Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [98]
"I'd be eternal grateful."
"You rest." Chamberlain was feeling alarm.
Tozier said, "I've sent off."
"Well I've seen them run," Kilrain said dreamily.
"Glory be. Thanks to you. Colonel darlin'. Lived long enough to see the Rebs run. Come the Millennium. Did you see them run. Colonel darlin'?"
"I did."
"I got one fella. Raggedy fella. Beautiful offhand shot, if I say so mesel'."
"I've got to go. Buster."
"He was drawin' a bead on you. Colonel. I got him with one quick shot offhand.
Oh lovely." Kilrain sighed.
"Loveliest shot I ever made."
"You stay with him. Sergeant," Chamberlain said.
Thomas nodded.
"Be back in a while, Buster."
Kilrain opened his eyes, but he was drifting off toward sleep, and he nodded but did not see. Chamberlain backed away. There were some men around him from the old Second Maine and he talked to them automatically, not knowing what he was saying, thanking them for the fight, looking on strange young bloody faces. He moved back down the slope.
He went back along the low stone wall. The dead were mostly covered now with blankets and shelter halves, but some of them were still dying and there were groups of men clustered here and there. There were dead bodies and wounded bodies all down the wall and all down through the trees and blood was streaked on the trees and rocks and rich wet wood splinters were everywhere. He patted shoulders, noted faces. It was very quiet and dark down among the trees. Night was coming. He began to feel tired. He went on talking. A boy was dying. He had made a good fight and he wanted to be promoted before he died and Chamberlain promoted him. He spoke to a man who had been clubbed over the head with a musket and who could not seem to say what he wanted to say, and another man who was crying because both of the Men-ill boys were dead, both brothers, and he would be the one who would have to tell their mother. Chamberlain reached the foot of the hill and came out into the last light.
Ellis Spear came up. There were tears in the comers of his eyes. He nodded jerkily, a habit of Maine men, a greeting.
"Well," he said. He did not know what to say. After a moment he pulled out an impressively ornamented silver flask, dented, lustrous.
"Colonel? Ah, I have a beverage here which I have been saving for an, ah, appropriate moment. I think this is- well, would the Colonel honor me by joining me in a, ah, swallow?"
Chamberlain thought: Kilrain. But he could not hurt Spear's feelings. And his mouth was gritty and dry. Spear handed it over solemnly, gravely, with the air of a man taking part in a ceremony. Chamberlain drank. Oh, good.
Very, very good. He saw one small flicker of sadness pass over Spear's face, took the bottle from his lips.
"Sorry, Ellis. 'Swallow' is a flighty word. An indiscriminate word. But thank you. Very much. And now."
Spear bowed formally. "Colonel, it has been my pleasure."
Here through the rocks was a grinning Tom. Young Tom.
Only a boy. Chamberlain felt a shattering rush of emotion, restrained it.
Behind Tom were troops of the 83rd Pennsylvania: Captain Woodward, Colonel Rice of the 44th New York. Chamberlain thought: Rice must be the new commander of the whole brigade.
Tom said with vast delight, ticking them off, "Lawrence, we got prisoners from the Fifteenth Alabama, the Forty-seventh Alabama, the Fourth and Fifth Texas.
Man, we fought four Reb regiments!"
Four regiments would be perhaps two thousand men.
Chamberlain was impressed.
"We got five hundred prisoners," Tom insisted.
The figure seemed high. Chamberlain: "What are our casualties?"
Tom's face lost its light. "Well, I'll go check."
Colonel Rice came up. Much darker now. He put out a hand.
"Colonel Chamberlain, may I shake your hand?"
"Sir."
"Colonel, I watched that from above. Colonel, that was the damnedest thing I ever saw."
"Well," Chamberlain said. A private popped up, saluted, whispered in Chamberlain's ear: "Colonel, sir, I'm guardin' these here Rebs with a empty rifle."
Chamberlain grinned. "Not so loud. Colonel Rice, we sure could