The Warriors Read Online Free Page B

choice but to remain outside the tent for an hour. And then another. Finally Dr. Black, the surgeon, came out wiping his hands on a bloody apron.
    Lantern light shone on the faces of the dozen or so men who’d been waiting for word. The surgeon glanced from face to face while the cannon continued to rumble beyond the burning trees on the eastern horizon.
    “I have successfully amputated the general’s left arm,” Dr. Black said. “The bone was beyond repair. If there are no complications, he’ll soon be back to lead his men again.”
    Gideon shouted like a boy. So did the others. Hats sailed into the air as the weary doctor turned, gave a faint smile of satisfaction, and stumbled back into the tent.
    Gideon sank down on the ground, incredibly tired. While a few of the men continued to whoop and dance around him, he leaned his forehead on his knee and thought. At least I’ve helped do one thing in this war that I can be proud of.
    After two years of fighting in which he had changed from a cheerful, contentious young man eager to see battle to a weary professional who now knew the dreadful cost of the South’s principles, it was good to be able to single out even one such accomplishment.
    He yawned. Closed his eyes. It was good.
    Though he knew he should get up and hunt for Stuart, he didn’t. He was too tired. He sat upright in the glow of the lantern outside the medical tent, struggling to keep his eyes open.
    It would soon be Sunday, he realized. Maybe it was Sunday already.
    Would Margaret be going to church in Richmond? Must write her, he reminded himself. Write to tell her how we saved old Stonewall —
    Eight days later, before Gideon found the spare moments to put his thoughts to paper, Thomas Jonathan Jackson lay abed in a small house at Guiney’s Station—
    Dying.
vi
—It was pneumonia, they say. Jackson was making a good recovery. Then, quite abruptly, Wednesday I believe it was, he began to sink.
    I’ve been told it was a relatively peaceful death, though the general suffered periods of delirium near the end. His wife Mary Anna was among those at the bedside. They sang a hymn he requested.
    According to what we’ve been told, the general spoke twice, once to issue an order for A. P. Hill to “come up” with his infantry, the second time to utter a most peculiar remark—“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.” Some claim the word was “pass, “ not “cross. “ But no one knows what he meant.
    I didn’t realize he was so young; he had observed his thirty-ninth birthday only in January.
    I’ve considered trying to write my father in New York where he is once again preaching. I wanted to tell him Stonewall has died. But I am sure no letter of mine would reach the North, and he will doubtless read of the passing, since Jackson’s exploits were so widely discussed.
    In Lexington, the general was a friend to my father when he had no others. He will mourn the cruel accident, I am sure, even though he believed his friend had given his loyalty to the wrong side.
    It is hard for me to express my feelings just now, Margaret. We won a sound victory at Chancellorsville—though at a high cost. I’ve heard there were as many as 13,000 of our boys killed, maimed, or lost. We would have made the success an even better one if Fighting Joe had not lost his taste for fighting—something it appears he never had to begin with!—and got away across the Rappahannock pontoons before we could catch him. And the loss of Jackson has robbed the victory of all sweetness.
    Even General Stuart, with whose command I was reunited before the fighting ended, seems in poor spirits. He is being praised in some quarters, and d——d in others, as a result of his handling of Jackson’s infantry. He took command when A. P. Hill fell wounded the same night Stonewall was shot.
    You may say I place too much importance on Jackson, but I do not believe so. It’s the common feeling that, between them,