For three days they marched steadily onward, securing meagre rations in a little town where they rested for a while, and pausing from time to time, to beat off a feigned attack. Pinetop, cheerful, strong, undaunted by any hardship, set his face unflinchingly toward the battle that must clear a road for them through Grant's lines. Had he met alone a squadron of cavalry in the field, he would, probably, have taken his stand against a pine, and aimed his musket as coolly as if a squirrel were the mark. With his sunny temper, and his gloomy gospel of predestination, his heart could swell with hope even while he fought single-handed in the face of big battalions. What concerned him, after all, was not so much the chance of an ultimate victory for the cause, as the determination in his own mind to fight it out as long as he had a cartridge remaining in his box. As his fathers had kept the frontier, so he meant, on his own account, to keep Virginia.
On the afternoon of the third day, as the little company drew near to Appomattox Court House, it found the road blocked with abandoned guns, and lined by exhausted stragglers, who had gone down at the last halting place. As it filed into an open field beyond a wooded level, where a few campfires glimmered, a group of Federal horsemen clattered across the front, and, as if by instinct, the column formed into battle line, and the hand of every man was on the trigger of his musket.
“Don't fire, you fools!” called an officer behind them, in a voice sharp with irritation. “The army has surrendered!”
“What! Grant surrendered?” thundered the line, with muskets at a trail as it rushed into the open.
“No, you blasted fools—we've surrendered,” shouted the voice, rising hoarsely in a gasping indignation.
“Surrendered, the deuce!” scoffed the men, as they fell back into ranks. “I'd like to know what General Lee will think of your surrender?”
A little Colonel, with his hand at his sword hilt, strutted up and down before a tangle of dead thistles.
“I don't know what he thinks of it, he did it,” he shrieked, without pausing in his walk.
“It's a damn lie!” cried Dan, in a white heat. Then he threw his musket on the ground, and fell to sobbing the dry tearless sobs of a man who feels his heart crushed by a sudden blow.
There were tears on all the faces round him, and Pinetop was digging his great fists into his eyes, as a child does who has been punished before his playmates. Beside him a man with an untrimmed shaggy beard hid his distorted features in shaking hands.