“‘We’ll take a cup of kindness yet—’”
Miles and miles and miles of old-time heat and dust and thirst! Tramp, tramp!—Tramp, tramp! Miles and miles. “There never were enough springs and streams on this road and old Miss War’s done drunk those up!—O Lord, for a river of buttermilk!—”
The dust weighted down pokeberry and stickweed, alder, blackberry and milkweed. The old trim walls bounding the Valley Pike were now mere ruinous heaps of stones. The thousands of marching feet, the wheels, the hoofs furred these with dust. There were no wooden fences now of any description; there were few wayside trees, few wayside buildings. There were holes where the fence posts had been, and there were stumps of trees and there were blackened foundations where houses had been, and all these were yellowed and softened with dust. A long, thick, and moving wall, the dust accompanied the Second Corps.
The Second Corps was used to it, used to it in its eyes, its throat, down its neck, in its shoes, all over. The Second Corps was used to poor shoes and to half shoes—used to uniforms whose best day was somewhere in past ages—used to hunger—used to thirst, thirst, thirst—used to twenty miles, twenty miles in heat and glare, or in mud and rain, or in ice or snow—used to the dust cloud, used to the storm, used to marching and marching, used to battling, used to a desperate war in a desperate land, used to singing, used to joking, used to despairing, used to hoping—used to dusty marches! It was a long time since the dusty march by Ashby’s Gap across to First Manassas. New Market, Mount Jackson, Edenburg, Woodstock, Strasburg, Middletown, Kernstown—on the second of July they came to Winchester. Sigel was at Martinsburg beyond.
Winchester was haggard, grey, and war-worn. How many times she had changed hands, passed from grey lover to blue master, it would be hard to tell. They were very many. Winchester had two faces, a proud and joyful and a depressed and sorrowful face. Today she wore the first.
On through Winchester, out upon the Pike to Martinsburg! There was skirmishing and Sigel quit the place, leaving behind him a deal of stores. That night he retired across the Potomac, to Maryland Heights by Harper’s Ferry, and the next day he burned the railroad and pontoon bridges at that place. The fifth and sixth of July the Second Corps crossed the river at Shepherdstown, crossed with loud singing.
“Come! ’Tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!”
Steve was with the Sixty-fifth still. He had meant to leave before they got to Martinsburg, but the occasion did not arise and the Sixty-fifth swept him on. He had meant to hide in Martinsburg and soberly wait until the Second Corps had disappeared in the direction of the Potomac, when he would emerge and turn his face homeward. But in Martinsburg were the stores that Sigel had abandoned. Coffee, sugar, canned goods, wheat bread—Steve supped with the regiment on the fat of the land. But it was his intention not to be present at roll-call next morning, and in pursuance of it he rolled, in the dark hour before dawn, out of the immediate encampment of the Sixty-fifth, down a little rocky lane and under the high-built porch of a small house of whitewashed stone. Here he lay until the first light.... It showed through the lattice of his hiding-place an overturned sutler’s wagon. Steve, creeping out, crept across and with his arms that were lean and long, felt in the straw. The wagon had been looted and the tears nearly came to his eyes on finding it so. And then he came upon a bottle fallen from a case that had been taken away. It was champagne.
Reveille sounding, the Sixty-fifth rose in the dim light and while making its cursory toilette thought of breakfast with coffee—with coffee—with coffee! Mess-fires burst into saffron bloom, the good smell of the coffee and of the sizzling bacon permeated the air, the Sixty-fifth came most cheerfully to breakfast. It sat down on the dewy earth around the fires, pleasant at this hour of the morning, it lifted its tin cups, blew upon the scalding coffee, sipped and sipped and agreed that life was good. Everybody was cheerful; at roll-call which immediately followed, everybody was present, in a full, firm tone of voice. Steve Dagg, filled with French courage, was most present.