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Ashby, at daybreak, was to move with the 7th Virginia cavalry in the direction of Strasburg; and at the same hour a staff officer, with a small escort, supported by Taylor's Louisianians, was to ride towards Middletown, a village five miles north of Strasburg and thirteen from Winchester, and to report frequently.
Those Louisianians are damned good dancers!" A courier quitting the knoll above the pike gave further information. "Skirmish back there, near the Capon road. Just a feeler of Fremont's his army's three miles over there in the woods. Old Dick's with General Taylor. Don't need your help, boys thank you all the same! Fremont won't attack in force. "All right," said the Stonewall.
Like their ancestors in the days of the "Grand Monarch," and their cousins in the days of the "Great Napoleon," they loved glory and their country. Light-hearted and gay in camp, they were equally light-hearted and gay in battle. Their slogan was, "Our cause and our country." The Louisianians were grand in battle, companionable in camp, and all round soldiers in every respect.
Men! any seaman among you has the chance to gather laurels from the strangest deck of the strangest ship that ever you saw! No fear for the laurels! They're fresh and green even under our belching smokestack. The Merrimac is up like the phoenix; and the last state of her is greater than the first, and her name is going down in history! Louisianians and Virginians, who volunteers?
A fellow in the chair next mine said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge. "Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin' with his grub; well, he deserves it." I asked how he deserved it. "Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one."
This gave him a large though sparsely-populated area for locality, while it suggested a settlement of Louisianians or Mississippians near the Summit, of whom, through their native gambling proclivities, he was professionally cognizant. But he mainly trusted Fortune.
Sitting by my camp fire to await the movement of Churchill's column, I was saddened by recollection of the many dead, and the pleasure of victory was turned to grief as I counted the fearful cost at which it had been won. Of the Louisianians fallen, most were acquaintances, many had been neighbors and friends; and they were gone. Above all, the death of gallant Mouton affected me.
A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving.
Logan's men are leaping over the lines to right and left, bayoneting the gunners. The Louisianians give way and drift to the rear. The evening shadows drop over crest, wood, and vale. When the first stars are in the skies Hood's shattered columns stream back into Atlanta. The three guns of De Gress have changed hands again.
He puts his losses at 1,000, all told. Foremost among the slain, while leading the fierce onset against Ransom's right, Mouton fell, a regimental color in his hand, and with him perished many of his brave Louisianians. Clearly the next thing, whatever might be the next after, was to concentrate and reform on the first fair ground in the rear. Such were Banks's orders.
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