Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [11]
Kilrain, a white-haired man with the build of an ape, looked up at him with fatherly joy "If ye'll ride the horse today, Colonel, which the Lord hath provided, instead of walkin' in the dust with the others fools, ye'll be all right- if ye wear the hat. It's the walkin', do you see, that does the great harm."
"You walked," Chamberlain said grumpily, thinking: shoot them? Maine men? How can I shoot Maine men? I'll never be able to go home.
"Ah, but. Colonel, darlin', I've been in the infantry since before you was bom. It's them first few thousand miles.
After that, a man gets a limber to his feet."
"Hey, Lawrence. How you doin'?"
Younger brother, Tom Chamberlain, bright-faced, high-voiced, a new lieutenant, worshipful. The heat had not seemed to touch him. Chamberlain nodded. Tom said critically, "You lookin' kinda peaked. Why don't you ride the horse?"
Chamberlain gloomed. But the day was not as bright as it had seemed through the opening of the tent. He looked upward with relief toward a darkening sky.
The troops were moving in the fields, but there had been no order to march.
The wagons were not yet loaded. He thought: God bless the delay. His mind was beginning to function. All down the road and all through the trees the troops were moving, cooking, the thousands of troop and thousands of wagons of the Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, of which Chamberlain's 20th Maine was a minor fragment. But far down the road there was motion.
Kilrain said, "There they come."
Chamberlain squinted. Then he saw troops on the road, a long way off.
The line of men came slowly up the road. There were guards with fixed bayonets. Chamberlain could see the men shuffling, strange pathetic spectacle, dusty, dirty, ragged men, heads down, faces down: it reminded him of a history book picture of impressed seamen in the last war with England. But these men would have to march all day, in the heat. Chamberlain thought: not possible.
Tom was meditating. "Gosh, Lawrence. There's almost as many men there as we got in the whole regiment. How we going to guard them?"
Chamberlain said nothing. He was thinking: How do you force a man to fight-for freedom? The idiocy of it jarred him. Think on it later. Must do something now.
There was an officer, a captain, at the head of the column.
The Captain turned them in off the road and herded them into an open space in the field near the Regimental flag. The men of the Regiment, busy with coffee, stood up to watch.
The Captain had a loud voice and used obscene words. He assembled the men in two long ragged lines and called them to attention, but they ignored him. One slumped to the ground, more exhaustion than mutiny. A guard came forward and yelled and probed with a bayonet, but abruptly several more men sat down and then they all did, and the Captain began yelling, but the guards stood grinning confusedly, foolishly, having gone as far as they would go, unwilling to push further unless the men here showed some threat, and the men seemed beyond threat, merely enormously weary. Chamberlain took it all in as he moved toward the Captain. He put his hands behind his back and came forward slowly, studiously. The Captain pulled off dirty gloves and shook his head with contempt, glowering up at Chamberlain.
"Looking for the commanding officer. Twentieth Maine."
"You've found him," Chamberlain said.
"That's him all right." Tom's voice, behind him, very proud. Chamberlain suppressed a smile.
"You Chamberlain?" The Captain stared at him grimly, insolently, showing what he thought of Maine men.
Chamberlain did not answer for a long moment, looking into the man's eyes until the eyes suddenly blinked and dropped, and then Chamberlain said softly,
"Colonel Chamberlain to you."
The Captain stood still for a moment, then slowly came to attention, slowly saluted. Chamberlain did