The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (50 page)

Willis returned to the map, and Bauer suddenly realized there was no joke here, that Willis was serious. Bauer felt a stab of pain at Willis’s words.

“You are my friend, Sammie. Always have been, when we were both privates. Just ’cause you got bars on your shoulders don’t mean we can’t be pals.”

“Don’t get all mushed up, Dutchie. I still like you. You’ve known me longer than anyone in this army. Been through all kinds of hell, you and me. You even won me some money, too, with that good shooting eye of yours. But out there, around the others, you’re just one of the muskets. Hell, you know that already.”

“Then why’d you call me in here?”

“Thought you’d like to know what’s happening, as much as I can tell you. Pretty good stuff, Dutchie. These boys haven’t seen a good fight in a couple months, not since we had to beat tracks away from Chickamauga. But that’s about to change. Thought you oughta know. Hell, thought you’d
want
to know.”

“You’re just telling
me
? You said I was just like the others. Just a musket.”

“Dumb as a walnut. Right now, we’re not around the others. In here, I even let you call me Sammie. You do that out there … well, you know what I’ll have to do.”

“Where’s the fight gonna be? Here?”

“Two walnuts. Of course it’s here. We ain’t marching to Richmond, Dutchie. You heard any artillery yet?”

Bauer turned his head, listened, a soft hiss of rain, a few voices spread across the soggy ground. “No.”

“You will. Pay attention to it.”

“Heckfire, Sammie, we hear artillery every blessed day. They drop some on us, we drop some on them. Ain’t meant nothing so far.”

“You hear me, Private? I’m your company commander. I tell you to listen to artillery, you best listen.” Willis glanced at a small pocket watch, snapped it shut. “About now, I’d say.”

Bauer waited, the silence broken by the strange clucks from the rooster, Bauer captivated by the bizarre sight, the bird poking his beak down through Willis’s blanket. There was a rumble of thunder now, and Willis perked up, stared past Bauer, out through the opening in the tent. The thunder came again, and Bauer knew it was cannon, far in the distance.

“Where’s that coming from?”

“Take a look outside. That big damn mountain.”

“Heck, Sammie, we been throwing shells up there for weeks. They throw ’em right back.” Bauer poked his head out into the heavy mist, thick fog obscuring the heights. “Can’t see a blessed thing anyway. Those guns belong to us, or them?”

“Maybe both of us.” Willis stood now, moved out to the opening in the tent. The rain had slackened, a thick mist covering the camps, dense fog higher up, the outline of the mountain barely visible. “Game’s over, Dutchie. We’re putting more than just iron on that big hill today. Up north of here, they tell me that Sherman’s crossing the river, but nobody wants to talk about just how he’s doing that. If I was a damn general, maybe I’d get to know all the secrets. Doesn’t mean I’d tell you. All I know is that this army’s not sitting still much longer. Keep an eye on that big damn mountain. I guess General Grant’s tired of those rebels waving their damn flags, having the best view. He wants our boys up there doing all that for themselves. General Hooker’s got at least a division on the move this morning, climbing up that way, right up outta that valley you marched through. If this confounded weather will clear, we might get a decent look. But we’re damn sure gonna hear it. Sounds like the fight’s started already. Right on time. Pretty rare for this army.”

Bauer stepped out clear of the tent, Willis close beside him. Most of the men were still huddled at the fires, had heard too much cannon fire to pay much attention to what was clearly falling well across the river.

Willis stared up into the fog, said, “Tell you what, Dutchie. I got things to tend to. Colonel wants to see all the company commanders. You go pass the word, tell the boys what’s happening. Maybe we’ll get a look yet. There’s no chance in hell that General Thomas is gonna sit tight and watch while Hooker and Sherman get all the fun. We left that ugly-assed town behind us for a reason, and I bet there’s a pile of generals out here somewhere figuring out just what that reason is. Right now, it’s somebody else’s ‘friends’ making that climb out there, maybe busting straight into a whole heap of rebels. Tomorrow, it might be mine.”

While Sherman’s men worked to complete their defenses to the north, his scouts pushing forward to find any sign of rebel troops, Joe Hooker’s ten-thousand-man force began their advance against Lookout Mountain. One part of Hooker’s strength was to keep low, close to the river, hoping to push through the narrow gap along the river itself, seeking a way to slice into the valley east of the mountain. There, Chattanooga Creek might act as a hard boundary Hooker’s men could use to slice the Confederate position in two halves, possibly stranding the rebels who held the ground on the mountain itself. The remainder of Hooker’s men would make the climb up the west side of the mountain, until they reached a gently sloping plateau, nearly halfway to the top. Those men included John Geary’s brigade, some of those the Pennsylvanians who had been so impressed with Bauer’s marksmanship. Masked by the miserable weather, Geary’s men and the remaining force under Union general Peter Osterhaus did their best to link up their flanks to form a strong battle line that extended from the base of the mountain to Geary’s wide, grassy plateau. Anchoring his right flank against the sheer face of the rock, Geary began a sweep along the plateau, a methodical advance through dense fog that soon confronted a brigade of rebels, commanded by General Edward Walthall. Walthall’s men held a strong defensive position near a house belonging to a man named Craven, one of the only structures on the mountain’s northern face. But Walthall had fewer than fifteen hundred men to hold back Geary’s push. Grossly outnumbered, Walthall had no choice but to withdraw, giving ground as slowly as he could, hoping to allow time for reinforcements to stop Geary’s advance. But Geary had the momentum, and his men made the most of the cover afforded by the fog, as well as the rocky terrain. Despite Walthall’s urgent pleadings for assistance, his men bore the brunt of the attack, and even with reinforcements arriving, the outcome was never in doubt. Geary’s men continued their push until they occupied the entire northern face of the mountain, leaving the Confederates no choice but to concede the mountain altogether.

Down below, across the wide plain that spread out from the new Federal lines around Orchard Knob, the troops belonging to George Thomas were finally graced with clearing skies. Though a heavy line of mist hung low on the mountain, the clash of arms was clearly visible.

As the panorama unfolded for Thomas’s men, up on Missionary Ridge, Braxton Bragg had absorbed the surprising sounds of a fight on Lookout Mountain, while at virtually the same time, his scouts reported that, to the north, a great mass of troops under Sherman had pushed across the Tennessee River.

The new summons from Bragg had come early that morning, and Cleburne obeyed, had seen a disturbing portrait of a man who seemed to be losing control of his army, and of himself. The orders came with a scattered urgency, couriers moving out in every direction like a flock of wild birds. Through a long night in the misery of the cold rain, Cleburne had followed Bragg’s instructions from the day before, had positioned his division along the center of Missionary Ridge, close to Bragg’s headquarters, a strong line of support for the men who even now, dug their pits and trenches along the crest of the hill. But with the dawn, something had changed, Bragg ordering Cleburne to shift one of his four brigades far to the north, returning them to the same rail depot where they had boarded the trains days before. Then it was to support Longstreet. Now it was to guard the valuable bridge across Chickamauga Creek against what Bragg had convinced himself was an imminent threat from Federal troops. That report had come to Bragg from lookouts and cavalry scouts upriver, that throughout the night, an enormous force of blue was crossing the river. No one could confirm any numbers, and no one besides Bragg was convinced that those troops were really any
threat at all. But Cleburne had followed the order, and early that morning, had sent Lucius Polk’s brigade back to the rail depot, ordering them to guard the station as well as the bridge that carried the tracks northward over Chickamauga Creek.

The first hint Cleburne had of any real Federal activity was the distant thunder that rolled down on the army from the heights of Lookout Mountain, Hooker’s attack against the very place Bragg had reduced his own strength. Whether or not Bragg was shocked by the sudden flood of fighting from the mountain, Cleburne had reacted by readying his men for the job they were assigned in the first place, preparing to receive a Federal onslaught against the heart of Missionary Ridge. From his vantage point on the ridge, there was little to be seen of the fight that had erupted on Lookout Mountain, the tall mass blanketed by a heavy mist, and layers of fog. The only real signs of the fight came from the high arcing shells of Federal artillery. He had stood in the light rain, his staff caught as he was by the strange beauty of what seemed to be a far distant fireworks display. Cleburne had no idea who was pushing a fight up the mountain, but he was more certain now than he had been the day before that the troops Hardee had been ordered to pull down off the mountain were probably, right now, in the wrong place.

With so little visibility, and so little news coming from Bragg’s headquarters, Cleburne had no real certainty just what the enemy was attempting to do. It was possible that General Stevenson had been correct, that Lookout Mountain was the enemy’s primary target, but Bragg seemed to believe still that Grant’s strategy was far more complicated than that. It was the dirty secret that was no secret at all. The arrival of Sherman’s four divisions added to what was already a simple mathematics exercise, that the Federal forces now outnumbered Bragg’s army by a wide margin. With Oliver Howard’s men crossing the river northward from Lookout Valley, and Sherman’s forces seeming to disappear altogether, no one was certain where Grant might strike. But Bragg was convinced, whether Carter Stevenson agreed with him or not, that the burst of fighting on Lookout Mountain was little more than a diversion. The greater vulnerability to Bragg’s position was to the north, Bragg convinced that Grant would make every effort to sever the rail lines that led toward
Knoxville, a line that intersected with an even more important track that led southeast, what might be the most effective path for either army to move out of Tennessee.

Around Cleburne, some of his own men had followed him to the crest of the ridge, standing alongside troops from other units, men with shovels who stopped their work, staring off toward the rumbles in the distance. Cleburne kept his stare to the front, directly across the plain where the two low hills had fallen into Federal hands, where Grant’s forces had pushed forward, closing the distance between the centers of the two armies. There was musket fire down below, far out in the plain, but it was ragged, scattered, skirmishers testing their enemy, exactly the kind of warning he knew to expect if the enemy wanted the men along Cleburne’s part of the ridge to stay put. He strained to hear the first sounds of artillery from out front, expected it, knew that most likely Bragg did as well. But the nervous pops from the muskets of the picket line were not increasing, and even in the heavy mist, Cleburne could see no movement by any vast waves of blue troops, no one pressing any assault toward Missionary Ridge.

As the sun rose higher, the fog seemed to settle lower on the mountain, offering some glimmer of what might be happening above. But Cleburne paced nervously for something more, some kind of order that would tell him what the enemy would do next. By now, his faith in Bragg’s strategic sense had evaporated, and he stared down the ridge toward the Nail House, thought, He knows little more than I do right here. He must hear that fight, must know what it will mean if the enemy captures the mountain. That’s our left flank, after all, the flank of this entire army. If they take those heights, it could give the Yankees a route into Georgia that we cannot block. He stared again to the low hills far out in the plain, glimpses through the fog of Grant’s new encampments. No, he thought, Grant will not go around. He will not ignore this army on this ridge while he settles for raids against railroads and telegraph wires.