Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [37]
Time to move. Lee took a deep, delighted breath.
"Now, General," he said, "let's go see what George Meade intends."
They moved out into the open, into the warm sunlight. It was becoming a marvelous day. Out on the road the army flowed endlessly eastward, pouring toward the great fight. Lee smelled the superb wetness of clean mountain air.
He said, "General, will you ride with me?"
Longstreet bowed. "My pleasure."
Lee mounted in pain, but the hot sun would heal the old bones. They rode out into a space in the great gray bristling stream. Another band played; men were shouting. It was lovely country. They rode through soft green rounded hills, a sunny mom, a splendid air, moving toward adventure as rode the plumed knights of old. Far back in the woods there was still fog in the trees, caught in the branches like fragments of white summer, and Lee remembered: Bow down Thy Heavens, O Lord, and come down, Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
He closed his eyes.
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my fingers to fight and my hands to war.
Amen.
They rode several miles before they heard the first thunder.
Lee reined to a stop. Silence. Motion of ragged white clouds. He said, "Did you hear that?"
Longstreet, who was slightly deaf, shook his head.
"It might have been thunder." But Lee waited. Then it came: low, distant thumping. Ominous: angry. Longstreet said grimly, bright-eyes, angered, "I don't hear too well any more."
"That was artillery," Lee said. Longstreet gazed at him with black marble eyes. "You don't think..." Lee began, then stopped. "I'd better ride forward,"
he said. Longstreet nodded. Lee looked at his watch. Not quite ten in the morning. He left Longstreet and rode toward the sound of the guns.
2. BUFORD.
Just before dawn Buford rode down the line himself, waking them up, all the boyish faces. Then he climbed the ladder into the white cupola and sat listening to the rain, watching the light come. The air was cool and wet and delicious to breathe: a slow, fine, soaking rain, a farmer's rain, gentle on the roof. The light came slowly: there were great trees out in the mist. Then the guns began.
A single shot. He sat up. Another. Two more widely spaced. Then a small volley, a spattering. A long silence: several seconds. He stared at white air, the rounded tops of smoky trees. Men were moving out in the open below him.
An officer paused on horseback in the road. The firing began again. Rebel guns, farther off, but not many. Buford was cold. He shuddered, waited.
The first attack was very short: a ragged fire. Buford nodded, listening.
"Yes. Tried to brush us off. Got a bloody nose. Now he'll get angry, all puffed up like a partridge.
Now he'll form up a line and try us for real, and he'll hit the main line."
The mist was lifting slowly, the rain was slackening, but Buford could not see the line. He felt the attack come and turned his face toward the sound of the guns, judging the size of the attack by the width of the sound, and he sat grinning alone in the cupola, while the Rebel troops pushed his line and drew back, bloody, and tried again in another place, the firing spreading all down the line like a popping fuse, and then there was another long silence, and Buford could feel them reforming again, beginning for the first time to take this seriously. The next assault would be organized. He looked at his watch.
Reynolds should be awake by now. They will have eaten their breakfast now, the infantry, and maybe they're on the march.
There was a silence. He climbed down out of the cupola.
The staff waited whitefaced under dripping trees. Buford asked for coffee. He went back inside the Seminary and waited for the firing to begin again before sending his first word to Reynolds. It took longer than he expected.