take the ----- guns!"
"I don't want no better place to die than right here!" echoed Abe,
still more savagely profane. "Le's have the guns, or sink into
hell getting 'em!"
The remnant of the Rebel regiment had broken cover and rushed for
the guns.
"Attention!" shouted Harry. "Fix bayonets!"
The sharp steel clashed on the muzzles.
"FORWARD, CHARGE!"
For one wild minute shining steel at arm's length did its awful
work. Then three-score Rebels fled back to their leafy lair, and
as many blue-coats with drew into the cedars, pulling the guns
after them.
"Pick up the Lieutenant, there, some of you who can do a little
lifting," said Kent, as they came to where the boy-artillerist
lay dead. "This prod in my shoulder's spoilt my lifting for some
time. Lay him on the gun and we'll take himj back with us. He
deserves it, for he was game clear through. Harry, that fellow
that gave you that beauty-mark on the temple with his saber got
his discharge from the Rebel army just afterwards, on the point of
Abe's bayonet."
"Is that so? Did Abe get struck at all?"
"Only a whack over the nose with the butt of a gun, which will
doubtless improve his looks. Any change would."
"Guess we can go back now with some peace and comfort," said Abe,
coming up, and alluding to the cessation of the firing in their
front. "That last round took all the fight out of them hell-hounds
across the field."
"Some of you had better go over to the camp there and get our axes.
We'll have to cut a road through the cedars if we take these guns
off," said Harry, tieing a handkershief around the gaping saber
wound in his temple. "The rest of you get around to the right,
and keep a sharp look out for the flank."
So they worked their way back, and a little after noon came to the
open fields by the pike.
-----
As the wagon rolled slowly down the pike toward Nashville Rachel,
in spite of anxiety, fell asleep. Some hours later she was awakened
by the driver shaking her rudely.
"Wake up!" he shouted, "ef ye value yer life!"
"Where are we?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.
"At Stewart's Creek," answered the driver, "an' all o' Wheeler's
cavalry are out thar' in them woods."
She looked out. She could see some miles ahead of her, and as
far as she could see the road was filled with wagons moving toward
Nashville. A sharp spurt of firing on the left attracted her
attention, and she saw a long wave of horsemen ride out of the
woods, and charge the wagon-guards, who made a sharp resistence,
but at length fled before overwhelming numbers. The teamsters,
at the first sight of the formidable line, began cutting their
wheel-mules loose, and escaping upon them. Rachel's teamster
followed their example.
"The off-mule's unhitcht; jump on him, an' skip," he shouted to
her as he vanished up the pike.
The Rebels were shooting down the mules and such teamsters as
remained. Some dismounted, and with the axes each wagon carried,
chopped the spokes until the wagon fell, while others ran along
and started fires in each. In a little while five hundred wagons
loaded with rations, clothing, amunition and stores were blazing
furiously. Their work done, the cavalry rode off toward Nashville
in search of other trains.
Rachel leaped from the wagon, before the Rebels approached, and
took refuge behind a large tree, whence she saw her wagon share
the fate of the rest. When the cavalry disappeared, she came out
again into the road and walked slowly up it, debating what she
could do. She was rejoiced to meet her teamster returning. He had
viewed the occurence from a prudent distance, and being kindly-natured
had decided to return to her help, as soon as it could be done
without risk.
He told her that there was a wagon up the pike a little ways with
a woman in it, to which he would conduct her, and they would go
back to the army in front of Murfreesboro.
"It seems a case of 'twixt the devil and the deep sea," he said,
despairingly. "At any rate we can't stay out here, and my experience
is that it is always safest where there is the biggest crowd."
They found the wagon with the woman in it. Its driver had bolted
irrevocably, so Rachel's friend assumed the reins. It was slow
work making their way back through the confused mass, but Rachel
was lucky enough to sleep through most of it. When she awoke the
next morning the wagon was still on the pike, but in the center of
the army, which filled all the open space round-about.
Everywhere were evidences of the terrible work of the day before,
and of preparations for renewing it. The soldiers, utterly exhausted
by the previous days' frightful strain, lay around on the naked
ground, sleeping, or in a half-waking torpor.
An officer rode up to the wagon. "There seems to be some flour on
this wagon," said the voice of Dr. Denslow. "Well, that may stay
the boys' stomachs until we can get something better. Go on a
little ways, driver."
"O, Doctor Denslow," called out Rachel, as the wagon stopped again,
"what is the news?"
"You here again?" said the Doctor, recognizing the voice: "well
that is good news. When I heard about Wheeler's raid on our trains
I was terribly alarmed as to your fate. This relieves me much."
"But how about the army?"
"Well it seems to have been a case of hammer and anvil yesterday,
in which both suffered pretty badly, but the hammer go much the
worst of it. We are in good shape now to give them some more, if
they want it, which so far they have not indicated very strongly.
Here, Sergeant Glen, is a couple barrels of flour, which you can
take to issue to your regiment."
Had not the name been called Rachel could never have recognized
her former elegant lover in the salwart man with tattered uniform,
swollen face, and head wrapped in a bloody bandage, who came to
the wagon with a squad to receive the flour.
A tumult of emotions swept over her, but superior to them all was
the feminine feeling that she could not endure to have Harry see
her in her present unprepossessing plight.
"Don't mention my name before those men," she said to Dr. Denslow,
when he came near again.
"Very good," he answered. "Sit still in the wagon, and nobody
will see you. I will have the wagon driver over to the hospital
presently, with the remainder of the flour, and you can go along."
All the old love seemed to have been out at compound interest, from
the increment that came back to her at the sound of Harry Glen's
voice, now so much deeper, fuller and more masterful than in
the fastidious days of yore. She lifted the smallest corner of
the wagon-cover and looked out. The barrel heads had been beaten
in with stones, and a large cupful of flour issued to each of the
hungry men. They had mixed it up into dough with water from the
ditch, and were baking it before the fire on large flat stones,
which abounded in the vicinity.
"I'll mix up enough for all three of us on this board," she heard
Harry say to Abe and Kent. "With your game arm, Kent, and Abe's
battered eyes, your cooking skill's about gone. You ought to both
of you go to the hospital. You can't do any good, and why expose
yourself for nothing? I've a mind to use my authority and send
you to the hospital under guard."
"You try it if you dare, after my saving your life yesterday,"
said Abe. "I can see well enough yet to shoot toward the Rebels,
and that's all that's necessary."
"I enlisted for the war," said Kent, "and I'm going to stay till
peace is declared. I went into this fight to see it through, and
I'm going to stay until we whhip them if there's a piece of me left
that can wiggle. Bragg's got to acknowledge that I'm the best man
before I'll ever let up on him."
Rachel longed to leap out of the wagon, and do the bread-making
for these clumsy fellows, but pride would not consent.
The dough was browning slowly on the hot stones, but not yet nearly
done, when the spiteful spirits of firing out in front suddenly burst
into a roar, with a crash of artillery. A bugle sounded near.
"Fall in, boys," shouted Harry, springing to his feet, and tearing
off the flakes of dough, which he hastily divided with his comrades.
"Right dress. Right face, forward, file right--march!"
"If there is anything that I despise, it's disturbing a gentleman
at his meals," said Kent, giving the fire a spiteful kick, as he
tucked the bread under his lame arm, took his musket in his other
hand, and started off in the rear of the regiment, accompanied by
the purblind Abe.
Rachel's heart sank, as she saw them move off, but it rose again
when the firing died down as suddenly as it had flamed up.
Soon Dr. Denslow took the wagon off to a cabin on a high bank of
Stone River, which he was using as a hospital.
She called some question to him, as he turned away to direct the
preparation of the flour into food for his patients, when some one
cried out from the interior of the cabin:
"Rachel Bond! Is that you? Come in heah, honey."
She entered, and found Aunt Debby lying on the rude bed of the
former inhabitants of the cabin.
"O my love--my darling--my honey, is that you?" said the elderly
woman, with streaming eyes, reaching out her thin arms to take
Rachel to her heart. "I never expected ter see ye ag'in! But God
is good."
"Aunt Debby, is it possible? Are you hurt, dear?"
"No, not hurt child; on'y killed," she answered with a sweet radiance
on her face.
"Killed? It is not possible."
"Yes, honey, it is possible. It is true. The gates open for me
at last."
"How did it happen?"
"I got through Breckenridge's lines all right, an' reached the
river, but thar was a picket thar, hid behind a tree, and ez he
heered my hoss's feet splash in the ford, he shot me through the
back. An' I didn't get through in time," she added, with the first
shade of melancholy that had yet appeared in her face. "Did YOU?"
"No, I was too late, too."
"An' Jim must've been, too. Hev ye seed him any whar?"
"No," said Rachel, unable to restrain her tears.
"Now, honey, don't cry for me--don't," said Aunt Debby, pulling
the young face down to where she could kiss it. "Hit's jest ez I
want hit. On'y let me know thet Bragg is whipt, an' I die happy."
All day Thursday the two bruised armies lay and confronted each
other, as two bulldogs, which have torn and mangled one another,
will stop for a few minutes, to lick their hurts and glare their
hatred, while they regain breath to carry on the fight.
Friday morning it was the same, but there was a showing of teeth and
a rising fierceness as the day grew older, which was very portentous.
While standing at the door of the cabin Rachel had seen Harry Glen
march down the bank at the head of the regiment, and cross the
ford to the heights in front of Breckenridge. She picked up a
field-glass that lay on a shelf near, and followed the movements
of the force the regiment had joined.
"What d' ye see, honey?" called out Aunt Debby. She was becoming
very fearful that she would die before the victory was won.
"Our people," answered Rachel, "seem to be concentrating in front
of Breckenridge. There must be a division over there. Breckenridge
sees it, and his cannon are firing at our men. He is bringing
men up at the double quick." She stopped, for a spasm of fear in
regard to Harry choked her.
"Go on, honey. What are they doing now?"
"Our men have formed a long line, reaching from the river up to
the woods. They begin to march forward. Breckenridge opens more
guns. They cut lanes through them. Now the infantry begins firing.
A cloud of smoke settles down and hides both sides. I can see no
more. O my God, our men are running. The whole line comes back
out of the smoke, with men dropping at every step. If Harry were
only safely out of there, I'd give my life."
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