July 9, 12:30 p.m.
Gambrill House Ridge
From his vantage point on the high ground, Wallace stared at the burning bridge. He had not wanted it put to the torch so soon, merely readied. His order either had been misunderstood or had been flawed—a possibility he could not discount, given his weariness.
No matter the fault, it was his responsibility, and he accepted it. He long had believed that the lowest thing an officer could do was to blame his subordinates for his mistakes and failures. He had seen enough of that out west, under Halleck.
The worst of it was that more than two hundred infantrymen, a mix of raw Home Brigade men and a detachment of Ricketts’ Vermonters, were all but cut off on the other side, their only path to safety the open deck of the rail bridge.
Nor did he want them to panic and quit the fight. They were buying time cheaply, measured against the great scale of the war. He understood, full well, that it didn’t seem much of a bargain to the men in combat along that rail embankment or defending the blockhouse, but they were doing heroic work in a hard hour. He hoped the veterans would prop up the morale of the Home Brigade soldiers sufficiently to keep them potting Confederates.
They had done surprisingly well thus far, repelling every probe, as well as an attack that came sneaking along the river. But he needed them to buy a bit more time. For him, for Washington.
The bridge was an inferno now, flames peaking and timbers crashing. The men who set the wheat shocks to fire the bridge had done a proper job.
One more problem for Early.
Not that Wallace lacked problems of his own. It had been a terrible hour. Even before some enthusiast set the bridge alight, bad news had tumbled over him. First, the telegrapher fled, cutting his communications. Then, when the first wounded men were carried back to the evacuation train, the locomotive was nowhere to be found. The engineer had driven off at the first cannonade. Next, the howitzer, his only heavy artillery piece, had been fouled by a nervous cannoneer dropping in the shot before loading the powder. Despite every effort, the gun remained useless and likely to stay that way. And the Johnnies continued to deploy additional batteries, keeping up a relentless bombardment.
Ricketts had done splendidly, though, repelling the first significant attack. But Early was just getting started, and those high fields would allow Reb numbers to tell.
Grateful for Ricketts—immensely so—he applied himself to shifting his meager reserves, dispatching staff men to trouble spots, and disbursing ammunition with largesse—it wasn’t the time to be thinking like a bookkeeper.
He stilled his horse and drew out his pocket watch. It ran a bit fast, but Wallace was pleased to see the hands marking twelve forty. He had stolen six precious hours from his enemy. If he could hold three hours more, Early would have lost the best of the day.
Why wasn’t Early pressing harder? Why?
1:15 p.m.
Best farm
Ramseur knew he was about to taste some bitter medicine. He only wondered how large the dose would be.
Early looked hot as a Tredegar furnace. Chawing, spitting, and glaring. Usually, the army commander unleashed a barrage of profanity the instant he faced a man who had disappointed him. But Early only spit and stared hot lead, interrupting himself with glances across the river, working his cud of tobacco as though grinding a living thing to a painful death.
Quiet as Presbyterians on Sunday, the staff officers about kept a wary distance.
Desultory skirmishing continued in the low fields, by the rail embankment and river, and the guns kept up their bombardment of the Yankees, but it all seemed weak-loined and feeble to Ramseur now. And the devilish thing was that an aide had just delivered a letter from his wife that he ached to read: With a child on the way, her frailty had become worrisome.
At last, Early spit out his entire chaw, a monstrous clump, and said, “God almighty, Ramseur, why the hell aren’t we over that little creek?”
“General Early, the Yankee position is—”
“I didn’t ask you about the damned Yankee position. I read your messages. And I’ve got eyes in my head. I asked you why we’re not across the river. And you let them burn that goddamned bridge.…” He turned to General Breckinridge, who had ridden over with him. “Ever feel you been pissed on by your own dog?”
Ramseur tried again. “Sir, General McCausland sent a message not ten minutes ago. He’s preparing to attack again. He’s certain he can sweep the Federals away.”
“Ha!” Early said. The pitch of his voice went higher, near to a screech: “McCausland couldn’t take a shit without being led to the outhouse.”
Twisting his bent spine, Early demanded his field glasses from an aide. But he had not looked through the lenses for a full minute before he handed—almost threw—the binoculars back to the captain.
“Can’t see worth a damn from up here.” He bobbed his head toward Ramseur. “That’s your damned problem. You’re not close enough to see a goddamned thing.” And to Pendleton: “Sandie, stay here with this gussied-up flock of geese passes for a staff.” He pointed to the aide who bore his binoculars, a new addition whose name he could not recall. “You ride on with me.” Turning again, he said, “And you, General Breckinridge. You come along. And you, Ramseur.”
“Where are you going, sir?” Pendleton asked. “In case I need to find you?”
Early snorted. “Not so damned far.” He pointed. “Just to that cracked-open barn down there. See if we can’t find the battle.”
Ramseur reached for Early’s bridle. “Sir, that barn’s within range of Yankee sharpshooters. Their artillery shot our men out of it.”
Early glared at him. “Hell with Yankee artillery. I can’t see, I can’t command. I can’t command, I might as well go home to Rocky Mount and drink my fill of Brother Cantwell’s whiskey.” He kicked his horse into motion. Then he yelled back, “Flags stay here. Just get in my goddamned way, all you’re good for.”
For all his age and deformities, Early could ride. He galloped down through the fields at a pace Ramseur found hard to match. Breckinridge lagged behind and seemed content to catch up when he could.
They weren’t in front of the barn more than a few seconds before bullets started hunting them. Early pretended he didn’t notice. Determined to show his own mettle, Ramseur played along. But his thoughts strayed to his wife and the child she carried.
“Them glasses,” Early said.
His aide handed him the binoculars.
As he scanned the enemy position across the river, Early let his horse nose trampled hay. The army commander grunted now and again, stopping once to claw at his tobacco-juice-stained beard before raising the glasses again.
“Smart,” he said. “Give ’em that.”
He moved the glasses along to the right. Then he stopped, straightening his humped back so abruptly that Ramseur expected to hear a mighty crack.
“God almighty,” Early said. “Those are Sixth Corps flags.” He lowered the glasses and fixed his attention on Ramseur. “And you didn’t even know. Did you?”
Ramseur said nothing.
Early took on his most sarcastic look and spoke, loudly, to Breckinridge: “Didn’t even know he’s facing Sixth Corps boys, when all he had to do was goddamned look.”
For an ugly stretch, silence gripped the generals. Despite the shot and shell, each man held still.
Ever the politician, Breckinridge tried out his make-peace voice on Early: “Doesn’t look like more than a brigade.”
“Wherever there’s a brigade, there’s a damned division.”
Early plunged into activity. Tossing the field glasses back to the aide, he told him, “Ride like merry hell back to Colonel Pendleton. Tell him General Rodes needs to give them a push on the Baltimore road, take him some prisoners. I want to know if we’ve got Sixth Corps boys there, too. You understand me?”
The aide dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks.
“Ramseur, you get back to that clapped-up multitude of yours and start pressing hard on those buggers this side of the river, just clear ’em out. Get your paws on that railroad bridge, at least.”
Ramseur nodded.
“General Breckinridge,” Early continued, “I want you to get a division across whatever ford McCausland stumbled on by whatever God-given miracle occurred and finish up with those blue-belly sonsofbitches. Before McCausland loses the whole damned Confederacy while we’re here tugging on our willies.”
“Yes, sir,” the former vice president said.
“Which division of yours is closest?” Early demanded, just as an artillery shell smashed into the barn, showering the generals with hay.
“Gordon’s,” Breckinridge said, coughing.
1:45 p.m.
Worthington farm
After letting each of his colonels take their turn, Tiger John McCausland peered through the upstairs window a last time. He was furious at himself for his earlier haste—had he only had the wits to climb the farmhouse stairs before ordering his attack, he would have seen the Yankees lying in wait, plain as could be.
“Look at that,” he said, although his shoulders blocked the view, “just you look. I don’t care if they’re Sixth Corps troops, they barely have enough men to reach that brick house. Line’s as skinny as a starving cat, and the flank’s in thin air.”
“Boys are ready to go back in,” Hen Bowen offered. “Hopping mad. Way I told you, sir.” He tut-tutted himself. “Almost pity those blue-bellies.”
“Don’t.”
McCausland took a last hard look, then turned from the panorama to the colonels. “We’re going to work around them. Keep the men hidden, behind that bump of a hill off to the right. Hen, you lead the way, pick us a jump-off point. Same order of regiments for the attack. Hit ’em like a hammer, turn their left, and keep going. No parading, come over the crest at the double-quick. Get on ’em fast as we can. And skirt that damned cornfield.” He looked around at the sweat-faced men. Bowen had washed off the blood he’d worn with well water. They all looked ready, if sobered.
Early would not scorn the cavalry today.
“Have your men head straight for that big brick house, both sides of it. Go!”
2:00 p.m.
Thomas farm
Ricketts ached to hear a train or to see his last two and a half regiments come marching along the road. He needed every man, but remained shy a good fifteen hundred of those he’d promised Wallace. Even five hundred … three hundred … would have been as welcome as Christmas to a child.
Another Confederate battery opened across the river, thickening the air with its shot and shell. The impacts seemed almost constant now, with Reb cannon firing on them from various angles. He had ordered his men to lie down, but there was nothing else that he could do for them. The line Truex’s brigade had been forced to occupy, from the yard of the brick house down to the river bluff, was exposed to the enemy guns for most of its length. And the only consolation—a grim one—was the thought that if he were commanding the Rebel artillery, there’d be a great deal more damage.
Truex met him by the gates of the lane that led up to the mansion.
“Sir … I need more men. At least a few hundred. My left’s dangling.”
“For God’s sakes, Bill, I don’t have more men.” He almost added, “And you know it.” But fewer words were always better than more.
Ricketts had already stripped his Second Brigade of all the companies he thought safe to remove from the river line … although he suspected he’d call up the rest before long. There simply were not enough soldiers. Too much ground, not enough men: the defender’s eternal complaint.
“You’ll just have to do what you can,” he told the colonel.
Truex nodded, touched two fingers to his hat brim, and spurred his mount back up the shaded lane. Explosive shells bracketed the mansion’s outbuildings as soldiers hauled laden stretchers down the slope.
The fragrance of early harvests had been smothered by the stink of powder and men.
Ricketts led his staff party up the lane before Truex’s dust had settled. Obliged to see things himself. That was yet another constant dilemma, the need to balance control of his entire division with the need to be close enough to the point of decision.
There was much to be said for being a grizzled captain in charge of a single battery.
He reached the yard of the house just in time to see the Rebs swarm over a low hill off to the left, long lines driving for his flank at a perfect, fatal angle.
He rode for Truex, but the colonel was already acting, calling in his skirmishers from the fence that had served them so well, then riding for his flank to refuse the line.
The Rebs came on fast, no nonsense about them now.
“Hold as long as you can,” Ricketts shouted as Truex galloped past.
He needed those missing regiments.
“Sir,” an aide called out, “you’re too far forward.”
“I’m not too far forward,” Ricketts snapped. “The damned Rebs are.”
On they came, yelling and hooting, pausing to fire, then trotting forward again.
They caught Ricketts’ flank regiments just as they were realigning themselves. Men went at each other with clubbed rifles, some even with bayonets, a rarity. And fists. Fighting engulfed the mansion and the thrust was clear: The Johnnies had momentum, his own men had been caught on the wrong foot.
The racket was so extreme, there was no point in shouting. He signaled his intentions to his aide and standard-bearer by pointing—quickly—down to his Second Brigade.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, he thought. And not enough coin to satisfy either one.
“Tell your colonel to re-form on the Pike,” Ricketts shouted to a major from Truex’s staff. “I’ll shift the Second Brigade to support your right.”
Stopping now and again to fire, his veterans withdrew down the slope that led from the house toward the junction of the Pike and a farm road. Soldiers fell, but not too many. The Rebs didn’t seem to be pursuing with serious intent, whether under orders to halt or unsure of what might await them down below.
He glanced back and saw Truex rushing about, ablaze with urgency, imposing order where there, briefly, had been none.
Amid the roar and chaos, Ricketts sensed that the tide had begun to turn again.
2:20 p.m.
Gambrill House Ridge
From the hillside, Wallace watched the Confederate flank break into pieces. It wasn’t even under fire, or not under much. Yet the body of men disintegrated, dispersing about the sprawling yards of the mansion, among the outbuildings, and even into the adjoining fields. As if uncertain where they were or why they had come to this place, the men who had rushed forth in impressive lines had become a mob.
He bent toward Ross to be heard. “Find Truex or Ricketts. Quick as you can. Tell them I suggest a counterattack … an immediate counterattack, with whatever troops are at hand. Aim left of the house. They’re disordered, they won’t hold up. But we need to hit them now.”
The instant he realized that Wallace would say no more, Ross kicked his horse hard and galloped down into the semi-chaos of troops re-forming after their short retreat, of stragglers and wounded men, ambulatory and not, of shouted orders and ammunition boxes thrown from the backs of wagons and broken open with rifle butts, of shrieking horses and shell bursts.
Wallace longed to ride down there himself, to take direct command. He burned to do it. But he knew his place was here, where he could see most of the field and issue orders, where he could be found.
The hardest part of battle wasn’t fighting.
2:24 p.m.
Georgetown Pike (the Washington road)
Captain William Lanius, aide to Colonel Truex, had separated from his commander in the confusion. He was helping to re-form the 14th New Jersey when Lieutenant Colonel Ross, whom he recognized as Wallace’s aide-de-camp, rode up and gasped a question.
“Where’s Colonel Truex?”
“Don’t know,” Lanius admitted.
“You’ve got to find him. I’ve got to find him. Or Ricketts. Somebody. General Wallace thinks the Rebs are all in a mess. Up by that house. He recommends that Colonel Truex counterattack. Immediately.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll see to it.”
Well, Lanius figured as Ross rode off again, better to be broken for doing too much than for doing too little. He steered his horse through the press of men to Lieutenant Colonel Hall, who was bleeding from the neck and ignoring the wound.
“Sir, General Wallace orders you to charge that house. The Rebs have nothing to them, they’re played out.”
Hall snorted. “Didn’t have nothing to them a few minutes back.” But he began shouting orders.
Lanius pushed on to the 87th Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Colonel Stahle already had his men formed up, awaiting orders.
“Colonel Stahle!” Lanius shouted. “General Wallace says take that house back now!”
2:30 p.m.
Thomas farm
They were cavalrymen, after all, that was the cursed thing. They had every bit as much spunk and fight in them as any infantry soldier, McCausland believed, but they had been trained to form up, maneuver, fight, and regroup on horseback. They could skirmish well enough dismounted, but this …
He rode across the fields, bellowing at stray soldiers to re-form on their colors. When he passed the skeletal semblance of a regiment, he gave them the orders he would have given infantrymen, but their understanding fell short.
They had done well, had done just fine, sweeping right over the Yankees, driving them. And then the attack had simply petered out, as if the lot of them had decided as one that it was just too risky to press on and finish the kill. And McCausland did have to admit that there was a sight more Yankees down in the swales and hollows he hadn’t spied out.
But he’d had his fill of mathematics in Lexington. It was a matter of spirit now, of not giving up, of facing down the Yankees, of bluffing them right off this field.
As he neared the brick house again, he heard cheers. The wrong sort.
Yankees came swarming up the lane and through the grounds. Some of his boys were inside the mansion, sharpshooting, but as the blue-bellies closed the distance the rifles retracted from the windows and did not reappear.
Tavenner found him. “Gave them a right licking, sir.”
“And now they’re set to give us one. See to your men, W.C.”
The realization that it would be his fault if they were beaten back just increased his fury. Determined to overwhelm the Yankees, he had put all his men on the line, had kept no reserve. And now he needed one.
He rode toward the melee around the great brick house, ready to apply his knuckles to a Federal mouth should the opportunity present itself.
“Kill them, damn you!” he shouted. “They’re nothing but worthless coward Yankee bastards, kill every one of them.”
2:40 p.m.
Thomas farm
Ricketts personally guided his Second Brigade’s regiments—barely half of those who should have been present—into place on their new line, freeing up the First Brigade’s right to advance again and complete the repulse of the Johnnies. Someone, bless him, had led a splendid countercharge, and the Rebs were going high-tail and white-tail from the brick house back across the fields, with his men cheering and shooting through the smoke drifts.
He told the brigade commander exactly how he wanted the line established, then rode up past two guns Wallace had sent and onto the high fields surrounding the brick house.
Dead men from both sides lay intermingled, the routine leavings of advance and retreat. Corpses presented a sameness, despite their odd contortions or surprised expressions. But the wounded came in a nearly endless variety, from the moaning boys he passed and the terrified pleaders, through the men who cursed the universe and their bloodied, broken limbs, to the leg-shot, spade-bearded, black-eyed Johnny who looked up as he rode by and called, “They’ll come back, you nigger-loving bastard, our boys are coming back.”
And they did come back, twice more, in attacks that were brave, determined, frail, and hopeless. They were dismounted cavalrymen, all of them, not infantry brigades, and Ricketts realized that all his command had just endured was little more than teasing.
His men seemed to understand that, too, and took it meanly. The last time the Rebs tried to cross those fields, they concentrated on the foolish mounted officers and shot down five.
3:00 p.m.
Worthington Ford
Nichols caught the voice of Elder Woodfin before he could make out a word the chaplain spoke. For all the thrashing and splashing up ahead, the artillery banging away on the left and the oaths of cannoneers gun-stuck in the ford, there was no mistaking the chaplain’s mighty call, a bull voice that commanded the Lord’s attention.
Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg stood on the near bank, shouting to be heard. “No time to take off your shoes, men, hurry on. Bottom’s rocky, anyway. Keep on moving.”
Nichols had a fair admiration for most officers, but a special liking for Valkenburg, who had been kind to him once and who had done fine service in the Wilderness. Handsome fellow, too, the kind the girls liked, bad girls and the good.
Nichols hoped a girl might take to him. After this fuss was done. A good girl, in clean gingham. Who wouldn’t play jokes and laugh at him, but like him rightly and truly. A fair-haired girl, if he had his druthers, who could cook and who read her Bible. The kind of girl his mother wouldn’t mind and his pa would take to.
“Get along now, men. We’re needed up top,” Valkenburg encouraged them.
Nichols and his mess mates splashed on in, sinking knee-deep, thigh-deep, waist-deep, holding their rifles high, with cartridge pouches looped over them. The water was shock-cold, but warmed up fast, running muddy and fast enough to carry off a child, but not a man.
He felt the waters wash him. Like the Jordan.
Elder Woodfin stood atop a rock on the far bank, as if the Lord himself had planted him there, a steady hand raised to Heaven. His words rang clear now, the shouts and busy batteries no more than a frame for his pulpit voice: “Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands. And he smote them…”
Foot tricked by a rock, Nichols stumbled. Saved by the grip of Ive Summerlin, he righted himself just before the water washed over his cartridge box. That bad leg again.
Colonel Lamar himself came back to hurry the men along. “Come on, boys, get on up that bank, come on. The old Sixty-first’s going to settle things right fast, come on now, Georgia!”
“… even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter,” the chaplain recited, disdaining mortality.
Judges 11:33, Nichols recollected. But bad things happened in the following verses.
“‘Very great slaughter’ all right,” Ive said, nearly losing his own balance. “Reckon on that.”
3:00 p.m.
Worthington farm
Gordon rode the fields and folds with his brigade commanders. He had restricted each man to a single aide to keep the party small, with flags and banners held back in the trees. The terrain posed an ugly problem with no good solution: There was no alternative to crossing broad fields lined by at least two fences that would need to be climbed over or knocked down. Worse, great shocks of hay studded the fields to be traversed, obstacles that would break up advancing lines. Beyond those impediments—bad enough—he saw two well-placed Federal lines, the second two hundred yards behind the first. If more Yankees lurked in the low ground to their rear, he had no way of knowing.
Didn’t see any batteries lined up. That was queer. Yankee artillery was a monstrous thing, devastating, plentiful. Yet, here … he could spot only two guns for certain and what might or might not have been a third set back.
What if the Yankees had kept their batteries hidden? To spring a surprise?
He said nothing of his fears to his subordinates. He never did. And far too much of the day had burned away to spend time on debate and deliberation.
Drawing up on a mild rise, he waited for his brigadiers to settle around him and soothe their horses. Every equine mouth was green with foam: Their march had been hurried, their scouting fevered.
“Well, gentlemen … your eyes see as well as mine. There is no good way to do this.” He considered his three brigadiers: Evans, the man he trusted most, with his parson’s smile and fervent heart, commanding Gordon’s old brigade of Georgians. Zeb York, with the remains of ten Louisiana regiments combined under his command, their rolls not amounting to half of a full brigade. Reared in Maine, but seduced by Louisiana, York had been one of the few truly wealthy men to go to war and stick it out. It was said he owned—or had owned, given present conditions in Louisiana—nigh on two thousand slaves. This day, the men he led numbered barely a third of that. But York would fight like a bull, charging ahead. And Bill Terry, newly made a brigadier general, somehow combined intelligence and gallantry, two qualities the war had taught Gordon were generally exclusive of one another. Terry’s Virginia Brigade gathered in the survivors of fourteen regiments shattered in the Wilderness or bled out at Spotsylvania. Especially Spotsylvania.
Clem Evans would fight with heart, York with his knuckles, and Terry with his brain. Gordon had a purpose for each man.
“We’re going to advance en echelon, from the right. Overlap their left, spook them into weakening their center along that crest.”
“Looks like that could require some serious spooking,” Zeb York told him. York retained the wealthy man’s sense of a God-given right to speak up. Gordon knew it, expected it, and tolerated it. York followed orders, that was the thing that mattered.
“Well, that’s where you’ll play your part, Zeb. But you’re running on ahead of me.” Gordon fixed his eyes on Evans. “Clem, you’ll be on the right, you’ll go out first.” He saw the flicker of doubt in Evans’ eyes, but it was only a flicker, soon snuffed out. “The Georgia Brigade’s going to face the worst of it, I understand that. But I need you to keep the pressure on their left. Zeb here will be in trail, on your left. He won’t dally now, just give the Yankees time enough to issue the wrong orders.” Looking from one man to the other, he said, “I expect you to break both of those Yankee lines. Between the two of you.”
Arching his back, Gordon stretched before resuming the perfect posture he kept in the saddle. “Bill, you’re my reserve. But I want your Virginians positioned to move en echelon, too, should the need arise. You’ll be on Zeb’s left, toward the river. Just keep your eyes wide open and be ready.”
“Virginia’s always ready, sir.”
Gordon almost snapped, “Not on the twelfth of May, you weren’t,” but restrained himself. Holding his tongue was often a trial, but only a fool made an enemy of a man who might one day prove a useful friend.
“Indeed,” Gordon told him, “indeed. I count myself the child of unsullied fortune in the privilege of commanding these three brigades. I hold none more valiant in all the armies of the Confederacy.” He smiled slyly, though not meanly. The slyness was meant to be seen and appreciated. “Of course, we’ll see who shines brightest today. Questions, gentlemen?”
“Thought you were going to get rid of that old red shirt?” Zeb York asked. “You stick out like the Queen of Sheba herself, get yourself killed. Then where’d we be?”
Gordon smiled the perfect smile again. “Why, I expect some grateful brigadier would get a promotion.” He twisted the smile from easy to wry. “Need y’all to be able to find me, when you seek my counsel.”
“Yankees don’t seek you first.”
“That’s your job, Zeb. To keep those blue-bellies off me.” He put the smile back in the smile chest. “All right, gentlemen … you will form your brigades behind that hill. Bill, you won’t stretch that far up, so keep your men back of the barn a ways. Flags down. Until you advance.”
Terry nodded.
As he surveyed the faces before him—none jovial now, each earnest—he paused, for a hair-split, at his brother’s eyes. Gene was to be a major, if spared this day. Gordon wanted the younger man to live for that promotion and long thereafter. But Eugene would have to do his duty at Clem Evans’ side.
He had noted his brother’s worried look when York raised the matter of the flannel shirt. Fact was, Gordon didn’t care for the garment. Even washed thin, it was too hot for the day, and turning back the sleeves hardly made a difference. But the men loved to see him in it. And they certainly saw him.
It continued to amuse, if not amaze, him how much his fellow officers and even his own kin failed to understand: Even a fearful man would die for a general in a red shirt. A. P. Hill understood that, but few others did. Early certainly didn’t.
Damn Early, though. The army should have been a dozen miles down the road by now. They’d lost a day, thanks to that shabby money-raking in Frederick and Ramseur’s knack for tying himself in knots. And damn that fool McCausland, for waking the Federals up to their open flank. And damn the sorry Maryland dirt underfoot, the whole fastidious, interfering, Negro-worshipping Union.
It was going to be a bloody, bloody day.
Gordon had saved his warmest smile for the last, a smile that promised intimate friendship with every man it fell upon. He believed that his hero, that other Ulysses—so unlike the beast in Union blue—would have donned just such a smile to win over Achilles, Agamemnon, or Menelaus.
“Not a man here has ever let me down,” Gordon announced. “And I know you never will.” He tugged on the reins just enough to make his beloved black horse prance. “Let’s kill us some Yankees.”
3:15 p.m.
Intersection of the Georgetown Pike and Baker Valley Road
Ricketts turned to face Wallace, who had just dismounted beside him. He realized that his temporary commander had come down to the road, rather than summon him, to shorten the interruption of his work re-forming his lines. Wallace seemed a considerate sort, gentlemanly, stuffed with brains, a dreamer. They were different types, almost opposites, but Ricketts liked this man who was about to destroy his division.
Moving clumsily, obviously exhausted, Wallace stepped close. “Let us walk for a moment, General Ricketts. Apart from the men. I shan’t take much of your time.”
There wasn’t much “apart” to be had, between the dressing ranks and sergeants all but hurling ammunition. Litter bearers moved back and forth like a two-way column of ants, depositing their cargoes and fetching more. Inevitably, a wagon had overturned, narrowing the road. Clutching his shoulder, the driver cursed magnificently.
The two generals stepped along, gesturing to the men to remain at ease. The shade, what little there was, had magnetic force, but by unspoken agreement, Ricketts and his companion left it to the powder-smeared, sweat-gripped soldiers.
“Your troops have done splendidly,” Wallace told him.
“Except for those two blasted regiments. God knows where the devil they are right now.” He had sensed, with finality, that those precious regiments and strayed companies would not arrive in time to affect the outcome.
Of course, the outcome would not have been changed, anyway. Only the fight’s duration was in dispute.
“I’m sorry,” Wallace said. “The railroad seems to have let us down today.”
Ricketts shrugged. “Fortunes of war.” Mind back on business, he said, “I’ve stripped the riverfront. Your boys will have to hold it. I’ve pushed out a heavy skirmish line again. Changed its orientation, of course. I learned that lesson. Main line’s still by the house, best ground. Flank’s refused by one regiment, all I can spare from the firing line.” He gestured at the men filling the hollow that cradled the Pike. “Reserve’s down here, two regiments. The Rebs will have to pound their way through, and they’ll pay the devil’s wages.”
He knew what Wallace was thinking. It would be the very thought he harbored himself: If they come the way we think they’ll come.
“There was a mounted party on a scout,” Ricketts added. “All officers, judged by the gait of their horses. Postures, too, that high-and-mighty way most of them have. Rode the length of the hill ten minutes ago.”
“I saw them,” Wallace said. “Infantry commanders would be my guess. Weighing courses of action.”
“They’ll come that way, all right. No real choice.”
Wallace nodded. “It’ll be soon. They’re pressing harder across the river, like they mean it this time. Not sure how much longer our boys can hold, they’re in a bind.”
“Those Vermont boys are stubborn.”
“I made a mistake. The bridge, the fire.”
For the first time in hours, perhaps aeons, Ricketts smiled. “Generals don’t make mistakes, sir. Didn’t anyone let you in on the secret? First thing a fellow learns when he gets to West Point.” Voice almost jovial—he recognized the hilarity that sprang from desperation—he added, “Never made a single mistake myself.”
Wallace smiled, too. But Ricketts thought, for a flashing moment, of the wretched court-martial of Fitz John Porter, of his own shabby part in it. Mistakes? What was a man’s life but a trail of mistakes?
Letting his smile fall away, Wallace said, “We’ve cost them a day. That’s something.”
“Cost them a good bit more, before we’re done.”
“If … I ordered you to withdraw now … you could save your division. There’s still time for an orderly withdrawal. I doubt the Rebs would contest it. They just want us out of the way.”
It was a tempting thought. A wonderful thought.
“We haven’t been beaten yet,” Ricketts said.
“We will be,” Wallace said, almost whispered.
“Yes. But we haven’t been. Not yet.”
“You’ll lose half your division. At least.”
“You told me yourself that every hour counts.”
Wallace appeared taut with nerves, half-starved, dark eyes sunken, and shoulders caved like an old woman’s under a shawl. Not the way the illustrated papers portrayed heroes. But Ricketts understood, thoroughly and clearly, that Wallace meant to stay and fight it out. With or without the men Ricketts commanded. He was trying to be just, but war mocked justice. The man was far too decent to be a general.
“It does,” Wallace said. “Every hour counts.”
“Then it’s my duty to contest the field.”
“God bless you,” Wallace said, faintly, enunciating each word.
Ricketts was tempted to say far more than was his habit, to lash out and damn the idiocy in Washington, the stubbornness of every general officer not present where they stood, the pigheadedness of government and the creatures who fed off its carcass like monstrous insects. Above all, he wanted to say, “I just hope to Christ in Heaven all this is worth it, that somebody in Washington has decided by now to step away from the bar of Willard’s Hotel and do their duty.”
But Wallace doubtless harbored the same thoughts; there was no point in speaking aloud. The men might hear.
“Best see to my lines,” Ricketts said brusquely. “Rebs will be coming along.”
“General Ricketts? In case we … should become separated. I want to thank you.” Wallace held out his hand.
Ricketts accepted the paw, but the time for genteel communion had passed them by. He nodded toward his begrimed men in their shabby uniforms.
“Thank them.”