Battle Flag

  All day long Jackson's troops waited in the woods. Most slept like the dead, so that Starbuck, setting his sentries just inside the tree line, could hear the murmur of the sleeping army like a swarm of bees. Twenty-four thousand rebel soldiers were snoring not six miles from Manassas, yet the Northern army was oblivious of their presence.

  Lucifer brought Starbuck an early dinner of cold pork, apples, and walnuts. "Still eating off the Yankees," he explained the luxury foodstuffs; then he squatted beside Starbuck and stared down the hill toward the empty turn­pike in search of Yankees. There were none in sight. "So where are the black folks' friends?" Lucifer asked.

  "God knows. Let's hope they don't find us." The sun was low in the sky, and with any luck night would fall before the enemy found Jackson's hiding place.

  "You don't want to fight?" Lucifer asked sarcastically.

  "I don't want to die."

  "You won't die. You were born under a lucky star. Like me. I can tell."

  Starbuck scoffed at the boy's confidence. "And I tell you, Lucifer, that just about every poor son of a bitch who's died in this war thought he was too lucky to get killed."

  "But I really am lucky," Lucifer insisted, "and you'd better be just as lucky as me, because you know what I was hearing back there among the other humble servant folk? That there are men in this regiment who don't like you."

  "I know that," Starbuck said. The pork was tender and the apples fresh. He wondered how long it would be before he was back on hardtack and salted offal.

  "But did you know they've written a letter about you?" Lucifer offered a sly sideways glance, then lit himself one of the cigars he had acquired for Starbuck. "The bald fellow wrote the letter, you know? The man you made me give his watch to, Meddlesome, is that his name? And I hear some three or four officers have signed it, and at least forty or fifty soldiers, and they're sending the letter to a congressman. They say you're too young and that you should be sent down the river just as fast as the army can get itself rid of you." The boy grinned, then drew his finger across his throat. "They got nothing but trouble for you, Major."

  Starbuck told Lucifer what the letter writers could do with their damned letter. "No one's sending me down the river," he added, "not if I win battles."

  "But suppose they don't let you win?" Lucifer asked.

  Starbuck acknowledged the question with a deprecating shrug, then stole the boy's cigar. "You know what I've learned about soldiering?"

  "To take another man's smoke away?"

  "That the worst enemy is never the fellow in the other uniform, that's what." He paused with the cigar halfway to his lips because a sudden fusillade had sounded in the west. The shots were from far away, but they ripped and crackled angrily in the late afternoon. "Here we go again," Starbuck said and sucked on the cigar as his heart lurched. He won­dered if fear ever decreased, or whether it got worse and worse until a man could no longer make himself stand upright in battle.

  Men woke among the trees and listened uneasily to the sound of firing. All but the newest conscript had learned to judge a fight's intensity from the sound of its guns, and this fight was hard and furious, and so they expected orders that would send them to join in, but no such orders came. The fight continued into the dusk, and no one knew who was fighting or who was winning, only that a skim of powder smoke showed white above the tree line in the west.

  Colonel Swynyard finally brought the Legion news. It seemed that a column of Yankee troops had been marching on the turnpike and that Jackson had ordered his own Stonewall Brigade to intercept and destroy the column. "Except the Yankees are too stubborn to run," Swynyard said. "They're standing toe-to-toe and fighting like demons."

  "I thought we were supposed to be hiding from the Yankees?" Starbuck said.

  "I guess we've hid long enough. Maybe Old Mad Jack reckons it's time to draw the Yankees on to us," Swynyard suggested. He looked up at the darkening sky and grimaced. "Not that they'll come tonight, but tomorrow?" He glanced over at Lucifer, who was crouched beside Starbuck's few possessions. "How's your darkie?" the Colonel asked gruffly.

  "He seems willing enough."

  "He looks a sly one to me. He's got soft hands, Starbuck, which like as not means he's been someone's house pet. And those pants he was wearing when you found him, the long-pocket ones, they ain't the pants of an honest man. If you want a good slave get yourself a bone-brained field hand who ain't afraid of a bit of work, but your boy looks more like the dangerous type of slave to me."

  "What is the dangerous type?"

  "The clever type. Not all the darkies have brains like mules, you know. Some of them are real sharp, and my father always reckoned it was the clever ones who needed breaking first. Whip 'em bloody, he'd say, then work them to death because if there's trouble among the people then you can be sure it's the clever ones who started it, so get rid of the clever ones and that way you'll have no trouble. That's the first and last rule of keeping slaves, Starbuck, and you're probably breaking it. I don't suppose it's Christian to beat a darkie without cause, so I won't suggest you do it, but I'd still advise you to send the boy away."

  "I won't do that. I like Lucifer," Starbuck said.

  "Lucifer? Is that what he calls himself? Dear Lord," Swynyard said, shocked by the name's impiety. "Find out what he's really called, Starbuck. Don't put up with that kind of nonsense! And have him cut his hair off. You don't want a black dandy. And for the Lord's sake take that gun off him! For a start it's illegal, but more important if you encourage him to think he's a cut above the other darkies he'll soon think he's a cut above you. Give a clever slave an inch and he'll take you for everything you've got." The Colonel checked this stream of advice to listen to the firing, which had reached a new intensity, almost as if the two sides were equally desperate to reach a victory before the sun dipped beneath the horizon. "Not our business, thank God. Get some sleep tonight, Starbuck, because I daresay we'll be neck deep in Yankees tomorrow."

  The long-haired, gun-toting Lucifer watched the Colonel go. "What did he say about me?" he asked Starbuck.

  "He gave me good advice," Starbuck said. "He told me to whip you bloody then work you to death."

  Lucifer grinned. "You don't want to do that. I'm your good luck, Major." He turned back toward Swynyard's retreating figure and made a deliberately formal gesture with his clenched right fist, which, at the last moment, he uncurled to let fall a few scraps of fragile bone and powdery white dust.

  Starbuck thought he recognized the ribs of a small bird among the litter Lucifer had let drop, but he did not like to ask what the strange gesture meant. He was afraid to know, so instead he looked out from the trees and saw, at last, Yankees. Horsemen were galloping across distant fields, spurring toward the firefight that still crackled in the west. The enemy was gathering like storm clouds heaping. And tomorrow they would fight.

  The Reverend Elial Starbuck's hopes, which had plunged so low during the inconveniences of the rail journey, now soared again, and once again it was the acrid smoke of battle that filled him with that fierce exaltation. He had breakfasted with Major Galloway, and afterward, leaving his luggage in the farm, the preacher had ridden to Manassas Junction to see the damage done to the depot and to intro­duce himself to General Pope's headquarters. The General had been affability itself and had willingly given his permis­sion for the famous preacher to stay with the army, even inviting him to share the headquarters' potluck suppers for the next few nights. Thus honored, the Reverend Starbuck had ridden south to Bristoe to commiserate with his old friend Nathaniel Banks, who had been given the unde­manding task of guarding the rail depot. Banks, who still considered his action at Cedar Mountain a victory, com­plained bitterly about his present duties, but the Reverend Starbuck was in no mood to encourage such backbiting. His spirits were being revived by the arrival of train after train from Warrenton Junction, each train crammed with troops fetched from the Rappahannock defenses. The damage to the rail line north of Bristoe meant that the tra
ins had to disgorge their passengers in the open country, and soon the line of parked locomotives and cars stretched for more than two miles. The men marched in from the fields where they had alighted and boasted that they had come to knock Stonewall down once and for all. The preacher liked their spirit. His own spirits rose even higher when, late in the afternoon, he heard the sound of gunfire coming from the north.

  He took his tired horse toward the sound of the guns, passing through quiet fields and deserted woods until at last he came to the valley where the Warrenton Turnpike ran and where a rill of smoke showed where men fought in the valley's bottom. He rode toward the fighting, arriving just as an enemy regiment made an attack on the Yankees' open right flank.

  The gray-coated attackers advanced in a line two ranks deep. Their rifles were tipped with bayonets that reflected the dying sun's scarlet light. They came in good order, kick­ing down a snake fence and then advancing across a pasture. The attack was silent, suggesting that these rebels planned to save their famous yell for the last few yards of their charge. Some rebels were screaming that weird sound off to the preacher's left, but that larger battle seemed stalemated between two opposing lines of riflemen.

  The Northerners had seen the threat to their right flank and hurried three regiments to meet it. Two of the regiments were from Wisconsin and the third from New York. The Northerners formed their ranks in a fold of land where they crouched behind a fence. The attackers, oblivious to the number of Yankees facing their charge, began to hurry, and their first shrill yells yipped in the dusk. The defiant sound prompted the Northern line to stand behind their fence and fire a shattering volley across the pasture. The volley's noise ripped over the valley and rolled back. Rifle flames glittered in the failing light, while the layered cloud of powder smoke drifted across the meadow to where the Confederates had been brought to a sudden, astonished halt. The Reverend Starbuck, oblivious of the bullets that whipsawed around his horse, cheered his Northerners on. Their first volley had stopped the rebel attack dead, their second turned it into a bloody mess, and their third began to drive the gray-clad regiment backward. The rebel fire became ever more feeble as the Northern fire increased. One of the rebel's banners toppled, was plucked up, and immediately fell again as the new standard-bearer was thrown back by a dozen bullets. "That's the way to deal with devils, boys!" the Reverend Starbuck shouted. A heaped line of dead and injured men showed where the tide of the Confederate attack had stalled, and now the survivors grudgingly abandoned that writhing, bloody heap as they edged backward. Earlier in the day the preacher had equipped himself with a Colt revolver from among Galloway's stores, and now he remembered the weapon and drew it from his saddle pouch. He fired at the stubborn rebels who, though their line had been broken and bloodied, still tried to return the overwhelming Northern fire.

  "By the left oblique! Forward!" a stentorian voice shouted, and the New York regiment swung forward like a gate that threatened to close on the remnants of the rebel attackers.

  "Halt!" the New Yorkers' commanding officer called. "Aim!"

  The preacher hurried his horse after the advancing New Yorkers.

  "Fire!"

  The New York volley slashed into the rebels' tattered flank. It was a killing volley, a massive blow that seemed to twitch the surviving rebels bodily backward. Blood misted the evening air as the bullets smacked home. Gray coats were splattered with red, and the field littered with still more dead and dying bodies. A man reeled out of the rebel line, blood pouring from an eye socket. He collapsed to his knees, looking as if he was praying, and the Reverend Starbuck cried in triumph as he fired his revolver at the man.

  "Doing God's work?" The New Yorkers' Colonel rode across to the preacher's side.

  " 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.'" The Reverend Starbuck trumpeted the text, then fired at a rebel who seemed to be giving orders. "Our Lord's own words," he added to the Colonel.

  "We're certainly doing His work well this time!" the Colonel shouted over the sound of his men's volleys.

  "I pray as much!" The Reverend Starbuck fired his gun's last cylinder and hoped he had slaughtered at least one rebel with his efforts. His wrist hurt from the gun's massive kick. It was a long time since he had fired a gun, and he was not sure he could remember quite how to load a revolver.

  "I suppose you wouldn't know where Pope is?" the Colonel asked the preacher.

  "I last saw him in Manassas."

  "Would you be going back there, sir? And if so, can you take a message?"

  "Willingly."

  The Colonel scribbled on a page of his notebook. "Lord knows where Jackson's main body is, but it can't be far away. We need to bring everyone here tomorrow morning to flush the mudsill out and finish him off." He tore the page out of his book and handed it to the preacher. "Just like we've finished off these rogues," the Colonel said, gesturing at the rebel regiment that had been beaten back with terrible loss. The field writhed with bodies, while a sorry handful of survivors limped back toward the far woods. "Poor fellows," the Colonel said.

  "Poor fellows? The scum of creation!" the preacher averred. "Devils in cretinous shape, Colonel, as even a casual glance at their skull shapes might reveal. They are Southerners: half-witted, morally infantile, and criminal. Don't feel sorry for them. Expend your pity on the Negroes they enslaved."

  "Indeed," the New Yorker muttered, taken aback by the vehemence of the preacher's words. "You'll deliver my message to Pope, sir?"

  "With pleasure, Colonel, with pleasure," the Reverend Starbuck said, and then, feeling as though he was at last making a real contribution toward the destruction of the Slavocracy, he turned his tired horse and headed back across the hills.

  He arrived in the day's last light at the smoking ruins of the depot, where lines of twisted, scorched boxcar frames stood on blackened wheels amidst great drifts of smoking ashes. There was acre upon acre of ruin, of desolation, of destruction. Indeed, to the preacher's heightened senses, there was something biblical in the awful sight, almost as though he witnessed the results of a visitation of God's wrath upon a people who had been lax in their duty. The Reverend Starbuck did not doubt that God could use even the hated Slavocracy to scourge the North for its sins, but the time would surely come when the North would repent, and on that happy day the armies of the godly would inflict a destruction similar to this horror upon all the rebels' habita­tions and towns and farms. And perhaps, the Reverend Starbuck fervently prayed, that great revival and consequent victory was starting here and now.

  He discovered the army's commanding general in a farm just north of the depot. A score of senior officers surrounded Pope; among them and outranked by all of them was Major Galloway, his face coated with dust and his uniform soaked with sweat. Pope snatched at the message the Reverend Starbuck carried. "It's from Wainwright," he announced. The General read the scribbled note quickly and was so pleased by what he read that he slapped the table. "We've got him! We've got him! He's on the Warrenton road, but he's been blocked there. He's trapped. He was at Centreville, now he's retreating toward Warrenton." Pope made a fine, slashing pencil mark on one of the maps that lay on the table.

  "I saw no sign of him at Centreville, sir," Galloway said nervously.

  "No wonder! The fellow was going backwards!" Pope laughed. "But who minds whether you saw him or not, Galloway? It doesn't matter where he was, but where he is now! And he's right here!" He made another pencil slash, forming a cross on the Warrenton Turnpike at the place where the Reverend Starbuck had seen the rebel attack trounced. "So tomorrow we'll bag the whole crowd!" The General could not hide his elation. For almost a year the North had shuddered at the name of Stonewall Jackson, and tomorrow Pope would end the fear and destroy the bogeyman.'

  Major Galloway, though outranked by the bearded men around him, stuck to his guns. "But what about the fellows my officer saw at Salem, sir?" He was speaking of Billy Blythe, who had at last reappeared with a convol
uted and not wholly convincing story of being chased by Southern horsemen and of being forced to take shelter for two days and nights in a draw of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but how­ever false the tale rang, the final part seemed true enough. Blythe claimed he had returned to the North's lines by fol­lowing the foothills of the Blue Ridge until he reached the deserted rails of the Manassas Gap Railroad, but that when he had tried to follow that rail line east, he had almost been captured by Southern cavalry pickets who had been guarding an immense column of troops hurrying toward Thoroughfare Gap. Blythe's men had confirmed that part of their Captain's story, and Galloway had brought the grim news to Pope.

  "But how reliable is this fellow?" Pope asked Galloway. The Northern General did not want to believe that yet more rebels were marching toward Manassas; he preferred his own theory that Jackson's panicked retreat had been intercepted on the turnpike.

  "Captain Blythe is ..." Galloway began, then could not continue. "Billy can be wild at times, sir," he admitted truth­fully, "but his men are telling the same tale."

  "And so they should. Men ought to support their offi­cers," Pope said dismissively. "So what exactly did they see?"

  "Men approaching the Thoroughfare Gap, sir. Wagons, guns, and infantry."

  Pope chuckled. "What your fellows saw, Galloway, was Jackson's supply train slipping off to the west. Stands to reason, Major! If Jackson's retreating this way"—he slashed the pencil from east to west—"then his wagons and guns won't be going in the opposite direction, not unless he's a good deal more stupid than we suppose. No, Major, your fellow saw the rebels retreating, not advancing, and tomorrow we'll turn that retreat into a rout!" His aides murmured agreement. Tomorrow the North would turn the war around. Tomorrow the North would begin the utter destruction of rebellion in Virginia.