Spake As a Dragon

Spake as a Dragon

By Larry Hunt

Copyright 2014 Larry Hunt

Cover by Laura Shinn

ISBN: 9781310730276

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Without
limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise)
without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner
and the above publisher of this book.

Spake as a
Dragon
is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, media, and incidents are either the product of
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. In some
instances actual facts and names are interspersed within the
fictional account. The author acknowledges the trademarked status
and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of
fiction, which have been used without permission. Further note:
this IS a work of fiction; it is not intended for use by serious
researchers. The author has taken liberty with names – leaving some
as history has named, changing others, altered places, events and
sequences of event. In short, the author made the historical events
fit the fictional storyline.

Chapter One

The First Day

Morning came early this summer day in
July 1863; the sun appeared first as yellow, then bright orange,
now it is a bright fiery ball in the eastern sky. The cool air of
the night is beginning to be replaced by the hot, dry air of this
tranquil mid-summer morning. High, white cumulus clouds float
gently across the Azure blue sky.

The line of gray-clad, rag-tag
assortment of uniformed, Southern soldiers trudge along, mostly
barefoot, as quietly as possible through the sparse hardwood trees
of southeast Pennsylvania. Southern cavalrymen mounted on tired,
war-weary horses lumbers in front of the haggard Confederate
infantry.

Sergeant Robert Steven Scarburg of E
Company, 48
^th
Alabama Infantry, is part of the advancing
rebel army this beautiful morning. As he walks along, he thinks of
home, and especially his beautiful wife Malinda left with his other
children on their farm in Alabama.

Suddenly his reverie is broken. Luke,
marching on his right turns his head and asks, “Father, do you
believe a battle is near?”

“
Yes son, I think before
the sun has set today we will have ‘seen the elephant.’”

“
Are you afraid Father?”
Matthew asks from the opposite side, “about the upcoming battle...
I mean when we ‘see the elephant?’”

Robert is scared, not for his life
alone, for he is not new to battle. He had, many years earlier,
been a participant to the blood, guts and other ugliness of the
unbearable horror of man’s inhumanity to each other known simply as
– War! He now fears for his two eldest sons, Luke and Matthew, both
of who are with him in this same confederate infantry company. All
three joined up in the spring of 1862 in Guntersville, a small
Tennessee River town in northern Alabama. Their enlistment was a
little over a year ago.

Malinda pleaded with them, she even
begged them not to enlist, but Matthew was dead set on enlisting
and had convinced Luke to go along too, Robert would not let his
sons venture into the War of Southern Independence alone. As an old
ex-soldier himself he believed he could best oversee his son’s
lives as soldiers, and he promised Malinda he would keep their boys
safe.

INDIAN WARS

Many years before enlisting to fight
for the Confederacy, Robert Scarburg had enlisted in the army once
before. He had joined Captain Long’s Company, 5
^th
Battalion, 1
^st
Brigade of the South Carolina Mounted
Volunteers in the fall of 1837. At 23 years old he had ridden out
of the Carolinas along with other young, wet-behind-the-ear,
farmers. They had ‘jined up’ with General Andrew Jackson to go
south and fight the Seminole Indians in what became known as the
Great Seminole Indian War.

The Indian War began with young,
Southern boys; Southern boys full of spit and vinegar thinking they
could ‘whoop’ those ‘Injuns’ in less than a month. They were eager
to fight. They believed they would put them redskins in their
proper place, they ‘wuz’ Americans fighin’ heathens. At nineteen,
immortality shielded young men like a suit of armor. They thought
the specter of death would elude them. However, this day,
twenty-six years later, Sergeant Scarburg is not thinking about
those illustrious days of many years ago, his only thought today is
to make sure he did not break his promise to Malinda. His two sons
must survive ‘seeing the elephant.’

Now at age forty-nine Sergeant
Scarburg, the old man of this Rebel infantry company is embroiled
in yet another clash of arms. It too began with the thought that
these Southern boys could ‘whoop’ those invading damn Yankees. This
war is different, they are not fighting Indians, in some cases it
is a family against family, but the boastings of the youth are
still the same. They believe they could put the Yankees on the run
in less than a month. In fact, they believed one Southern boy was
equal to ten of those sorry Yanks. Some Southern boys were even
afraid the war would end before they had a chance to get into a
fight and kill them a Yankee or two.

These young men walking through the
woods that day are no longer boys with the idle thoughts of their
youth. They have grown up fast. These were men, regardless of their
age, men fighting for the Confederate States of America.

Sergeant Scarburg turns to answer
Matthew’s question, “Yes, I am fearful my son,” he says looking at
Matt, “but we should not be afraid of dying, death will catch up to
us all eventually, today lets hope that if death’s scythe seeks us
out its blow will be quick and merciful. Fear not boys, we have on
the cloak of invincibility, nothing is going to harm us. Let us
just do our duty.”

GENERAL THOMAS JONATHAN
‘STONEWALL’ JACKSON

This is the first actual fight Matthew
has participated in. Upon enlisting he had been assigned to the
staff of General “Stonewall” Jackson. General Jackson had made a
special request to have Robert appointed as his aid, but Robert
tactfully declined his request stating his promise to Malinda to
take care of their sons. Robert knew a staff position with General
Jackson would be safer than the toils and hardships of the common
foot soldier; therefore, Robert recommended his younger son Matthew
to serve in his stead.

Robert realized Matthew was no
fighter; he was the scholar of the family. When not at work on the
farm, Matt generally could be found with his face buried in some
book. Luke, on the other hand was usually in the woods, the sights
of his old musket marking the spot on the whitetails body where the
bullet would hit. Luke seldom ventured away from the house on one
of his deer-hunting trips that he did not return with fresh meat.
Robert’s two boys could not have been so different, Luke the rough
outdoorsman and Matthew the soft-spoken bookworm. Luke is quick to
anger and just as quick to fight, Matt is soft-spoken and more
adept at talking himself out of a tenuous situation. Matthew was at
the South Carolina College when the Confederate government sent out
a call for 18,000 volunteers. The entire student body of the
College voted to leave school to enlist. Matthew returned to
Alabama and was determined to honor his commitment to his
classmates.

Luke takes after his grandfather; tall
and rugged with dark brown hair down to his shoulders and a
haphazard grown of tangled beard at least two to three inches in
length, which gives him the coarse look of a rough western mountain
man. He would be more at home in a bearskin coat than a $30 dollar
suit from Atlanta. Matt’s appearance, on the other hand, must have
come from the other side of the family. He is of medium height,
slightly on the robust side, hated beards and could not tolerate
mustaches. His blond hair was probably the reason, it was thin and
fine, as blond hair tends to be. Such hair, as everyone knows, does
not make for a generous beard.

It was no mere coincidence that
General Jackson requested Robert for assignment to his staff. As
soon as the General was informed of Robert’s enlistment Jackson put
the wheels of the Confederate war machine into motion to have
Robert on his staff. General Jackson and Robert Scarburg were first
cousins!

As a young boy Thomas Jackson’s, or TJ
as he was called back then, after losing both of his parents was
sent to Scarburg Mill to live with his uncle Thomas Scarburg.
Thomas was Robert’s father. TJ’s mother was Thomas and Robert’s
sister.

Although TJ was a few years younger
than Robert, they grew up together playing in and around the Mill
on Mink Creek. TJ was forever playing on the stonewall dam built
across the creek to catch the water for the enormous water wheel.
His uncle Thomas was constantly admonishing young TJ to stay off
the stonewall dam warning, “I believe you like that stonewall dam
more than life itself Thomas Jackson! Someday “Stonewall” Jackson
you are going to find yourself swept up into the blades of that
water wheel!” From that day forward they abandoned the nickname
“TJ”; he was now “Stonewall.”

A couple of months before today’s
approaching battle Stonewall had been killed at the Battle of
Chancellorsville; Matthew requested re-assignment to a line
company, preferably E Company of the 48
^th
Alabama.

His request was granted. Now he was
about to participate in his first battle or ‘see the elephant’ for
the first time, alongside his father Robert and brother
Luke.

THE CORNFIELD

Another smell, a pleasant aroma, the
scent of ripened corn join the smell of sweat from the horses,
un-bathed men, and manure. This tantalizing smell reaches the noses
of the hungry Confederate soldiers as they approach the edge of the
trees. Just beyond the oak, elm and hickory they find a sun-dried
field covered in tall stalks of Yankee corn.

The soft, sweet, roasting ears of
spring have already changed into the ears of hard, dry corn of
summer. Corn the farmer, whose field is on the outskirts of this
small Pennsylvania village, will use to feed his livestock and
family during the coming winter. Some of the corn will be ground at
the local gristmill into cornmeal. However, now many of the ears
are being broken from their stalks, shucked, and eaten hurriedly by
the famished Confederates including Sergeant Scarburg, Luke and
Matthew.

This Regiment of the Army of Northern
Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, is not
expecting any resistance; they are, after all, only looking for
shoes. They have heard shoes can be obtained at this small
crossroads place whose name hardly anyone knows. Although few know
the town’s name, the battle that will take place here over the next
three days will forever burn upon the pages of history. This action
at the junction of five roads will become the high water mark of
the Confederate States of America. It is arguably an avoidable
mistake from which the South will never fully recover.

The date, as recorded in General Lee’s
Daily Log is Wednesday, the First of July in the Year of Our Lord
One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Three.

Despite orders to the contrary by
General Lee, Maj. Gen. Henry Heth, the commander of the
Confederates Third Corps, orders his troops to attack the Union
forces defending the northern side of town. The Union forces open
fire – the bullets whizz over Robert and his two boys head and plow
through the dried stalks of corn.

Sergeant Scarburg stops, shoulders his
musket, and despite being unable to see the enemy fires forward
into the forest of cornstalks. Matthew and Luke, following their
father’s lead, do the same. Occasionally they hear screams of agony
as a bullet finds its mark in someone’s body – is it the enemy? Or
have they fired into their own troops? No one will ever know? Most
never see the target of their blind shooting. By the time, the
rebels emerge from the cornfield the Union troops have retreated
back into town. The Confederates pursue and continue firing at
anything that moves. Street to street fighting pushes the Yankees
south of town where they establish defensive positions on a piece
of ground known locally as Cemetery Ridge. Here the Union soldiers,
under the command of General George Meade, make their
stand.