[Continuing chapter one]
The men were shouting, but what shocked
Grant into immobility wasn’t the vocal din.
It was the way their formation had been solid one second, and
non-existent the next. In their hundreds,
in the pale blue of the line or the dark blue of officers, they poured into the
woods out of which they’d attacked just minutes ago, flowing around him as if
he were an insignificant rock in the river of their panic. Most of the men were unarmed: they seemed to
have thrown away everything they’d carried, so desperate were they to not be
here. Grant had stumbled into three
Seminole ambushes in Florida in the first weeks of that Indian war, and he had
never seen soldiers just give up and run like this. “Follow me!” he shouted to his staff, and
urged his reluctant horse into the woods.
“Where are we going?” shouted one of his
aides.
“Back to our clearing.” Grant had no trouble keeping his voice
steady: in the earliest moments of the first ambush the Seminoles had laid for
him, he’d been frightened. Then his fear
had just evaporated. Ever since, he’d
been mildly surprised at how little he was affected by things that seemed to
make other men lose their senses. “We
have to stop these men,” he shouted to the aide, and to the adjutant, who’d
appeared from out of the smoke and attached himself to the party on
horseback. “They’ll aim for that
clearing, and it’s the best place to start a rally.”
Too many men reached the clearing ahead of
him, but once he was clear of the trees Grant spurred his horse into a gallop
and, heedless of who might be in front, charged to the far edge. Reigning up just at the fringe of the next
belt of forest, he could finally make out what they were shouting: “Betrayed!”
God damn Ransom, he thought as his staff came up alongside him: two aides, the
adjutant, and the surgeon. His
quartermaster still hadn’t returned from his search for the missing regiment.
Not that those Massachusetts boys
would have made a difference. Ransom’s brigade had attacked too soon,
before Grant’s depleted brigade was ready to move. Two entire regiments of Ransom’s men had been
stopped in their tracks by a couple of companies of Rebels, and by the time
Grant had his own men moving forward Ransom’s brigade was in full flight,
leaving Grant’s regiments exposed to enfilade: fire from both sides as well as
from their front.
“Don’t just stand there!” He shifted in the saddle to glare at
them. “Draw your swords! We have to rally them!” Pointing at a man in the dark-blue frock coat
of an officer, he said, “Start with officers and sergeants. We need to stop as many men as we can.” This phase of the battle was likely lost, but
Grant still had a responsibility to make the withdrawal an organized one, and
not a rout.
Grant steered his horse toward the nearest
officer. Biting back his disgust, he
pointed his sword at a group of men fast-walking through the clearing. “Major,” he said, “I want you to bring those
men here and help me form up a company to serve as rear guard. Now, major.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I’ve got to
help my colonel.”
“What’s wrong with him? And where is he?”
The major pointed over Grant’s shoulder, in
the direction of the supply train and, eventually, Washington. Then he saluted, wiped his nose with the back
of his sleeve, and sprinted past Grant and into the woods.
Grant spun his horse around and pulled his
pistol from its saddle-holster. “Damn
it, man,” he shouted, “get back here!”
* * * *
Most of the guns in the fringe of the woods
had been abandoned, and most of the Federal troops had fled by the time Stewart
and his men reached the position the blue-coats had abandoned. Some of the Federals were apparently made of
sterner stuff, and a bunch of them had taken possession of a six-pounder. As he stared from his perch atop the stone
wall, it seemed to Stewart the gun’s muzzle seemed to be trying to pull him
into its black, hellish maw.
Unaccountably, there was a sudden
silence. Then the universe
exploded. Everything—the men, the wall,
the cornfield, the rich blue sky—swirled around as Stewart flew,
weightless. A rushing sound filled his
ears, followed by a silence so deep and total it was smothering.
Abruptly he was on the ground again. He struggled to sit up; for some reason this
was very hard to do. Looking down, he
saw that his left leg was bent at a crazy angle. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, he knew.
He looked up, his ears still smothered by the
silence. Some of the men had turned to
look at him, but they seemed to be receding into the distance. He was vaguely aware of having seen
Fitzgerald falling, ever so slowly, to the dirt behind the ruined wall. Something about the man hadn’t been right.
As sight faded, he realized what had been
wrong with Fitzgerald. The sergeant’s
head was gone.
* * * *
Grant heard musket-shots behind him, and
knew the Rebels had taken the wall and were moving into the woods. He had a few minutes at most to put together
a line. Abandoning the idea of chasing
the fleeing major, he tugged the reins to turn his horse to face the men
fleeing through the clearing. The reins
tugged back.
Pain shot through his leg. In the same instant, his horse reared, the
world spun, and then he was upside down, head throbbing and one boot snagged in
a stirrup. “Sorry, general,” a voice
said. “We need that horse a sight more
than you do.” For a brief instant Grant
saw one man holding his horse’s reins; another, wearing sergeant’s stripes and
presumably the one who had spoken, raised his musket like a club. Grant had enough time to register that the
sergeant had contrived to keep his musket but lose his bayonet, and then a
bright flaring light blotted out everything.
When he regained his senses, men in white
jackets and pale blue trousers stood around him, looking down as if he were a
specimen in a menagerie.
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