The Rock of Chickamauga by Joseph A. Altsheler (best love novels of all time txt) 📖
- Author: Joseph A. Altsheler
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saw increasing numbers of men there. They were beyond the line of battle
and were not obscured by the clouds of smoke. As he stared he saw a
weazened figure under an enormous, broad-brimmed hat, and, although he
could not discern the face at the distance, he knew that it was Slade,
come with a new and perhaps larger body of riflemen to burn away the
extreme left flank of the Union force.
As the colonel and the sergeant crawled back Dick told them what he had
seen, and they recognized at once the imminence of the danger. Colonel
Winchester looked at the great columns of fire and smoke in front of
him. He did not know when the main attack would sweep down upon them
again, but he took his resolution at once.
He ordered his men to wheel about, and, using Slade's own tactics, to
creep forward with their rifles. Most of his men were sharpshooters and
he felt that they would be a match for those whom the guerrilla led.
Sergeant Whitley kept by his side, and out of a vast experience in
border warfare advised him.
Dick, Warner and Pennington armed themselves with rifles of the fallen,
and they felt fierce thrills of joy as they crept forward. Burning with
the battle fever, and enraged against this man Slade, Dick put all his
soul in the man-hunt. He merely hoped that Victor Woodville was not
there. He would fire willingly at any of the rest.
Before they had gone far Slade and his riflemen began to fire. Bullets
pattered all about them, clipping twigs and leaves and striking sparks
from stones.
Had the fire been unexpected it would have done deadly damage, but all
of the Winchesters, as they liked to call themselves, had kept under
cover, and were advancing Indian fashion. And now a consuming rage
seized them all. They felt as if an advantage had been taken of them.
While they were fighting a great battle in front a sly foe sought to
ambush them. They did not hate the Southern army which charged directly
upon them, but they did hate this band of sharpshooters which had
come creeping through the woods to pick them off, and they hated them
collectively and individually.
It was Dick's single and fierce desire at that moment to catch sight
of Slade, whom he would shoot without hesitation if the chance came.
He looked for him continually as he crept from bush to bush, and he
withheld his fire until fortune might bring into his view the flaps of
that enormous hat. The whole vast battle of Chickamauga passed from his
mind. He was concentrated, heart and soul, upon this affair of outposts
in the thickets.
Men around him were firing, and the bullets in return were knocking up
the leaves about him, but Dick's finger did not yet press the trigger.
The great hat was still hidden from view, but he heard Slade's whistle
calling to his men. Sergeant Whitley was by the lad's side, and he
glanced at him now and then. The wise sergeant read the youth's face,
and he knew that he was upon a quest, a deadly one.
"Is it Slade you're looking for, Mr. Mason?" he asked.
"Yes, I want him!"
"Well, if we see him, and you miss him, I think I'll take a shot at him
myself."
But Slade, crafty and cunning, kept himself well hidden. The two bands
fighting this Indian combat, while the great battle raged so near them,
were now very near to each other, but as they had both thickets and a
rocky outcrop for refuge, they fought from hiding. Nevertheless many
fell. Dick, the ferocity of the man-hunt continuing to burn his brain,
sought everywhere for Slade. Often he heard his silver whistle directing
his troop, but the man himself remained invisible. In his eagerness the
lad rose too high, but the sergeant pulled him down in time, a bullet
whistling a second later through the air where his head had been.
"Careful, Mr. Mason! Careful!" said Sergeant Whitley. "It won't do you
much good for one of his men to get you while you are trying to get
him!"
Dick became more cautious. At last he caught a glimpse of the great hat
that he could not mistake, and, aiming very carefully, he fired. Then he
uttered an angry cry. He had missed, and when the sergeant was ready to
pull the trigger also Slade was gone.
Now, the colonel called to his men, and rising they charged into the
wood. It was evidently no part of Slade's plan to risk destruction as he
blew a long high call on his whistle, and then he and all his men save
the dead melted away like shadows. The Winchesters stood among the
trees, gasping and staunching their wounds, but victorious.
Now they had only a few moments for rest. Bugles called and they rushed
back to their old position just as the Southern cavalry, sabers circling
aloft swept down upon them again. They went once more through that
terrible turmoil of fire and flashing steel, and a second time the
Winchesters were victorious. But they could have stood no more, and
Thomas watching everything hurried to their relief a regiment, which
formed up before them to give them breathing time.
The young soldiers threw themselves panting upon the ground, and were
assailed by a burning thirst. The canteens were soon emptied, and still
their lips and throats were parched. Exhausted by their tremendous
exertions, many of them sank into a stupor, although the battle was at
its zenith and the earth shook with the crash of the heavy batteries.
"General Thomas has had news that we're driven in elsewhere," said Dick.
"And we've yielded ground here, too," said Warner.
"But so slowly that it's been only a glacial movement. We've made 'em
pay such a high price that I think old 'Pap' can boast he has held his
ground."
Dick did not know it then nor did the general himself, but 'Pap' Thomas
could boast of far more than having held his ground. His long and
stubborn resistance, his skill in moving his troops from point to point
at the right time, his coolness and judgment in weighing and measuring
everything right, in all the vast turmoil, confusion and uncertainty of
a great battle, had saved the Northern army from destruction.
Now, as the Winchester men lay gasping behind the fresh regiment,
Thomas, who continually passed along the line of battle, came among
them. He was a soldier's soldier, a soldier's general, and he spoke
encouraging words, most of which they could not hear amid the roar of
the battle, but his calm face told their import, and fresh courage came
into their hearts.
The news spread gradually that Thomas only was holding fast, but now his
men instead of being discouraged were filled with pride. It was they and
they alone whom the Southerners could not overwhelm, and Thomas and his
generals inspired them with the belief that they were invincible. Charge
after charge broke against them. More ground was yielded, but at the
same immense price, and the corps, sullen, indomitable, maintained its
order, always presenting a front to the foe, blazing with death.
Thomas stood all day, while the Southern masses, flushed by victory
everywhere else, pressed harder. Terrible reports of defeat and
destruction came to him continually, but he did not flinch. He turned
the same calm face to everything, and said to the generals that whatever
happened they would keep their own front unbroken.
The day closed with the men of Thomas still grim and defiant. The dead
lay in heaps along their front, but as the darkness settled down on the
unfinished battle they meant to fight with equal valor and tenacity on
the morrow. The first day had favored the South, had favored it largely,
but on the Union left hope still flamed high.
Darkness swept over the sanguinary field. A cold wind of autumn blew off
the hills and mountains, and the men shivered as they lay on the ground,
but Thomas allowed no fires to be lighted. Food was brought in the
darkness, and those who could find them wrapped themselves in blankets.
Between the two armies lay the hecatombs of dead and the thousands of
wounded.
Dick, his comrades and the rest of the regiment sat together in a
little open space behind a thicket. It was to be their position for
the fighting next day. Thomas, passing by, had merely given them an
approving look, and then had gone on to re-form his lines elsewhere.
Dick knew that all through the night he would be conferring with his
commander, Rosecrans, McCook and the others, and he knew, too, that
many of the Union soldiers would be at work, fortifying, throwing up
earthworks, and cutting down trees for abattis. He heard already the
ring of the axes.
But the Winchester men rested for the present. Nature had made their own
position strong with a low hill, and a thicket in front. They lay upon
the ground, sheltering themselves from the cold wind, which cut through
bodies relaxed and almost bloodless after such vast physical exertions
and excitement so tremendous.
CHAPTER XIV. THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA
Dick, after eating the cold food which was served to him, sank into a
state which was neither sleep nor stupor. It was a mystic region between
the conscious and the unconscious, in which all things were out of
proportion, and some abnormal.
He saw before him a vast stretch of dead blackness which he knew
nevertheless was peopled by armed hosts ready to spring upon them at
dawn. The darkness and silence were more oppressive than sound and
light, even made by foes, would have been. It numbed him to think there
was so little of stirring life, where nearly two hundred thousand men
had fought.
Then a voice arose that made him shiver. But it was only the cold wind
from the mountains whistling a dirge. Nevertheless it seemed human to
Dick. It was at once a lament and a rebuke. He edged over a little and
touched Warner.
"Is that you, Dick?" asked the Vermonter.
"What's left of me. I've one or two wounds, mere scratches, George, but
I feel all pumped out. I'm like one of those empty wine-skins that you
read about, empty, all dried up, and ready to be thrown away."
"Something of the same feeling myself, Dick. I'm empty and dried up,
too, but I'm not ready to be thrown away. Nor are you. We'll fill up in
the night. Our hearts will pump all our veins full of blood again,
and we'll be ready to go out in the morning, and try once more to get
killed."
"I don't see how you and Pennington and I, all three of us, came out of
it alive to-day."
"That question is bothering me, too, Dick. A million bullets were fired
at each of us, not to count thousands of pieces of shell, shrapnel,
canister, grape, and slashes of swords. Take any ratio of percentage
you please and something should have got us. According to every rule of
algebra, not more than one of us three should be alive now. Yet here we
are."
"Maybe your algebra is wrong?"
"Impossible. Algebra is the most exact of all sciences. It does not
admit of error. Both by algebra and by the immutable law of averages at
least two of us are dead."
"But we don't know which two."
"That's true. Nevertheless it's certain that those two, whoever they may
be, are here on borrowed time. What do your wounds amount to, Dick?"
"Nothing, I had forgotten 'em. I've lost a little blood, but what does
it amount to on a day like this, when blood is shed in rivers?"
"That's true. My own skin has been broken, but just barely, four times
by bullets. I've a notion that those bullets were coming straight for
some vital part of me, but seeing who it was, and knowing that such a
noble character ought not to be slain, they turned aside as quickly as
possible, but not so quickly that
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