Steve conceived himself to be neglected. Carefully propped by his stick and a roadside boulder he hearkened to orders and marked manœuvres[manœuvres] until he was aweary. He had saved the Second Corps and it wasn’t noticing him! He grew palely dogged. “They got ter notice me. Gawd! I’ve seen a man thanked in General Orders ’n’ promoted right up for less’n I’ve done!” In addition to a sense of his dues a fascination kept him where he was. The unwonted feeling of superiority protected him from fear; no army would too closely question its saviour! The rag about his foot, as he assured himself every now and then with a glance, was good and bloody. So well fixed and with such a vantage-point, he gave way to a desire just to see how the boys looked after so long a time. Vanguard and artillery had gone forward; down the road he saw coming at a double an infantry brigade; further back the main body had been halted. He gathered from a comment of officers passing that there was a conviction that it was only Hunter’s rear guard before them in the pass. Cavalry scouts spurring back, clattering down dangerous paths from adjoining crests, justified the conviction. The Federal main body was pressing on upon the Salem road while the rear guard gained time. And here the blue rear guard, observing from its crags that the ambuscade had been discovered, opened fire. The grey guns now in battery on a knoll of hemlocks answered. The Blue Ridge echoed the thunders.
It was near sunset and the brigade coming up was bathed in a slant and rich light. With a gasp Steve recognized the horse and rider at its head. He raised and bent his arm and hid his face, only looking forth with one frightened eye. Cleave and Dundee went by without recognizing him, without, as far as he could tell, glancing his way. Steve chose again to feel injury. “Gawd, Colonel! if I did try to get even with you once, ain’t you a general now, ’n’ ain’t I jest saved your life ’n’ all your men?—’n’ you go by without lookin’ at me any more’n if I was dirt! If you’d been a Christian ’n’ stopped, I could ha’ told you you were goin’ home to find your house burned down ’n’ your sister dyin’! I jest saved your life ’n’ you don’t know it! I jest saved this army ’n’ don’t any one know it.... O Gawd! here’s the Sixty-fifth!”
Steve could not stand it. “Howdy, boys!” he said. “Howdy, howdy!” The water came into his eyes. He saw through a mist the colours and the slanted bayonets and the ragged hats or no hats and the thin, tanned faces. A drop gathered and rolled down his cheek. There was a momentary halt of the Sixty-fifth, the last rank abreast of the boulder by the road. Forward! and the regiment moved on, and Steve marched with it. “Yaas, you didn’t know it, but I jest saved you boys ’n’ the army! I was comin’ along the road—I got a sore foot—’n’ I looked up ’n’ seed the guns—”
The sun went down and the night came, with the guns yet baying at one another, and the well-posted blue yet in possession of the rocks above the gorge. But in the middle of the night the blue withdrew, hurrying away upon the Salem road. McCausland, pursuing, captured prisoners and two pieces of artillery. But the great length of Hunter’s column, wheeling from Salem toward Lewisburg, plunged into the mountains of western Virginia. From the grey administration’s point of view it was better there than elsewhere. Early, under orders now for the main Valley, rested in Botetourt for one day, then took the pike for Staunton.
One day! Matthew Coffin spent it with the blue letter-paper young lady. Allan Gold and Billy and Dave Maydew covered with long strides the road to Thunder Run. Making all speed up and down, they might have the middle of the day for home-at-last. Richard Cleave rode to Fincastle and found in a house there his mother and sister. Miriam was sinking fast. She knew him, but immediately wandered off to talk of books, of Hector and Achilles and people in the “Morte d’Arthure.” He had but two hours. At the end he knelt and kissed his sister’s brow, then came out into the porch with his mother and held her in a parting embrace. She clung to him with passion. “Richard—Richard!—All is turned to iron and clay and blood and tears! Love itself is turning to pure pain—”
Riding back to his troops he went by Three Oaks. There was only a great blackened chimney stack, a ragged third of a wall, a charred mass behind. He checked Dundee and stood long in the ragged gap where the gate had been and looked, then went on by the darkening road to the Golden Brigade.
Up on Thunder Run, throughout the morning, there was great restlessness at the toll-gate. Tom knew they couldn’t come this way—yes, he knew it. Their road lay along other mountains—he wished that he had the toll-gate at Buford’s. Yes, he knew they wouldn’t be likely to stop—he knew that, too. He didn’t expect to see any one. He could have borrowed the sawmill wagon and gone down the mountain and over to the Salem road and seen them pass just as well.—No, he wasn’t too weak. He wasn’t weak at all—only he wanted to see the army and Allan. He hadn’t ever seen the army and now he didn’t reckon he would ever see it. Yes, he could imagine it—imagine it just as well as any man—but he didn’t want to imagine it, he wanted to see it! And now he wouldn’t ever see it—never see it and never see Allan.
“Sho! you will,” said Sairy. “You’ll certainly see Allan.”
But Tom did not believe it, and he wanted intensely to see the army. “I see it when I dream, and I see it often and often when I’m sitting here. I see it marching, marching, and I see it going into battle, and I see it bivouacking. But it won’t look at me, and though sometimes I take the boys’ hands there ain’t any touch to them, and I can see the drums beating, but they don’t give any sound—”
Sairy looked away, out and over the great view below the toll-gate. “I know, Tom. Sometimes in the night-time I sit up an’ say, ‘That was a bugle blowing.’ An’ I listen, but I can’t hear it then.—But the Lord tells us to be content, an’ you’d better let him see you’re tryin’ to mind him! What good’ll it do Allan or the army if I have to set up with you to-night an’ your heart gives out? You’d better save yourself so’s to see him when he does come home. My land! the lot of things he’ll have to tell, settin’ on the porch an’ the war over, an’ school takin’ in again—”