Copperhead Page 12

  An enemy bullet spat into a puddle thirty yards short of the company and spewed up a splash of dirty water. Ned Hunt, ever the company’s clown, jeered at the distant cavalry until Truslow told him to curb his damn tongue. Starbuck knelt beside a tree on which he could steady his aim. He lifted the rear leaf sight to four hundred yards, then, because cold rifles fired short, added an extra hundred for good measure.

  “Give us room, boys!” Major Bird called out to the rebel cavalry, and the gray-coated, long-haired horsemen pulled their horses back past Starbuck’s company.

  “You won’t hit a thing, boys!” one of the horsemen shouted good-naturedly. “You might as well chuck rocks at the bastards.”

  There were more Yankees visible at the bend in the road now, maybe a score altogether. Some had dismounted to kneel beside the tavern while others still aimed and fired from the saddle. “We’ll shoot at the group on the right!” Bird called. “Remember to aim off for the wind, and wait for my order!”

  Starbuck edged his barrel leftward, so allowing for the wind that gusted out of the east. Rain beaded the rifle’s barrel as he laid the foresight on a horseman in the center of the Yankee group. “I’ll count to three, then give the order,” Major Bird announced. He was standing in the very center of the roadway and staring at the enemy through one half of a pair of field glasses he had taken from a corpse at Manassas. “One,” he sang out, and Starbuck tried to control the wavering of his rifle’s muzzle. “Two!” Major Bird called, and the rain stung Starbuck’s eyes, making him blink as he raised the stock so that the leaf sight framed the foresight. “Three,” Bird cried, and the company held their collective breath and tried to freeze their muscles into rigidity. Starbuck held the foresight exactly over the blurred figure of a mounted man a quarter mile away and kept it there until at last Bird shouted the order. “Fire!”

  Fifty rifles cracked almost in unison, spitting a ragged cloud of white powder smoke across the wet road. The butt of Starbuck’s rifle slammed into his shoulder while a bitter spew of exploding fulminate seared his nostril. Major Bird ran clear of the powder smoke and trained his broken glass at the far bend in the road. A horse was galloping loose there, a man was down on the road, a second was limping toward the wood, while a third crawled in the mud. Another horse was down, kicking and thrashing, while beyond the dying beast a score of Yankees scattered like chaff. “Well done!” Bird shouted. “Now form up and march on!”

  “How did we do?” Starbuck asked.

  “Three men and a horse,” Bird said. “Maybe one of the three men dead?”

  “Out of fifty shots?” Starbuck asked.

  “I read somewhere,” Bird said happily, “that it took two hundred musket shots to cause one casualty in Napoleon’s wars, so three men and a horse from fifty bullets doesn’t seem a bad tally to me.” He gave an abrupt bark of laughter, jerking his head back and forth in the mannerism that had earned him his nickname. He explained his merriment as he put the broken field glass away. “Just six months ago, Nate, I was full of scruples about killing. Now, dear me, I seem to regard it as a measure of success. Adam is right, war does change us.”

  “He had that conversation with you, too?”

  “He allowed his conscience to leak all over me, if that’s what you mean. It was hardly a conversation as he regarded any contribution of mine as irrelevant. Instead he moaned at me, then asked me to pray with him.” Bird shook his head. “Poor Adam, he really should not be in uniform.”

  “Nor should his father,” Starbuck said grimly.

  “True.” Bird walked in silence for a few paces. A small farm had been cut from the trees by the side of the road and the farmer, a white-bearded man with a tall ragged hat and hair that fell past his shoulders, stood in his door and watched the soldiers pass. “I keep fearing that Faulconer will reappear among us,” Bird said, “full of bluster and dignity. Yet every day that passes and he is not reappointed or, God help us, given a brigade, serves to astonish me that perhaps there is some common sense in our high command after all.”

  “But none in our newspapers?” Starbuck observed.

  “Don’t remind me, please.” Bird shuddered to recall the editorial in the Richmond Examiner that had called for Washington Faulconer’s promotion. Bird wondered how newspapers could get things so utterly wrong, then pondered how many of his own prejudices and ideas had been shaped by similarly mistaken journalism. But at least no one in Richmond seemed to have heeded the editorial. “I’ve been thinking,” Bird said after a while, then promptly fell silent.

  “And?” Starbuck prompted the Major.

  “I’ve been wondering why we call ourselves the Faulconer Legion,” Bird said. “After all, we’re no longer in his lordship’s pay. We are charges on the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I think we should find ourselves a new name.”

  “The 45th? The 60th? The 121st?” Starbuck suggested sourly. State regiments were given numbers according to their seniority, and somehow being the 50th Virginia or the 101st Virginia was not quite the same as being the Legion.

  “The Virginia Sharpshooters,” Bird suggested proudly.

  Starbuck thought about the name, and the more he thought the more he liked it. “And what about the colors?” he asked. “You want the Virginia Sharpshooters to go into battle under the Faulconer coat of arms?”

  “A new color, I think,” Bird said. “Something bold, bloody, and resolute. Maybe with the state motto? Sic semper tyrannis!” Bird declaimed the words dramatically, then laughed. Starbuck laughed too. The motto meant that anyone who tried to oppress the Commonwealth of Virginia would meet the same humiliating defeat as King George III, but the threat could equally well refer to the Colonel who had abandoned his own Legion when it marched against the enemy at Manassas. “I like the idea,” Starbuck said, “very much.”

  The company breasted a small rise in the road to see the smoke of a bivouac rising from a ridge half a mile away. The rain and clouds were masking the setting sun to bring on an early dusk in which the campfires on the ridge showed bright. The ridge was where the division’s rearguard would spend the night, protected by a stream and two batteries of artillery that stood silhouetted on the far skyline. Most of the Legion had already reached the encampment, far ahead of Starbuck’s company, which had been delayed by its encounter with the stragglers and its brush with the Yankee cavalry. “Home comforts in sight,” Bird said happily.

  “Thank God,” Starbuck said. The sling of his rifle was chafing through his soaking uniform, his boots squelched with rain, and the prospect of resting by a fire was like a foretaste of heaven.

  “Is that Murphy?” Bird squinted through the rain at a horseman who was galloping down the road from the ridge. “Looking for me, I daresay,” Bird said, and he waved to attract the Irishman’s attention. Murphy, a fine horseman, spurred through a shallow ford, galloped up to K Company, then turned his horse in a flurry of hooves and mud to rein in beside Bird. “There’s a man waiting for you in the encampment, Pecker. He’s kind of demanding you hurry up and see him.”

  “Does his rank make his demand important to me?”

  “I reckon it does, Pecker.” Murphy curbed his excited horse. Mud splashed up from the beast’s hooves to spatter Bird’s trousers. “His name’s Swynyard. Colonel Griffin Swynyard.”

  “Never heard of him,” Bird said cheerfully. “Unless he’s a Swynyard of the old slaver family? They were a nasty set. My father always reckoned you needed to stay well upwind of a Swynyard. Does this fellow smell, Murphy?”

  “No worse than you or me, Pecker,” Murphy said. “But he wants you on the chop, he says.”

  “You can tell him to boil his head, perhaps?” Bird suggested happily.

  “Reckon not, Pecker,” Murphy said sadly. “Reckon not. He’s got new orders for us, you see. We’re changing brigades.”

  “Oh God, no.” Bird said, guessing the awful truth. “Faulconer?”

  Murphy nodded. “’Fraid so, Pecker. Faulconer himself isn’t here,
but Swynyard’s his new second-in-command.” Murphy paused, then looked at Starbuck. “He wants you too, Nate.”

  Starbuck swore. But swearing would do no good. Washington Faulconer had secured his brigade, and with it he had taken back his Legion.

  And suddenly the day really did feel like defeat.

  A group of men, some in civilian clothes and some in uniforms, walked slowly along the line of abandoned fortifications north of the rail depot at Manassas. The day was ebbing fast, draining a wet land of what small gray light had illuminated its misery. The rain was helping to reduce the fires set by the retreating Confederates into damp smoking piles of evil-smelling ash through which the newly arrived northern troops raked in hopes of salvaging souvenirs. The towns-people looked sourly on these invading Yankees who were the first free northerners seen in Manassas since the war had begun. A few free blacks offered a better welcome to the Federal troops, bringing out plates of hoecakes and dodgers, though even that generosity was offered cautiously for the town’s northern sympathizers could not be certain that the wind of battle would not turn south once more and bring the Confederate army back.

  Yet for now the northern army controlled the rail junction and the commander of that army was inspecting the earthworks abandoned by the retreating Confederates. Major General George Brinton McClellan was a small man, stoutly built, with a full, fresh-colored, and boyish face. He was just thirty-five years old, but made up for his youthfulness with a stiff dignity and a permanent scowl that helped compensate for his diminutive stature. He also cultivated a small mustache that he mistakenly supposed added authority to his looks, but which only made his youth more apparent. Now, in the smoky air of the rail junction, he stopped to examine one of the black-painted logs that jutted like a cannon’s muzzle across the wet embrasure.

  A dozen staff officers paused behind the Major General and stared with him at the dripping, black-painted log. No one spoke until a weighty civilian broke the portentous silence. “It’s a log, General,” the civilian said in heavy sarcasm. “What we folk back in Illinois call a tree trunk.”

  Major General George Brinton McClellan did not dignify the remark with a reply. Instead, and taking fastidious care to avoid placing his polished boots in the deeper puddles, he walked to the next embrasure, where he gave an almost identical log another earnest examination. A rebel had chalked two small words on the fake gun’s muzzle: “Ho Ho.”

  “Ho ho,” the man from Illinois said. He was middle-aged, red-faced, and a Congressman known to be close to President Lincoln. Such a relationship would have inhibited most officers from offending the politician, but McClellan despised the Congressman for being one of the Republican mudsills who had spent the winter mocking the Army of the Potomac for its inactivity. “All quiet on the Potomac,” the mockers sang, demanding to know why the most expensive army in America’s history had waited somnolent throughout the winter before advancing on the enemy. It was men like this Congressman who were nagging the President to find a more combative soldier to lead the northern armies, and McClellan was tired of their criticism. He showed his contempt by pointedly turning his back on the Congressman and glaring at one of his staff officers instead. “The Quakers were placed here this morning, you think?”

  The staff officer, an engineer colonel, had examined the Quaker guns and deduced from the rotted state of their butt ends that the logs had been in place since the previous summer at least, which meant that the Federal Army of the United States, the largest force ever assembled in America, had spent the last few months being scared away by a bunch of felled trees smeared with pitch. The Colonel, however, knew better than to confirm such a view to General McClellan. “Maybe they were emplaced yesterday, sir,” he said tactfully.

  “But there were real guns here last week?” McClellan demanded fiercely.

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” the Colonel lied.

  “For sure,” another officer added, nodding sagely.

  “We saw them!” a third northern officer claimed, though in truth he was wondering whether his patrolling cavalry had been fooled by these painted logs which, from a distance, did look astonishingly like real cannon.

  “These tree trunks”—the Illinois Congressman put a derisive spin on the words—“look pretty well-established to me.” He clambered over the muddy embrasure, streaking his clothes with dirt, then slid heavily down beside the Quaker gun. There must have been real guns in the embrasures once, for the fake guns rested on gently ramped earth slopes that had been faced with wooden planks up which a firing gun would have recoiled before rolling gently back into position. The Congressman almost lost his footing on the old wooden planks that were slick with a greasy, damp mold. He kept his balance by holding on to the Quaker’s barrel, then hacked down with his right foot. The heel of his shoe broke clean through the rotted planks of the platform to disturb a colony of sowbugs that crawled desperately away from the daylight. The Congressman took a wet chewed stump of a cigar from his mouth. “Don’t see as how a real gun could have stood here in months, General. I reckon you’ve been wetting your pants because of a bunch of sawn-off tree trunks.”

  “What you are witnessing, Congressman”—McClellan wheeled fiercely on the politician—“is a victory! Maybe an unparalleled victory in the annals of our country! A magnificent victory. A triumph of scientifically employed arms!” The general threw a dramatic hand toward the pyres of smoke and the scattered pairs of blackened boxcar wheels and the tall brick chimney stacks that had been left gaunt among the smoldering embers. “Behold, sir,” McClellan said, waving his arm at the dispiriting landscape, “a defeated army. An army that has retreated before our victorious advance like hay falling before the scythe.”

  The Congressman obediently surveyed the scene. “Precious few bodies, General.”

  “A war won by maneuver, sir, is a merciful war. You should fall to your knees and thank Almighty God for it.” McClellan made that his parting shot and strode briskly away toward the town.

  The Congressman shook his head, but said nothing. Instead he just watched as a lean man wearing a threadbare and tarnished French cavalry uniform climbed over the embrasure to look at the Quaker gun. The Frenchman wore a monstrous straight sword at his side, had a missing eye disguised with a patch, and displayed a cheerful demeanor. His name was Colonel Lassan and he was a French military observer who had been attached to the northern army since before the previous summer’s battle at Bull Run. Now he jabbed his toe against the planks of the gun platform. His spurs jingled as the rotted wood broke apart under his half-hearted kick. “Well, Lassan?” the Congressman demanded. “What do you make of it?”

  “I am but a mere guest in your country,” Lassan said tactfully, “a foreigner and an observer, and so my opinion, Congressman, is of no importance.”

  “You’ve got eyes, ain’t you? Well, one anyway,” the Congressman added hastily. “You don’t have to be an American to decide whether this piece of lumber was put in place just yesterday.”

  Lassan smiled. His face was foully scarred, but there was something indomitable and mischievous in his expression. He was a sociable man who spoke perfect English with a British accent. “I’ve learned one thing about your wonderful country,” he said to the Congressman, “which is that we mere Europeans should keep our criticisms to ourselves.”

  “Patronizing frog son of a goddamn bitch,” the Congressman said. He liked the Frenchman, even though the one-eyed bastard had taken two months’ salary off him at a poker game the night before. “So you tell me, Lassan. Were these logs put here yesterday?”

  “I think the logs have been here somewhat longer than General McClellan assumes,” Lassan said tactfully.

  The Congressman glowered at the General’s party which was now a hundred paces off. “I reckon he doesn’t want to get his nice clean army dirty by getting into a brawl with some nasty, ill-mannered southern boys. Is that what you reckon, Lassan?”

  Lassan reckoned the war could be over in a month if the northe
rn army just marched straight ahead, took some casualties, and kept on marching, but he was far too diplomatic to pick sides in the disagreements that were argued so fiercely in Washington’s offices and across the capital’s well-stocked dining tables. So Lassan simply shrugged off the question, then was saved from further interrogation by the arrival of a newspaper sketch artist who began making a drawing of the rotted planks and the decaying log.

  “You’re seeing a victory, son,” the Congressman said sarcastically, peeling off the damper parts of his cigar before thrusting it back into his mouth.

  “It sure ain’t a defeat, Congressman,” the artist said loyally.

  “You think this is victory? Son, we didn’t throw the rebels out, they just strolled away in their own sweet time! They’re getting their wooden guns ready someplace else by now. We won’t have real victory till we string Jeff Davis up by his scrawny heels. I tell you, son, these here guns have been rotting here since last year. I reckon our Young Napoleon’s just been humbugged again. Wooden guns for a timberhead.” The Congressman spat into the mud. “You make a sketch of these wooden cannon, son, and be sure to show the wheel-marks where the real guns were towed away.”

  The artist frowned at the mud beyond the decaying firing ramps. “There ain’t any wheel-marks.”

  “You got it, son. And that means you’re one long jump ahead of our Young Napoleon.” The Congressman stumped away, accompanied by the French observer.