The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee's Great StandAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee's Great Stand
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
"But unlimited men, unlimited cannon and rifles, unlimited ammunition
and supplies and a general who is willing to use them, are. Of course
I know that you can't carry any such message to General Lee, but I feel
it to be the truth."
"We've a great general and a great army that say, no."
Nobody paid any attention to the two. It was merely another one of
those occasions when men of the opposing sides stood together amid the
dead and wounded, and talked in friendly fashion. But Harry knew that
he could not delay long.
"I've got to go, Dick," he said. "And I've a message too, one that I
want you to deliver to General Grant."
"What is it?"
"Tell him that we've more than held our own to-day, and that we'll
thrash him like thunder to-morrow, and whenever and wherever he may
choose, no matter what the odds are against us."
Dick laughed.
"I see that you won't believe even a little bit of what I tell you," he
said "and maybe if I were in your place I wouldn't either. But it's
true all the same. Good-by, Harry."
The two hands, covered with battle grime, met again in the strong grasp
of blood kindred and friendship.
"Take care of yourself, old man!"
The words, exactly alike, were uttered by the two simultaneously.
Both were stirred deeply. Harry sprang on his horse, looked back once,
waving his hand, and rode rapidly to General Lee. Later in the night,
he received permission to hunt up the Invincibles, his heart full of
fear that they had perished utterly in the gloomy pit called the
Wilderness, lit now only by the fire of death.
He left his horse with an orderly and walked toward the point where he
had last seen them. He passed thousands of soldiers, many wounded, but
silent as usual, while the unhurt were sleeping where they had dropped.
The Invincibles were not at the point where he had seen them last, and
the colonels of several scattered regiments could not tell him what had
become of them. But he continued to seek them although the fear was
growing in his heart that the last man of the Invincibles had died
under the Northern cannon.
His search led toward the enemy's lines. Almost unconsciously he went
in that direction, however, his knowledge of the two colonels telling
him that they would take the same course. He turned into a little
cove, partly sheltered by the dwarfed trees and he heard a thin voice
saying:
"Nonsense, Leonidas. I scarcely felt it, but yours, old friend, is
pretty bad. You must let me attend to it. Keep still! I'll adjust
the bandage."
"Hector, why do you make a fuss over me, when I'm only slightly hurt,
and sacrifice yourself, a severely injured man!"
"With all due respect you'd better let me attend to you both," said a
voice that Harry recognized as St. Clair's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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