Widow of Gettysburg (18 page)

An owl hooted overhead as Bullet carried Silas toward York, and Silas wiped thoughts of his former life from his mind. Like it or not, he had a mission to complete.

He could not stop running yet.

B
ullet was all but spent, and so was Silas. Thirty-five miles from Gettysburg to York would have been no trifling journey in the daylight. But traversing the road before dawn revealed it, with no rest or food or water—Silas was not surprised that Bullet could not sustain a gallop, or even a canter for much of it. Fatigue and constant vigilance had weakened horse and rider alike.

And Stuart had not been at York. After three more hours of hard-riding, Silas and Bullet arrived in Carlisle, thirty-two miles west of York. Smoke clogging his already parched throat, Silas dismounted his exhausted horse in front of the blunted remains of Carlisle Barracks.
Stuart was here.
And he may have just missed him.

“Pardon me, young man, but could you tell me when this happened?” Silas approached a young boy climbing around on the rubble.

The boy was only too eager to tell the tale. Stuart had been here all
right. If the boy could be believed, he had lobbed some shells into the town last night, made some demands for supplies, and been refused, evidently because Confederate General Ewell had already cleaned them out. So he lit Carlisle Barracks and headed south toward Gettysburg.

“Can’t miss ’em,” said the boy. “He left with one hundred and forty brand-new, fully loaded wagons and mule teams, all of them Federal. Counted ’em myself. He shouldn’a done that.” He scowled.

With that long of a wagon train, Stuart wouldn’t be able to go any faster than a walk. Silas was feeling rather slow himself at the moment, and he knew Bullet needed a rest. His hide was filmy with sweat and he frothed around his bit. The poor beast needed a break.

“I don’t suppose you know of a fresh horse I could borrow?” he asked the boy. “I’d leave this one here with you until I could come back for him.”

“Stuart took all the good horses we have.”
Of course he did.

“All right, Bullet, we’ll rest a short spell, and then it’s back on the road.”

But the short spell stretched out on the bank of the stream that curved around the smoldering barracks. When Bullet nudged the hat off Silas’s face, the sun glared almost directly down on him.

Silas stumbled to his feet, scolding himself for sleeping that long. Swinging back in the saddle, he winced as his thighs hit his mount, and spurred Bullet toward Gettysburg. If Stuart had headed there himself, there was only one road he would have used. Silas might catch up to him yet, if he was lucky.

He was. Headed south on Carlisle Road, Stuart’s wagon train, laden with weight that sunk the wheels into the ground, labored to move at a crawling pace. Silas steered Bullet off the road and trotted to the front of the line until he found Lee’s absentee general.

“Sir.” Silas saluted Stuart. “General Lee is anxious for your arrival in Gettysburg.” He knew better than to say any more.

Stuart slanted a gaze at him. “I can go no faster, as you see with your own eyes.” At this rate, he would not likely enter town until evening.
Directing his gaze into the distance ahead, he did not look at Silas again. The conversation was over.

Saluting once more, Silas urged Bullet forward, past the wagon train, and veered back on the road. By midafternoon, he was back at the Confederate headquarters on Seminary Ridge. Completely sapped of his strength, Silas sighed as he dismounted and approached the two guards flanking the door.

“I need to report to General Lee. I have news of General Stuart.”

“The General and Major Taylor went south along the ridge with Longstreet,” one of the men responded. “You may find him there.”

Silas nodded, slowly turning back to his horse.

“Ford. Need water?” He pointed him to the well. “You look about dead on your feet.”

After slaking his thirst, Silas filled his canteen and let Bullet drink before stiffly climbing back in the saddle. Mustering the very last dregs of his energy, they traveled south along Seminary Ridge. Muscles quivering as he fought to maintain balance, he threaded a path through a buzzing swarm of Confederate soldiers, asking for General Lee along the way. There were hundreds of soldiers, with more collecting by the minute, but so far, none had seen Lee. “He may yet be coming,” one of Hood’s men told him. “Come back in an hour.”

Gladly.
Silas retraced his path north, just beyond the bevy of soldiers, and stopped to rest in the shade before he collapsed off his horse completely. Back aching from the constant jolting on his horse, he sagged against a tree trunk and closed his eyes.

And did not sleep. Without looking, he knew that not two miles from where he sat was the Holloway Farm, and Liberty. Groaning, he covered his face with his hat. His conscience would not let him rest until he checked on her welfare one last time, now that battle had come to her doorstep. He would assure himself that she was fine, and then he would leave. He would not turn tail and run away as he had last time, but he would make his exit like a gentleman who knew not to overstay his welcome.

With a sigh of resignation, Silas rehearsed in his mind what he would say to Liberty. Once he told her who he was, what he’d done, she would reject him outright, and all would be well. His heart would be safe, and so would she. All he had to do was tell her the truth. Most likely, she already knew one version of it.
Silas Ford, man of the Lord, took slaves to bed and shot Pa dead!

It was easier if he wrote it. Yes, he would write her. Reaching into his haversack, he retrieved paper and pencil, and let the story unfold in a letter. He told her almost everything. Perhaps some things were better left unsaid.

After signing and folding the paper into his trousers pocket, he let his head fall back against the shaggy bark of the tree trunk and closed his eyes once more. Visions swirled in his mind. A flash of sunlight on the silver barrels of two lacquered walnut dueling pistols. Smoke pouring out of his gun. His father’s face before he fell. A full jug of moonshine. An empty jug of moonshine. A stranger pointing to an enlistment paper. His name, but not his signature. A gun to his head.

Darkness.

Congratulating himself on his perfect timing for the brewing fight, Harrison Caldwell ran up the eastern slope of the smaller Round Top hill, crunching last year’s dead leaves beneath his feet, as Union regiments double-timed into place. From beyond the wooded hill, the Rebel yell vibrated the air before a single enemy soldier could be seen.

But they were coming.

Harrison crouched alongside the reserves of the 20th Maine regiment, twenty yards behind the front line, and found himself next to a private he’d already met. Theodore Hopkins, the last of his brothers to go to war, and the only one still alive.

“Well, Hopkins, what can you tell me?” Harrison asked as he pulled out his pad and pencil. The air filled with the sound of sharpening knives, and Harrison looked up to see every man on the front line ramming his rod down the barrel of his Springfield rifle, each one glinting silver and bobbing like a giant needle.

“We’re the left flank, and the 83rd Pennsylvania is to our right. Col. Chamberlain says we’ve got to stand our ground here or the Rebels will sweep over the rest of the line. So it’s up to us.” He tore open a cartridge with his teeth, poured the powder and bullet into the barrel, and rammed his metal rod down in after it. “When there is a hole on the front line, we are to fill it. I’ve got to be ready.” He dropped his rammer in the dead leaves, and groped around for it for a few seconds before returning it to its slot and priming the gun. In training, the best men could fire three times in one minute. In the heat and confusion of an actual battle, Harrison had seen less experienced soldiers take far longer than that. He hoped Hopkins’ fumbling hands would not be the death of him.

“Here they come!” shouted a soldier on the front line, and new energy coursed through Harrison’s veins, heightening all his senses.

Every gun in the Union line seemed to fire at once, cracking the air as lead balls rushed at the enemy. Clouds of smoke hung in front of the barrels, saltpeter and sulfur replacing the scent of rotting leaves and warm, damp earth.

While the soldiers in front reloaded their rifles, Hopkins chanted with quavering voice. “For right is right, since God is God, and right the day must win; to doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin. For right is right, since God is God, and right the day must—”

Rushing footsteps in the underbrush grew louder, like the tide coming in, as the Confederates charged up the rocky western slope.

The Union guns fired at will, sporadically this time, dropping Confederate soldiers mid-stride, their bodies blending in with the felled tree trunks scattered on the slope. Orange-red sparks spat out of the barrels like lizard tongues lapping at the smoke.

A Maine soldier slumped silently over the hastily built pile of rocks in front of him, dead. Another fell back as a bullet slammed into his shoulder. Rebels were beginning to perforate the Union line.

Harrison glanced at Hopkins. A film of sweat coated the boy’s face under his kepi, his knuckles were white against his barrel. Expelling a breath, he pulled out another cartridge and put it to his teeth.

“You’ve already loaded it.” Harrison laid his hand on Hopkins’ shoulder. “You’re ready.”

“I’m going to be sick. My mother told me not to enlist. I can’t die. She’ll be all alone. I can’t die.”

Harrison groaned inwardly. It was the same story he’d heard countless times, yet no less tragic despite its repetition. Young man wants to prove bravery. Mother says no. Man enlists. Man dies. Another mother mourns.

“Private!” An officer stood over him. “Fill that hole. Now.”

Crouching low, Hopkins crept up to fill the breach in the line, pulling another cartridge packet from his box as he went.

Time stretched as men in blue traded shots with men in grey. Harrison stood to get a better look, but dropped down again when a bullet whizzed past his head, taking a notch out of his straw hat.

Minutes crawled by, punctuated by showers of musket fire and the thunder of artillery from elsewhere on the hill. Until an explosion in the line twenty yards in front of him made everything else sound like rain.

Dread trickled over Harrison, seeped into his skin. He looked down and saw the torn papers from eight cartridges that had not been there when he had first arrived.
Eight!
His stomach roiled. Hopkins must have gone mad with fright, and reloaded his gun out of nervous habit, jamming the barrel with gunpowder and lead before ever taking his first fatal shot.

“They’re falling back!” someone called. The shots tapered off to an eerie calm. Smoke swirled in long shafts of sunlight falling through the trees. “Remove the wounded, gather their ammunition.”

Harrison watched as soldiers dragged their comrades from the stone wall and moved them back to the reserves line, out of danger’s reach.

Some men grimaced in pain, while other faces were already frozen in death. One face had been blown off completely. So had his hands. It had to be Hopkins.

Such a waste.

A sheen of moisture stung Harrison’s eyes, and he wiped them angrily.
A war correspondent has no business getting weepy over a single casualty when thousands fall.

He had seen too many boys and men—sons, fathers, husbands, brothers, sweethearts—pass ingloriously into the next world. The hardened reporter’s shell he had built around his heart was beginning to crack, and it frightened him. If he was going to make a name for himself with a profound story as a war reporter, he needed to toughen up.

I’m too close.
What Harrison needed was a big picture view, not a character study.

“Here they come again!” A new wave of Confederates came charging up the hill.