The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 (25 page)

The far Yankee cannon opened fire. The shells flashed overhead and thumped behind as Swynyard's Brigade went to ground on the captured ridge. Starbuck reloaded the rifle then turned to see where his men were. He could see the color sticking up from a rifle pit, he could see a scatter of wounded men crawling slowly on the slope beyond, and he could see the Legion still climbing the hill. He turned to look north and was amazed to see the land drop away to where, between the shoulders of two humped hills, he could glimpse a silver river sliding eastward. Beyond the river, in Maryland, there was smoke on the hills where other Confederate troops were tightening Jackson's grim ring about Harper's Ferry.

"Sweet Jesus, but I enjoyed that," Potter said.

Starbuck meant to tell him that he should have taken his skirmishers up against the gunners, but instead he vomited. He emptied his belly into the floor of the rifle pit. "Jesus," he said when he had finished heaving. "Jesus."

"Here," Potter handed him a canteen, "it's only water." Starbuck rinsed out his mouth, spat, then drank. "I'm sorry," he said to Potter.

"Something you ate," Potter suggested tactfully. "Fear," Starbuck said harshly.

A shell banged into the turf a few yards ahead of their pit. It did not explode, but instead tumbled end over end to embed itself in the spoil thrown up by the Yankee diggers. "I think we might seek other quarters," Potter said, eyeing the shell. The air above the metal shimmered from the heat of the missile's passage.

"Go on," Starbuck said. "I'll join you." Once alone he squatted in the pit, pants about his ankles, and voided his body. He was sweating and shaking. The ground thumped softly from the fall of the sheik. The sky above the pit was laced with smoke, but suddenly the fear drained away and Starbuck stood and clumsily pulled up his pants, belted them, then buttoned his fraying jacket and rebuckled his revolver belt and straightened his bedroll. He climbed out of the pit and, with shouldered rifle, walked among the other pits to congratulate his men. He told them they had done well, told them he was proud of them, and then he walked back down the slope to watch his stragglers climb sheepishly toward the crest. Captain Dennison was pretending to be busy as he chivvied the laggards, but he took care to avoid Starbuck, though Captain Tumlin walked eagerly across the slope with his hand outstretched.

"Hell, Starbuck, if you ain't the bravest man I ever saw then my name's not Tumlin," Blythe said.

Starbuck ignored both the outstretched hand and the compliment. "What happened to your companies?" he asked coldly.

Tumlin seemed unconcerned by Starbuck's brusqueness. "I managed to keep most of Cartwright's boys moving, but A Company?" He spat. "They're mules, Starbuck, mules. I got up here once, went back for the bastards and still they weren't moving. Did my best. Hell, Starbuck, I know you're disappointed, but I did my God honest best."

"I'm sure." Starbuck was convinced of Tumlin's sincerity. "Sorry, Billy."

"You look kind of washed up, Starbuck."

"Something I ate, Billy, nothing worse." Starbuck found a broken cigar in his pouch and lit the largest remnant. "You want to make me a list of the casualties, Billy?" he asked, then walked back to the crest as the Yankee cannon fire increased in intensity, but the shells were no longer aimed at the captured ridge, but toward a second rebel attack that was coming from their left flank. Swynyard's men had cleared the ridge to prevent its defending Yankees from flanking that second attack, which was the real assault intended to take the high ground that formed the southern skyline of Harper's Ferry. The sound of the battle thumped and snapped, filling the air with gray-white smoke.

Starbuck pulled the bayonet off his rifle as he watched the Legion climb the last few yards. Maitland had deliberately held them back from the canister fire, and the men knew it, and while they were doubtless grateful to have been spared the last stuttering fire of the Yankees' melting resistance, they also looked ashamed. The despised Yellowlegs had outperformed them, and Starbuck's men called jeering greetings to the arriving Legion. Starbuck did not try to stop them, though he knew that Dennison's company did not deserve the reward of a little pride. "Captain Dennison!" Starbuck shouted.

Dennison slouched along the crest where his men were spreading into empty rifle pits. Dennison expected a reprimand, but instead Starbuck pointed across the crest to the rifle pit he had vacated. "Your men can form the picket line," he said. "Skirmish order a hundred paces down the hill. You can stay up here," he pointed toward the rifle pit that he and Potter had vacated. "Make that rifle pit your headquarters."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't worry about the shell. It's dead. Go on, hurry. Jump in before some bastard sharpshooter starts practicing on you."

"Yes, sir," Dennison said, then shouted at his men to follow him to the forward slope of the hill. Starbuck watched as Dennison jumped into the pit, then he turned away.

"What are you laughing at, Nate?" Colonel Swynyard, his horse abandoned for the battle's duration, came strid' ing along the hill.

"Just a petty revenge, sir." He was ashamed of it now, but he could not undo the juvenile prank. "Nothing to worry you," he added.

"Your lads did well," Swynyard said, "real well, and I guess they'll prove just as sound when we have to fight a proper battle. Well done, Nate, well done." He paused. "You know why the Legion was slow?"

"No, sir."

"Then I'd better find out," he said grimly and paced toward Maitland.

And Starbuck tipped back his hat and wiped the sweat off his face. His battalion had fought its first proper fight. The Yellowlegs had not run away and life seemed suddenly sweet.

adam faulconer had
once opposed the war. Before it began, when debate had raged like prairie fire across America, he had been passionate in his quest for peace, but that passion had been overwhelmed by the bitterness of his country's division. Adam had then returned home to fight for his native state, but he could find no allegiance there. His love stayed with a
United
States
and so, risking breaking his family's heart, he had crossed the lines and replaced his gray coat with a blue.

He had not regained his passion in the North. Instead he had found a dull anger that served as a replacement for what he now perceived had been youthful fervor touched with youthful ignorance. One man, Lyman
Thorne
had told Adam, can make a difference, and Adam wanted to be that man. He wanted the war to end, but he wanted it to end with complete Northern victory. The man who had once opposed war now embraced it like a lover, for war would be God's punishment on the South. And the Southerners, Adam believed, had to be punished, not because they were at the heart of American slavery, but because they had broken the Union and so defiled what Adam knew to be God's country. The South was the enemy of God, and Adam His self-appointed champion.

But a champion who felt useless. True, Colonel
Thorne
had given him a task and it was a task that could make the difference Adam craved, but
Thorne
had been unable

to give Adam any guidance as to how that task might be completed. He was living by hope, not by plans, and felt nothing but frustration.

The frustration was made worse by General McClellan's sluggishness. News arrived on Thursday afternoon that the rebel army had finally abandoned Frederick City to march westward, but McClellan merely filed the report and instead spoke about the need to preserve Washington. The withdrawal from Frederick could be a ruse, he claimed, a device to suck the 100,000 men of the Federal army away from Washington while a second army of rebels poured across the lower Potomac to engulf the capital. Or else, McClellan feared, the rebel withdrawal might be merely a bait to draw the Northern army out of its camps and onto a battlefield of
Lee's choosing, and Lee, McClel
lan now believed, possessed 200,000 fighting men; 200,000 wolf-colored demons who attacked with fearful shrill cries and a desperate ferocity. McClellan would not risk that ferocity, nor uncover Washington. He would be steady.

And so, while the rebels vanished beyond the barrier of mountains that lay west of Frederick City, McClellan's army inched its way forward. There was no pursuit of the rebels and even the news that the fifteen thousand men at Harper's Ferry were under siege did not provoke the Young Napoleon into haste. Harper's Ferry must look after itself while McClellan, fearing every rumor, tried to protect his army against all eventualities. The army, he decreed, would advance on a broad front, but there was to be no unseemly haste. Caution ruled.

Adam had no say in the matter. Adam was an unwanted major attached to McClellan's headquarters and Adam's opinion was of no interest to anyone, least of all to Allan Pinkerton, who commanded McClellan's Secret Service Bureau. Adam attempted to influence Pinkerton, and through Pinkerton, Mc
Clellan, by arguing with Pinker
ton's chief of staff, who was a friend of Adam's and the older brother of Adam's erstwhile friend, Nate Starbuck. James Starbuck was utterly unlike Nate. He was a Boston lawyer, honest, careful, and conscientious, and his cautious nature only reinforced Pinkerton's inflated estimates of the rebels' numbers. Adam, arguing with James at supper on the Thursday evening when they had first heard about the rebels leaving Frederick City, protested that Lee could not possibly muster 200,000 men, not even 100,000. "Maybe sixty or seventy thousand," Adam said, "but probably no more than fifty."

James laughed at the figure. "We are meticulous, Adam, meticulous. Give us credit for that. We have hundreds of reports! I know, I collate them. I compare them."

"Reports from who?" Adam demanded.

"You know I can't say," James said reprovingly. He paused to extract a scrap of chicken bone from between his teeth then laid the bone chip carefully on the edge of his plate. "But the contrabands tell the same tale, the exact same tale. I interviewed two more today." The contrabands were escaped slaves who were brought to Pinker-ton's tents and quizzed about the rebel forces. They all told the same story; thousands upon thousands of rebels, endless marching columns and vast guns crushing the dusty roads beneath their iron-rimmed wheels. "Even if we allow for some small exaggeration," James said with a flourish of his fork, "we must still credit Lee with a hundred and seventy thousand. And that's far more men than we have!"

Adam sighed. He had ridden with the rebel army as late as the spring campaign and knew there could never be 170,000 men in gray coats. "How many were bivouacked at Frederick City?" he asked.

James looked owlishly solemn. "At least a hundred thousand. We have direct reports from the town."

Adam suspected the townspeople's reports were about as much use as the rumors printed in the newspapers. "What does our cavalry say?" he asked.

James frowned and probed his cheek with a forefinger before extracting another sliver of bone. "Very skeletal, this chicken," he said disapprovingly.

"Maybe it's rabbit," Adam said. "So what did the cavalry say?"

James peered at his food in the candlelight. "Don't think it's rabbit. Rabbits don't possess wishbones, do they? I'm sure they don't. And I don't think our cavalry were ordered as far as Frederick City today. In fact, I'm sure they weren't. Maybe the problem is that our cooks can't joint chickens properly? I found one kitchen fellow attack' ing a carcass with a cleaver! Can you credit that? With a cleaver! No attempt to joint the bird, just hacking it apart. Never seen such behavior. Wasn't even plucked properly either. I told him, do as your mother does, I said, run the skin over a candle flame and that will get rid of the feather-gristle, but I don't think he listened."

"So why don't you and I go to Frederick City," Adam ignored the culinary problems, "tomorrow morning. At dawn."

James blinked at Adam. "For what purpose?"

"Because if a hundred thousand men were encamped at Frederick," Adam said, "they'll have left traces. Fire-marks. Say ten men to a campfire? So if we count the scorched patches in the fields we'll have a shrewd idea of Lee's numbers."

James laughed gently. "My dear Adam, do you have any idea how long it would take two men to count ten thousand burned patches of grass?" He shook his head. "I appreciate your interest, I surely do, but I don't think we need, if you'll forgive my bluntness, amateur help in the Secret Service. Mind you, if you can help us with some signaling problems, we would be grateful. You're something of an expert on telegraphy, aren't you? Our fellows seem unable to grasp the equipment. They probably send their messages with cleavers!" He snorted with amusement at the thought.

But Adam had no time for heavy-fisted telegraphers, but only to indulge his dull anger at the slowness of the North's army and the plodding obtuseness of its Secret Service. He decided he would ride to Frederick City himself in the dawn, not to count fire patches, but to talk to the people in the town who might give him some indication of Lee's numbers. Civilians, Adam knew, usually overestimated numbers of troops, but maybe there was someone in the town who could give him some facts that the US Cavalry had not found time to seek out themselves.

He saddled his horse before the dawn and was well through the picket line by the time the sun blazed up behind to cast the horse and rider's shadow long across the verge of the white dusty road. He breakfasted as he rode, eating bread and honey and drinking cold tea as his path wended north eastward in parallel with the unfinished railbed of the Metropolitan Rail Road. He felt redundant and useless. In truth he had small purpose for visiting Frederick, for he knew that whatever he discovered, if he found anything at all, would be discounted by Pinkerton's staff, who were busy constructing their own elaborate picture of the rebel army, but Adam was filling in time because any activity was better than another indolent day in McClellan's camp.