THE GUNS OF SHILOH

CONTENTS

I. IN FLIGHT

II. THE MOUNTAIN LIGHTS

III. THE TELEGRAPH STATION

IV. THE FIGHT IN THE PASS

V. THE SINGER OF THE HILLS

VI. MILL SPRING

VII. THE MESSENGER

VIII. A MEETING AT NIGHT

IX. TAKING A FORT

X. BEFORE DONELSON

XI. THE SOUTHERN ATTACK

XII. GRANT'S GREAT VICTORY

XIII. IN THE FOREST

XIV. THE DARK EVE OF SHILOH

XV. THE RED DAWN OF SHILOH

XVI. THE FIERCE FINISH OF SHILOH




THE GUNS OF SHILOH



CHAPTER I. IN FLIGHT


Dick Mason, caught in the press of a beaten army, fell back slowly with
his comrades toward a ford of Bull Run. The first great battle of the
Civil War had been fought and lost. Lost, after it had been won! Young
as he was Dick knew that fortune had been with the North until the very
closing hour. He did not yet know how it had been done. He did not know
how the Northern charges had broken in vain on the ranks of Stonewall
Jackson's men. He did not know how the fresh Southern troops from the
Valley of Virginia had hurled themselves so fiercely on the Union flank.
But he did know that his army had been defeated and was retreating on
the capital.

Cannon still thundered to right and left, and now and then showers of
bursting shell sprayed over the heads of the tired and gloomy soldiers.
Dick, thoughtful and scholarly, was in the depths of a bitterness and
despair reached by few of those around him. The Union, the Republic, had
appealed to him as the most glorious of experiments. He could not bear
to see it broken up for any cause whatever. It had been founded with
too much blood and suffering and labor to be dissolved in a day on a
Virginia battlefield.

But the army that had almost grasped victory was retreating, and the
camp followers, the spectators who had come out to see an easy triumph,
and some of the raw recruits were running. A youth near Dick cried that
the rebels fifty thousand strong with a hundred guns were hot upon their
heels. A short, powerful man, with a voice like the roar of thunder,
bade him hush or he would feel a rifle barrel across his back. Dick
had noticed this man, a sergeant named Whitley, who had shown singular
courage and coolness throughout the battle, and he crowded closer to him
for companionship. The man observed the action and looked at him with
blue eyes that twinkled out of a face almost black with the sun.

"Don't take it so hard, my boy," he said. "This battle's lost, but there
are others that won't be. Most of the men were raw, but they did some
mighty good fightin', while the regulars an' the cavalry are coverin'
the retreat. Beauregard's army is not goin' to sweep us off the face of
the earth."