Love and War

Doan leaned close. 'Who the devil are they, then? Their uniforms are so blasted dirty, you can't tell.'

Charles stroked his beard, which now reached to an inch below his chin. He connected mud to riverbanks and riverbanks to his friend Billy. 'Bet anything they're engineers.'

'Might be,' Ab said. 'Doin' what, though? Scoutin' the swamps?'

'Yes. For bridges. Places to cross. This may be the first sign of an advance.'

Sport shied. Charles steadied the gray with his knees as a far part of his mind noted a queer whispery sound on the ground. He didn't ponder its meaning because Doan was talking.

'Can we shoot 'em up a little, Cap?'

'I wouldn't mind, but I suspect it would be smarter to ride on to the next road. The sooner we're over the river with news of this, the better.'

'Rattler,' Ab whispered, louder than he should have. The snake tried to slither past the forehoofs of his horse. The horse  lanced back and whinnied, long and loud.

'That's done it,' Charles said. He heard halloos on the road; someone yelling orders. The snake, more frightened than any of them, disappeared. 'Let's ride out of here.'

Ab had trouble with his spooked mount. 'Come on, Cyclone, damn you —' Accustomed to gunfire but not reptiles, the scout horse reared and nearly unseated its rider. Charles grabbed the headstall, the forehoofs crashed down, and Ab kept his seat. But seconds had been lost, and the horse's erratic behavior had placed it in one of the shafts of light falling through the trees. Two Yankees at the tail of the column spotted Ab and aimed shoulder weapons.

Charles pulled his shotgun, discharged both barrels, then fired his revolver three times with his right hand. As the fusillade faded, the Yanks skedaddled, shouting, 'Take cover.'

'Come on, boys,' Charles cried, leading the way. The Yanks would likely go to ground in the roadside ditches, giving the scouts a margin of time. He spurred Sport through the trees, not away from the road, as he had first intended, but toward it, up the side of an imaginary triangle that should bring them out well ahead of the detachment.

After some hard riding, he burst onto the road, Ab a length behind, Doan bringing up the rear. A glance behind showed him two Yanks standing in the road. The rest were hidden.

Both Yanks fired at the scouts. A ball flipped the side brim of Charles's hat. Another few seconds and they were safely out of range of the enemy muskets. Charles shoved his revolver into the holster and concentrated on riding. The road serpentined through woods where swampy pools glittered.

Another quarter of a mile and the sheets of water were solid on both sides. The trees appeared to rise from a surface fouled by green scum and speckled by tiny insects. A mile or less should bring them to the crossing.

The road behind them erupted in a single jet of flame and a fountain of shrapnel. Ab was so unnerved, he nearly galloped off into the water. Charles reined around, saw a smoking hole and Doan dragging himself from under his fallen horse.

Round-eyed, Doan made choking sounds. The horse was finished. The buried columbiad shell triggered by a friction primer had hurled lethal fragments into the animal's shoulder, chest, and crest.

Doan struggled free of the left stirrup. His horse slid tail first into the hole. Doan walked in a little circle like a confused child. Hidden by the looping curves of the road, the Yanks could be heard coming at a gallop.

Charles began to sweat. He urged Sport to the edge of the hole, but the gray shied from the dying horse, shuddering down there and blowing out its breath in great sad gasps. 'Get up,' Charles said, reaching behind to slap Sport's croup. Doan's confusion continued. Ab excitedly fired a shot up the road, though no Yankees were in sight. Suddenly Doan began crying. 'I can't leave him.' 'He's a goner, and Company Q is a better post than some Yankee stockade.' The first blue horseman came around the bend. Charles seized Doan's collar. 'Get up, damn it, or we'll all be caught.' Doan managed to climb onto the gray and take hold of Charles's waist. Charles pulled Sport's head around, and they broke for the Chickahominy. Ab stepped his horse to one side to let the gray go by, then emptied his side arm at the oncoming horsemen. He had little chance of a hit, but the firing slowed the pursuers.

Even carrying double weight, Sport performed valiantly, leading the escape to the river. Charles could feel Doan trembling. Suddenly the scout yelled, 'Goddamn savages.'

'Who?'

'The Yanks who buried that infernal machine in the road.'

'You'll have to blame Brigadier Rains or somebody else on our side. Before we pulled out of Yorktown, Rains planted those torpedoes all over the streets and docks. How we doing, Ab?' he called to the scout riding alongside.

'We're way ahead of them thimble merchants and ribbon clerks. Look yonder — there's the bridge.'

The sight stopped the shouted discussion of the torpedo that had killed Doan's mount. General Longstreet called the devices inhuman and forbade their use. Lot of good that did. What shook Charles as they raced to Bottom's Bridge was realizing that the slain horse could just as easily have been Sport. A buried bomb didn't differentiate.

The gray hammered across the river bridge, hoofs pounding a rhythmic litany. Just as easily. Just as easily.

Jealousy had as much to do with it as politics, Billy later decided. He had been primed for a scrap when he walked into the sutler's tent that evening toward the close of May.

A dour nervousness had gripped the peninsular armies for days. The rebs were dug in beyond the Chickahominy, prepared to die for Richmond. On the Union side, instead of expectancy or a giddy sense that one fierce blow could end it, there was uncertainty. The high command suffered from it, and the leakage spread. Rumor simmered with fact in a stew of negativism. Jackson was humiliating the Union in the Shenandoah. McDowell, holding near Fredericksburg, might be diverted to meet that threat. Little Mac continued to insist he had not nearly enough men, though he had over a hundred thousand. He also insisted the hounds of Washington were tearing at him, led by the rabid Stanton.

Cliques had formed, holding and arguing each side. Little McNapoleon's detractors claimed that his cadre of senior officers, Porter and Burnside among them, would execute any command of the general's without question and would support and promote his policies and reputation in defiance of Washington and at the expense of a victory.

All of this, together with the normal weariness induced by long hours on duty, wore Billy away, as it wore away many others, and primed him for trouble.

The night he visited the sutler's, a junior officer was present whom he didn't know personally but nevertheless disliked. The young man, another Academy graduate, belonged to staff; Billy had seen him dogging behind Little Mac on horseback. The officer was pale as a girl and bore himself with the relaxed arrogance of a clubman. Even the fellow's uniform irritated Billy. In a season of mud, it was immaculate. So were the sparkling boots. With long, light-colored curls and a red scarf knotted around his throat, he resembled a circus performer more than a soldier.

Most galling to Billy, hunched there at one end of the plank counter with a dirty glass in hand, was the officer's attitude. He was three or four years younger than Billy and wore no shoulder straps at all because of his junior rank. But he behaved like a senior man.

A loud one.

'The general would win posthaste if it weren't for the abolitionist scoundrels in Washington. Why he tolerates them, I don't know. Even our revered President humiliates him. He dared to call the general a traitor last week. To his face!'

Billy drank; it was his second glass. The sutler piously proclaimed that he served only cider. That cider, however, was harder than a New Hampshireman's head. Even so, it was safer to drink than some of the misbegotten combinations — brown sugar, lamp oil, grain alcohol — purveyed as whiskey.

But the cider — the sutler's name for it was oil of gladness — wasn't very good on the gut or the disposition if you hadn't eaten since noon. Superintending a detail making gabions, a routine job of the battalion, Billy had somehow been too busy for food.

The officer paused to toss off a double glass of cider. He had a lithe build and knew how to hold the stage the way actors did. His little coterie, five other officers, captains and lieutenants, waited expectantly for him to