“The young fellow's no callow milksop, after all,” said the Surgeon Denslow, as his eyes followed Harry's retreating form. “His gristle is hardening into something like his stern old father's backbone.”
Chapter IX. On the March.
“He smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the
Captains and the shouting.”
— Job.
The weary weeks in Camp of Instruction ended with the Summer. September had come, and Nature was hanging out crimson battle-flags every-where—on the swaying poppy and the heavy-odored geranium. The sumach and the sassafras wore crimson signals of defiance, and the maples blazed with the gaudy red, yellow and orange of warlike pomp.
The regiment made its first step on Kentucky soil with a little bit of pardonable ostentation. Every one looked upon it as the real beginning of its military career. When the transport was securely tied up at the wharf, the Colonel mounted his horse, drew his sword, placed himself at the head of the regiment, and gave the command “Forward.” Eleven hundred superb young fellows, marching four abrest, with bayonets fixed, and muskets at “right shoulder shift,” strode up the bank after him and went into line of battle at the top, where he made a short soldierly speech, the drums rolled, the colors dipped, the men cheered, and the band played “Star-spangled Banner” and “Dixie.”
Three years later the two hundred survivors of this number returning from their “Veteran furlough,” without a band and with their tattered colors carefully cased, came off a transport at the same place, without uttering a word other than a little grumbling at the trouble of disposing of some baggage, marched swiftly and silently up the bank, and disappeared before any one fairly realized that they were there. So much had Time and War taught them.
“Now our work may be said to be fairly begun.” said the Colonel, turning from the contemplation of his regiment, and scanning anxiously the tops of the distant line of encircling hills, as if he expected to see there signs of the Rebels in strong force. All the rest imitated his example, and studied the horizon solicitously. “And I expect we shall have plenty of it!” continued the Colonel.
“No doubt of that,” answered the Major. “They say the Rebels are filling Kentucky with troops, and going to fight for every foot of the Old Dark and Bloody Ground. I think we will have to earn all we get of it.”
“To-day's papers report,” joined in Surgeon Denslow, “that General Sherman says it will take two hundred thousand troops to redeem Kentucky.”