Thomas stood all day, while the Southern masses, flushed by victory everywhere else, pressed harder. Terrible reports of defeat and destruction came to him continually, but he did not flinch. He turned the same calm face to everything, and said to the generals that whatever happened they would keep their own front unbroken.
The day closed with the men of Thomas still grim and defiant. The dead lay in heaps along their front, but as the darkness settled down on the unfinished battle they meant to fight with equal valor and tenacity on the morrow. The first day had favored the South, had favored it largely, but on the Union left hope still flamed high.
Darkness swept over the sanguinary field. A cold wind of autumn blew off the hills and mountains, and the men shivered as they lay on the ground, but Thomas allowed no fires to be lighted. Food was brought in the darkness, and those who could find them wrapped themselves in blankets. Between the two armies lay the hecatombs of dead and the thousands of wounded.
Dick, his comrades and the rest of the regiment sat together in a little open space behind a thicket. It was to be their position for the fighting next day. Thomas, passing by, had merely given them an approving look, and then had gone on to re-form his lines elsewhere. Dick knew that all through the night he would be conferring with his commander, Rosecrans, McCook and the others, and he knew, too, that many of the Union soldiers would be at work, fortifying, throwing up earthworks, and cutting down trees for abattis. He heard already the ring of the axes.
But the Winchester men rested for the present. Nature had made their own position strong with a low hill, and a thicket in front. They lay upon the ground, sheltering themselves from the cold wind, which cut through bodies relaxed and almost bloodless after such vast physical exertions and excitement so tremendous.
CHAPTER XIV. THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA
Dick, after eating the cold food which was served to him, sank into a state which was neither sleep nor stupor. It was a mystic region between the conscious and the unconscious, in which all things were out of proportion, and some abnormal.
He saw before him a vast stretch of dead blackness which he knew nevertheless was peopled by armed hosts ready to spring upon them at dawn. The darkness and silence were more oppressive than sound and light, even made by foes, would have been. It numbed him to think there was so little of stirring life, where nearly two hundred thousand men had fought.
Then a voice arose that made him shiver. But it was only the cold wind from the mountains whistling a dirge. Nevertheless it seemed human to Dick. It was at once a lament and a rebuke. He edged over a little and touched Warner.
“Is that you, Dick?” asked the Vermonter.
“What’s left of me. I’ve one or two wounds, mere scratches, George, but I feel all pumped out. I’m like one of those empty wine-skins that you read about, empty, all dried up, and ready to be thrown away.”
“Something of the same feeling myself, Dick. I’m empty and dried up, too, but I’m not ready to be thrown away. Nor are you. We’ll fill up in the night. Our hearts will pump all our veins full of blood again, and we’ll be ready to go out in the morning, and try once more to get killed.”
“I don’t see how you and Pennington and I, all three of us, came out of it alive to-day.”
“That question is bothering me, too, Dick. A million bullets were fired at each of us, not to count thousands of pieces of shell, shrapnel, canister, grape, and slashes of swords. Take any ratio of percentage you please and something should have got us. According to every rule of algebra, not more than one of us three should be alive now. Yet here we are.”
“Maybe your algebra is wrong?”
“Impossible. Algebra is the most exact of all sciences. It does not admit of error. Both by algebra and by the immutable law of averages at least two of us are dead.”