Twigs cracked off to the right. Caudell swung his rifle that way, but the newcomers—almost invisible against the bushes in their gray and butternut clothes—were Confederates. “Yankees there,” he called, pointing at the thicket. As if to underscore his words, a couple of Spencers barked, making all the rebels flatten out against the brambled ground.
He nudged the private next to him. “You and me, let’s put some bullets through there, make them keep their heads down.” When the fellow nodded, Caudell looked over to the soldiers who had just arrived. “You flank ‘em while we keep ‘em busy.” The words were punctuated by a dive into better cover as the Federals fired at the sound of his voice.
He fired back. So did his companion. The other Confederates scrambled forward, from log to tree to bushes. Before they’d moved fifty feet, they disappeared from Caudell’s sight. A few seconds later, though, their AK-47s snarled. As Caudell had noted on the practice range, the new repeaters had a shorter, sharper report than any rifle he’d known before. He could tell which was which without having to turn and look, an asset on a field like the Wilderness.
The oak thicket shook like a man with the ague. Caudell grinned savagely—the Yankees’ cover from the side couldn’t have been as good as it was from his direction. Four bluecoats ran for a stand of cedars. The private next to Caudell shot one of them. He went down in a thrashing heap, screaming and cursing at the same time. Dust puffed from the back of another Federal’s jacket as one of the flankers scored a hit. That Yankee pitched forward onto his face and did not move again.
The other two cavalrymen stopped in their tracks. They threw down their carbines, thrust their hands into the air. “You got us, goddammit!” one of them shouted.
The private flicked a glance at Caudell. He nodded; he had no stomach for butchery. Cautiously, he made his way through the brush to the Federals. “Throw down your cartridge boxes and your mess bags,” he told them. “Then pick up the wounded fellow there and head west. I reckon someone will take charge of you sooner or later.”
“Thank you, Johnny Reb,” one of the men in blue said as he shed ammunition and rations. He stooped beside his injured comrade. “Come on, Pete, we’re going to pick you up now. It’ll be all right.”
“The hell it will,” Pete gasped out between clenched teeth. He gasped again when the two unhurt cavalrymen hauled him to his feet and supported him between themselves. Seeing Caudell, he fixed him with a baleful stare and growled, ‘“‘Where’d you bastards come by all these repeaters? I ain’t been shot at so much in the last two years put together, and now one of you had to go and nail me.”
“Don’t anger him up, Pete,” the cavalryman who had spoken before said. But his gaze kept flicking to Caudell’s AK-47, too. “What kind of rifle is that, anyway, Johnny?”
“Never you mind.” Caudell gestured with the barrel of the repeater. “Just get going.” As the dispirited Federals obeyed, he scooped up their haversacks. He handed one of them to the private who had fought beside him. Both men grinned. “Good eating,” Caudell said; even with the Rivington men’s desiccated meals, belts had been tight all winter.
“Coffee and sugar too, likely,” the private said dreamily. Not far away, a Spencer spoke. The private and Caudell dove for cover. A bullet could end all dreams in a hurry, or turn them to nightmares.
Caudell kept moving east, now quickly, now slowly. The Federal cavalrymen put up a stubborn fight, but more and more Confederates were coming into line against them. Caudell spotted men he did not recognize. “What regiment?” he called to them.
“Forty-Fourth North Carolina,” one of them answered. “Who are you all?”
“Forty-Seventh.”
“Let’s go, Forty-Seventh!” A rebel yell ripped the air. “Let’s flank these bluebellies out of their shoes again.”
They drove the Federals past Parker’s Store and the handful of houses that huddled in the clearing with it. The open space gave the Confederates a chance to dress their lines a little; victory had left them about as disorganized as defeat had the Yankees. Caudell almost stumbled over Captain Lewis. “What are we aiming to do now, sir?” he asked.
Lewis pointed east.” About three miles from here, I hear tell, the Orange Plank Road crosses the Brock Road. We want to grab that crossing. If we can do it, we cut the Yankees in half.”
“Three miles?” Caudell gauged the sun, and was surprised to find how early it still was. “We can be there before noon.”
“The sooner, the better,” Lewis said.
Along with as many of the Castalia Invincibles as had reassembled around Parker’s Store, Caudell plunged into the woods again. As he scrambled along, he munched on a hardtack from the Yankee cavalryman’s haversack. The square, flat biscuit lived up to its name by the way it challenged his teeth. He choked it down, swigged from his canteen, and pushed on.
The Wilderness was like no battlefield on which he’d ever fought. At Gettysburg, the whole panorama of war had spread out before him. When the 47th North Carolina joined in the great charge against the center of the Federal position, Caudell had seen every rifle, every artillery piece that slaughtered his companions. Here, he could not even see more than a handful of those companions, let alone the Yankees they were doing their best to slay. All he knew was that the Confederates were still rolling east, which meant they were driving back the enemy.
By twos and threes, the Confederates dashed across a narrow roadway. Yankee bullets from the other side kicked up dust around their feet and knocked down more than one man, but before long the dismounted cavalry had to retreat again—they were not only outnumbered but outgunned. Caudell wondered if this was the Brock Road of which Captain Lewis had spoken. He didn’t think he’d come three miles since Parker’s Store, but in the tangle he couldn’t be sure.
Evidently the Brock Road lay further on—he heard an officer yelling, “Come on, men, keep it moving! Give those damnyankees hell!” More rebel yells rang out. Caudell did his best to keep it moving. He reached up to settle his hat more firmly on his head, only to discover he’d lost it to a grasping branch or bush without ever noticing.
Somewhere to the north, he could hear a great crash of gunfire. Ewell’s II Corps and the Federals were tearing at each other along the Orange Turnpike, then. He took a moment to wish his fellows well. A bullet crashed past his head and made him pay full attention to his own battle.
Cheers came from just ahead. Caudell wondered why; the fight seemed no different now from what it had been all along—confusing, exhilarating, and terrifying at the same time. Then, without warning, he found himself out of the underbrush and standing in the middle of a dirt road which had recently seen heavy traffic, a dirt road that, by the sun, ran north instead of east.
“It’s the Brock Road!” a first lieutenant from some other regiment bawled in his ear. “We done beat the Federals to the crossroads and trapped the ones who’ve already gone by.”
For a moment, that made Caudell want to yell, too. But when he said, “Holy Jesus,” it came out in a whisper. He turned to the lieutenant. “Does that mean they’ll be coming at us from north and south at the same time?” The lieutenant’s eyes got wide. He nodded. Now Caudell shouted, as loud as he could: “Let’s get some branches, stumps, rocks, whatever the hell, onto this road. We’ve got lots of Yankees heading this way, and we’d better have something to shoot from.”