She took a deep breath, prayed yet again for strength, and slowly walked in. He was under the covers, which were pulled down to his waist. -Chest bandaged, the left side soaked red. A trickle of blood frothed his lips. He was breathing raggedly, gasping, each breath another froth of blood.
She knelt down by his side and took his hand. It was cool to the touch, graying, so unlike the warm strong grasp she once knew, the way he held her when they danced, when they walked together beneath the moonlight, the way his hands had so lovingly cupped her face when they kissed for the first time.
"James."
She leaned "forward and whispered. He moaned sofdy, eyes fluttering.
"The morphine," Lacy whispered behind her. "He knows I'm here now," she replied. "James, it's Emily."
His eyes opened. He turned his head slightly, looked at her, and smiled.
She took the handkerchief given to her by the Confederate officer and wiped his lips.
"Emily." It was barely a whisper.
She leaned forward and kissed him.
She had to be strong, she knew that, and though she wanted to collapse, to cry, to just curl up and die with him, she knew she could not.
She stood up and looked at Lacy.
"A favor, Reverend."
"Anything."
"James and I were to be married. In fact, if not for what is happening now, General Grant had promised him a furlough once Vicksburg was taken for him to come to Baltimore so we could be joined."
She looked back down at James.
"We want to be married," she whispered.
"My dear?" It was her mother standing in the doorway.
A look from Emily silenced her mother. She looked at her father, who nodded in agreement.
Lacy hesitated.
"My dear, at this moment? He is drugged and his time approaches."
"You attended General Jackson at his deathbed, did you not?" she asked.
"Yes, miss," Lacy whispered. "And his wife was present?" "Yes."
"Then let General McPherson's wife attend to him." Lacy did not respond. "Marry us."
It was McPherson, eyes open, a smile on his lips. Lacy nodded in response.
"No years together," McPherson whispered, "no wedding night, but still we have a little time, and then we will be together for all eternity."
Forcing back her tears she took James's hand and turned to face the minister.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Near McCausland's Ford 4:15 P.M.
Go, boys, go!" Ord was standing in his stirrups, saber drawn, urging his men on as they ran down the slope on the double, in column by regiments. Shells rained down into the packed ranks, men screaming; at the ford, smoke swirled up from volley after volley blazing from the other side of the Monocacy.
"A splendid fight!" Ord shouted. "A splendid fight. Now drive'em to hell!"
He turned and galloped down to the edge of the creek, violating strict orders from Grant to stay to the rear. He knew the general standing at the edge of town might see him, but he no longer cared. The fury of battle was upon him and he loved every second of it.
An Indiana regiment was in the lead, terrifyingly shredded by a volley delivered from the other bank, but they piled into the river anyhow, regardless of loss, plunging into the thigh-deep waters, pushing forward, men collapsing at every step, to be carried off by the waters.
Overhead was an inferno as Hunt's batteries,, firing at long distance, plowed up the field on the other side of the creek and tried to suppress the dozen rebel batteries up next to a brick farmhouse that overlooked the ford less than a quarter mile away.
The Indiana regiment buckled as it reached midstream and started to give back, boys from Ohio pushing up behind them, gaining another twenty to thirty feet before they, too, started to collapse. Another Ohio regiment pushed in after them, plunging across, and barely gained the muddy bank on the other side. The Union was paying in blood for each foot gained for what was, as their commanding general declared, "a demonstration to fix Lee in place."
On those banks it turned to hand-to-hand fighting, men screaming, cursing, lunging with bayonets. Ohio just barely gained the opposite bank and then the artillery thundered in. The reb infantry gave back, coming out of the willows and ferns that lined the stream, running across the open field, dodging around the exploding shells of Hunt's batteries. As they fell back a terrible inferno erupted, battery after battery lining the hilltop around the McCausland farm opening up, sending down volleys of case shot that exploded over the Monocacy. Any shot that went high detonated or plowed into the ranks of the supporting brigade coming up to join in the assault. Treetops exploded in flames, solid shot slamming into the water threw up geysers thirty feet high pockmarked by the iron and lead balls of case shot slamming into the stream.
Ord, hat off, screamed with fury, urging his men to press in. A courier rode up, the side of his mount dripping blood, the horse limping badly.
"From General Grant, sir!" the courier shouted. "Call it off. Pull back!"
"We have the other bank!" Ord cried.
"You are ordered to call it off, sir!"
Ord reluctandy nodded, shouted for one of his staff to get across the stream, another to order the Second Brigade to turn about and retreat. Buglers began sounding recall throughout the attack.
The first courier into the stream went down, a shell detonating directly over him. Another dashed off, young lieutenants looking for glory were always thus, hoping a general would notice them. He barely made it to the other side, shouting to a regimental commander, and then he, too, pitched out of his saddle.
Within seconds the Ohio regiments on the other side broke and fell back across the stream. The supporting brigade, the men obviously not at all upset about the order to pull back, reversed and started to double-time back up the open slope.
As the last of the Ohio and Indiana regiments came up out of the river bottom, picking up wounded as they retreated, the rebel artillery ceased fire, a taunting cheer rising up from the other side.
"Some demonstration," Ord hissed, as he looked at the hundreds of dead and wounded piled along the riverbank or floating downstream. "I certainly hope Grant is right and this brings about an effect worthy of the lives of these young men.
"Tomorrow, you bastards," he shouted defiantly, and, turning, he retreated with his men.
Baltimore 5:30 P.M.
The last train of the artillery reserve rolled out of the Baltimore depot twenty-four hours behind schedule. Cruickshank wiped the sweat from his brow and looked over at McDougal, who had, pulled out a bottle and was taking a "wee nip," something he tended to do at least twice an hour.
"Useless now to try and move Beauregard," Cruickshank said, "but there're the supplies, hundreds of tons of it. Rations, additional ammunition, evacuation back of the wounded, replacement horses and mules."
"And not a locomotive to be seen," McDougal said with a shrug.
"They'll be back tonight." There was almost a pleading note in Cruickshank's weary voice.
"A few perhaps, but you seem to have forgotten something, General."
"And that is?"
"Wood and coal."
"What do you mean?"
"You have over a hundred locomotives up the line and all snarled together. Their boilers have most likely been cooking away all day. They're short of wood and coal."
"I thought the order was given to send the necessary supplies for them up the line."
"Never got out, what with you rushing about, countermanding orders, then countermandering them again."
"Damn it, you should have kept me informed."
"I did, twice today, don't you remember? But you kept saying, 'Get the guns, up, McDougal, get the guns up.'"
He glared at the man, honestly not sure whether he was telling the truth or not. After two days with barely any sleep it was hard to tell anymore what was said just ten minutes ago.
"I'd say two thousand tons should do the trick," McDougal announced, fin
gers out as if calculating on them. 'That'll be ten of our heavier trains, but we seem short of hopper cars."
"Where the hell are they?"
"A fair number of Robertson's boys rode up on them, General, sir. Don't you remember?"
"No, I don't, damn you," Cruickshank hissed, turning his back on McDougal.
What a simple, stupid, and yet all-too-obvious concern. When he drove supply wagons in Texas before the war, hauling along extra water and grain was a given. If the trains had simply gone up and off-loaded, then come straight back, he would not have a problem now, but many had been stranded up there for over a day, and their crews had undoubtedly kept the boilers lit and steam up.
Of course they'd be running short of fuel by now.
"What is stored along the line?" Cruickshank asked, not looking back.
"What do you mean 'stored'?" McDougal replied. "Fuel, damn it."
"Wood ricks at the stations usually have a couple of cords that local farmers bring in. Coal for some of our newer engines, a few tons at each station. But you got more than a hundred locomotives up there, General, and they're all hungry and thirsty."
McDougal's tone was flat, showing he had enough sense not to rub the general's face in the problem. He knew he could take him on in a good knockdown, and if there had been the slightest hint in his voice, there would have been a fistfight, or better yet knives or pistols, one that had been building for days.
"How many locomotives still in the yard?"
'Three, and all of them are old wheezers."
"Load one of them up with wood and get it up at least to the tunnel and the changeover to a single track."
"Won't haul more than a hundred cord or so."
"I don't care. Just get something up there."
Cruickshank turned to one of his dwindling staff. He had been sending them out on assignments all day and none had yet returned.
"Get a message up to General Lee. Write something down and I'll sign it. Tell him about our fuel problem, and also what you see along the line."
The captain, one of his old drivers, sat down on a barrel and laboriously began to write out the dispatch.
The yard was strangely quiet after the mad bustle of moving out two divisions of infantry and over two hundred artillery pieces. Men who worked for the Baltimore and Ohio were sitting about in the shade, eating their evening meals, laughing and smoking, and somehow he felt that many were looking at him and secretly grinning.
If only Garrett had been cornered into a contract or, better yet, this army had had a trained railroad detachment the way the Yankees did. There were just too many details—and then he inwardly cursed himself, knowing he was trying to justify his own failings.
McDougal was off, shouting for some of his men to warm up one of the three remaining engines, several of them laughing when McDougal called out the number.
"I could pull more with me own hands," a derisive reply came back.
"Just do it, damn ya," McDougal shouted.
The staffer finished writing out the dispatch, Cruickshank cringing a bit as he read it, with all its misspellings, but the content was correct and he signed it.
Cruickshank walked over to McDougal's side.
"Not much to do here, General, until the engines start coming back. If they come back. Why don't you go sleep."
"I think I should stay," Cruickshank replied.
"Don't trust me?"
"No, I don't."
"General, darlin', would any of my lads be so stupid as to get themselves shot now? You have guards all over this place watching their every move. Go back to the company office and get some sleep."
Cruickshank reluctantly nodded in agreement.
"One question first," Cruickshank said.
"And what might that be, General, and if you are asking me if I am sabotaging your plans, of course, the answer is no."
"No, it's about one particular train."
"Which one?"
"This morning, the one for Miss Hoffman. Even though it was pulling troops, you had an extra car on it within minutes, had a good crew on board. It left here without a hitch except for the traffic farther up the line."
McDougal fell silent. After another sip from his bottle he handed it to Cruickshank.
"Wouldn't you have done the same?"
Cruickshank finished the bottle and threw the empty on the tracks, the glass shattering.
He looked at McDougal, nodded, and then went off to find a place to sleep.
Hauling Ferry on the Potomac River Twenty Miles South of Frederick
6:00 PM.
The sharp crackle of carbine fire rippled along the road leading down to the ferry. Winfield Scott Hancock had worried deeply about this moment, for two reasons. First, would they arrive here ahead of any strong Confederate detachments or would they have to fight for possession of the crossing?
It looked to be no more than a company of Confederate cavalry which were already drawing back as his cavalry regiment, escorting the lead boats, had pushed ahead. They had been ordered to try to drive all the rebels off before the first barge arrived, to keep concealed what was going on, but Winfield knew that was an impossible hope.
By midday, on the other side of the Potomac, they had been steadily trailed by Confederate scouts, most likely Mosby's men, who had laid down an occasional harassing fire. For a while they had simply taken to firing on the barges, the men aboard them delighted with the challenge and giving back entire volleys, dropping several of the raiders.
Then Mosby's men had switched tactics, firing on the draft horses pulling the barges, killing or wounding several, which had really set tempers aflare among his men, who thought this was unfair and downright cruel.
Strange how war is, he thought. Killing men is part of the game, but to deliberately shoot horses, except in the heat of battle, is thought unfair and draws howls of protest.
Mosby's men had pushed ahead, crossed the river at Edwards Ferry, and just above it tried to destroy one of the locks, which would have tangled the entire operation. Fortunately, the cavalry escort on his side had second-guessed them and raced ahead, stopping them just in time.
So to think that word had not gone ahead and up to Lee regarding their move was now senseless.
What had worried him more, though, was his own reaction to fire. He had seen it with more than one officer or soldier. A man of courage, or the sublime few, were as calm under fire as they were at a church service, until finally they were hit. They lost a limb, took a bad wound, and something within died, never to return. When again under fire the calm was gone, some broken completely, to be relieved of command or sent back to the rear, old comrades watching their departure with pity and, yes, also a touch of disdain.
His own experience, he knew, would haunt him the rest of his life. It was not the pain at the moment of being wounded. Surprisingly, there had only been numbed shock and deep rage that fate had pulled him out of the fight at Union Mills just when he was needed the most. No, it was what had happened afterward.
The doctor had withdrawn the bullet from his inner thigh just below his crotch and stanched the bleeding that, at first, he thought might kill him. It was later, in Philadelphia, when the wound festered, his leg swelled to twice its normal size, and the heat, the terrible heat.
At that moment he knew he was dying, in fact, inwardly he begged for it to end the agony. The mere touch of a sheet on his leg sending shock waves through him, the morphine dulling the pain, but still it was there. Doctor after doctor would come in and stick probes into the wound to keep searching for something, anything, and the room would spin in circles, and he would break, whimpering for more morphine. He lived for the next injection and prayed for death in between.
Then one doctor struck upon a plan, and when he was told of it, he begged to just be left alone to die, not to be moved, not to endure what was proposed but then relented when his wife asked him to try for life, to stay with her and the children.
They then brought a s
addle into the room, set it up on sawhorses. lifted him naked from his bed and had him sit on the saddle, feet in the stirrups. The doctor then marked where the entry wound touched against the saddle, crawled under the sawhorse, and carefully drilled a hole through the saddle. He was matching up the trajectory of the bullet with how it struck him while he was upright, astride a horse. All the other doctors had probed his wound with him flat on his back, legs spread wide. This one doctor had figured they should put him back into the position he was in at the moment he was struck and perhaps in so doing a probe could find whatever it was that was now killing him. He reasoned that the bullet which had struck him had not creased up the side of the horse, but instead had gone straight through his mount's neck, then into the saddle and finally lodged in his upper thigh.
Several assistants now braced him as he sat in the saddle, feet forced into the stirrups, the mere act of bending his swollen leg a living, burning hell. The doctor was on the floor under him and took a long hooked probe out of his medical bag.
"Be brave, General," the doctor said, and then he slipped the probe through the hole in the saddle and into Hancock's body. Groaning, sweat pouring from his face in the ninety-degree heat, he hung on, gripping the hands of an orderly, struggling not to scream.
"Got it!" the doctor cried, and he pulled the probe out, its hooked blade snagged onto a tenpenny nail, bits of uniform, saddle, and rotting horsehair and flesh.
The wound exploded, decaying flesh and pus cascading out onto the floor, now that the plug within had been removed.
He fainted.
When he awoke the fever was abating, the wound still draining ... and he was alive.
And since that moment the fear had eaten at his heart. Can I stand battle again ? Will terror of facing such an ordeal again unman me? Can I still command?
And there was the other aspect of it. He had ordered the morphine to be stopped the day after the ordeal, but the wound was not healed, perhaps never would be, leaving a suppurating hole in his leg. His doctor had raged with protest when Winfield had told him he had orders to report to Washington.
'Three months from now, maybe," was the reply, "but for God's sake, General, you did your duty. I didn't put you through that agony and save your life just to see you throw it away. Let someone else carry the burden now. You have a loving wife and family to think of."
Never Call Retreat - Civil War 03 Page 27