"I can't see the Brigade!" Medlicott said despairingly. A salvo of shells cracked ahead of the skirmishers, filling the trees with whistling shards of hot metal. The men leading the retreat had followed the twisting path into a small hollow, and now they instinctively crouched rather than leave their scanty cover to walk into that zone of fire. The perplexed and frightened Captain Medlicott seemed content to let them rest. "Maybe we should send a patrol to look for the Brigade?" he suggested to Starbuck.
"While the rest of us wait here to be captured?" Starbuck asked sarcastically.
"I don't know," Medlicott said. The miller was suddenly bereft of confidence and initiative. His doughy face looked hurt, like that of a child struck for an offense it had not committed.
"Yankees!" Truslow called warningly, pointing west to where blue uniforms had appeared in the woods.
"Stay still!" Medlicott shouted in sudden panic. "Get down!"
Starbuck would have gone on retreating, hoping to join up with the rebel reserve, but Medlicott had been panicked into making a decision, and the men crouched gratefully in the shadows. Two of Starbuck's company lowered a body they had been carrying. "Shall we bury him?" one of the two men asked Starbuck.
"Who is it?" It was dark under the trees, and the evening was drawing in.
"Tom Petty."
"Oh, dear God," Starbuck said. He had seen Petty wounded but had thought he would live, and surely Petty had deserved to live, for he had been a boy, not a man. He had used to shave each morning, but the blade had made no difference to his cheeks. He had only used the razor to explain his lack of beard, but he had been a good soldier, cheerful and willing. Starbuck had planned to make him up to corporal, but now it would have to be Mellors, who was not nearly so quick on the uptake. "Scratch him a grave," he said, "and get Corporal Waggoner to say a prayer for him."
All around them the shouts of the Yankees grew louder. The woodland was filled with screaming shells, so many that at times the torn leaves looked like a green snow drifting through the warm evening air. The trees echoed with the pathetic cries of dying men. Lieutenant Coffman hunkered down beside Starbuck, his small face showing bewilderment because his beloved Southerners were being whipped, because the North was winning, and because nothing in his world made sense.
The Reverend Elial Starbuck shared in the joy as the realization of victory dawned on the Yankee headquarters. And what a victory it was proving! Prisoners had confirmed that the enemy commander was indeed the notorious Stonewall Jackson. "The wretch won't be fetching his supper from my supply wagons tonight!" General Banks exulted. It was true that the enemy was still holding firm on the slopes of Cedar Mountain, but Banks's staff brought message after message that told how the Federal right wing under General Crawford was driving the rebels clean across the valley and into the woods beyond. "Now we'll turn their flank!" Banks exclaimed, gesturing extravagantly to show how he meant to hook the right wing of his army around the backside of Cedar Mountain and thus surround the remnants of the Confederate army. "Maybe we'll have Jackson as our supper guest tonight!"
"I doubt he'll have much appetite after this drubbing," an artillery major observed.
"Fellow's reputed to eat damned strangely anyway," an aide responded, then blushed for having sworn in front of the Reverend Starbuck. "Nothing but stale bread and chopped cabbage, I hear."
"You and I could chop the rogue some cabbage, eh, Starbuck?" General Banks thus drew his distinguished guest into the jubilant conversation.
"I would make him eat what the slaves eat!" the Reverend Starbuck said.
"I think he eats worse than any slave!" Banks jested. "Force a slave to eat what Jackson dines on and the whole world would revile our inhumanity. Maybe we should punish the man by giving him a proper meal? Oysters and pheasant, you think?"
Banks's aides laughed, and their master turned his gaze back to the battle smoke that was already touched with a faint pink tinge of evening sunlight. In the slanting light Banks looked quite superb: straight-backed, stern-faced, the very image of a soldier, and suddenly, after months of disappointment, the politician did at last feel like a soldier. He had, Banks modestly admitted to himself, grown into the job and was now ready for the battles to come. For despite this day's splendid victory, there would be more battles. With Stonewall Jackson defeated, General Robert Lee, who was protecting Richmond from McClellan's army, would be forced north even if such a move did open the rebel capital to McClellan's forces. McClellan would dutifully overwhelm the Richmond defenses, Pope would crush Lee, and then, bar some mopping up on the Mississippi and skull-breaking in the deep South, the war would be over. Better, it would be won. All that remained was a few battles, a rebel surrender, a Federal victory parade, and most important of all, the absolute necessity for President Lincoln and the dunderheads in the United States Congress to realize that it had been Nathaniel Prentiss Banks who had precipitated the whole process. My God, Banks thought, but others would try to steal his glory now! John Pope would doubtless make the attempt, and George McClellan would certainly write to every newspaper editor in creation, which made it all the more important for this night's victory dispatch to be written firmly and clearly. Tonight's dispatch, Banks knew, would fashion history books for years to come, but more important, the words he wrote tonight would garner votes for the remainder of his career.
Federal officers gathered round to offer the General their congratulations. The commander of Banks's bodyguard, a tall Pennsylvanian Zouave, handed the General a silver stirrup ' cup of brandy. "A toast to your triumph, sir," the Zouave proclaimed. A ragged line of disconsolate prisoners trudged past the group of horsemen. One or two of the captured seceshers glanced sullenly at the Northern General, and one rogue spat in his direction, but tonight, Banks thought, he would have the most valuable prisoner as his dinner guest. He would treat General Jackson with courtesy, as a gallant soldier should, and the world would wonder at the victor's modesty. Then Banks imagined himself at another dinner table, a much grander table in Washington that would gleam with massive presidential silver, and in his mind's eye he saw the foreign diplomats and their admiring be-jeweled wives bend forward to catch his words. President Banks! And why not? George Washington might have made this country, but it had needed Nathaniel Premiss Banks to save it.
A mile south of Banks, in a belt of woodland where fires started by shell fire tortured the wounded, men screamed and fought and died. The Yankee counterattack was being slowed by the undergrowth and by the stubborn defiance of Southern riflemen, whose muzzle flames stabbed bright in the smoky shadows. Shells slashed through the treetops, thrashing the branches and hammering the sky with their explosions. Blood and smoke reeked, a man called for his mother in the voice of a child, another cursed God, but still the North pushed on, yard by hard yard, going through hell in search of peace.
"Nothing is served," General Washington Faulconer said icily, "by breaking the Brigade into small detachments. We shall go into battle united."
"If there's any battle left," Swynyard said with a manic glee. He seemed to be enjoying the panic that had infected the western side of Jackson's battle.
"Watch your tongue, Colonel," Faulconer snapped. He was more than usually displeased with his second-in-command, who had already lost a quarter of the Legion instead of just Starbuck's company, and what was left of the Brigade must be husbanded, not frittered away by being committed to the battle in dribs and drabs. Faulconer edged his horse away from Swynyard and gazed at the woods, which were filled with smoke and thrashing from the passage of Northern shells and bolts. God only knew what had happened in the wide valley beyond those woods, but even here, far behind where the fighting had taken place, the evidence of impending disaster was awesome and obvious. Wounded men staggered back from the trees; some of the injured were being helped by friends, others crawled or limped painfully back to where the surgeons hacked and sawed and probed. Many of the fugitives were not wounded at all but were merely frightened men who were trying to escape the Yankee advance.