It was a weary dream and yet it had its interest, for this was new country to the Second Corps, thrown this way for the first time in all the war. It knew much of Virginia so exceedingly well—and here was a new road and the interests of a new road! Here and there in column it was not new country, it was to soldiers here and there land of old time, their part of Virginia. Some had had furloughs and had come back to it, once or twice or thrice; others had missed furloughs, had not seen these mountains and waters for so long a time that now they looked at them wistfully as we look with closed eyes at the landscapes of childhood. The thickness of a life seemed to lie between them and the countryside; one could not reckon all that had happened since they had marched from these blue mountains and these sunny fields—marched to end in one battle the trouble between North and South!
Richard Cleave rode at the head of the Golden Brigade. There were now no full grey brigades, no complete grey regiments. All were worn to a wraith of their former seeming. They took not a half, often not a third, of the space of road they once had covered. The volume of sound of their marching was diminished, the flags were closer together. Had the dead come to life, taken their old places, there would have passed on the Liberty pike a very great army. But scattered like thistledown from the stem lay the dead in a thousand fields.
The living Sixty-fifth moved with jingle and clank through the heat and dust and glare. It had men and officers who were at home in this landscape seen through clefts in the dust cloud. What was left of the old Company A were all from the rolling hills, the vales between, the high blue mountains now rising before the column. Thunder Run men pointed out the Peaks of Otter; there ran a low talk of the James, of North Mountain and Purgatory, of Mill Creek and Back Creek and Craig Creek, of village and farm and cabin, smithy and mill. Company A did not feel tired, it was glad when the halts were ended, glad to hear the Column forward! Matthew Coffin had been home twice since First Manassas; other men of the region had been home, Thunder Run had seen a furlough or two, but many of the living of Company A had not returned in four years’ time. Allan Gold had not been back nor Dave and Billy Maydew.
The column was moving rapidly. Hunter had a few hours’ start, but this was the “foot cavalry” that was pursuing him. The road was rough, the dust blinding, the heat exhausting, but on pressed the “foot cavalry.” “Hot! Hot! Hot!” said the rapid feet, so many of them half-shoeless. “Heat and dust! Heat and dust! There used to be springs in this country,—springs to drink and creeks to wade in.... Then we were boys—long ago—long ago—”
Mouth furred with dust, throat baked with dust and cracked with thirst, much ground to cover in short time, the column for the most part kept its lips closed. It went steadily, rhythmically, bent on getting its business done, no more forever aught but veterans, seasoned, grey, determined. But in the short halts granted it between long times it spoke. It lay on the ground beside welcome waters and babbled of heaven and earth. That portion of the Sixty-fifth whose shores these were spoke as soldiers immemorially speak when after years the war road leads past home. The rests were short. Fall in! Fall in!—and on after Hunter swung the Second Corps.
In the hot June dusk, in the small town of Liberty, twenty-five miles from Lynchburg, they found his rear guard. Ramseur charged and drove it through the place and out and on into the night. There sprang a sudden shriek of shells, rear guard joining main body, and the batteries opening on the grey, heard coming up in the night. The grey line halted; grey and blue, alike exhausted with much and sore travel, fell upon the warm earth and slept as they had been dead, through the short summer night. Grey was in column as the candles of heaven were going out—on before them they heard the blue striking the flints on the Liberty and Salem turnpike.
The sun came up hot and glorious. Full before the column rose the Blue Ridge. The men, moving in a huge dust cloud, talked only between times. “Hunter’s a swift Hunter or he wants to get away mighty bad! ‘Burner’ Hunter!”—“I could get right hot of heart—but what’s the use?”—“I don’t bother about the use. You’ve got to have a heart like a hot coal sometimes, with everything blowing upon it!”—“That’s so! Life’s right tragic.”—Press forward, men!—“Peaks of Otter! Boys from hereabouts say there’s an awful fine view from the top.”—“Awful fine view? Should think there was! When you’re up there—if you go alone—you feel like you’re halfway upstairs to God! Don’t do to go with anybody—they make a fuss and enjoy it.”—“We’re going straight into the mountains.”—“Yes, straight into the mountains. Thunder Run Mountain’s over there.”
The road was now a climbing road. The column moved upon it like a gleaming dragon—the head in thick woods lifting toward the heights, the rear far back in the rolling green land just north of Liberty. The Golden Brigade was near the head. The Sixty-fifth felt the world climb beneath its feet. Allan and Billy were thinking of Thunder Run; Matthew Coffin was thinking of the pale blue letter-paper girl. Allan’s vision was now the toll-gate and now the school-house, and now, and at last persistently, the road up Thunder Run Mountain and Christianna Maydew walking on it. Blended with this vision of the road was a vision of the hospital in Richmond after Gaines’s Mill. He lay again on a blanket on the floor in a corner of the ward, thirsty and in pain, with closed eyes, and Christianna came and knelt and gave him water....
The road climbed steeply. Above ran on to the sky long, wooded, purple slopes. At one point showed a break, a “gap.” “That’s where we ’re going! That’s Buford’s Gap!” On and on and up and up—Halt! rang out from the head of the column, and Halt!—Halt!—Halt! ran from segment to segment of the mounting length.
Hunter, a week before, had not appeared on Thunder Run Mountain. No torch came near its scattered “valuable property.” The few men left upon the mountain were not pressed or shot or marched away to Yankee prisons. Thunder Run Mountain saw burning buildings in the valleys below and heard tales of devastation, even heard wind of a rumour that Hunter’s line of march lay across it, in which case it might expect to be burned with fire and sowed with salt. It was this rumour that sent Steve Dagg on a visit to a long-forgotten kinswoman in Bedford.... And then the line of march had proved to be by the kinswoman’s house!