The Long Roll

by Mary Johnston

Long, steady, swinging tread, pace of the foot cavalry, the main column moved up the Valley pike, violet in the shadow, gold in the sun. The ten-minutes-out-of-an-hour halts were shortened to five minutes. During one of these rests Jackson came down the line. The men cheered him. "Thirty miles to-day. You must do thirty miles to-day, men." He went by, galloping forward to the immense and motley convoy. The men laughed, well pleased with themselves and with him. "Old Jack's got to see if his lemons are all right! If we don't get those lemon wagons through safe to Staunton there'll be hell to pay! Go 'way! we know he won't call it hell!"

"The butcher had a little dog, And Bingo was his name. B-i-n-g-o-go-! B-i-n-g-o-go! And Bingo was his name!"

"Fall in! Oh, Lord, we just fell out!"

Advance, convoy, main column, camped that night around and in Strasburg, Strasburg jubilant, welcoming, restless through the summer night. Winder with the Stonewall Brigade bivouacked at Newtown, twelve miles north. He had made a wonderful march. The men, asleep the instant they touched the earth, lay like dead. The rest was not long; between one and two the bugles called and the regiments were again in motion. A courier had come from Jackson. "General Winder, you will press forward."

Silent, with long, steady, swinging tread, the Stonewall moved up the Valley. Before it, pale, undulating, mysterious beneath the stars, ran the turnpike, the wonderful Valley road, the highway that had grown familiar to the army as its hand. The Army of the Valley endowed the Valley pike with personality. They spoke of it as "her." They blamed her for mud and dust, for shadeless, waterless stretches, for a habit she was acquiring of furrows and worn places, for the aid which she occasionally gave to hostile armies, for the hills which she presented, for the difficulties of her bordering stone walls when troops must be deployed, for the weeds and nettles, thistles, and briars, with which she had a trick of decking her sides, for her length. "You kin march most to Kingdom Come on this here old road!" for the heat of the sun, the chill of the frost, the strength of the blast. In blander moods they caressed her name. "Wish I could see the old pike once more!"—"Ain't any road in the world like the Valley pike, and never was! She never behaved herself like this damned out-of-corduroy-into-mud-hole, bayonet-narrow, drunken, zigzag, world's-end-and-no-to-morrow cow track!"

It was not only the road. All nature had new aspects for the Confederate soldier; day by day a deeper shade of personality. So much of him was farmer that he was no stranger to the encampment of the earth. He was weather-wise, knew the soil, named the trees, could orientate himself, had a fighting knowledge, too, of blight and drouth, hail, frost, high wind, flood, too little and too much of sun fire. Probably he had thought that he knew all that was to be told. When he volunteered it was not with the expectation of learning any other manual than that of arms. As is generally the case, he learned that what he expected was but a mask for what he did not expect. He learned other manuals, among them that of earth, air, fire, and water. His ideas of the four underwent modification. First of all he learned that they were combatants, active participants in the warfare which he had thought a matter only of armies clad in blue and armies clad in grey. Apparently nothing was passive, nothing neutral. Bewilderingly, also, nothing was of a steadfast faith. Sun, moon, darkness and light, heat and cold, snow, rain, mud, dust, mountain, forest, hill, dale, stream, bridge, road, wall, house, hay-rick, dew, mist, storm, everything!—they fought first on one side then on the other. Sometimes they did this in rapid succession, sometimes they seemed to fight on both sides at once; the only attitude they never took was one immaterial to the business in hand. Moreover they were vitally for or against the individual soldier; now his friend, now his foe, now flattering, caressing, bringing gifts, now snatching away, digging pitfalls, working wreck and ruin. They were stronger than he, strong and capricious beyond all reckoning. Sometimes he loved these powers; sometimes he cursed them. Indifference, only, was gone. He and they were alike sentient, active, conscious, inextricably mingled.

To-night the pike was cool and hard. There were clouds above, but not heavy; streams of stars ran between. To either side of the road lay fields of wheat, of clover, of corn, banded and broken by shadowy forest. Massanutton loomed ahead. There was a wind blowing. Together with the sound of marching feet, the jingle of accoutrements, the striking of the horses' hoofs against loose stones, the heavy noise of the guns in the rear, it filled the night like the roar of a distant cataract. The men marched along without speech; now and then a terse order, nothing more. The main army was before them at Strasburg; they must catch up. To the west, somewhat near at hand in the darkness, would be lying Frémont. Somewhere in the darkness to the east was Shields. Their junction was unmade, Stonewall Jackson and his army passing between the upper and the nether millstone which should have joined to crush.

The stars began to pale, the east to redden. Faintly, faintly the swell and roll of the earth gathered colour. A cock crew from some distant farmhouse. The Stonewall swung on, the 65th leading, its colonel, Richard Cleave, at its head. The regiment liked to see him there; it loved him well and obeyed him well, and he in his turn would have died for his men. Undoubtedly he was responsible for much of the regiment's tone and temper. It was good stuff in the beginning, but something of its firm modelling was due to the man now riding Dundee at its head. The 65th was acquiring a reputation, and that in a brigade whose deeds had been ringing, like a great bell, sonorously through the land. "The good conduct of the 65th—" "The 65th, reliable always—" "The 65th with its accustomed courage—" "The disciplined, intelligent, and courageous 65th—" "The gallantry of the 65th—"

The light strengthened; pickets were reached. They belonged to Taylor's Brigade, lying in the woods to either side of the pike. The Stonewall passed them, still figures, against the dawn. Ahead lay Strasburg, its church spires silver-slender in the morning air. Later, as the sun pushed a red rim above the hills, the brigade stacked arms in a fair green meadow. Between it and the town lay Taliaferro. Elzey and Campbell were in the fields to the east. General Jackson and his staff occupied a knoll just above the road.

The Stonewall fell to getting breakfast—big tin cups of scalding coffee! sugar! fresh meat! double allowance of meal! They broiled the meat on sharpened sticks, using the skillets for batter bread; they grinned at the sugar before they dropped it in, they purred over the coffee. Mingling with the entrancing odours was the consciousness of having marched well, fought well, deserved well. Down the pike, where Taylor kept the rear, burst a rattle of musketry. The Stonewall scrambled to its feet. "What's that? Darn it all! the Virginia Reel's beginning!" An officer hurried by. "Sit down, boys. It's just a minuet—reconnoissance of Frémont and Dick Taylor! It's all right. Those Louisianians are damned good dancers!" A courier quitting the knoll above the pike gave further information. "Skirmish back there, near the Capon road. Just a feeler of Frémont's—his army's three miles over there in the woods. Old Dick's with General Taylor. Don't need your help, boys—thank you all the same! Frémont won't attack in force. Old Jack says so—sitting up there on a hickory stump reading the Book of Kings!"