The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign by Altsheler (reading eggs books .txt) 📕

would have no message to send that night to Jackson. He might go to sleep, but the whole division would march early in the morning. Harry wrapped himself again in his cloak, found a place soft with moss under a tree, and slept with the soft May wind playing over his face and lulling him to deeper slumber.

He rode the next morning with General Ewell and the whole division to join Jackson's army. It was a trim body of men, well clad, fresh and strong, and they marched swiftly along the turnpike, on both sides of which Jackson was encamped further on.

Harry felt a personal pride in being with Ewell when the junction was to be made. He felt that, in a sense, he was leading in this great reinforcement himself, and he looked back with intense satisfaction at the powerful column marching so swiftly along the turnpike.

They came late in the day to Jackson's pickets, and then they saw his army, scattered through the fields on either side of the road.

Harry rejoiced once more in the grand appearance of the new division. Every coat or tunic sat straight. Every shoe-lace was tied, and they marched with the beautiful, even step of soldiers on parade. They were to encamp beyond Jackson's old army, and as they passed along the turnpike it was lined on either side by Jackson's own men, cheering with vigor.

The colonel who was in immediate charge of the encampment, a man who had never seen General Jackson, asked Harry where he might find him. Harry pointed to a man sitting on the top rail of a fence beside the road.

“But I asked for General Jackson,” said the colonel.

“That's General Jackson.”

The colonel approached and saluted. General Jackson's clothes were soiled and dusty. His feet, encased in cavalry boots that reached beyond the knees, rested upon a lower rail of the fence. A worn cap with a dented visor almost covered his eyes. The rest of his face was concealed by a heavy, dark beard.

“General Jackson, I believe,” said the officer, saluting.

“Yes. How far have those men marched?” The voice was kindly and approving.

“We've come twenty-six miles, sir.”

“Good. And I see no stragglers.”

“We allow no stragglers.”

“Better still. I haven't been able to keep my own men from straggling, and you'll have to teach them.”

At that moment the Acadian band began to play, and it played the merriest waltz it knew. Jackson gazed at it, took a lemon from his pocket and began to suck the juice from it meditatively. The officer stood before him in some embarrassment.

“Aren't they rather thoughtless for such serious work as war?” asked the Presbyterian general.

“I am confident, sir, that their natural gayety will not impair their value as soldiers.”

Jackson put the end of the lemon back in his mouth and drew some juice from it. The colonel bowed and retired. Then Jackson beckoned to Harry, who stood by.

“Follow him and tell him,” he said, “that the band can play as much as it likes. I noticed, too, that it plays well.”

Jackson smiled and Harry hurried after the officer, who flushed with gratification, when the message was delivered to him.

“I'll tell it to the men,” he said, “and they'll fight all the better for it.”

That night it was a formidable army that slept in the fields on either side of the turnpike, and in the silence and the dark, Stonewall Jackson was preparing to launch the thunderbolt.