by Ralph Peters
“General Ulysses S. Grant’s private stock,” he explained. “Finest cigars in this here country, North or South. ‘An excellent mix of tobaccos.’” Among his own people, he did not affect the toadying minstrel-show talk that even Grant preferred.
The preacher accepted the cigar, but as Bill produced a match to light his own smoke, the old man said, “Shouldn’t we pray first, Cap’n Bill? For the peace of the Lord to descend upon this land, upon this blighted Babylon of our exile, this bleeding Egypt?”
“Don’t you pray for peace to come too soon,” Bill told him.
September 18, 3:30 p.m.
Martinsburg, West Virginia
“You men are drunk,” Early said. He spit tobacco juice at Gordon’s feet.
Beyond the storefront awning, rain slopped the street. Wet uniforms clung.
“Some of them are,” Gordon said. “I’m seeing to it.”
“No goddamned discipline,” Early muttered. “I didn’t march them up here for some Roman orgy.”
“No,” Gordon said. “Not for a Roman orgy.”
Sandie Pendleton and Hennie Douglas, an aide of Early’s, watched from a corner of the boarded walkway, earnestly silent. Gordon stood alone. He had already sent off his entire staff to gather up his men and prepare them to march.
“Damn you, John Gordon. Don’t you get superior with me, up on your goddamned high horse. You were ordered to rip up the B and O, not turn your rabble loose.”
“Work’s done. That railroad won’t be running again for some time.”
Early looked at him with a narrow-of-eye intensity that approximated hatred. The army commander’s beard was particularly filthy with tobacco slop, despite the rain that had soaked them all for hours. Gordon had once overheard a soldier describe that beard as looking like somebody with the trots had shit all over it.
“Well, you just do what I told you,” Early snarled. “God almighty, I never want to see another spectacle like the one I saw this day. Soldiers drunk before noon. I should shoot half of them.” He spit again, into the rain. “You march it off ’em, Gordon. Get ’em on down to Bunker Hill, rest ’em just enough, then you make Stephenson’s Depot by first light. Or you may not have a damned division, hear?”
Gordon held his tongue, drew himself up formally and saluted. The two men glowered at each other, on the outs again. Gordon wondered if the formula for their discord could be found in Newton’s laws. It just seemed that inevitable.
Early turned and stomped off through the street mud, leaving problems great and small behind him. Yes, discipline had broken down. Especially in Gordon’s old Georgia Brigade, his dependables, the men he had once called his “Myrmidons.” The fighting on the Monocacy had ravaged them, snapping some thin twig deep in the men, something hidden. The casualty list bore most of the blame, of course. And the matter of leadership, with so many officers dead or gone to hospital. Clem Evans was on his way back, maybe even in Richmond by now, and Clem was sorely needed. He counted on Clem to take the brigade in hand once he resumed command.
The Louisiana men were a problem, too. No doubt the Virginia Brigade would take its turn. The campaign season, long and uninterrupted, had worn everyone down, from the slaughter in the Wilderness to this forlorn street.
Yes, the drunkenness was inexcusable. It had infuriated Gordon, too, although it wasn’t so stark a blight as the plague described by Early. Someone had gotten into a reserve of whiskey early that morning, even before the columns reached the goal of their raid. As for Martinsburg, it was one of the few Lower Valley towns known for Union sentiment. The men had not been inclined to show restraint.
As Douglas and Pendleton moved to follow their master, Gordon said, “Hold on there, Sandie. Wait a minute, son.”
Reluctantly, Pendleton halted. Douglas continued, striding off as quickly as a boy escaping a spanking.
“What’s going on?” Gordon demanded.
“He just learned about Grant. Meeting Sheridan yesterday.”
“Rumor’s been making the rounds of this town all day.”
“Well, he didn’t hear any rumor. He got it from a Yankee telegraph message.”
Gordon hooked the corner of his mouth. “And now he’s worried.”
“That’s about it. He’s ordered General Rodes to hurry back toward Winchester. He expects you to make haste, too.”
“And make haste we shall,” Gordon said, crossing his arms. “Didn’t need two full divisions to tear up some railroad tracks in the first place.” He curled his mouth again. “General Early still convinced that Sheridan’s got no fight in him?”
Pendleton paused. “He feels Sheridan may be deficient … in certain aspects of leadership. But Grant showing up…”
Gordon shook his head. The rain remained steady, unlike a number of his soldiers this day. “With Anderson and Kershaw gone, Sheridan has us two or better to one. At least, that’s my reckoning. Doesn’t take an excess of courage to strike with that kind of odds.”
“No, sir.”
“And you realize we’re all that stands between those Yankees and many a thousand hearth and home. After Chambersburg.”
“Chambersburg was almost two months ago. The Yankees haven’t done—”
“Sandie, why do you think they slapped together a new army just for the Valley? Biggest force they’ve ever sent out this way? And why do you think Grant picked his own pup to command it?” Gordon sighed. “They haven’t forgotten, Sandie.”
“I don’t think General Early really expected McCausland to burn the town. I really don’t. He expected them to pay up, the way every other town has. McCausland exceeded his—”
“No. He carried out his orders to the letter. I was in the tent.”
“But the general didn’t really mean—”
“Then he shouldn’t have said it. Don’t make excuses for him, Sandie. Not about this. Loyalty has its limits.” Gordon lifted his sodden hat and sleeked back his hair. “Burn down a fat Dutch town in Pennsylvania, and, Lord help us, Atlanta’s only the start.” He reset his hat. “We didn’t give them a cause. We gave them an excuse.”
“Well, they’ll have to fight their way through us.”
“If they don’t start chomping on us, bits and pieces.”
“General Early didn’t expect Grant to come scratching around.”
“Expect the unexpected. As for Sheridan, he may not have been a lion since he took command, but he hasn’t done badly, either. He’s been feeling us, getting his bearings. Hasn’t made one significant mistake, he’s no Sigel or Hunter. And their cavalry scares the hell out of me. Wouldn’t want to be looking the wrong way. Just because I had a bee in my bonnet. Understand?”
Pendleton nodded.
“All right, I’ve had my say. Let’s hope Sheridan’s taking a day of rest this splendid Sunday. Any word on Clem Evans?”
“No, sir.”
Profoundly disheveled, a soldier stumbled down the street, dragging his rifle. He sang with bursts of power, but the melody and words were unknown to man.
“Don’t worry,” Gordon said. As if to himself. “They’ll fight. They’ll fight well enough.”
“Anything else, sir?”
Gordon smiled. One of his Ulysses smiles. “General Early still grumbling about Mrs. Gordon’s presence in Winchester?”
Made uncomfortable, Pendleton said, “Not so much, sir. But you know how moods take him. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“Well, he knows that you and I—”
“Enjoy splendid relations,” Gordon helped him along. “A shared sense of honor. Between gentlemen. What did General Early have to say? Regarding Mrs. Gordon?”
Pendleton looked into the rain, as if counting the drops. “He … did hope I might persuade you … to send Mrs. Gordon back to Richmond. You know how he feels about women around the army.”
Summoning a practiced grin, Gordon took the young man by the shoulder. “Well now, son … if you can persuade Mrs. Gordon to retreat, God bl
ess you. I can’t.”
The soldier braying his nonsense song paused across the street to serenade them. And Gordon lost his temper, appalling himself even as he snapped at Pendleton, who surely would be classed among the innocents.
“Damn Early to blazes! Damn the man! You know about his … his trollop? For want of a harsher word? Surely, you do. Everybody knows about his bitch. Man keeps a poor-white woman in a shack up the hill from the town he calls his home, fathers three or four brats on her, then rants and raves like old King Lear, ‘beneath is all the fiends.’ Looking down on honest women as if they’re tavern whores.” He grunted. “At least, we had the decency to marry.”
In a simmering voice, Gordon added, “Men have needs, and women have theirs, too, don’t think they don’t. No sense pretending otherwise. Wedlock’s all about filling a woman’s belly, not filling up teacups. But those vows keep things decent in society, they keep us all safe.” He shook his head. “Take life’s pleasures, surely, and thank the Lord. But don’t be a damned hypocrite.” Folding his arms, he concluded, “I never have cared for furtiveness in a man.”
The singing soldier flopped on his rear in the mud, and quiet prevailed. The rain eased sharply and the gray sky brightened.
After a moment, Pendleton whispered, “Yes, sir.” The boy had gone pale—deathly pale—which mystified Gordon.
“Oh, you go on now, get along,” Gordon told him. “I’ll get this noble division of mine on the march.”
Sliding lower into the mud of the street, the soldier attempted another musical foray.
“And I’m going to start by lifting that bastard up by his unwashed ears,” Gordon declared.
He plunged into the fading drizzle, straight of back and hard of mien, but thinking, helplessly, of his wife, excited by his own words about desire. At that moment, he would have walked into whatever parlor full of clucking hens he found her in, pulled her out into the hallway, pushed up her skirt, and taken her right there against the wall. And Fanny would’ve wanted it just as badly.
A rainbow graced the sky above the town. Gordon didn’t trust it.
September 18, 6:00 p.m.
Clifton Manor, Berryville, Virginia
Sheridan stood in the plantation’s muddy garden, talking to Crook and avoiding the mansion’s interior. His quartermaster had selected the place for the army’s headquarters, citing its central location between the corps, but comfort doubtless had been the man’s concern. Comfort, and a not-yet-depleted cellar.
Some of the bottles had been put to good use on the newspapermen who haunted the army’s rear, and Sheridan saw that as no small advantage: The general who failed to flatter and court the scribblers was a fool. But nothing else about Clifton Manor pleased him. Southern grandeur, even tattered, repelled him. Too much for his mick blood, he told himself. All the pretensions of the Anglo-Irish, but without the frankness of their greed and bigotry. Here, filth and iniquity dressed in frills.
The South was in need of a lesson, and now the South would learn.
As for that Irish blood of his, he talked it up when it suited him but was not convinced it mattered. His immigrant parents insisted—swore—that he had been born in Albany on their long plod to Ohio, but a hard remark he’d overheard during one of his parents’ all-too-frequent squabbles implied that he had arrived mid-passage, somewhere upon the Atlantic. His father had cried that the blighted brat should have been drowned at once, instead of becoming an anchor around a man’s neck, worse than a wife. Complicating his nativity, his mother once spoke carelessly of a County Cavan birth. The uncertainty annoyed Sheridan, but left him free to choose his own allegiance. And he chose not only the United States, but their Northern half and Ohio, a land of industrious men and sturdy women, the West, the future.
Built on crown grants and nigger blood, the fine houses of Virginia were sordid, proclaiming the pride of dissolute, violent men who never did a day of honest work, the men who’d made this bitter, brutal war. The mansion behind him brought out the peasant vandal in his soul—his people were not of the better breed of Sheridans—and he would as soon have put a torch to its walls as sleep within them.
But the man who meant to master an army had first to master himself. And all else had gone right on this sainted Sunday, with one stroke of luck falling hard upon the other. He swam back up to a surface of good cheer.
“Buck up, George,” Sheridan told his old friend from the Indian frontier. “If you don’t get into the fight tomorrow, we’ll still have to finish the remnants of Early’s army. I’ll let your boys lead the infantry pursuit, right behind the cavalry.” He grinned and lit a fresh cigar. “Glory enough for all, and some to spare.”
Hands clasped behind his back and shoulders a trifle bent, Brevet Major General George Crook said, “It’s not about glory, Phil. You know me better than that.”
Exhaling, Sheridan asked, “Then why the mope?”
Crook looked down the plantation’s lane to the country road beyond. His fellow corps commanders were still visible, though barely, trailed by staff men and aides as they rode back to town. “I didn’t want to fuss in front of the others … but I’m troubled by the plan, the changes. You’re putting a cavalry division and two full corps on a narrow road through a mile-long ravine.” He smiled, not happily. “Local people even call it a ‘canyon.’”
“They don’t know canyons.”
“Maybe not. But even if my corps never crosses the Opequon, even without my boys, you’re still putting a cavalry division and five infantry divisions on a single road. That’s a lot of camels through the eye of a pretty small needle.” He straightened his back. “You’d brace the staff man who suggested that.”
Sheridan tapped his cigar. Beyond the fields and tented camps, a brilliant sunset promised a perfect morning. Rays gilded puddles left by the afternoon’s showers. The rain clouds had swarmed northwest, where Early, unsuspecting, had marched his men.
“I’ve thought that over,” Sheridan said. “Any soldier would. I expect little resistance, that’s the crux of it. Scout reports are encouraging, the risk’s worth taking. Go straight for the enemy’s heart while he’s got himself unbuttoned, don’t waste time. It’s a covered approach, as well, that’s half the beauty. Cavalry screen along the front for a good ten miles, while the infantry moves in a single column of fours. Surprise the hell out of them.”
“Phil, you’re counting on everything going right.”
“And it will go right.” He tasted the cigar again and winked. “When I saw Grant, the old plan was well enough. But to come back and learn that Early’s marched not one, but two, divisions away from Winchester … with another scattered and only Ramseur left … it’s almost enough to make this sinner believe in Providence.” He grinned. “If I can’t swallow Ramseur whole by nine a.m., tie me up and offer me to the Comanches.”
“Well, I’ll be cheering you on. From the rear of the army.”
Sheridan renewed his grin. “Somebody’s sour, after all. Come on, George. I’m keeping you as my reserve because I can count on you. Let Wright and Emory feast on Ramseur—if Emory’s even needed—and we’ll eat up Early’s other divisions piecemeal. Turn the cavalry loose in a great envelopment, it’s a solid plan.” He reached out and clapped the taller man on the shoulder. “Might send you in for the coup de grâce, we’ll see.”
“Speaking of the cavalry…,” Crook said. Along the lane that had taken the other commanders back to their corps, another troop of horsemen approached the plantation, a gay and glittering bunch, with one golden-locked officer waving a floppy hat and trailing a red scarf. Crook muttered, “When you explain the new plan to them, you’d best speak slowly.”
Sheridan laughed.
In their last moments alone, Crook said, “Just keep that road clear, Phil. Through the ‘canyon.’ Even if the provost marshal has to resort to bayonets.”
Sheridan cast off the stub of the cigar. “I’d say you sound like my mother, but the truth is she never worried about me
much. A hard lot they were, my people.” He reinforced his grin a final time. “We’ll be all right, George. All wagons and impedimenta have been forbidden the road. Until the last of the infantry has passed.”
“Well, may the Devil be with you. I’m off to tend to my boys.” Crook paused. “Has Grant or Halleck—or anybody—decided on my command’s designation yet? Do I still command the Army of West Virginia, or are we the Eighth Corps now?”
Sheridan tut-tutted. “Still the old-Army stickler.… George, I don’t give a damn what you call your outfit. As long as those mountain-creepers of yours can fight.”
The cavalry generals and a bevy of colonels jingled and clanked into the carriage circle before the mansion, laughing and preening, as if they’d intercepted the Champagne wine Sheridan had sent to Berryville for the newspapermen. He’d dispatched a keg of the season’s first oysters, too, along with deft, dishonest hints about the army’s activities. The trick to dealing with newspaper fellows, Phil Sheridan had learned, was to treat them like kings, but keep them in the dark.
Tomorrow, he’d delight them with a victory.
EIGHT
September 19, 2:30 a.m.
Summit Point, east of Opequon Creek
“No,” Rud Hayes told his adjutant, “let them sleep.” With the handle wrapped in his handkerchief, he took up the coffeepot. “I won’t have my men standing in formation, waiting for orders I know won’t come for hours. We’re bringing up the rear, it’ll be a wait.” Yawning, he extended the pot. “Slurp of this fine mud, Russ?”
Dappled by the firelight, young Hastings waved off the coffee. “Just had some of Sergeant Bannister’s brew-up. Open a man’s eyes, I’ll give it that, sir.” He saluted and faded away between the tents, a man in search of a purpose, striving to fill Will McKinley’s shoes.
He’ll do, Hayes thought. Just needs a bit more tempering.
Squatting by the fire, Doc Joe spoke in the bantering tone he reserved for their moments alone. “Never going to make general, going easy on your men, Rud.” He grinned and showed a broken tooth that made him look more a ruffian than a surgeon. “You intend to pass that coffee over here?”