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Updated: June 9, 2025
"It's the first time," I shouted, "that any of our people ever took directions from Hawk Rufe. As for me, I'm going by the Gauley." And I turned El Mahdi into the wooded road on the left of the turnpike. For a moment the two hesitated, discussing something which I could not hear. Then they rode up out of the Stone Coal and came clattering after me.
Here was bone and sinew tougher than Malan's, and such cunning as might cry Marks a merrier run than he had gone for many a day. Then, as by some sharp turn, I caught a new light on the two hours already gone. Man alive! We had been in the game for all of those two blessed hours with our eyes sealed up tight as the lid of a jar. "How high was the Gauley?"
On the 5th of October the condition of the Kanawha valley had become such that Rosecrans felt compelled to withdraw his forces to the vicinity of Gauley Bridge. The freshet had been an extraordinary one.
Three companies of the Fourth Virginia under Captain Vance, and a squad of horse were sent by Lightburn from Gauley Bridge to Siber's assistance, but the latter, being without definite orders and thinking he could not hold the position another day, retreated in the night, setting fire to a large accumulation of stores and abandoning part of his wagons.
Then we rode north through the Hills, over the Gauley where the oak leaves carpeted the ford, and the little trout darted like a beam of light, and the old fish-hawk sat on the hanging limb of the dead beech-tree with his shoulders to his ears and his beak drooping, like some worn-out voluptuary brooding on his sins.
There was none of his staff with him; he had on no sword or pistol, or anything to show his rank. The only thing that I remember he had was an opera-glass hung over his shoulder by a strap. Leaving Big Springs, we marched on day by day, across Greenbrier and Gauley rivers to Huntersville, a little but sprightly town hid in the very fastnesses of the mountains.
I hoped it might sting cruelly the hand that flung it. I rose in my stirrups and shook my youthful fists at the hills beyond the Gauley. I could see the smile dying on her red mouth when one came to say that her plans were ship-wrecked. Then I thought of Ward, and something fluttered in my throat. He was under the spell of this slim, brown-haired witch.
"He asked me where we was goin', an' I told him we was goin' home. He asked me if we had had any word from Mr. Ward to-day, an' I told him we hadn't had any. Then he said we had better take the Hacker's Creek road because the Gauley was up from the mountain rains, an' runnin' logs, an' if we got in there in the night we would git you killed."
The army of occupation, under General Rosecrans, amounted to 27,000 men and over 40 guns; but the troops were dispersed in detachments from Romney to Gauley Bridge, a distance of near two hundred miles, their communications were exposed, and, owing to the mountains, co-operation was almost impracticable. Showing: West: Pt. 5000 men, based on Grafton, occupied Romney.
General Benham I knew already, from his visit to me at Gauley Bridge in his capacity of engineer officer. I had met Colonel Robert McCook at Camp Dennison, and now that it was intimated that he would be for some days under my command, I recalled a scene I had witnessed there which left many doubts in my mind whether he would prove an agreeable subordinate.
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