Valley of the Shadow: A Novel

by Ralph Peters

  They reached Getty’s division north of Middletown. Three miles from their old camps. The men had thrown up barricades along a rail fence and Torbert had deployed cavalry on both flanks.

  The line was thin as watered whiskey, though. Why hadn’t the Rebs pressed on?

  Sheridan spurred Rienzi hard and the animal gave its all, sailing over the rail fence, putting him between his own men and the Rebs fussing in the distance.

  Showing himself to the men, he waved his cap.

  Recognizing him, the soldiers rose. Cheering wildly and wonderfully this time. An officer rode out to greet him: Lew Grant, a New Englander of the soberest, solemnest sort. Who really did look like an undertaker, Sheridan had to admit.

  “The acting division commander reports, sir,” Grant said, saluting.

  “Where’s Getty?”

  “General Getty has the corps, sir.”

  “I know he has the damned corps. Where is the man?”

  “Rallying the other divisions, sir. He means to fight, if the Johnnies have a mind to.”

  “Fuck the Johnnies. I’ve got a mind to fight.” Sheridan softened. “I hear you did splendidly, Grant. Bully for you.”

  The Vermonter refused to smile. Christ, they were cold porridge, Sheridan told himself.

  He meant to ride back to find Getty and look for Wright, but as soon as he passed to the rear of Getty’s division he was startled by a line of flags shooting up from the earth, as if rising out of graves. The men gathered about the banners cheered: George Crook’s men. Sheridan saw Rud Hayes.

  A politician unlike any other he’d met, Hayes always struck him as thoughtful and honest. Brave, too. Traits Sheridan didn’t associate with the run of elected officials.

  He rode closer.

  “Devil of a morning, I hear.”

  “That’s putting it gently, sir. We were surprised, we—”

  “No matter, we’ll see things right. Just got our knuckles bruised.” Sheridan looked more closely at the colonel—a man awaiting a promised star—and added, “You all right, Hayes? You look like the convict’s last breakfast.”

  “I’ll do, sir. A minor discomfiture. I’ll do fine. As will my men.”

  His men. Barely a handful. But there would be more, in time, Sheridan believed. And Hayes? Dear Jesus. What kind of officer—or politician—used a word like “discomfiture”? Unless he was describing a case of clap?

  For all that, Hayes had done well enough at Opequon and Fisher’s Hill. Damned well. Probably too good a man to go far in politics.

  Before he rode off, Sheridan bellowed down the line of flags—a line with as many officers as men: “You boys just wait. Those sonsofbitches might think they’ve wrung the chicken’s neck this morning, but they’ll be the ones cooked in the soup tonight. You’re going to sleep in your own damned camps, we’re going back.”

  Robust cheers, from too few throats. And cheers were not bullets.

  Not yet.

  As they continued rearward, searching for Wright and Getty, Torbert asked, “You really do mean to attack, sir? After—”

  “I’m going to shit all over them.”

  Found at last, Horatio Wright shocked Sheridan with his appearance. Blood all over the man. Face swollen up like a monkey’s. Yet Wright seemed alert enough. Beside him, Getty’s own mug was set in stone. Except for eyes that betrayed the strain of the day.

  “You look like a whore cracked you over the snout with a bottle.”

  “Would’ve preferred that,” Wright told him, struggling to pronounce his words with clarity. “Grazed my chin. Looks worse than it is.”

  “I hear Ricketts is down.”

  Wright grimaced. “Did what he could, Jim did. Chance he’ll live, but no more than a chance. Thoburn’s dead.”

  “Done’s done,” Sheridan said. “The living have work to do. Where’s George Crook? And Emory?”

  “Rounding up their men.”

  “Well, gather the rest of yours. I mean to attack.”

  That raised eyebrows. Even Getty’s.

  Sheridan drew his watch from his vest: It wasn’t even noon.

  He turned to Torbert. “I need to know whether Longstreet’s on the field. Or anyone else we weren’t expecting to call. Have your men take prisoners, find out.” He faced Wright and Getty again. “As soon as you can, get all of your divisions back in the line, free up Torbert’s Comanches for flanking movements. Emory’s pack will go back in, as well. What’s left of Crook’s divisions can form the reserve.”

  Wright stammered, “Sir … we need time. It’s going to take—”

  “We’ve got the time,” Sheridan told him. “The Rebs don’t.”

  11:30 a.m.

  Middletown

  Early thought: What the hell did those Yankees have to cheer about?

  1:15 p.m.

  Northwest of Middletown

  Gordon watched his men slump back.

  “Couldn’t do it,” Clem Evans told him. “Yanks have thickened up, would’ve cut us to pieces.”

  Gordon nodded. Ruefully. “‘Ripeness is all.’”

  “Try again, though? Slip left, get around their flank?”

  “No. They’ve got cavalry over there, I’m sure of it. Don’t want you cut off.”

  Evans took off his hat, scrubbed the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and said, “We should’ve kept going. This morning.”

  It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement of fact, like a man saying “It’s hot” in a Georgia August. Gordon didn’t reply.

  Early had, at last, ordered a renewal of the attack, but couched in such cautious and qualified language that it seemed too kind to describe it as halfhearted. It was clear that the army commander’s desire to hold what he’d gained still outweighed the hope of achieving more. It wasn’t like Jubal Early—not the Early who’d fought, fiery and foulmouthed, for three hard years—and this unexpected collapse into timidity, on this day of all days, made Gordon sick and furious at once.

  He had advanced his men and they stepped off dutifully. But the weather deep down in their souls had changed. Exhaustion had caught up with them in that pair of do-nothing hours. Worse, they’d had time to think themselves into a scare. The attack hadn’t failed so much as petered out, the only saving grace the low count of casualties.

  They’d been deserted by the gods, like those obstreperous Greeks on the plains of Troy. And no sacrificial libations were going to help.

  The waste, the waste …

  Between Early’s order to halt and his tardy directive to nudge forward again, something had happened to the Yankees, too. A clamor of cheers had arisen from those blue blots on the horizon. Gordon could not fix the cause—not after the Federals had suffered so great an embarrassment—but he was certain the reason for that new and boisterous confidence would prove unwelcome.

  Reinforcements? Had less of Sheridan’s army been on the field than they had reckoned? Had they done less damage than every man in a gray uniform believed? That made no sense. They’d taken prisoners from every Yankee division known to be in the Valley.

  Reinforcements from Grant, then, their arrival fatefully timed? What else could those whipped wastrels have to cheer about?

  Gordon felt exhausted himself, head clouded all around the edges of thought. Every man from Middletown south needed sleep.

  For their part, the Yankees appeared to have caught their wind. Well enough to deliver confident volleys and stand their ground. By the time his men had worked their way forward through the copses and swales, it also had become evident that the Yankees had gathered in many of their runaways. The lines encountered were skeletal no more.

  As the gun smoke quit, the earth gleamed between the armies. The beauty of the day seemed unjust and cruel, almost dizzying. A man just wanted to nap under a tree.

  His last, bloodied men passed Gordon. Their eyes reproached him, an unusual thing.

  Surely they didn’t blame him for the morning’s halt? When, dudgeoned nigh unto mutiny, he’d
pushed Early to continue, even begged?

  Probably just plain angry at the world, those threadbare devils. The men had common sense, that was the thing. Those who had survived this long in the ranks were little generals, one and all, keen as to what made sense and what did not. They knew the army should have kept going, back when the going was all peaches and plums. And they’d grasped that this late, enfeebled attack was a waste. The hour of triumph had passed, and his soldiers knew it.

  On the far right, the advance by Ramseur’s Division had been paltry, with even less action between the army’s wings. Was Dod still spooked by that premonition of his? For Dod, of all people, to let his fire go out, and on this day … Gordon remembered him sitting on his horse, mouth sealed, as Early stopped them short of destroying Sheridan. Any other day, Dod would have spoken up, as hungry for glory as a preacher for beefsteak. But in that crucial moment he’d held his peace.

  And now the spark was out of the men, leaving them surly and restive. They knew as well as he did that their position was a wretched one, inviting the Yankees to come and take revenge. Cavalry country lay beyond their left, conjuring memories of the debacle at Winchester. They knew, those veterans did, that the sensible thing, the wise thing now, would be to withdraw to ground that could be defended, even if it meant giving up the field.

  But Gordon also knew that Early was resolute. Jubal Early wasn’t hard to figure, not on this marred, upside-down of a day. He’d scared himself with victory, unable to quite believe it. Aching to put his row of defeats behind him, he’d longed for a win so terribly that the ease and speed of the morning’s success unnerved him. Now the old man hoped to claim this ground through sunset, to prevent the Yankees from pronouncing all this a mere raid. The traditions of warfare—pernicious things—held that the army occupying the field at the close of the day had won the battle. Jubal Early just wanted to keep what he had.

  Gordon feared losing everything.

  2:00 p.m.

  Sheridan’s knoll

  Lying on his side on the grass, with his head propped on one hand, Sheridan watched young Forsyth dismount and approach. The captain looked as though he meant to chaw nails and spit out bullets.

  “Got an itch there, Forsyth?”

  The captain all but tore into him. “The Rebs couldn’t make their advance stick anywhere. They’ve peaked, sir, they’ve used themselves up.”

  “So I hear,” Sheridan noted.

  The aide could not contain himself. “It seems to me, General, that we ought to advance. I came to you hoping for orders.”

  Sheridan sat up. He was not one to take advice, let alone a scolding, from a junior officer. But before he could speak, he caught the sudden look of terror on Forsyth’s face: The younger man had realized in an instant just how far he’d overstepped.

  Sheridan laughed out loud. Stray officers nearby chuckled along on cue.

  “Sir, I…”

  Sheridan waved away the captain’s alarm. Better to have officers who longed to fight than the sort who always saw reasons for doing nothing.

  “Not yet, Forsyth, not yet. Go back and wait.”

  And Sheridan left it at that.

  Of course, it had been tempting, the impulse to order a broad counterattack when the Rebs sought to resume their advance and crumbled before they’d come to serious blows. But Sheridan was still waiting for the cavalry to confirm that Longstreet was merely a spook and not a presence. While presenting a front of unconcern—all but lolling atop the knoll where he’d fixed his headquarters flag—he kept an eye on the constant stream of men returning to seek out their regiments. He could read their hearts, the way the shame of the morning’s defeat was transforming itself into anger. They needed to stew a little longer, though. Meanwhile, the damned quartermasters and ordnance officers, the supply sergeants, and each last corporal had to do their work and put cartridges in pouches, pouches on men, and men back under arms.

  As for Jubal Early, his brazenness was admirable. He’d almost pulled off the great coup de main of the war. But “almost” wasn’t cash money. And soon he was going to pay.

  When Forsyth reappeared an hour later, agitated as only the young can be, Sheridan didn’t give him a chance to speak, but grinned and repeated, “Not yet, Captain, not yet.”

  3:30 p.m.

  North of Middletown

  Lucy.

  Lucy and the boys.

  It seemed to Hayes that nothing else mattered at all. War? This madness? He’d had his fill of it, wanted nothing more to do with the carnage.

  And yet …

  His borrowed horse stirred mildly. Hayes took off his hat and tilted back his head. Sniffing up the last blood.

  His skull throbbed. Worst headache of his life. Cracked skull? Couldn’t tell. And many another feature of his body pained him, too. Not least, that ankle. He would’ve liked Doc Joe to look him over, but that was not going to happen for some time. His brother-in-law was busy just to rearward, sawing and sewing and sweating amid the gore of a field hospital missing all the tools left in Rebel hands.

  The queer thing was that he had not really bled from all the thumping. Not until midafternoon, when a sudden gush from his nose crimsoned his shirtfront. Even that seemed to have stopped, for the most part. But his head felt the size of a mountain.

  He longed to leave it all and return to Lucy, to life, to a pretense, at least, that men could live in harmony and accord, to go back to his law books, to Shakespeare, to lamplit evenings in a familiar chair.

  But he knew that, even now, he wouldn’t go. He would keep his promise to these men around him, would not leave their ranks until, together, they were paroled into peace.

  Correcting his posture for the hundredth time that afternoon, he looked about himself, at the faces. Faces with names he knew. A motley bunch, they were, these men of Ohio and West Virginia, weathered and withered by war. Some had trousers but no shirt or jacket. A few wore only undergarments. Others were as barefoot as the Rebs now, though not as toughened against the claws of the earth. Hats were rare.

  But they had returned. To him. He had thought his division gone. And yes, it had suffered. But these men had come back to rally around their uncaptured flags, most returning of their own free will, but some driven by the provost marshal’s horsemen and others cajoled by the likes of Will McKinley.

  Lucy. He closed his eyes and let himself ache with longing for a last moment. Then he forced himself back to his unwanted duty.

  Crook had told him that his division and poor Joe Thoburn’s—under Harris now—would not join the coming counterattack, but would be held in reserve. He should have welcomed the news, he knew. And in one sense he had. Yet these men around him, who had endured so much through years of war, must not be left with the sense that they had failed. They had fought too hard, won too often, and seen too many comrades fall away to finish what might be their last great battle like this, as defeated men left standing in their undergarments, stripped of their possessions and their pride. These men deserved better.

  Crook understood, of course. Hayes had not needed to speak up on the matter. He’d read Crook’s voice, his expression, even the way his fingers clutched the reins.

  These men did not deserve to be left behind when the others went forward. They did not deserve to be shamed. No, it was not the division it had been one day before. But it did not deserve shame.

  It struck Hayes, again, how much he loved these men. Not with the odd, perfunctory love many officers professed, but in a bared and honest sense that was almost familial. He saw the paradox, of course, in his desire to lead them back into battle against his own dear wishes, against all reason, merely to save that intangible thing called “pride.” What an odd thing it was, that almost embarrassing tenderness you came to feel toward your brothers in arms. Was it possible to love so broadly? Was “love” even the right word? Was the human heart, so often sordid, capable of emotion so enormous?

  Nearby, a sergeant returning to his troops from a personal
errand hitched up his trousers and announced, “Boys, I’ve just taken the grandest shit of my life. ’Twas pure magnificence. I wish it had gone right down Early’s gullet.”

  Wiping a drop of blood from his nose, Hayes smiled. Love had to take a number of things in stride.

  3:40 p.m.

  Sheridan’s knoll

  “All right, Forsyth,” Sheridan said. “Issue the order. The army will advance at four o’clock.”

  The confirmation had come at last that all the Longstreet rumors were pure nonsense. And the men were ready now, angry as wasps whose nest had been poked with a stick.

  Forsyth rushed off. All around, officers and orderlies stirred into action. The air sparked. Even before the order could be transmitted, the blue lines beyond the knoll seemed to quicken and stiffen.

  It was not a time for refinement. His plan was straightforward. Attack head-on with the infantry to knock the Rebs out of position, then envelop them with cavalry on both flanks. Early’s dispositions were idiotic, his flanks petered out in thin air, a display of overconfidence that hearkened back to the earliest months of the war. Jubal Early’s arrogance would be Jubal Early’s destruction.

  Unexpected, unwanted, and, as usual, uncontrollable, Custer galloped up, fair hurled himself from his snorting, prancing mount, rushed over to Sheridan, wrapped him in his arms, and picked him up, dancing him around.

  “Put me down, damn it!”

  Custer cried, “Phil, it’s grand to see you! Now we’ll give them a licking!”

  “Put me down!”

  Grinning like a boundless fool, Custer set him back upon the earth.

  Although the gaudy young cavalryman was oblivious, every two-legged being near them had tensed. Hushed. Waiting for a burst of outraged temper.

  Instead, Sheridan smiled, shaking his head as at a naughty boy. “George, I’ve sent down the order to attack. You should be with your men, they’ll go in late.”

  Custer’s delight collapsed. He looked like a lad who’d been told he might miss out on the cherry pie.