The Long Roll

by Mary Johnston

"Good! Press on. If they open with artillery, get under cover until our guns are placed." He jerked his hand into the air and rode on, galloping stiffly, his feet stuck out from the nag's sides. The cavalry disappeared to the right in a storm of yellow dust.

The village of Front Royal that had been dozing all the summer forenoon, woke with a vengeance. Kenly's camp lay a mile or two west, but in the town was quartered a company or so. Soldiers off duty were lounging on the shady side of the village street, missing the larger delights of Strasburg, wondering if Richmond had fallen and where was Stonewall Jackson, when the fracas, a mile away, broke upon their ears. Secure indolence woke with a start. Front Royal buzzed like an overturned hive. In the camp beyond the town bugles blared and the long roll was furiously beaten. The lounging soldiers jerked up their muskets; others poured out of houses where they had been billeted. All put their legs to good use, down the road, back to the camp! Out, too, came the village people, though not to flee the village. In an instant men and women were in street or porch or yard, laughing, crying, hurrahing, clapping hands, waving anything that might serve as a welcoming banner. "Stonewall Jackson! It's Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Bless the Lord, O my soul!—Can't you all stop and tell a body?—No; you can't, of course. Go along, and God bless you!—Their camp's this side the North Fork—about a thousand of them.—Guns? Yes, they've got two guns. Cavalry? No, no cavalry.—Don't let them get away! If they fall back they'll try to burn the bridges. Don't let them do that. The North Fork's awful rough and swollen. It'll be hard to get across.—Yes, the railroad bridge and the wagon bridge. I can't keep up with you any longer. I ain't as young as I once was. You're welcome, sir."

Cleave and his men came out of the village street at a run. Before them stretched level fields, gold with sunshine and with blossoming mustard, crossed and cumbered with numerous rail fences. Beyond these, from behind rolling ground lightly wooded, rang a great noise of preparation, drums, trumpets, confused voices. As the skirmishers poured into the open and again deployed, a cannon planted on a knoll ahead spoke with vehemence. The shell that it sent struck the road just in front of the grey, exploded, frightfully tore a man's arm and covered all with a dun mantle of dust. Another followed, digging up the earth in the field, uprooting and ruining clover and mustard. A third burst overhead. A stone wall, overtopped by rusty cedars, ran at right angles with the road. To this cover Cleave brought the men, and they lay behind it panting, welcoming the moment's rest and shelter, waiting for the battery straining across the fields. The Louisianians, led by Taylor, were pouring through the village—Ewell was behind—Jackson and the cavalry had quite disappeared.

Lying in the shadow of the wall, waiting for the order forward, Cleave suddenly saw again and plainly what at the moment he had seen without noting—Stafford's face, very handsome beneath soft hat and plume, riding with the 6th. It came now as though between eyelid and ball. The eyes, weary and tragic, had rested upon him with intentness as he stood and spoke with Jackson. Maury Stafford—Maury Stafford! Cleave's hand struck the sun-warmed stone impatiently. He was not fond of deep unhappiness—no, not even in the face of his foe! Why was it necessary that the man should have felt thus, have thought thus, acted thus? The fact that he himself could not contemplate without hot anger that other fact of Stafford's thought still dwelling, dwelling upon Judith had made him fight with determination any thought of the man at all. He could not hurt Judith, thank God! nor make between them more misunderstanding and mischief! Then let him go—let him go! with his beauty and his fatal look, like a figure out of an old, master canvas!—Cleave wrenched his thought to matters more near at hand.

The battery first seen and heard was now up. It took position on a rise of ground and began firing, but the guns were but smoothbore six-pounders and the ammunition was ghastly bad. The shells exploded well before they reached the enemy's lines. The opposing blue battery—Atwell's—strongly posted and throwing canister from ten-pounder Parrotts—might have laughed had there not been—had there not been more and more and yet more of grey infantry! Taylor with his Louisianians, the First Maryland, Ewell, Winder with the Stonewall, grey, grey, with gleaming steel, with glints of red, pouring from the woods, through the fields—the Pennsylvanians, working the battery, did not laugh; they were pale, perhaps, beneath the powder grime. But pale or sanguine they bravely served their guns and threw their canister, well directed, against the mediæval engines on the opposite knoll.

Shouting an order, there now galloped to these Jackson's Chief of Artillery, Colonel Crutchfield. The outclassed smoothbores limbered up and drew sulkily away; Courtenay's Battery, including a rifled gun, arrived in dust and thunder to take their place. Behind came Brockenborough. The reeking battery horses bent to it; the drivers yelled. The rumbling wheels, the leaping harness, the dust that all raised, made a cortège and a din as of Dis himself. The wheel stopped, the men leaped to the ground, the guns were planted, the limbers dropped, the horses loosed and taken below the hill. A loud cannonade began.

Behind the screen of smoke, in the level fields, four Louisiana regiments formed in line of battle. A fifth moved to the left, its purpose to flank the Federal battery. As for the cavalry, it appeared to have sunk into the earth—and yet, even with the thought, out of the blue distance toward McCoy's Ford, on the South Fork arose a tremendous racket! A railway station, Buckton—was there, and a telegraph line, and two companies of Pennsylvania infantry, and two locomotives with steam up. At the moment there were also Ashby and the 7th Virginia, bent upon burning the railroad bridge, cutting the telegraph, staying the locomotives, and capturing the Pennsylvanians. The latter tried to escape by the locomotives; tried twice and failed twice. The forming infantry before Front Royal knew by the rumpus that Ashby was over there, below the Massanuttons. There ran a rumour, too, that the 2d Virginia cavalry under Munford was somewhere to the northeast, blocking the road to Manassas Gap, closing the steel trap on that quarter. The 6th with Jackson remained sunken.

In the hot sunshine blared the Louisianian trumpets. An aide, stretched like an Indian along the neck of his galloping horse, came to the skirmishers. "All right, Cleave! Go ahead! The Louisianians are pawing the ground!—Shade of Alexander Hamilton, listen to that!"

"That" was the "Marseillaise," grandly played. Tramp, tramp! the Louisianians came on to its strains. The skirmish line left the sunny stone fence where slender ferns filled the chinks, and lizards ran like frightened flames, and brown ants, anxious travellers, sought a way home. Cleave, quitting the shadow of a young locust tree, touched with his foot a wren's nest, shaken from the bough above. The eggs lay in it, unbroken. He stooped swiftly, caught it up and set it on the bough again, then ran on, he and all his men, under a storm of shot and shell.

Kenly, a gallant soldier, caught, through no fault of his, in a powerful trap, manœuvred ably. His guns were well served, and while they stayed for a moment the Confederate advance, he made dispositions for a determined stand. The longer delay here, the greater chance at Strasburg! A courier dispatched in hot haste to warn the general there encountered and hurried forward a detachment of the 7th New York Cavalry as well as a small troop of picked men, led by a sometime aide of General Banks. These, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah and coming down the road at a double, reported to Kenly and were received by the anxious troops with cheering. The ground hereabouts was rolling, green eminences at all points breaking the view. Kenly used the cavalry skilfully, making them appear now here, now there between the hills, to the end that to the attackers they might appear a regiment. His guns thundered, and his few companies of infantry fired with steadiness, greeting with hurrahs every fall of a grey skirmisher.