[Continuing chapter fifteen]
“What’s the name of this place?” he asked the sergeant.
“Oak Springs, sir. Not much to look at, is it?”
“I’m still glad to be here.” Stewart was surrounded by wagons, and the din of the mules was almost enough to drown out the sounds of cannon and musketry. He did a quick estimate of the number of wagons in the baggage park, and realized with pleasure that his months in the War Department hadn’t been entirely wasted. The vehicles told him General Lee had brought a good twenty thousand men with him. Surely that was a force huge enough to deal with any invader. “Can you tell me where General Lee has his headquarters?”
“Well, his headquarters is in the first farm north of town,” the sergeant said. “But he ain’t there. Ol’ Bobby’s on the north side of that creek over yonder”—he pointed at a line of trees north-east of the town—”with the rest of the army. It’s called Little Mayfield Creek, I think.”
“Much obliged, sergeant,” Stewart said. He still restrained himself from pushing the horse too hard. He expected to need the animal shortly.
The first things he saw on approaching the creek were men, staggering or running, headed away from the battle. He saw no obvious sign of wounds on any of these men, and that made him uneasy. “Go back!” one shouted. “We’re licked. We been betrayed!”
Stewart pulled up on the reins, but a moment’s thought ended his worry. If the battle truly had been lost, there’d be many more men running, and he’d see blood on them. These were shirkers or cowards, and could be ignored. He urged the horse forward again; it went across the creek with some reluctance, its nostrils flaring as the smell of powder and blood came on the breeze.
General Lee was easy enough to find. A small group of horsemen stood together atop the low rise that came up from the bank of the creek. They seemed oblivious of the noise and smoke that reached up to them from the woods and fields below. Stewart steered his nervous mount in their direction.
As he rode, he tried to look at the battlefield with a critical eye. This wasn’t easy. The field at Harpers Ferry had been small, clear, and self-contained. Below him stretched a patchwork of woods only occasionally interrupted by cleared fields. He could see where the fighting was taking place only by the clouds of grey smoke that rose from those woods currently being contested. From time to time a brigade or regiment appeared at the edge of one block of trees, only to disappear almost immediately into the next.
“Who is this? Is it Captain Stewart?” General Lee rode toward him. “Praise God, Captain, it is good to see you. You look well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Stewart saluted, feeling proud that the general had remembered him. “I apologize for my condition. I have been riding a week since leaving Memphis.”
“You have made good time, then. And we are all of us the worse for wear,” Lee said. “Trust those people”—he pointed to the north—”to come while everything is still so wet.”
A horrible banshee sound came towards them from beyond the woods, ending with a solid “thud” as a cloud of smoke appeared in the air a short distance before them.
“Mind those things, Captain Stewart,” Lee said. “The Federals now have rifled cannon. They can send explosive shells several thousand yards, and occasionally one of them seeks us out. They may not sound dangerous, but you can believe me when I say that they are.”
Stewart looked down the slope, but could see no evidence that the shell had done any damage at all in bursting. Still, the general ought to know. “I will be careful,” he said. “How does it go, sir? I am told you have successfully blocked the approach to Columbus.”
“I think it goes well, Captain.” Lee raised a spy-glass to one eye. “Though it is very hard to tell, in this country.”
“It’s not like Virginia, is it, sir?”
“More like the Virginia of my childhood. And no doubt one day Kentucky will be as green and prosperous as Virginia is today. But first we must defeat those people and drive them back across the Ohio.”
“What can I do to help, sir? Is my regiment with you?” Stewart felt a trembling beginning inside him. He wanted to order men and then to see them following him.
“No, the Second Virginia is back with my old friend Thomas Jackson. The last I heard, they were engaged with the enemy in front of the Rappahannock. I trust that God is kind to them.”
Lee lowered his spy-glass and turned to look at Stewart. “You can help me, though, Captain. I find myself in need of aides today. I have lost a number of couriers”—he looked past Stewart and down the slope—”and am afraid that I risk losing control of the battlefield.”
Stewart couldn’t keep himself from looking. A short distance down the slope and to his right, a red and brown mess resolved itself into the corpses of a horse and man. The man had been torn, the head and a leg gone entirely and the chest opened along one side, exposing ribs and other things Stewart did not want to know about.
“Those explosive shells I pointed out to you,” Lee said from behind him. “As I said: more dangerous than they seem.”
Stewart swallowed. “I am at your disposal, sir.” He saluted, and tried not to think any more about shells or dead couriers.
“Good lad.” Lee turned and called to the group of officers waiting just along the slope. “Colonel Buchanan, could you join us, please?”
The colonel wrote with a pencil on a small pad of paper as General Lee dictated. “My compliments to General McKee,” Lee said to Stewart, “and could the general please send cavalry along his right flank to determine whether or not Kearny’s left is in the air? I believe the general has Colonel Goodall’s regiment attached to his command. If the Federal flank is indeed in the air, I want McKee to advance his entire brigade immediately, so that he rolls up Kearny’s left flank. Tell General McKee that as soon as we hear the sounds of his advance, General Marshall will move immediately to support him.”
Colonel Buchanan folded the order and gave it to Stewart. “Where exactly will I find General McKee?” Stewart asked.
“His brigade is on our right flank,” Buchanan said. “Last we heard, his headquarters was in the Bentley house. Follow this creek as it curves to the south-east; the house is just north of the creek’s source.”
“Thank you, sir.” Stewart tucked the message inside the breast of his jacket, then saluted both officers. To General Lee he said, “Shall I return immediately I’ve delivered the message?”
“Once you’re certain the message is understood and my order is being carried out,” Lee said with a small smile, “then return. I may have further work for you by then.”
“Yes, sir!” Stewart wheeled his horse around and spurred it down the slope at a gallop.
Delivering messages on a battlefield turned out to be easier said than done. Stewart found the farmhouse quickly enough, but no general was there to receive the order. Two different men gave him two different suggestions as to where General McKee might have gone with his staff. Stewart wound up riding slowly behind the brigade’s line, his search made more difficult by the fact that the Confederate line ran through woods, making it almost impossible to see more than a few dozen yards in any direction.
Off to the Confederate left, the intensity of musket-fire increased. The two sides must have stumbled into contact with one another; that, or the Federals were making another effort to break General Lee’s line. It unnerved him that he couldn’t tell what was happening.
General McKee had, it turned out, gone to inspect his line; his brigade had suffered serious casualties during the last Federal assault and his counter-charge. In spite of his own problems the general received Stewart with calm courtesy, perhaps mistaking Stewart’s mud-spattered appearance as proof that Stewart had been more involved in the day’s action than he had. General McKee accepted the order without comment, and wrote out one of his own, handing it as he finished to Stewart. “My compliments to Colonel Goodall,” McKee said to Stewart, “and could he please detach a squadron from his regiment to probe the Federal left flank. Higginson, where do you place the Yankees right now?”
The colonel of the regiment McKee was visiting said, “about two hundred yards that way”—pointing roughly north-east—”but I couldn’t guess how far to our right they go. The woods out that way are pretty thick.”
“Not good ground for cavalry,” McKee said. “Still, I can’t spare anyone else. Captain, please add that the colonel may, if he thinks it wise, move a second squadron forward as a mobile reserve in the event he encounters resistance to his reconnaissance. Under no circumstances, though, is he to be drawn into an engagement.”
“Understood, sir,” Stewart said.
“He’ll probably have to do his probing on foot,” McKee said. “I’d like you to go with him, Captain Stewart, and report to me directly you find evidence concerning Kearny’s disposition on that flank. I’ll send you back to General Lee as soon as I’m ready to begin my advance.”
Stewart couldn’t suppress his smile. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ve been hoping to do more than just deliver messages.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Colonel Higginson said, and only now did Stewart notice that the colonel’s left hand was heavily bandaged, several spots of bright red suggesting that the dressing wasn’t doing its job. Stewart decided to ignore the implication of the bandage. He still had a job to do. Now the job was a bit more exciting.
* * * *
Frustration had been his lot for days now. He had made excellent time to Memphis, at which place he’d been able at last to connect with the Confederate telegraph. His message to General Davis had been acknowledged from Nashville—by General Lee, of all people. Lee commanded a small reserve army at Nashville; Davis was near Bowling Green in central Kentucky, having advanced toward the Federal forces feinting south from Louisville. Stewart had been just in time with his warning—provided that Lee or Davis could get reinforcements to Columbus in time.
From the moment he’d delivered his warning, though, Stewart had met with nothing but delay. News that a battle was imminent persuaded the steamboat captain that Memphis was as far north as he cared to travel. Since the boat had been commandeered to deliver the warning to Davis, and that had been done, Stewart had no recourse but to let the man go.
Stewart wanted to join General Lee, though. Permission to travel to Columbus was easy to obtain, as was a horse. Being allowed to go to Columbus was not the same as actually going there, though. There was no railroad; the single railroad in western Tennessee ran due east from Memphis, and he was going north. That meant going by road.
But the roads in the western part of the Confederacy were atrocious, scarcely worthy of the name, and several times a day he’d got lost. It had taken him an exhausting, seat-pounding week to reach the Kentucky line, and all he could think about the entire time was that he would be too late. Either the battle would be won without him, or Columbus would fall because he hadn’t got the warning to General Davis in time.
Today, though, it looked as if his warning had been in time. From a courier headed east he’d heard the good news that Columbus was not yet attacked; the Federals were still somewhere to the north-east. Better, Lee had made excellent time, down the Cumberland and then cross-country to Mayfield. The courier was on his way to Davis, who was less than a day’s march to the east. It was shortly after he and the courier had parted that Stewart had begun to hear the rumble that he knew meant cannon-fire.
Now he was on what was rather grandiosely called the Blandville road—another narrow track through heavy woods that only occasionally broke out into the cultivated fields of tobacco plantations. And the sound of the guns was definitely getting louder.
No comments:
Post a Comment