United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
Was the army pulling out? Drew tried to think coherently. He had
something to do. It was important! Not here--where? The boom of the
field artillery, the flickering of those fires, they confused him,
making it difficult to sort out his memories.
Again, a canteen appeared before him, but now he pushed it petulantly
aside. He didn't want a drink; he wanted to think--to recall what it was
he had to do.
"Drew--!" There was a figure, outlined in part by one of those fires,
squatting beside him. "Can you ride?"
Ride? Where? Why? He had a mule, didn't he? Back in the horse lines.
Boyd--he had left the mule with Boyd. Boyd! _Now_ he knew what had to be
done!
He moved away from the outstretched hand of the man beside him, got to
his feet, saw the blot of a mount the other was holding. And he caught
at reins, dragged them from the other's hand before he could resist.
"Boyd!" He didn't know whether he called that name aloud, or whether it
was one with the beat in his head. Boyd was out on that littered field,
and Drew was going to bring him in.
Towing the half-seen animal by the reins, Drew started for the fires and
the boom of the guns.
"All right!" The words came to him hollowly. "But not that way, you're
loco! This way! The Yankees are burnin' up what's left of the town; that
ain't the battlefield!"
Drew was ready to resist, but now his own eyes confirmed that. Fire was
raging among the few remaining buildings of the ghost town, and shells
were striking at targets pinned in that light, shells from Confederate
batteries, taking sullen return payment for that disastrous July day.
A lantern bobbed by his side, swinging to the tread of the man carrying
it. And, as they turned away from the inferno which was consuming
Harrisburg, Drew saw other such lights in the night, threading along the
slope. This was the heartbreaking search, among the dead, for the
living, who might yet be brought back to the agony of the field
hospitals. He was not the only one hunting through the human wreckage
tonight.
"I've talked to Johnson," Kirby said. "It'll be like huntin' for a steer
in the big brush, but we can only try."
They could only try ... Drew thought he was hardened to sights, sounds.
He had helped bring wounded away from other fields, but somehow this was
different. Yet, oddly enough, the thought that Boyd could be--_must_
be--lying somewhere on that slope stiffened Drew, quickened his muscles
back into obedience, kept him going at a steady pace as he led Hannibal
carefully through the tangle of the dead. Twice they found and freed the
still living, saw them carried away by search parties. And they were
working their way closer to the breastworks.
"Ho--there--Johnny!"
The call came out of the dark, out of the wall hiding the Yankee forces.
Drew straightened from a sickening closer look at three who had fallen
together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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