Pender rushed to Jackson, betraying the greatest grief, and said that he was afraid he must fall back before the tremendous artillery fire of the enemy. As he spoke, that fire increased. Shells and round shot, grape and canister and shrapnel shrieked through the air, and the bullets, too, were coming in thousands, whistling like hail driven by a hurricane. Men fell all about them in the darkness.
But the great soul of Jackson, wounded to death and unable to stand, was unshaken. Harry saw him suddenly straighten up, draw himself away from those who were supporting him, and say:
“You must hold your ground, General Pender! You must hold out to the very last, sir!”
Once more the eyes shot forth blue fire. Once more the unquenchable spirit had spoken. The figure reeled, and the young officers sprang to his support. He wanted to lie down there and rest, but the youths would not let him, because every form of missile hurled from a cannon’s mouth was crashing among them. A litter arrived now and they carried him toward a house that had been used as a tavern. A shot struck one of the men who held the litter in his arm and he was compelled to let go. The litter tipped over and Jackson fell heavily to the ground, his whole weight crashing upon his wounded arm. Harry heard him utter then his first and only groan. The boy himself cried out in horror.
But they lifted him up again, and the litter bearers carried him on, the young officers crowded close around him. Although it was far on toward midnight, the roar of the battle swelled afresh through the Wilderness. They came presently to an ambulance, by the side of which Jackson’s physician, Dr. McGuire, stood. The surgeon, tears in his eyes, bent over the general and asked him if he were badly hurt. Jackson replied that he thought he was dying.
An officer of high rank, Colonel Crutchfield, whom Jackson esteemed highly, was already lying in the ambulance, wounded severely. They put Jackson beside him and drove slowly toward the rear. Once, when Crutchfield groaned under the jolting of the ambulance, Jackson made them stop until his comrade was easier. Then the mournful procession moved on, while the battle roared and crashed about the lone ambulance that bore the stricken idol of the Confederacy, Lee’s right arm, the man without whom the South could not win. Harry heard long afterward that a minister in New Orleans used in his prayer some such words as these, “Oh, Lord, when Thou in Thy infinite wisdom didst decree that the Southern Confederacy should fail, Thou hadst first to take away Thy servant, Stonewall Jackson.”
Harry and Dalton might have followed the ambulance that carried Jackson away, as they were members of his staff, but they felt that their place was on this dusky battlefield. While they paused, not knowing what to do, a body of men came through the brushwood and they recognized the upright and martial figures of Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant- Colonel Hector St. Hilaire. Just behind them were St. Clair, Langdon and the rest of the Invincibles. The two colonels turned and gazed at the retreating ambulance, a shadow for a moment in the dusk, and then a shadow gone.
“I saw them putting an officer in that ambulance, Harry,” said Colonel Talbot. “Who was it?”
Harry choked and made no answer.
Colonel Talbot, surprised, turned to Dalton.
“Who was it?” he repeated.
Dalton turned his face away, and was silent.
At sight of this emotion, a sudden, terrible suspicion was born in the mind of Colonel Leonidas Talbot. It was like a dagger thrust.
“You don’t mean-it can’t be-” he exclaimed, in broken words.
Harry could control his feelings no longer.
“Yes, Colonel,” he burst forth. “It was he, Stonewall Jackson, shot down in the darkness and by mistake by our own men!”
“Was he hurt badly?”
“One arm was shattered completely, and he was shot through the hand of the other.”
The moonlight shone on Harry’s face just then, and the colonel, as he looked at him, drew in his breath with a deep gasp.