The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 (29 page)

"Which is what, pray?" Thorne asked.

"Capture, I suppose. The man had no business there. I thought he was here to advise our signal people?"

"He was," Thorne lied, and knowing that McClellan knew he lied.

"Then he should have been working with the telegraphers, not exercising his horse. Unless, of course, he was here for another purpose?"

Thorne stared into the general's young, fresh face, which was set in the perpetual scowl of a man always trying to look older and more severe than his inmost fears made him feel. "What purpose might that have been, General?" Thorne asked spitefully.

"You'd know, Thorne, you'd know," McClellan snapped. He knew full well that Thorne had the President's confidence, and he feared, justifiably enough, that the white-haired Colonel was feeding Lincoln with a constant stream of unofficial news. No wonder the fool in the White House had no idea how to win the war! If the ape would just let McClellan be slow and systematic then the Union would be saved, but no, he was forever prodding and urging McClellan to go faster. And what did Lincoln know of war? My God, the man was a railroad lawyer, not a soldier. McClellan let these resentments brood in his mind as he listened to the distant grumbling of the heavy guns at Harper's Ferry.

A stirring of the thick, warm air caused that grumbling sound to swell into a sudden staccato. Thorne wondered why McClellan did not launch an army corps toward the beleaguered garrison to rescue the thousands of Northern soldiers and their tons of precious supplies from the rebels, but such an ambitious lunge was beyond the Young Napoleon's thinking. "You wouldn't mind, I suppose," Thorne asked, "if I rode toward Frederick City?"

"Your choice, Colonel, your choice, but I can't spare men to protect you. Besides, I confidently expect to camp there tonight, but if you care to ride ahead, it's your risk. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a war to prosecute."

Thorne did ride ahead of the advancing army, but in the event he arrived much later than McClellan's vanguard. The Colonel's horse threw a shoe and by the time he had discovered a blacksmith and had the shoe nailed back onto the hoof, the Federal army was already moving into the scarred fields that had held the rebel army just a few days before. Axes sounded in the woods as men cut firewood, and everywhere drab tents unfolded in long lines. Latrines were dug, horses led to water, and pickets set to watch the empty fields.

Thorne rode into the town that was filled with curious Northern soldiers who were disappointed not to hear tales of rebel rapine and pillage. Stars and Stripes flew from windows, rooftops, and balconies, but Thorne cynically suspected that just as many rebel flags had greeted the arrival of Lee's army. Barrels of water and lemonade were placed on the sidewalk to slake the soldiers' thirst, while women handed round trays of cookies. One enterprising shopkeeper was doing a brisk trade in Confederate flags; crude things that Thorne guessed had been run up on a sewing machine, but the soldiers were eager enough to buy the souvenirs that would be dirtied, shot at, then sent home as battle trophies. Even the despised Confederate paper money, which had no real value outside the South, was being bought as keepsakes. Four young women in widely hooped skirts and fringed shawls, carrying paper parasols, walked brazenly down the center of Main Street. They were no local girls, that much was obvious, for their pinchbeck sophistication was far too flashy for Frederick City's tastes. Thorne guessed they were four of the hundreds of Washing-ton whores who had followed the army west and were said to have their own transport, tents, and cookhouses.

A tall, white-haired preacher frowned at the sight of the girls, and Thorne, deciding that the preacher looked like a man of sense, approached, introduced himself and, without any real hope of learning anything useful, asked about Adam.

It took the preacher only a few moments and a half dozen questions to identify the missing officer. He hauled off his wide-brimmed hat and gave Thorne the terrible news. "Buried in my ow
n churchyard, Colonel." The min
ister led
Thorne
to the graveyard, and to the mound of freshly turned earth with its makeshift wooden cross on_ which Adam's name had been misspelled. Someone,
Thorne
was glad to see, had put flowers on the grave. "You poor bastard,"
Thorne
said too softly for the preacher to hear, "you poor innocent bastard."

So that, he thought despairingly, was that, and he rode dejectedly back to the growing Federal encampment. The desperate throw had failed.
Thorne
had always known it was a reckless and ramshackle chance, but he had deceived himself into believing that somehow it might work. Yet how was Adam ever to have reached Delaney? It had been a waste of a good man and, when
Thorne
reached the camp and found where his servant had erected his tent, he forced himself to endure the penance of writing to Adam's father. He did not know if Adam's mother still lived, and so he addressed the letter to General Washington Faulconer and assured him that his son had died a hero. "It will doubtless grieve you that he perished while fighting for his country rather than for his native state, but Almighty God saw fit to repose that patriotism in his heart and God's ways are ever inscrutable." The stilted words were hopelessly inadequate, but what words could ever suffice to tell a father of his son's death?
Thorne
told the General where Adam's body lay, then finished the letter with his sincere regrets. A drop of sweat smeared his signature, but he blotted it dry, sealed the letter, then pushed it to one side. Damn, he thought. The one chance to goad McClellan into a semblance of energetic soldiering had passed.
Thorne
had played and lost.

Except he had not lost. Two Indiana soldiers, a sergeant and a corporal, had finished pitching their tents and had wandered north out of their camp lines, across a dip in the pastureland, to a cleaner stretch of grass that was unsoiled by rebel litter. They planned to make a fire and boil some coffee away from the predatory gaze of their comrades and so they walked toward a rail fence that had miraculously remained unbroken during the rebels' stay. Rails made good firewood, and the coffee would help pass the long hot afternoon, but just before they reached the fence Corporal Barton Mitchell saw an envelope lying in the grass. It had a curiously bulky look and so he picked it up and shook out the contents. "Bless me, Johnny," he said as the three cigars appeared. He sniffed one. "Damn good too. You want one?"

Sergeant Bloss took the offered cigar, and with it the sheet of paper that had served to wrap the precious find. As he nipped the cigar's end with his teeth he glanced at the paper and, after a few seconds, frowned. There were names here he recognized—Jackson, Longstreet, and Stuart—while at its foot the paper was signed by command of General R. E. Lee.

The coffee was forgotten. Instead the two men took the paper to their company commander, who passed it up the chain of command until at last a prewar colleague of Colonel Chilton's recognized the handwriting. It seemed the order was genuine and it was hurried to General McClellan's tent.

Thorne heard the excitement and, pulling on his blue coat, ducked out of his tent and strode across to where a throng of people was gathered about the General's headquarters. Many in the crowd were civilians come to gape at the Federal general who, convinced that the order was the real copper-bottomed thing, was exultant. McClellan saw Thorne and brandished the paper triumphantly. "Here's a paper with which I can whip Bobby Lee, Thorne! And if I can't I'll go home tomorrow!"

Thorne, astonished at this sudden enthusiasm on McClellan's part, could only gape.

"Tomorrow we'll pitch into his center!" McClellan boasted, "and in two days we'll have him trapped!"

Thorne managed to secure the order. His astonishment grew as he read it, for here were written all Lee's dispositions and those dispositions revealed the enemy commander to be a consummate gambler. Lee must have known that McClellan's army was marching westward, but such was his contempt for his enemy that he had divided his army into five parts, then scattered them across western Maryland and northern Virginia. Most of the Confederate forces were besieging Harper's Ferry, others had gone north to prepare for the invasion of Pennsylvania, while smaller forces barred the hills that faced McClellan's troops. It was true that the order was now four days old, but the constant mutter of the distant guns confirmed that the rebels were still swarming about Harper's Ferry and that sound suggested that the dispositions detailed in the order were still in place, which meant that if McClellan really did march quickly then there was a genuine chance that the Northern army could be placed between the scattered units of Lee's army. Then they would be destroyed, one by one, slaughter by slaughter, surrender by surrender, page after page of history being made.

"Rebellion's end, Thorne," McClellan said as he retrieved the paper.

"Indeed, sir," Thorne said, and felt a pang of distaste for the short general whose hair was so carefully waved and whose mustaches so gleamingly brushed. A gelded cockerel, he thought, and was ashamed that he should so resent this gift of utter victory being given to such a creature.

"You don't doubt the order's genuine?" McClellan inquired, unable to hide his nagging anxiety that the order might be a ruse, though the circumstances of its finding suggested gross carelessness rather than sly design. "Pittman vouches for the handwriting," the General went on. "It's Chilton's penmanship, right enough, or so Pittman says."

"I trust Colonel Pittman's memory on the point, sir," Thorne admitted.

"Then we've won!" McClellan crowed. The ape in the White House might take the credit for preserving the Union, but George Brinton McClellan was content that the voters at the next presidential election would know who was truly to thank. McClellan in '64! And '68, by God, and maybe forever once the voters realized that only one man in the country had the nerve, prudence, and wisdom to steer America! McClellan luxuriated in that vision for a moment, then clapped his hands. "Marching orders!" he announced, then shooed his visitors away so that he could work in peace.

Thorne found Colonel
Pittman, and from Colonel Pitt
man he traced the order's discovery back to Sergeant Bloss and Corporal Mitchell. From them he learned where the envelope had been found, and after that he rode into Frederick City and found a man who had helped retrieve Adam's body. To
Thorne
's delight he discovered that the body had been found only yards from where the envelope had lain, and that circumstance convinced
Thorne
that the copy of Special Order 191 was genuine, and not a subtle trap laid by an outnumbered enemy. "So it wasn't in vain," he told Adam in his grave. "You did well, Faulconer, you did well." He solemnly saluted the grave, then said a prayer of thanks. God, it seemed, had not abandoned His country. And well done, Delaney,
Thorne
added silently. The Richmond lawyer had earned a reward.

For already the first Federal troops were preparing to march with new haste and sudden purpose; preparing to march west to where Lee's betrayed army was spread so carelessly across the summer-heated land. The Young Napoleon had been offered victory and now, with uncharacteristic verve, he sprang to take it.

At dawn Harper's Ferry was shrouded in a mist that flowed like twin white rivers from the Shenandoah and the Potomac valleys to meld softly above the town. The mist flowed in utter silence, but it was an ominous silence, for by now the rebel troops commanded all the high ground about the river town and their great guns had been dragged forward to the crests so that their cold, dew-beaded barrels were pointing down to what lay hidden by the soft white vapor. The gunners had loaded and rammed their pieces, and their most distant cannon was scarcely a mile from the mist-concealed Federal defenses, a mere six and a half seconds of flight for the nineteen-pound shells that were nestled inside the barrels against the two-pound charges of coarse powder that would explode when Jackson gave the signal. There were guns to the north of the town, guns to the south, and guns to the west. A ring of guns, all silent now, all waiting for that shroud of mist to lift from the doomed town.

General Thomas Jackson paced the rocky crest of the Bolivar Heights west of the town from where he scowled at the valley mist as though it were a devilish device planted to thwart his victory. His cadet cap was pulled low over his brooding eyes, but those eyes missed nothing as he walked up and down, up and down, sometimes dragging a cheap watch from his pocket and peering at its slow-moving hands. The gunners tried not to catch his gaze. Instead they busied themselves with unnecessary tasks like greasing already lubricated elevating screws or straightening the friction primers that came bent from the factory so that they would not accidentally ignite and cause an explosion. Shirt-sleeved infantry carried ammunition up the hill trails and stacked their loads beside the waiting guns.

Most of the rebel infantry would be spectators of this battle and the hills were crowded with lines of gray and butternut uniforms waiting for Old Jack's firework display. Starbuck's battalion was close to a mixed battery of ten-and twenty-pounder Parrott guns, their trails all burned with the initials USA, evidence that Jackson had equipped his batteries with cannon taken from the Yankees. Captain Billy Blythe carried a cup of coffee as he joined Starbuck. "That's Old Jack?" he asked, nodding at the shabby, bearded figure who stumped in his huge square-toed boots up and down beside the guns.