United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
“Is it possible that it is you, Miss Bond?” he said in amazement,
after she had spoken to him again. “Yes, this is I, or as much as
is left of me. And here,” and his voice trembled, “is about all
that is left of the regiment. The rest are lying about the roots
of those accursed cedars, a full mile from here.”
“And Harry Glen--where is he?” she said, rising hurriedly from the
boxes and passing along the line of stretchers, scanning each face.
A new pain appeared in the Doctor's face, as he watched her.
“You'll not find him there,” he said. “The last I saw of him
he was forming a handful of the regiment that were still on their
feet, to retake cannon which the Rebels had captured. I was starting
off with the Colonel here, when they dashed away.”
“Come,” he said, after making some temporary provisions for the
comfort of his wounded. “You must get away from here as quickly
as possible. I fear the army is badly defeated, and it may be a
rout soon. You must get away before the rush begins, for then it
will be terrible.”
He took her over the pike, and across it to where some wagons were
standing. As he was about to put Rachel in one of these their
attention was arrested by an officer, apparently acting as Provost
Marshal, dragging from behind a huge rock a Lieutenant who was
skulking there. They were too far away to hear what was said, but
not so far that they could not recognize the skulker as Lieutenant
Jacob Alspaugh. The Provost Marshal apparently demanded the
skulker's name, and wrote it in a book. Alspaugh seemed to give
the information, and accompanied it with a lugubrious pointint to
a bandage around his knee. The Provost Marshal stooped and took the
handkerchief off, to find that not even the cloth of the pantaloons
had been injured. He contemptuously tore the straps from Alspaugh's
shoulders, and left him.
“The rascal's cowardice is like the mercy of God,” said Denslow,
“for it endureth forever.”
He put Rachel in the wagon, and ordered the driver to start at once
for Nashville with her. She pressed his hand, as they separated
with fatigue and grief.
How had it been faring all this time with Harry Glen and those with
him?
The fierce wave had dashed against the regiment early in the
morning, and although the first fire received from the Rebels made
gaps in the ranks where fifty men fell, it did not recoil a step,
but drove its assailants back with such slaughter that their dead,
lying in the open ground over which they crossed, were grimly compared
by Abe Bolton to “punkins layin' in a field where the corn's been
cut off.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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