LVII
GATES OF HELL AND GLORY
The next sun rose fair over the green, rolling, open land, rich inhalf-grown crops of cotton and corn between fence-rows of persimmon andsassafras. Before it was high the eager Callenders were out on a mainroad. Their Mobile boy had left them and given the reins to an old man,a disabled and paroled soldier bound homeward into Vicksburg. Delaysplagued them on every turn. At a cross-road they were compelled to waitfor a large body of infantry, followed by its ordnance wagons, to sweepacross their path with the long, swift stride of men who had marched fortwo years and which changed to a double-quick as they went over ahill-top. Or next they had to draw wildly aside into the zigzags of aworm-fence for a column of galloping cavalry and shroud their heads fromits stifling dust while their driver hung to his mules' heads by thebits. More than once they caught from some gentle rise a backwardglimpse of long thin lines puffing and crackling at each other; oftenerand more and more they heard the far resound of artillery, theshuffling, clattering flight of shell, and their final peal as theyreported back to the guns that had sent them; and once, when the ladiesasked if a certain human note, rarefied by distance, was not thehurrahing of boys on a school-ground, the old man said no, it was "theYanks charging." But never, moving or standing from aides or couriersspurring to front or flank, or from hobbling wounded men or unhurtstragglers footing to the rear, could they gather a word as to Brodnax'sbrigade or Kincaid's Battery.
"Kincaid's Battery hell! You get those ladies out o' this as fast asthem mules can skedaddle."
By and by ambulances and then open wagons began to jolt and tilt pastthem full of ragged, grimy, bloody men wailing and groaning, no oneheeding the entreaties of the three ladies to be taken in as nurses.Near a cross-road before them they saw on a fair farmhouse the yellowflag, and a vehicle or two at its door, yet no load of wounded turnedthat way. Out of it, instead, excited men were hurrying, some lamely,feebly, afoot, others at better speed on rude litters, but all rearwardacross the plowed land. Two women stepped out into a light trap andvanished behind a lane hedge before Constance could call the attentionof her companions.
"Why, Nan, if we didn't _know_ she was in New Orleans I'd stand theworld down that that was Flora!"
There was no time for debate. All at once, in plain sight, right athand, along a mask of young willows in the near left angle of the tworoads, from a double line of gray infantry whose sudden apparition hadstartled Anna and Miranda, rang a long volley. From a fringe of woods onthe far opposite border the foe's artillery pealed, and while theCallenders' mules went into agonies of fright the Federal shells beganto stream and scream across the space and to burst before and over thegray line lying flat in the furrows and darting back fire and death.With their quaking equipage hugging the farther side of the way theveiled ladies leaned out to see, but drew in as a six-mule wagon comingfrom the front at wild speed jounced and tottered by them. It had nearlypassed when with just a touch of hubs it tossed them clear off the road,smashing one of their wheels for good and all. Some one sprang and heldtheir terrified mules and they alighted on a roadside bank countingthemselves already captured.
"Look out, everybody," cried a voice, "here come our own guns, six of'em, like hell to split!" and in a moment the way was cleared.
A minute before this, down the cross-road, southward a quarter of a mileor so, barely out of sight behind fence-rows, the half of a battalion ofartillery had halted in column, awaiting orders. With two or threelesser officers a general, galloping by it from behind, had drawn up ona slight rise at the southwest corner of the fire-swept field, taken oneglance across it and said, "Hilary, can your ladies' men waltz intoaction in the face of those guns?"
"They can dance the figure, General."
"Take them in."
Bartleson, watching, had mounted drivers and cannoneers before Kincaidcould spur near enough to call, "Column, forward!" and turn againtoward the General and the uproar beyond. The column had barelystretched out when, looking back on it as he quickened pace, Hilary'scry was, "Battery, trot, march!" So the six guns had come by thegeneral: first Hilary, sword out, pistols in belt; then his adjutant;then bugler and guidon, and then Bartleson and the boys; horses stridingout--ah, there were the Callenders' own span!--whips cracking,carriages thumping and rumbling, guns powder-blackened and brown, theirwheels, trails, and limbers chipped and bitten, and their own bronzepock-pitted by the flying iron and lead of other fights, and the heroesin saddle and on chests--with faces as war-worn as the wood and metaland brute life under them--cheering as they passed. Six clouds of dustin one was all the limping straggler had seen when he called his gladwarning, for a tall hedge lined half the cross-road up which thewhirlwind came; but a hundred yards or so short of the main way thewhole battery, still shunning the field because of spongy ground, sweptinto full view at a furious gallop. Yet only as a single mass was itobserved, and despite all its thunder of wheels was seen only, notheard. Around the Callenders was a blindfold of dust and vehicles, ofshouting and smoke, and out in the field the roar of musketry andhowling and bursting of shell. Even Flora, in her ambulance close beyondboth roads, watching for the return of a galloping messenger and seeingHilary swing round into the highway, low bent over his charger at fullrun, knew him only as he vanished down it hidden by the tempest ofhoofs, wheels, and bronze that whirled after him.
At Anna's side among the rearing, trembling teams a mounted officer, asurgeon, Flora's messenger, was commanding and imploring her to followConstance and Miranda into the wagon which had wrecked their conveyance.And so, alas! all but trampling her down, yet unseeing and unseen thoughwith her in every leap of his heart, he who despite her own prayers wasmore to her than a country's cause or a city's deliverance flashed by,while in the dust and thunder of the human avalanche that followed shestood asking whose battery was this and with drowned voice crying, asshe stared spell-bound, "Oh, God! is it only Bartleson's? Oh, God ofmercy! where is Hilary Kincaid?" A storm of shell burst directlyoverhead. Men and beasts in the whirling battery, and men and beastsclose about her wailed, groaned, fell. Anna was tossed into the wagon,the plunging guns, dragging their stricken horses, swept out across thefield, the riot of teams, many with traces cut, whipped madly away, andstill, thrown about furiously in the flying wagon, she gazed from herknees and mutely prayed, but saw no Hilary because while she looked fora rider his horse lay fallen.
Never again came there to that band of New Orleans boys such an hour ofglory as this at Champion's Hill. For two years more, by the waninglight of a doomed cause, they fought on, won fame and honor; but forblazing splendor--of daring, skill, fortitude, loss and achievementwhich this purblind world still sees plainest in fraternalslaughter--that was the mightiest hour, the mightiest ten minutes, everspent, from 'Sixty-one to 'Sixty-five, by Kincaid's Battery.
Right into the face of death's hurricane sprang the ladies' man, sweptthe ladies' men. "Battery, trot, walk. Forward into battery! Actionfront!" It was at that word that Kincaid's horse went down; but whilethe pieces trotted round and unlimbered and the Federal guns vomitedtheir fire point-blank and blue skirmishers crackled and the gray linecrackled back, and while lead and iron whined and whistled, and chips,sand and splinters flew, and a dozen boys dropped, the steady voice ofBartleson gave directions to each piece by number, for "solid shot," or"case" or "double canister." Only one great blast the foe's artillerygot in while their opponents loaded, and then, with roar and smoke as ifthe earth had burst, Kincaid's Battery answered like the sweep of ascythe. Ah, what a harvest! Instantly the guns were wrapped in their ownwhite cloud, but, as at Shiloh, they were pointed again, again and againby the ruts of their recoil, Kincaid and Bartleson each pointing one asits nine men dwindled to five and to four, and in ten minutes nothingmore was to be done but let the gray line through with fixed bayonetswhile Charlie, using one of Hilary's worn-out quips, stood on RoaringBetsy's trunnion-plates and cursed out to the shattered foe, "Bricks,lime and sand always on hand!--,--,--!"
; Yet this was but a small part of the day's fight, and Champion's Hillwas a lost battle. Next day the carnage was on Baker's Creek and at BigBlack Bridge, and on the next Vicksburg was invested.
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