Traveller (33 page)

“Well,” says Marse Robert, “I'm glad to see you're keepin' ‘em in hand with the lines and not letting them spoil the farmer's property. I wish all our mule-drivers was as careful! But if'n I was you, I wouldn't stay here too long. There are some gentlemen in blue back here on the road a little way, and—”

“What's that?” shouts out the old fella. “What's that you say? Lord, I ain't a-takin' no chances! Them infernal Yankees ain't never gittin' my mules! Come on, Dragon, Logan! We-all's gittin' out of here!”

Well, he was jest hitching ‘em up again when up rides Major Taylor and Colonel Marshall and the rest of the headquarters staff, and Marse Robert, he starts in a-giving out orders and saying what he wanted done. You should jest a seed that old teamster's face when he realized who he'd been talking to! As for me, I never used to talk to mules, but Marse Robert, he'd talk to anyone.

Directly we'd got back into our own country, we was able to settle down and rest a spell. Oh, yeah, we had about two months, ‘far as I remember, of peace and quiet. ‘Long ‘bout that time Marse Robert held two big reviews. Reviews? What's reviews? Well, that's what we call it, Tom, when all the soldiers gets trim and cleaned up, and then they-all line up in their different companies, with the bands a-playing and all the red-and-blue cloths flying; and then Marse Robert and me, we ride all round, regiment by regiment, and the different generals salute him and ride along with him a piece, and Marse Robert tells ‘em they're doing jest fine; and then finally him and me, we take up our place, somewheres up a little bit high, where everyone can see, and they-all march past and Marse Robert salutes them as they go by. Oh, it's something to see, I'll tell you, is a big review.

The second of these here reviews was of the whole of Red Shirt's men—thousands of ‘em. There was a whole crowd of fine ladies with bonnets and parasols had come to watch, and all the country people from miles around, some of ‘em in carts and on horses, and others jest a-walkin'.

I felt real proud that day. I'd been groomed real special—I was a-shining like the moon—and Marse Robert was in full uniform, with his sash and sword, a brand-new pair of gauntlets and a new hat. The soldiers was drawn up by regiments, muskets and bay'nets all clean and glittering in the sun, and the different cloths—colors, as they call ‘em— standing straight out in the breeze. When everything was ready, Red Shirt and his staff officers rode up to us and saluted, and then him and Marse Robert set out to gallop right around the front and rear of the whole durned outfit.

‘Twas a long way to go—'bout nine mile altogether, I'd figure— and I thought, Well, if'n we don't get on, we ain't going to be done ‘fore it's dark, or near ‘nuff. Marse Robert evidently reckoned the same, ‘cause when I started off at a long lope, he never checked me nor reined me in. As we passed each bunch, he jest kept a-lookin' straight at the soldiers. So I set a good, fast pace and kept it up. After a bit I realized that we mostly seemed to be leaving other horses and officers behind. One of Red Shirt's generals—General Mahone, I think ‘twas—was riding a biggish, spirited black called Brigand, that I'd met several times in action and on the marches.

“Wind and rain, Traveller!” gasps Brigand as we went on acrost the front of General Mahone's bunch, “can't you let up a piece? You've busted three staff officers' horses already.”

“Marse Robert's happy ‘nuff, if you are,” I answered, and jest put myself a few more paces ahead. “This ain't the only division we got to see today.”

During the second half of that ride, the officers along with us gradually became fewer and fewer. One by one pretty well all of ‘em dropped out, and finally Red Shirt hisself left me and Marse Robert to arrive at the reviewing stand by ourselves and rein up where we was going to take the salute. I could feel Marse Robert's blood pumping strong—partly with the ride, I reckon, and partly with pride in his men. As he raised his hat and saluted, there was a regular storm of cheering and applause from all the folks around, and then the regiments marched past at the quickstep. Me, I didn't even feel winded. I stood there tossing my head and breathing quite calm and steady. I felt that the best soldier around that day had the best horse under him, and he'd been so kind as to ‘low me to prove it. I only wished Skylark had been there—yeah, and Hero, too. But if'n I recall rightly, they'd sent Old Pete and his ‘uns off somewheres else jest ‘bout that time, although they came back later.

In fact, we did see some more action during that fall and right on into the early part of the winter. But ‘truth was, the Blue men had pretty well had ‘nuff for the time being and they'd gotten what you'd call leery. What I chiefly recollect ‘bout that time is my notion that Marse Robert was beginning to feel older and to get tired more easy. There was something not entirely right ‘bout the feel of him in the saddle. Jest the same, he seemed to be driving hisself to do as much as he'd always done since we'd been together. I felt fine myself, but I was glad for his sake when the winter was fin'lly come and the Army moved into log-hut camps along that river I'd gotten to know so well.

But you know, Tom, they was gloomy places, them winter camps. There was never ‘nuff to do, that was the way I felt. And there was a power of sickness ‘mong the men. We'd ride to a camp, and as we came near I could often smell if'n there was sickness in it. The main trouble was the everlasting shortage of food, and there the horses and mules suffered worse'n the men. They starved. And then in cold weather the men'd be freezing and shivering. They hadn't ‘nuff warm clothes for sticking around doing little or nothing in a frost. They hadn't even boots, a lot of ‘em.

Gosh sakes! It's better to be laying down full of a good feed, ain't it, in a clean, dry stable in summer, than letting yourself live through times like that again? I'm going to have a drink and drop off to sleep. You jump up in the crib, Tom, and settle down. I guess them dad-burn rats'll be glad to forget ‘bout you for a while.

Early May, 1864. The Confederacy is undone and its cause doomed. Irreplaceable losses in numbers—which were always inferior—not only of men but also of horses; shortage of boots, clothing and ammunition; lack of means to replace worn-out artillery and small arms; near-starvation, owing to a grossly defective commissariat, itself dependent upon the economy of a ruined country—these make up the hopeless prospect. Yet there is no will to capitulate. On the contrary, the Army of Northern Virginia still believe themselves superior to the enemy
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The hope, when it existed, was that the North, though certainly unconquerable by force of arms, would become weary of continual casualties and the strain of the war, and rather than continue to oppose the indomitable South would desist and agree to a negotiated peace. That this has not taken place—that the North still matches the South in determination—is due in large part to the political skill and pertinacity of a single man, President Abraham Lincoln. If there is one imponderable that has tipped the balance towards continuation of the war until the Confederacy is overthrown, it is the will of the President. Never wavering from his conviction that the Union must at all costs be preserved, Lincoln, patient, resolute and adroit, is proving himself an adversary more formidable than any of the Federal generals. Rather less than two months ago, in March, 1864, he appointed General Ulysses S. Grant to the command of the Union armies
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Grant himself is commanding in the field the reorganized Army of the Potomac, now increased in numbers to a dire 140,000. His scheme for defeating the Confederacy can be expressed in one word: attrition. If the Federals lose ten men for every Confederate soldier killed or otherwise put out of action, this, maintains Grant, is no more than they can afford. The defiance of the South is to be broken by sheer force of numbers. With this bloody horseman of the apocalypse is to ride another—Famine. All fertile land, all crops, fruit trees, pasture, barns, byres and holdings will be laid waste by the advancing Union forces; all sheep, cattle and pigs seized. During April, 1864, before Grant's offensive has yet begun, Lee has written to President Davis, “I cannot see how we can operate with our present supplies.” Yet far greater privation, both for soldiers and civilians, is to follow. Grant's design is to hammer continuously against the enemy and his resources until by sheer carnage and devastation he is forced into submission. Lee's troops are acknowledged an army of hard and experienced veterans, an instrument sharpened to a perfect edge. “You turn its flanks—well, its flanks are made to be turned. All that we reckon as gained is loss of life inflicted.”

It is no longer practicable for the Army of Northern Virginia to pursue Lee's earlier strategy' of offensive maneuver at a distance from Richmond, or to constrain the enemy to conform to his movements. In 1863, at the close of the Gettysburg campaign, he formally offered his resignation to President Davis, but this was unhesitatingly refused. Lee himself is a man of straightforward, unaffected and somewhat uncompromising character, adhering above all to a simple concept of duty. “Private and public life,” he once wrote, “are subject to the same rules; and truth and manliness will carry you through the world much better than ‘policy,' or ‘tact,' or ‘expediency,' or any other word that was ever devised to conceal a deviation from a straight line.” General Lee, though as a soldier he must now foresee the outcome, will continue to carry out his appointed duty
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This spirit, by one means and another—not least the force of example, for the captain of this ruined band is much among the men—has infused the entire army of about 64,000 that now faces Grant across the Rapidan. Officers and men have a strong will to continue to fight—with barely the means, it would seem. Under Lee's command they have indeed been forged into soldiers: resourceful, adept and habituated to war to a degree seldom if ever paralleled. The formidability of this army has increased in proportion to their hardships
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“The retreat of a great general,” said Carl von Clausewitz, “should resemble that of a wounded lion.” The May leaves are green on the dense oak, hazel and brush of the wilderness—that wilderness where Jackson was mortally wounded and the battle of Chancellorsville was won; the redbud is over and the flowers of spring are in bloom. A wilderness, trackless and in places almost impassable, with visibility often down to a few yards, is a good place for a wounded lion; a good place for a general who knows his artillery inferior to the enemy's; a good place for those determined to cost the enemy very dear
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Hey, there, Tom. Come on in! Nights turning sharper, ain't they, these last few days? Soon be midwinter. For goodness' sakes, what you got there? That's no rat! Oh, a chipmunk? It's dead, ain't it? You killed it? Poor little fella, I don't see how a chipmunk's going to do us no harm in stables. You've been out prowling in the woods, I guess, han't you? He was a bit slow with the cold and you natcherly grabbed him. I wonder he was out at all. ‘Nother day or two and he'd have found hisself a hidey-hole and been asleep for the winter. Well, now you've brung him in I guess you'd better settle down and eat him.

We was out in the woods, too, s'afternoon, Marse Robert and me. ‘Twas the old road to the Baths we was riding along, as usual, although these days we seldom go all that far. Marse Robert—well, he don't ‘pear to like riding as far as he used to, and he gets tired quicker. Not surprisin', is it, after all him and me have done together? Come to that, I don't know that I always feel all that much of a colt myself, though I can still go. I don't know whether I'd want to do one of them night marches again, though, through the wind and rain. Stopping, starting, uncertainty, confusion—they're the things take it out of you.

What was it I started telling you? Oh, ‘bout s'afternoon. Well, you know, part of that road to the Baths goes through a pretty thick stretch of woods, and we was right in the middle of this when we come up on a real plain-looking old fella riding a ways ahead of us. His horse gave me a nice, friendly nicker and I answered back. Then, when we got close, he said, “You're Traveller, ain't you? I seed you often, back in the old Army days.”

Well, ‘course, in them days Marse Robert and me was used to seein' more horses'n there's stars in a night sky, so I jest nuzzled him friendly-like and said I was glad to meet up with him again. But meanwhile his master, who anyone could have told for an old soldier, reined in and said, “General Lee, I'm powerful glad to see you, and I feel like cheering you.”

Marse Robert evidently didn't recognize him personally, but I remembered him all right, even if I didn't his horse. I recollected Marse Robert speaking to him and three-four others that night on the river-bank in the rain, telling ‘em the crossing was going fine and ‘twas all thanks to fellas like them. Anyway, now he said he was real glad to see him, same as he was always glad to see any of his old soldiers, but he figured there'd be no sense in cheering, seeing as how jest the two of them was alone in these here woods. But that didn't stop the old soldier none. He offs with his hat jest the same and waves it over his head, shouting, “Hurrah for General Lee! Hurrah for General Lee!”

‘Warn't much Marse Robert could do, ‘ceptin' to salute him and ride on. And that's what we did. But for a considerable time after, we went on hearing the fella behind us, yelling “Hurrah for General Lee!” till we was a ways off down the road.

Let's see, I ‘member I was telling you, last time you spent the night in here, ‘bout the life in camp that winter after we crossed back over the river in the night. But I been thinking since then, I don't reckon I really said ‘nuff, Tom, to make you realize jest how hard life was for the Army horses and mules during them months. As I remember it, the corn and hay got less and less till a lot of us was down to eating straw and glad to get even that. I'll tell you this: me, myself, I sometimes used to gnaw the bark off'n trees when I was out exercising with Dave—
and
he didn't stop me—or when I thought Marse Robert was too busy talking to people to notice. And I know both Lucy and Ajax done the same. Ajax told me that one day, when he was hitched up outside some cottage, he ate a tidy piece off'n the hedge, although, bein' winter, ‘twas pretty well all sticks and no leaves. I seed Joker, one day, eat a poke he seed a-laying on the ground—maybe it had some crumbs in it.