Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (32 page)

The last Rebels quit their attempts at organized volleys and made for the rear, even as slave-master officers tried to rally them. Soon enough, Upton’s ranks outpaced the smoke, emerging into a brilliant afternoon marred only by puffs from batteries resisting the Lord’s judgment.

“And there was given unto him a great sword,”
Upton repeated.

2:00 p.m.

Gordon’s Division

All chance of a victory was gone, bled out, and the best hope now was for a stalemate until dark, followed by another Yankee withdrawal. But Gordon had begun to doubt even that possibility. Sheridan would not quit; he felt it and feared it.

The shelling and rifle fire had grown so intense that he had dismounted, sending his horse back to lower ground. It was an action taken with great reluctance. The soldiers liked to see officers on horseback—especially him.

“Try again,” he told Atkinson, wishing all the while Clem Evans were back. “Ed, I know the men are tired. But we have to silence that battery. Force them back, at least.”

The Yankees opposite his division had finally brought their guns to bear effectively, disabling two of the precious cannon north of Red Bud Run and blunting every attempt at a fresh counterattack. His men had been driven back again and again to a rocky ledge, savages in gray confronting savages in blue and dying for a gain of a dozen yards, only to see it lost again.

The pounding of the artillery was terrific, the bass drums of battle beating a rhythm beneath the rifle volleys.

Atkinson’s posture was that of an old man, a portrait of weariness, as if he had aged decades in a day. Traces of blood streaked the powder smudges on his forehead and cheeks.

“Yes, sir,” he told Gordon. “Just need to fill their cartridge boxes.”

“No.
Now.
You have to go now. I don’t care if you have to use your bayonets.”

“Sir…”

“Damn it, Ed. I feel for those men just as much as you do. I led them for most of this war. I know their names, I know their
wives’
names, I just about know each man’s stink. But they have to do what they have to do.”

Atkinson was willing, but barely able. Gone pale, despite the ravages of the sun.

“Come on,” Gordon said. And he led the way himself, shouting at the Georgians, calling out the names of valiant men he knew, cajoling them to give their lives for the faintest of faint hopes.

He had discarded his sword and scabbard as too unwieldy, and he pointed the way with his pistol. His soldiers followed him again, some even cheering, despite their long-dry throats. They leapt from their cover of trees and lips of stone and broken walls, advancing raggedly but doggedly, their bravery scorned by Yankee volleys, a lottery of death.

“Don’t stop, boys, don’t stop!”
But Gordon let the men pass him now, aware that he had to act as a major general, not a captain. Risk, yes. But not folly. Early needed him whole. The entire army needed him. As it needed Ramseur and Cull Battle, and Breckinridge, who had got caught up in a bad fight to the north. Rodes was dead, and Zeb York, of Gordon’s Louisiana Brigade, had been carried off terribly wounded. And the toll down among the line officers was grim.

Returning to a scrap of trees, pursued by breathless aides, he turned only to see his men repelled again—not running, but retiring, their movements those of laborers exhausted by the hardest work of their lives, put to a task they just could not perform. As Gordon watched, a man threw wide his arms and fell.

For all that, the nearest Yankee battery appeared to be pulling back. Out of ammunition or out of nerve.

How many lives had that cost?

Don’t try to count them now, Gordon told himself.

He wanted a drink of cool water, but there was none. Perhaps there’d be well water back at the house he’d picked as the centerpiece of his next position, should the Yankees force him back again.

Hold until night, just hold until night. Don’t let them turn the flank.

A Yankee who had been too brave to survive, who had come too far, sat bedazzled against the trunk of a tree, cramming intestines back into his belly. He didn’t even move his lips, just clawed at his slopping innards. His hands worked like the paws of a frantic mouse.

That is war as it is, Gordon thought, not as men will remember it.

Had to give Early credit, that was a fact. After that pigheaded rush to Martinsburg and the break-a-man night march back, Early had shone on this battlefield, ornery but everywhere, full of bile, but equally full of fight. Gordon had to admit that for all the individual bravery he had witnessed, it was Early who had made the right decisions with promptitude, a man as gifted as he was unlikable.

The human species never failed to interest John Gordon.

“Here they come!” a soldier shouted.

And the Yankees took their turn at failure. Tiny gains were soon reduced to no gains. When this latest round of firing eased again on Gordon’s front, the armies glared at each other over their guns, each unable to advance and unwilling to retreat.

They had come close, so close, to embarrassing Sheridan. Only to be driven back a mile and more. Now they stood behind barricades of hate. Waiting.

He would not, dare not, let on, but Gordon’s spirit was not as firm as his posture. He sensed that if Sheridan managed to bring up more forces—if he had more troops available and used them with any art—Early could not hold on for very much longer. Valor might withstand numbers, but only to a point: After all, the Persians, not the Greeks, had won at Thermopylae.

Early understood. They all did. The jolly naïveté of this war’s early days had been put to death. And every man in command knew that a retreat, if forced upon them now, would break not only morale, but perhaps the army. With Winchester at their backs, a debacle loomed.

The only hope was to hold on until night.

“I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms…”
That was Shakespeare, Gordon knew, though he could not recall which play. What good had his love of the classics done, after all? War took men beyond words, exposed their uselessness. Strut an hour upon the stage, indeed.

What if they couldn’t hold, if they just could not? Fanny was in Winchester, and she wouldn’t be sensible. She’d wait for him, or news of him, before leaving. And by then it might be too late. She was such a hardheaded, irresistible woman.

A woman worth living for, that one.

In the lull that fell upon his weary soldiers, another encounter, off to the north, grew audible. Were Breckinridge and Wharton still up there, trying to stave off some unholy passel of Yankees? Gordon knew that Early had sent repeated orders to Breckinridge to come down to Winchester at once, but every battle had a mind of its own. And if Breckinridge did obey, who would stand in the way of a Yankee envelopment? Fitz Lee? Gordon had seen him in passing that morning. Lee had been fit for a Chimborazo ward, leading his tattered cavalry when he should have been in bed, taking quinine.

The cavalry weren’t much these days, but Early was too dismissive of Fitz Lee.

Jubal Early. A man who might win battles, but never hearts. And Bob Rodes dead, a thing still hard to believe. Zeb York carried off screaming.

Dear Christ, it was a bad day.

“They’re coming again,” a bloodied lieutenant warned.

2:00 p.m.

Eversole’s Knoll

“Plans change, Phil,” Crook said. “Point is to win.”

Sheridan nodded. “Grates on me, though. If you could’ve swung south, cut off their retreat…”

“Have to get them to retreat first. Old Bricktop’s right. I rode over there, had a look. If I extend his flank with one division and swing the other north of that creek bottom—”

“Red Bud Run,” Sheridan said.

“—then clear out that artillery and recross, we can turn their flank and set them running like rabbits. I believe it’ll do the trick, Phil, I really do.”

Staff men kept their distance, sensing that the generals wanted privacy. Between the hill on which they stood and Winchester, volleys prickled on, but with less fury.

“Not just you, though,” Sheridan said. “You flank them, George. And I’ll resume the attack across the front. I’ll be damned if a single man in this army won’t do his part.” His face was blotched and hard-set. “Whole day’s been a piecemeal affair, I’ve made damned-fool mistakes. But I’m done making them.” He snorted. “Would’ve liked to trap that bastard, though.”

“Still might. We’ll see.”

“Cavalry were supposed to do it. Come in on their flank, not play at pony rides.”

“Still might happen. Probably will,” Crook reassured him. “Torbert’s not one to take his ease on a battlefield. Nor are those boys of his. My bet’s that we’re going to give Early a whipping he won’t forget. His quiver’s about empty, way I figure.”

“Hell, George, hasn’t this been a wicked a day?”

“Isn’t over.”

“No.” Sheridan sighed. “I’ll miss Davey Russell, though. That sonofabitch.”

Crook nodded, but just said, “I’ll get my corps moving.”

Sheridan broke off his foray into sentiment. “How long until you get up?”

Crook drew out his pocket watch. “Three. I can go in by three. My corps’s well positioned for the movement.” He neglected to add that he’d brought it up without orders.

“Do it, then,” Sheridan said. “I’ll have the Nineteenth Corps go in beside you.” All of his decisiveness had returned. “Then the Sixth Corps, hit them with everything.”

“Cavalry’s going to show, you wait and see,” Crook said, still bucking up his old comrade. “We’ll make a pretty rout of this mess.”

“Torbert had damned well
better
show. After I sang the cavalry’s praises to Grant. Which division of yours makes the flanking move? North of the creek?”

“Duval’s. Thoburn’s division is leading my column, he’ll break off and extend the Ninthteenth Corps’ flank. Duval will keep on going across the creek, then wheel to the left.”

“Duval’s brigade commanders? Remind me.”

“Hayes and Johnson. Only two brigades.”

“That enough?”

“They’re good men. The best.”

“Hayes? The politician? The Ohio man?”

Crook smiled his old-Army smile, a phenomenon as thin as frontier rations. “He’ll do. Waxes philosophical, then fights like a Comanche. Honest, for what that’s worth nowadays.”

“Honest? Politician?”

“No man I’d trust more.”

Sheridan smiled, too. “Except for present company, you mean?”

Crook’s smile, a mere cut between his lips, hinted at hidden teeth. “Excepting present company, of course.”

Dropping his smile, Sheridan said, “Tear their guts out.”

3:00 p.m.

Rutherford farm, north of Winchester

Fitz Lee beheld the most awe-inspiring spectacle he had witnessed in the war. It was not a welcome sight.

Across the open fields to the north of the grove to which he’d been driven, at least five thousand blue-clad troopers advanced stirrup to stirrup on a front that filled the horizon. Tidy as if on parade, the mounted men came on at a steady walk, flags and banners aloft, with brass bands urging them southward. It was a display of insolence, of arrogance, of shameless vanity, that filled Lee with raw hatred. And with envy.

Rare was the Confederate officer now who possessed a horse as sound as a Yankee private’s.

One obstreperous band played “Rally ’Round the Flag,” and another answered back with “Yankee Doodle.” Above the thud of hooves on hardening soil, the tack and spurs, carbines and sabers, of all those thousands jangled.

“Dear, sweet Jesus,” Billy Payne said, sitting his horse beside Lee under the trees. He swept his hand back over slicked-down hair.

“Sonsofbitches,” Lee judged. His uncle would not have approved of his language, but his uncle wasn’t there.

After receiving a final, peremptory order from Early, Breckinridge had slipped off with his infantry and guns, leaving Lee with his scattered, exhausted, wildly outnumbered horsemen to hold off what had to be the greatest concentration of cavalry since Ney led the French horse at Waterloo. The whooped-up charges of the Crimea, for all the singsong poesy they’d inspired, surely had been nothing compared to this.

And Lee had about six hundred riders on hand, commanded by Colonel Billy Payne, pure Virginia, a Warrenton lawyer and Black Horse hellion, still a young man and already sire of more children than a quartermaster could number. The rest of Lee’s men had been spread wide to cover roads or regroup from encounters in which they’d been battered badly. He’d delayed Merritt and Averell—
two
of Torbert’s divisions—since morning, but only a fool could believe the end wasn’t near.

All around him, Virginians on hard-used horses cooed at the spectacle, some attempting jokes at which no one laughed. Payne looked as serious as a man about to be hanged and as murderous as a man who deserved the hanging.

Brave boys all, Lee knew, but the fear in the air was enough to choke a hog.

“You all right, sir?” Payne asked.

All right? And go to the devil. Lee felt sick as a failing consumptive and tired as a slut come Sunday morning. His left arm was bound high where a round had clipped him—the damned thing hurt—but the paw still served for the reins. He’d needed an aide to reload his revolver, though. No, he was not all right at all. Dizzy and puking sick. But that was not the sort of thing a man said to another man. Not at a time like this.

At the end of a man, when all else was used up—health and love and worth and even honor—duty remained.

“Wish they’d at least play a jig a man could cotton to,” one trooper said.

Lee turned toward the voice. “Don’t like the tunes they’re playing, I reckon we’ll have to register an objection.” He looked at the grime-faced, hard-faced men about him. Then he turned to Payne.

“Got to buy time, only one thing to do,” Lee said. “Order your men forward, Billy. Guide to the right of the Pike. You give the order.”

Payne rose in his stirrups and barked the plain command. No time now for inspiration or flourishes.