The Star of Gettysburg Part 19

"You're right, fellows," he said. "We oughtn't to be quarreling among ourselves when there are so many Yankees to fight."

Mail forwarded from Richmond was distributed in the camp the next day and Harry was in the mult.i.tude gathered about the officers distributing it. The delivery of the mail was always a stirring event in either army, and as the war rolled on it steadily increased in importance.

There were men in this very group who had not heard from home since they left it two years before, and there were letters for men who would never receive them. The letters were being given out at various points, but where Harry stood a major was calling them in a loud, clear voice.

"John Es...o...b.., Field's brigade."

Es...o...b.., deeply tanned and twenty-two, ran forward and received a thick letter addressed in a woman's handwriting, that of his mother, and, amid cheering at his luck, disappeared in the crowd.

"Thomas Anderson, Gregg's brigade. Girl's handwriting, too. Lucky boy, Tom."

"Hey, Tom, open it and show it to us! Maybe her picture's inside it! I'll bet she's got red hair!"

But Tom fled, blus.h.i.+ng, and opened his letter when he was at a safe distance.

"Carlton Ives, Thomas' brigade."

"In hospital, Major, but I'll take the letter to him. He's in my company."

"Stephen Brayton, Lane's brigade."

There was a silence for a moment, and then some one said:

"Dead, at Antietam, sir."

The major put the letter on one side, and called:

"Thomas Langdon, the Invincibles."

Langdon darted forward and seized his letter.

"It's from my father," he said as he glanced at the superscription, although it was half hidden from him by a mist that suddenly appeared before his eyes.

"Here, Tom, stand behind us and read it," said Harry, who was waiting in an anxiety that was positively painful for a letter to himself.

"Henry Lawton, Pender's brigade," called the major. "This is from a girl, too, and there is a photograph inside. I can feel it. Wish I could get such a letter myself, Henry."

Lawton, his letter in his hand, retreated rapidly amid envious cheers.

"Charles Carson, Lane's brigade."

"Dead at Fredericksburg, sir; I helped to bury him."

"Thomas Carstairs, Field's brigade."

"Killed at the Second Mana.s.sas, sir."

"Richard Graves, Archer's brigade."

"Died in hospital after Antietam, sir."

"David Moulton, Field's brigade."

"Killed nearly a year ago, in the valley, sir."

"William Fitzpatrick, Lane's brigade."

"Taken prisoner at Antietam. Not yet exchanged, sir."

"Herbert Jones, Pender's brigade."

"Killed at South Mountain, sir."

Harry felt a little s.h.i.+ver. The list of those who would never receive their letters was growing too long. But this delivery of the mail seemed to run in streaks. Presently it found a streak of the living. It was a great mail that came that day, the largest the army had yet received, but the crowd, hungry for a word from home, did not seem to diminish. The ring continually pressed a little closer.

St. Clair received two letters, and, a long while afterwards, there was one for Dalton, who, however, had not been so long a time without news, as the battlefield was his own state, Virginia. Harry watched them with an envy that he tried to keep down, and after a while he saw that the heap of letters was becoming very small.

His anxiety became so painful that it was hard to bear. He knew that his father had been in the thick of the great battle at Stone River, but not a word from him or about him had ever come. No news in this case was bad news. If he were alive he would certainly write, and there was Confederate communication between Eastern Tennessee and Northern Virginia.

It was thus with a sinking heart that he watched the diminis.h.i.+ng heap. Many of the disappointed ones had already gone away, hopeless, and Harry felt like following them, but the major picked up a thick letter in a coa.r.s.e brown envelope and called:

"Lieutenant Henry Kenton, staff of Lieutenant-General Thomas Jonathan Jackson."

Harry sprang forward and seized his letter. Then he found a place behind a big tree, where St. Clair, Langdon and Dalton were reading theirs, and opened it. He had already seen that the address was in his father's handwriting and he believed that he was alive. The letter must have been written after the battle of Stone River or it would have arrived earlier. He took a hurried glance at the date and saw that it was near the close of January, at least three weeks after the battle. Then all apprehension was gone.

It was a long letter, dated from headquarters near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Colonel Kenton had just heard of the battle of Fredericksburg and he was rejoicing in the glorious victory. He hoped and believed that his son had pa.s.sed through it safely. The Southern army had not been so successful in the west as in the east, but he believed that they had met tougher antagonists there, the men of the west and northwest, used to all kinds of hards.h.i.+ps, and, alas! their own Kentuckians. At both Perryville and Stone River they had routed the antagonists who met them first, but they had been stopped by their own brethren.

Harry smiled and murmured to himself:

"You can never put down dad's state pride. With him the Kentuckians are always first."

He had a good deal of this state pride himself, although in a less accentuated form, and, after the momentary thought, he went on. The colonel was looking for a letter from his son-Harry had written twice since Fredericksburg, and he knew now that the letters would arrive safely. He himself had been wounded slightly in a skirmish just after Stone River, but he was now entirely well. The Southern forces were gathering and General Bragg would have a great army with which they were confident of winning a victory like that of the Second Mana.s.sas or Fredericksburg. He was glad that his son was on the staff of so great a genius as General Jackson and that he was also under the command of that other great genius, Lee.

Harry stopped reading for a moment or two and smiled with satisfaction. The impression that Lee and Jackson had made upon the South was as great in the west as in the east. The hero-wors.h.i.+p which the fiery and impressionable South gives in such unstinted measure to these two men had begun already. Harry was glad that his father recognized the great Virginians so fully, men who allied with genius temperate and lofty lives.

He resumed his reading, but the remainder of the letter was occupied with personal details. The colonel closed with some good advice to his son about caring for himself on the march and in camp, drawn from his own experience both in the Mexican war and the present strife.

Harry read his letter three times. Then he folded it carefully and put it in an inside pocket of his tunic.

"Is it good news, Harry?" asked Happy Tom, who had already finished with his own letter.

"Yes, it's cheerful."

"So's mine. I'm glad to hear that your father's all right. Mine didn't go to the war. I wish you could meet my father, Harry. I get my cheerful disposition and my good manners from him. When the war was about to begin and I went over to Charleston in about the most splendid uniform that was ever created, he said: 'You fellows will get licked like thunder, and maybe you'll deserve it. As for you, you'll probably get a part of your fool head shot off, but it's so thick and hard that it will be a benefit to you to lose some of it and have the rest opened up. But remember, Tom, whenever you do come back, no matter how many legs and arms and portions of your head you've left behind, there'll be a welcome in the old house for you. You're the fatted calf, but you're sure to come back a lot leaner and maybe with more sense.'"

"He certainly talked to you straight."

"So he did, Harry; but those words were not nearly so rough as they sound, because when I came away I saw tears in his eyes. Father's a smart man, a money-maker as good as the Yankees themselves. He's got sea island cotton in warehouses in more than one place along the coast, and he writes me that he's already selling it to the blockade runners for unmentionable prices in British and French gold. Harry, if your fortunes are broken up by the war, you and your father will have to come down and share with us."