Traveller (37 page)

I forget, Tom. I forget sech a lot after all this while. But I do remember, ‘bout two weeks or so after that battle we won—'time the judge's horse bolted—how we-all rode into the city in the hot sunshine, with all the people out on the streets, a-waving and a-cheering. Of all the things that come your way when you're a soldier, there's nothing more encouraging than marching into a town and seeing all the women and children turn out to holler for you and treat you like a lot of heroes. They was waiting for our fellas at their gates with food and water and flowers to stick in their caps—yeah, and shaking their hands and kissing them, all sweating and dirty as they was from the march. Every now and then some man would dash out of the column and run up the steps of a house to fling his arms round a lady's neck—you know, his mother or his sister—his wife, maybe. ‘Twas plain ‘nuff to me that the enemy warn't going to be able to get us out of this here city in a hurry. Maybe this was where we'd finally beat them. I'd always knowed we'd do that.

Well, that was when we started what they call the siege. A siege ain't like a battle, you see, Tom, though there's liable to be battles mixed up with it here and there. A siege is when you and the enemy is faced up opposite each other in lines that stretch for miles—lines of trenches dug in the ground—and there's very little moving and no fighting ‘cept for the shells and the musket fire. But that don't come all the time. It breaks out more or less like rain, often jest when you're least expecting it. A siege goes on for months—well, that's what this here siege did, anyways. It went on till I'd more or less forgotten there'd ever been anything else.

During that long spell of hot weather after we'd marched into the city, ‘twas back to the digging again, jest like two years before, when Marse Robert and me had first took over command of the Army. Day after day, up and down the lines we went, Marse Robert giving orders for what had to be done—revetting, gun emplacements and all the rest of it. I can see it all now—the dust clouding the air, the flies everywhere, the lines of men stripped to the waist, sweating and cussing as they kept on with the digging in the hot sun. There was one way it warn't like two years before, though. They'd used to grumble then, but now they was crazy to get into the ground as fast as they could, ‘cause of the enemy shells that was likely to come over ‘most any time, day or night. The enemy, they was digging in, too, and they warn't hardly no distance off. By the time we was done, Tom, there was more'n twenty mile of trenches and pits and holes and banks—what we call earthworks—facing each other, ours and the enemy's.

I can't give you no idea of the dirt and mess and the change in the whole country that that siege made. It plumb tore the whole place to ruins, and that's the truth. The fields, the woods, the hedges, the fences, the barns—everything disappeared under that digging and them trenches. All that was left was jest the bare earth dug up into these great ditches and ridges, with our men a-standin' in them, waiting and watching for the chance to fire at the enemy. They lived like rats. There was trenches behind trenches, and trenches running up to jine other trenches like roads, and deep holes the fellas went down when the enemy shells started coming over. Our guns was sited in pits along the lines, and every so often they'd start firing back. The shells did as much as the digging to turn the whole place—miles an' miles—into one great, broken-up mudflat of bare earth and nothin' else.

Our fellas built up the sides of the trenches with logs and posts, to stop ‘em falling in. And out in front they often put sort of crisscross fences made of sharp wooden spikes, to hold up the Blue men if they tried to attack. And then all along the lines, in special places, there was what they call sharpshooters—fellas who jest kept watching all the time for the chance to fire at any Blue man who showed above ground. He only had to show hisself for jest a moment and that'd be ‘nuff. ‘Course, the enemy had their sharpshooters, too. There was lots of fellas killed that way. ‘Twarn't safe to be above ground nohow.

During the first weeks it was hot, with dust everywhere, but after that it commenced to raining. It rained day after day, till everything was mud and all the trenches was flooded. I've seed men standing waist-deep in water, soaked through and no shelter nowhere. There was any amount of sickness. The horses went sick as much as the men. They was wet through, you see—no shelter—and starved. There was plenty of horses simply couldn't pull the guns no more, what with the mud and with being so weak. You should jest have seed some of them trenches, Tom: the bottoms full of stinking water, and worse'n water; old shelters—if'n you could call ‘em shelters—made of boards all falling to pieces; piles of rubbish, tangles of tree roots sticking out of the sides; and a bullet waiting for anyone who showed his head over the top. But still the Blue men didn't try no more attacks. They'd larned what they could expect from us, I reckon.

‘Most every day Marse Robert and me would ride the whole length of the lines, more'n twenty mile. Course, we mostly kept back behind the worst places, but even so ‘twas hard going and I was often stumbling and having a hard job to pick my way and guess where to put my hooves down. If there's one thing frightens any horse, it's bad going underfoot. All the same, Marse Robert didn't really have to pay all that much attention to me. We understood each other so well that I always knowed what he wanted and what I had to do.

The lines went right up northward, as far as that other city—the first one I'd ever seed when I came up from the South with Marse Robert. I recognized it soon as we got back there, and the big river where I'd first heared enemy fire. I'll tell you, Tom, ‘twas a hard day's journey up there and back, from one city to t'other, over so much broken ground. I don't believe any other horse could have done it—no, not Skylark hisself. When we got back at night, I'd get a rub and a feed and then I'd sleep through enemy shellfire, horses coming and going— anything.

The enemy shells was likely to fall anywhere and any time. Our headquarters was in the yard of a house a little ways outside the city, jest ‘longside a river. It belonged to an old lady who was an invalid and couldn't get about much at all. She was real pleased to have Marse Robert and his officers, and did all she could for them. But ‘course Marse Robert didn't live in the house; he had the tents put up in the yard, same's he'd always done everywheres else. He'd had the same old tent ever since I'd been with him, and I remember ‘twas ‘bout this time that he finally agreed that it had got so battered and full of holes he'd have to get another one. The stables was comfortable ‘nuff, but you never knowed when the shells'd start coming over. Everyone got used to ‘em after a time and jest took no notice, though I can recall one particular night when we was all led out in the pouring rain and taken a fair ways off, on account of they'd begun dropping a little too close.

Another day, when Marse Robert and me was riding out to the lines, we'd come a ways out of town when he stopped to talk to a little girl tending a baby beside a garden gate. An enemy shell fell in the field nearby, but this little girl took no notice of it at all. Marse Robert asked her who she was and whose baby it was, and when she'd told him he told her to go back home and take the baby to a safer place.

We often came under fire, of course, riding up and down the lines. Marse Robert never took no notice on our ‘count, but he was quick ‘nuff to tell off anyone else, officers or men, if he reckoned they was risking theirselves unnecessarily. I remember one time when he stopped to talk to some of our fellas that had their guns set up in the yard of a house we'd taken over. ‘Course, soon's they knowed he was there, all the soldiers come a-crowding round to see him, and talk to him, too, if'n they could get the chance. The Blue men must ‘a been able to spot us, ‘cause pretty soon their shells started falling close around. Marse Robert told the men to leave him and go to the rear; they warn't to expose theirselves to unnecessary danger. So off they went. I stayed where I'd been hitched, of course, and from where I was I seed Marse Robert walk acrost the yard and bend down. There was a fledgling sparrow had fallen on the ground, and he picked it up and put it back in the nest. When he came back to unhitch me, be patted my neck and muttered something ‘bout me being of more value than many sparrows. Well, I thought, I should jest ‘bout hope I was; and I reckoned at that rate maybe we could hightail it out of the way of the durned shells. But Marse Robert always took care not to let anyone see we was in any hurry to do that.

There was plenty of fighting all that summer—more'n I can recall now—but the time I ‘specially remember is the battle we fought after the big bang—the biggest bang of the lot. I still don't know what made it. ‘Twas well on into the night—early morning, in fact—and I was sound asleep at headquarters. When the bang came, ‘twas a long ways off, but it fair shook the ground, real heavy: a monstrous great bang! That was no gun made that. I'd never heared the like. All the other horses was awake and real scared with the shaking. We couldn't none of us tell what to make of it, you see. Real soon nearly all of us was saddled up and led out. All the same, ‘twas some time before headquarters started into action. I guess Marse Robert was waiting for news of what had happened. When a mounted officer finally reached us, Marse Robert listened to what he had to tell him and then gave out his orders right away.

Far as I could make out from this officer's horse, the Blue men had somehow or other managed to blow a great hole—kind of a huge pit—right in the middle of our lines on t'other side of the river, ‘bout a couple of mile from where we was at. A lot of our men had been killed, and now the enemy was doing their best to fight their way through the gap. I couldn't make it out at all, but anyways I didn't have long to wait around thinking ‘bout it, ‘cause Marse Robert and me set off right away, entirely by ourselves. Everywhere was soldiers staring and talking and trying to make out what was going on. When we got to Red Shirt's headquarters, we found he'd already left to get his fellas together, so me and Marse Robert followed after him. ‘Twas all a jumble and a confusion, but after a while we got out of town into the open, and then we came to a place where we could actually see this here hole the enemy had made. ‘Twas as big as the field out here, Tom—bigger, I reckon— and a great mass of thick smoke hanging over it. There was fighting all around—bursting shells and musket fire—but so much confusion that you couldn't tell which was our men and which was the enemy.

There was a young officer with Marse Robert—one of Red Shirt's headquarters people. Marse Robert told him that at all costs the Blue men had got to be stopped and we must go back and hurry our fellas forward. We went back, but the men was already coming up as fast as they could, so Marse Robert rode me off to a house a little ways from where the hole was and waited to see what would happen.

From what I could make out, there must ‘a been thousands of Blue men crowded into that there hole, ready to beat us to pieces and go on into the city. They'd begun to spread out either side, too, along our lines. But by this time our guns had started firing and that was holding ‘em up. We was so close to the hole, Marse Robert and me, that we could see the Blue men moving ‘bout and getting ready to come on. Suddenly they began jumping down and running forward, and jest at the same moment our fellas advanced to meet them.

Well, you couldn't hardly see what was going on for the smoke and the dirt throwed up by the shellfire. That was as near as I ever come to going wild in a battle, I reckon. If'n I could, I'd have bolted, ‘cause Marse Robert had gone up to the top of the house, where he could see best, and there was no one near us horses at all.

The fighting went on a long time, and no one could tell who was winning. Marse Robert never moved from where he was, and I reckoned he meant to stay till either we'd driven the Blue men out or else we hadn't no more soldiers left. ‘Twas the middle of the afternoon afore things died down. Big bunches of the enemy had begun to surrender, and the rest had come out of the hole and skedaddled back to their own lines. When Marse Robert finally came down and mounted me again, I could tell at once't that he was wore out. But he was mighty cheered, too, that we'd beat ‘em back. He must ‘a been real anxious for hours—maybe more anxious than he'd ever been in a battle before. I reckon we'd never come so close to being beat.

We never rode right up to that big hole, Marse Robert and me. But Marse Taylor did, after the fighting, and later on his horse told me ‘twas the worst thing he'd ever seed in his life. There was guns and weapons and bodies all laying together, half in and half out of the earth. The whole bottom of the crater, as they called it, was covered with dead men, this horse said. He'd thought he'd got used to bad things, but he hoped he'd never see nothing like that again.

I still don't know jest how the enemy blowed that there crater, but we'd evidently made them give up the idea, ‘cause they never tried nothing like it again.

Old Pete came back to the Army in the fall. I was surprised to see him, ‘cause I'd figured he must ‘a died after being shot in the wilderness battle. But now he ‘peared to be jest the same as ever in his spirits, though the wound had left him lookin' awful bad. He sure was a real tough soldier, even if he was given to argufying, and I reckon Marse Robert was glad to see him again.

The winter came on, but still there was no let-up in the siege. Conditions in the trenches was bad as could be, and ‘twas plain ‘nuff that the men was getting ‘most nothing to eat; they all looked mighty puny—jest skin and bones, a lot of ‘em. Us horses didn't do no better. Many a time I'd have to make the best of a night in stables with less'n half a feed in my stomach. But ‘twas worse for the horses and mules on the lines. There was a plenty died, Tom, I can tell you.