“O my Lawd, whar you gwine?
Keep in de middle ob de road!
Gwine de way dat Moses trod,
Keep in de middle ob de road—”
“The butcher had a little dog,
And Bingo was his name.
B-i-n-g-o-go![B-i-n-g-o-go!] B-i-n-g-o-go!
And Bingo was his name—”
Toward four o’clock, as the head of the column neared Fairfield, came from the rear a burst of firing—musketry, then artillery. There was a halt, then the main body resumed the march. Early, in the rear, deployed Gordon’s brigade and fought back the long skirmish line of the pursuing blue. Throughout the remainder of the afternoon there was fitful firing—sound, water-logged like all else, rising dully from the rear. Down came the night, dark as a bat’s wing. The Second Corps bivouacked a mile from Fairfield, and, waking now and then in the wet and windy night, heard the rear guard repelling half-hearted attacks.
Reveille echoed among the hills. The Second rose beneath a still streaming sky. The Stonewall, camped on a hillside, sought for wood for its fires and found but little, and that too wet to burn. It was fortunate, perhaps, that there was so little to cook. The Sixty-fifth squatted around a dozen pin-points of light and did its best with the scrapings of its commissary. “Well, boys, the flesh pots of Egypt have given us the go-by! D’ye remember that breakfast at Greencastle? Oohh! Wasn’t it good?”... “Hold your hat over the fire or it’ll go out!”... “I wish we had some coffee ...” “Listen at Gordon, way back there, popping away at Yanks!—Did you hear about his men burning fence rails? No?—well, ’twas out beyond York. ‘Men!’ says Marse Robert’s General Order, ‘don’t tech a thing!’ ‘All right, Marse Robert!’ says we, as you can testify. Gordon’s as chivalrous as Young Lochinvar, or ‘A Chieftain to the Highlands Bound,’ or Bayard, or any of them fellows. So he piles on an order, too. ‘Don’t touch a thing! especially not the fences. Gather your wood where Nature has flung it!’ Well, those Georgia boys had to camp that night where Nature hadn’t flung any wood—neither Cedar of Lebanon nor darned pawpaw bush! Just a nice bare field with rail fences—our kind of fences. Nice, old, dry, seasoned rails. Come along Gordon, riding magnificently. ‘General, the most wood around here is musket stocks, and of course we ain’t going to burn them! Can’t we take just a few rails?’ ‘Boys,’ says Gordon, being like a young and handsome father to his men. ‘Boys, you can take the top rail. That will leave the fences high enough for the farmer’s purposes. Now, mind me! don’t lay your hand on anything but the top rail!’ And off he goes, looking like a picture—leaf of Round Table, or what not. Whereupon company by company marched up and each took in turn the top rail.”