'They can't see me any better than I can see you. How wide is this benighted stream anyway?'
'The high command does not favor us with such information. Nor do they issue topographical maps. Just orders. We are to bridge Black Creek.'
'Hell of a good name for it,' Billy said, a scowl on his stubbled face.
The bridging train — pontoon wagons, balk, chess and side-rail wagons, tool wagons, and traveling forge — had labored along gummy roads as rain started at nightfall. It had slacked off a while but was now pouring down again, and the wind had risen. Billy surveyed the unfinished bridge by the light of three lanterns swaying on poles planted in the mud. It was risky to reveal their position that way, but light was necessary; the creek was deep, the water high and swift.
The bridge extended halfway across the broad creek. Pontoon boats spaced by twenty-seven-foot balks were anchored on the upstream side, and every other one by a second, downstream, anchor. Work parties were running out chesses and laying them on the balks while others placed and lashed the side rails where the cross planks were already down. It was rough work, made more difficult because the whole structure heaved under the push of a wind approaching gale force.
No one answered Billy's hail, nor could he see any more boat wagons in the darkness. 'I suspect they are mired,' Farmer said. 'I suggest you go see. I'll handle matters here.' He snugged his old musket down in the vee of his left elbow. The infantrymen detailed for this kind of duty were responsible for guarding the construction area. But those in the Battalion of Engineers, Army of the Potomac, had more confidence in themselves than in green horns, and they seldom worked without a weapon. Billy's revolver rode in a holster with the flap tied down.
Covered with mud and growing numb, he slopped up the bank past a tool wagon. He was not certain of the date; the tenth of April, maybe. General McClellan's huge army, said to outnumber the combined Confederate forces of Joe Johnston and Prince John Magruder two to one, had come down by water to Fort Monroe at the low-lying tip of the peninsula between the York and James rivers. The embarkation began March 17, six days after Little Mac was stripped of his duties as general-in-chief. To explain the demotion, some cited his refusal to move against Manassas. Others merely mentioned the name Stanton; the generals now reported directly to him.
Though McClellan's command had been reduced to the Department and Army of the Potomac, he fought on for what he wanted: more artillery; more ammunition; McDowell's corps, which was being held to defend Washington. When the administration refused most of the demands, McClellan decided to besiege Magruder instead of attack him, a decision to which some, including Lije Farmer, had objected.
'What is wrong with him? They say he takes the number of enemy troops supplied by his Pinkerton spies and doubles it — but even then, our forces are superior. Of what is he so afraid?'
'Losing his reputation? Or the next presidential election maybe?' Billy said, not entirely in jest.
The campaign against Yorktown began April 4. The tasks of the Battalion of Engineers included corduroying roads and bridging creeks so men and siege artillery could advance toward Magruder's line, which stretched almost thirteen miles between Yorktown and the Warwick River. Scouts brought back reports of sighting many big guns in the enemy works.
The peninsula was a maze of unmapped roads and creeks. Movement in the maze became increasingly hard as rainy weather set in. But the engineers were prepared. When Billy left Washington so hastily that winter night, the battalion had been sent up the Potomac to test the training of their seven-week recruits. The successful test, construction of a complete pontoon bridge, had renewed the engineers' almost arrogant pride. Now Billy felt none of it. Nights sleeping in damp tents and eighteen-to twenty-hour stretches of work in ceaseless rain had beaten it out of him. He merely existed, pushing himself and his men through one minute, then the next, to complete one job in order to move to another.
He reached the line of pontoon wagons, stalled a good half mile above the bridge. Each wagon carried one long wooden boat and its gear: oars and oarlocks, anchors and boat hooks and line. As they had suspected, the problem was mud; the first wagon sat hub deep in it.
He surveyed the situation by the light of a teamster's lantern. He suggested unhitching the oxen, moving them forward, and running lines from their yoke over a thick overhanging limb and down again to the wagon to provide a lifting action. The lines were rigged, and the teamster hit his oxen with his quirt. Instead of pulling straight ahead, they headed away at the right oblique. The limb cracked ominously.
'Slack off!' Billy shouted, jumping to knock the teamster out of the way moments before the limb broke and dropped onto the prow of the boat, smashing it and snapping the wagon's front axle with its weight.
Furious with himself, Billy climbed from the mud. The wrecked wagon would prevent the others from coming up; there was no room to pass on the muddy road. 'All right, you drivers — I'll send you some men, and we'll carry the boats to the launching site. We're behind schedule.'
Away in the dark, some phantom shouted, 'Whose fault is that?'
Billy scowled again. Someone else complained. 'Carry them? From the last wagon that could be damn near a mile.'
'I don't care if it's fifty,' Billy said, and stormed back to Lije, full of self-disgust.
On the unfinished bridge, the weary infantrymen had fallen idle. Nothing more could be done until the next boat was floated down and pushed out twenty feet from the last one placed. 'I need men to carry the boats, Lije. I tried to free the wagon that's stuck and wrecked it instead. No one can pass.'
Standing with his musket in his arms, Farmer gave a majestic slow nod. 'I saw. Don't take the guilt so deeply into your soul. There is not an engineer breathing who has not miscalculated in his time — and these are not the best of conditions for sharp thinking. Be thankful you lost a wagon and not a life.'
The younger man stared at the older, thinking that when he and Brett raised children, he hoped they could counsel them as wisely and humanely as Farmer counseled those who served with him.
A musket flashed in the woods beyond the stream. On the bridge, a soldier yelled and grabbed his leg. He started to topple into the water, but others pulled him back. Simultaneously, Farmer grasped his musket by the barrel and clubbed the nearest lantern from its pole. Billy leaped for another as musketry and gibbering hoots and cries issued from the dark. They put all the lanterns out, retreated up the bank, and returned fire. In fifteen minutes the rebel sniping stopped. Fifteen minutes after that, Billy and Lije relit the lanterns and work resumed.
By half past two they had launched enough boats and laid enough balks and chesses to reach the opposite bank. Billy wrote a brief dispatch reporting completion of the bridge and sent it back to headquarters with a courier. Lije ordered a rest. The men slept in the open, finding the best available cover for themselves and their gunpowder. Troubling thoughts strayed through Billy's mind as he lay against a tree trunk, a soggy blanket over his legs. Water dripped on him. He sneezed for the fourth time.
'Lije? Did you hear what they said about the Shiloh casualties before we started out tonight?'
'I did,' came the answer from the far side of the tree. 'Each army is said to have lost a quarter of those engaged.'
'It's unbelievable. This war's changing, Lije.'
'And will continue.'
'But where's it going?'
'To the eventual triumph of the just.'
I am not too sure all of us will live to see that, Billy thought as he shut his eyes. His teeth chattered, and he started to shake. Somehow, though, he slept, sitting in the rain.
In the morning the engineers secured the last cables on the bridge, scouted the woods beyond for rebs and found them gone, and settled down to wait. They would be sent somewhere else soon enough.
Bivouacked one night near Yorktown, Charles said to Abner Woolner, 'We've ridden together for a few weeks, but I still don't know much about you.'
'Hardly a thing worth knowin', Charlie. I don't read good, I spell worse, and I can't cipher at all. Ain't married. Was once. She died. Her and the baby.' The straightforward way he said it, devoid of self-pity, made Charles admire him.
'I farm up near the North Carolina line,'' the scout went on. 'Small place. Right near where my grandpa fought the redcoats. King's Mountain.'
'What do you think about this war?'
Ab pushed his tongue back and forth between front teeth and upper lip for a minute. 'Might hurt your feelin's if I told you.'
