“What’re they going to do up there, Colonel?” Otis Massey asked.
“That I can’t tell you, Otis; for I don’t know,” Faribault said. “I shouldn’t worry, though; I expect General Lee will come up with something.”
“Reckon you’re right about that, Colonel,” Massey said. Caudell thought so, too. Lee had a way of coming up with something. The 47th North Carolina had joined the Army of Northern Virginia after Chancellorsville, but he knew how Lee had divided his outnumbered army and then divided it again, to fall on Joe Hooker’s flanks and drive him back over the Rapidan in dismay’ and defeat. Not even all the artillery in the world could long contain a man with the nerve to devise a scheme like that. Caudell was sure of it.
“Want to sleep here tonight, Colonel?” he asked. “It isn’t fancy hospitality, but it’s what we have!’
Faribault’s laugh sounded more tired than amused. “I thank you, First Sergeant, but I’ve a ways to go before I think of sleep. If I’m to lead the regiment tomorrow, tonight I must learn where this day’s fighting scattered the men and let them know what is required of them. Thus far I’ve found less than a quarter part. I expect I shall be busy well into the evening.”
“Yes, sir,” Caudell said. He expected that Faribault wouldn’t sleep at all tonight, not if he intended to track down the whole 47th in the jungle of the Wilderness. He also saw Faribault knew that. It was part of what went with being a colonel if one aimed to make a proper job of it, as Faribault plainly did.
“May we succeed tomorrow as we did today, and may God keep all of you safe, through the fighting to come,” Faribault said. He limped off into the woods. Before long, the occasional spatters of picket firing and the. never-ending groans from the wounded swallowed the sounds of his footsteps.
“He’s a good colonel,” Mollie Bean remarked.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Caudell said as he clicked the receiver plate back into place on his rifle. “He sees to his men before he worries about himself.” He spoke as if he were giving a lesson back in the classroom; he wanted Otis Massey to listen to him. Though a corporal had fewer men in his charge than a colonel, he needed to look out for them, too. But if Massey was paying attention, he showed no sign of it.
Caudell’s sigh turned into a yawn. He undid his blanket roll, wrapped himself up, and fell asleep by the fire.
The long roll woke him early the next morning, or so he thought until he realized where he was. The rattle was not drumsticks on snares; it was gunfire, the reports bunched tighter together than the fastest drummer could hurry his sticks. The fighting had begun again, even if sunrise still lay ahead.
No time to boil water for a desiccated meal. Caudell choked down a couple of Yankee hardtack biscuits. He clicked off the AK-47’s safety, clicked again to fire single shots. The private who’d been on watch in the clearing woke the men too worn to rouse even for the racket of battle close by.
“We don’t have an officer with us,” Caudell said. That was nothing new; after the third day’s fighting at Gettysburg, three of the 47th’s ten companies had been commanded by sergeants. He went on, “Remember, though, the Yankees are likely in worse shape than we are, because we whipped their tails yesterday. Let’s go get ‘em.”
One by one, the Confederates climbed over the rude barricade of branches and earth and stones behind which they’d fought the day before. They spread out into a firing line, though not one of the parade-ground sort, not in half-light in rugged, overgrown country.
A rifle fired, not far ahead. It was a Springfield. Caudell burrowed deep into the brush he’d been cursing till that moment. He crawled forward. Twigs and thorns grabbed at his clothes like children’s hands.
The Springfield boomed again. He peered through bushes, waited. Something moved—something blue. He fired. An instant later, a bullet buzzed past his head, so close he felt the wind of its passage on his ear. It had not come from the man at whom he’d shot—a couple of Yankees were working an ambush, and he’d stumbled right into it.
He scuttled backwards toward a fallen log he’d seen a few yards away. Another bullet zipped by him before he got there, and no sooner had he taken cover than another flew by, just over his head. He buried his face in the musty dirt. A twig the last Minié ball had clipped fell on the back of his neck. It tickled. He did not brush it away.
After half a minute or so, he slid sideways toward the far end of the log. He still could not see the Federals who were shooting at him, but the smoke that lingered in the cool air under the trees told him where they might be. He fired several times in quick succession, blessing his repeater all the while. He didn’t know whether he’d scored any hits, but a thrashing in the bushes ahead said the Yankees were getting out of there.
Or he thought it said that. These Yankees were sneaky customers. He advanced with infinite caution. Only when he’d gone past the clump of oak saplings where they’d hidden did he dare believe he’d really driven them off.
He pushed farther south. Once or twice, Federals shot at him. He shot back. Again, he had no idea whether he hit anyone. That was hard enough to tell on a battlefield where the foe stood right in front of you. In the Wilderness, it was impossible.
He rejoined Otis Massey and several other soldiers with whom he’d spent the night. The firing ahead grew ever more intense. A few minutes later, he discovered why: the bluecoats were fighting from behind a breastwork of their own. Hereabouts, it stood at the far edge of a cleared space. Even with the AK-47 in his hands, his mouth went dry at the prospect of charging those blazing rifles.
“Form your line here in the woods, men,” an officer said. Most of the Confederates stayed low, on their knees or their bellies. The officer walked up and down as if on a Sunday promenade. Minié balls made branches dance all around him, but he affected not to notice them.
As he strode past the stump behind which Caudell crouched, the first sergeant recognized Captain John Thorp of Company A. Thorp was a slim, little fellow with nondescript features. He wore a thin line of mustache that tried to give him the air of a riverboat gambler but couldn’t quite bring it off. However he looked, though, his courage was beyond reproach.
“Make sure your banana clips are full, men,” he said, and paused to let the soldiers stuff in as many bullets as they could. “At my word, we’ll give them a good shout and go for their works. Ready?…Now!”
Yelling like fiends, the rebels burst from cover and dashed toward the barricade. Half—more than half—of Caudell’s yell was raw fear. He wondered if that was true of the men to either side of him, or if, like Thorp, they were immune to the disease. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the private on his right spun sideways and crashed to the grass, blood spurting from his thigh.
Caudell squeezed the trigger again and again and again. His aim was poor, but he put a lot of bullets in the air. With the AK-47, he could shoot and move at the same time. No more stopping to reload under remorseless enemy fire, no more ramrod slipping through sweaty fingers, no more jabbing it against the ground or hitting it with a rock—if you could find a rock.
More Confederates fell, but so did Yankees in back of the breastwork. Just in front of Caudell, a bluecoat’s head exploded into red ruin. He yowled like a catamount and started scrambling over the logs.
A bayonet almost pinned his arm to the untrimmed branch he was holding. With a four-foot rifle and eighteen inches of steel on the end, the snarling Federal who stabbed at him had all the advantage in that kind of fight. The fellow raised his Springfield for another thrust. Caudell shot him at a range of perhaps a yard. The Federal folded up like a man punched in the belly. Unlike a man punched in the belly, he wouldn’t unfold later.