The Valiant Virginians

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THE VALIANT
VIRGINIANS

By James Warner BeUah

Sketchbook of a Cadet From Gascony

Frantic Years

Gods of Yesterday

Sons of Cain

Dancing Lady

White Piracy

The Ems Gong Tree

This Is the Town

Seven Must Die

Bones of Napoleon

Ward Twenty

Irregular Gentleman

The Apache

Massacre

Divorce

Rear Guard

The Valiant Virginians

THE VALIANT
VIRGINIANS

James Warner Bellah

Foreword by FLETCHER PRATT
Maps by Rafael Palacioa

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK.

A shorter version, under the title
TALES OF THE VALOROUS VIRGINIANS,

appeared serially in

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST,

Copyright 1953 by

The Curtis Publishing Company.

Copyright, 1953, by Jams Warner Belkh

Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. $3-11281

Printed in the United States of America

BALLANTINE BOOKS

404 FIFTH AVENUE

NEW YORK 18, N.Y.

For

Brigadier General Henry Barlow Cheadle,
U.S.A., Rtd,,

who was the first regimental commander to
be made a general officer in World War li-
on the field of battle, by presidential order.
A professional who loved his 16th Infantry
-a regular regiment with fifty-four battle
honors dating to 1798, to 'which the General
added the taking of Gran, in the finest tradi-
tion of the First Infantry Division.

Foreword by FLETCHER PRATT

THIS is A BOOK about very young men in war, becoming
veterans while their officers are learning how to handle
them. Tactically, that is; from the very beginning the lead-
ing figure in the book knew a good deal about the personal
side of handling men, both here and on the factual record.
It is also, in accordance with modern taste and Mr. Bellah's
own particular skill, a book about the minor incidents that
involve the rear-rank private, and that are often of a great
deal more importance to him than how the battle came out.
This is regardless of the fact that he went into the battle
out of a certain idealism and in the future is going to be
deeply affected by its major results if he has any future
after the battle.

So far as my memory goes, this technique has not often
been applied to the Civil War, and most especially to the
Virginia end of it Put the combination Civil War- Virginia
into the hopper and you will usually come out with a
beautiful girl in crinoline on a plantation and a couple of
dashing young captains who say "Suh," have a high sense
of honor, and clank their spurs. The rear-rank private is on
hand in such stories purely as a spear-carrier. This time he
is the center of the picture, and it must be a good deal
nearer what the war was really like. The average Virginia
soldier was not really a plantation product.

Moreover, Mr. Bellah has heightened his effect by a
thoroughly honorable use of dialect. Not the kind that
confuses the issue and makes things difficult to understand,
but that which gives an acceptable reproduction of the
speech rhythms and thought patterns of the people doing
the talking. This whole series of "takes" is told in a kind
of easy drawl, as though they came from the mouth of
someone who was at least a close participant in the events
described.

The nature of those events is also worthy of some atten-

tion. Yon cannot have a war or a war story without battles,
especially when, as in the present case, the framework re-
quires that each tale be wrapped around some major occa-
sion of the war. The usual trouble is that the battle becomes
so much the center of the picture that the author feels
obliged to make it his leading character and ends up writ-
ing history instead of fiction. The hero has to carry the
message that saves the day. Mr. Bellah has neatly avoided
this trap. The major events take place all right, but he is
quite aware that battles, for all their intensity of action and
emotion, make up a very small part of war, either counting
the amount of time spent on them or the amount of thought
devoted to them except afterward, when old soldiers get
'round to telling lies. Most of the time is spent in worrying
about things like the soup tureen or the silk dress which
you will find chronicled hereinafter.

Jeb Stuart pops into and out of a couple of the stories,
looking pretty much to the life, but the major historical
character is Stonewall Jackson. It is hard to give a true pic-
ture of a general from a soldier's point of view; you can
only say how he looked to the soldiers, and in this case the
portrait is probably just about accurate, except that Jack-
son's sternness seems a little written down, and so is his
religious side. But perhaps the private didn't know about
these things, or didn't think them remarkable. There seem
to have been a fair number of praying colonels in the
C.S.A.

And in any case this is Jackson before the war took on
its subsequent intensity, while it still seemed possible that
the issue could be decided in the terms and with the pro-
portionate casualties of the other wars America had en-
gaged in up to that time. It should not be forgotten that
when the Civil War opened we were military amateurs and
pretty naive ones at that. One of the special excellences of
this book is the manner in which it shows Davin Ancrum
and Roan Catlett turning from skylarking boys into the
veterans who fought that titanic series of struggles on the
long road to Appomattox.

VIII

As this book closes, those struggles have just begun with
the Seven Days' Battles, and even these take place offstage.
The area covered is the first year of the war, and except
toward the end, there is not much that can be said to back-
ground these stories. Mr. Bellah's valiant Virginians saw it
all, and knew as much as anyone else about what was going
on. The skirmishing around Harper's Ferry in the early
days of the conflict, with which the book opens, was ex-
actly that a series of confused clashes in which not many
people got hurt or accomplished very much. Bull Run,
where the fighting was hot enough and angry enough for
a time, was a clash between two groups of men only play-
ing at soldier so far. The Union army marched out to
where it knew it could find the Confederates and they had
a battle. That was all. At Ball's Bluff, McClellan had or-
dered a reconnaissance in force across the Potomac, and
then withdrew its supports, with results cited in these
pages.

It is only when we come to Kernstown that strategy
begins to raise its head. Jackson took a beating there and
it was a solid one, but he was probably right in claiming
that this was one of those battles where it did not matter so
much who had won the formal victory as that there had
been a battle. The Shenandoah Valley was the back door
to Washington, and if the Confederates were going to be
active there, Washington would have to see that it was
strengthened, no matter how much the result might
weaken the forces supposed to be conducting an offensive
against Richmond along the peninsula between the York
and the James.

The phrase "supposed to be" is used advisedly. The
background of the last two stories is the discovery by the
Confederate generals Lee deserves most of the credit-
that McClellan, who was around Richmond on two sides,
close enough to hear the churchbells ring, and with con-
siderably superior forces, was not going to take any aggres-
sive action until he had still more men. Very well, they
would take action against him.

Jackson attacked the Union force at the north end of the
Shenandoah, defeated it and sent it flying. Lincoln and
Secretary Stanton there was no one below them who had
the authority to move the troops of more than one army
ordered one army eastward into the Valley from West
Virginia, reinforced the beaten troops already there, and
recalled a whole corps that was marching to j oin McCl ellan,
sending it westward into the Valley in a triple pincers
movement on Jackson, This was when StonewalPs men
earned the name of "foot cavalry." By hard fighting and
incredible marching he hit each jaw of the pincers in turn,
damaged it badly, and was down before Richmond attack-
ing McClellan's right wing, before the Federals knew what
had happened.

It is observable that more backgrounding is necessary
as the war goes on and things get complicated. These
stories are concerned with the change that made the
complications.

THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

When you cross the Blue Ridge and come into the
Shenandoah Valley, the breed of man changes subtly. He
grows taller against the western mountain bastions of
Virginia and his voice shades soft in primal courtesy, nor
does he speak as often, for a great many of the things men
talk of elsewhere were resolved forever long before he
was born and brook no further discussion. His memories
of race are deep within him, his habits of life patterned
by them. There is right and there is wrong still left for his
decision, but the dividing line between is more sharply
drawn across God^s canvas of the mountains than it is in
the cities of the world.

Of this breed was Roan Catlett, born six miles from
Deerfield, where the women the Catletts married "kept
the blood and kept the progression." A few miles north
his cousin Forney Manigault, second boy of old Judge
Manigault > first drew milk from his mother's lady breasts
and knew the whispering winds in the towering oaks of
Manigault. Lastly there was Davin Ancrum, cousin to
Forney but not to Roan, but a boy grown tall to walk
with men.

There were Indian mounds they played among and
because of Yorktown and New Orleans and Bladensburg

1

so close still upon their boyhood, they 'were the Indians
who defeated Eraddook. A downed and shattered red-
coat 'was the capstone of the growing American tradition,
so they destroyed a British Army once more in the
savage play of youth Roanoke Colony being gone so
far into the mists of history by their time that the Indian
once more had attained to a nobility they 'would emulate.

They broke their own horses and coerced the blood
of Timolean and Bright Eyes to the flat saddle. Their
fathers taught them to shoot. The old men of Chapultepec
and Cerro Gordo taught them their history that there
is a time of peace and a time of war and that the inalien-
able right to bear arms is a part of the dignity of free men.

Their mothers gentled them with native courtesy so
that they might develop a deference for age, the obliga-
tion of protection for youth more helpless than their own,
and a seme of decency toward women so that some day
they might look a girl in the eye full and take her hand
for better or for worse but whatever, forever.

But long before Forever started, the shore batteries of
Charleston Harbor fired on Sumter and the young
United States locked its fledgling muscles into an inter-
family struggle that no one won and no one lost for
Appomattox marked the birth of soul and stature of this
land of ours, and the legend of the gallant Army of
Northern Virginia is still the deep, firm beat of its stout
heart.

Roan Catlett, Forney Manigault, Davin Ancrum.
Remember their names for in their time they were men.
And being men, the essence of immortality came upon
them. As their grandfathers did not die at Brooklyn
Heights, so their sons did not die at San Juan or El Caney,
their grandsons at Chateau Thierry or in the Argonne
Forest, their great-grandsons 'with RCT 116 on Omaha
Easy Red or in the skies above Heartbreak Ridge in
far Korea.

For this is a century of war, and like it or not, wars

2

must be won by us when we are bom to them. That
what happens to one now has happened to one's blood
long ago, is sometimes a comfort in time of present trial
So let us go back and watch the preparation a country
underwent in order that it might be strong and unified.,
fit to meet the trial of leadership that the years would
bring.

Long, long after Appomattox if you had asked Roan or
Forney or Davin if they had fought, their eyes would
have come up slowly and level and they would have said,
"I was out with Stonewall Jackson"

But in that spring of 1861, Forney trudged up the road
to the Catlett place and he said "Roan you goiri*?" Roan
looked at him with the Catlett eyes that were like stiff
fingers pronged upon him.

"Yes."

Forney traced dust with his boot toe. "What about
Davin he's only fifteen. The Senator won't let him go
unless you promise to look out for him."

"I'll promise. Well y Forney? Come on."

So the hill-billy muleteers and the gentry squadrons of
Turner Ashby 'were formed and the great cavalry tradi-
tion of J. E. B. Stuart galloped through the land. May
the echo of their hoof beats never die in the memories
of US. 56191111 and his present companions in arms; for
it is a comforting thing in age to have been out with
Jackson, but a greater thing by -far to know that one stands
rifle in hand faced toward the savage doctrine that man
may live only in duress under the heel of his more oppor-
tunist fellow whereas his innate dignity is a fact before
God that seven centuries of thought and prayer and
bloodshed have brought to fullest flower in this broad
and pleasant land.

"Well, Forney? Come on."

$ATERL'S FARM

PTERSWLLE\\ BRUNSWICK
81/RKITSVILLE

FIRST BLOOD

AT HARPER'S FERRY

ROAN CATLETT NEVER ATE hog after the Cross Keys fight.
He'd vomit If he smelled it cooking. They got loose in
the woods after Cross Keys and ate the Yankee dead. But
that first spring of the war, when the Valley companies
marched up the Shenandoah to take the arsenal at Har-
per's Ferry, Roan was still a powerful hog-eating man.

Cap'n Murt Patton marched the Short Mountain Com-
pany. He was in Mexico last war with Winfield Scott.
Vera Cruz, Molino del Rey, Cerro Gordo and Chapulte-
pec. Sharp fighting, to hear the Cap tell of it over a jug,
and he had plenty of time to tell of it, for he was too old
and too fat to ride a horse any more, so he led the com-
pany up, riding in Doctor Breckenridge's brougham.

By the time the company got as far north as Harrison-
burg, the Cap was having everybody call him major. The
folks in New Market gave him such a send-off two weeks
later that he promoted himself up to colonel. By the end
of the month, when the company tore itself loose from
Winchester, he put a bunch of feathers in his old Army
hat, divided the boys up into two regiments of ten men
each and rode his carriage into Harper's Ferry, general
of the brigade.

At Harper's Ferry it was like Market Day every day.
There wasn't any nonsense about drilling or shooting at

5

6 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

the mark, and there were so many other self-promoted
militia generals arguing who commanded over what, that
they let the soldiers be. Besides, everybody owned his
own horse and his own gun and nobody was used to being
told what to do, except by his own pappyand most of
the Short Mountain boys had 'listed themselves up for the
war to get quit of that. All but Davin Ancrum. Davin
wasn't yet sixteen. Senator Ancrum only let Davin go
along if he gave his promise to do what Roan Catlett told
him. That was the way it was agreed, otherwise Davin
couldn't get to go.

All told, at Harper's Ferry there were about forty-five
hundred boys gathered to fight by the time Virginia was
taken into the Confederacy on May seventh. Folks said
this Abe Lincoln, fifty miles southeast in Washington,
had about a hundred and fifty thousand Yankee soldiers,
while forty-five miles north, in Chambersburg, Pennsyl-
vania, a Yankee general named Patterson had about twelve
thousand more. Right smart odds.

Roan Catlett turned seventeen that spring, but he was
berry brown already with the Valley sun, and his hair
was dark red-black, like a new colt's, so he looked about
twenty. He was four inches over six feet and he could
clamp his teeth into the off rim of a hogshead, tilt it to
him and lift it, full to the heading with tobacco, clear oS
the ground. That way he always had betting money in
pocket.

Roan got sparking a pert snip of a girl over west of
town in the part they call Bolivar, and one night the girl
let drop that her uncle was the biggest breeder of Chester
Whites in Western Maryland. The name was Satterlee
and this hog farm lay about twelve miles over the Poto-
mac. Now, a Chester White is white, with pink skin like
a baby's. As the breeders say, it possesses good carcass
qualities, which means it eats well when roasted. And
finally to Roan's thinking they originated the breed in
Chester, Pennsylvania, which made them sure-enough

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY 7

Yankee hogs and free as the summer breeze for the taking.

You couldn't sleep at night anyway, on account of the
trains rumbling through. The Baltimore and Ohio Rail
Road runs double track through Harper's Ferry from
Point o' Rocks twelve miles down toward Washington,
to about sixteen miles west of Martinsburg. There was
talk of blowing out the covered bridge to get quit of the
noise, but the railroad was working for us as well as for
the Yankees. So the bridge stayed in and nobody got
much sleep.

Roan got Davin to ride up to Satterlee's farm with him
the night after he found out about it, and reconnoiter
those Chester Whites. Now, Roan and Davin weren't
kin. Roan was Forney Manigault's cousin. So was Davin.
But they weren't cousins to each other. Forney was slow-
thinking. He had to chew things out in his mind for the
right of them. So Roan didn't tell Forney about this hog
expedition.

About the fifth roast-hog breakfast in a row that the
company was enjoying, Forney Manigault looked over
across at Roan. "Roan," he said, "where y' takin' Davin
nights?" Forney is Judge Dabney Manigault's second boy.
The judge rode circuit forty years in the county and
never took court oath. Said his word was his bond and he
wasn't going to fancy it up with oaths like the liars did.
There was the judge's look in Forney when he spoke to
Roan.

"I'm takin' him ridin'," Roan said, and he turned slow
and let his eyes finger Forney's eyes. Roan had the Catlett
eye. So pale blue it looked like it ought to hurt. Only man
in the world you could feel his eyes on you like stiff
fingers. Only man, that is, except Stonewall Jackson.

"Davin ain't grown yet," Forney went on. "He needs
his sleep. He's my cousin. You leave him be nights.
Y'hear?"

"He may be yore cousin," Roan said, "but his daddy

*8 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

told him to mind me. And that's who he's goin' to mind
until we get the orders countermanded."

Making him out to be a boy to be looked after like that
before everybody, got Davin slow hot in his shirt. But
Davin was a politician like the senator. He wouldn't ever
cross an issue straight off, for chance of losing it entirely
before he figured a way of approach. But he'd talk right
steady while he was thinking to throw you off the argu-
ment.

Davin said, "The boys tell me we got a new command-
ing officer here in Harper's Ferry. Just come up from
Richmond to take over. Had a meeting of all the militia
gin'rals yesterday and whittled 'em down to army size.
They all come out of meeting captains and under. Those
that come out at all. Only old Cap'n Murt couldn't go to
th' meetin' on account he was sleepin' off a jug. So I guess
he's still a gin'ral. Only one left, though," and Davin went
on eating roast hog.

Forney Manigault hadn't taken his eyes off Roan the
whole time. Nor Roan his.

"And another thing," Forney said. "These yere hogs,
Roan. You buying them out of yore barrel-lifting bet
money? "

"I wasn't," Roan said. "Does that bother yore appe-
titie?"

"Not buyin'," said Forney, "is stealin'."

Davin said, "The new man's name is Colonel Tom Jack-
son from down the Institute at Lexington. Taught school
there." As he said that, he was sort of looking up over
Roan's head at something behind, and he looked so long,
everybody else turned slow around to see what he was
looking at, and there stood a tall stranger, better than six
feet, in a plain blue uniform coat, sort of frayed and shiny
at the sleeves, with an Institute cap tilted so's not to hide
his eyes. Talk of Catlett eyes the eyes in that man's head
you'd never forget, once you looked into them. Like blue
lights. There's killing in Catlett eyes and there was killing

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY 9

in this man's eyes, too, but it was deep down under his
kindness. Controlled, so's anger'd have to go clear to the
bottom of his soul to bring it up.

Davin got up on his feet. "Honored to have you jine
us at breakfast, suh,"

"Thank you kindly. I'm Colonel Jackson." The man
nodded. "What company is this?"

Cap Murt came out of the bushes just then, buttoning
his frock coat from Mexico over his pants and hooking
on his old artillery sword. Cap Murt was crowding seven-
ty and his eyes weren't so good.

He skirted around the boys and walked up to this
Colonel Jackson close enough to see the eagles on his coat,
and he said, "Good morning to you, colonel Brigadier
Gin'ral Murtagh Patton, commandin' the Short Mountain
Light Cav'ry Brigade. What can I do for you, sir?" Then
something came between those two like a twig cracking.
For a moment they stood stump still, before Cap'n Murt
threw back his head like an old bull and roared, "Good
Lord in heaven, effen it ain't Lootinint Jackson from the
Chapultepec Road!" and he saluted. "Sarjint Patton, sir,
of Magruder's Battery. That was my gun you and me
man-hauled acrost the ditch!"

This Colonel Jackson smiled. It came into his eyes like
a glory, and it wrapped around him and ole Murt until
they were a million miles away in their memories. And
the colonel held out his hand.

"Sergeant Patton!" he said, and he chuckled "Did you
ever find out where the Fourteenth Infantry got to that
day?"

"No, sir. Never did." Cap shook his head, tears in his
eyes from remembering. "I was too plumb wore out to
go look for 'em. All I could do was to serve that gun with
you. We was droppin' round shot in the hip pockets of
them Mexicans shortly! I guess we kinda won that war,
eh, lootinint?"

General Jackson laughed. It doesn't sound right to call

10 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

him colonel even if he was only a colonel there at Har-
per's Ferry. "Our part of it anyway, sergeant, I'm going
to need a good man like you at headquarters. An old reg-
ular," he said. "We've got to make an army out of these
volunteers."

Cap said, "Any time you say. Any place. You jine us
now for breakfast, sir? Honored to have you."

"I've had my breakfast, thank you. Looks like a very
fine mess of roast pig you have here," and he shot a look
over toward the bushes where the hide and the leavings
were. "Chester White, from the hide. The commissary
issue you that?"

"Well, not exactly, sir," Cap said. "It comes under the
heading of supplementary field rations, I should put it.
If I had to report it in writin'."

"I see," General Jackson nodded. "Some members of
the Maryland Legislature visited camp yesterday and one
of them mentioned that the country north of the Potomac
was excellent breeding ground for Chester Whites* He
said that a farmer named Satterlee had a herd of several
hundred."

Davin Ancrum was taken with General Jackson's
friendly manner. "Yes, sir. That's right, sir," he said.
"Twelve miles around South Mountain. Up near Bur-
kittsville."

"Is that so?" The general looked at him.

That's when Roan stepped in front of Davin and said,
"If there's blame, I'm taking that blame, sir. All of it."

"What blame would that be?" The general raised his
eyebrows.

"For foraging the hog, sir. Stealing it if that's to be
the word. And four other hogs before this one."

General Jackson thought it out for a minute, then he
said, "There are a lot of technicalities in a war. For in-
stance, if this hog was rooting in Pennsylvania when you
appropriated it, we could call that foraging, for it would
be property in the enemy's country. Its being a Maryland

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY 11

hog, however makes a slight difference. Maryland is still
trying to make up her mind whether to join the Confed-
eracy or not. So, until she decides, there is a possibility
that Mr. Satterlee's hogs are loyal Southern hogs and to
take them without paying for them would be stealing."
Right up to that last it was as if he were a schoolteacher
trying to explain a point. And Roan took it that way,
first on one foot, then on the other. But when the general
said "loyal Southern hogs" there was quiet fun in it sud-
denly, lurking there just under the surface of the words
a smile in the eyes alone. "At least," he said, "that is
how the Maryland senator put it to me when he lodged
Mr. Satterlee's complaint."

"Yes, sir," Roan said. "It won't happen again/'

When General Jackson went on to the next camp, in-
specting, ole Cap cut up his extra red flannel underpants
and made himself the biggest set of artillery sergeant's
chevrons ever. He sewed them on his coat sleeves and
took the feathers out of his cap.

"Now," he said, "that Lootinint Jackson's promoted me
up to headquarters, y'all goin' to see some changes made
around here."

First thing happened we got a drill schedule and all the
separate companies got regimented up together. When
the horns blew now, you got up. You ate. You drilled.
You went to sleep.

Then General Jackson got the trains working so that
his army could sleep at night. He wrote a letter to the
president of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road asking
him to please run all the heavy coal trains on the east-
bound track through Harper's Ferry between eleven and
one o'clock in the daytime. Cap'n Murt was in charge of
paper work at headquarters by that time. That's how the
company knew why the night coal trains stopped.

There'd been a coolness between Roan and Forney
Manigault ever since that first day the general stopped by
camp. Because Roan had pretty nearly got young Davin

12 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

into trouble. When the eastbound coal trains stopped
rambling through at night, Forney said, "When y'goin'
to do what Gin'ral Jackson told you to do, Roan?*'

Roan looked at him full. "What'd he tell?"

"Plain as speaking out, he said you stole those five
Chester Whites. When y'goin' to ride up to Satterlee's and
pay him?"

Roan said, "How far back in the Manigault family they
breed this hoss thief y'all have to be so all-fired honest
out in public about everything since?"

Young Davin Ancrum was standin' there quiet until
the horse-thief part. Then he eased into the talk like the
senator. "Speaking of hosses, I got to get Old Nell back
home by June. If I don't get me a Yankee hoss by then,
I got to go for a foot soldier and walk this yere war!"

Forney said, "Roan, I don't take talk against the Mani-
gault family. If y'll step down to the river bank, suh, I'll
be pleased to have my satisfaction."

Now, Roan was big and there wasn't any question that
he could jasperoo Forney. But Roan was a gentleman* He
never fought men he was sure he could take. He said,
"Forney, I spoke in lightness. If it appeared insultin' to
you, I apologize. I figure ten dollars a hog. I got forty
dollars in bets from lifting hogsheads with my teeth from
the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Twenty-Seventh Virginians
with ten more to go from the Thirty-third after recall
tonight. It was to be for buying Davin here a hoss, but if
you think Gin'ral Jackson wants those hogs paid for, I'll
pay. For I ain't never seen a man like Ole Blue Light. You
just have to do what he wants. Ask or not."

Forney nodded. "I'm glad to hear you say that, Roan,
and to show you my talk ain't just empty preacher talk,
heah" and he handed Roan a wad of paper money.
"Everybody in the comp'ny ate on them five Chester
Whites, so I took up a collection of two-fifty apiece. Add
yore own two-fifty and you've got fifty dollars for Sat-

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY U

terlee, with yore barrel-liftin' fifty still left for Davin's
new hoss."

Davin said, "That's right friendly of you, Roan, to
want to buy me a hoss. I ain't going to need the courtesy,
though, I get a sight of some hoss-ridin' Yankees."

But you couldn't walk in and out of camp nowadays,
when the prowling itch was on you at night. General
Jackson had fellas at night with guns on the covered bridge
and the canal bridge and the roads out west and south.
They challenged. And you couldn't get a pass to go out
either. You just plain couldn't go out, so those hogs
wouldn't have been paid for to this day if it hadn't been
for that railroad deal. The coal trains were all going down-
to Washington noontime for three or four days, but the
empties had to come up at night and they were almost as-
noisy. So General Jackson wrote another letter to the
rail-road president, Cap told, and suggested that he hold
the empties overnight in Washington one night, and send
'em up west again on the other track between eleven and
one in the daytime, so that all the cars would be rumbling
each way through Harper's Ferry during the same two-
hours. Then he sent the 5th Virginia Infantry, Colonel
Harper, west to Martinsburg to see the suggestion was
carried out properly, and he sent a detachment east to
Point o' Rocks, including the Short Mountain Cavalry,
for the same reason. The night the company got down
there, Roan, Forney and Davin took off to pay old Sat-
terlee back for his five Chester White hogs.

When they turned left off the Frederick road, Davin>
said, "We're making good time. You don't suppose we
could push on a ways toward Chambersburg to have a*
try at getting a Yankee soldier's hoss for me, do you?"

"Leave well enough be," Forney said. "There's twelve-
thousand Yankees in Chambersburg."

"That's what I mean," Davin said. "We're sure to get
one good hoss among that many."

Roan was riding a little ahead off the crown of the:

14 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

road. He pulled up, listening with his head turned side-
ways to what little night wind there was.
"What you hear, Roan?"

He shook his head he didn't know, and flatted his hand
for the two to stand while he rode up under the rise like
General Jackson taught in the drill

Forney unslung his rifle, and Davin, seeing him do it,
unslung his, too, and they sat there stiff in their saddles,
waiting. Pretty soon Roan came back, his own rifle across
his pommel.

"There's twenty wagons in front of Satterlee's, standin*
there headed this way. And there's lantern light and some
fellas on hossback. Loadin' pens are full of hogs. . . ,
Davin, you hold our bosses. Forney and me're goin' down
for a close look."

They went down on foot, keeping off the road, and
they skirted wide to come in mid-column of the wagon
convoy. They were commissary wagons with U. S. on
the canvas, half of them loaded with Chester Whites al-
ready and the other half loading. Three, four hundred
hogs, all prime. There was a soldier counting tally by lan-
tern and another with a sword standing by to give orders.
Four others supervising Satterlee's men's loading. Count-
ing one waggoner for each wagon, twenty-six Yankees
all told.

Lying in the ditch opposite, Roan pulled a spear of
sweetgrass and bit his teeth on it for the juice, looking
and listening. Forney was hunkered down beside him,
thinking and gnawing his long upper lip like he does.

Then he whispered, "It's sure enough Yankee soldiers
loadin' them hogs. Buy or steal for them, it's foragin' for
us if we take 'em now." Just like the judge handing down
a considered opinion. Roan touched his shoulder and they
started back up to where Davin was with the horses, and
told him.

"Gentlemen, let's take them hogs," Davin said.

"The thought was in my mind," Roan said, "except

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY 15

with odds of nine to one, it's prob'ly goin' to mean some
shootin' and I don't aim to get you hurt, Davin."

"Mr. Catlett, suh," Davin said, "I'll thank you to leave
m'tender years out of this. If I'm man enough to carry a
gun in war, Fm man enough to shoot a Yankee. That
bein' settled, what's yore plan?"

Roan grinned. "It's a simple plan," he said. "An inferior
force only has one chance for success. Attack with sur-
priselike Gin'ral Jackson teaches. Them six hossback
soldiers are goin' to ride ahead when they start. Davin and
I are goin' to make 'em turn right on the Frederick road
for Point o' Rocks, instead of left, and ride on with 'em.
. . . Forney, yo're goin' to stay at the crossroads t'see
that each hog wagon turns and follows on. Then you
bring up the rear to keep the convoy closed up."

Forney said, "I reckon that covers it, Roan."

Roan kneed his horse. "If yo're ready, gentlemen, we'll
take positions for openin' the ball" and he nodded back
to where they could hear the whips begin to crack and
the wheels to creak "for the fiddles're tunin' up."

They moved on back to the Frederick-road junction
and took up position this side on the road to Satterlee's,
in shadow under a clump of trees.

After a while Roan whispered soft, "I ain't never killed
a man, so I don't know how it'll be. Neither do you two.
But if it'll help y'all to think it out, I'm goin' to kill the
first Yankee tonight who don't do what I say, when I say
it. It ain't goin' to be me personally. It's goin' to be me
as a soldier of the sovereign state of Virginia, which was
a dominion in its own right long before the states was
made united."

"Thanks, Roan," Davin said. "That's right comfortable
thinkin'."

Forney just sat his horse, deep drawn in his own mind.
Then the first wagon topped the rise, moving at the walk,
and the soldier with the sword was up ahead with the five
other horse soldiers, free of the high-rising dust, and about

16 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

ten yards between them and that first wagon. Roan let
them just pass him. Then he kneed in behind, between
them and the leading wagon.

"Turn right, gentlemen! And don't reach for yore
hand guns!" He had his own out, held close in with the
hammer cocked full.

You could see the whites of their eyes like swamp mal-
low blobbing the darkness as the Yankee detail whipped
around to see who was talking. There was the space of
half a drawn breath, then from orderly two by two the
horses were up, pirouetted, kneed out of line, the men
cursing and reaching. Roan shot close, fast. Twice. And
twice and twice again the echoes came back down the
Valley so perfect it was almost as if that was what he'd
done it for to hear the echo. For that's the way a man
thinks at times like that, apart from it all. Not quite living
it at the time. Not seeing Roan barrel-whip the fifth man
off his horse and wrist-lock the sword man into an arm
bar in the saddle. "Ah said don't reach, suh!"

And Davin with his rifle in the face of Number One
Waggoner, "You heard what Mistuh Catlett tole you!
Turn right and don't draw!" But what you never forget
are the belly screams torn from deep pain. Blood choking
a man's breathing like mud clogging a pump, and some-
body sobbing like a baby while his legs thrash the ditch
weeds.

"Lord A'mighty," the sword man yelled, "what is this
a holdup? Leggo my arm!"

"This yere's Gin'ral Jackson's army, suh! Yo're a
pris'ner of war and all yore hogs with you! Turn right,
I said, and git! "

With that, the head wagon started and turned right,
and you could hear Forney galloping rear and turning
the rest of them. "Never mind that shootin'! Jest follow
the wagon ahead and keep goin'!"

It was that easyonly it wasn't, for Roan. He knew
he'd killed, and the feeling was fresh in his mind, like a

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY 17

smashed finger hurting all up his shoulder in spite of what
he'd said before. He rode to one side, keeping the sword
man ahead of him and the lead waggoner in the corner of
his eye. And he grew up a mite that night. Grew a mite
hard inside. The fun was gone out of it, and it never
would come back full blown like it had been, for blood
was in it now. And dead men. But pretty soon it got plain
spoken in Roan's mind. It's when you're born, that does
it to you. There was Braddock, years ago, cut to pieces
by the Indians in spite of what Colonel Washin'ton told
him. Then there was the British to fight and lick down
Yorktown way, and Roan could remember his own grand-
pappy telling how they did that. And there was Cap'n
Murt at Chapultepec with Colonel Jackson. And himself
on the Point o' Rocks road tonight. It's when you're born.
If you're born to a war fight it! And when you fight-
fight for keeps.

Then Roan missed Davin, and he shouted, and Davin
didn't answer. He shouted for Forney, and Forney didn't
answer, and the cold worms crawled in his stomach, for he
could see the tree holes now in the false light with dawn
to come just beyond. He kneed out to the roadside and
looked back into the wagon dust that hung low in the
morning damp, like brush-fire smoke. The hogs were be-
ginning to squeal, for it was getting on to their slopping
time. One wagonload would take it up from the next,
until all three hundred were giving out like the low notes
of those coal-burning steam calliopes on Market Day.
"Davin!" and that time Davin came up through the
dust, galloping. "Where's Forney?"

Davin reined in beside Roan and shook his head. "Them
danged honest Manigaults!" he said. "Forney rode all the
way back to Satterlee's after we got the wagons turned
to pay him for the five hogs we stole. And you know
what Satterlee said? He said he sold these hogs to the
Yankees for twenty dollars a head. In that case,' says
Forney, 'for ten dollars a head you'll be pleased to know

18 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

five of your hogs have been loyal to the Confederacy,'
and he threw fifty dollars paper at his feet. Then he drew
on Satterlee and he said, 'Yankee money's contraband of
war, suh. And if you've got it for tradin' with the enemy,
yo're enemy too. So hand it ovah!'" Davin jerked his
thumb. "Forney's ridin' at the rear with six thousand
dollars gold notes in his pants and his conscience clear."

"How'd you git blood on yore shirt?" Roan asked him.

"You shot me, Mistuh Catlett."

"I what?"

"Mistuh Catlett, yo're the best shot in the county, hand
gun or rifle. But you shot me, suh."

"How d'you mean I shot you?"

"Like I said." Davin grinned. "The first Yankee you
killed was me, suh. You creased off my upper arm.
Missed clean the bone, but by deflection the lead took
the Yankee in the throat after it nicked me. Nervous, I
reckon you were, Mistuh Catlett. Would you like that
story to get around the comp'ny, suh?"

"Not to Forney, I wouldn't. Nor to yore pappy,
Davin."

"Quite so, Mistuh Catlett." Davin bowed in the saddle.
"The wound then becomes an hon'ble war wound, suh,
provided there's a little less talk about my tendah age and
how I have to do what you say, place of ni'father. But
militarily speakin', suh, I'd be pleased to follow you
through the windows of hell into the back yard and over
the fence any time you've a mind. I got five good hosses
out of last night's fracas to pick my choice of, come
full light!"

It was broad day when the hog convoy came into Point
o' Rocks. Broad day and better. Nearer half past ten when
they got in. The up trains for the eleven-to-one-o'clock
shuttle through Harper's Ferry were lined up, head to
tail, on the westbound tracks, waiting for the word. A
solid mess of cars as far up the tracks as you could see,
and over by the telegraph office there was General Jack-

FIRST BLOOD AT HARPER'S FERRY 19

son himself with Cap'n Murt. The operator came out with
a telegraph form.

Cap'n read it. "Colonel Harper at Martinsburg, sir," he
said. "His eastbound trains will be all marshaled off the
single line onto the double line in about fifteen more min-
utes."

General Jackson nodded. Then he looked up and saw
those twenty Yankee commissary wagons full of hogs,
with Roan and Davin and Forney riding the line of them
to a halt.

"Come here, sir," he called to Roan. "You're the Ches-
ter White man, aren't you? Where'd you get those
wagons?"

"If there's any blame, sir, I'll take it" and Roan told
him the story.

General Jackson turned away once or twice and ran
his hand down his nose and over his beard. Finally he
said, "Well, sir, from our standpoint, the night's been
right profitable. We could use wagons and we could use
pork. And six thousand dollars in gold notes'd help the
war chest in Richmond. But I don't doubt in the least
that Mr. Satterlee's got another complaint. And he'll make
it noisy this time. So drive the wagons up the platform
ramp and load them on the empty flatcars."

"Yo're not sending them back, suh? " Roan gasped.

General Jackson just looked at him full in the eyes and
ignored the question like it had never been asked. Cold.
Then he walked a few paces up the platform.

"Roan," old Cap Murt said soft, "don't never mistake
again an' ask Colonel Jackson what he's goin' to do in a
war. He don't even tell his chief of the staff, an' all he
writes his missus is how nice the roses smell outside head-
quarters. Besides, he's busy this morning. Once he gets all
the Balt-O cars and engines on these two double tracks,
he's switching the whole caboodle of it onto the branch
line south to run it to Winchester and horse-draw it from
there over to the Manassas Gap Rail Road at Strasburg.

20 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

The Confederacy needs cars and engines, too, as well as
hogs and wagons."

Roan Catlett stared across at General Jackson. The gen-
eral was turning to pace back the platform. When he
came to Roan again, the glory was in his eyes. "When
you forage, youngster," he said quietly, "forage." Then
he smiled and Roan's guts sort of melted and ran down
inside his legs and, from that moment on, it was, in a way,
like love for a woman in him for Stonewall Jackson a
part of himself gone for all the rest of his life, leaving him
empty and grateful and humble of soul inside. General
Jackson saw it there, for those things show plain and they
leave a man naked, and it isn't good for others to see. So
he put his hand on Roan's shoulder and he said, "And
what time is breakfast this morning, Corporal Catlett if
the invitation still holds?"

The Potovnac River then became the -focal point of war.
Washington, where the crawling forces of the Union
were concentrating, lay north of it with the broad sweep
of Virginia to the southward. All that spring patrols
denied the right to cross in 'freedom. Men died in small
actions, whetting their angering souls -for the full-bladed
slaughter of the greater fights to come. To the westward
the long arc of the river lay across the entrance to the
rich food treasury of the Shenandoah Valley and Lieu-
tenant Colonel J. E. B. Stuart became the watchdog. To
the eastward the river was the barricade before the Capi-
tal, manned by the swarming volunteers of McDowell.

It was to be a short war. All wars are, at their begin-
nings. Two great armies were in concentration, great in
numbers for that day, but grotesque in ill-discipline, het-
erogeneous in equipment, plagued with unqualified offi-
cers. They grew as cancer grows, their size increasing
their threat and decreasing any possibility of close con-
trol. They were two vast concentrations of rabble under
arms. Little more. Some of the officers on both sides were
career officers, but pitifully few compared to the total.
Again, the professional horizons of the regulars were the
small horizons of garrison duty and frontier service.
None of them "had seen troop concentrations of this size
before, or had any experience of administration or com-
mand or sanitation of large forces.

In this respect, both gathering forces were about equal.
They were equal in respect to lack of and -non-uniformity
of equipment. And they were equal in a hotheaded will
to fight the questionable and uninitiated will to fight
that is based upon no previous experience in the actuality
of battle. Each army believed fully that once joined in

21

combat with the other it 'would sweep the -field clean.
Recruit vinegar, you might say. But there was more to it
than that; this was one 'war in history wherein the men
on both sides knew what they were fighting for from
the very beginning, for it had taken thirty years to bring
the disagreement to the field. Their heritage was com-
mon. In unity they had fought the Indian and pushed
their colonies west of the Appalachians across the central
plains to the Pacific paradise of California. Twice to-
gether they had fought the British off their fledgling
necks. Together, they had subjugated Mexico and dictat-
ed peace deep in the heart of the Mexican homeland.

Now this unity was shattered and it was shattered on
one basic point of disagreement. Did or did not each in-
dividual state that had held the power to enter into coali-
tion with the others, still retain the power to withdraw?
Could a contracting power enter into national union by
its own sovereign will and still retain enough of that will
to withdraw when displeased with national majority deci-
sions? In other words, how far were the sacred minority
privileges of American thinking to go so far that the
union of the country itself could be destroyed by them?

Slavery of the black man was convenient propaganda
glib words for shallow thinking. Johnnie Reb and Dam-
yankee were the slogans. But the fact of the matter lay
in states' rights as against the authority those states had
given to the federal government and now sought to with-
hold. McDowell's army represented the federal police
power. Beauregard stood in defense of man's primary
allegiance to his state. That was the issue.

So then while two great armies sprawled across the
face of the Potomac country, growling at each other, the
men of those armies grew slightly older in their minds.
The pageantry and bright adventure of the march away
were gone from it, the fluttering handkerchiefs of the
girls, the last solemn words of paternal wisdom, the silent
tears of mother heart.

22

They had killed and been killed and a blue coat and a
gray coat were the symbols of mounting hatred. They
had buried boys they had gone to school with a few
months before, shot it out in picket actions and skirmishes
with other boys who had been reading Caesar's Com-
mentaries in Boston in March while they read them in
Richmond.

So they moved toward First Manassas First Bull Run,
whichever you please for the first great trial of strength.
Here they would fight a dreadful battle that would cloud
the heavy summer air with the sick sweet stench of de-
composing flesh for weeks afterward. There would be
men on both sides who could never see the full yellow
moon again without the grease of gangrene clogging
their nostrils through the associative channels of memory.

Equal in strength and training, with equally commend-
able tactical plans., the two armies would meet, and the
tide of battle would join full and deadlock for a time.
Then subtly it would turn in the Southern -favor for no
good or known reason unless it was Stonewall Jackson's
counterattack pom the Henry Hill The Northern Army
would break and in the inertia of indiscipline flee toward
Washington, its officers in many instances getting there
ahead of their men be-fore the taverns could be drunk
dry. By the same indiscipline, Beaure gardes Southerners
'would fail to exploit their God-given opportunity to pur-
sue, -fail to push the advantage of victory. Had they done
so y Washington would have fallen and history would have
had a different face. Of what nature, who can say?

But the important thing was what that battle did to
meris minds. It coerced blind hatred into the beginnings
of mutual respect. These were foemen worthy of each
other's steel. Win, lose, or draw this was a breed of men
'who could not deny each other. Let the New York
politicians curse the Johnnie Rebs for defaulting cut-
throats. Let the Richmond staff colonels damn the Yan-
kees for ravishers of Southern womanhood, but no com-

23

bat soldier on either side at Manassas ever hated blindly
again.

For Manassas was the birthplace of a nation, t<wo life-
times distant from Valley Forge a rebirth in steel and
blood of those principles that freemen find more neces-
sary to defend than life itself, the right to political
integrity in principle and fact.

24

STUART'S CHARGE

AT BULL RUN

THIS SOUP TUREEN of the Washington family was a lovely
thing. Pale cream salt glaze with raised blue cornflowers
in delicate clusters. You could see the shadow of your
finger through it, held to the light. One of the earlier
Washingtons, before President George, had the soup
tureen about 1760 from Josiah Wedgwood himself, of
Stoke-upon-Trent.

That was all in the letter from Forney Manigault's
grandmother. It was early in June they organized the 1st
Brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah and General
Jackson was given command of it. The Short Mountain
Cavalry Company was attached to it; so was the Rever-
end Doctor Pendleton's artillery battery with their four
old smooth-bores, called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
That's the way they gave the orders, too: "Stand by,
Matthew. . . . Matthew, read-ay? . . . Fire, Matthew!"
"Gospel on the way, sir. n

Roan Catlett was detailed to brigade headquarters rid-
ing dispatch during the Falling Waters skirmish, because
he was orderly in his dress and habits for a youngster. He
wasn't twelve feet from General Jackson when a Yankee
cannon ball tore a limb off a tree. General Jackson was
writing out an order. He brushed the splinters off the
paper and clawed them out of his beard and went on writ-
ing without even looking up.

27

28 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

Just after that cannon ball missed, old Doctor Latham
drove up the road with the soup tureen and the letter,
watching the battle, curious, through his spectacles, like
he was on a round of calls and getting the news to talk it.
Forney Manigault was over on the far left flank with
the company, fending. The doctor haltered his horse and
rig to a fence rail. He saw Roan and he said, "Come yere,
Roan," and he told it to Roan about the soup tureen For-
ney's grandmother had sent with the letter to Forney's
Great-Aunt Chastity, He had a package of other letters
from home : or all the boys in the Short Mountain Com-
pany and a quart bottle of sulphur and molasses for Davin
Ancrum, 'count of Davin was only turned fifteen, and
still a growing boy, and his mother wanted him to take
it for spring toning.

There were leaves falling from the trees. The old doc
looked up. "That's mighty odd, leaves falling in July,
Roan. Don't recall ever having seen that before."

"No, sir. No, sir," Roan said. "Bullets cuttin' them, sir.
Mebbe you better move the rig down the road a piece,
sir. We're kinda close in here."

"Nonsense," doc told him. "Can't see down there. You
go on about your business, Roan. I'll just sit here a spell
and watch."

So Roan took the letters and the soup tureen, and he
said, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir," and all the rest of the fight he
was worried sick to retching for fear a bullet' d smash that
beautiful piece of Wedgwood china before he could get
it over to Forney.

Forney was pretty shaken when he saw Roan, because
the first boy in the company was killed that day. Hadley
Stuart. Hadley was lying roadside with his hands dirty.
That's what you thought of first even when you saw
the throat shot clean out of him. Let's wash his hands
clean. Lying there with the summer breeze moving his
fine blond hair, like he was still alive only gray in the
face and chiseled sharp like a statue and lying awful flat

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 29

to the ground. You couldn't believe it was laughing
Hadley.

"Ridin 5 right beside me, Roan," Forney whispered. "I
heard it hit him like a rock chunked in swamp mud,"
and young Davin Ancrum just stood there with the tears
running down his own dirty face.

AH you could think of was the news getting home to
the Stuart place how Hadley was killed in the fight and
his laughter gone down the summer wind. With his
mother, after a while, asking, soft, with the desperation
held tight in her, "Was his face hurt? Hadley was such
a pretty baby."

"It's an omen to me, Roan." Forney shook his head.
"Just a few inches left and it'd been me. Maybe it will
be, next time."

"Stop it!" Roan's voice was quiet. "We got to bury.
Hadley's ours. We don't let nobody touch ours but us.
There by the sycamore, where it's peaceful like. . . .
Forney, this yere's George Washin'ton's soup tureen yore
grandmother sent for you to take to yore Aunt Chastity
over Manassas way. . . . Davin, this yere's yore sulphur-
and-molasses tonic."

About two weeks later it was, along in July, when the
Short Mountain Cavalry Company was ordered up near
Shepherdstown to join Lt. Col James Ewell Brown
Stuart's regiment. That was the fellow they got to calling
"Jeb" Stuart later along, you may remember. He was a
right personable man, of medium height, built in one
powerful piece of grown manhood to sit a horse and
nothing else. He'd been out on the prairies Indian-fighting
and they said he knew every name of his three hundred
sabers, and each squad he sent out on scout he instructed
personally, each tnan by name. Close-knit and black-
haired, Colonel Stuart, with an arrogant West Point eye
to him, but it had a pixy smile deep in it that they said
the ladies went for mighty easy.

He looked the company over when it reported to him,

30 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

and when he got to Forney Manigault he said, "What's
that gunny bag hanging to your cantle, soldier?" and For-
ney said, "That's George Washin'ton's soup tureen, sir."

Stuart looked full into Forney's eyes for insolence, but
he didn't find any.

"How'd you come by it?" he said.

Forney sort of shifted a bit under Stuart's eyes. "Well,
sir," Forney said, "my grandmother inherited it from the
Custises and she always promised, when she died it was
to go to Aunt Chastity, over Manassas way. Well, sir,
she knows I'm to the wars and she writes how some very
old friend of hers named General Beauregard is over
Manassas way getting set to fight this Yankee General
McDowell around Washin'ton. She figures that with all
them hundred thousand Yankees, General Beauregard's
goin' to need some help from General Jackson's Valley
Brigade up here and that I'd get to go over when they
send for us. That's about the how of it, sir. I got it
wrapped against breaking in m'extra drawers but it
worries me pretty much."

Then, before Colonel Stuart could answer, young
Davin Ancrum, on Forney's off side, said, "A fine old
lady, Forney's grandmother, sir. I got the cover to her
tureen in my cantle pack to keep the two parts from
smashing together at the gallop, but I'll sure be glad to
get it to where it's goin'. How soon you aim to start for
Manassas, sir?"

You could see Colonel Stuart was having trouble with
the dignity a colonel has to have.

"My respects to your grandmother, young man, but
General Beauregard has not given me his confidence to
the extent that she seems to enjoy it."

Right then an orderly galloped in, looking for Lieu-
tenant Colonel Stuart, and after Stuart read the orders,
he looked at Forney sort of funny this time, and he said,
"I'd like to meet your grandmother someday, sir. I've got
a place for her on my staff."

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 31

The Valley Brigade slipped out the sixty-odd miles for
Manassas behind a cavalry screen. It marched from Win-
chester east, forded the Shenandoah, waist deep, and came
down out of the Blue Ridge through Ashby's Gap to
Piedmont, to take the steam cars on from there. It was
getting hot, July hot, when dawn lies in the valleys in
thick blue haze and you can still smell yesterday's sun
scorch like cindered toast. Coming through Manassas
Junction before light, the column got a halt order passed
down through it, and that stopped the Short Mountain
Company so close to a hospital that you could hear a man
screaming. Not conscious screaming that you can control,
but deep out of delirium. Some poor devil wounded in
the skirmish around the Stone Bridge on the eighteenth.
In the last dark of night, that's not good to hear.

When Roan spoke Forney in passing, Forney didn't
answer. He just stood there in the dark, looking, like a
strange face at the window. Roan turned and came back
to him.

He said soft, "You let up, Forney, you hear? Thinking
ahead is like punishing yoreself before you do wrong."

Forney just reached into his jacket. "I want you to see
my father gets this letter afterwards. He's a f amily-think-
ing man. Proud of blood. He's got a right to know I
tried." Forney shook his head. "Oh, it ain't anything in
the letter but chat and news to him. I just kinda wanted to
talk to him once more. Just let him get that and you
write him."

Roan took the letter. He held it a minute in both hands.
"All right, Forney," and he bowed slightly, because that
was the way with Roan.

Daylight broke about then, and along about six in the
morning there was gunfire a little west of north, which
folks said would be up around the Stone Bridge on the
Warrenton Pike about six miles. So the brigades got on
the road again General Jackson's, Bee's and Bartow's
to march toward the gun fight. Bee and Bartow led off

32 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

up the road that parallels the Orange and Alexandria Rail
Road, with General Jackson's five Virginia infantry
regiments trailing in the dust behind. And that was dust.
It got seven, eight inches deep underfoot to walk in and
two inches thick to breathe. At the road to Mitchell's
Ford, the three brigades turned off left for due north, and
about a mile and a half north of the railroad and a straight
mile south of Bull's Run from Mitchell's Ford, they
halted. A right pretty place.

Sometime after nine the sound of that gun fight began
to shift left. Sudley Springs by the sound now. When
General Jackson finished prayers, he put a glass over
toward his left flank and he said, "That's low dust on the
Sudley Road. Thick-clouded. Infantry, and it can't be
ours. The Short Mountain Company will move out un-
til it contacts Colonel Stuart's regiment. Bring me back
his word on the situation at the gallop. You'll find him
between the Henry Farm House and the Stone Bridge,
probably behind the ridge line." That was General Jack-
son he could see through the hills.

Roan led 'cross country north and west. He'd lost his
hat, and the sun brought the dark red out of his black
hair like slow embers in charcoal. Forney, with that
Wedgwood soup tureen in the gunny bag from his cantle,
rode next to Roan, quiet in his own thinking, with his
cousin Davin watching him close and not liking what he
saw in Forney's face.

About two miles on the way, there was a quick wind
shift, like a fire swirl of smoke, and with it a retching
stench from a draw. And there it was to ride through,
with the horses blithering at it and some of the boys
vomiting. The surgeons had used the place after the
eighteenth, like they'd gone mad with the butcher knife.
The horses were walking in it. A green hand clawing at
their hoofs with half an arm on it and a couple of smashed
feet lying side by side in shoes, with ten inches of leg, but

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 33

no man on them. The greasy flies clouded thick, and there
was a field rat!

Roan lashed through that mess. "Git that off yore
minds, y'hear?" But how could you?

Through his tight-shut teeth, Forney said, "If I git hit
bad for the surgeons to carve me, don't take my hand
gun off me, Roan! Let me keep it for out/'

Roan turned slow in the saddle with the light of those
Catlett eyes of his burning deep into Forney. "That's
three times, Mr. Manigault," he said, soft. "Have quit of
that kind of talk!"

"There's Colonel Stuart!" Davin pointed, and it was.
He had left his regiment and ridden over to the Henry
Hill when the battle shifted. At fifty-yard intervals back,
he had his connecting files waiting, so he could shout and
the word'd pass like telegraph.

Across the pike the Yankees were pouring down thick
between Mr. Mathews' House and the old Stone House,
heading to force over Young's Branch, like ripe blueber-
ries dumped from a broken-wheeled market cart. There
were artillery shells puffing like cotton swabs close over
their heads with red in them, like cracked frosted
knuckles. It didn't look actual, though. That was the
funny thing. It looked like a picture drawing in a school-
book.

The worst thing was the sight of that flag with them.
The right of that was hard to come by. That was the old
glory flag of long back. It had blood in its red stripes
from Roan's own grandpappy's veins- and Davin's great-
uncle. It had honor in its white from the whole Manigault
tribe from long gone. One of those stars in the blue was
for the sovereign state of Virginia herself. But there it
was across the valley with the damn Yankees having
hold of it. And how can you think that out? It puts the
bitter tears deep. So deep you can't cry them. In Davin
Ancrum's boy's mind it went; / git the chance, Fm goin'
to shoot me a blue-bellied color sergeant and git my flag

34 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

back. All in a moment, which is battle too. Thoughts for
a lifetime that take twenty seconds.

When Roan brought the point up to report to Colonel
Stuart at his lookout, the colonel said, "Tell General
Jackson we have two enemy divisions on our left flank,
I believe." Then he pointed down to our line in front.
"Fending along out there in the corn is Colonel Evans*
riflemen with the Louisiana Tigers. Cooke and Wade
Hampton are backing him up, but it isn't going to be
enough against this flanking move. I don't think you'll
need to tell him." Stuart nodded behind where they were
and a shade over his left shoulder. There was General
Bartow's Brigade coming up on the run, yelling, with
Irnboden's battery galloping like the devil before break-
fast. And on the other side this General Bee with his
Carolina fireballs screaming to drink blood hot from a
boot, without sugar or cream.

But what Jeb Stuart was really nodding at was General
Jackson. Those two knew how to make the land fight
for them. That's West Point, and it's a knack precious
few generals ever learn. If the land don't fight for you,
soldiers die.

The fight below wasn't all together. It was meeting
the Yankee force piecemeal first Evans, next Cooke,
then Bartow, and then Bee and Hampton. Punch, hit or
miss, and after a while all of 'em falling back. Getting
snakewhipped now, sure enough.

Jackson alone wasn't sucked in. That's what Stuart
really meant when he nodded. Jackson had the 1st Bri-
gade coming up slow, like on drill, and taking position
with the hill crest to shelter them. You saw him and saw
the line below breaking up and falling back, and it was
like Christmas, when you know you're not going to get
what you want.

That was when there was a clear close sound as if a
sharp-honed razor caught the strop and sliced right
through it. Forney Manigault looked down. His left foot

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 35

was still holding the stirrup on his boot toe, but the stir-
rup leather was trailing the dust, cut clean in two by a
bullet.

Roan Catlett grinned. "That's one, Forney," he said,
"and you lived through it. What for you had to call it
twice more on yourself?"

Nobody knows where time goes. It was ten minutes
ago the company went to find Stuart, just after nine
o'clock, and now it was crowding for noon by the sun.
There was a right smart mill for a time around the
Henry House below, and Imboden's battery was gallop-
ing back up, everybody shouting. Then our infantry
was breaking its line all along, and fighting up backwards,
shooting from the knee. There were some powerful wide
gaps in it, like kicked-out teeth, and the men sure looked
jasperooed. Through the smoke and right in the front
of it all, there was this madman galloping his soaped
horse, waving his sword. And you could hear. "Look!"
he shouted. "There is Jackson " They said it was Gen-
eral Bee from Carolina. Then General Jackson let loose
on the battle, like a mountain man stepping up to mark
in a Thanksgiving turkey shoot. His horse had been
wounded, he had a big bullet tear in his coat at the hip
and a bloody handkerchief wrapped around the broken
middle finger of his left hand, but he looked like a man
setting off late for church, mad because he wanted to
get there before first hymn.

Now you can feel a battle turn. It don't make any dif-
ference how, for you ain't human in a battle. And nothing
happens that's human. It just happens. As soon as the
Shenandoah Brigade opened, that battle turned like a
greased wheel, and the smile of God came upon General
Jackson. He volleyed the whole Yankee army. Volleyed
again, and the Yankee center buckled. Then the bayonets
flashed on in the sunlight like a thousand shards of broken
mirror, and General Jackson shouted, "If they're beating
us, sir, we'll give them the bayonet!"

36 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

Forney yelled, "Roan, they got French soldiers down
there!" and he whipped up his arm and pointed, and his
hat snapped off and scaled away behind. He reached to
his head like to catch it, and he turned slow around and
stared at it, lying in the sumac with a hole through it.

Roan spat cotton that didn't clear his chin. "That's
twice, Forney!"

They weren't French soldiers at all; they were what
they called the New York Fire Zouaves, in red pants and
caps with white leggings and pretty little blue short coats,
coming off the Sudley Road. Column-of-fours.

Just as Forney pointed, a staff officer galloped up.
"Colonel Stuart," he said, "General Beauregard directs
that you bring your command into action at once and that
you attack where the fighting is hottest!"

Colonel Stuart cupped his hands. "Boots and saddles!"
and you could hear the repeat going back through his
link filesan echo so fast it was like hail on a tin roof.
In no time the head of Stuart's regimental column was
coming up through the fences on Bald Hill at the trot
with Capt. William Blackford leading. Stuart turned and
waved the company into position in the column. Then he
hand-signaled again for the rear to oblique left and de-
ploy on right into line. It's a mighty pretty sight, horse
and man, when the sabers flash and the trumpet shrieks.
Only you've got scant chance to enjoy it, for a horse at
the gallop does a hundred yards as fast as a steam train,
when blood's in his nostrils. Halfway to them those five
hundred red pants faced around and leveled and fired a
long streak of red flame in pale blue smoke, Capt. Welby
Carter went down; then the smoke was too thick to see
a thing. But they couldn't see either and in the battle fog
they made their mistake. They reloaded instead of stand-
ing with the knife at charge bayonets. Half reloaded,
Stuart hit them.

It was bloody awful. Half Stuart's horses thought they
were hunting and that they were making to clear this

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 37

red-pants fence with smoke over it, so they gathered and
took off. Their fore hoofs topped into faces and chests.
They caved like picked pumpkins, and the charge went
through. The charge broke then and turned in a thrash-
ing mill to smash back through the gouting shambles from
the rear. It was awful. Sick, puking, stenching awful.

Roan was drenched in cold sweat. Forney had blood
all the way to the shoulder. Young Davin Ancrum had
only four inches of blade left. Snapped clean. He threw
the stumped hilt back at them, like it was a rock.

"Bite on that!" he yelled, and other things.

In the galloping scramble to get uphill again, Forney
shouted something and kneed left, pulling his mount
crosswise to Davin and Roan. Roan yelled, "Not that
way!" and there was a chunk sound and a muffled smash
of breaking china, and Forney shrieked like a cut pig,
"I'm hit, I'm hit!" Roan grabbed at him and got him over
the hill still in the saddle.

Forney was hit all right. A calf Vear nick through both
sides of his rump. Only with the muscles stretched the
way they were at the gallop, it looked like ForneyM got
the whole bottom shot off him. They laid him over a
log, face down, to plug lint in until it sopped up the blood.
The girls down home sent lint to the company in per-
fumed-paper packages. You were supposed to guess
which girl by the perfume. Roan took a pinch of lint and
passed it in front of his nose like a pinch of snuff.

Then he plugged it into Forney and shook his head.
"Forney, I'd be ashamed what yo're using this pore girl's
petticoat for!"

"Shut up!" Forney grunted.

Roan took another pinch of lint and inhaled deep from
it. "Forney," he said, "you called it three times on your-
self. Maybe you better let God run his own war from
now on."

"Shut up!" Forney grunted.

38 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

So Roan got the blood stopped and he rigged up a
white shirt like a sort of diaper and he said, "Hold still
while mamma pins you up, Forney."

You think it's funny? Well, it isn't. It's shock. It's what
comes of fighting. Shock's gray like a casket cloth. Your
soul's wrapped in it. You want to put your arms around
somebody and cry like a baby. You get doing whatever
and you can't stop. Over and over until it leaves you.

Roan couldn't stop. "Dear Judge Manigault," he said,
"I have a sad duty to perform in writing to you. Forney's
been shot in th' "

That was when Forney whipped up and spun on his
heels, his boots sucking blood, and smashed Roan. Roan
went down like a poleaxed ox, and there was Forney
bawling like a toddler real tears crouched over Roan,
his finger pointed rigid to the gunny bag at his cantle.

"Damn yore eyes, Roan Catlett!" he blubbered. "I
broke my grandmother's soup tureen!" and he pressed
both hands to his face with the sobs tearing out of him.
"I heard it smash, damn you, Roan Catlett! I love my ole
grandmother! She used to give me apples and take me
walks and tell me stories!" And he sat down on the log
with his head on his arms, and you'd thought his heart
would break.

Davin Ancrum put his hand on Forney's shoulder.
"Come on, Forney, don't take it so hard. I still got the
cover whole."

Like a couple of old men sitting there, they were, nod-
ding their heads solemnly and 'settling the affairs of the
world.

"Yes"- Forney wiped his eyes "that's right. We got
the cover. Well," he said, "it's the best that I could do,
but I'm sure sorry. Sure sorry." Roan opened his eyes.
"Sure sorry, Roan," Forney said.

Roan got up. Probably didn't even know Forney'd hit
him. Didn't act like it. Just said, "I got an idea you can

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 39

sit sideways on a horse and get back to Manassas that
way, Forney boy. Let's try."

Monday afternoon the whole company came back into
Manassas, two by two, leading at the walk down the
Union Mills Road. Feeling pretty good, because that Bull's
Run battle was a jasperoo and General Jackson won it,
for the Short Mountain money.

Sitting on a veranda of a house as you come into town,
with a cushion to his chair and his polished boots cocked
on the rail, was young Forney Manigault with a pipe of
shag going.

"Well, well," said Forney. "My old friend Roan Catlett
come from the wars," and he stood up and stretched a bit,
elegant like.

An elderly gentleman came out of the house and
squinted over his spectacles. "Yore friends, sir?" he said.
"Ill have Commodus saddle yore charger. . . . Corn-
modus!"

"Stand," Roan told the boys, "while we watch a passel
of Negras get Mr. Manigault ready to accompany us."

Then the man's wife came out with doughnuts and
lemonade. Lawyer and Mrs. Pemberton. Right-pleasant-
spoken people. And it was all fun again, with one by one
the company going in the big kitchen for a hot bath them-
selves and a change of shirt. Everybody laughing and
telling how it was and how it was going to be now, with
the war done and the Yankees gone home. Laughing, that
is, until this macaroni rode up, with the carriage behind
him in the street.

You've seen 'em in Richmond of a Sunday? Gray top
hat with a high fresh collar to his ears and a folded silk
neck cloth, black with small white dots. Gray frock coat
and tight pants over his varnished half Wellingtons. Sil-
ver-knobbed crop and yellow gloves. It's all right if you
like it, but as young as he was, about twenty-two, and

40 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

right after a battle like Bull's Runand on the finest horse
you ever saw it can rub you rough.

He signaled to the coachman to stop the carriage as if
it mustn't come any closer with the princess in it. Then
he took off his hat and he said, "I beg yore pardon, but
can any of you tell me in what house the Carolinian
General Bee's body lies?" Without the mannerly "sir"
onto it.

Roan's eyes flicked. He straightened up slow and put
his thumbs in his belt.

"Don't reckon that any of us here ever heard of any
General Beesbody."

"Is that meant to be funny, suh?"

"It wasn't, sir," Roan told him, slow. "It's just the way
you talk. I thought you said Beesbody. You slur your
words, sir for a Virginian."

"I am not a Virginian," and there was pond ice in it.
"General Bee was killed because of the Virginians," the
fellow said in fury. "The word comes from Major Rhctt
direct. And Major Rhett is General Johnston's chief of
staff, suh! He ought to know. In yesterday's battle the
Carolinians bore the brunt. They were badly shaken.
General Bee shouted for someone who calls himself Gen-
eral Jackson. * Where is Jackson? Where is Jackson?' he
shouted. To get him to come help him. But this Jackson
didn't move an inch. He just stood where he was, not
lifting a finger, like a" the fellow's face was boiled scar-
let "like a damned stone wall!"

Roan took his thumbs out of his belt and dropped his
hands. Very slowly he walked across toward the fop.
"Get off yore horse," he said, soft in the throat. "Because
I'm goin' to carve it into yore hide, slow and neat lettered,
what was really said by that general to keep yore boys
from running clear to Charleston. What was really said
was, "Look! There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall!
Rally behind the Virginians!'" and with a quick hand,

STUART'S CHARGE AT BULL RUN 4-1

he whipped the fop off his horse and he said, "Take off
his shirt, boys, while I strop my knife point."

There wasn't a princess in that carriage. There was a
very old lady, with a satin bonnet set tip top of her ivory
hair knot and tied under her ear with a big satin bow.
Come to think, maybe she was a princess too. Just grown
old. It's always how you believe. She was that old when
a person's waking and sleeping runs together all day and
all night.

She opened her eyes and said, "Forney Manigault!"

Forney jumped, and everybody looked.

"Yes, ma'am?"

She said, "Forney, whatever are you doing in Manassas?
Does your grandmother know you're here?"

Forney's foot shuffled. "Well, Aunt Chastity, as a mat-
ter of plain talk, my grandmother sent me."

"She's not sick, is she?"

"No, ma'am. She's right spry still. Right spry."

You could see that Forney was fighting for every min-
ute of time. So Davin helped. He worked the soup-tureen
cover out of his cantle pack. He waved Commodus away
from Forney's stirrup and undid the gunny bag. He
reached inside for Forney's extra drawers with the shat-
tered pieces in it, and the funniest look came on his face,
like he had sorghum candy stuck in his throat. Only what
he really had was sulphur and molasses all over his hands.
Next minute, there was that beautiful Josiah Wedgwood
soup tureen out in the sunlight, without a nick in It, not
a crack. Sort of dazed, Davin put the cover on it, and
that fine thin china rang in the hot street like a lady's
silver table bell.

He walked over and held it out to the old lady. "Davin
Ancrum, ma'am. Glad to do a service for Forney's
grandma."

"My goodness," Aunt Chastity said. "Cousin Emily's
soup bowl I remember it very well. Cousin Matilda

42 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

Mesereaux had it from Aunt Augusta Semmes. It was
always promised to me."

Forney tugged out his grandmother's letter and handed
it up carriage side, and just then the old lady saw Roan
standing with one foot on the dandy's neck, the dandy
thrashing and flopping under it like an axed rooster. She
reached into her reticule for her hand glasses, opened
them and held them by the handle in front of her eyes.

"Chesnut," she called, "what are you doing, lying on
the ground? . . . Forney, that is your cousin Chesnut
Haxall from Charleston," and she began to read her letter.
After a moment's reading, she said over the top of the let-
ter, "He has come up here to stay with me until they
make him a captain or a major or something down in
South Carolina. . . . Chesnut, pick up your hat." After
a little bit further reading, she said, "My goodness, For-
ney; your grandmother says you're in the cavalry."

"Yes, ma'am," Forney grinned. "Looks as if I am."

She said, "But there was a dreadful battle yesterday."
She looked over at the rest of the company. "A perfectly
dreadful battle. I live out in the country," she explained,
"and there were soldiers all over my place all day. The
shooting was so close it broke more than two dozen of
the windows."

"Sure glad you got away safe, Aunt Chastity."

"Got away?" She put her hand glasses close on Forney.
"Got away? I don't know what you mean, Forney. I live
at Grammercie. It's my home. I'm in town today because
it's my Sewing Day with the Episcopal Mission Board."
And then she said, "You weren't in that battle, were you,
Forney?"

Forney shuffled foot again. "Well, ma'am," he said,
"for a time, I was in a little part of it."

"You weren't hurt, were you, Forney?"

"Well, ma'am, I "

Roan bowed. "No, ma'am," he said. "Forney weren't
hurt at all."

The rest of the summer of 1861 found the Potomac River
once more a rough line of demarcation between the dif-
ference of opinion. Opposite the city of Washington, the
Union forces had troops south of the river but in no con-
solidated organization that could, in a modern tactical
sense, have been called a bridgehead. Alexandria was con-
trolled by these troops. Arlington House., the residence
of Colonel Robert Edward Lee, late Corps of Engineers,
United States Army, and now an obscure staff officer in
Richmond, was used variously as a Union field hospital
and a -forward echelon headquarters. The Sixty-Ninth,
New York, held a shallow bridgehead in Rosslyn, pro-
tecting the southern end of the Canal Bridge. This bridge)
on the site of which the Key Bridge now stands, brought
the canal waters across the Potomac from Georgetown
in an open aqueduct so that the canal might serve Alex-
andriaits mule-drawn boats passing within sight and
earshot of the present Pentagon.

A summer war for summer soldiers, after Bull Run,
with both armies passing from the offensive not to the
defensive necessarily but rather to complete apathetic
inactivity, with the exception of minor patrol prowling.
Confederate cavalry sniffed the outskirts of Alexandria.
They came down between Arlington House and Rosslyn
and watered their mounts in the Potomac, probably right
where the present Memorial Bridge connects the main
gates of the Cemetery with the Lincoln Memorial on the
Washington side, along the land now occupied by South
Post, Fort Meyer.

Across the river they could see the derrick-spidered
domeless Capitol, the Washington Monument flat-
topped still, at about one-third of its height to be and
the full raw expanse of the frightened town.

43

For Washington was frightened, 'with a victorious
armed -force to the southward and the 'whole doubtful
but insurgent state of Maryland to the north. The Presi-
dent had sent out an immediate call for additional volun-
teers and they 'were pouring in but they were ra<w. This
time, however , they were not coming with the flamboyant
bombast of the army that had been soundly trounced at
Bull Run. They were coming quietly with a sense of near-
disaster in their heartsand the slow anger that fear in-
stills. They were coming doggedly from the northern
farms and cities for it was as if the ghost of Pitcairn was
on Lexington Bridge once more, Wellington's Peninsula
veterans were marching on Plattsburg, or the last long
rifle in the overrun Alamo had ceased to fire.

These men were to be McClellaris mishandled army of
the Chickahominy , of Malvern Hill, of Cold Harbor, a
hardening breed of men with not so much a personal fight
in their hearts as a mass consciousness of which way
destiny lay. The United States was the property of their
fathers in their time they would not see it dissipated.
Hold the whole farm together and to Ugh hell with hack-
ing off parcels of it to split the ownership!

For Southern arms that summer, the war was won. Bull
Run proved it conclusively. Even Congress knew it at
last, for Congress had come out to see the battle with its
ladies and its picnic lunches and run frantically when the
tide turned, leaving a ten-mile trail of broken parasols,
top hats, wine bottles, and food hampers.

So what was left? Stay around a while, flushed with
the high wine of victory so the Yankees would damn well
remember them, and then go home to kiss the girls who
had seen them off. Row the Potomac at sundown and
have a drink in Wdlard's just to say you had. Dust up the
sentries now and then to keep them awake but the bat-
tle's done and the war's done and that's what we came
for. So let's go home.

Not so T. J. Jackson. Nor Beauty Stuart. Nor the rest

44

of the ex-regulars. As they could see through hills in
battle, so too they could see through the summer to the
painted leaves of fall In their shoulder blades they could
feel the small western actions already probing for control
of the Mississippi. In the Atlantic mists they could feel
the water envelopment of the Northern navy fending for
Cape Fear to blockade the ports. Two fumbling arms as
yet, but with their import plain to embrace both sides
of the Confederacy in a wrestler's hug and crush it breath-
less! So they kept their men to drill schedules, denied them
furlough, bent their minds to the cold threat of the
massing new armies across the Potomac.

That summer saw the real birth of the greatest army
the world has ever seen, the Army of Northern Virginia.
Greatest, because it could not be defeated. Shoeless, hun-
gry, short on ammunition always, blanketless in winter,
rotten with dysentery, bareheaded to the rains the Army
of Northern Virginia remained upon its feet for four
long years. Marched when it was told to march, counter-
attacked with the spleen of a hill cat. Won great battles
and lost great battles, but always stood to its colors to
fight again until it furled those colors in the dignity and
awful pride of Appomattox*

45

SLAUGHTER

AT BALI'S BLUFF

HADLEY STUART'S GRANDFATHER and his old horse Prince
caught up with the Short Mountain Cavalry Company
outside of Fairfax Court House a few days after the Bull's
Run battle. He was an old man, but he didn't look as old
as he was until you looked right close into his eyes. Then
you could see the procession of the years going down
deep into him like a stone dropped in a blue mountain
pool

"It's like this, sir," he told Roan Catlett. "With Hadley
killed, somebody in the Stuart family has to fill in his
part. Hadley's ma won't let his brother Ambrose 'list
until he turns fifteen. His pa's been dead these six, seven
years" he smiled "so I reckon that left me."

Roan was slow to smile ever, after Manassas, and with
his better than six feet of hill-grown bone and muscle
and his leather sunburn he looked much older and meaner
than his going on eighteen years should have made him
look. It was in Roan's eyes probably that it wouldn't
make too much sense having an old man like that in the
company. Hadley's grandpappy saw that and he smiled,

"I've got every one of my teeth still anchored solid in
m'head, son and Prince is a good sound horse for all he
got old enough to vote this spring." Being called "son"
made Roan feel a little homesick, but the thought of a

47

48 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

twenty-one-year-old horse made him smile it away fast.
"I guess it's all right, sir," he told Hadley's grandfather.
"For all of me, you can stay."

"I'm right glad of that, sir, because I told General Lee
I'd get his hat and send it to him in Richmond." The old
man's eyes twinkled and his head sort of went down
toward his left shoulder like he was listening for the laugh
that would pick his words up for a joke. But Hadley
Stuart was the first boy killed in the company. That day
over at Falling Waters when a cannonball hit a tree close
enough to General Jackson to plow splinters into his
beard. And there wasn't any joke in remembering that.
Besides, nobody knew who General Lee was, that early
in the war.

Davin Ancrum touched his forehead to the old man.
"I'd be right pleased to go get the hat for you, sir, you
tell me where he left it. We were powerful fond of Had-
ley." Forney Manigault frowned. Davin was his cousin,
and he knew Davin's way of volunteering to build up
credit for a letdown.

Hadley's grandfather snorted. "General Lee didn't
really mean get the hat, son! He said it for a joke. When
he resigned from the United States Army he left his home
and went straight to Richmond. Left everything. Big
white house down the Potomac, he and Miz Lee had.
Called it Arlington House. Remember it long ago. Pillars
in front and a portrait of George Washington in the par-
lor. Overlooks a slope to the river. But the Yankees took it
over right away as a headquarters; so that does for the hat.
But it was a right special hat, I reckon. You know how
some men are? Placing great store in certain hats? When
he gave me my letter in Richmond and I thanked him, he
laughed and said, I left my hat up there on the Potomac,
where you're going, sir. If you can get it back for me,
that'll return the slight courtesy I've been able to do
you.' " The old man's eyes got sort of wistful. "Joke or
not, I'd sure like to get that hat, to return General Lee's

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLUFF 49

courtesy to me. But it's impossible, so I reckon we'll just
forget it. ... Whoa-up, Prince! Stand still, y'hear?"
which wasn't necessary because the old horse was sound
asleep where he stood, and had been all the time.

Now the order in the company from Roan was to go
light on Hadley's grandpappy, and on that old black
horse, Prince. Let him work as hard as he wanted, only
damn well see that the heavy work was done before he
got to it, and damn well don't let him know it was
planned that way.

It wasn't any chore to do that, for Mr. Stuart was lik-
able. He could cook like a sailor cooks take anything
for a base, add anything you had to offer, and come up
with real tasty potluck. He could tell time by the stars,
give him a moment to look and never off only a few
minutes, and maybe at that it was the clock you checked
by that was off, not him. He'd been a sailor and been all
over the world. It was in his walk somewhat and the way
he'd ask, "Smoking lamp lit? " when he wanted a pipe on
night patrol. But he didn't offer talk. Not like most old-
sters, cankering the spleen in you, telling how it was in
their day.

Day patrols'd shove over wide, southeast, and water
their horses right in the Potomac River with the whole
mud-flat Washington City right across, to see it all. Night
patrols'd push around close to the head of the Aqueduct
Bridge, listening to those New York Irishmen jasperooing
each other in their camp. Sixty-ninth Regiment it was,
guarding the bridge, and come sundown the whisky'd
flow red. Their Colonel Corcoran had got himself cap-
tured in the battle and sent to Richmondand he was the
only one they'd ever kept order for. So all bets were
off until he got exchanged.

One night on point, dismounted, Forney and Davin
got in close enough listening, to fall over one of those
New York boys sleeping whisky deep. Fall didn't even
blink him, but it tinkled his bottle, so they took it off him

50 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

in the name of Jeff Davis and went on around and down
to the riverbank to look the situation over.

"Right good bourbon," Davin said.

"Store bought. Thin," Forney said.

Davin pointed across river. "Couple of boys in Jeb
Stuart's regiment tell me they went right into Washing-
ton one night and bought drinks at Kirkwood's Hotel
on Twelfth Street."

"How?" Forney turned his head sharp.

"Boat," Davin said.

"In uniform they'd 'a' been caught. Out of uniform
ain't honest." That's the Manigault family for you al-
ways.

"What uniform?" Davin reached for the bottle back.
"Both of us got the fundamental clothes on we wore at
home. Shirts and pants. Take off the sabers and hats, and
we're just country boys in for marketing."

"What boat?" Forney grunted.

"Right down there," Davin pointed. "With everybody
saying the war's over, I'd sure hate to miss seeing Wash-
ington before I go back to school especially the Cap-
itol where my daddy used to orate." Mighty fine orator,
Senator Ancrum. Powerful chest and throat.

The boat didn't leak too badly and the next thing For-
ney knew, Davin was paddling it right down the middle
of the Potomac. Only thing Forney could think was that
he wasn't going to let his cousin go alone, even if it
wasn't what a Manigault would do, left on his own to
decide.

Wind was off the city and the place smelled worse
than Manassas battlefield. Sour sick. Old swamp they
built the town on with a stench of fudged sewage sim-
mering in the damp heat to make the fish-rot river flats
a relief until their boat got opposite that stone shaft they
were going to finish someday in memory of George
Washington. The Yankee Army had its slaughterhouse

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLUFF 51

there and the fetid leavings covered half a rotting green
acre, four feet deep.

By that time the bottle was done. Besides, the moon
broke out from the clouds and they could see the Capitol
straight down the sludge canal, all cobwebbed with der-
ricks and scaffolds, and no dome on it yet, which was
what they'd come to see. Where Senator Ancrum orated.
On top of all, three or four sentries were shooting at them
from the riverbank now, so Davin turned the boat and
headed back.

"Looka there, Forney!" he said. "There's that gen-
eral's house where he left his hat!"

And sure enough, up the slope in the trees in the moon-
light there was a big house with white pillars like old Mr.
Stuart had said.

Forney said, "Let's not stop, boy! Them bullets are
getting close to hitting, we take a deep breath to make
ourselves a rnite wider!"

"Sure was good bourbon," Davin grinned.

They made back to below Anolostan Island, beached
the boat and went on back to where they'd left the patrol
with the horses. Only thing was Roan was there, come
down to inspect, and he smelled the liquor on them. Going
to take the hide off them in quick long-arm jerks, not for
touching the stuff on duty but for touching it, that's all
when old Mr. Lovatt Stuart said, "Sergeant, I gave them
a half issue of my own medicinal rum apiece/' and he
patted his saddle bag. "Against the malaria. Medicine.
Pure medicine. They were coming down, else."

He was like that, the old man. Sharp as a whistle for
the right thought and word in trouble. Like an old soldier.

When everybody knew finally that Beauregard wasn't
going to take Washington, he said, "I'm sort of glad. It
got taken once by the British. Wasn't pretty. Army ran
away at Bladensburg. Captain Barney's sailors came up
from the mosquito fleet, running with cannons on their

52 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

shoulders. Tried to save it, but Barney got wounded and
it was all over. British burned the Printing Office and the
Treasury and the President's Palace. President Jim Mad-
ison ran away to Maryland. Dignity bled clean out of the
country for a while. Wasn't pretty." He shook his head
slowly. "This yere's a family fight. Blood feuding, but
we're all Americans, don't forget. So let's fight each other
like men; let's not get to burning out each other's houses,
like banditti." He smiled. "I talk too much,"

When Col. Jeb Stuart first saw old Mr. Stuart, he
looked twice, quick, and kneed over to him. "I don't place
your name, sir? You've just joined?" It wasn't for any
reason at first, except that Colonel Jeb had to get names.
Knew all names of his three hundred men. Called them
plain, day or night. Captains to cooks.

"Lovatt Stuart, sir." Then he saw the colonel's eye
cloud just a shade at the sight of how old he was and how
old Prince was, sleeping sound there on formation under
him. Sound, to horse snores. The fire kindled deep to
pride in the old man's own eyes. "Total age of horse and
man," he said, "one hundred years." And that was right,
He was seventy-nine and Prince was twenty-one, like it
or leave it.

Colonel Stuart was only twenty-eight years old that
year, and he didn't like it. You could see that. A cavalry-
man's got hard work to do, and there're two ways it can't
be done. One is to try to be a hero, so the others always
have to get you out of show-off trouble; and the other is
always to need help the other way, from lack of strength
or spirit, horse or man. Either way takes it from the files
to right and left and weakens the command. That was in
Jeb Stuart's mind, and you could almost see fear in the
old man's eyes when he saw it there. If he got to be sent
away before Ambrose reached fifteen, it would let the
whole family down.

"I have a letter," he said, "from General Robert Ed-
ward Lee, sir. I didn't aim to show it" he pulled it out

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLUFF 53

of pocket and held it in hand "but if it's going to be

going home or not I'd sure like to stay for just one

battle."

Colonel Jeb looked quick at Roan Catlett with the
question.

Roan snapped his hand up, flicking his hat brim.
"Pulls his freight, sir," Roan said. "Lifts his weight. Shore
sorry to have to lose him, sir.'*

"Proud to have you with us, sir." Colonel Jeb bowed
slightly. "The letter won't be necessary as long as Ser-
geant Catlett vouches for you. Unless it's to me person-
ally."

"It's to 'Whom-it-may-concern,' sir. Thank you, sir,"
and the old man put the letter back in. Later he said to
Roao, "Thank you kindly, sergeant if you weren't
lying?" and Roan couldn't quite meet his eye. He just
said, "No man lies to Colonel Stuart twice," and the mean-
ing was plain between them.

"I understand/' the old man said. "You won't regret it,
sir."

The summer wore along. The war was over. All the
hotheads were yelling for discharges or furlough to go
home and tell how they won it. But Gen. "Stonewall"
Jackson wasn't going home, so he didn't let his men go.
Nor was Colonel Jeb, so his regiment stayed too. Drill-
ing.

After McDowell, the Yankees got a fellow named
McClellan in command and along toward the end of Sep-
tember the war wasn't over at all Word got around that
there was a sizable Yankee force camped between Con-
rad's and Edward's Ferries near Harrison's Island on the
Upper Potomac. Our left, under Gen. "Shanks" Evans,
who had the riflemen at Bull's Run, was secured on Lees-
burg, but they were shy on cavalry scouts, so early in Oc-
tober the Short Mountain Company, being Shenandoah
boys, got ordered up under this Evans to help scout for
the Mississippi infantry 13th, 17th and 18th regiments.

54 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

It was in the air that something was going to rip. The
cork was still in the bottle on Sunday morning, the twen-
tieth, but you could feel it sizzing to pop. The company
rode into Drainesville just at first light and broke into
prowl points of four to scout the river line. Roan, old
Mr. Stuart, Davin and Forney took the right-hand east
flank, and coming up on Ball's Bluff, dismounted, and be-
gan to look-see Harrison's Island opposite and the far
shore.

Suddenly the old man pointed. "Boats," he said. "Flat-
boats from the Chesapeake Canal. Soldiers in 'em."

"Don't make sense," Davin shook his head. "This side
the bluff is too steep to climb up to here. Must be a hun-
dred, hundred fifty feet straight up almost from the water
to where we are. Why boat over to the island, opposite
here? It don't make sense."

"It made sense when Wolfe did it at Quebec," Mr.
Stuart whispered. "A fellow once said, 'Never say a cliff's
inaccessible; just say difficult for horse artillery/ "

Roan chewed grass. "Like this way, you think, sir?
Sneak over here and up the bluff face because we wouldn't
think they could? Start the fight up-river a piece and fall
on our flank from here?"

"It could be," the old man nodded.

"Gripes," Roan snorted. "It's your idea, sir; you ride
dispatch in and take the word to General Evans. Fast."

You'd never forget that picture of Mr. Stuart against
the autumn sky. When he crawled back to Prince, the
old horse was asleep as usual, but he woke up and flared
his nostrils and pranced a little bit to show he wasn't. Mr.
Stuart threw a leg over and straight in the saddle, raised
his hand with his hat in it to Roan and the others. Prince
seemed to feel something, too, for he ups with his fore-
hoofs and to hell with his rheumatism. The cavalier, the
man on horseback, the spirit of the battle that only one
sculptor in a thousand can see in the cold stone he carves

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLUFF 55

his statue from. "Total age of horse and man, one hun-
dred years."

Well, that's the way it was, you'll read in cold history
print. Two forces. One to cross between Edward's Ferry
and Conrad's. The other from Harrison's Island and up
the cliff, to catch Shanks Evans between and run him out
of Leesburg. Only Shanks wasn't there. Which saved
trouble, because the Yankees didn't get there either.
Where they did get the next day was each halfway, when
the cork popped. The force that climbed Ball's Bluff was
mostly Massachusetts people. General Evans let 'em move
down almost to Leesburg before he let go. They must
have been the feint, because they fell back right away,
leaving only one man dead. But the sound of the battle
brought the other force down to help, and shortly after
noon Evans had them pinned cold, on three sides, to the
top of Ball's Bluff. That was no Bull's Run. It was stand
and deliver and lash it out for blood. New Yorkers now
with the Massachusetts men 40th Regiment by the belt
plates on the dead and they said the 1st California Regi-
ment was somewhere in it, toomostly Pennsylvanians
and elsewhere, however, which is what they say Calif or-
nians are.

Just before twilight, old Mr, Stuart found the company
again, where it was being held off, shelter of the woods,
for when the cavalry mop-up would begin.

"I didn't stay away, sergeant," he told Roan. "I was
kept by General Evans for dispatch and guiding."

"That's all right," Roan nodded, his eyes keen to the
fight across the way. "I figured so." But what he was
really figuring was when the charge order came, there' d
be the old man with him on his old horse, Prince, and it
getting toward dark and the bluff edge steep and all. The
way a man thinks who's got twenty men to think for.
And he sure didn't want to charge old Mr. Stuart and that
twenty-one-year-old horse, Prince. He sure as hell-fire
didn't. Across the bluff top, the gun smoke was blue in

56 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

the twilight, hanging like autumn mist, gashed with red
as the firing got hotter.

Where the company waited there was a mask of oaks,
and the leaves now and then would drift down from long
shots high above. It was coming up on cavalry time now,
fast, for the Massachusetts men and the New Yorkers
were slowly backing to the cliff top. Fascinating to watch.
Like a boat drifting toward the open lip of a waterfall.
In a moment the word would come galloping in the
twisted mouth of one of General Evans' staff: "Cavalry
to clear the field! Draw . . . sabers!" and Roan sure
enough didn't want to charge Mr. Stuart and that old
horse, Prince.

It was in his eyes of course. Mr. Stuart saw it, and a
man can't keep begging and hold his pride forever. "The
poet Homer once said" the old man's voice was soft
"that 'that man is happy who has sons and whose sons
have sons, and who himself is permitted to die upon the
field of battle.' " But before Roan could say, "How's that,
sir?" there was a sound like a boot sucking mud and Prince
threw up his head in awful surprise, slewed around like
his hind hoofs had slipped on slick, and started to go down
slowly all over. Mr. Stuart was off and at his mount's
head before the old horse was quite down. They just sort
of looked at each other just looked and Prince made a
noise in his throat, when the pink foam bubbled through
his nostrils, that you would have sworn was a laugh at
some old and homely joke they had between them. "And
I reckon that goes for horses too." The old man looked up
at Roan. "Satisfy your function in life, and be able to re-
capture a figment of youth again at the very end." He
eased Prince's girth and drew the saddle off his dead horse.
"Made Prince feel mighty good, being with the younger
horses."

Then they all saw the word coming; saw the officer
galloping in, his hat gone and the wind tangled in his hair;
saw his face twist in a shout drowned by the firing.

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLUFF 57

Roan turned taut to the boys. "Dismount and tighten
girths! . . . Mr. Stuart," he said, "we'll see you later."

It wasn't a battle from that time on; it was slaughter.
The poor devils taken on three sides against the bluff top
went over it. Some tried to scale down. More got pushed.
There were knives in it and clubbed rifles, with the au-
tumn-darkness sea blue to full black, and the cliffside
screaming with lost souls, to the water's edge.

Some tried to swim. Some tried to get off in the boats.
By then the company was afoot, horses with the holders
on top, fighting down side by side the Mississippi infan-
try. One boat got off and sank, then another, and another.

It was Davin Ancrurn who found Mr. Stuart. He hadn't
gone to the stragglers' line at all; he'd made for the cliff
top and climbed down east of the fight, worked his way
to twenty feet above the river, where the boats were
beached, and crouched there, deliberately shooting holes
in the bottoms of them with his Sharps carbine and his
hand gun. Smashing the rudders and riddling the planks.
Maybe he didn't win the battle, but he sure fixed it so
precious few Yankees got back across the river to tell how
they lost it.

Had to carry the old man up, he was that exhausted.
He couldn't talk. It had just run his strength out, doing
that. The last of it. All he had left. But it was worse than
that. He wanted it to be that way. With his old horse,
Prince, shot dead under him, the whole adventure was
closing up. The accounts totted. He'd had his battle and
that's all there was. Davin was crying not really; just
the tears flooding his eyes. "We'll get you another horse,
sir," kneeling beside him in the firelight, begging up to
Roan Catlett with his eyes, while Forney put more
blankets to keep the old man warm. Roan shook his head.
Davin pulled him aside. "But don't let him die, Roan," he
begged. "He just lies there smiling. You've got to do
something, Roan."

58 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

It was awful watching that faded smile touched across
that old white face like a benediction. From all the years
back it came through, like evening sun after a storm.
Darin shook his head again. "And he didn't even get to
get that general's hat he talked about!"

John Lasater came up with Prince's saddle where the
old man had left it on the cliff top* They touched his lips
with his own rum and he went to sleep then. Old sleep,
soft breathed. Davin held the bottle. Roan just walked
away.

Forney said, "Don't take on so, Davin. He had sons and
grandsonsand Ball's Bluff was sure a field of battle while
it lasted," and he rolled into his own blanket.

"I'm going to get that hat for him," Davin said fiercely,
standing there in the firelight with the flame writhing on
his face and the rum bottle in his hand. Fighting does fey
things to the mind. It takes the real, and shadows it in fan-
tasy, while fantasy will stay in it for years, crouching be-
yond the edge of memory. Davin was there for a moment
to his cousin Forney, with the crimson yellow fire ribbons
lacing across his face and that bottle of rum uncorked in
hand. The next minute the fire was gone in the flaked
white ash of dawn, but Davin was still there, this time
with the hat in his hand, holding it out in white anger,
sobbing, "You let him die, damn you! You let him die!"

With Davin, the time between was almost as fast, for
he saw himself go and get back, before he even started.
That was the rum, sloshed down raw on battle shock. He
saw himself sneak to the piquet line and rope out his
mount, onsaddle and lead to the road. Mount and start.
Passing sentries at the gallop, shouting, "Dispatch for
Colonel Jeb Stuart!" Walking between, to save his mount.
Circling Centerville to avoid question and riding wide of
Fairfax under the full arch of deep night. There were
gaps in it which was the rum, too, for old Mr. Stuart car-
ried powerful seagoing medicine. But it was awfully clear

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLUFF 59

being close in the bushes to that big white house with the
six pillars looking down the broad grass sward to the Po-
tomac. Awfully clear in Davin's mind that it had to be
that General Lee's house because the Yankees were sure
enough using it for some kind of a headquarters. There
were the slow sounds of sentries' feet on the gravel drive
in back and, in what light there was, the glint of bayonets
on their muskets. What would make it sure was the pic-
ture of George Washington in the parlor.

Davin went over the lawn slowly, on his belly, the way
it was taught in drill, clinging to shadows tight with his
shirt buttons. Close to the wall, he inched along, figuring
to find a window into the cellar that he could force with
his spring knife, and climb up into the house from below.

His mind was on George Washington's picture now,
because that was the next step to take to be sure he was
in the right place. When he got into the cellar, he took
his boots off and hung them around his neck before he
groped in the darkness for stairs up. But when he got up,
there wasn't much need, for the carpets were thick under-
foot. Only thing was, you had to be mighty careful open-
ing doors, for they were big doors, swollen in their frames
with the night damp. There were people, too, in the back,
the way people are at night when the hours are working
down the slope toward morning. A spurred boot slipping
off a desk top. The smell of stale coffee, reheated, and to-
bacco smoke stenching damp and thin and bitter. Soldiers.
Orderlies and staff officers of whatever headquarters it
was made into. There was yellow lamplight splashed
down some of the halls. This General Lee must have been
a very wealthy man for a house this size and this richly
furnished. Silk-covered chairs and sofas. Pictures, and
suddenly one of those pictures was George Washington
in the distant smear of lamplight, on his gray horse with
his sword pointing straight out at Davin Ancrum.

That made him sure of the house, and a great warmth

60 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

of accomplishment came over him. He felt good inside and
big and powerful in his muscles. But time wasn't stand-
ing still So he inched out into the great hall and started
to work down sideways, close to the wall, watching the
sweep of stairs above and the light splash of the head-
quarters office and holding his breath. Right beside the
door, he saw the hat. There were half a dozen blue Yankee
kepis on the chest top beside it, so it was easy to tell Gen-
eral Lee's. Very carefully he reached out his hand, crouch-
ing to get his arm to go far enough, and his fingers closed
over the stiff brim. Fie drew it to him and worked back
up the hall, holding it tight to his stifled chest.

It seemed to take him hours longer to get out of the
house, down cellar, out the forced window and across
the lawns on his belly. When he was clear, he ran to make
up time ran all the way to where he'd left his boat.
Climbed up the slope to where he'd left his horse and
started the long way back to the company bivouac.

When Forney opened his eyes, there Davin stood, with
the hat held out, cursing him soft in his teeth, "You let
him die, damn you! You let him die!"

Roan was kneeling beside old Mr. Stuart chafing his
hands and trying to poke up the fire between, and there
was a young fellow there with Roan, his blanket roll at
his feet, with a squirrel rifle laid overtop and his horse
still saddled just beyond.

"Shut up!" Roan said. "He's not dead."

Davin yelled, "I got the hat for him to send to his
friend in Richmond! The general who gave him the
letter!"

Forney woke up and saw Davin there with the hat the
way he'd been there with the rum bottle just a minute
before, it seemed like.

"This yere's Ambrose Stuart," Roan said. "Hadley's
brother. He just turned fifteen. Been riding to jine us.
. . . Shut up, Davin!"

SLAUGHTER AT BALL'S BLOTF 61

That was when old Mr. Stuart opened his eyes. "Hello,
Ambrose," he said.

Ambrose said, "Yore to go straight home, grandfer."
He turned to Davin and Forney and Roan. "He's real
old," he said softly. "He fought down there at Bladens-
burg in eighteen fourteen with Barney. A midshipman,
he was. On the Hamilton when she sank the British frigate
Penelope off Montauk. Down at Veracruz last war, against
the Mexicans."

"Keep quiet, Ambrose," the old man said. "You talk
too much."

And Davin said, "Here's the hat, sir. I got it for you
for your friend, General Lee."

Old Mr. Stuart looked up at Davin as if he didn't right-
ly understand. "What would General Lee do with a hat
like that, son?"

"Well, sir, I don't rightly know about what he'd do
with it. I didn't figure that. Just that you wanted his hat
to send to him. So I got it for you, sir."

"Where? Where'd you get it?"

"From his house. Where the Yankee soldiers had all
their hats. The big white house with the six pillars that
overlooks down to the Potomac."

Old Mr. Stuart pushed up in his blankets and reached
out a hand. He took the hat and stared at it for a minute.
"By Jeremy," he said, "I ain't agoin' home! . . . Son,"
he said to Davin, "you mistook the house! You got the
wrong side of the river! . . . Sergeant," he said, "can I
stay if I get another horse?" and he was up on his feet
then. "Look at the name in that hat," he shouted, "and
try to pry me loose from this man's army, and 111 really
show my letter!"

Roan looked in the hat and he looked at Davin, and he
walked slow across and smelled his breath.

"You've been drinkin', Davin," he said, "and this time
I'm goin' to whip you for it. Put up yore hands!"

62 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

The hat rolled over to Forney. He looked at the name.
Those Manigaults are the most honest people in the whole
world. He said to Ambrose, "How in the hell are we
going to get this hat he stoleback to Mr. Lincoln?"

Midway that -first summer of the 'war it became evident
to Richmond that the massing of Union troops in the
vicinity of Chamber sburg, Pennsylvania, as 'well as at
Washington, constituted two separate capabilities of at-
tack 'when the new armies were ready to march. One
capability was a straight drive south on the Confederate
capital The other was a drive through the lush granary
of the Shenandoah Valley to envelop Richmond from
the rear.

Whereas Jackson had made a name for himself of sorts,
at Bull Run, as a combat general officer, he was -not yet
immortal. It was the Stonewall Brigade at that time rather
than he himself as Stonewall Jackson, and among the
galaxy of bright stars at Bull Run, he was still a middle-
ranking "Brigadier. He was, however, known by higher
authority as a most competent officer for the training of
new troops. The performance of his brigade at Bull Run
was credited to the fact that in a matter of weeks he had
trained them pom raw separate units into a coordinated
command that could perform well in combat.

So he was relieved of his brigade at Centreville and
sent, without troops, to Winchester with the mission of
organizing the new militia levees into a Valley Army for
the defense of the Shenandoah. Through the fall and win-
ter he did his job well for two anachronistic reasons. The
one was that he gradually acquired as cavalry the highly
individualistic and poorly disciplined force of Turner
Ashby. Ashby was not a professional soldier, nor had he
any intention of aping one in manner or method; but he
could screen for Jackson, he could get information and
he would fight for it viciously, if need be.

The other reason was that at Christmas time Jackson

63

requested and got his old First Brigade as a nucleus, an
example of training, a veteran corps around which he
could mold his new army to the First Brigade's template
of performance.

Turner Ashby's war was personal He was the finest
horseman in Virginia at the time and he could draw unto
himself all the hotspurs who loved a horse, a jug, and a
girFs smile. He could lead them too, as long as they were
in units small enough for him to control personally and
visually. But he had no facility at decentralization of com-
mand, nor had the cotmnand itself been trained by
him in any concept of coordinated action. Again., Vir-
ginia to Ashby meant his home at Rose Hill and the
adjacent Valley he had hunted in. It meant his brother
who had been killed early and on whose grave Turner
had sworn a private and awful vengeance. Beyond that,
he had no strategic concepts. Yet he served Jackson well,
riding circuit eternally on the broad arc of the river that
cut across the northern entrance to the Valley. Scouting
the Union preparations for advance, even to going him-
self into their camps in disguise when necessary. It is in-
conceivable that any man of Ashby's command needed
a map or a compass. They 'were native sons, operating on
their own terrain, knowing the trails and bypaths since
boyhood, out on their own good horses, with their own
good rifles, in defense of their own splendid Valley with
a pride and arrogance that lies deep in the Shenandoah
breed.

Roan Catlett, when his company joined Ashby, was of
an age when boys are crystallized into soldiers, if soldier-
ing lies in their hearts. Had Stuart kept him in his com-
mand he would have been subjected to the full treatment
of cavalry discipline and been a better man. With Ashby
he was not. Roan admired Ashby for his incisive daring
and worked for him well, but he could not love him. It
was like a gay expensive school in which the boys know
they are wasting their father's hopes and substance, and

64

a discomfort sits upon the better minds. For Roan, Ashby
never quite came off. Jackson and J. E. B. Stuart 'were
the breed any soldier could love. They always accom-
plished their missions to the letter of their orders, but,
within that military necessity of the regular, they gave
paramount consideration to their men. Ashby could not,
for the very concept of it was left out of him. He was an
individualist, so were his men. What they did, they did
in small units with a sort of temporary mass enthusiasm
for the job in hand. Thereafter, it was taken for granted
they could look out for themselves. But men cannot, in
war, for there is nothing more helpless than an individual
in mass, when his commanding officer fails to realize that
the basic component of men is man.

The winter wore on Into spring, the wet and frost-shot
spring of '2. The bright victory of Mctnassas was a blade
long tarnished now by time. The Union odds to the north-
ward had slowly become overwhelming both in numbers
and equipment when totted man for man and gun for gun
against Jackson's small force.

In Washington, McClellan commanded; under him,
McDowell. Little Mac, the white-haired boy of the Union
forces. The small western actions for the control of the
Mississippi had begun to assume the outward and visible
signs of a rolling campaign. The Navy 'was closing the
Atlantic ports of the Confederacy. What Stuart and Jack-
son had seen in the summertime 'was now 'written plain
for all men to see. And the picture 'was not pleasant.

Alone to the northward stood Virginia^ offering the ter-
rain and most of the manpower against the full brunt of
the spring attacks. Offering her farms to be overrun, her
homes to be lost. Women to be stricken blind in their
souls when their loves were killed in the field. Children,
with their hearts to be broken in tiny pieces.

But against that time of travail, a tall and bearded man
began to assume his immortal stature. Thomas Jonathan
Jackson, one-time lieutenant of guns at Chapultepec, one-

65

time schoolteacher at Lexington, all-time wrestler with
his literal, living God. A close student of Napoleon for
over fifteen years. Close friend to no man, for he was too
hard to know. Kindly to all men in his thinking, even
when duty lashed him to contained but frightful anger
as it did once against Ash by. But a soldier of soldiers, for
in addition to his pastmastery of combined arms tactics
he had the broader strategical vision that completes the
military cycle.

The ending of one military operation to Jackson was
the immediate and uninterrupted beginning of the next.
No battle was justified unless it wove itself deftly into
the whole fabric of the war. Jackson, therefore, became
the empiric father of the modern American military doc-
trine. That is 'why he is great in history. One knows it
now, in cold reason.

'But in the spring of '62 one knew only what was in
men's hearts when they saw him great-coated by the
roadside. "Stonewall Jackson for the Valley !"

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON
GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN

IT WAS WELL AFTER NOON when Roan Catlett's horse was
hit. Stretched full to clear a stone wall north of Stephen-
son's, getting away from a close-in scout on the Yankee
west flank. Roan heard the bullet strike, like tobacco spit
hitting loose board. Felt Jason flicker at the top of the
jump, like breaking a taut silk thread. Forney Manigault
was ahead of him, left, with Davin Ancrum intervaled
out to the right and Colonel Ashby thundering along be-
hind at the gallop.

Turner Ashby pulled up his own milk-white on the
other side of the ridge line, spun her on her heels with the
wind in his black beard and flung off. "Your mount's hit,
Catlett. Let's look." There were frost crusts along the hol-
lows and the cold spleen of March was bitter in the air.
Roan was off, holding Jason's head, looking at his eyes
close for pain.

Turner Ashby put a hand to Jason's off flank; touched
beside the entering wound with a gentle gloved finger.
Walked around quickly to the near side. Bent close, his
dark, fine-planed face clenched at the e) r es. Two weeping
bullet rips, you could cover with a two-bit piece each.
One each side where it had gone clean through. Turner
Ashby looked quick into Roan's desperate question.

69

70 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

"Blanket him and walk him slow. If you can get him to
Doc Tatly in Winchester he may have a chance. The doc
performs miracles with hosses, keep him drunk enough.
Sorry, Catlett. Fine animal. . . . Manigault!" He un-
buckled his near saddle bag and drew out the roll of news-
papers. Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and New
York papers picked up each scout, from roadside and old
bivouacs where the Yankees dropped them after reading.
Torn, muddy or what the order was "Get their news-
papers." "Take these papers in to General Jackson's head-
quarters and tell 'em the Yankee advance guard will be
about four miles from Winchester come nightfall. Last I
knew, Jackson's headquarters was at Taylor's Hotel in
Winchester. That's all." Colonel Ashby mounted his milk-
white. "Rejoin when you can. We'll be somewhere." And
he was gone in the mists like nothing so much as the quick
flash of a deer's brush in white birch. Turner Ashby of
Rose Hill. God rest his gallant soul.

The three troopers climbed wearily up through the
scrub oak toward the Unger's Store Road, leading their
mounts. Three old men, not yet twenty summers grown,
but with no laughter left in them. Last November end to
this March beginning had killed their laughter. Screening
the hundred-mile arc of the Potomac across the mouth of
the Shenandoah Valley against General Banks' thirty-
eight-thousand-man Yankee power play had sapped their
youth. November to March, with the Southern ports on
the Atlantic falling one by one to the Northern fleet;
with the armies of the West yielding up the Mississippi,
battle by battle, until Virginia alone was the only saber
pointing sharp at the bastions of the North. Virginia, hell;
only Jackson, for east of the Blue Ridge the word now
was that last summer's victorious Manassas army was
falling back to the Rapidan under heavy pressure. And
that left Stonewall Jackson alone, out on a limb, pinched
in the Shenandoah Valley, outnumbered, outgunned, with
the whole right wing of McClellan's quarter-million-mari

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 71

new army pouring down on him like spring rains swollen
in the rivers. That will kill youth and laughter.

Top of the rise, Forney Manigault mounted stiffly with
the newspapers strapped to his pommel roll. His chapped
lips rasped open, Mood-beaded, to speak. But there were
no words. He kneed his mount and took off across the
flat for the Unger's Store Road. Roan and Davin could
see him get smaller and smaller, until he lifted over the
rail fence a couple of miles west a black bug galloping
toward Winchester.

Davin Ancrum, racked with chill, pulled himself slowly
up onto his own saddle. His jacket sleeve was caked white
with nose run, his reddened eyes rheumed his frost-
burned cheekbones.

"Lean down," Roan said, and he put a dirt-crusted hand
up to behind Davin's ear. "You got fever, Davin. Pull
loose yore blanket and wrap in it."

Davin said, "No! Let be."

They walked, Roan leading both horses, Davin sitting
his. Slow, with the tarnished yellow sun smoking cold to
slide behind Little North Mountain in another two hours.

You get so tired in war. Sleep can't lift it, for it builds
up slow inside, and solidifies like old age, and there is only
wisdom left, with less and less strength to carry it. Roan
knew his horse was going to die. Knew he'd have to shoot
him soon. First sure-enough horse Roan ever had.
Watched him swell slow in golden Dolly's belly the long
spring and summer he was just past his own thirteenth
birthday. Watched Dolly foal by lantern light. "Stallion,
Roan, and all yours. That's the blood of Timoleon you
see in the colt's eyes. He's a gentleman, Roan. Treat him
like one."

Dying on his feet now on the Unger's Store Road to
Winchester, the way Jackson's tiny army would die in its
next battle and the whole Southern cause with it. De-
feat and desperation galled the soul of Roan Catlett and
his blood was rancid in his veins.

72 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

Coming down into Winchester, he could see the Pio-
neers trenching across the Valley Pike. Standing gaunt in
the twilight against the distant Massanutton peaks, to ease
their backs. "What's the word, scout?" and a jerked chin
to the north, with the question hard in the eye. Valley
men, asking of the Valley. A personal war this second
spring. Every man jack for his own family now, with the
deed to his land in the rifle in his hands, and the early-
spring working of it in his ditching shovel

"They're cominY' Roan said. "Tomorrow. Next day."

The diggers looked north again and spat and gripped
their shovels once more. "Let 'em come, scout." Thirty-
eight thousand against forty-five hundred. "Let 'em come,
scout" and you could cry if there were any tears left.

It was full dark now and the evening wind of March
was knife-sharp under the bare branches arched above
the Winchester streets, worrying, like old people's distant
voices. There were heel taps in the darkness on the brick-
paved walks far ahead, as if they scurried from Roan and
Davin to leave them deeper in their misery.

Then right beside where they passed, from the deeper
dark of a tree shadow, Forney Manigault's sore throat
rasp, "Roan! Ya'll took long enough. Turn in yere."

Roan had both bridles Jason's and Davin's. He turned
In through the shadow sentinels of high gateposts to fine
gravel underfoot that splashed like brook water, with
Forney moving to walk beside him, "I found this yere
Doc Tatly for yore boss Jason, and a bed for the night
for Davin to rest in good. And hot suppuh for us all"

As he said it a stable door opened and splashed warm
yellow light into the cold dark above them, and there was
a young girl standing. Proud; like a young empress al-
most, out of a story-book. Full-skirted and slender, facing
into the night with no fear of what it held below her.
Her face shrouded in shadow, but beauty in it full

Davin jerked his head up and saw the girl. He leaned
full to his mount's neck to steady with both hands as he

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 73

disengaged his off stirrup and slid heavily to the ground,
shaking miserably with chill, his hat in both hands. "Davin
Ancrum, ma'am."

With one hand to Davin to steady him, Roan bowed.
"Roan Oatlett," he said. "The Short Mountain Cavalry
Comp'ny, ma'am. Brigaded now with Colonel Turner
Ashby."

"Yes." Her voice was thin in the cold night air. "This
is the home of Colonel Lentaigne. He is away, but you
are most welcome. I am his daughter, Molly Lentaigne."
There was cool, studied dignity in the way she said it. A
young gentlewoman offering the hospitality of her father's
home to strangers. And then, because it sounded stilted to
her when it was finally spoken, she warmed it with quiet
eagerness. "My brother is Brace Lentaigne. He's with
Colonel Ashby too. You haven't seem him lately, have
you?"

Roan said, "I regret I don't know yore brother, Miss
Molly."

She moved her head sharply, almost as if she felt of-
fense. "Just lead the horses up the ramp," she said; "then
we'll get the sick man into bed."

She stepped into darkness to push the stable door wider.

Inside, there was a little fat man in baggy black pants
and a dirty gray claw-hammer coat dragged low to his
hips each side, as if he had chimney bricks in his pockets.

"Tatly, the boss doctuh," he said. "At yore service.
Which un's the hurt hoss?" Then he walked slow over
to Jason and took his jaw gently in hand. "You, hunh?
What yo' mean gettin' yoreself shot by a damyankee?
Big hoss like you? Ought to know bettah. Six year old,"
he said. "Timoleon blood by yore line too. Stand still
while I look," and he lifted off the blanket.

"You know this hoss, sir?" Roan asked.

"Know all Valley hosses," doc spat. 4 'Oncet I look
at un. Good thing I do too. Because I think foh um and
jolly um, and they know I do."

74 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

"Name's Jason," Roan told him.

"Hold the lantern," doc told him, but as he said it,
the light of the lantern flooded up toward them, and
through it Roan saw a twelve-year-old girl, holding it
high. He smiled at her and winked in friendliness. She
raised a finger to her lips and moved her head slightly
toward Davin, sunk down in the straw, his back against
the barn wall behind.

"Your friend's got measles," the girl whispered. "Spots
all over his face. But it'll shame him to have a child's
disease, being a trooper of Colonel Ashby's" she shook
her head so we won't tell him, shall we? Just pretend
fever?"

Roan stared at her. "Measles are catching," he grunt-
ed. "We'll have to tell yore sister. It won't be right for
us to stay yere now."

"We can't tell my sister," the little girl said. "On
account of the baby. But it won't matter if she doesn't
know. We'll put him in the downstairs bedroom I had
last year when I had measles. That'll be far enough away.
And there is a big bottle of turpentine and opium that
was left after I got well"

"Yore sister's married?"

"You have to be married to have a baby, silly. Only
she hasn't had it yet. Another day or two, they think."

"You mean the young lady " Roan turned and

looked out into the black beyond the open stable door.
"You mean Miss Molly?"

The girl stared at him as if he had suddenly gone out
of his reason.

"You're making fun of me," she told Roan quietly,
"because I let my hems out," and there was a bright
glint in her wide eyes as an angry tear glaze filmed them.
"Pm Molly Lentaigne."

Roan swallowed hard, looked again toward the open
door and back at the little girl. "You stood so tall, there
on the ramp above with no light on yore face, and so

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 75

dignified that I thought you were" he smiled "I
thought you were a mite olderthan you are, Miss
Molly." And he bowed, and the way he said it this time
was not mocking, not just fun with a child. It was honest
respect, and she knew it.

She dropped her full curtsy to him, with color in her
cheeks and her eyes lowered, and for just a moment the
seven years between them were seven years on ahead.
Not now, but on ahead where youth always lives, and
where Roan had stopped living ever again from too much
war. Just for a second, she wasn't twelve; she was nine-
teen. And just for a second, his nineteen was twenty-
six, and a strange embarrassment caught him full, for the
line between girl and woman can be a very thin one at
times.

Jason began to go down between them. Went down
like an old dog to sleep in the straw. Drew himself to-
gether in a half turn as if to mat grass; curved in on him-
self very slowly to bring the whole of him close to his
hurting, let his knees buckle and sank down with a soft
noise in his nostrils and a long, tired stretch of his neck.

"Sure, sure." Old Tatly knelt beside him, his hand on
his cheek. "You take it easy now, Jason hoss. Yo're
among friends, y'ole fool!"

Roan hunkered down and laid his hand soft to Jason's
neck, and at the touch it was his father's stable six years
before, with golden Dolly birthwet in the lantern light,
with little Jason born all new again with his great wobbly
legs struggling to stand. Through the distortion of his
own filmed eyes, Roan looked hard at old Tatly.

"Colonel Ashby told me you could do miracles, sub.
If you can't, with this hoss, you tell rne in time, y'hear?
If he has to be shot" Roan fisted his chest hard so the
blow echoed like a drum thump "I'll shoot him. No-
body else." He stood up quickly to steady himself, and
in that moment when he desperately needed it, the little

76 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

girl put her hand in his. "He'll be all right, Mr. Catlett,"
she said. "You'll see."

They took Davin up the gravel drive to the house.
Roan sponge-bathed him and got him to bed. Then, in
some way that Roan didn't quite understand, or try to,
he was walking toward Taylor's Hotel with the little girl,
his saber rattling like peddler's pots, his spurs singing on
brick. Things happen like that when you're dog-tired
no relation to other things. Just happen.

"A long time ago my father brought an espaliered
lemon tree all the way from Jamaica," she told him. "It
grows in a hot frame and has real lemons. General Jack-
son loves to suck lemons. They keep you healthy," she
said. "It's awful lucky we have them for him, don't you
think?"

"Yes, I do indeed," Roan said. "I think that's very
lucky."

"My brother Brace," she said, "was a major with
Colonel Marron, but he resigned just to be a trooper
with Colonel Ashby. That's what we think of Cousin
Turner here in the Valley! Will there be a big battle
nearby?"

"There'll be a battle, I reckon," he told her solemnly.
Not all at once, the way it sounds, but long spells of her
talk and Roan answering only when she stopped for
him to.

"My sister Thyrza Brace's wife, that ishopes her
baby is going to be a little boy. I sort of hope it'll be a
little girl. Which do you like best? Boys or girls?"

" 'Sugar and spice' " he bent slightly to her and
squeezed her hand " 'and all things nice.' I reckon I like
little girls."

She was silent for a long moment, then her voice was
solemn. "I had the right to let my hems out," she said
stubbornly. "Black Emmalina is so scared the Yankees'll
come, she won't budge from the house, day or night.
Can't do anything, unless I tell her what. Brace's wife

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 77

isn't able to do, until after the baby. Brace Isn't here and
my father is over with Prince John Magruder. So I have
to do. I have to run things." There was quiet pride in it,
and a defiant toss of her head. "So if I have the name, I
can have the fame, too," she said. "Can't I?" And that
wasn't a question, it was pushing her own courage hard
from inside, for her voice dropped to softness as she said
it. "Besides," she told him, "when my mother died, she
told me I'd have to look after my father. That means his
house and his people when he's away too!" She was so
near tears that Roan was frightened. Afraid if Molly
cried, he'd sit right down on the curb and blubber, too,
from a horribly empty sense of the futility of all living.
But she didn't cry. She said, "You'll just love General
Jackson," and she held up her paper sack of three lemons.
"I'll introduce him to you."

There was a crowd in front of Taylor's Hotel and
lamplight blazing full, with horse holders steadying the
staff mounts on the hitching pole, and suddenly old fat
Cap Murt Patton, pushing through with his big red ser-
geant's chevrons to sleeve and his artillery saber from
Mexico banging against his bowed legs. "Roan, I'm pow'-
ful glad t'see you!"

"Cap Patton, Miss Molly," Roan said. "Cap raised and
commanded our comp'ny last year, but he was down
Mexico way a war ago with Stonewall when they were
lieutenants and sergeants together. So he got promoted
up to headquarters."

"Molly and me, we ole friends, Roan." Cap grinned,
and he put a hand on the girl's head. "Lemons," he said.
"That's wonderful! He's just come back from suppuh at
Doctor Graham's, up the Manse. You go right in, girl.
Captain Hotchkiss'll get you to the general." And to the
crowd he called hard, "Let the little lady through, y'all
y'hear?" Then he grabbed Roan's arm and pulled him
back. "All hell's poppin' in the skillet fer breakfast,
Roan," he whispered. "Heads'll roll, you mark! Began to

78 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

happen right after Forney Manigault brought the last
batch of newspapers in."

"What?"

"Like-a-this: Gin'ral Jackson pulled his wagons and
main body out south with the last of the light, for the
benefit of the Yankee scouts to see. To turn 'em fast
under cover of darkness and march back again to hit the
Yankee off balance and paste him hard, north of town,
grace of God and the blessings of the bay 'net, like it says
in the Bible. But the staff pulled the wrong string. They
let his brigades get too far south to come back north again
before dawn, and some of the wagons are as far as New-
town. Eight miles." Cap shook his head. "So we lose the
town and the road net."

Roan stared at the old soldier. "You mean we ain't
goin' to fight for Winchester, Cap?"

"Lord Harry, Roan!" Cap clutched his arm fiercely.
"It ain't Winchester now. It's Richmondand high, low,
jack for the whole cruddy wah!"

"I don't follow that!"

"You ain't paid to. Only himself is paid to. And his
own staff got him off balance this time. It'll take a maneu-
ver now to set the Yankees up again. But you'll get yore
battle, Roan, when General Jackson's ready fob it! Heah
he comes now!"

The provost was clearing the crowd from in front of
Taylor's. People were turning away, their lips pursed
tight, walking off into the blue darkness, their eyes
shadowed in defeat*

Roan never forgot that picture of the man. There Gen-
eral Jackson stood in Taylor's doorway, taller than Roan
in his great spurred boots, and the biggest feet you ever
saw. Dust brushed clean, but his beard scraggled where
he'd tugged an angry hand through it. The visor of his
old Institute cap frayed like a cocklebur where his thumb
and finger always reached to tug it tight, but never to
tug it low enough to cover the flame-blue light of his

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 79

eyes. Damnedest eyes you ever saw. Like frost-blued
fingers poking at you. God in them and the galloping
devil Kindliness and killing. Love and laceration.

He held the paper sack of lemons in one hand and
Molly Lentaigne's hand in the other. For a moment, he
stood tall and furious as he turned his head back toward
the tight, worried faces of his officers behind.

"That," he said, "is the last council of war I will ever
hold!" It was soft, but you could hear it all right, for it
was like a silken whiplash he cut across their faces. He
and Molly came out onto the brick walk.

"But you'll come back to Winchester, general, won't
you?"

She looked up at him, clear-eyed, without a vestige of
fear in her taut proud little body. His shoulders moved
slightly in his own deep tiredness and worry. Then he
did a wonderful thing. He smiled and the glory of his
great soul was in it. That lumbering, awkward body bent
in rough gallantry, and he kissed her hand like a young
blade. Roan heard his own knees crack loud as he stood
stiff, hand rigid in salute. It's that way with real generals.
Just as the true princess felt the rose leaf under a spate
of down cushions, a fighting man feels a real general. It's
something apart, between man and man, and you can't
ever fake it with epaulets and feathers. Tom Jackson was
a battle-fighting man!

Going back to the house with Molly, Roan walked
stiff against the heavy despair that rode his soul

"You have a carriage, Molly? Friends south, maybe?
Strasburg? Middletown? Nineveh?"

"Oh, yes. Of course. But why?"

"Yore sister's baby," he said quietly.

The little girl stopped. "My father wouldn't like it for
us to leave the house and go away. It wouldn't be right,
Mr. Catlett."

He held her hand tighter. "You call me Roan," he said.
"It's more friendly and we all need comfort tonight. Yore

80 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

fathered understand, I reckon, with the Yankees coming."
She shook her head. "General Jackson'U come back. I
know It, Roan."

"Sure he will But for now the baby and all?"
"Well," she said, "I'll ask Thyrza but she won't leave,
I think, unless Brace comes and tells her to. And I won't
leave her alone. And what about Mr. Ancrum lying sick?
What about Emmalina too scared to move, and old Mor-
decai too old? Somebody has to watch Doc Tatly close,
too, when he's working on a sick horse. He gets talking
to them so hard he doesn't watch the bottle."

As they turned into the drive again, there were lights
near the house, and horses hoofing the ground. Closer to,
one was a milk-white, and Turner Ashby's soft voice
challenged them, "Who is it there?" He hardly came to
Roan's shoulder, Turner Ashby, but somehow that didn't
matter, for he was a man grown tall In soul. "Catlett," he
said, "I've just heard the word we're pulling out south
and I've passed it to tell all our boys to rendezvous in
Kernstown to screen the infantry withdrawal." Then he
saw Molly. He put both gentle hands to her upper arms.
"Molly girl," he said soft, "sometimes the Lord God has
to have us grow up very fast. Things happen, and He
has to make us men and women overnight."
"What is it, Cousin Turner?"
"It's Brace, darling," he said.

"He's hurt? Oh, no!" Her hands went up to the colo-
nel's arms.

"He's dead, Molly. Killed over Berryville way."
She stood there rigid for a second. You could feel the
tightness rack her whole little woman body as she held
herself against the horror. Slowly she pressed his hands
frorn her and stood back alone in it. "You haven't told
Thyrza yet? The way she is?"

"No," Ashby said; "we've just got here."
Her head twisted frantically, looking sharp into the
lantern-torn darkness.

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 81

"We've taken him inside," Turner Ashby said.

The girl clasped her hands together tightly, twisting
them hard against each other. "What shall I do?" she
asked him. "What shall I do? "the soft, frantic age-old
wail of woman. No tears yet, only the sou! agony to de-
fend the hearthstone. The desperation of all motherhood,
seeking within for the courage that is so much deeper
than the courage of the firing line that, in defense of
the family, can kill, if need be, so much more ruthlessly
than the bayonet. Then, slowly, she turned to Roan. "I
can't go away now even If Thyrza would want to.
And she wouldn't."

Turner Ashby took her hand and started for the house,
and Forney came out of the darkness. He had Davin's
horse saddled for Roan, and his own. He swore in his
raw throat and he spat phlegm. "Roan," he said, "we
can't leave her here, with the Yankees comin*. The ole
Negra woman's a gibberin' fool and the ole houseman's
nigh to ninety and no help at all."

"It's her home," Roan said, "with birth ripenin' in it
and her dead to be buried from it and her father away
fightin' with General Magruder. You don't aim to pry a
lady away from those lady duties, do you?"

Roan tiptoed in the back to the downstairs bedroom.
Davin was sleeping, the heavy breath soughing in his
mottled cheeks. Roan took his hand gun and saber and
boots, and wrapped them tight in his reeking uniform. He
woke Davin up, hand to his forehead to bring him to, easy.

"Davin boy, I'm hidin' yore stuff under the straw in the
stable where Jason is. We're pullin' out and Banks' ad-
vance guard'll probably be in town tomorrow. You lie
doggo and cook a story up how you ain't old enough to
jine the army yet, y'hear? You got measles that'll help
prove you ain't grown and keep you from bein* took
prisoner. Stay here until we come back."

Davin opened his eyes wide. "We ain't really licked,
are we, Roan? God bless, I couldn't stand that!"

82 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

Roan closed Davin's door softly and stood for a mo-
ment in the hall. From the front of the house he could
hear the girl's desperate sobbing, caught inside her with
the effort to hold it in control. She was standing at the
parlor door, one arm up the side of it, her face pressed
tight against the arm. A handkerchief crumpled wet in
her other hand. Outside, Roan heard Colonel Ashby's
voice calling a soft order; heard horses thrash gravel and
trot down the drive, sabers clanking. Roan walked slowly
up the long hall Molly turned at the sound of his foot-
steps and stared at him in utter desolation. Roan held
out his hand for hers, and as she gave it he stooped and
kissed her forehead.

Above her on ancient smoky canvas there was a face
from long years gone in Continental regimentals with
the pale blue Cincinnati laced in a buttonhole. Beyond
her in the parlor there was the same face, dead in youth,
with the fierce flame of battle not yet quite shadowed
under the calm of death. Trooper Lentaigne, laid de-
cently upon the couch, with his silky blond hair combed
and his stiff hands composed upon the hilt of the cavalry
saber that lay across him. Between the two, in the anguish
of growing up, Molly's tear-stained child's face, with the
same delicate pride of nostril and the same full forehead.

"Roan"- she sucked her lip between her teeth and
shook her head fiercely "I am sorry there was no sup-
perfor you all," and suddenly she flung herself into his
arms. He held her tight against his filthy clothing, giving
her what comfort he had to give in her child's need for
it Crying silently inside himself. And against his dirty
jacket she whispered, "But I'll take care of Jason, and you
tell General Jackson that there'll be more lemons for him
when he comes back!" . . .

You never see the whole battle from a trooper's saddle.
Only that part right around you. All the rest is clouded
in rumor, obscured in the fog of war. You never know
the plans. Long, long afterward you read what the gen-

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 83

erals write In books, and some of it becomes clear, but
never quite all of it until one day a missing pice turns
up when you don't care any more, and the years fall away
starkly to your long-dead youth, to cold rain and the
white burn of chilblains, to the hard rat gnaw of hunger
in your empty belly, to dull hopeless fury in your mind.
And you remember, that's what the newspapers were 'for.

Stonewall Jackson's infantry plodded south in silent
desolation, with the wagons and what artillery he had,
churning the Valley Pike into a thick, cold poultice, knee-
deep. Slopping it over onto the bottomless morass of the
fields flat beside. White, angry faces, thin-lipped and bit-
ter in the eyes. Newtown to Strasburg to Woodstock,
and Jackson himself as far as Rude's Hill. Slow, slogging,
hungry miles with odds of eight to one some will put it
ten to one at their backs. Retreating. Giving ground.
Their own Valley land, where their hopes lived and their
dead lay buried in the old churchyards.

Rumor lashed the army of the Valley for ten febrile
days like a gaunt old harridan with a bitter tongue. John-
ston east, across the Blue Ridge, was falling back too to
the Rapidan River. The Rapidan, hell! Johnston's headed
way back toward the Virginia Central Rail Road line.
The Pamunkey River line. The gates to Richmond.
Against McClellan's quarter million new army thrusting
out of Washington, the Southern armies were rolling up
like a tattered tent cloth. The jig's up and the fiddler's
goin' home. . . .

The Yankess were in Winchester for a while, feeling
south after Jackson. Feeling easy, for they knew he was
done. Piqmt brawling only. Tantalizing. Dusting up Ash-
by's scouting cavalry. Then the brawling fell off to noth-
ing and the Yankees pulled back into Winchester. Soon
the most of them began to move out east to Castleman's
Ferry across the Shenandoah, heading for Snicker's Gap
through the Blue Ridge Mountains to pour more pres-
sure on Johnston? Why? Why, if McClellan's quarter

84 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

million is over there pushing Johnston already? Ask
Stonewall Jackson but ask him fast, for that night he
turned his columns. And now it's gospel that he sus-
pected all along that McCIellan wasn't there a word
here, an item there, something somewhere else in those
newspapers he pored over every night and troops
leaving Winchester for the east proves it! So turn right
about, for Jackson starts before dawn always unless he
starts in the middle of the night. Force the infantry march
back north to Winchester forty-three miles in two days,
with having to pull each foot free from twelve inches of
glutinous sucking, spring-flood Virginia, each step north.
Stonewall Jackson for the Valley, with a battle comin*
up!

Kernstown, friend? Got licked sure 'miff . But to no
frazzle, sir not to no frazzle.

Turner Ashby hit the Yankee rearguard piquets on
their east flank a mile south of Winchester, out of Kerns-
town, like a roaring Valley storm lashing down the Mas-
sanuttons. Hit 'ein with two hundred and eighty hell~for~
tarnation cavalrymen and three little horse guns to devel-
op the battle for General Jackson.

General Jackson moved the infantry off the Pike west
to fight the main action, maneuvering across Middle Road
toward the Opequon and the Cedar Creek Turnpike,
grace of God and the blessings of the bay'net.

One time, Turner Ashby and his cavalrymen cut their
way plumb into the streets of Winchester on the blade.
Right straight into the yard of the Lentaigne house, and
there was Davin Ancrum bustin' out of the barn with
that great golden horse to bridle, yellin 7 , "Git off m'hoss,
Roan! This yere's yourn!" draggin' at Roan's near leg to
pull him down.

Young Molly shouted from the veranda, "It's Brace's
horse, Roan! Her name's Lady!" And then softly to Roan
alone as he pulled up under the veranda rail: "She's got
Timoleon's blood in her too" and again: "Jason couldn't

WHY STONEWALL JACKSON GOT LICKED AT KERNSTOWN 85

get well. Doc Tatly knew, the second day. So I did it,
Roan, with Brace's gun. In the ear, Roan. Close. I kissed
him for you first. He never knew." Then very softly, "I
thought you'd like for me to do it. Not doc," And in the
yard, reaching for his stirrup, "It was a boy, Roan
Thyrza's baby. He's Brace Lentaigne now," and, as Roan
kneed fast away, "You'll come back Roan someday,
please?"

Then Ashby rallied his raid and they cut out of Win-
chester again, closing in on Jackson's right to press the
main fight two miles south of town. Up near Pritchard's
Hill they were at it with the bay'net, some of the Virginia
companies worn thin enough to spit the survivors on one
ramrod, but they fought it out cold to sundown, and
withdrew in decent order from the field. And that was
the Kernstown fight.

So long, long afterward it's all written down in the
books the generals writehow McClellan wasn't east of
the Blue Ridge at all, but gone by water to attack Rich-
mond up the Peninsula. And the books say that when Lin-
coln received the report of Kernstown, he stopped the tail
end of the movement at once, for fear of a counteithrust
on Washington, so that on the eve of McClellan's advance
up the Peninsula to Richmond, he found himself suddenly
deprived of the whole 1st Army Corps. ~~

So the fight wasn't Kernstown at all. Eighty dead men
up there in the Shenandoah Valley lost their lives to save
Richmond. And that's a bargain.

But not yet, you're not old. Not yet There is Stone-
wall still in the living flesh that night, with the sadness of
another battle fought on Sunday riding his godly soul.
Standing roadside, his long coat loose-draped from his
hunched shoulders, his great fingers twined behind his
back, nursing the hand hit at Manassas, staring into the
glow of the spitting log fire, as the returns of battle are
brought to him.

"I think I may say that I am satisfied, sir," he said, and

86 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

after another moment, he nibbed his hands briskly and
walked slowly off into the darkness.

Still later, with Lady standing to hand for the brush
and a sackful of oats, the things that Molly had said came
alive to Roan again and echoed down from the stars. As
if she were right there beside him saying them now: "I
kissed him for you first. He never knew. I thought you'd
like for me to do it. Not doc."

Davin, wrapped tight against the chill, looked across at
Forney and reached a hand for a drag at Forney's pipe.
Forney grinned. "Wonder what the Yankee newspapers'll
say tomorrow?"

"Never mind that," Davin said. "I got to get the
straight of something else. I ain't sayin' anything about
the little girl. She nursed me fine. But what happened to
the young lady that met us at the stable door? Sick as I
was, I could see she was powerful prettyand awful
worth knowin' fer her presence and manners and not
bein' afraid."

Roan looked across at him. "You ain't goin' to see that
young lady again," he said, "for four more years. Be-
cause it's goin 7 to take her that long to get to be sixteen.
And you ain't goin' to see her then, Mistuh Ancrum, be-
cause I aim to call on her m'self, and take her boss back.
Does that answer yore question, sir?"

Roan Catlett rode Lady -for the rest of the war. You can-
not speak of a mare like Lady for, like a fine woman, she
was what she was only to Roan. The Short Mountain
Cavalry Company kept its identity as long as Turner
Ashby lived, but with the attrition of campaign it gradu-
ally disintegrated and its members were absorbed in other
units. Forney Manigault and Davin Ancrum were Roan's
men throughout, and where he went they went too. And
they went the route.

From the doubtful victory of Kernstown, Jackson
withdrew deep into the Valley, drawing Banks after him
as water seeks its level, rather than inspiring Banks with
a retreating target for hot pursuit. Banks was a politician
primarily and a general only through opportunity. He
fought his battles on letter paper to his superiors in Wash-
ington, filling them -full of campaign pledges which he
seldom attempted to carry out. Jackson fought his in ad-
vance, in the lone and secret recesses of his professional
mind.

By the end of April, Strasburg, Winchester, Front
Royal, New Market, and Harrisonburg were choked with
Union Troops, The lower Valley was solid with Banks' 3
Army twenty thousand men, with Blenker, Geary, and
Abercrombie near enough to the railroad to reinforce
him by steam car, with sixteen thousand more. Across
the Shenandoah Mountains to the west, was Fremont's
Union Army with the mission of making junction with
Banks through the passesabout nine thousand more men.
Eighty miles to the east, across the Blue Ridge Mountains,
McDowell at Fredericks burg had thirty-three thousand
Federal troops opposing Anderson's twelve thousand
Confederates for the northern drive on Richmond while

87

McClellan lay to the southeast of the Confederate capital
with one hundred and ten thousand men, against Joe
Johnston's fifty thousand.

Simplify it: one hundred and forty-three thousand
Union troops directly threatened Richmond, with sixty-
two thousand Confederates to defend on April 30th , 1862.

In the Valley, Jackson, with a total available force of
seventeen thousand, was faced with a junction of two
Union armies totalling forty-five thousand, all told. If he
left the Valley, it was lost to the Confederacy and if he
did not time his leaving right, McDowell might cut him
off with thirty-three thousand more before he could reach
Richmond.

It has been the lot of most American soldiers in modern
times to fight winning wars. Victory, or the instinctive
knowledge of victory to come, is an incentive that tran-
scends fear and dysentery, jungle heat and bitter cold,
hunger, wounds, and the raw, gaunt lot of the individual
soldier. He goes on in vision of the bright end to his going.

Few armies have been magnificent in defeat. Washing-
ton's tattered rabble crossing Jersey. The 'British regulars
whipped from Mons to the Marne. The young men of
Korea.

And Jackson's men of April '62.

It is a gauge of Jackson that he never made a plan with-
out first basing it on the best possible knowledge he could
obtain of the enemy situation. Throughout history, it is
a recurring phenomenon that even the greatest generals
have had the unfortunate habit of mind of entertaining
firm convictions of what the enemy would do and there-
after accepting all indications that proved them right, re-
jecting all that proved them wrong. Napoleon was guilty
twice, of record. Once at Moscow. Once at Waterloo. In
our time such cumulative mistakes were made twice.
Once at Pearl Harbor. Once at Bastogne.

But Jackson was a superb-G-2. He knew Banks'
character and he knew that Banks 7 immediate striking

force of twenty thousand men was twenty miles north
of Staunton six march hours by the roads of that day.
If Banks joined Fremont, the jig was up. The junction
was imminent.

If there is any cardinal rule of tactics, which one doubts
it being am involved and ahnost an exact science it is
to strike before forces are joined full, or once joined, to
divide them by maneuver and defeat them in detail. Piece-
meal

Jackson chose not to await the junction. He saw his
opportunity and took it in one of the boldest, most care-
fully -thought-out moves in military history. But to make
it dead certain, he put the fatal quietus on Banks first. He
pulled the wool over the joker's eyes in as magnificent a
maneuver as the realm of counter-intelligence records. He
cost Banks six hours' march time by bluffing deuces
against Banks' three of a kind and Banks believed him.

So did Jackson's soldiers, and the heart 'went out of
some of them. It went out of Roan Catlett and a little bit
of Roan died within him. For there is no such thing as a
brave man or a steadfast man. Some are more continuous-
ly brave and steadfast than others, but with most men
these qualities -fluctuate within the confines of their basic
characters. Character itself is a template within which
there are certain general things a man will or will not do
within which there are certain prices he will not pay,
or accept.

Courage in war attains to certain levels within each in-
dividual. He will, as a general rule, move forward with
his unit when the order comes. Not to, is to invoke dras-
tic and public penalty. He will, when forced to act alone
and without witnesses, tend to doubt the incumbent
necessity for full-out effort, and consider his own hide as
of primary importance. Again, there is a certain madness
right around the corner of every combat soldier's mind.
He lives in personal filth and privation. He has, if he is
lucky in mind, drawn the curtain close behind him so

89

that he no longer hears the throaty whisper of his girl or
sees the lights of home at dusk. He has had to close him-
self to the fast in order to free his present of ghosts that
might betray his necessity for alertness. But a curtcdn is
also drawn ahead of him. Just beyond the immediate. For
he has no future. He lives with death; therefore he is free
to court her. And sometimes madness takes his mind, the
Death Wish flames full and he trades the last vestige of
sanity for the primeval killing, the hate of instinctive aeons
and his Ultimate Discharge.

If this were not so, there would be no difference be-
tween the worth of decorations. It is significant that the
citations for the highest are beyond the comprehension
of most combat veterans. It is more significant that they
are given posthumously, more often than not.

Somewhere between these levels. Roan fluctuated, when
Jackson left the Valley.

90

HOW STONEWALL
CAME BACK

IT WAS TOWARD the last of that second April that Roan
Catlett began to ride in the shadow of black doubt The
bright Manassas fight of the summer before had tar-
nished dull under the slow months of falling back to the
Rappahannock. In the Shenandoah Valley, Jackson, heav-
ily outnumbered, played fox most of the time, but all the
time he'd given ground. From the Potomac patrols, he'd
been pushed south to Winchester, only to give up Win-
chester and pull farther south. With only Ashby's scat-
tered cavalry actions pressuring back on the Northern
pursuit and the eternal sharp picket brawls, to give the
feeling of any fight left in it at all. Once there had been
that brilliant countermarch back to Winchester, for the
Kernstown Fight. Forty-three muddy miles of marching
back for a three-hour slug fight and out south once
more, proud, but licked again!

The sawdust runs out of a man and he becomes old
inside, with an old man's senile fears close to his heart
and an old man's tears drenching his soul. Inside, where
he lived, Roan was licked. It hung on him night and
morning and wouldn't lift, whatever. Too close to his
personal honor to say the word, but too insistent now,
to give it the lie.

That last morning in April when General Turner Ash-

93

94 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

by sabered the Union cavalry back into their own camps
at Harrisonburg, it came plain to Roan. There ain't no use.
You could always drive them in, in small actions, but
still they came acoming. From Harrisonburg north, the
Valley was choked thick with Yankees. Solid blocked to
the Potomac. Across the Shenandoah Mountains due west,
there was Fremont's brand-new Western Army, rumored
to corne down through Buffalo Gap and take Staunton.
Behind Roan's back, across the Blue Ridge Mountains
east, there were thirty-three thousand Federals pressing
Fredericksburg, to close the northern door on McClellan's
siege of Richmond and if that ain't all four sides but a
footpath, what is?

Ashby brought his troopers out of the woods after
re-forming them and led them back down the Cross Keys
Road toward Port Republic. They said Turner Ashby'd
gone a little mad a year ago when they killed his brother.
Said when Dick Ashby's body was lowered into the
grave up at Romney that Turner had snapped his broth-
er's saber across his knee and thrown both pieces in on
the casket. Said the two broken pieces striking hollow
wood was worse than any curse he might have called.
Strange man. Small and dark almost to a Spanish cast.
Praying man. Gentle in his words and clean in talk and
thought. A man'd do well not to have Ashby's hand
against him.

Warm rain soaked them, running down inside, wash-
ing the body filth into their steaming boots. Roan felt
it good. Miserable but perversely gooda part of the
whole damned business under the mists that hid the great
hulking mountains like veils across the faces of mourning
women.

If they killed my brother Buford, I'd never let up on
'em. But I saved Bufe from it for a couple of years till he
gets eighteen and it ain't gain' to last that long. Bufe
don't die trailside with the outer air blood-bubblw!
through a hole in Ms chest, pressuring his lungs to slow

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 95

strangulation. No, sir; he stays at V.M.L down in
Lexington where a drill gun in hancTll give him the
feel and a uniform to his bac&ll lend the cockiness.
When pa wrote he'd tried to leave school and enlist, I
wrote it strong to Bufe, like deserting his corps. Job was-
plain. Study and work it out -for two more years. No, sir,
Bufe, a man dorft run away from the job in hand. He
works it out to the finish, before he takes on the next.

Roan skinned his lips back off his teeth in violent men-
tal satisfaction. Bufe was hisout of all the family. Bufe
was his own, in some strange way it can happen. There-
had always been thoughts and laughter between them
without words. A piece of the cosmos, divided equally.
Each knowing the inner man of the other since the very
beginning, when Bufe, toddling on fat uncertain legs t
walked from his mother and put his chubby hand in-
Roan's four-year-old one. "Let go m'brother! I do his
fightin' for him, 'till he grows!"

Morning of May first it was still raining. Not in drops
you could see, but in heavy drenching sheets that brushed
your face like gossamer wash on God's clothesline. The
threadbare head of General Jackson's column came up
the Elk Run Valley out of that rain, six thousand all told,
but sullen inside from retreating. Men slogging mud to-
the knees in places, guns bogging down to trunnions,
until they were dug free. Horses' legs plastered with the
drying mud on their backs corded thick like scabs over-
saber cuts. But the column didn't cross the Shenandoah
into Port Republic town. It turned east on the Brown's
Gap Road, heading for the Blue Ridge Mountains.

You couldn't believe that, when you first saw it from
Ashby's bivouac. Must be one regiment turning off to
secure that side of the crossing, while the rest went on
into town. Only it wasn't. Regiment after regiment made
the same turn east and the column didn't stop for even
a breath. Medium's Station lay that way on the Virginia
Central Rail Road with Richmond south and east by

96 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

steam car. And all the Valley left behind. Harrisonburg,
Staunton, Lexington for the Yankees to pour into if
Jackson left. And Jackson was leaving.

You could see the infantry sucking the greasy mud,
feel the misty mountains pawing at your shoulders, but
you couldn't hear above the snarling river water, white-
roaring, so that you had to shout, "What's that?"

"The Valley jig is up! Jackson's pulling out for the last
stand around Richmond. March direction don't lie. He's
headin' for the rail road and it's high-low-jack and the
game!"

A few minutes later Turner Ashby was crouching road-
side with his map on his knee, his milk-white horse be-
side him, laced thick with the mud. General Ashby hated
to have his horse streaked, but there wasn't time. There
never was time any more. He had his orders.

He passed them. "The main screen will be maintained
on Harrisonburg," he said softly, "to cover the rear of
General Jackson's withdrawal. Two troops will work
well over west, and north of Staunton to fend around
Buffalo Gap, Lebanon Springs, McDowell and the
Bull Pasture River, to feel out the advance elements
of General Fremont's Shenandoah Mountain Army."
Ashby looked up at the handful of his officers and non-
coms. There was mud in his black mustache, twisted into
it like pomade, but his dark eyes were as calm as if he
were planning to plow his north forty, up at Rose Hill.
"Those two troops will be between two Federal armies,"
he said, "so don't go to shooting up each other through
jumpiness. The orders are to fend and scout"~-Turner
Ashby folded his map and stood up "and delay fight-
ing where you can without being sucked in and taken.
Questions?"

There it was, plain. The last muddy ditch! Throw the
cavalry back against them once again to hide the fact of
withdrawal as long as possible. Nine hundred of Ashby's
troopers against two Federal armies. Feel 'em, fool J em,

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 97

fuddle 'em, as long as could be to let Jackson get to
Richmond. StonewalPs heart must be broken inside him
at the orders calling him down there and every other
Valley heart with it.

Roan's troop rode west for two days. Back toward
Cross Keys and down to Bridgewater. Mount Crawford
and on to Stabling's Spring. He didn't want to get out
of this dreadful break-up alive somehow, and yet he
didn't want to die. He'd built up too much credit
on the living side. Other men right and left had been
killed riding with him and he had lived. To die now was
like throwing in a good hand at cards. But there wouldn't
be anything to live for afterwards, if you played 'em.
The money wouldn't buy. You couldn't even get the last
year out of mind, and with the war lost, you couldn't
tolerate the awful memory. It would be like the cancer-
ous lumps that grow inside of old folks. Can't cut them
out, so they snarl their growing into vitals until the only
way left is death. Death becomes academic and the values
of life cease to be.

The third day, when they had a sharp skirmish along
Mossy Creek with a Harrisonburg vedette, Roan fought
with his whole mind and body waiting for a bullet. Hell,
it couldn't be long now. There wa'n't nothing left but
for it to hit him. He began to quiver in his flesh for it, like
a horse twitching flies, and when the fight was done, he
had a bad five or ten minutes when he thought he was
going to cry go all to pieces and whimper in his soul.
He clawed his sweating face with his dirty fingers. Twist-
ed his hands into it for control His breath caught in
silent sobs and he had no God in that moment to lean
upon, because he felt unworthy to call upon Him. It was
like he had really died a little bit and was halfway across.
Too far to pull clear back and not far enough to go on.
Awful.

The troop moved on up into North River Gap in the
Shenandoahs, and Roan rode with it like a man in sick

98 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

stupor. There were almost four troops in the mountains
by May sixth, under Ashby's Captain Sheetz. Operating
by squads and half troops, feeling out the road to Frank-
lin for General Fremont's advance guard fending as far
north as Brock's Gap Settlement to make sure Fremont
wouldn't try to come through the mountains up there to
join his army with Banks' at Harrisonburg, instead of
south to take undefended Staunton. Roan didn't care
what happened. His heart was gone out of it.

He knew he was going home a couple of days before
he went. Not deserting, for there was nothing left to
desert from just going home, like a man has to when
his work's finished, win or lose. Plugging these moun-
tains, just waiting for it, hopelessly, was fool's business
now, with Jackson gone. Sure you could spot 'em first
and sting 'em like always, but four troops couldn't stop
Fremont. Fremont's army would pour through four
troops like spring wash down the creeks and there'd be
nothing left but lost hope. But today, tomorrow, there
was still time and everything'd be the same at home as
before except in his mind. At least he'd have that same-
ness to breathe in for a spell, before it happened.

The Catlett place was about six miles from Deerfield
in the Short Mountain country. Log cabin it was in In-
dian times long before. Then built onto as they cleared
the land in his great-grandfather's time and more still in
his grandfather's. When the Tidewater branch of Cat-
letts died out, the old English furniture and the silver
came over the mountains by oxcart, and some of the
Catlett pictures came with it That was when they built
the brick part of the house. Funny hodgepodge of a
place really, because the Catletts never tore any of the
old parts down. They just built on solidly as they lived
solidly. Kept what they had and added to. The women
they married did that for them kept the blood and
kept the progression.

It wasn't that Roan really wanted to go home, because

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 99

he really didn't. There just wasn't anything left for him
to do. It was going to hurt bad to go, because he'd have
to tell his father all of It and he hated to do that. How
they'd whipped the Yankees man for man and troop for
troop, every time the fight was joined and yet lost it
all somehow day by day, week by week, until nothing
was left now but a handful of tired and ragged cavalry-
men in the mountains, between two whole Yankee
armies with Richmond ringed about and the Valley
wide open. Thy 'will be done but dear God in heaven,
1 wish I 'was a little boy again with my -father big W
help me.

Roan hadn't ever wanted to go home since he'd started
out for Harper's Ferry last year. He seemed to have a
soldier's instinct about that from the start. Turn your
back on all that was before and don't come back until
the fight's over or it'll weaken you somehow in your
mind. It'll soften your bowels against going back to fear
and sweat and killing.

He walked slowly down the Green Valley Pike, lead-
ing his tired mare, Lady, and breathing the evening air
deep for the first smell of his own chimney smoke. Lady
touched her velvet lips to his crusted shoulder, slobbered
his upper arm and breathed down her nose in soft whis-
pers to him. Fremont's men'd burn the houses and loot
off the stuff to send north. A trooper of Ashby's they'd
collar like a hoss thief, like as not hang him where they
took him. But not Roan. That's what a man's last gunload
is for, to shoot it out cold to them for his own kill, stand-
ing. He ground his teeth in tired and impotent rage, for
all the dead men he'd buried and all the hope that had
died with them, for his youth that was gone and his old
age that would never sit upon him more heavily than it
did this night.

Then roadside, half a dozen yards ahead to the right, a
gunlock snicked open sharp. "Stand and stipulate!" Roan
stopped in his tracks. It was an old man's voice, cracked

100 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

slightly in the words, but not with fear and the sound
of it echoed vaguely from the past.

"Friend," Roan said, puzzling the voice.

"Friend to who?"

Roan laughed then. "Friend to Judge Manigault," he
said, "and to Gin'ral Turner Ashby and Stonewall Jack-
son! That enough, sir? I'm Roan Catlett, judge."

"God bless m'soul, Roan" the judge stepped out of
the rhododendron. "H'are you, boy?" and with his old
Lefevre rifle in his left hand, he held out his right to
Roan. "Yore pappy'll shore be glad t'see you!"

"Yes, sir," Roan said, "Yore boy Forney's all right, last
I saw. He's up around Harrisonburg, with Ashby him-
self."

"Oh, Forney'H get along," the judge snorted. "The
Slow Devil's in him and the Devil always looks after his
own." He swept an arm back toward the roadside and
two more armed figures crawled out of the bushes. One
was Tom Ruffin, the hunchback saddle maker from Deer-
field, and the other was Davin Ancrum's eleven-year-old
brother, Custis. They had rifles, and white kerchiefs were
tied to their upper left arms.

"What is it?" Roan asked.

"Law of lev<e, suh," Judge Manigault said. "Legal as
taxes. We heard things weren't turnin* off good just right
now and that this yere fellow Fremont was on his way
down yere from Franklin with a brand-new Yankee Army
to join Banks. Folks don't take kindly to John C. Fre-
mont heahabouts, even though his wife is Senator Tom
Benton's daughter, Jessie grand-niece to Governor
McDowell, of Cherry Grove, just south a piece. Bad
blood, suh! His mother was Miz' Anne Whiting Pryor,
who left her husband in Richmond and ran off to Savan-
nah with a schoolteacher named Fremont, his father. Ma-
jor Pryor shouIdVe shot the seducer dead, you ask me,
but the major was an old man with a shaky hand. So we
aim to shoot the son, he sets foot in our country!"

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 101

"You can't," Roan said; "a citizen fires a shot at a blue-
coat, they'll execute him out of hand."

"No, suh." Judge Manigault drew himself up. "Law of
levee en masse, suh. All the old men left all the boys
too young to go. They ain't firm' any lone, personal shots
at Fremont. That's franc-tireuritf not legal. But leve en
masse is legal as militia. These yere handkerchiefs on our
arms and the feathers in our caps is uniform. Every man
jack of the Short Mountain Defense Comp'ny has stood
up and sworn to obey me a regularly sittin' magistrate
of the Commonwealth of Virginia, suh. That's command.
Uniform and command make us an armed force under
the law of levee en masse, same as the army, suh and as
we stand not a one of Fremont's men's goin' to come
into our mountain or our valley and live to talk about it!"

"You tell Davin you saw me, Roan," young Custis An-
crum said. "You tell him pappy and me ain't goin' to let
'em burn our house and barns!"

The tears were so thick in Roan's throat that he choked.
"Well " he said. "Well, I reckon n

"Git along, boy," Judge Manigault told him. "You'll
be late t*yore suppah."

A mile farther down, Roan turned in the drive and led
Lady straight to the barn.

There was lantern light up there and after a moment
it raised high. "Who is it?"

Roan stopped and swallowed hard, "Roan, sir," and
the two men stood there, twenty yards apart across the
darkness, unable to move for a minute or to say more.
What can be said, ever, between a grown man and his
father? That they both lived once, drawn close in child
love and love of child, and that the years have broken the
protecting circle so that no longer can arms fend danger
or a son in manhood seek them? Of the hour before the
attack, when the need for older words and thought be-
comes so vital, that it is a pain inside like unto nausea? Or
of the older man, roaming the cold house with the haunt

102 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

upon him, when the rain beats with the high wind off
Short Mountain? Take care of yourself, Roan like a
hoarse, demanding prayer.

Their hands came together, more to keep each from
embracing the other than for any other reason, and
Thomas Catlett said, "You've thickened through, Roan/'
and Roan said, "Reckon so/' and that was awful, for there
was so much more they couldn't say. "Go to your mother,
boy. I'll do for the hoss," and Roan said, "Yes, sir"; then
he was running blind toward the house, his boots and
spurs thundering across the summer-kitchen breezeway
and up the steps in back. "Mom!"

He scrubbed himself clean in the great wooden tub in
the kitchen and got into clean clothing and it felt wrong
on him somehow, like a popinjay strutting uniform in
the Richmond Home Guard. It took him back to times
before and there never could be times before ever
again. His campaign smell was gone to his own nostrils
and his honor somehow gone with it.

"What's it like, Roan? Do they give you warm food?
Do you have chapel service?" The searching, homely
questions of mothers, against the things they cannot know.

"Not like yore cooking, mom" he tried to smile, but
the effort twisted his mouth hard "and not like the Rev-
rund Kinsolving's brimstone preaching."

"What's it like, Roan?" his sister, Emily, turned fif-
teen, intense and slendering tall, with burgeoning woman-
hood. "What's it like, Roan!" breathless with it almost,
as she held his boots, new dubbined by her own hand in
fierce love for her older brother. Tell me of the gallantry
and the glory and of some young Lochinvar I cannot yet
know, but *who rides for me as surely as my heart beats
for the sound of hoofs that will someday come. What's
it like. Roan? Her eyes were bright upon him with her
delicate nostrils flared to her indrawn breath.

"Boredom mostly, Em. Hurry up and wait. And
measles." He laughed to stem the tears within, for the

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 103

knowledge was full upon him that his own people were
utter strangers to him this night. That what had been so
close a part of him was no longer there for him to touch.
The year between was like a wall between. The voices
he knew so well could not probe his thinking any more.
Like a man in a dream he was, who walks eternally
through a blank-faced crowd, trying to ask for that which
he must seek, with his voice soundless, and deaf ears
turned against him.

"What's it like, Roan? " Charlie looked up at him with
his chubby boy's face turning man subtly with his tenth
year, his eyes wide and his jaw pushed out hard. "You
kill a lot of Yankees, Roan? Tell us how!"

Edward half drew his saber and touched a thumb to
the cutting edge. "Ask pop, Roan; if I can join the levee.
Custis Ancrum's only seven months older than me. Ask
him!" . . .

"What's it like, Roan?" That was his father, much
later, when Sarah Catlett left them together with a
woman's instinct for a man and his first son. It had a dif-
ferent sound from all the others, as if somehow Thomas
Catlett knew what it was like full well, but didn't dare
to do any more about it than ask. Roan stood up and
walked across behind the table, wondering how to tell it;
knowing he had to, but wondering how. Then he knew
how the only way must be.

"I don't know about Richmond, sir, but we've lost the
Valley cold. Gin'ral Jackson's had to pull out at last. Left
only Ashby."

"Yes" his father frowned slightly "I was afraid so,
from what we heard." He nodded once or twice, like a
man who finally gets his thinking straight.

"They've sent us over here," Roan said, "four thin
troops, to do what we can to harass Fremont joining
Banks, That's the story plain" he shook his head fierce-
ly "and it's no use!"

"What then, Roan?" his father asked softly.

104 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

There it was as Roan had dreaded it. He was the man
bringing the news the man with the immediate expe-
rience. He posed the problem. His, then, to make the de-
cision, for it is too late ever to be a little boy again, once
the years have passed.

"I don't know, sir," he said helplessly. "What do you
think?"

"I don't know," Thomas Catlett said. "You've got
older than me, somehow, Roan, since you went off with
the army. You know things I don't know. Think things,
I reckon, that have never been in my mind. I have never
been a soldier, Roan. It is as if I were suspended somehow
between Grandfather Catlett and you. Somewhere be-
tween Cowpens and Yorktown in that old war and Gen-
eral Jackson in this one. Looking in through a window.
Not a part of it." Thomas Catlett smiled wistfully. "It is
as if you were my father, in a way; not I yours."

Roan drew in a deep breath. "I'll tell you then, sir"
and the shame was full upon him, but he beat it back
with the heavy hand of youth. "We must load the wagons
with all we want to save, and take the family out south.
Mother and Emily and the two boys."

The words were there between them, and there was no
calling them back. Their echo lay in shattered pieces,
jagged and ugly with destruction, and the silence that
followed after was the silence of things dead.

"Out south to where, Roan?"

"I don't know," Roan said. "All I know is that the
Valley jig is up and I had to come and tell you."

The silence fell again, and it was a dreadful-sounding
nothingness that hung in the old room and probed the
farthest reaches of its shadows. From the walls, it came
back upon them again like tide returning up the beach
and held them in its cold import of finality.

"What about Buford, down at Lexington? " His father's
voice was steady.

Then it was as if Roan had known all along that his

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 105

father would ask that question next. As if he had been
standing, braced, to meet it, but when it came he had no
answer.

"How is Bufe?" he asked quickly. "Have you heard?
Tell rne!" Too quickly, to buy him time.

Thomas Catlett moved his eyes to look at his oldest son
without moving his head. "Last week," he said, "Ruford
wrote you had written him about not leaving school"
and that was all Thomas Catlett said. For just a second
or two his tongue sucked his lips as if he would say more,
but he closed his mouth on the impulse and clasped his
hands on the table edge. The words he might have said
were in Roan's mind, plainer than if he had said them:
Like deserting your corps., Bufe a man don't run away
from the job in hand. He 'works it out to the finish be-
fore he takes on the next. Deep anger lashed at Roan's
vitals, caught as he was between necessity and the shame
of meeting it He was like a man tied up and struck, then,
across the face. You couldn't tell this to Buf ord, for Bu-
ford couldn't know it yet for what it really was. He was
like Roan had been last year fresh in his heart for it,
eager with the dreams of childhood, but with manhood
bursting within him now to make those dreams come
true. The trap of glory. The bone-strewn short cut that
eternally weaves its bloody snare for youth,

"You know that boy better than I do, Roan," his father
said. "His heart is one with your heart. Where you are
is where his mind lives. What you do is what he will al-
ways try to follow. You might be twins close in mind
as some twins are. But with more than that in it, because
you are older. Older enough so that all of Buford's life
you will be to him what a father is for the first few years
of a boy's life. His god, Roan."

Then the guilt came full upon Roan and hung in his
nostrils like the stench of flesh rot. Not his own guilt
alone but the guilt of despair that creeps into the souls of
men as sickness will take their bodies when plague stalks

106 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

the land. Rotting their minds with the mass fear that
comes of doubt and question. Shriveling their hearts until
they are like sheep for the driving, denying them the
right to walk in forthright pride as men, destroying the
heritage of God's image.

Thomas Catlett reached a steady hand and raised his
brandy to his lips. He watched his son's eyes over the
rim of the glass as he drank. c What were you planning
to drop by Lexington on the way? To tell Buford and
take him alongon south?"

Roan stared at the older man. "I a "

Just then the dogs began to give voice down in the
runs. Old Bess first, with her heavy bell ringing full to
the night. Then the others waking and coming in on the
chorus because it was Old Bess and they didn't dare not
take her word for whatever stalked the darkness. Close in
to the house Splinter woke and growled in his whitening
muzzle, like an old man cursing for the sleep he was going
to lose now. Roan stepped quickly for his hand gun,
pulled it out of holster.

His father watched him for a moment, then he crossed
to the door, opened it and stepped outside. Splinter was
growling down by the pike now, thrashing angrily around
through the brush, circling for what scent there would
be to satisfy his sleepwalking. Outside with his father, the
darkness seemed to bring the whole place in close on
Roan. To ring him about tightly so that he couldn't move
his arms. There was too much of it suddenly for one man
to live in all alone. Too many old people crowding close
for a moment, whispering from other years long gone.
Buckskin people with long rifles to hand who had known
Captain Washington long before General Braddock got
to know him or My Lord Cornwallis. Steady people,
forthright to God and stouthearted to living with the
fundamentals deep grained in their souls. It was like they
had all slowly drifted down from the burial place to
stand by this night and watch the Catletts close with the

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 107

right the Catletts have to watch their own. Babies born
in the old house, who had grown up to those mountains,
to call the land theirs in their time in sweat and worry
and heartbreak. In joy and loving and living. The gun
hung heavy in Roan's hand, like someone pulling on his
arm, and in that moment he knew his shame full.

"There is someone on the pike," his father said quietly.
They could see old Splinter against the night sky. He had
straightened out his circling and was standing braced
with his ancient nose up to what wind there was. Then
Old Bess in the runs must have told him, for she tore it
out of her throat suddenly to shout the others down in
a panic of unholy joy and Splinter took off up the road
fit to tear his rheumatism out by the roots.

"Lord a'mighty!" Buford said. "Ain't it enough I got
to walk all night but Judge Manigault like to shot me
down the road, Splinter like to eat me up and m'own
brother Roan meets me gun in hand! . . . H'are you,
dad? . . . Damn, man, I'm glad t'see you, Roan! What
time is it?" And again there the three of them were as
Roan and his father had been earlier, with so much to say
and no words to say it with. No power to get it out of
their inner thinking.

"Past eleven, Buford," Thomas Catlett said.

"Just made it," Buford snorted in disgust, "in time to
turn around and mosey straight back!"

"Made it from where, Bufe?" Roan's voice was sharp,

"Staunton, Roan. Where else?"

"What the hell for Staunton!"

"Well " Buford grinned. "The army must of done

something wrong, for they sent word for the Cadet Corps
to come on up from the Institute to help. We left Lex-
ington the first of May to march up. General Smith
marched us they say to General Jackson's order. That's
all I know."

"That can't be!" Roan said helplessly. "They wouldn't
do that put boys in to hold Staunton!"

10g THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

"Not so much of the boy talk, Roan," Bnford grinned.
"They gave us men's shoes and socks down at the Deaf
and Dumb Asylum where we're camped, and we're going
to get real rifles to replace our smooth bores when we
take off west to fight Fremont." He stood on one foot
and held up the other to show the issue shoes. His cadet
trousers were stuffed in mud-crusted laced leggings and
his short jacket was strapped at the waist with the Insti-
tute belt buckle turned to the rear. "Too bright for a
target," he said. "Orders are to wear it in back, but polish
it bright, don't fear!" and he pulled the Institute kepi
down to his eyes so's just not to hide them, in the self-
same way General Jackson had of doing, and Roan knew
suddenly that every man jack of the corps was doing just
that to his kepi forty times a day, because Jackson had
that habit, hoping to burr the visor with thumb and finger
just as Jackson's was burred. Of such things are school-
boys made forever and were it not so, there would be
no men in the world,

"What you doin' here, Roan? They told us Ashby was
screening way up in the mountains. Towards Franklin."

"That's right," Roan growled. "I just dropped by.
Close enough to."

"Me, too," Buford said. "Got a pass 'til reveille. Reckon
I should see ma? Or would it upset herme havin' to go
right back without even time for a snack?"

"Reckon you should," his father said. He stood for a
moment looking full at his oldest son in what light there
was, and a strange thing came to pass. Just as Thomas
had felt for a brief moment that Roan was older in his
mind than he was in his for this night, so now Buford, as
he stood there slightly puzzled, looking from one to the
other, was older than either of them, for manhood isn't
years, it is heart, and if the heart be strong in youthful
dreams, who shall deny that it still is heart?

"I'll go saddle Lady," Roan growled. He walked across
the paddock, icy cold in his whole inner body. How

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 109

could they do it? How could they order those boys up
from Lexington to try to hold Staunton, when Jackson's
whole army had pulled out? His fury snarled in his mind
like a treed hill cat the numb fury a soldier lives in half
his time. He cursed General Jackson with his lips drawn
thin against his teeth. They cannot have Buford. Til go
back, but they cannot have Buford. But he knew now he
was only whistling in the dark. Had been, about Bufe,
from the first.

When he led Lady up to the house, his mother stood
there with a handkerchief crushed tightly in her hand,
but no tears. "It seems a shame," she said, "to walk so far
to have to start right back! Fll give you some ham and
biscuits to take. I "

"It's only fifteen miles up and fifteen back/' Buford
said, "by road. Shorter the way I cut across. It's nothing
as long as I saw you for a minute. And none of you are
to worry," he said solemnly, "because Fremont ain't goin'
to get to pass through those mountains! Take my word
for it, Virginiae Fidem Praesto!"

Thomas Catlett took down his squirrel rifle. "Fll walk
a piece back with you both."

Then they were on the road again north. Three shad-
owy figures with Lady behind, following Roan close for
comfort. The night damp was down full and there was
still no talk in it, for there couldn't be. The thinking ran
too deep for talk. Old thinking. That these three men
were not themselves alone, but only a part of a long dead
march behind them to bring them where they were to-
night. And that ahead in the shadows of tomorrow lay
the further march of their own sons. Caught between,
the present tenants of the name, with the power in their
hearts to add to it, but no right whatsoever to detract.

After a while Thomas Catlett stopped and pulled a
white kerchief from his pocket, circling his upper left
arm with it and knotting it with his teeth.

"Judge Manigault's road block is just beyond," he said.

110 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

"I've got the twelve-to-daylight watch with Doctor Cros-
set and Senator Ancrum. Good night, boys." He held
out his hand to Roan.

Roan stared at his father. "You just let me talk! You
weren't goin', whatever!"

"I reckon not," his father smiled. "This Valley is mine
from way back. I wouldn'thave any other place to
go." Roan took his father's hand and then he whipped off
his hat and leaned and kissed his father's cheek. Bufe took
off his hat. Thomas took off his hat. "Take care of your-
selves, y'heah?" and they said, "Yes, sir. Take care of
yourself, sir."

Out of earshot down the road, Buford said, "Goin'
where, Roan? Where were you and papa goin'?"

"No place." Roan shook his head. "Just talking, earlier.
About after" he gestured vaguely to the night.

"Been at Staunton a few days," Buford said. "Drilling
and such. Tonight was the first chance I got to ask a pass.
Funny, Roan, we should have picked the same night.
Makes a man believe strange things like thinking goin'
across space the way telegraphing goes down a wire.
We've been like that a lot, in our time." He turned his
face toward his brother. "Ever notice?"

"Yes." Roan's throat hurt. "Yes. I have." Let go
m> brother! I do bis -fighting -for him till he grows.

"Roan," Buford said. "I'm awful proud of you. I
couldn't say that to any other living man the way I mean
it. Kind of makes me feel inside like you was a girl I
wanted to kiss," he laughed. "I ain't agoin' to kiss you,
so don't draw back, but I'm awful proud of you, boy. A
sergeant of Ashby's Cav'ry! Boy!"

"That's good, huh?" Roan smiled.

"Damn good, for my money." Buford nodded once or
twice. Then he said, "I'm turnin' off just beyond, Roan.
The road down toward Waller's Creek that follows the
railroad in to town. Could I ask you something?" His
voice was solemn soft. For a moment Roan couldn't draw

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 111

his breath and his heart was white cold within him. Dear
God, he thought, don't let the -finger be upon Buford like
it 'was on Forney Manigault when he saw death at Manas-
sas. Don't let Buford tell me that he sees it grinning at
hbn now. Don't God, don't.

"Go ahead, Bufe, ask."

"Well," Buford said, "what's it like? Just that, I reckon.
What's it like, Roan?"

The reprieve in Roan was like a live thing, leaping for
joy. It pressed his throat tight so that he could not talk.
But he could breathe again and think again, and with the
thinking came the hopeless, futile knowledge that no man
who's been in it can ever really tell it right. There are
no words.

"How do you mean, Bufe?"

"Well," Bufe said thoughtfully, "just that, I reckon.
Just what's it like in a battle? I never thought one way or
another to fight a man with fists. If he was big, I reckon
I fought harder 'cause I was scared. Reckon I never
thought if I was brave or a coward. But I'd kind of like
to know what it's like if you can tell me?"

Roan's impulse was to fling his arm tightly across Buf e's
shoulders to hold him close, but it was too late for that.
Too late now for everything. I can't do his fighting for
him any longer, -for he*s grown. With that he laughed,
and the sound was horrid against the silence of the night.
"That's all it is, Bufe, boy. Just what you said. If he's big,
you just fight harder, 'cause yo're scared!" Then Roan
did put his hand on Buf ord's shoulder, not his arm around,
but his hand tight, fingers pressing hard. The anger in the
paddock was gone from his soul with the faint and dis-
tant echo of the past. "I reckon yo're grown, Bufe. Take
care of yoreself, y'hear?"

"You, too, Roan. Here's m'turn-off. Good luck."

Roan threw his leg over Lady and sat for a moment
looking down at his younger brother, getting the boy's
face full in mind as he saw it now. And his heart was

112 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

quiet within him, for he knew now that, win or lose, you
never throw the cards in, for the money never buys any-
waybeyond the satisfaction of your own soul for the
playing.

Buford stood there in the roadway, his face turned to
the sound of the scrabbling hoofbeats, his mouth open
still to call good-by once again, but it was too far now
for Roan to hear. .So, after a moment, he turned his back
and put his tired boy's legs into the last ten miles back
into Staunton, to the job in hand.

It was lightening for dawn by the time Roan worked
his way up into the high country where he'd left his
patrol. "All hell's breaking open soon," they told him.
"Word's been corning all the way down the line all night.
Fremont's man Milroy has got thirty-seven hundred Yan-
kees in McDowell Village, foot of Bull Pasture Mountain
right ahead of us, with a regiment deployed on Shenan-
doah Mountain. Rest of Fremont's army is strung along
South Branch Valley. Schenk's Brigade is thirty-four
miles north at Franklin, and Fremont himself is still in
Petersburg, with Blenker's Division not yet quit of Rom-
ney! That's seventy-five miles of stringing out, sarge.
There's goin' to be some fancy clobberin' heahabouts be-
fore day is done!"

"What withfour cav'ry troops? "

"Hell. Ain't y'heard? Jackson's back!"

Roan was too far upcountry to see. But Buford, jog-
ging fast into Staunton to make reveille, saw.

When the first train rolled slowly into Staunton Sta-
tion, folks didn't know what for, beyond just a train.
Then somebody recognized Clubby Johnson forming up
the companies, with his big stick to hand instead of a
swordshouting in that loud voice of his he didn't even
soften to say sweet words to the ladies. By that time the
next train close behind was clanking to a steam-spitting
stop and the third-brigade regiments began piling off
the 10th, 23rd and 37th Virginia taking it on the double

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 113

to clear the tracks, forming column in the street beside.
"Stonewall's back!" The word smoked through town like
brush fire in a quick wind shift and folks came arunning
leaving lay what be death, childbirth and taxes. Down
to the depot to see it and breathe it and shout inside with
the joy of it.

"Damn if Stonewall didn't march us clean to Medium's
Station, without a word of whereto! Cars come in and
marshaled and ev'one swore to hell we're headed for Rich-
mond. Trains were all set to pull and they pulled. But
west and back again not east! And by Garry for break-
fast, heah we are, to git that bastoon Fremont!" More
trains were pulling, as far down the single track as you
could see. Stopping and letting off. First brigade now
the "Stonewall" since Manassas, under that fancy General
Winder 2nd, 4th, 5th, 27th and 33rd Virginia, piling
down and forming columns.

"What for y'ask? I'll tell you what for! That Tom
Jackson's plenty smart, in spite of what some say. Ev'body
in the Valley thought he'd snuck out so did Banks and
so did Fremont! That's why Jackson done it to make
them believe! Between the two, the Yankees've got forty
thousand men, once they jine up. But they ain't agoin' to
jine now. Stonewall kept Ashby wedged between, and
now he's all between himself with six thousand men to
put the clobber on one and one, piecemeal, before they
know which side's painted. Hold up theah! Wait for
pappy!"

You could see General Jackson then through the troops
forming in the streets and the troops detraining. Here a
minute for a quick sight of him putting a word to Cap-
tain Hotchkiss. Gone then, walking slow and thoughtful,
and there again bending an ear to General Winder's ques-
tion. Not a smidgin of haste in him, nor excitement, with
the crowds cheering him and the little boys yelling shrill.
Just tall and calm and quiet, with his beard combed out
with morning and his eyes so blue it hurt to look into

114 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

them. His old overcoat buttoned tight for a while, then
draped to his arm as the heat of the day came full. Once
in a while, thumb and finger to his cap visor where it was
burred, to pull it down firm. Seeing all of it, prodding
hard for it to be the way he wanted, oblivious to what-
ever else but what he had to do but powerful thankful
in his soul that this fight wasn't coming up for Sunday.
StonewalFs back!

Upcountry twenty-two miles, the cavalry dismounted
to fight on foot. Sent the horses back with horse holders
and took the line with carbines to pin the flung-out Yan-
kee pickets. Pinned 'em cold until Old Clubby Ed John-
son came double-quicking his advance-guard march up to
take over. Took over and went through, waving his big
hickory club like a drum major and shouting blue billy
for bumblebees. Yanks recognized him. "There's old
Johnson! Let's flank him!" and Clubby yelled back, "Yes,
damn you! Flank me if you can!" and he drove on
through the regiment on the mountain, developing the
fight around McDowell Village.

It was a rifle fight, Bull Pasture, when the third brigade
came up, laid on across jagged, sawtoothed mountains
where a cat could hardly cling, let alone wheeled artil-
lery. Four hours of lead drenching, with the barrels hot
to frying eggs, and both sides scrambling the steep slopes
for position and neither getting it too well. Roan's troop
was in part of it, dismounted, when it began to break
toward nightfall Not long, but just enough for him to
know he wasn't waiting for it any longer. His flesh was
cool in sweat with the mountain winds, but there was no
faint quiver of expectation left in it. Firm and hard and
slow-triggered.

Then darkness came down and the Yanks in the village
began to pull out, heading for the bridge, retiring under
cover of what artillery they could bring to bear on the
flat. Pulled out about a mile and built a lot of campfires
and pulled out again, leaving the fires to cover for them

How STONEWALL CAME BACK 115

while they headed north for Franklin, telescoping the
whole of Fremont's army back on itself and making sure,
for all bets, that there wouldn't be no junction with
Banks yet awhile!

Roan found Buf ord with his jacket off, digging trenches
to bury Yankee dead. Whole Institute Corps was burying
to harden the boys up, some said. But the hell with that
Jackson himself had let 'em march upcountry with his
own old Stonewall Brigade and that's enough for a start
in war, for any man's money.

"H'are y', Bufe."

"Hello, Roan." Buford sleeved the sweat off his face
and came up grinning, shovel in hand. "Some fight, I
reckon, by the sound. Didn't get to see much with," he
said distinctly, "the Stonewall Brigade held in reserve."

Roan grunted. "Never do see much. Jest what's around
you."

"Sure," Buford nodded. "So I reckon we'll go back to
Lexington now, what with exams six weeks ahead, and
not even see that much."

"I reckon," Roan said.

"But I'll be back," Buford said, and he wagged his head
emphatically, "because it ain't no more than just what
you said c if he's big, you fight harder, 'cause you're
scared!'"

The bodies weren't covered. They lay beside the
lengthening trench just as they had been littered in, with
the earthy smell of death rising from them like swamp
mist. Too many of them to give personality back to any.
Ohio boys from the Maumee Western Virginia boys
from the coal country. Dead soldiers left behind forever
in the backwash of a lost fight, with dirty hands and
wrenched faces softening to peace in the quiet nobility
that comes upon those who die under God's sky to go
down into God's earth as they lie with no tribal trap-
pings of funeral pomp and circumstance to make them

116 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

seem asleep no paint and flowers and music to give the
lie to Death.

"It's a little more," Roan said softly. "I couldn't tell
you when you asked, for it wasn't in me then, but it is
now, Bufe."

"What, Roan?"

Roan looked at his brother closely. "Bufe," he said,
"life takes a lot of living, but only one dying. I don't
know how it happened" he shook his head "but I died
a little bit over at Mossy Creek the other day, so now,
when it really comes, I've got it all to do over again." He
smiled. "Will you remember that, Bufe if you come
backjust don't die too many times. Bufe, Fm hungry.
Let's eat."

Jackson's operation against Fremont's advanced -forces
'west of the Shenandoah Mountains rolled Milroy back
onto Schenk at Franklin Village and precluded any im-
mediate possibility of Fremont's joining 'Banks through
the gaps west of Staunton. Banks, in the maneuver, had
been completely hoodwinked by Jackson and almost lit-
erally "marched around" A sensitive Banks might have
conceived the idea that he had been ignored. But Banks
was not at all sensitive, merely cautious, so like Mont-
gomery pivoting on Rheims, he withdrew -from Harri-
sonburg and shuttled north up the Valley to New Mar-
ket. To his superiors in Washington, he was merely short-
ening his lines. To himself he thought he was giving Jack-
son no opportunity to make a lightning move on him.
If Jackson so intended, Banks, the political strategist
turned soldier, would throw him off balance and out of
timing.

Clever Banks! Because immediately he knew he had
hoodwinked Jackson. He knew he had hoodwinked Jack-
son because Jacksotfs man Ashby put cavalry pressure
on him immediately both frontally and pom the west-
ward and cavalry pressure is the setup for an attack.
So Banks withdrew to consolidate for that attack, know-
ing full well that by moving first he had brought Jackson
beyond the break of measure and thus precluded surprise.

Had a frontal attack on Banks been Jackson's next plan,
Banks would have been dead right. But it was not. Jack-
son was in no position, on his manpower factor alone, to
assault at odds better than two to one against him. He

117

could not reduce Banks with the battle axe, but he could
slit his throat 'with the military scalpel And he did.

When Banks* rear guard under Ashby's pressure
cleared the east-west road that crosses the Valley Turn-
pike at right angles through New Market, Jackson began
to force the northern march of his main body. Banks was
telescoping rapidly for the twenty-five miles to Strasburg
canalized between the long run of Little North Moun-
tain to the west and the Massanutton range to the east.

Now a jug'll make the old men see it all again, 'when
thunder growls in the Massanuttons, for the glory of it
will hang on the high crags forever. Best keep off those
mountains when the mists coil thick or once again they'll
come marching. Old rooster-necked Dick Swell, with
his stomach growling loud on the frumenty he fed him-
self "for mortal fear of gut-rot. The First Brigade they
always called the "Stonewall" since Manassas. Frying
pans stuck down their rifle barrels. The singing Loitisiana
Boys in white gaiters; dancing like women at night, with-
out a straggler on the day's long march; fighting to the
sound of the guns like the Devil gone corn-juice happy.
With Old Jack everywhere the line along. Telling noth-
ing., giving no word. Camping his regiments at crossroads
so they could talk at night but never guess which road for
dawn, until the march started. And then, by Cracky,
reaching New Market and turning sharp east for the
Massanuttons. Close enough to smell the wind in Banks 9
tail feathers 726? walking away from it! Who's crazy
now? Tom Fool Jackson they said all but his own men.
His men just kept on marching.

Up and up and up into the mist-hung mountain forests*
Leaving Banks behind. Climbing over and down across?
South Fork to Luray. Then turning north in Page Val-
ley. Now it came plain even to the lumberheads. He's
marching around Banks again, but this time to get Banks
himself. He's paralleling Banks' army } with the Massa-

118

nuttons to screen his move and when he comes out at
Front Royal he'll be across Banks' supply lines!

So press it, Brother! Beat yore feet. Richmond's totter-
ing behind you with McClellan beating on the door. But
she ain't fell yet! Jackson's three-o'clock-m-the-morning-
men, marching before da<wn except when Old Blue Light
starts the night before. And don't ask questions, Gaivd
A'Mighty for there he is, ndirf Old Sorrel, heavin' his
own tired shoulder to a bogged-down gun^ mud in his
beard, caked hard.

'Banks slept at Strasburg, behind his trenches. You can't
fool Senator Banks. Jackson is way down south. This is
only Ashby's scouts knocking on the door and Pll so
notify Washington tomorrow. No, Siree. Only you can't
"fool with God either. If God intends a man to be a sena-
tor, Abe Lincoln himself best not try to make him a major
general!

Jackson came out of his valley at Front Royal across
the Manassas Gap Rail Road Banks 7 direct line of com-
munications with Washington. Part of the breach of the
Front Royal lines was the Confederate cavalry charge in
column of fours at the gallop on the Winchester Road.
Banks got out of the pocket by taking one side of the tri-
angle into Winchester while Jackson fought down the
longer hypothenuse. But Banks left his supplies almost in-
tact shoes and blankets, food and medicines, ammuni-
tion, tentage, and wagons. Mr. Commissary Banks to
Jackson's men thereafter.

There was a time when Jackson personally fought his
advance guard through the dark streets of Winchester
returning, as he had promised little Molly Lentaigne. The
impetus of attack drove the victorious Valley Army on
north until once more they saw the Potomac and fright-
ened Washington.

'But only briefly, for the price of giving Banks a tactics
lesson, 'was time again. And time ivas allowing Fremont the

119

opportunity to close from the 'west behind Jackson, al-
most to join Shields, closing from the east.

So Jackson slipped back through the closing door at
Strasburgactudly through the extreme range fire of
Shields' and Fremont's advance guards and retreated
once more to fight the slow pursuit again at Cross Keys
and Port Republic, by which time the focus of battle had
shifted to Richmond.

Let there be -no doubt that part of McClelland failure
in the Seven Days' Battle was the fact that Jackson's Val-
ley defeat of Fremont and Banks, piecemeal, and his out-
smarting of Shields, so frightened Washington that Me-
Clellan again could not count on the vast power play of
troops he thought he had to crush Richmond.

But then again there was another ingredient that
thwarted McClellan, that he did not dream of. Jackson
slipped out of the Valley stalemate., f mo f ving swiftly in the
dark cloak of complete secrecy, and struck McClelland
north-right flank and rolled him up like a rug to the
James River!

120

THE SECRET

OF THE SEVEN DAYS

THE TENSION EASED up a bit after the Cross Keys and Port
Republic fights. Up in the Shenandoah Valley, on June
eighth, Stonewall Jackson met Fremont's Fed Army at
Cross Keys and drove him back on Harrisonburg losing
poor, gallant Turner Ashby. The next day Jackson
crossed the river at Port Republic and drove General
Shields' army back up the Luray Valley. Three days
later, down Richmond way, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart the same
who was a lieutenant colonel up at Manassas the year be-
fore rode his twelve hundred cavalry thundering around
McClellan's hundred and five thousand 'sieging army
from Mechanicsville on the north clear almost to the
James River on the south to show up the whole Yankee
threat for a loose- jointed heavy hand over Richmond with
scant power to close the fist, now that Robert Edward
Lee was in command.

That was when Davin Ancrum got the letter from his
father that if he got anywhere near his Great- Aunt Honor
Summerhayes' place, he was to drop by for another horse
to replace the one he had to shoot. So Davin showed the
letter and got a three-day pass to go down Charlottes-
ville way to Aunt Honor's horse farm.

Roan Catlett grinned, "Slack times a three-day pass is
good for two weeks, but you come back, y'hear? With
Forney Manigault out for wounds, I don't aim to git
ridin* orders, without you with me for luck, boy!"

"Well" Davin waved his pass "if anything starts,
123

124 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

Gin'ral Jackson'll know where to find me. Just tell him
to come git me."

It was a bright June day when Davin crossed the Blue
Ridge, with heavy heat to come, by the fast way the mists
smoked off the treetops after sunrise. He felt free and
light in spirit. His own man, for sure. Turned full sixteen
with this past year of Valley fighting, but with boy still
hiding under it. Funny how that could be. Like two
people, almost.

Davin laughed at both. "I sure'n hell ain't still goin' to
school studying books whatever else!"

He caught a mule ride halfway up Brown's Gap and a
couple of rides in army wagons farther along. A great
golden day, getting better to live in, each mile east. A
day to slowly meet a yellow-haired girl in a pale blue
dress, with a silver ribbon to her hair.

Davin met a hearse. Caught up with it rather, a few
miles beyond Mechum's River Station, A real old-fash-
ioned hearse with glass sides where they weren't busted
out, and lacquered urns and white feather plumes on it,
moth-eaten somewhat like the old white-muzzled jug-
heads that pulled it. Old Negra on the box; beside him a
quartermaster captain in a brand-new uniform frock coat
and sword, his arm in a black silk sling. Two soldiers
stood below in the road, spitting and waiting like soldiers
do, for the next word of what happens.

The captain turned slowly on the box and looked down
at Davin walking along. "About time you showed up,
trooper. Just follow along. . . . Come on, Neb; tickle
? em up," and the hearse started off again down the dirt
road,

Davin looked at the two dusty soldiers. They were
about the same height and in the same state of campaign
shabbiness that he was. An infantryman and an artillery-
man.

The beetle-crusher held out his hand. "Threewhitts
m'name, scout Thirty-Third Virginians. 'Lousy' Thirty-

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 125

Third but we git to git a bath and spankin' new uni-
forms, soon's we reach Richmond."

"That so?" Davin said. "Well, I had a bath yesterday,
and I don't aim t'go t'Richmond."

"Talk yoreself out of Christmas, wouldn't y', bub?
Suppose t'be four of us for funeral escort- infantry, ar-
tillery, cav'ry, and we pick up the quartermaster up in
Richmond, where they got plenty of them lyin 5 aroun'
loose.'*

Davin shook his head. "I'm out of Gin'ral Turner Ash-
by's lot. I got a three-day pass for down. Charlottesville
way. That's where I'm goin'."

"Hell," Threewhitts winked, "you wouldn't up and
spoil a man's fine funeral, now would you, scout?"

"What's it got to do with me?" Davin said. "I got a
legal pass."

"Sure, sure," Threewhitts said. "Only Captain Scott
Barnaby here'll write you an extension. Got too much
other trouble to let you go, now he's got you. Body ain't
fresh's it might be. Buried for a time after it happened.
Brought an undertaker up from Richmond, but you know
how it is, the weather turns warm. Sealed iron casket with
a window in it. But the family wants burial in Richmond
and the captain's got plenty money on him to see it hap-
pens that way. Know any girls in Richmond?"

"Only my Cousin Tandy," Davin said, "but I still ain't
agoin'."

The artilleryman jerked his head toward the casket in
the hearse. "Brigadier General Chadwick McHoes," he
said. "Acting Deputy Quartermaster General of all of
Jeff Davis' armies. His hoss blew up on him. M'name's
Tom Jourdin. The Revrund Doctor Captain Pendleton's
old batt'ry. Just got over wounds."

"His hoss blew up?"

Jourdin said, "Sure'n hell hit did. Shell went right in-
side the animule. Blew up inside. Wasn't any hoss left
and precious little general, they tell."

126 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

With that, the three of them walked on silently for a
while, trailing the old mule-drawn hearse.

"They got observation balloons for the fightin' down
around Richmond," Threewhitts said presently. "I sure
aim to see 'em if I can. Read in the papers how. Yanks
call theirs the Intrepid. They got a balloon professor who
ascends it up with a wire down from it from over the
Chickahominy near Gaines' Mill to look-see our lines
and tell back by telegraph. Got to git up a thousand feet
to stay clear of our Whitworth guns south of the river."

"Yo're plumb crazy," Jourdin said. "A thousand feet
is way the hell high an' up!"

"We got any?" Davin asked.

"Sort of a one," Threewhits nodded. "Homemade like.
We gas it up in Richmond tied to an engine and run it
up and down the York River Rail Road to ascend it up
our side of the fighting, paper says."

"That's somethin', I reckon," Davin said. "Saw one go
up once. Market Fair at Staunton befoh the wah. Fellow
hanging on it too. Striped tights."

Wasn't any use arguing this escort thing. Just walk
along with it for company and beggar off casually when
he got to Aunt Honor's. The only thing was that walking
and talking to the two others, the whole escort pulled in
under Aunt Honor's side portico and stopped before
Davin quite realized where he was.

Aunt Honor Summerhayes was a fixture. Summer-
hayeses are old people around Charlottesville, and old
people tend to breed up fixtures. It won't do her kindly
to tell how she looked, but you should see how, to un-
derstand. A big woman. Big to tall, that is. Not through.
Through, she was no thicker than a thin strong man'd be,
any place. Only one better horseman in the whole Com-
monwealth of Virginia than Miz Honor. Jeb Stuart. Bred
horses, Miz Honor. Years of it made her look sort of like
a horse, like married people get to look alike. But power-
ful land to her people. A great hand for charity. Took

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 127

care of all the poor people miles around even if it killed
them.

"Well, Scott," she said to the captain, "I got your
lettah, but you took long enough getting here! Put the
hearse out in the barn for the night and come in for sup-
pah. What are these soldiers doing with you?"

"Escort, ma'am."

"Not that boy there." Aunt Honor pointed a bony
finger at Davin. "That boy's an Ancrum." She looked
Davin questioningly in the eye for a moment. "Can't call
your name, son," she said, "but you've got Ancrum blood.
Not the DInwaldie Ancrums, I'd say. A hand or so higher
than the Dinwaldies, and broader in the withers, I reckon
the senator's line. Over Short Mountain way?"

"That's right, ma'am. M'f ather wrote I was t'git a hoss."

"For sure!" Aunt Honor boomed. "Come in, y'all!"

The captain looked at the hearse. "In the barn, you
said, ma'am?"

"Where else?" Aunt Honor squinted at him hard. "I've
known Chad McHoes since I wore pigtails. He's all
packed and loaded, so there's no need unloadingwith all
the fuss of flowers and charcoal saucers. Besides, it's bad
luck when you're not buryin' from the house. Never
liked Chad too much anyway. It's his brother Beckwith
I'm doing this fer."

After supper, Aunt Honor took Davin into the house
office.

"Lucky you're goin' to Richmond," she said. "You can
take Cousin Tandy's silk wedding dress down. I'll wrap
it for you, dampproof. I've got a three-year-old hunter
for you, son. Eclipse blood with a strong strain of Bright-
eyes too. Been hidin' him from the commandeering "

"But I'm not Eclipse blood? C'n I see him, Aunt

Honor!"

"The family was at the Spotswood Hotel for a while,"
Aunt Honor said, "but they've opened the old house

128 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

again on Broad Street back of the Governor's Mansion."

"But, ma'am, I'm not "

"Opened it for Cousin Tandy's wedding. Not rightly
theirs, the house. Inherited it from the Linthicurns when
Uncle Sloane married Miss Sarah Linthicum. She died of
child fever. Cousin Tandy's Wade's daughter. Summer-
hayes, that is. Drinks too much and rides a hoss like a
hill Negra Wade, that is. Married Thalia Ancrum from
Dinwaldie. Thin girl. Vaporish."

"But, Aunt Honor, this Captain Barnaby has made a
mis "

"Wedding dress is a tradition. Belonged to the Du-
chesse de Saussure, one of Louis Philippe's never-mind.
When Grandfather Cassals was Secretary of Legation he
married her, back in the 'Thirties. Then Cousin Chastity
wore it when she married that schoolteaching popinjay
who died of a consumption in Natchez."

"I'm trying to tell you, ma'am "

"Next it went over to your branch when your sister,
Henrietta, married Brainerd Manigault. Brainerd got
killed the other day, they tell me. Well, Henrietta'll get
someone else, with her roving eye, you mark. Your father
sent the dress down here to me to get it to Richmond
somehow. I reckon you're the somehow. Senator puts
great store on family tradition. Great store."

"M'father?" Davin said. "He wants it down? Well
j

They loaded the great iron casket on a flatcar down at
Charlottesville Station the next day and rigged a tent fly
over it for shade. Captain Barnaby paid off the hearse
and got blankets for the escort.

The Virginia Central Rail Road ran pretty close to the
Yankee right wing on the north, after it left Noel's Junc-
tion heading for Richmond, but they had jump tracks up
there to route cars down the Richmond, Fredericksburg
and Potomac line. The flatcar with the casket got side-

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 129

tracked off for supply trains a couple of times. The three
of them settled to it in soldier boredom, getting food now
and then at the stops. Second morning, when Davin
pulled the blankets off his face, where he was lying with
the bundle of Cousin Tandy's wedding dress for a pillow,
the car was on a siding and stopped. He could smell city
all around damp stone pavements and the dusty spice
smell of horse drays, cindery smoke and the dry breath
of pine packing cases.

It was just coming light. Jour din was sitting on the
casket, scratching his armpit inside his shirt, getting ready
to pull his boots on.

"Cap'n Barnaby woke me awhile back," he said, "He's
gone up to town to arrange. Got to get the quartermaster
fella to make four for escort, and borry a gun caisson
from some defense batt'ry."

Threewhitts yawned and sat up. Davin rolled the blan-
kets and looped the bundle of Cousin Tandy's wedding
dress across his shoulders with the rope he'd rigged.

"Left half an hour ago, walking," Jourdin said. "Fu-
neral's supposed to be from St. Paul's Church, but we got
first to tote him up and leave him lay in state at the Cap-
itol near Eleventh all day for folks t'see. Then the cap-
tain's got to get new uniforms for us. He's walkin'. Be a
right smart time he's gone, I reckon."

Threewhitts looked around slowly, taking his bearings.
"This yere must be Fourteenth Street leading over
Mayo's Bridge, with the Richmond docks the other side.
Y'all smell bacon cookin'?" Threewhitts drew a deep
breath. "Damn if I don't!" He pointed. "Down by the
bridge" and he scrambled fast off the car.

"Can't all go," Davin shook his head. "Somebody's got
to stay with the general."

Threewhitts looked at Jourdin. "How then? Match?
Two to go first and scout it up for breakf ast, then spell
the other one to go?"

Davin and Threewhitts walked across the tracks and

130 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

climbed up the bank to Fourteenth Street where it leads
onto the bridge. The other side, below, the bridge-guard
relief was cooking in a skillet around a little scrap-wood
fire. They spoke them and made a deal on account of
being out of Ashby's Cavalry and the 33rd Virginians of
the Stonewall Brigade. "That so? Well, sure 'nuff. Long
way from home, ain't you? Gather 'round."

With his mouth full, sitting on the bridge bank, Davin
saw the little steamboat tied up on the far side of the
wharves beyond the bridge. Great bubble of bright-col-
ored rags heaped beside it on the dock. Like to smother
the steamboat under, if it fell over on it. Like to fall over
on it any minute too; because the rag clutter was ruffling
up high like something was trying to get out from under
swelling like a great multicolored blister ballooning.

Davin choked. "There she is, Threewhitts!"

"She's just that freakin' balloon," the guard corporal
snorted. "They gassing it up from the dock main. Don't
any of them know how to work it, you ask me. Blow
th'selves up someday sure,"

"What about Tom Jourdin's breakfast?"

"Match you." Davin flipped a coin.

Davin walked down to the dock. They had this thing
hooked up to a wheel gas valve beside the mooring, filling
it full with a powerful hosing sound and a stench of raw
gas you could have hung a blanket roll on. A pile of mis-
matched silk like a patchwork quilt. The crew on the
dock were walking out the great silk folds, keeping them
smooth for filling, spreading the rolled part flat and keep-
ing the basket ropes clear from snarling the fishnet that
went around the outside.

The sergeant fella with them had a twisted leg that
bent outward at the knee, instead of front and back.
Quite a trick for him to walk with it, so he stood mostly,
shouting how.

"Howdy, bub." He looked at Davin. "Never saw one
of these yere contraptions before, I reckon?"

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 131

"Yes, I did," Davin said. "Up at Staunton Market Fair
three years ago, I saw one."

"Saw me, then" the sergeant nodded. "Made m'living
at it. Ascented up at Stannton, three years ago."

"Striped tights?" Davin asked.

"Striped tights," the sergeant nodded solemnly. "The
Miraculous Wizard Watts, Professor of Applied Aero-
nautics."

"That's something!" Davin said. "You goin' up now?"

"Nope." Watts shook his head. "Busted m'leg at Phila-
delphia right after Staunton," and he pointed at his knee,
flexing it so Davin could see how it worked. "Besides,
they got a cav'ry lieutenant fer that who can draw on
the map what he sees. Lieutenant Barraclough."

Davin nodded. "Balloon at Staunton was all one color
silver. How comes it this one's like a rainbow?"

Wade snorted. "This yere's a project. When they got
the idea we had to have a balloon to match the Yanks,
they don't have silk to make one. What'd they do? Col-
lected ev'ry silk dress from ev'ry girl fer miles around!
Made a man feel mighty indecent to be around it until
the gas killed the perfume smell." Watts winked. "Boudoir
nervous. Come on, lay off your blanket bundle and give
us a hand here" and he bent quickly to the snarling net
ropes, feeding them back to Davin to lay clear.

"It ain't m'blanket bundle. It's my Cousin Tandy's wed-
ding" and then with sudden mountain shrewdness
"present," he said, and snugged the end of the bundle
tight under his arm. "Well," he said, "I reckon I better
mosey."

Sergeant Watts straightened up. "Say, wait a minute."
Davin gripped the bundle tighter. "Where you from?
You ain't a Richmond soljer."

"Ashby's Cav'ry, up in the Valley. Leastwise Ashby's,
until he got killed. Don't know whose now."

"It's true then, ain't it?" Watts fixed him with an in-

132 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

tent eye. "About General Jackson being in Richmond
last night, conferencing with General Lee?"

"Idon't know. Just got in t'day m'self . Gin'ral Jack-
son was bivouacked at Madison's Cove up in the Valley
when I left three days ago. How could he be here?"

"You're here, ain't you?" Watts pursed his lips. "So
could Jackson be. He moves around, they tell," and he
laughed "You ain't lyin'?"

Davin shook his head, but there was a vague unrest
upon him suddenly. It didn't set right now, to be so far
away from his outfit. Out of hand of news from people
he knew, and things he had learned to feel instinctively
for true or false. The lost-dog feeling of soldiers on their
own.

"They goin' up soon's it's full?" he asked awkwardly.

"That's why I asked you. We been ascenting before by
running her down the York River Rail Road on an en-
gine. Now we got these orders to hook her up to this
yere steamboat and run her down the James."

"That so? What's down the James to look at? McClel-
lan's army's up the north between Mechanicsville and
White Oak Swamp."

"That's just it. Ain't nothin' down the James. Yankee
gunboats near Bermuda Hundred and transports at City
Point is all."

"What then?"

"Well" Watts winked "if I was a Yank and seen this
balloon go up down the James to look-see, I'd get itchy
about what for. It'd draw my attention why it ain't up
North side around the Chickahominy where it always
was before. Wouldn't it you? Like mebbe we want 'em
to think we're gettin' set to hit 'em down the James
River side."

"So they pull a lot of reserves down to prepare against
it. That yore idea?"

Sergeant Watts shrugged. "Why not? If Stonewall
Jackson was in Richmond last night, his Valley army may

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 133

be right behind. He hits the Feds north in the Mechanics-
ville flank and keeps 'em movin' toward the James till
they're rolled clean up on themselves, right to left, like
a parlor rug, come spring cleaning!"

The unease in Davin stirred again. He turned and
looked back the way he had come, Threewhitts and Jour-
din were nowhere in sight. There was some distant artil-
lery firing up to the north, but not hot. Just then half a
dozen folds each side of the main balloon bubble caught
the gas full, and rippled into the rising mass of silk, swell-
ing it high above them, with the rope net snarling again
under their feet so they had to jump clear.

There was this Lieutenant Barraclough yelling now for
everybody to give a hand, and Davin grabbed hold with
the rest of the crew. They drew the covering net clear
of its tangle and rove out the shrouds of basket ropes,
walking them down aboard the steamboat to where the
basket lay on the afterdeck beside the anchor-rope winch.
You could feel the silk bag begin to tug now. Lot of force
in the gas and coming in fast.

"Get up topside, some of you fellas!" Watts yelled.
"Fend her clear the funnel befoh a spark catches her!"
With somebody on shore screaming, "Fend her off the
trees!" and everybody running around, some on the lower
deck with axes cutting the mooring ropes and the man at
the gas valve turning the wheel frantically, like a brake-
man on a runaway steam car.

The balloon made a noise inside like a great drum
booming once, muffled, and it swelled suddenly full
round, drawing the net snug and jerking the shroud lines
taut. The basket, on its side on the deck, jerked up to sit
on its bottom, spewing out sandbags and glasses and a map
board. Then the man at the valve snaffled the gas neck
tight with a strap and unhooked it free of the pipe. With
that the bag leaped straight up aft of the steamer to the
limit of the anchor rope, carrying the basket with it until
the bottom of it was four feet above the deck with the

134 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

snubbed anchor rope drumming like a bull-fiddle string-
and the steamer in midstream, its engine throbbing.

A cut of panic knifed through Davin at sight of the
water between him and shore, but like all things in the
army you can't do anthing about, it left nothing but
the determination that they still wouldn't get Cousin
Tandy's wedding dress to put with the extras in the patch
bin forward, against rips and tears. Absent without leave
you could talk away or take the punishment, but this
wedding dress his father

They had the sandbags gathered together to rerig on
the basket rim and Lieutenant Barraclough stood with the
map board and glasses while half a dozen men tried to
wind down the winch to bring the basket back to deck.
They were coming around the bend now, with the navy
yard left, heading south down the Jarnes toward Drew-
ry's Bluff. Davin couldn't just stand there, so he turned
to help, building up credit for himself against a letdown,
which was his usual way. Winch would let out, but they
couldn't get it to grind down.

"Give somebody a leg up!" Watts yelled. "Then hand
him the sandbags; that'll weight it!"

A dozen of them had their hands up, clawing at the
basket, Davin with them. They looked at one another and
one made a hand stirrup. "Come on, son," and before
Davin really knew he was doing it, he put his foot in and
they hoicked him high enough to grab the basket rim
and tumble headfirst inside. When he got his head over,
they began to pass up the sandbags.

Lieutenant Barraclough handed up the map board and
field glasses. "There're racks for them," he said, and just
as he said it, the winch ratchet let go in a running metallic
shriek and the basket shot thirty feet up and stuck again.

It knocked Davin flat inside and took the breath out
of him. When he got his head over the rim that time, the
thirty feet was not only up but it was aft as well, over
the steamer's muddy wake.

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 135

Lieutenant Barraclough stood in the stern, shouting at
him through cupped hands, "Sit tight! Don't try to slide
down the rope!"

Then for half an hour they worked on the winch,
sweating and hammering and cursing it, while Davin
watched them, and the steamboat plowed on toward
Drewry's Bluff.

The lieutenant kept calling to him off and on. Finally
he said, "Look, trooper. We can't grind you down, and if
you slide down the rope, I can't get up to observe. We
can head back in and call it off or we can let you up
farther, for you to do the observing. Which'll it be?"

"Well, I don't know, sir I ain't never "

"That toggle to the hoop above you Is the rip cord. If
you go all the way up, you can pull that to let the gas
out and bring you down. Coming down, if it's too fast,
you dump out sand."

"Yes, I know but "

"All you do is look for dust on the roads to indicate
troop movement," Barraclough shouted, "and mark the
map! It's the Gilmer map. Nine sixteenths of an inch to
the mile. You're a cavalryman. It's just like horse scout-
ing, only from higher up!"

"How far up is higher up?" Davin shouted.

"That's Drewry's Bluff ahead, left." Barraclough
pointed. "High enough only for you to see well over
north and as far east as City Point. Higher if they shoot!"

"Higher if theywhat?"

And just then the ratchet began to hammer shrill again,
the men at the winch leaped back, shouting, and the bal-
loon bounded upward with a jerk that knocked Davin fiat
again and a rush of air that gagged him. When he finally
got his head over the rim that time, the steamboat was a
tiny toy way below and the whole James River no wider
than a farm ditch. His face frozen in fear, he hung on
for a few minutes, his eyes tight shut, pulling up on the
basket rim. The basket was turning slowly as the gasbag

136 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

turned, but after a few minutes it came steady and he
opened his eyes, and suddenly it was the most amazing
thing in the whole wide world, and the pure exhilaration
of it drenched his soul in awful beauty.

He could see way east and north now miles, when he
used the field glasses.

Must be fourteen miles to the Yankee right wing at
Mechanicsville Bridge. Couldn't get to make that out for
sure, but he could sure enough see the Chickahominy and
White Oak Swamp six or seven miles northeast, where
McClellan had his left wing secured. Then suddenly in
the high silence, he heard distant artillery fire. He put the
glasses north to try to see the red of shell bursts in the
haze, but it was still too far. Up Mechanicsville way. "By
glory, mebbe Stonewall Jackson has sneaked down to
help jasperoo them, and I'm missing it!"

He came in closer with the glasses and caught a line of
light blue ammunition wagons raising a long plume of
dust toward where the Long Bridge Road joins with
Willis Church. Marked them down on the map. Over east
between Crenshaw's and where Western Run crosses,
there was a column of infantry marching north. Low
dust, thick-clouded. Two regiments anyway, by the col-
umn length moving toward the gunfire. He marked
them down. Then it got so easy it made him chuckle. Just
like hossback scouting, except you could see everything.
Cavalry moving north out of W. M. Harrison's Landing
high dust and thin, and four artillery batteries turning
left at the sawmill near Mt. Prospect

He was so excited he shouted down what he was see-
ing, even though it was way too far to hear. He could see
the steamboat, tiny as a water bug, well south of Drewry's
Bluff now, with the rippled wake out back and the bow
wave front, like swimming legs. He went back to his
work, spotting more dust moving north on the roads, all
the while the artillery fire way up there got hotter and
heavier, like the long roll on distant drums. "Sure'n hell

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 137

there's a big battle making! It must be Gin'ral Jackson's
come down from the Valley! It must be and I'm miss-
ing it!"

That time, when he looked down at the steamboat,
there was no wake or bow wave to her and she was canted
around sideways to the river current, tipped slightly to
her port side with the tug of the balloon rope on her
stern. Grounded hard on a sand bar. The rope trailed east
straight across the river and the Yankee side of the bank,
with the wind that pressured the bag. Smoke puffs there
were, from the riverbank, like rifle fire and, by Garry,
it was rifle fire with a platoon of blue coats scrambling
down the banks to get closer range on the steamer. The
wind caught the bag hard now and tugged the anchor
rope almost straight, carrying the basket over farther in-
land. They'd sure enough capture the steamboat, caught
as she was on the bar; then they'd capture him. No blessed
fear, they'd capture him!

For a white moment of panic, he tried to remember ex-
actly what the lieutenant had told him. Let sand out to go
higher; pull the rip cord to come down. He pulled Cousin
Tandy's wedding-dress bundle tighter around his shoul-
der, clutched the map board and pulled on the rip cord.
Nothing happened for a moment, except the basket
seemed to drift farther inland on the anchor rope. Drift-
ing, it brought the ground closer up to him. He pulled
harder and, looking back, found he could no longer see
the river, only little blue figures running from it. There
were trees coming up fast toward him now, so he pulled
a few sandbag dump cords. That slowed the trees, but
not too much, for a moment later he could see the leaves
on them. Then the anchor rope was slicing into them,
snipping leaves in a green cloud behind. Then the basket
plowed into top branches and the great silk bubble went
on ahead and settled, rippling out flat like a great spread
crazy quilt.

Davin got out fast, fell a bit, and began to climb down.

138 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

He could hear distant shouting from the direction of the
James, and a few scattered rifle shots; so he headed off in
the opposite direction, going fast toward the north by the
sun. Came to the edge of the woods and saw a farm
wagon moving along, direction of Long Bridge Road.
Piled high with last fall's hay. Crawled in in back for a
breather and to put distance between him and the Yanks,
without leaving trail

After the better part of a slow hour, the road ran
through woods again, so Davin dropped down from the
hay and crawled in under the bushes to think it out. He
could still hear the heavy artillery firing to the far north
of him. He had no clear idea of what time it was, but he
was dead solid in his mind now that it must be Stonewall
Jackson up there. It must be, from the sharp and ugly
character of the fight, and all that Watts had said.

He climbed a tree after a while and listened out the
firing carefully. Sure'n hell it was somewhere up around
Mechanicsville. He figured from the map, if, like Watts
said, McClellan began to roll up like a rug under Jack-
son's pressure and get forced down across the Chicka-
hominy toward the James, that it'd be on a route down,
something like Mechanicsville Gaines' Mill Cold Har-
borSavage Station Frayser's Farm Malvern Hill, be-
cause that's the way the roads lay. Having decided that,
he went to sleep for the rest of daylight, because if
McClellan was coming down that way, that would be the
way for Davin to get north to join his own outfit. And
night would be the best time to work his way through a
hundred and five thousand Yankees.

That night he worked north as far as a place on his map
called Tate & Riddell. Quite a road net joined there-
Charles City Road, Long Bridge, Quaker Road with
connecting short roads across. Holed up to sleep the day
off in a clump of rhododendrons, he couldn't sleep much
because of Yankee troop movements all day. Passed the
time by putting all of it on his map infantry, cavalry,

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 139

artillery just as he'd been told to do in the balloon. But
close to, this way, he could get the regimental numbers
from the flags and what states they were from and ap-
proximately what time they passed, with arrows in which
direction they were moving. It built up to quite a thing
after a while, that maybe some general could use right
handily.

The firing kept moving east for the three days Davin
worked slowly toward it; until the twenty-eighth it was
up north of Savage Station on the Richmond and York
River Rail Road. Davin was getting a right decent span
of mileage, considering he had to move slowly to avoid
countersigns at night. But then, so was General Jackson
getting good mileage, in spite of the fact he had to fight
a hundred thousand Feds for it. Whatever, Stonewall
Jackson and Davin were right close to joining up now,
and as Davin holed up at sunup in a clump of maple on
the Seven Mile Road, the whole character of the Yankee
rear movement began to change. First, there were wound-
ed wagonloads pulling out south. So many of them you
could hardly keep count. A three-day slug-fight crop.
Mechanicsville, Games' Mill, Old Cold Harbor wounded.
Then there were regiments marching back. Badly mauled
regiments, with batteries down to three guns, two, and
sometimes only one. Horse cavalry with half the men
afoot and straggling. Then heavy supply wagons. Am-
munition, flour barrels, pork and tentage. Engineers with
bridge equipment. Everything. And lying roadside in the
brush, Davin got all of it on his map.

The Seven Days' Battle caught Davin as it swept past
Watkins Mill, late the afternoon of the twenty-ninth,
headed south for Frayser's Farm and Malvern Hill. Talia-
f erro's third brigade hot on the tail of McClellan pulling
out of Savage Station. When you're close, you have "to
lie close on account of passwords and itchy trigger fingers.
Davin waited until he saw the 23rd Virginia colors pass
him in the skirmish line across the fields, then he got up

140 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

and walked in toward the colors of the 10th Virginians
moving down the road in reserve.

"Fella says he's out of Ashby's Cav'ry. Talks crazy.
Says he came part way by b'loon and his pass ran out.
Better send him to the provost marshal. . . . Get along,
bud; we got work coming up."

The provost said, "Got a map on him, hunh? Balloon?
He's daffy! Must be a spy. There's General Jackson's
topographical engineer over theah. Take him over to Cap-
tain Hotchkiss mebbe's a major now. Let Hotchkiss de-
cide, I'm busy."

The letdown after three days of working back through
the enemy lines had Davin shaky inside by that time. He
just stumbled along in a tired daze, like a man who's got
his courage up to have the blacksmith pull his tooth and
the tooth's come clean without snagging off the roots. He
handed over the map whenever they asked and just stood
blinking from lack of sleep, and waiting, with Cousin
Tandy's wedding dress still roped to his shoulder.

Young Hotchkiss frowned at him. "Look here," he
said; "this is the whole axis of General Jackson's attack
marked out, and General Jackson don't even tell his
staff! And look here here's almost the whole of McClel-
lan's army movement behind the lines for the past three
days, horse, men and guns. They are pulling out for the
James to hold the high ground at Malvern Hill, you ask
me! Keep that man close. If he tries to escape, shoot him!'*

"I ain't agoin' nowhere," Davin said. "I just come."

Then suddenly across the road, there was Gin'ral Jack-
son himself, standing by his great horse with his officers
grouped around him. White with dust and caked wet in
the armpits with sweat through the jacket. His great
round beard was scraggled from tugging at it three battle
days. His face looked drawn to the bones under it, tight
like a pudding cloth, from lack of sleep, but his back was
as straight as a ramrod. He took the map from young
Hotchkiss and glanced at it. Then for a moment he

THE SECRET OF THE SEVEN DAYS 141

studied it intently, fingering out the road nets on it with
the hand hit at Manassas that always throbbed him after.
Measuring mileage by laying the first two joints of the
index finger to the road, then to the scale. Then, very
slowly, he let the map hang to arm's length and he turned
and looked south toward the battle thunder rolling down
toward Frayser's Farm now, and he put his thumb and
finger to his old Institute kepi visor where it was burred,
and he pulled the hat tight, so's just not to hide the awful
blue battle light of his eyes. Then he smiled. . . .

Davin didn't find Roan or his own outfit until after the
Malvern Hill battle on July first, which left McCIellan in
full retreat to under his gunboats' covering fire on the
James River. Didn't find him until after he'd got into
Richmond again, during the lull.

In Richmond at the Summerhayes house on Broad
Street behind the Governor's Mansion, Davin gave the
dress to his Cousin Tandy.

"Oh, Davin, we've been expecting you!" she said.
u Aunt Honor's got a three-year-old hidden out in our
stable here for you. Eclipse blood." When Davin gave
her the dress she said, "How perfectly sweet of you!
You're a dear boy, but I can't possibly wear it!"

"Why not, Tandy? Don't it fit?"

"But it's not that at all! You just don't know Richmond
girls, Davin. They just live and breathe this awful war
in every fiber!"

"That so?"

"Of course it's so. How could we live if we weren't
patriotic to the last drop of our blood! You see, they col-
lected every silk dress in the 'Confederacy to make a bal-
loon, and it got captured!"

"Oh, it did?"

"And no Richmond girl would ever think of wearing

When he found Roan, Roan squinted at him hard.

142 THE VALIANT VIRGINIANS

"Well, Dav," he said, "Gin'ral Jackson sure knew where
to find you. He sure came and got you!''

"I didn't git to talk to him m'self," Davin said earnestly,
"but is there going to be trouble about the pass running
out? Can you fix it for me? You know I wouldn't "

Roan considered it for a moment. "They were all for
putting you through the sausage grinder for a spy. Until
they put it to Gin'ral Jackson himself."

"Bad trouble?"

"Well," Roan drawled, "it's beyond anything I can do
about the pass, if that's what you mean. With them all up
in arms about how you got that map and what to do with
you, Old Stonewall Jackson made the decision himself."

"What'd he say? Come on! Tell me!"

"Well," Roan said, "Stonewall just sort of smiled at
them in that way he has, and handed them back the pass.
Then he got on his horse, with your map in hand and
'Gentlemen,' he said, 'extend the man's pass!' "

So we have told a tale of half a war, and seen a nation
half -born in the blood and anguish of its own labor pains.
There is Second Manassas still to come and Chancellors-
ville. The dreadful Wilderness and Gettysburg where the
struggle attains immortal crescendo. There is the strangu-
lation of the blockade which bled the dying Confederacy
white; and the Mississippi actions, north and south, that
double-knotted the ligature. Jackson dies and J. E. B.
Stuart dies and the last of the glory dies with them. There
is little but cussedness left and pride of corps which can
transcend all personal misery, and does. The will to go
on against all odds, which is the rebirth of manhood,
whenever it happens in history. Two lifetimes after Wash-
ington's ragged Continentals evacuated New York, the
Army of Northern Virginia was forced to uncover Rich-
mond.

"On the way to Appomattox, the ghost of an army
Staggers a muddy road for a week or so
Through fights and weather, dwindling away
each day"

Who today can see Appomattox as it was? Too much
national dishonor follows on the echo of Booth's pistol
shot. Degradation comes upon the land and metfs hearts
are twisted in black anger that was never there in combat.

At Appomattox there is the dignity of God, the quiet-
ude of honored death, for at Appomattox the Army of
Northern Virginia is dead but still upon its feet. Dead
in the presence of overwhelming Union force that has it
penned so that one further step, one more shot is only
madness. And nwdness is no longer in this thing. But dis-
courtesy is and crassness is in the actions of the golden-
haired Custer, for West Point could never make him a

143

gentleman, nor a soldier. Nor could the dead Seventh
Cavalry at the Big Horn.

Two decent men however^ meet in a quiet room and
the war is ended.

All the way back to the Short Mountain country, Roan
Catlett) Forney Manigault, and Davin Ancmm plodded
in shock. Talk had left them gradually during the last jour
years so that there 'would have been little for them to have
said even had victory kissed their shields. Roan was twen-
ty-two with six wounds upon his body. Forney was just
turned man to vote but his elbow would never bend again.
Davin was just twenty, but a man so old in mind that his
children would only find youth still in him when he dug
down consciously to bring it up for them.

There was no heartbreak in that shock, no bitter stain
of frustration. Certainly no guilt, for they had been fight-
ing for their Country, not against it. The shock was im-
personal and it beggared analysis. A gray shroud like the
first reaction to a crippling blow, an apartness that stole
the taste from -food, the sunshine from the morning, the
wine from the high, good air of the mountains. They
walked three days in the little death of it, leading their
gaunt horses until the strength built up in the animals
once more.

Then strangely they were on their old boyhood road,
three ghosts haunting it, coming to the first turning.
When they reached it, Davin stopped. "Well, Gentle-
men " he said and he took off his abominable hat, hold-
ing it in his left hand. He held his right out to his cousin
Forney. "Take care of yourself, Forney" To Roan, he
said nothing beyond the grip of his fingers on Roatfs. The
tears flooded his eyes then and lifted his chin higher. They
channeled the deep war grime of his face. He could not
sob, for the muscles of his throat and chest were caught
tight as fear had never caught them. Nor did he wipe the
tears y for they were like slow blood from his soul that
would not stop.

144

When he dropped Roan's hand, he shook his head once,
short and sharp. Then he turned up his road to farming,
to storekeeping, to this and that that required no great
mental effort, for his memory was always too strong upon
his youth to allow anything else to encroach too heavily
upon his mind ever. At San Juan Hill long afterwards,
as a fifty -three-year-old Major of Volunteers when the
order came to advance on the Spanish blockhouse, Davin
turned to his men and shouted "Come on. Boys we'll
drive the damyankees off that hill!"

At Forney' *s turnoff, they stopped again. Forney said y
"Roan I want you to think about it. Til have to go to
the University, my Dad's so set on it. Maybe at Char-
lottesville the thinking 9 II come straight for us again. At
least it can't hurt us, doing nothing on good bourbon' 9

Roan shook his head. "Not me, Forney. I've got to
work. It's the only way I can saddle the hate not of any-
thing particularly but of all of it. Hate is like a man you
have to wrestle hard. You can't let up until you break
him. . .

And much later that night at the Catlett place Roan
said the same thing to his -father.

" What work, Roan?"

"Body work, Sir. Sweating work. Muscle work that
tires you gray to sleep"

"Where?"

"Texas way, Sir. There are a lot going. Land is cheap
and the place is wide. It's not like I was your only son y
Sir, You've got three to stay who haven't the reason I
have for going. I fought for this land and I lost it. I
can't bear to see it any more!"

"Once before, Roan, you wanted to leave. Maybe leav-
ing is in your soul. Maybe that's really why you went to
war to leave life itself"

Roan raised his head. "How do you mean? 77

"Some men are always leaving. Job to job. Woman to
woman. Ideas to ideas. But there's a funny thing about

145

that it catches up when you grow old. Benedict Arnold
asked his old Continental uniform coat be draped about
him when he died. Deserters always have to turn in be-
fore the end to get their records straight. A man can live
in far lands most of life but he hankers in his age to come
back to where he was a boy to where his people sleep.
I didn't make that up. It's a law of life. Like the Ten
Commandments* Nobody made them up. They are the
sum total of man's moral experience throughout the ages.
Where'd you get that golden mare, Roan? She's got
Timoleon blood or 1 don't know horseflesh''

Roan started slightly as if he had heard something faint-
ly down the midnight road. "/ got her . . . after she shot
Jason."

"Who shot Jason?"

"A little girl in Winchester when I had to leave. Look
here, Sir. Let's turn in. I've got to start for Winchester
tomorrow, to take Lady back"

There were four chimneys left of the Lentaigne house?
clutched to the sky like fingers of a stiff hand, with the
two charred cross gables of Sheridan's mitre arching them.
But Molly was there as she always would be. Sixteen that
spring, chatelaine of her -father's land, her father's house
and her -father's people when so little remained of any of
it that for a moment there were only tears in Roan but
inside him. Not in his gaunt eyes.

Her dark hair was parted cleanly in the middle and
braided tightly along each side. Her nose turned up just a
tiny shade at the tip. Her waist was girl slender m the
young flesh of womanhood. For a moment when she saw
him walking up the old drive leading Lady, she stood
stark and unbelieving, for the heritage of defeat was on
her too and she had been born to losing everything.

Then she laughed deep in her throat. Not a laugh really
but a gentle sound of exquisite joy.

"Ro&nP she said. "/ knew you'd come back!"

146

About JAMES WARNER BELLAH

JAMES WARNER BELLAH HAS dedicated his -writing life
to an examination of Americans and their past and' present
way of life. The Valiant Virginians is his latest offeringa
study of the private soldier of the Confederacy, written
without white-pillared tidewater houses or crinolines,
without the flamboyance of Scarlett O'Hara and the
eternal swagger of fictional bright sabres.

Born in New York City three months before the turn
of the present century, Mr. Bellah came of the last gasp
of an ancient Irish family which has since acquired several
more gasps, as he puts it, in the persons of his three sons,
who range from a twenty-two-year-old soldier in the 44th
Infantry Division to Stephen Hopkins Bellah, aged one and
a half. His people have been lawyers and judges and part-
time soldiers here for two-and-a-half centuries. A name-
sake, Captain James Bellah, fought as an infantry officer at
Princeton, Brandywine, and Cooch's Bridge. John Bellah,
for whom Mr. Bellah's middle son was named, was a soldier
in the second war with Britain and explored well beyond
the western waters of the Ohio country before 1809. A
great-uncle was a Confederate naval officer, His own
grandfather was Captain Charles Jefferson Johnson, 15th
United States Infantry, who was wounded seven times
from Harrison's Landing on and who arrived at Appo-
mattox in an ambulance, still in command of his company.
His father raised a company of volunteers in the Spanish-
American War.

The history of the United States was thus, in a way, a
personal family record during Mr. Bellah's boyhood of
which record he says one thing pertinent: "Whether they
carne yesterday or three centuries ago, all Americans have
one thing in common. They had and have the primeval
courage to turn their backs forever on tradition and the
scenes and habits of their childhood to seek the elusive

promise that lies in new lands. There was no going back
nor is there today and therein lies final dedication!"

Mr. Bellah was educated at Columbia College in New
York City. His M. A. is in history (Georgetown Univer-
sity). He was privileged to sit as an undergraduate under
the late John Erskine and had his first book published by
Knopf, shortly after he took his A. B. His early story
"Fear" in The Saturday Evening Post is still considered to
be the finest story of flying ever written. His stories have
gone into thirty-odd anthologies and been translated into
fifteen languages. Books of his, by official request, are on
the shelves of the Library of the Imperial War Museum in
London and of the Bibliotheque de la Musee de la Guerre
in Paris. The worksheets and original manuscripts of The
Valiant Virginians were requested by Columbia University
to become part of the permanent exhibit. The United
States Military Academy at West Point has requested the
original situation maps that Kenneth Fagg of The Saturday
Evening Post art staff made for these stories, from air mo-
saics he supervised. Mr. Bellah has been informed that the
Virginia Military Institute intends to confer an honorary
degree upon him for his contribution to living Virginia
history.

In setting the fall perspective for his work, Mr. Bellah
has lived and traveled and written the world over. China
in the days of Chang Tso Teng and later in the days of
General Stilwell. The Federated Malay States, Burma,
India, and Arabia, Europe from the time of many kings to
the time of many upstart threats and unconscionable politi-
cal turmoil Mexico, South and Central America (he was a
member of the crew of the first plane to fly mail from
Miami to Panama), New Guinea, Australia, and Japan.
Travels lightly told of in his tongue-in-cheek autobiog-
raphy, Irregular Gentleman.

He has been a soldier. In France at seventeen in the first
World War, he went shortly into the Royal Flying Corps
from the Transport Service and ended the war as a de
Haviland pilot with the 117th Squadron R.A.F. Briefly

thereafter he was a captain in General Haller's expedition
for the relief of Poland, In World War II he started as
a platoon commander, 16th Infantry, First Infantry Divi-
sion. He served thereafter, in one capacity or another, in.
every staff echelon from battalion to theatre. In Southeast
Asia he was on Viscount Mountbatten's staff. He served
with General Stilwell at Taihpa Ga and Mainkwang, along
the Tanai River. He was attached temporarily, through
the death in action of his British opposite number, to
General Orde Charles Wingate's Chindits. He flew in the
point glider with Phil Cochran's tiny airborne task force
that seized and held the target "Broadway" deep in central
Burma, from which airhead the 3rd Indian Division oper-
ated to cut the supply lines of the four Japanese divisions
that then threatened Imphal.

His novel of that war was Ward Twenty, a work seldom
equalled for its stark acceptance of the cost of war.

At present Mr. Bellah lives in Santa Monica where the
Pacific washes his doorstep. Eleven years ago he married
Helen Lasater Hopkins, daughter of the late Colonel N.
Hopkins, U.S.A., of the Marshal Mission. Mrs. Bellah does
most of his detailed research once he blocks it out in the
intervals between the continuing task of raising young
sons that the progression may go on.

Of The Valiant Virginians Mr. Bellah says: "Few men
know how a story is born, or a group of characters. I lay in
hospital two years ago thinking of the more pleasant places
I had been in my living and suddenly the Shenandoah
Valley was the most pleasant of them all. But it has always
lived fullest for me when the ghosts of Jackson's men
march through it. I can, in my profession, destroy time and
space at will. I destroyed the hospital and went back to
live in the Ws where the greatest peril was a minie ball
and the greatest joy the smile of a soft-eyed girl in Win-
chester. So was born The Valiant Virginians and if you do
not believe they live, I swear to you that they do still, for
at sundown of a Sunday not a month gone from the pleas-
ant back verandah of Charles and Mildred Picketf s at

Fairfax we saw three of Stuart's troopers lead their
mounts in for water. Cadett, Ancrum, and Manigault

"It was so unusual a sight in 1953 on a hot Virginia
evening, that the portraits, too, reached for a glass as the
great silver tray passed once more!"

FLETCHER PRATT 'was born in Buffalo, New York, in
1897 and has written a number of books on military sub-
jects, including Ordeal by Fire, a famous and highly es-
teemed one-volume history of the Civil War.

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