CHAPTER XII.
THROUGH "MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND."
Our course now lay through Maryland, and we performed endless marches and countermarches over turnpikes and through field and forest.
After crossing South Mountain,—but stop, I just must tell you about that, it will take but a paragraph or two. South Mountain Pass we entered one July evening, after a drenching rain, on the Middletown side, and marched along through that deep mountain gorge, with a high cliff on either side, and a delightful stream of fresh water flowing along the road; emerging on the other side at the close of day. Breaking off the line of march by the right flank, we suddenly crossed the stream, and were ordered up the mountain-side in the gathering darkness. We climbed very slowly at first, and more slowly still as the darkness deepened and the path grew steeper and more difficult. At about nine o'clock, orders were given to "sleep on arms," and then, from sheer fatigue, we all fell sound asleep, some lying on the rocks, some sitting bolt upright against the trees, some stretched out at full length on beds of moss or clumps of bushes.
What a magnificent sight awaited us the next morning! Opening our eyes at peep o' day, we found ourselves high up on top of a mountain-bluff overlooking the lovely valley about Boonesboro. The rains were past; the sun was just beginning to break through the clouds; great billows of mist were rolling up from the hollows below, where we could catch occasional glimpses of the movements of troops,—cavalry dashing about in squads, and infantry marching in solid columns. What may have been the object of sending us up that mountain, or what the intention in ordering us to fell the trees from the mountain-top and build breastworks hundreds of feet above the valley, I have never learned. That one morning amid the mists of the mountain, and that one grand view of the lovely valley beneath, were to my mind sufficient reason for being there.
Refreshed by a day's rest on the mountain-top, we march down into the valley on the 10th, exhilarated by the sweet, fresh mountain air, as well as by the prospect, as we suppose, of a speedy end being put to this cruel war. For we know that the enemy is somewhere crossing the swollen Potomac back into Virginia, in a crippled condition, and we are sure he will be finally crushed in the next great battle, which cannot now be many hours distant. And so we march leisurely along, over turnpikes and through grain-fields, on the edge of one of which, by and by, we halt in line of battle, stack arms, and, with three cheers, rush in a line for a stake-and-rider fence, with the rails of which we are to build breastworks. It is wonderful how rapidly that Maryland farmer's fence disappears! Each man seizing a rail, the fence literally walks off, and in less than fifteen minutes it reappears in the shape of a compact and well-built line of breastworks.
But scarcely is the work completed when we are ordered into the road again, and up this we advance a half-mile or so, and form in line on the left of the road and on the skirt of another wheat-field. We are about to stack arms and build a second line of works, when—
Z-i-p! z-i-p! z-i-p!
Ah! It is music we know right well by this time! Three light puffs of smoke rise yonder in the wheat-field, a hundred yards or so away, where the enemy's pickets are lying concealed in the tall grain. Three balls go singing merrily over my head—intended, no doubt, for the lieutenant, who is acting-adjutant, and who rides immediately in front of me, with a bandage over his forehead, but who is too busy forming the line to give much heed to his danger.