It was just then also that couriers came, bearing the paralyzing presidential order to stop the pursuit at Cub Run.
It was just then that the despondency of the Mamelukes began.
A little later it rained.
MY LAST NIGHT ON PICKET
MY period of service in the cavalry was about to expire. I was not tired of the cavalry service; on the contrary, I was very much in love with it. Any full-blooded man must have been so under such leadership as Stuart’s.
But for reasons pertaining to Joe, I had sought and obtained a transfer to the artillery.
Joe was just sixteen.
The infantry regiment in which he had gone out had been so cut to pieces in a fierce fight that it was dissolved. Joe and a bullet-riddled flag were about all there was left of it.
Therefore Joe had enlisted in a battery of artillery. He was as brave a fellow as is made, and as cantankerous and self-assertive as a brave boy is apt to be. I felt it necessary to be with him to keep him from being unnecessarily killed or court-martialled, and to exercise over him that mature, paternal influence which the superior age of twenty-one justified.
This was my last night of cavalry service. It was late autumn in 1861. The company was ordered on picket at Fairfax Court House. The enemy was very urgent just then, and gave us a good deal of trouble on the picket lines.