The Bishop of Cottontown Part 23

The old man wheeled and was gone. In a moment, it seemed, the black smoke of battle engulfed him. Cleburne's command was just in front of the old gin house, forming for another charge. The dead lay in heaps in front. They almost filled the ditch around the breastworks. But the command, terribly cut to pieces, was forming as coolly as if on dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag, a field of deep blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. It was Cleburne's battle flag and well the enemy knew it. They had seen and felt it at s.h.i.+loh, Murfreesboro, Ringgold Gap, Atlanta. "I tip my hat to that flag,"

said General Sherman years after the war. "Whenever my men saw it they knew it meant fight."

As the old man rode up, the division charged. Carried away in the excitement he charged with them, guiding his horse by the flashes of the guns. As they rushed on the breastworks a gray figure on a chestnut horse rode diagonally across the front of the moving column at the enemy's gun. The horse went down within fifty yards of the breastwork. The rider arose, waved his sword and led his men on foot to the very ramparts. Then he staggered and fell, pierced with a dozen minie b.a.l.l.s. It was Cleburne, the peerless field-marshal of confederate brigade commanders; the genius to infantry as Forrest was to cavalry. His corps was swept back by the terrible fire, nearly half of them dead or wounded.

Ten minutes afterwards General Travis stood before General Hood.

"General Cleburne is dead, General"--was all he said. Hood did not turn his head.

"My compliments to General Adams," he said, "and tell him I ask that battery at his hands."

Again the old man wheeled and was gone. Again he rode into the black night and the blacker smoke of battle.

General Adams's brigade was in Walthall's division. As the aged courier rode up, Adams was just charging. Again the old man was swept away with the charge. They struck the breastworks where Stile's and Cas.e.m.e.nt's brigades lay on the extreme left of the federal army.

"Their officers showed heroic examples and self-sacrifice," wrote General c.o.x in his official report, "riding up to our lines in advance of their men, cheering them on. One officer, Adams, was shot down upon the parapet itself, his horse falling across the breastworks." Cas.e.m.e.nt himself, touched by the splendor of his ride, had cotton brought from the old gin house and placed under the dying soldier's head. "You are too brave a man to die," said Cas.e.m.e.nt tenderly; "I wish that I could save you."

"'Tis the fate of a soldier to die for his country," smiled the dying soldier. Then he pa.s.sed away.

It was a half hour before the old man reached Hood's headquarters again, his black horse wet with sweat.

"General Adams lies in front of the breastworks--dead! His horse half over it--dead"--was all he said.

Hood turned pale. His eyes flashed with indignant grief.

"Then tell General Gist," he exclaimed. The old man vanished again and rode once more into the smoke and the night. Gist's brigade led the front line of Brown's division, Cheatham's corps. It was on the left, fronting Strickland's and Moore's, on the breastworks. The Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry was in front of the charging lines. "In pa.s.sing from the left to the right of the regiment,"

writes Colonel Ellison Capers commanding the South Carolina regiment above named, "the General (Gist) waved his hat to us, expressed his pride and confidence in the Twenty-fourth and rode away in the smoke of battle never more to be seen by the men he had commanded on so many fields. His horse was shot, and, dismounting, he was leading the right of the brigade when he fell, pierced through the heart. On pressed the charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis where many were captured and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own men. This abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire brigade was arrested by it. But Gist's and Gordon's brigade charged on and reached the ditch, mounted the works and met the enemy in close combat. The colors of the Twenty-fourth were planted and defended on the parapet, and the enemy retired in our front some distance, but soon rallied and came back in turn to charge us. He never succeeded in retaking the line we held. Torn and exhausted, deprived of every general officer and nearly every field officer, the division had only strength enough left to hold its position."

The charging became intermittent. Then out of the night, as Hood sat listening, again came the old man, his face as white as his long hair, his horse once black, now white with foam.

"General Gist too, is dead," he said sadly.

"Tell Granbury, Carter, Strahl--General! Throw them in there and capture that battery and break that line."

The old man vanished once more and rode into the shock and shout of battle.

General Strahl was leading his brigade again against the breastworks.

"Strahl's and Carter's brigade came gallantly to the a.s.sistance of Gist's and Gordon's" runs the confederate report sent to Richmond, "but the enemy's fire from the houses in the rear of the line and from guns posted on the far side of the river so as to enfilade the field, tore their line to pieces before it reached the locust abatis."

General Carter fell mortally wounded before reaching the breastworks, but General Strahl reached the ditch, filled with dead and dying men, though his entire staff had been killed. Here he stood with only two men around him, Cunningham and Brown. "Keep firing" said Strahl as he stood on the bodies of the dead and pa.s.sed up guns to the two privates. The next instant Brown fell heavily; he, too, was dead.

"What shall I do, General?" asked Cunningham.

"Keep firing," said Strahl.

Again Cunningham fired. "Pa.s.s me another gun, General," said Cunningham. There was no answer--the general was dead.

Not a hundred yards away lay General Granbury, dead. He died leading the brave Texans to the works.

To the commanding General it seemed an age before the old man returned. Then he saw him in the darkness afar off, before he reached the headquarters. The General thought of death on his pale horse and s.h.i.+vered.

"Granbury, Carter, Strahl--all dead, General," he said. "Colonels command divisions, Captains are commanding brigades."

"How does Cheatham estimate his loss?" asked the General.

"At half his command killed and wounded," said the old soldier sadly.

"My G.o.d!--my G.o.d!--this awful, awful day!" cried Hood.

There was a moment's silence and then: "General?" It came from General Travis.

The General looked up.

"May I lead the Tennessee troops in--I have led them often before."

Hood thought a moment, then nodded and the horse and the rider were gone. It was late--nearly midnight. The firing on both sides had nearly ceased,--only a desultory rattling--the boom of a gun now and then. But O, the agony, the death, the wild confusion! This was something like the babel that greeted the old soldier's ears as he rode forward:

"The Fourth Mississippi--where is the Fourth Mississippi?" "Here is the Fortieth Alabama's standard--rally men to your standard!" "Where is General Cleburne, men? Who has seen General Cleburne?" "Up, boys, and let us at 'em agin! d.a.m.n 'em, they've wounded me an' I want to kill some more!"

"Water!--water--for G.o.d's sake give us water!" This came from a pile of wounded men just under the guns on the Columbia pike. It came from a sixteen year old boy in blue. Four dead comrades lay across him.

"And this is the curse of it," said General Travis, as he rode among the men.

But suddenly amid the smoke and confusion, the soldiers saw what many thought was an apparition--an old, old warrior, on a horse with black mane and tail and fiery eyes, but elsewhere covered with white sweat and pale as the horse of death. The rider's face too, was deadly white, but his keen eyes blazed with the fire of many generations of battle-loving ancestors.

The soldiers flocked round him, half doubting, half believing. The terrible ordeal of that b.l.o.o.d.y night's work; the poignant grief from beholding the death and wounds of friends and brothers; the weird, uncanny groans of the dying upon the sulphurous-smelling night air; the doubt, uncertainty, and yet, through it all, the bitter realization that all was in vain, had shocked, benumbed, unsettled the nerves of the stoutest; and many of them scarcely knew whether they were really alive, confronting in the weird hours of the night ditches of blood and breastworks of death, or were really dead--dead from concussion, from shot or sh.e.l.l, and were now wandering on a spirit battle-field till some soul-leader should lead them away.

And so, half dazed and half dreaming, and yet half alive to its realization, they flocked around the old warrior, and they would not have been at all surprised had he told them he came from another world.

Some thought of Mars. Some thought of death and his white horse. Some felt of the animal's mane and touched his streaming flanks and cordy legs to see if it were really a horse and not an apparition, while "What is it?" and "Who is he?" was whispered down the lines.

Then the old rider spoke for the first time, and said simply:

"Men, I have come to lead you in."

A mighty shout came up. "It's General Lee!--he has come to lead us in," they shouted.

"No, no, men,"--said the old warrior quickly. "I am not General Lee.

But I have led Southern troops before. I was at New Orleans. I was--"

"It's Ole Hick'ry--by the eternal!--Ole Hick'ry--and he's come back to life to lead us!" shouted a big fellow as he threw his hat in the air.

"Ole Hickory! Ole Hickory!" echoed and re-echoed down the lines, till it reached the ears of the dying soldiers in the ditch itself, and many a poor, brave fellow, as his heart strings snapped and the broken chord gurgled out into the dying moan, saw amid the blaze and light of the new life, the apparition turn into a reality and a smile of exquisite satisfaction was forever frozen on his face in the mould of death, as he whispered with his last breath:

"It's Old Hickory--my General--I have fought a good fight--I come!"

Then the old warrior smiled--a smile of simple beauty and grandeur, of keen satisfaction that such an honor should have been paid him, and he tried to speak to correct them. But they shouted the more, and drowned out his voice and would not have it otherwise. Despairing, he rode to the front and drew his long, heavy, old, revolutionary sword.

It flashed in the air. It came to "attention"--and then a dead silence followed.

"Men," he said, "this is the sword of John Sevier, the rebel that led us up the sides of King's Mountain when every tyrant gun that belched in our face called us--rebels!"