A Lieutenant at Eighteen Page 22

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE RIVERLAWN CAVALRY ON THE FLANK

  The aide-de-camp was a stranger to Lieutenant Sterling, who thereforehesitated to answer such a question; but Deck immediately introducedhim to the staff-officer, adding that he had saved the wagon-train fromthe enemy by taking to the meadow, and had brought it over a milethrough the mire.

  "You have done well, Lieutenant Sterling, and I will mention the matterto the general," said the captain.

  "Thank you, Captain Woodbine. I have forty men, besides thequartermaster-sergeant and thirteen mule-drivers," added the chief ofthe escort very respectfully.

  "You are a commissioned officer?"

  "I am, Captain."

  "You may retire, but remain within call."

  "The presence of this officer solves the difficulty," continued theaide-de-camp. "He has to conduct his wagons within our lines, and hecan take charge of the prisoners after you have disarmed them. They donot seem to be disposed to fight, and the escort is sufficient. Theywill be here in a very short time. Lieutenant Sterling!" he called.

  This officer hastened back to the point, and saluted the captain; andthis time he noticed the gold cord of a staff-officer on the sides ofhis trousers, which had been concealed before by a clump of bushes inwhich he stood. He had been an officer in the regular army, a WestPointer, who had resigned in "piping times of peace."

  "I have to assign you to an important duty in addition to your presentservice, and I have no doubt you will perform it as well as you havethe conduct of the wagon-train," said Captain Woodbine.

  "I should certainly have been captured if Lieutenant Lyon had notfought and beaten the enemy's cavalry," replied the chief of theescort.

  "It would not have been your fault if you had been. What is left of theenemy will be placed in your charge, and you will march them to ourlines beyond Jamestown. They will be disarmed as soon as they come in,"said the captain.

  Lieutenant Sterling was then sent over to the road with a message toLife Knox to march the cavalry, dismounted, to the point, and to bringover his own men, except a guard for the wagons and the horses. Theywere on the ground as soon as the Confederates reached the forest. Theycame on foot, and left the horses where they had been abandoned.

  An orderly sergeant, as he appeared to be from the chevrons on his arm,advanced and asked for the commanding officer; and Deck was pointed outby the riflemen, as his men ascended the bank to the solid ground. Hepresented himself to the lieutenant, and saluted.

  "I am Sergeant Pfeffer, and we desire to surrender, for we can donothing more," said he.

  "Where are all your commissioned officers?" asked Deck.

  "They are all killed or badly wounded," answered the sergeant.

  "How many men have you now?"

  "Fifty-eight; and we started out early this morning with a fullcompany," returned Pfeffer, with no little bitterness in his tones.

  "You will march your men in single file along this bank, and deposityour arms of all kinds on the ground," said Lieutenant Lyon.

  He directed Life to supervise the ceremony, sending the weapons by hisown men and the riflemen to the wagons; and the quartermaster-sergeantwas directed to load them in the vehicles. Deck hurried the business,for the aide-de-camp was impatient at the delay. As soon as this dutyhad been accomplished, and Lieutenant Sterling was thus in condition tohandle the prisoners, Deck ordered the cavalrymen and the riflemen toreturn to the road, mount their horses, and form in the usual order, incolumn, under the command of Sergeant Knox.

  Captain Woodbine instructed Lieutenant Sterling to have the prisoners,under a guard of his own men, bring in the wounded, bury the dead, andlead their horses to the forest. He was told to be very cautious, andto shoot any prisoner who attempted to escape or make any serioustrouble. With forty men, armed with muskets of the best quality, thecaptain declared that he could control the greater number of prisoners.

  The aide-de-camp, who may take command of any body of troops in thefield if he finds it advisable to so, and Lieutenant Lyon hastened totheir horses, and mounted, and the column moved up the road. LieutenantSterling proved himself to be a man of energy and determination. Hedrew up his command around the prisoners, and then addressed them. Hetold them what they were to do, and warned them that any man whoattempted to escape, or offered any opposition to his orders, would besummarily shot.

  Forming the remains of the company by fours, with his own men on theflanks, he marched them to the stream. They were first required todispose of the dead and wounded, who numbered over forty, and to dowhat they could to aid the latter. Quite a number of them who had notbeen disabled had been hit and more or less injured, and the lieutenanthad excused the worst cases from duty.

  The horses were all led to the point, and the wounded who were able toride them were mounted. It was late in the afternoon when thecumbersome column was ready to move. Lieutenant Sterling's infantry hadworked hard all day, and were considerably fatigued by their hard laborat the wheels of the wagons. He mounted the best horse he could find,and gave a steed to each of his men. A horse was also given to eachwounded prisoner able to ride him; but the others were required to goon foot, for the officer would not trust them with horses for fear theymight attempt to escape.

  The prisoners had the head of the column, the mounted ones in theirrear, with a file of the mounted infantry on each flank of them. Thewagons completed the column, with guards on each side of them, mountedlike the others. Each vehicle had a led horse behind it; for there weremore of them than of prisoners. The lieutenant, mindful of theinstructions of Captain Woodbine, kept a careful watch over his charge,riding up and down the line on both sides. In due time, though notuntil in the evening, he delivered the wagon-train to the chiefquartermaster at the camp, and the prisoners to the provost marshal. Hewas highly commended later for his efficient service.

  It would require a whole volume to give the details of the battle, asit began in the early morning, and continued with more or lessintensity till evening, when the enemy were driven back to theirintrenchments on the Cumberland River. General Thomas cannonaded tilldark, and he intended to storm the works the next morning.

  Lieutenant Lyon's command, accompanied by Captain Woodbine, reached theMillersville Road in the middle of the afternoon, where they found aportion of the First Kentucky Cavalry waiting for them, detained thereby the written order of the aide-de-camp. The column was reformed, andmarched with all haste for a distance of two miles, where the captainturned into another by-road, made by teams hauling out wood from theforest, and running parallel to the one by which the force had reachedthe meadow, and nearly to the pike.

  At a point on this road Captain Woodbine had sent the companies inadvance of the First Kentucky, by what looked like a cattle-path, to aposition in the woods where they might intercept the retreating enemy,or at least annoy them. The Confederates were moving to the south bythe pike and each side of it, the infantry passing through the miryregion. The Riverlawn portion continued on the same road till they camein sight of the intrenchments on the north side of the Cumberland,where the rear of Major Lyon's command was drawn up.

  At this time in the afternoon no considerable portion of the enemy hadadvanced near their intrenchments, and there appeared to be nothing forthe squadron to do. The major wanted to know what his son had beendoing; and Deck gave him a brief account of his operations at themeadow. Not a man had been lost in the affair, which had been fought bythe sharpshooters behind the trees near the point. The artillery's gunswere still booming on the air in the distance.

  Captain Woodbine had chosen the position to be occupied by thesquadron; and he had sent the remainder of the regiment to which itnominally belonged to a point farther north, for reasons of his ownwhich he did not explain, but probably he desired to keep theRiverlawns by themselves.

  The riflemen were now reunited; and while Deck was telling his story tohis father, Captain Woodbine conducted the body, now under the commandof Captain Ripley, from the hill
behind which the two companies ofcavalry were stationed, so that they could not be seen by the enemy, toanother hill which commanded the pike and the meadow. Here he postedthem, and gave the commander his orders.

  From this height the sharpshooters could harass the enemy retreatingover the pike, and also the two regiments of infantry retiring over thelow ground, the first of which was within twenty rods of the hill. Itwas evident that it was marching towards ground to the west of thehill, where the ascent was less difficult. They were within range ofthe riflemen, and the fight in this section of the field was extremelylikely to begin here. But the First Kentucky Cavalry was posted nearthem, and would be obliged to bear the brunt of it.

  Captain Woodbine went to these troopers, and moved them to a morefavorable position, where they could support the sharpshooters; forthey were nearly, if not quite, as efficient as a battery would havebeen in the same place. Directly in front of the Riverlawn Cavalry wasa hill overlooking the intrenchments of the enemy, which sheltered thecommand from the guns if they were fired in that direction; and theaide-de-camp rode his horse up the declivity, which was partiallycovered with trees.

  Then he dismounted, hitched his horse, and placed himself behind atree, where he could see all the force he had taken under his command,and all the approaches of the enemy who were hurrying down the pike andon both sides of it. Just then he wished he had half a dozen regimentsof troops, for he believed that with a sufficient force he could cutoff the retreat of the enemy to his works.

  He had five companies of cavalry and fifty-six riflemen, less than asingle regiment; and he could only impede, but not check, the retreat.Major Lyon surveyed the country around from all points; and when he sawthe captain on the hill, he ascended it in order to make a startlingproposition to him.

  "We are within half a mile of the enemy's intrenchments, CaptainWoodbine," the major began.

  "Hardly as near as that, Major," replied the aide-de-camp.

  "A quarter of a mile would make no difference with my plan."

  "Ah, then you have a plan?" replied the captain with a smile.

  "I am not an engineer, as I believe you are; but I have been lookingover those earthworks. I see a place where I believe I could ride mysquadron over them; and I presume there is not a large force there, forit has the river on one side. We have something less than six hundredmen, all mounted, and I fancy we could ride over the artillerymen itcontains."

  "I don't believe you could get into the works, in the first place,"returned the captain with a laugh. "If you did get in, you would findyourself outnumbered two to one."

  "I should be willing to feel of them, at any rate," added the major.

  "Do you suppose a general with ability enough to command an army offive or six thousand men would be so stupid as to march from hisintrenchments, and, going away ten miles to attack another army, wouldleave his base of retreat insufficiently manned?"

  "I supposed they would have been sending up re-enforcements to thebattle-field all day; and they could not have done that withoutreducing greatly the number in the works. However, I am not a veryexperienced soldier, Captain Woodbine, and I am willing to admit that Ishould not have undertaken the enterprise on my own responsibility,"replied the major.

  "Of course it may be possible that the garrison within the fort hasbeen reduced to a number equal, or even less, than your force; but Ishould say it would be foolhardy in the extreme to make such a venturewithout a certain knowledge of the extent of the force behind thebreastworks. But the riflemen have opened on the regiment nearest tothem," added the captain, as the crack of a rifle was heard on theother hill, not more than a quarter of a mile distant.

  Other shots followed in rapid succession; but they were fired one at atime, in accordance with Captain Ripley's tactics.