“Corporal Bland,” the sergeant called out. A tall, broad-shouldered man got to his feet and stepped away from the line of weary soldiers resting on the ditch bank. When he approached, the sergeant said, “Lieutenant wants to see you.” The sergeant turned on his heel and walked back toward the temporary command post near the crossroads. Tanner Bland followed without comment or question.
Lieutenant Richard Pearson looked up when the two men approached. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said, dismissing him. Turning to Tanner, he said, “Corporal Bland, I need to ask you to take on a mission of high importance.” He cocked his head apologetically. “You notice, I didn’t say I was ordering you. I said I’m asking you to volunteer.” There was no reply from the quiet man, something that the lieutenant had come to expect from the corporal. He felt a considerable measure of guilt in sending for Tanner again. He was requested for dangerous assignments more often than any other man in his company.
Tanner waited patiently for the lieutenant to continue. Pearson looked into the dark expressionless eyes that never gave any clue to the man’s thoughts. “Well, I’ll get on with it,” he said. He led Tanner over to a makeshift table on which a map had been spread. “Here’s where we are, at this crossroads.” Using his finger, he identified points on the map. “Here’s Waynesboro, and this is where the Union’s main body is camped on the other side. Now our scouts tell us a whole regiment of cavalry left the main body late this afternoon, heading east on the Charlottesville road. We suspect Sheridan is going to launch his offensive tomorrow morning, and General Early needs to know where that cavalry regiment is going. He’s ordering me to send a scout tonight to find out.”
He paused for Tanner’s reaction. As he suspected, there was hardly any. After a moment, when it was obvious the lieutenant was waiting for an answer, Tanner said, “Yes, sir. I’ll try to find ’em.”
“Good man,” Pearson said. “I knew I could count on you. How long will it take you to get ready to leave?”
“I reckon I’m ready now.”
“Good man,” Pearson repeated. “I can get you a horse if you want.”
Tanner looked at the map again to fix the Charlottesville road in his mind. “No, sir. I’ll just go on foot.”
He set out immediately, passing the picket line, and entered the forest beyond the dusty road. Making his way up through the hills with nothing but the moon to light his path, he cut directly across the ridges south of the town. Away from the controlled chaos of the army, he was at home in the forest, having spent a great deal of his young life in the hills of Alleghany County, hunting and trapping.
In less than two hours’ time, he had crossed the hills east of Waynesboro to arrive at a creek that ran along the Charlottesville Pike. After stopping momentarily to drink from the creek, he started out along the road, heading east. Even in the moonlight, the tracks of the cavalry horses were easily seen. He had not walked a mile when the tracks left the road, crossed the creek, and followed a valley back toward the south. It told him that a flanking maneuver was what the Union cavalry had in mind. That was as much information as the lieutenant expected, but Tanner decided to see how far they had gotten before making camp.
The Union troops were not difficult to follow. They left a wide trail through the plowed fields of the valley. Tanner could smell the freshly turned soil beneath his feet. No doubt the owner of the field had started his spring plowing recently. After crossing the field, he followed the tracks into a forest of hardwoods. Soon he saw the glow of campfires flickering through the dense growth of trees and vines, and he knew he needed to exercise a little more caution.
Moving with the quiet ease of a natural-born hunter, he made his way closer to the Union bivouac until he could see the soldiers sitting around their fires. After a moment, he thought, The lieutenant was right. There must be a whole regiment camped here. Our right flank is going to catch hell if we aren’t ready for them in the morning. I best get back and tell Lieutenant Pearson. He quickly turned to leave.
“Who goes there?” a voice challenged from out of the darkness.
Damn, Tanner thought. A Union picket. He had inadvertently gotten so close to the camp that he was inside the picket line. There wasn’t much time to think. If he made a run for it, the sentry would alert the whole regiment. If he shot him, the sound would have the same result.
“Who goes there?” the sentry repeated, this time with considerably more authority.
“For Pete’s sake,” Tanner replied, “can’t a man have a little privacy to take a dump?”
The sentry stepped out from behind a large poplar trunk, his rifle held in position to fire quickly. “You must need a helluva lot of privacy,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
“Bland. Tanner Bland,” Tanner answered honestly, hoping it was too dark for the guard to see his Confederate uniform.
The guard thought for a moment, but could not recognize the name. “Well, Bland, get on back to your unit. You ain’t got no business out this far.”
“I’m done, anyway,” Tanner replied as casually as he could. He took a couple of steps in the direction of the camp before turning away from it again, hoping the picket wasn’t paying close attention.
“Where the hell are you goin’?” the sentry asked impatiently. “Hey, hold it right there!” he exclaimed when a flicker of firelight through the trees cast a faint light on the gray uniform Tanner wore.
Tanner acted instantly. Holding his rifle by the barrel, he swung it as hard as he could, catching the sentry beside his ear with the butt. Staggering backward, too stunned to cry out, the sentry tripped over a bramble bush, crashing to the ground with Tanner right on top of him. A desperate struggle ensued as each man fought for his life. The guard tried to yell for help, but Tanner’s grip on his throat rendered him incapable of more than a gasp for air. He clawed at Tanner’s face in a frantic attempt to break the viselike grip, but Tanner would not yield, knowing that to do so would mean his death. It seemed an eternity before the sentry’s struggles ceased and he fell back unconscious.
Tanner wasted no time extracting himself from the brambles and diving into the darkness of the forest. There was no thought of killing the guard. He didn’t want to take the time. There was no point in it, anyway. Either way, the Union soldiers would find out that he had been there. His only thought now was to be sure he was long gone when they did. He hoped his information would be of value to Pearson—it looked to Tanner like all hell was going to break loose when morning came.
I’m in a helluva fix now, Tanner Bland thought as he slid along a muddy ditch bank on his belly. A few scant yards beyond the edge of the deep drainage ditch, he could hear the hollow drumming of hooves as a Union cavalry company passed by him, looking for stray survivors from the battle. In reality, it hadn’t been much of a battle. There was little left of General Jubal Early’s Valley Army. No more than fifteen hundred or so could be mustered to repel General Sheridan’s fourteen thousand cavalry troops that fell into line at Waynesboro. Hell, we held them for a little while, Tanner thought, until they rolled up our right flank and scattered us all to hell and gone. It was the regiment he’d scouted the night before that had hit the Confederate flank the hardest.
It had not been a pretty sight, watching the men he had fought with for the last seven months lay down their weapons in surrender. It was hard to cast blame, however, for to stand and fight was suicide. As he lay still for a few moments, listening, the sounds of a horse’s hooves came dangerously close to the edge of the ditch. The horse stopped right above him, and then there was silence. Had he been discovered, lying as still as a corpse? He held his breath and waited for the shot that would pronounce his decision not to surrender a mistake. The stillness of the moment rang in his ears like a whirlwind. And he thought of Ellie. Why, he wondered, in this moment of peril, would the image of the woman he loved suddenly appear in his mind? He could almost feel the gaze of the Union soldier upon his back. Whatever happened in the next few seconds might determine whether or not he would return to his home and to Eleanor Marshall.
Lying facedown in the muddy ditch, Tanner considered the odds of rolling over quickly enough to bring his rifle up and get off a shot before the Union soldier fired. He decided they were not in his favor. Maybe he just doesn’t see me, he thought. His damn horse knows I’m here. It’s been blowing and snorting ever since he stopped above me. After several more agonizing seconds, however, the rider moved on, either having not seen him or concluding that he was dead. Tanner exhaled slowly, realizing that his entire body had been so tense that it probably looked like it was in rigor mortis.
He continued his painfully slow crawl along the muddy ditch, dragging his rifle and haversack in the cold slime as he inched his way toward a bridge about thirty yards away. Several minutes passed without the sound of horses on the bank above his head, so he increased his pace a little. Once he reached the cover of the bridge, he decided it would be safe enough to raise his head above the edge of the ditch to see where he was going. The sight that met his eyes was disheartening, to say the least.
There on the main street of Waynesboro, milling aimlessly about like so many sheep in a pen, were the remnants of General Early’s Army of the Valley. With an army that numbered only fourteen thousand at its peak, they had tied up Union forces of forty or fifty thousand for seven months, delaying them from attacking Lee’s army at Petersburg and Richmond. Now, shattered and depleted, they stood in pitiful profile, the shadow of a once proud army.
He supposed that the Valley Army had done its job as well as could have been expected against such superior forces. And now that they were so badly outnumbered, maybe surrender was justifiable. But Tanner didn’t squander a moment contemplating the decision. He had no intention of sitting out the rest of the war in a federal prison. He was at home in the forest and hills and he would take his chances on avoiding the Union patrols.
Since no one took a shot at him when he raised his head above the ditch bank, he took a few moments more to assess his situation. Behind him, on the other side of the ditch, was a low building that appeared to be a warehouse of some sort. He considered scrambling out of the ditch and taking refuge in the building, but changed his mind when a company of Union cavalry suddenly appeared around the end of it. Searching for strays, he thought. Strays like me. He crouched back down in the ditch and waited until the soldiers completed their search of the abandoned building. They were soon in the saddle again and moving down toward the congregation of prisoners. He could see other units performing the same kind of search missions, too many to risk exposing himself. So he dropped back down to the bottom of the ditch and continued to crawl along through the mud.
After covering approximately seventy-five yards more, he reached a point where the ditch deepened, allowing him to risk running in a crouch. Taking one last look behind him to make sure he had not been spotted, he checked his weapon. Wiping mud from the breech and barrel of the Enfield rifle he carried, he silently congratulated himself for the forethought to give the barrel a coating of lard the night before to prevent rust.
He had by now progressed to a point adjacent to the edge of the woods where his company had made their last attempt to hold the Union forces amassed against them. Concerned till then with no thoughts beyond removing himself from harm’s way, he now realized that quite by accident he had chosen the best route of escape. He was retreating in the direction from which the enemy had advanced, and at the moment he liked the idea that he was going one way while the enemy was going the opposite.
When he was sure there was no one else about, he scrambled out of the ditch and ran for the cover of the trees, almost stumbling over the body of a Confederate soldier sitting with its back against a large gum tree.
“Damn!” he swore after catching himself on the tree trunk to avoid falling. “Sorry,” he then muttered contritely under his breath. Staring with dull sightless eyes was the corpse of a young boy, his chest torn apart by shrapnel, probably K-shot or some other deadly canister round. Tanner speculated that the unfortunate young man had sat patiently waiting for the life to bleed out of him. He hurriedly looked closely to see if the boy had been a member of his company. He decided not.
Pausing then to look around him, he took in the grim scene of a beaten army. Here and there lay other bodies, a testament to the fierce, though brief, battle that had taken place. In the heat of the fighting, when they were being pushed back into the town, he had been aware of comrades falling on both sides. Seeing the aftermath now, it struck him as a miracle that any had survived to surrender.
He’d had no time available to think as he crawled through the muddy ditch, but now he knelt on one knee deciding what to do. While he considered his circumstances, he continued to look around him at the carnage left by the battle—the lifeless lumps that were once his brothers in arms, the discarded pieces of equipment. He could smell the rancid odor of gunpowder that still hung over the forest. Glancing up at the trees, he saw the tattered lower leaves and branches shredded by minié balls, evidence of triggers pulled before rifles were aimed properly, the result of a panic to fire quickly and reload in the face of a charging enemy. He shook his head sadly when he thought about the wholesale slaughter about him.
Casting sorrowful thoughts aside, he turned his focus back to his primary concern at the moment. Taking a minute to get his bearings, he found the sun through the canopy of oak leaves above him, and turned to the west. Starting out at a lope, he made his way through the trees, avoiding the silent bodies. He gave no thought toward searching any of the fallen for usable items, though he would not hesitate to take from the dead, especially his comrades. He certainly would not begrudge their taking something of his if the situation were reversed. But now he knew that because of the debilitating lack of supplies, no one in his company had anything worth taking. During the weeks leading up to the battle, the men of his regiment had foraged farms and villages for food, but there was nothing left to forage. Even the population of rabbits and squirrels seemed to be depleted. The only thing he might gain from his dead comrades was possibly a few extra cartridges for the Enfield he carried.
Approaching the western edge of the forest, he slowed to a cautious walk before emerging into an open field, a dozen or more acres wide. It was across this field that the Union cavalry had charged and his unit had stood to repel them. Looking out over the open space, he could see the scattered bodies of Union soldiers, seeming small and pathetic in their eternal sleep. Here and there, the larger lumps that were the slain horses appeared like random boulders in the level field. He was still trying to decide whether to strike out straight across the field or to circle it, when he heard someone call out.
Reacting instantly, he dropped to one knee and swung his rifle around to aim at the point from which he thought the voice had come. “Corporal Bland.” The voice came again. Instinctively shifting his rifle to aim at a clump of briar bushes several feet to the right of the first target, he still could not locate the source. “Don’t shoot, Corporal. It’s me, Jeb Hawkins.”
“Jeb Hawkins,” Tanner echoed in surprise. “Where the hell are you?”
“I’m down here in this damn hole,” the man replied.
Still Tanner did not spot him right away, but in a few seconds’ time, he saw branches parting no more than ten feet before him to reveal the head and shoulders of Jeb Hawkins, a man from his company. Upon moving to help Jeb up, he discovered the bushes hid an old stump hole. Grasping Jeb’s wrists, Tanner hauled him up through the brambles. His tunic was spattered with blood. “Damn, Jeb,” Tanner exclaimed, “how bad are you hurt?”
Jeb replied with a grin. “I ain’t hurt bad a’tall. Just some little cuts and scratches.” He went on to explain that he received his injuries when he split the barrel of his rifle. “When them Yankees charged, we was firin’ so fast, and all the guns goin’ off right and left of me, I didn’t even know that I hadn’t pulled the trigger, and I rammed another load down the barrel, right on top of the first one. When I pulled the trigger that time, it knocked me plumb over backward, and I landed in that stump hole. Landed on my head, I reckon, and by the time I started to crawl outta there, our boys had started retreatin’. I was gonna scramble out and catch up with ’em, but Billy Thacker fell right in my arms, with a hole in his chest the size of my fist. We both wound up in the bottom of the hole.”
“You sure you aren’t hurt? There’s a helluva lot of blood all over you.”
“That’s mostly Billy’s,” Jeb replied. “They got him right through the heart, I guess. I thought he never was gonna stop bleedin’ before he finally just quit breathin’. He was still layin’ on top of me. I started to crawl out again, but the Yankees were already movin’ up through the bushes.” He displayed another grin. “So I figured I’d just lay right where I was, with ol’ Billy.” He paused, then asked, “How come you’re slippin’ through the woods by yourself? Where’s the rest of the boys?”
Tanner painted the somber picture for him. “I don’t know how many others got away,” he concluded, “but it looked like damn near the whole bunch of survivors surrendered.”
“So it’s just you and me then,” Jeb said, scratching his head thoughtfully. “What are you aimin’ to do?”
“I’m aimin’ to get the hell away from here,” Tanner replied. “That’s the first thing I’m gonna do. This valley is crawlin’ with Union troops, and I don’t plan to spend any time in a Yankee prison.”
“That’s damn sure my feelin’s as well. Whaddaya say we team up?”
“Suit yourself,” Tanner replied. “I’m thinkin’ maybe we can head up in those mountains west of the pike. It oughta be easy enough to stay outta sight in those hills. Then maybe we can work our way back down the valley, and cut across to Lynchburg or somewhere. We’re bound to run into some of our army between there and Richmond.”
Jeb didn’t reply at once, nodding slowly while he thought the prospects over. He apparently thought the matter of rejoining the army worthy of considerable speculation. Tanner studied the man in the meantime, realizing he knew very little about Jeb Hawkins. He had never spent any off-duty time with him. From a little town in Kansas, Jeb had traveled to Virginia to join General Jubal Early’s army. Tanner knew that much—that and the fact that Jeb, a tall, rangy man with a shock of sandy red hair, soon established a reputation as a hard-drinking, quick-tempered hell-raiser anytime he was off duty. As far as soldiering, from what Tanner had seen, Jeb Hawkins never hesitated when given an order, even though he usually looked as if he was considering questioning it.
“Well, hell,” Jeb said, his decision finally made. “That’s what we’ll do then. Maybe we’ll find ol’ Robert E. Lee hisself.” Before Tanner could take a step, Jeb added, “I need me a gun, though. My rifle barrel’s split like a cherry tree.”
“There’s Thacker’s,” Tanner said, pointing toward the dead man’s weapon.
“I’m thinkin’ more about pickin’ up one of them Spencer repeatin’ carbines those Yankee cavalry boys carry. If we hustle our asses, we oughta have time to find us a couple of rifles before they come back to pick up their dead.”
“That makes sense to me.” Tanner readily agreed, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it himself. Without further comment, the two hurried out of the trees and into the open field. “There’s gotta be some stray horses around here somewhere, too,” he called out as he headed for a Union body.
“I’m gonna leave you this bullet sack of .58-caliber cartridges,” Jeb said to the corpse of a young man whose head was half blown away. “I wouldn’t wanna just take this fine carbine of yours without tradin’ you somethin’ for it.” He laughed at his macabre humor as he relieved the body of its ammunition pouch of rimfire cartridges. “Look here, Corporal, this feller has one of them Blakeslee cartridge boxes.”
“So has this one,” Tanner said, in the process of equipping himself from another unfortunate soldier. He was well familiar with the cartridge boxes fashioned by a man named Blakeslee. The Spencer held seven cartridges in its magazine, and Blakeslee had built a carrying case that held anywhere from six to thirteen tubes loaded with the cartridges. The rifle was loaded through the butt, and these tubes could be quickly inserted, loading all seven bullets at once. It was a hell of an advantage in a hot firefight.
Well equipped, and loaded down with extra ammunition for their confiscated weapons, the new partners stayed to scavenge the enemy dead as long as they dared before deciding it best to remove themselves from the open field.
“Damn, Corporal, I wonder what happened to the horses,” Jeb said, panting as they ran toward the lower end of the field.
Breathing rapidly himself, Tanner answered, “My name’s Tanner. That looks like a creek runnin’ along the bottom of the hill. If they’re anywhere around, that’s the place we’ll find ’em.”
Tanner’s prediction proved to be accurate. Just past the lower end of the field, the creek wound its way into a heavy forest of oaks and poplars. About thirty yards into the trees, it almost doubled back on itself, forming a narrow glen. It was here that half a dozen cavalry horses had gathered to graze on the tender grass within the double bend of the creek. Curious, but not frightened, all six horses bobbed their heads up to study the two men approaching.
“Well, would you look at that,” Jeb commented. “All bunched up and waitin’ for us to come get ’em.” He chuckled at the thought. “By God, I reckon I ain’t in the infantry no more. ’Course, I never figured I’d be in the Yankee cavalry.”
Tanner merely grunted in response, his mind already evaluating the choice of horseflesh before him. “Looks to me like the gray and that sorrel beside him are the best of the bunch,” he offered. Of the six, those two appeared to be more broad-chested and built for stamina. “I’m not holdin’ myself up as being an expert on horses. I’m just sayin’ I figure on takin’ one or the other of those two.”
“Yeah, I reckon,” Jeb allowed, although he was eyeing a hand-tooled saddle on one of the other horses. It looked to be of Mexican origin and had the initials JW tooled on the apron. “That black sure is sportin’ a fine-lookin’ saddle. I bet it was an officer’s horse.”
Tanner took another look at the black mare. “If you were to ask me, which you didn’t, I’d say take the saddle, but throw it on one of the other horses. That horse may look pretty, but she’s too narrow in the chest, and her legs are too long. The gray or the sorrel would likely run her into the ground. But that’s just my opinion.”
Jeb thought that over for a few moments, then decided Tanner was probably right. “I expect that’s true,” he said. “Which one of them two do you favor?”
“Either one.”
Jeb speculated a moment more before speaking. “I reckon you favor that fancy saddle yourself, and you outrank me.” He studied Tanner intently, awaiting his answer.
Tanner was not looking at him when he answered. Instead, he was gazing out toward the field they had just left. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and calm. “Right now, we ain’t worried about rank. You fancy that saddle, you take it. Take your pick of the horses. But be quick about it. There’s a Union patrol on the road on the other side of that field, and they look like they’re fixin’ to cut into the field.”
“Damn!” Jeb exclaimed, becoming immediately alert. At the same time, a grin appeared upon his face when he realized Tanner wasn’t concerned about rank. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll take the saddle, so you take first pick of the horses.”
More concerned with expediting a quick withdrawal, Tanner said, “All right, I’ll take the gray.” He walked slowly up to the two horses he had selected and caught the reins of both. Looping the reins over a laurel branch, he prepared to remove the cavalry saddle from the sorrel while Jeb approached the black mare. He hesitated with his hand on the girth strap, however, when the black bolted, leaving Jeb to chase wildly after her.
The horse, somehow spooked by Jeb’s manner, splashed through the creek with Jeb right behind her. Under less dire circumstances, it might have been amusing, with the exasperated redhead struggling up the bank, arms waving frantically, running after the frightened horse.
Tanner took one more glance back toward the field to check on the Union patrol’s progress. When he was sure they had not spotted the two Confederate soldiers, he calmly stepped up on the gray. Taking the sorrel’s reins as well, he started out after his new partner, figuring they might both be sitting cavalry saddles. Jeb appeared to be pretty physically fit, but Tanner felt fairly confident that he wasn’t going to outrun a horse. He gave the cantankerous horse a run for her money, however, before giving up the chase. The contest ended with the black standing, watching warily, on a pine knob some fifty yards from the winded Confederate infantryman. If, indeed, Jeb had been correct in assuming the black was an officer’s mount, the horse had no doubt recognized the two as enlisted men and apparently deemed it highly improper for Jeb to presume to climb on her back.
A somewhat impatient observer to all this, Tanner guided the horses along behind the haphazard chase through the trees. In spite of the potential danger of the Union patrol now searching the open field behind him, he was not overly concerned as long as Jeb and the black continued moving in a westerly direction, away from the patrol. Even though it was only the second day of March, the woods were fairly dense, and he felt certain they had not been spotted by the soldiers.
Pulling up beside Jeb, who was bent over, hands on knees, gasping for breath, Tanner handed the sorrel’s reins to the frustrated man. “If you really fancy that saddle that much, I’ll try to get it for you.” He left Jeb holding the sorrel and gave the gray a touch of his heels. The big horse responded immediately, crossing the creek again and climbing up the pine knob toward the waiting mare. Tanner had a notion that the mare was only spooked by the red-haired Rebel chasing her. That turned out to be the case, for the black stood patiently waiting while Tanner rode up beside her and took her reins. He dismounted, and unbuckled her girth strap. “You can go ahead and jerk the saddle off of that sorrel,” he called out to Jeb as he pulled the hand-tooled saddle off.
“Well, I’ll be double-dogged damned,” Jeb exclaimed, scarcely able to believe his eyes. From that day forward, he would always believe that Tanner had a special way with horses, a belief that Tanner didn’t embrace himself, but never bothered to refute.
When the transfer of saddles was completed, Tanner said, “Let’s get movin’. I wanna get up in the hills on the other side of the pike before dark.”