Valley of the Shadow: A Novel

by Ralph Peters

  George Crook had been right about trusting a single road, and that galled Sheridan, too. He liked Crook and respected him, but remained alert to hints of Crook’s old seniority. Before the war, Crook had been not only his superior officer, but something of a friend. And outward friendship still prevailed, with Crook behaving impeccably. Somehow, that made things worse.

  In an instant of weakness, almost of panic, he imagined himself relieved and Crook replacing him.

  Sheridan stiffened his spine: That would not happen.

  He had passed so many officers on his climb, though. Even Davey Russell, his captain early on, was stuck leading a division under Wright. For all the good cheer his old comrades displayed toward him, Sheridan could not help feeling that more than a few would have liked to see him fail.

  Unjust suspicions? Perhaps. But an officer didn’t win stars through Quaker forbearance. Life was a constant battle. Every man born short of stature—and every Irishman—learned that out of the cradle: A man got what he had the grip to seize.

  In the fields and gullies off to the west toward Winchester, skirmishers pricked the morning. Wright’s lines filled out at last, their dark blue almost black against the greenery, and batteries unhitched between the groves. Well and good, but time was pressing hard.

  And Wilson’s horsemen had gained this ground at a cost. John McIntosh had been shot in a clumsy attack. Sheridan had ridden up to the wounded man’s litter to tell him, volubly, that he had done nobly, but the cavalry action had been a piecemeal donnybrook, victorious only because of initial surprise and swelling numbers. A sound brigadier, McIntosh would lose a leg. Sheridan had pressed Wilson’s troopers forward for as long as it made sense, but now it was the infantry’s turn at work. And, veterans or not, Wright’s soldiers had the slows.

  Below Sheridan’s hillock, a break developed in the flow of troops. Unwanted wagons creaked out of the gorge and paused, waiting for orders, blocking the road. Sheridan had expected Emory and the Nineteenth Corps to appear, ready to outflank the Rebs on the right.

  If Emory didn’t emerge from the maw of that gorge at the double-quick …

  And what the devil were all those wagons doing, clogging up the egress from the gorge? He’d ordered the trains to bring up the army’s rear, he’d made it clear.

  Sheridan’s staff men kept well off him: They’d learned to read his moods. And when still more wagons—whose damned wagons?—appeared in place of regiments and brigades, a livid Sheridan turned to order an aide with rank to ride back and attend to the problem.

  Then he decided to gallop down there himself.

  “Flags stay here,” he snapped. “Forsyth, Moneghan, ride with me. Bring two couriers.”

  He spurred Rienzi toward the Pike, waving his hat to troops who cheered to acknowledge him. His smile was as forced as an old man’s shit.

  The soldiers had to believe that he was confident, that he had the day in hand. A bold smile at the proper time could be worth a full brigade.

  Where the hell was Emory? Even Old Bricktop could not have strayed from the single road assigned him.…

  Galloping through a fog of wagon dust, Sheridan pointed his mount toward the gorge, cursing Heaven and earth in anticipation. He promptly became entangled in the worst confusion he’d seen on the verge of a battle. Avoiding a crowd of purposeless men, his horse nearly collided with an ambulance. A less skilled rider would have been hurled to the ground.

  The declining road was Hell under green leaves, cluttered with every encumbrance that burdens an army. Supply wagons and spare caissons swarmed the narrow Pike, wheels interlocking. Drivers raged and whipped each other’s teams to clear the way, making things worse. Put-upon men fought bare-knuckled, while others loitered, content to avoid the fray pending in the high fields. There wasn’t space for a rat between the flank of the hill and the drop into the ravine. Still worse, some idiot surgeon had set up shop at the one spot where wagons might have skirted each other.

  A pile of arms and legs stood near the road, souvenirs of the cavalry attack and hardly the welcome Sheridan wanted for troops headed into battle.

  The wagons belonged to Wright’s Sixth Corps, their presence a flagrant violation of orders.

  “Satan’s whore of a mother,” Sheridan muttered. “Buggering Christ.”

  He bullied his way down the narrow Pike, ordering idle men to clear the way, although they had nowhere to go. At last, he spotted Emory forcing his way up the track with faint success. Emory had lost his hat. His red hair spiked.

  As he closed on the general commanding the Nineteenth Corps, Sheridan exploded.

  “You shit-licking bastard. You’re supposed to be up and ready to attack.”

  Emory was having none of it. He leaned out of the saddle as if about to punch Sheridan in the face. “I’m not going to be your whipping boy, Sheridan. If you want to know where my soldiers are, just look up that damned hillside. I’ve had to set my men scrambling through the brush to get past this mess.”

  “These wagons aren’t supposed to be on this road.”

  “Well, they’re not my goddamned wagons.”

  “I know whose wagons they are.”

  Sheridan wanted to smash somebody, something, anything. Wright, who had it coming, wasn’t there, and Sheridan couldn’t restrain himself.

  “This is your goddamned shambles, Emory. As the senior officer on the spot, you should’ve damned well taken charge and cleared the lot of them off.”

  Emory gave him another hard-boy glare. “I told Wright to his face, back across the creek, that his trains were to wait while my men went forward. Care to know what General Wright replied?”

  “Don’t you dare lecture me, Emory.”

  “He reminded me that you’d placed him in command of the field this morning. And he ordered me to damned well wait my turn while his trains went forward.” Emory’s eyes belonged to a wolf. “In fact, I’m violating my orders by trying my damnedest to get past all this.” He jerked a thumb toward the army’s rear. “I’m supposed to be back there, sitting on my saddle sores.”

  Sheridan found it unbearable to be caught in the wrong. He turned and called to Major Moneghan. “Find the provost marshal. Any of his men. Tell them to clear this road. If a wagon’s stuck, push it into the ravine. Hell, push them all over. Just clear this road.”

  He turned back to Emory. “Get your men up that hill and into position.”

  9:00 a.m.

  Brucetown

  After a ride much lengthened by poor information, Sandie Pendleton finally found the generals. Breckinridge and Wharton stood talking on the porch of a ruined store.

  “Compliments,” Pendleton gasped, saluting briskly. “General Breckinridge, you’re to withdraw your infantry from this position and move to Winchester with all possible speed. Yanks are pressing Ramseur. It appears to be a significant attack.”

  “Plenty of damned blue-bellies up here, too,” Wharton objected. He was leading Breckinridge’s Division while the former vice president commanded the army’s wing. “At least two divisions of cavalry. With those damned repeaters. Our cavalry can’t hold ’em, can’t begin to.”

  “You have General Early’s orders,” Pendleton told him, a tad too curtly. He was as short of patience as of breath.

  Squinting against the sun, Wharton looked up at him. Evidently seething, but restraining himself. “Tell General Early I’ve been hotly engaged since dawn … in an effort to prevent a large body of cavalry from crossing the Opequon. To no avail. We’re now attempting to hold them close to the creek. There. Now you have it in prettied-up language, fit for a staff report. But I’m telling you plain as calico, Pendleton, if I withdraw my infantry, their cavalry’s going to run all over us, once we’re in open country. I can fight a time where I am now, but if I pull out too soon, we’ll have a disaster. And not just for this division.”

  Pendleton never had cared for Wharton, who was given to unkind remarks about staff men. “Doesn’t sound like much of a fuss to me,
General.”

  Breckinridge tried to smooth things over. “Sandie, it’s been plenty hot up here. You rode in during a lull. They’ve been coming at us hard, on multiple approaches. Plenty of them. They’ll surely come again, any minute now. We need to hold them east of the Valley Pike. Or this entire army will be outflanked.”

  Pendleton could see it. All too clearly. But the situation at Winchester was desperate and worsening. The decision was General Early’s to make, no one else’s.

  With a dust-scathed voice, Pendleton said, “I’ve given you General Early’s orders. He expects you to obey them.”

  He pulled his horse around before the generals could renew the argument.

  * * *

  Wharton turned to Breckinridge. “It’s plumb insanity.”

  Breckinridge shook his head, dismayed. “If Early were here, he’d see it.”

  A few fields away, Yankee bugles sounded the charge again.

  “Not sure how long we’ll hold, as it is,” Wharton noted.

  “’Long as we can, Gabe,” the former vice president told him. “’Long as we can.”

  10:30 a.m.

  The Winchester battlefield

  Fitz Lee didn’t want any man to know how ill he remained, but he half believed he should bind himself to the saddle. The dizziness wasn’t constant, that was a mercy, but his head felt the size of a pumpkin and as delicate as an egg. The day was mild—perfect fighting weather—but he remained greased with sweat. Wiping his forehead to spare his eyes, he rode as hard as he could bear to ride. Determined to do his duty.

  He rode well enough to leave Breathed’s horse-artillery battery hundreds of yards behind, along with the mounted detachment guarding the guns. Only Breathed himself kept pace with Lee. The artillery major had a flair for horsemanship and war that belied his prewar training as a doctor.

  Lee could have used the young man’s medical skills, but gunnery took priority this morning. The boy-faced major had left his Maryland home to establish a medical practice in Missouri, only to hasten back as secession spread, coincidentally sharing a railcar with Jeb Stuart and thus deciding his fate. The joke current in the cavalry was that Dr. Breathed dissected Yankees with shrapnel, but the young man’s taste for war went even further: He relished defending his guns with pistol and saber.

  Lee often marveled at what war revealed in men, but the revelations could also be unsettling. He wondered how one such as Breathed could ever again find contentment in smearing ointments on children or giving ear to a woman’s vague complaints.

  Every surge of Lee’s horse seemed a ruffian’s blow, pounding his spine. But he would not relax his pace. Desperate to seize the terrain he’d scouted earlier, he galloped headlong toward the fine, high field. Longing to lie down and to shut his eyes.

  The Yankees, however, had chosen to be inconsiderate.

  The queer thing was that they’d been massing all morning, a multitude, but Sheridan had yet to advance his body of infantry. It made no sense, since the Yankees had the numbers, plain as Hazel. Ramseur was stretched to the point of opening gaps of twenty, even forty, yards between regiments, with no reserves, just praying that Rodes or Gordon or Breckinridge and Wharton would appear. The Yankees overlapped his front, they had the weight to crush him. Yet they didn’t come on.

  Hadn’t studied the terrain, either. Or if they had, they’d drawn some poor conclusions. That was one dispensation from the Lord. The Federals appeared set to rest their flank in the fields south of Red Bud Run, a creek down in a chasm, with no attempt to secure the heights to the north. And that ground had been wrought by the Lord for artillery.

  “Over there,” Lee shouted, hoarse and breathless, barely able. “Major, put your guns in battery over there and aim due south.” He drew up and Jim Breathed reined in beside him. “Attend to this personally. Plenty of Yankees will make their appearance shortly.”

  Breathed snapped open his field-glass case, intent on a better look.

  “Oh, they’re over there,” Lee assured him. He coughed.

  “And fool enough to cross those fields?” Breathed asked, pointing. “I’d have them in perfect enfilade.”

  “Knock ’em down in rows.”

  With Breathed leading this time, they trotted to the lip of the field above the creek. Behind them, arriving cavalrymen eased their pace, husbanding hard-used nags, with four guns and extra caissons rattling behind them.

  Lee intended to linger just long enough to see the battery positioned, but not a moment more. He had to ride north, see how Lomax was faring. The din of action, including the thump of artillery, rolled down from Stephenson’s Depot and the countryside beyond. According to reports he’d received, two Yankee mounted divisions were in action to the north. Lee foresaw an attempt at a grand envelopment, imagining advancing waves of blue. He commanded less than half their number, shamefully mounted. And the Yanks had their infernal repeating rifles.

  Well, if a man couldn’t be strong, he’d best look strong.

  If only the blasted dizziness would quit ambushing him.…

  He just had to stay in the saddle, only that. His uniform clung, sodden, drenched by a private rainstorm. He prayed to stay upright through this fearsome day.

  “That’s right,” he called to a sergeant. “Set her in just so.” Breathed’s cannoneers looked like filthy workmen, not the proud soldiers Lee knew them to be.

  He felt himself wobbling again, the whole world tilting.

  “You all right, sir?” Major Breathed asked.

  Lee tried to smile, unsure if he succeeded. “Just pondering the lot of Man the Fallen, Major. And the frightful justice of the Lord.”

  “Put a few rounds in those trees? See what they’ve got in there?”

  Lee stared across the ravine, focusing by strength of will. The Yankees were out there all right, deep in that grove. He’d seen them marching up from another vantage point. But the terrain was broken, rolling and plunging, with patches of trees interrupting lines of sight. Entire brigades could play peekaboo like children. It was a landscape that favored the artful defender. And Breathed’s guns held the only perfect artillery position Lee had found all morning.

  Why didn’t the Yankees come on, though? What were they waiting for? Did their delay serve a purpose? If so, what could it be? Was Early doing exactly what they wanted, hurrying down to Winchester? The blue-bellies could’ve crushed Ramseur hours before, with the strength they’d already had up.

  Well, their delay was going to cost them dearly.

  Lee closed a palm over his eyes, trying to force the world back into good order.

  “Sir? Shall I give them a few rounds?” Breathed asked again.

  “No. Don’t warn them. Surprise them.” His empty stomach burned, but he doubted that he could keep down as much as a biscuit.

  “Sir … if I may speak as a doctor…”

  “A minor indisposition, Major, all but behind me now.” Lee considered the dismounted cavalrymen deploying in skirmish order to shield the guns, weighing the meager force he had provided. There just were not enough men to go around. Not enough of anything, really. Except spirit. And even that, were the truth to be told, was not all it had been. “Can’t spare any more cavalrymen,” he told Breathed. “You’ll just have to make do.”

  “Yanks try coming up out of that ravine, I’ll prescribe a dose of canister.”

  To the north, miles off, the sound of fighting intensified. Lee imagined sabers clashing with sabers. He needed to be there, not here any longer.

  About to ride off, he wiped his beard and addressed the horse-artillery major a last time.

  “Hold this position, son,” Fitz Lee told Breathed. “You hold this position.”

  11:00 a.m.

  The rear of Sheridan’s army

  Rud Hayes rode at the head of his brigade, confounded by the beauty of the day. Beyond the dust of an army on the march, a mild sun flirted with autumn. Dreaming of colors to come, the green groves slept. Fields gleamed and cornstalks fa
ded. The earth, the air, emanated a grace past understanding, the transcendence philosophers struggled to explain. Swedenborg, Emerson, it mattered not: The language of men could not confine such wonder, this brilliance of life.

  It often struck Hayes how nature remained unmoved by human folly. Up ahead, cannon grumped—not yet with the full growl of battle—but these fields would meet soldiers or lovers impartially. It put Man in his place.

  Men were such small things, really, measured against the stars, and yet each life was the center of a universe. In West Virginia, they had clashed in a war of ants atop mountains as grand as Eden. Men had perished miserably amid splendor, and those who gave them orders could only hope their deaths had a greater meaning, that this hard war made sense.

  Riding by his side, Russ Hastings asked, “Think we’ll go in, sir?”

  Hayes judged the distant smoke. “Only if things go badly.”

  The young man longed to prove his worth, to show that he could rival Will McKinley’s skills as an adjutant, but Hayes felt no craving to see his men bloodied again. If they remained out of the fight this day, it would bring no shame upon them. They had done their duty before and doubtless would do it again. But killing had to be confined to duty, never a matter of personal advantage. This murder condoned must not become a passion.

  In the early days of the war, it had alarmed him that men killed so readily, then gloated. Sometimes he felt that the true purpose of discipline was not to get men to fire when ordered to do so, but to ensure they ceased firing when that command was given.

  Hayes had never caught the contagion of common religion, but there had been times in this war when he feared for his soul.

  He could not deny that battle thrilled the senses—disturbingly so—but he never lusted for it between-times. Content to follow orders, he did his best when required, and that was enough. He knew too many of the men he led, not only by sight and name, but in the deeper ways rooted in shared hardships and winter encampments. No glory gained at their expense appealed to him.