A Passionate Girl (38 page)

“I came with the doctors, to be of some service.”

“You're goin' right back,” he said.

“That will take some doing,” I said. “It's a long walk to that ferry, and you'll have to carry me every inch.”

“As a physician, I would advise against such strenuous exercise on a hot day in June,” Tom Gallaher said.

“Didn't you know I forbade Margaret to come?” John O'Neil said.

“No,” I said. “I'm also here to tell you the bad news. The river is shut tight.”

I described the tugs being manned by seamen from the
Michigan.
Their faces fell. They forgot about sending me back. Dan strode up and down, cursing under his breath for a full minute. The colonels looked equally undone.

“We must do something with the men we have,” John O'Neil said. “Let's consider our best move.”

He called them back to a study of the map. “There's one enemy column moving up from Port Colborne,” he said, pointing to that city on the shore of Lake Erie. “And another moving up from Chippewa on our other flank. The maxim for us is to fight them separately before they can meet and overwhelm us with sheer numbers.”

“Colborne is the lighter column, and they don't have artillery,” Dan said.

“Let that be our first opponent,” O'Neil said.

In that moment, I glimpsed the inner secret of the art of war, the steady calm of a born soldier. Panic and hysteria ebbed from me, and from everyone else in the room. No matter what else happened, with John O'Neil in command our expedition would not end in shameful surrender.

He turned to the doctors and me. “Where will you set up your hospital?” he asked.

“I would prefer to use a building in town, near the ferry,” Dr. Donnelly said. “Perhaps the post office. I paid a visit to Fort Erie last week and made a pretty careful survey of the place.”

“Fine,” O'Neil said. He scribbled an order to Captain Hennessy, instructing him to detach a dozen men to help Donnelly set up an operating room and commandeer cots and mattresses from nearby houses.

“Have any of our medical supplies gotten over?” Dr. Donnelly asked.

O'Neil sent for another officer, Major John Canty, a fat, perspiring man. Canty shook his head. “Not so much as a swallow of opium,” he said.

“We'll imitate your example, General,” Dr. Donnelly said, “and do the best with what we have.”

“Good. Say nothing about the river being closed. It might panic the men.”

We nodded our acquiescence and returned to town, where Captain Hennessy quickly obeyed O'Neil's order. We soon had a half dozen strapping fellows clearing counters and tables from the post office. Another set went with me along the main street in search of bedding and sheets for bandages. The items were usually surrendered without opposition, although glares of enmity often accompanied the process. The size of my escorts and the guns in their hands were very conducive to cooperation. Only at one house—where I least expected it—did I get backtalk.

Fat, red-faced Teresa O'Brien, wife of James O'Brien, according to the name on the door, exploded when I asked her to surrender her mattresses and sheets. “Isn't it enough that you've taken me husband prisoner to hunt up food for yez, now y'want me furniture?” she bawled.

“It's for the cause of Ireland and to ease the suffering of wounded men,” I said.

“You're daft, the whole lot of you,” she yelled. “Ireland's three thousand miles away across the ocean. We've left the whole bloody mess behind us with the help of God, and now you've brought it to our very door. You'll ruin us all. When the regulars are finished thrashin' yez they'll hang poor Jimmy, and him the father of two babes.”

She slammed the door in our faces. The men were for smashing in and taking what we pleased, but I decided to let her go unpunished. Though I said nothing to the men, and scarcely admitted it to myself then, there was truth in her bawling.

The doctors and I dined that night in the house of the mayor of Fort Erie, Dr. Kempson. He and Dr. Donnelly were well acquainted. They discussed the pros and cons of our expedition with the polite demeanor of professional men. Dr. Kempson maintained that our foray made no sense, because Canada was only nominally part of England. It was as much a separate country as America; British rule was more theoretical than actual. Because men had been wronged in their own country by a powerful enemy, it gave them no right in invade a third country, which had had nothing to do with inflicting the wrongs. Dr. Donnelly maintained that Canada was as much a part of England as Scotland and Wales, and we had every right to be where we were.

After supper, I walked out to Newbigging's farm to see Dan. I wanted to put my arms around him at least, before tomorrow's day of battle dawned. But I was dismayed to discover that the fields where the Fenians had been so numerous were empty. The army had already begun its march toward Port Colborne. John O'Neil had decided it was wiser to go part of the way in the coolness of the night, rather than in the morning heat. Only Lieutenant Colonel Bailey of the Buffalo regiment and about fifty men were still there. They were engaged in a sad business. They were taking the surplus rifles—a thousand of them—from wagons and smashing them against the trees. The men had deadly faces. They knew what it meant—there was no hope of reinforcements. John O'Neil had ordered them to do the destruction after the army left, to keep the secret.

I watched, heartsick, until the last gun was flung to the ground, its stock splintered, its barrel bent. Bailey took a letter from his inner pocket. “I was going to leave this with Mr. Newbigging, but he's no friend of our cause. It has some sentiments in it that might be misinterpreted. Give it to my wife, if it comes to the worst for me.”

I promised him it was in safe hands. He mounted his horse and rode off into the deepening twilight. Back at Dr. Kempson's house, Dr. Tom Gallaher was waiting on the dark porch for me.

“I'm leaving tomorrow at 4:00
A.M.
with a medical wagon to join the army. Can you handle a two-horse team?

“Of course. I grew up on a farm.”

“It could be dangerous. But I think you're like me. You enjoy danger.”

“Not really,” I said, “but I'll come.”

He knocked softly on my bedroom door at 4:00
A.M.
It was already dawn. The June nights are surprisingly short in northern New York and Canada. The wagon was waiting beside the house; in it were some medical supplies, mostly opium, procured from Dr. Kempson and the Fort Erie pharmacy. We rode along the river road for some four miles and met no fewer than fifty or sixty Fenians. They shambled past, declining to look us in the face.

“Stragglers,” Tom Gallaher said. “Donnelly told me to expect them. There's some before every battle.”

“But we need every man,” I said, glaring at them.

“Better they run now than when the shooting starts. They might panic everyone,” Gallaher said.

We swung west as the sun began to rise and jounced for several more miles through open, thinly wooded country. At length we struck a rail line and followed it on a parallel road that ran along a ridge. Rounding a bend, we caught sight of our army on the road a half mile ahead of us. We persuaded our two tired horses to go a little faster and soon reached the rear of the column. Up ahead we could see O'Neil and the other colonels, all in Union blue, on horseback. As we watched, Dan and two other horsemen came racing up to them. Dan waving his wide tan hat to whip his horse. They reined up and reported urgent news to O'Neil, pointing to the west.

O'Neil turned and shouted an order to the column, which quickened its pace. Dan rode down the line of march to us. He glared at me. “I knew you'd get out here,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Why did you bring her?” he said to Gallaher. “Don't you have any brains at all?”

Dan wheeled and galloped away. “I knew love was blind,” Gallaher said. “Now I see it is also deaf and dumb.”

“Have you ever been in love?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Bad for the digestion.”

The Fenians had been marching parallel to the river as well as the railroad. Ahead lay a crossroad that ran into their route at right angles. In the southeast corner of the intersection stood a fine brick farmhouse with a barn and other outbuildings. From the crossroad, pastureland sloped gradually for a half mile, broken by several fences. On the left as we faced this open ground was a lower road also roughly parallel to the river. The crossroad was really the crest of a ridge, and under John O'Neil's direction the Fenians moved along it to form a battle line. Several companies took up positions around the farm and in a grove of trees beyond it. There was a ditch running along the road, fringed with trees and shrubs. The men pulled down a fence on the opposite side of the road and made
A
-shaped rifle pits with the rails, jamming loose stones between them.

As they worked, we heard the sound of a train engine to the west, then a clear, unmistakable bugle call. The enemy were on the scene. They had come by rail from Port Colborne to the nearby village of Ridgeway. Several dozen of our men emerged from a grove of maple trees on the far left of our battle line and ran swiftly across the fields in that direction to vanish into a thicket of pines. Dan rode up to us and ordered Gallaher to get the medical wagon and me behind the brick house.

“Where are they going?” I asked, pointing to the running men. I wondered if they were more deserters.

“Skirmishers,” Dan said. “We're goin' to try to tease them into a nice little trap here.”

Even my unmilitary eyes could see the position was well chosen. We were largely invisible to the enemy, who would have to advance across open fields to reach us. For another minute, all remained perfectly still. There were only the sounds of summer, birds twittering, a faint breeze stirring the topmost branches of the tress. The day was growing very hot.

Then came the crack of a gun, followed by another, and another. In an instant it was followed by the rolling crash of a dozen guns, joined by the staccato cracks of so many more that they became a continuous thunder. Still there was not a sign of a man in the fields between us and the pine trees, or on the road that ran along the edge of the fields about three hundred yards below us on the sloping ridge. Dan sat quietly on his horse, the battle glow gleaming darkly on his somber face. “Heavy skirmishin',” he said.

I thought of how many other times he had heard the sound of those guns and seen his friends falling before their murderous mouths. If he thought about it, he gave no sign.

For twenty minutes the heavy firing continued. Then the first of our skirmishers appeared, running in and out among the trees by the lower road. Others burst from the pine trees and raced across the pastures to crouch behind fences and single trees for another shot. Suddenly the enemy was there, an explosion of brilliant red against the green and brown and yellow landscape. From the lower road to the edge of the pasture directly opposite us they formed a long swaying yelling line. They advanced erratically, pausing to fire, then whooping and running forward again. Our skirmishers waited until they were climbing over a fence to return their fire and retreat once more. Twice I saw a Redcoat clutch his chest and fall.

A tremendous crash of riflery erupted from the grove of maple trees at the far left of our line. The red line opposite them wavered, recoiled; two or three men dropped, but they rallied, and squads of them went racing to the right to get around the flank of that position.

“I don't like this,” Dan said. “They're fightin' like veterans.”

He rode to the center of our line to confer with John O'Neil, then rode back, waved a junior officer to his side, and in a moment detached a half dozen men from the battle line. They followed Dan across the road to where the horses belonging to colonels and lieutenant colonels were tied in a grove of trees. Dan's men mounted these and rode rapidly off to the north.

Before I could wonder where they were going, much less ask, the men all around us opened fire. I thought my head would split and my eyes spring from my head, the noise was so tremendous. An acrid haze of gunsmoke swirled over the field, in some places so thick the Canadians appeared like ghosts through it. Up and down the whole battle line, the firing became universal. The Canadians returned it with a vengeance and came on, cheering and shouting. Bullets hummed all around us, but most of them were high, clipping twigs and leaves from the trees above us. A few whizzed close enough to make me crouch behind a brick wall, but Dr. Gallaher stood calmly in the open, taking his own pulse. He later explained that he was trying to determine scientifically whether he was a hero or a coward.

Suddenly the red line halted, and there was a loud bugle call. Men pointed to the north, and we heard someone shout, “Cavalry.” They scampered back a few hundred feet and began trying to form squares, the standard formation for infantry attacked by horsemen. Now I knew where Dan had gone and what was about to happen.

“Soldiers of Ireland,” John O'Neil roared. “Charge.”

Out of the rifle pits and from behind the trees and fences the Fenians sprang. At their head raced a lad carrying a great green flag. Bayonets flashed in the sun. They stopped, fired a volley into the Canadian squares, and resumed the charge, roaring and yelling like men possessed. The howl of the Union veterans mingled with the shrill
yi-yi-yi
of the Confederate yell. Redcoats toppled right and left. Everywhere the squares buckled. Dan and his half dozen horsemen appeared on their northern flank firing pistols and rifles into them. A wild bugle call and the squares dissolved. But their last volley brought down the lad carrying the green flag when he was within ten yards of them. Behind them came his roaring fellows. A few Canadians tried to make a stand and were swiftly dispatched. The rest ran.