Gallant Boys of Gettysburg (3 page)

When she disappeared, Abigail said, “Come and sit down. You must be tired from that long trip.”

“Actually, I’m more tired of sitting than anything else,” Sarah answered ruefully. But she allowed herself to be led over to a horsehide sofa beneath the window that looked out on the street and sat down beside Abigail.

Now she had a chance to look at her friend closely and saw that the young woman’s face was pale and lined with strain. However, she thought,
I’ll feed you up and get you to feeling better now that I’m here
. Abigail was a very small girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She had always been pretty but rather timid, and she had surprised everyone by leaving her hometown to marry a Northerner.

“Now,” Sarah said, “tell me everything.”

Abigail’s narration was woven with the events that had happened since she left Kentucky. She seemed to be anxious to talk, as if she had had no one to talk with, and she spoke a great deal of Albert, her husband, who was in the Union army serving under General Grant.

Finally Abigail drew a deep breath and laughed shortly with some embarrassment. “I’m going to talk your ear off,” she said. “Why don’t we fix some hot chocolate? You always loved that, didn’t you, Sarah?”

“I still do. But you sit and watch me fix it. I’ve come to take care of you, and I might as well learn where everything is.”

The girls crossed to the part of the large room that served as a kitchen. Actually the apartment consisted of one large room—a combination kitchen, dining room, and living area—plus two smaller rooms, which served as bedrooms.

As Sarah prepared the hot chocolate, heating water on a small woodstove, she thought,
It’s a good thing I came. Abigail always was a little afraid of things—and she doesn’t look as well as I’d like
. However, when she poured the hot chocolate into cups, she let none of this show in her face. “Now,” she said, “let me tell you what’s been happening back in Pineville.”

As the days passed, Sarah was even more satisfied that she had done the right thing in coming to help her friend. Abigail’s husband had only an uncle and aunt, who lived seven miles out in the country, and his widowed mother, who kept an apartment downtown. She was not in good health and was able to do very little for Abigail. Abigail, of course, was almost frantic with relief at having someone to be with her. She missed her own mother and family, and she threw herself into Sarah’s care.

Sarah soon discovered that Jenny Wade was closer to Abigail than anyone else. Jenny was in the apartment almost every day, bringing food, helping,
making clothes for the baby, and, of course, talking constantly about Johnston Skelly.

She brought all his letters. The young man was a prolific writer. He wrote about his activities as a soldier, and Jenny would carefully skip over some parts, her face blushing.

“Those are the parts I really want to hear,” Sarah teased. Jenny giggled. “You’ll have to get you a sweetheart and get your own love letters.” Later she relented and read aloud some of the more intimate parts of his letters. They were rather sweet, and the young man was very lonely and longed to be back with his Jenny.

Every day Sarah walked the streets of Gettysburg. The talk, of course, was all of the war. Everyone agreed that the Confederate army was not going to give up without a terrible struggle.

“I tell you, they’re headed this way,” Mr. T. J. Thomas, the butcher, declared firmly. A group of people had gathered in his shop, and Thomas was chopping meat with hard strokes, punctuating his sentences. “We’re not going to get by as easy as we have. I know Robert E. Lee. He’s a fighter if ever there was one. First thing you know, the Army of Virginia’s gonna be headed this way.”

“What would you do if they did, T.J.?” an older man named Burns asked. He had a look of hard wear about him. His lips were tightly clenched.

T.J. Thomas said, “Why, I’d get me a musket and fight ’em, that’s what I’d do!”

“I doubt if you even got a musket,” Burns said and smiled slightly, “but that’s exactly what I’d do!”

“Do you really think they’ll be coming this way, Mr. Thomas?” Sarah asked nervously.

“Ain’t no doubt in my mind. They’re runnin’ out of food down there in the South—so everybody says—and Robert E. Lee is gonna bring that Army of Northern Virginia north to feed his men. And then—look out!”

Sarah said nothing. She bought her pork chops and went home.

Later on, Jenny came over for supper, and the three girls talked—mostly about Johnston Skelly and about Albert Munson. Sarah knew Abigail and Jenny were fearful for their men, though they tried not to show it.

Finally Abigail said, “What about Tom, Sarah? You still in love with him?”

Jenny Wade perked up at once, her blue eyes sparkling. “Oh? So you
do
have a sweetheart, Sarah! I thought you might. No girl as pretty as you could get by without being courted.”

“Oh, well—” Sarah shrugged “—we were courting, but he left Kentucky and joined the Confederate army. He and his whole family moved to Virginia.”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” Jenny exclaimed, her tone sympathetic. “That must be very hard on you.”

“Yes,” Abigail put in, “especially since your own brother’s in the Union army. Wouldn’t it be awful if they met each other on the field of battle?”

Distress came over Sarah, for she had thought exactly of this possibility. That had been the reason she could not agree to marry Tom Majors. “I try not to think about it,” she said finally.

Abigail and Jenny exchanged glances, and then Abigail said quickly, “Well, when the war is over, I expect you and Tom can get together.”

“What do you think will happen if the Rebels come this way?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, they’ll never get this far north,” Abigail said firmly. “There’s not enough of them, and General Grant would never let that happen.”

Then she turned the talk to babies, and Sarah felt relief to talk of something other than the war.

J
eff Majors stared at the food on his tin plate and shook his head mournfully. “I sure hope they don’t have goober peas in heaven,” he muttered. “I think I’ve eaten enough of ’em down here on earth.”

“Why, Jeff, you ought to be glad to get good cookin’ like that.” The speaker was an undersized boy of fourteen with tow-colored hair and blue eyes. Charlie Bowers had been with Jeff since the two had enlisted as drummer boys, and now he winked around at the rest of the squad, who were consuming their rations.

“I don’t think Jeff appreciates our cook, Curley. Why don’t you explain to him how lucky he is to have you?”

Curley Henson was a huge red-haired man. It was his turn to serve as cook for the squad, and he grunted, “If he don’t like the way I cook goober peas, he can cook ’em himself.” He looked over at Jeff. “If you’d get out and find me something to cook—like maybe a good suckling pig—I’d show you something!”

Jeff Majors knew he was on dangerous ground. In the Confederate Army the rations were doled out, and every squad did its own cooking, the men usually taking turns at the task. Jed Hawkins was the best cook, but he had been wounded and was recuperating in the hospital.

“I wasn’t complaining about the cooking, Curley,” Jeff said. “I don’t think there
is
any way to cook goober peas that’d make me like ’em anymore.”

“Well, I expect we’ll be on the march soon. We’ll get better grub then.” Sergeant Henry Mapes was a rangy man with black eyes and dark hair. He had been a sergeant in Jeff’s company ever since Jeff had enlisted. Now he chewed thoughtfully on a piece of hardtack. “That’d be one good thing about headin’ out. Those Yankees got good farms up there.”

Jeff shook his head. “I doubt if General Lee’d let us help ourselves. You know how he is about things like that.” Jeff was sixteen but could have passed for eighteen. He had the blackest hair possible. He was tall for his age and had grown so rapidly during the past months that the shirt he wore was too small for him. He looked over toward where the officers were having a meeting and said, “I’d like to hear what they’re saying.”

“Well, you can ask your pa.” Sergeant Mapes grinned. “That’s one good thing about having an officer for your pa. He’ll always give you the information about what the army’s gonna do.”

“Well, shoot,
I
know what we’re gonna do.” Pete Simmons, a tall, very thin young man with rusty hair and blue eyes, finished his peas and hardtack, then took a swallow of water from his canteen. “We’re gonna go whip the Yankees. That’s what I come to do.” Simmons was a new recruit. He had not been through the earlier battles and was eager to fight. The other soldiers, who had been through hard fighting since Bull Run, were sometimes amused but sometimes irritated by Pete Simmons.

“Wait’ll you hear a few minié balls whiz around your ears,” Curley Henson said in disgust. “Then we’ll see how anxious you are.”

Pete shook his head stubbornly. “Everybody knows one Rebel can whip five of them blue-belly Yankees.”

This was a popular saying at the beginning of the war, but the members of the Stonewall Brigade had discovered it was not very close to the truth.

Jeff spoke up, saying, “You’ll change your mind about that. Some of those fellows are the fightingest folks I ever saw.”

“Well, I ain’t no drummer boy—I’m a soldier,” Pete said. It was true that he was the best shot in the entire company, and he seemed to be totally fearless, but training was one thing, and an actual battle was something else. Pete was a wild young man who drank a great deal whenever he could get whiskey and boasted about his conquests among young women. He never shirked his duty, however, and for that reason was a welcome addition to the squad.

We’ve lost so many men
, Jeff was thinking, and a series of faces rose in his memory as he recalled those who had been in the company at the beginning of the war. Face after face came to him, all of them youthful, some of them now buried on the fields of Antietam and Fredericksburg and Bull Run. Others had been maimed beyond further fighting, and as Jeff looked around he saw that the ranks indeed were thin.

“Well, you try to find out from Captain Majors which way we’re gonna go,” Sergeant Mapes said.

Even as he spoke, Jeff saw his brother, Tom, approaching. Tom was a sergeant now and had the
same tall, dark good looks as their father. Jeff called out, “Well, what’s the word, brother?”

Tom Majors sat down and took a pan of peas and some hardtack and began to eat hungrily. “Well, General Lee didn’t tell me all of his plans—” he grinned, his white teeth flashing “—but I expect everybody knows we’re not gonna sit around here much longer.”

Soon a card game began. Jeff had discovered that soldiering was rather odd. Either it was as boring as anything he’d ever done—for weeks doing absolutely nothing except light drill—or for brief moments it was filled with absolute terror as the shells and bullets passed through the ranks and men died.

Jeff pulled Tom to one side and reached into his pocket. “A letter came for you from Pineville.”

Tom’s dark eyes brightened. He took the letter and started off.

“Aren’t you going to read it to me?” Jeff protested. Then he grinned as Tom merely shook his head and walked away. “Must be awful to be in love like that,” he muttered to himself. He knew that a letter from Sarah Carter was the biggest event in his brother’s life. The two had been practically engaged before the war, and even now he knew Tom wanted to marry Sarah more than he wanted anything else in the world.

Thinking of Sarah brought memories of the times before the war when Leah, Sarah’s younger sister, had been the biggest thing in his own life. Jeff leaned back and half closed his eyes, listening to the talk flow over him.

He was so accustomed to camp sounds that he barely heard a bugle blowing and the shouts of
command or saw the cavalry that rode by at almost full speed, raising dust. He was thinking instead of Leah and how they had searched for birds’ eggs and fished in the creeks of Kentucky and hunted possum and coon at night.

Leah’s face came before him. She was fifteen now, he knew, but somehow he still thought of her as younger than that. He remembered with a guilty feeling that he owed her a letter, and he stirred himself finally to find paper and a pencil and soon was busily filling the sheet with a record of his activities.

Capt. Nelson Majors was perhaps the finest-looking officer in the Stonewall Brigade. He was six feet tall and weighed 175 pounds. His skin was dark. He had black hair and black eyes. Recently he had cultivated a mustache, which made him look very dashing. He wore his gray uniform with grace, for he had always been a man who could make clothes look good no matter how simple they were.

Coming out of the colonel’s tent, Majors wandered through the camp, his sharp black eyes taking in everything. He had just been told that his promotion had come through. But promotion meant little to him. His only concern was his company. He would do no more with the new rank of major than he had done with the rank of captain.

He found his way to where Jeff and Tom were sitting out in front of their tents and smiled as they rose. He was intensely proud of these young men and noted that Jeff was almost as tall as Tom now, although not as heavy. Both looked a great deal like him, and he regretted wishing that one of them looked like their mother. But he was encouraged to
think that his daughter, Esther, still only a baby, looked very much like his late wife.

He still missed his wife terribly and longed to see his child. She was, however, in Kentucky being cared for by the Carter family until after the war. He thought warmly of Dan and Mary Carter and once again thought,
There are no finer people in the world than those two!

Drawing up in front of his sons, he said, “You’re invited to have supper with one of your officers tonight.” He grinned then, saying, “I’ve got a surprise for you. I’ve been promoted.”

Tom grinned happily back. “I wondered how long it would be before they recognized how badly they needed you, Pa—I mean Major.”

“Now you’ll be Major Majors, won’t you? That’s an odd thing,” Jeff put in.