“Yes. In a cave down by the ——th Redan.”
“I was down by the river, back of the Lower Batteries. Vicksburg! We thought that nothing could ever happen any more after Vicksburg! But things just went on happening—”
“Firing ahead of us,” said the boy.
It rose and fell in the distance to the left of the road. A turn and they came upon pickets. Followed a parley. “You two want to join your regiment, and the lady wants to get to Resaca? Resaca isn’t a big place, ma’am, and the fighting’s going to be all around it and maybe through it. Hadn’t you better—”
“No, I hadn’t. My husband is Captain Cary of the ——th Virginia. I know, sir, that you are going most courteously to let me pass.”
When Désirée Gaillard said “most courteously,” when she smiled and looked straight and steady with her dark eyes, it was fatal. Nothing short of positive orders to the contrary would have kept those grey pickets from letting her pass. The wagon went on, and, having pierced a skirmish line lying down waiting, came, in the dusty forenoon, to Stevenson’s division, drawn up in two lines across and on either side of the Dalton and Resaca road.
An officer stopped the advance. “There’s going to be fighting here in five minutes! You shouldn’t have been let to pass the pickets. You can’t go on and you can’t go back. They’ve got their batteries planted and they’re coming out of the wood yonder.—There’s the first shell!” He looked around him. “Madam, I’ll agree that there aren’t many safe places in the Confederacy, but I wish that you were in one of them! You two men report to the sergeant there! Uncle, you drive that cart behind the hill yonder—the one next to the one with the guns on it. When you’re there, madam, you’d better lie close to the earth, behind one of those boulders. As soon as we’ve silenced their fire and the road’s clear, you can go on.—Not at all! Not at all! But it is extremely unwise for a lady to be here!”
The eastern side of the hill offered fair shelter. Nebuchadnezzar took the old horse from the wagon and fastened him to a small pine. Désirée sat down in the long cool grass beside a grey boulder. Before her stretched rugged ground, and far and wide she saw grey troops, ready for battle. Johnston had wasted no moment at Resaca. With skill and certitude he flung down his battle line, horseshoe-shaped, Hardee holding the centre, Polk on the left bent down to the Oostenaula, Hood on the right resting on the Connesauga. Earth-works sprang into being, salients for artillery—hardy and ready and in high spirits the Army of Tennessee faced the foe. Throughout the morning there had been general skirmishing, and now a fierce attack was in progress against Hindman’s division of Hood’s corps. It spread and involved Stevenson. The latter had the brigades of Cumming and Brown in his front line, in his second those of Pettus and Reynolds. All the ground here was rough and tangled, rock-strewn, overlaid with briars and a growth of small bushy pines. The men had made some kind of breastworks with rotted logs and the rails from a demolished fence. What especially annoyed were the blue sharpshooters. There was a ridge in the possession of these, from which they kept up a perpetual enfilading fire, addressed with especial vigour against Cumming’s line and against Johnston’s battalion ranged upon a long hillside by Cumming.
From the foot of her small adjoining hill, Désirée could see these pieces plainly. Elbow on knee, chin in hand, she sat and watched. Six guns were in action; the others, expectant, waiting their time. The horses were withdrawn below the hill. Here, indifferent, long trained, they stood and cropped the grass in the face of thunder and gathering smoke. The caissons were in line behind the pieces, and from them powder and grape and canister travelled to the fighting guns. They were fighting hard. From each metal bore sprang yellow-red flowers of death. The hill shook and became wreathed with smoke. Through it she saw the gun detachments, rhythmically moving, and other figures, officers and men, passing rapidly to and fro. Shouted orders came to her, then the thunder of the guns covered all other sound. The antagonist was a blue battery on a shoulder of the ridge and blue infantry somewhere in the thick wood below. This battery’s range was poor; most of the shells fell short of the grey hill. But the sharpshooters on the nearer spur were another guess matter. Out of the tops of thick and tall pine trees came death in the shape of pellets of lead—came with frequency, came with a horrible accuracy.
Désirée shuddered as she looked.