GENERAL DESHLER’S heart, and the ribs that so stoutly enclosed it, were torn from his body by a shell that came ripping out of the woods at noon. George Rowan was with him when it happened.
The Tenth Texas arrived on the ground they were to occupy at ten o’clock. It was a wooded ridge two hundred yards from the Yankee breastworks. Colonel Mills had dismounted and was running alongside of his men when they came up to the crest. Semple’s battery at the left of the ridge was still firing then. Mills swore savagely when he saw the gunners limber up and lash their horses to ride away.
“They want us to hold it without artillery, boys. Well, we God damn will!”
A shell bursting ten feet below threw up a black geyser that covered him from his men’s sight. He emerged, wiping his face free of cinders and ordered the men to fall back a little and fire lying down. Then he went down the hill, still swearing, to see if he could get Douglas’ battery up.
The Yankee fire got hotter instead of decreasing. The ridge was just within range of canister. But the grape was the worst. Under it men dodged backward and forward like jack-in-the boxes, or plastered themselves to the hill so tight that only the upward reaching of the arm told the living from the dead. Toward noon the Texans’ supply of ammunition ran low. George was lying behind a stump trying to pick off a Yankee gunner when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and Mills told him to go find General Deshler and tell him the ammunition was giving out.
George plunged down the hillside through a cloud of hot smoke just in time to see his little mare break her tether and go snorting off. He cut a horse loose from a captured gun, mounted, and using part of a rope trace as his riding whip rode off in search of Deshler.
The young brigadier was sitting his horse beside a clump of sumac bushes. Two of his staff officers were with him. Hearne was telling the General that the place was too exposed, when Rowan rode up. Deshler kept his eyes fixed on the ridge as Rowan was giving the message. It was perhaps the sight of a man who suddenly fell sidewise from behind a stump, spread-eagling as he fell that decided him not to ask a staff officer to risk his life up there. He had half turned to Hearne when he shook his head and murmuring something—George thought it was “Can’t send that boy”—rode off at a gallop.
He went so fast that George on his winded horse had trouble in keeping up with him. It was hotter now than it had been a few minutes ago. And Mills did not seem to be in the place where he had left him. Or was it that the place itself had changed, with the black geysers springing up everywhere, keeping the very ground under your feet in motion? The fire and brimstone Aunt Charlotte’s preacher talked so much about, he thought, and he dodged his horse desperately through the smoke, trying not to lose sight of Deshler.
Deshler’s big back was just in front of him when the shell struck the oak a few feet away. George’s horse danced and George swayed involuntarily far to the right. When he came up Deshler was out of the saddle and flat on the ground. George looked down, saw the red sponge that had been Deshler’s chest. He got off his horse, put his hands to his face and cried out. It seemed a long time before men came running with stretchers.
Mills was standing there as they carried Deshler’s body off. He would not look. His face was black as a fiend’s with powder and he kept shouting to men who were so far up the hill that they could not hear him. “Ammunition out? Get up and bay’net ’em then!”
Rowan tethered his horse to a sapling and followed Mills back into the fight. The men were down to their last round now. George ran about over the field gathering up cartridge boxes from the dead and wounded. He had just taken a pistol from a dead Yankee when he heard his own name called. He looked up and saw Ned Allard in a hand-to-hand struggle with a Yankee. George ran a few steps forward then stopped. He passed a hand before his forehead to clear his sight. Ned’s arm was locked around the Yankee’s body but above that arm George could see blue cloth. He levelled the pistol barrel, took careful aim. The hammer clicked. George threw the pistol away and ran on. He was within a few feet of the combatants when a bullet from a sharpshooter’s rifle hit him. He fell, then after a second got up and staggered forward. The Yankee soldier had hit Ned over the head with the butt of his musket and was dragging him off the field. Ed Johnson coming up saw only George staggering and ran forward to help him. George, who was suffering no pain, saw no sense to that and resisted, but he was suddenly unable to see and collapsed against his helper’s shoulder. When he came to himself he was being carried on a stretcher through a grove of scrub oaks. They passed Mills, who was still roaring.
One of the bearers stumbled over a rock. The stretcher tilted forward. Mills’ red face, with the mouth stretched to an O under the straggling moustache, was for a moment within George’s field of vision. It seemed to him somehow not so red but he thought that was the smoke. He had forgotten about Ned. He did not know that he was dying. He was thinking of the captaincy that would be his tomorrow when he looked at his colonel and smiled before he was borne from the field.