THE VALLEY PIKE
As he moved away from the stone house, the vicinity of Ashby and the line of Tigers behind the fence, he became aware that not a small portion of Wheat's Battalion had broken ranks and was looting the wagons. There were soldiers like grey ants about a sutler's wagon. Steve, struggling and shouldering boldly enough now, managed to get within hailing distance. Men were standing on the wheels, drawing out boxes and barrels and throwing them down into the road, where the ants swarmed to the attack. Not the Tigers alone, but a number of Ashby's men as well engaged in the general business. The latter, either not so hungry or more valiant to abstain from the smaller rifling, turned to the plunder of horses. There were horses enough, dead and wounded, along that frightful road. Others were unhurt, still harnessed to wagons, or corralled in fence corners, or huddled with prisoners in the trodden fields. Horses, to the trooper of the Valley, were as horses in the ten years' war at Troy—the prized spoil of battle, the valued trophies, utilities outweighing all filagree spoil. Each man of Ashby's owned the horse he rode, burned to provide himself with a second mount, and flamed to be able to say at home, "This horse I took at Middletown, just before we drove the Yankees out of the Valley and ended the war!" "Home," for many of them was not at all distant—gallop a few miles, deposit the prize, return, catch up before Winchester! Wild courage, much manliness, much chivalry, ardent devotion to Ashby and the cause, individualism of a citizen soldiery, and a naïve indiscipline all their own—such were Ashby's men! Not a few now acted upon the suggestion of the devil who tempts through horse flesh. In the dust they went by Steve like figures of a frieze.
Inefficient even in plundering, he found himself possessed of but a handful of crackers, a tin of sardines—a comestible he had never seen before and did not like when he tasted it—and a bottle of what he thought wine but proved vinegar. Disgusted, he moved to the next wagon, overswarmed like the first by grey ants. This time it was ale, unfamiliar still, but sufficiently to his liking. "Gawd! Jest to drink when you're thirsty, and eat when you're hungry, and sleep when you're sleepy—"
A drum beat, a bugle blew. Fall in! Fall in! Officers passed from wagon to wagon. They were ready enough with the flats of their swords. "For shame, men, for shame! Fall in! Fall in! General Jackson is beyond Newtown by now. You don't want him to have to wait for you, do you? Fall in!"
The Valley pike, in the region of Middletown, proved a cumbered path. From stone fence to stone fence, in the middle trough of dust, and on the bordering of what had been, that morning, dew-gemmed grass and flower, War the maniac had left marks. Overturned wagons formed barriers around which the column must wind. Some were afire; the smoke of burning straw and clothing and foodstuffs mingling with the yet low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta—knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange postures, and on all the dust was thick. There were many wounded; the greater number of these had somehow reached the foul grass and trampled flowers of the wayside. Prisoners were met; squads brought in from the road, from fields and woods. There was one group, men and horses covered with the dust of all time, disarmed, hatless, breathless, several bleeding from sabre cuts. One among them—a small man on a tall horse—indulged in bravado. "What are you going to do with us now you've got us? You've nowhere to take us to! Your damned capital's fallen—fell this morning! Yes, it did! News certain. Rebellion's over and Jack Ketch's waiting for you—waiting for every last dirty ragamuffin and slave-driver that calls himself general or president, and for the rest of you, too! Pity you didn't have just one neck so's he could do the whole damn thirteen millions of you at once!—Jeff Davis and Lee and Johnston were hanged at noon. This very moment Little Mac's in Richmond, marching down whatever your damned Pennsylvania Avenue's called—"
A negro body servant marching in the rear of one of the contemptuous companies broke ranks and rushed over to the reviling soldier. "You damn po' white trash, shet yo' mouf or I'll mek you! Callin' Main Street 'Pennsylvania Avenue,' and talkin' 'bout hangin' gent'men what you ain't got 'bility in you ter mek angry enuff ter swear at you! 'N Richmon' fallen! Richmon' ain' half as much fallen as you is! Richmon' ain' never gwine ter fall. I done wait on Marse Robert Lee once't at Shirley, an he ain't er gwine ter let it! 'Pennsylvania Avenue!'"
Half a mile from Middletown they came up with a forlorn little company. On a high bank above the road, huddled beneath three cedars, appeared the theatrical troupe which had amused General Banks's army in Strasburg. Men and women there were, a dozen actors, and they had with them a cart bearing their canvas booth and the poor finery of their wardrobe. One of the women nursed a baby; they all looked down like wraiths upon the passing soldiers.
Firing broke out ahead. "Newtown," said the men beside Steve. "I've got friends there. Told 'em when we came up the Valley after Kernstown we'd come down again! 'N here we are, bigger 'n life and twice as natural! That's Rockbridge making that awful noise. Must be a Yankee battery—There it opens! Oh, we're going to have a chance, too!"
They were moving at double-quick. Steve simulated a stumble, caught himself, groaned and fell out of line. The wall to the left blazed. He uttered a yell and sprang back. "That's right!" said the man. "It's taken most a year to learn it, but you feel a whole heap safer in line than out of it when firing's going on. That's a nice little—what d'ye call it?—they've planted there—"
"Avalanche," panted Steve. "O Gawd!" A minie ball had pierced the other's brain. He fell without a sound, and Steve went on.