Hell or Richmond by Ralph Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

Doubtfully.
    “Don’t stare, you ass.” He could hear Miles clopping up. “Help me with my boots.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Move.”
    The man moved. He was deathly afraid. That was good.
    Fully clad below the waist again, Barlow stood and said, “Now get out of here.”
    His feet burned, damn them. He dreaded the coming summer.
    And yet, he relished the suffering, too, and knew he did. He took a fierce pride in treating hardships casually, in living rough, in enduring more than the Irish toughs and the muscle-clad farm-boys still not dead of dysentery. In winter, he wore an overcoat only when the cold became truly unbearable, a rare thing in Virginia. He intended to be more spartan than the Spartans, more stoic than the Stoics. He relished humbling other men with their weaknesses.
    Barlow stepped outside as Miles dismounted. They had served together, on and off, since the Peninsula. If there was any officer Barlow trusted, it was Nelson Miles.
    “Well, Nellie!” he said. “You look like a damned Red Indian. Careful of that Virginia sun, old man.” Feet be damned, he was happy to see Miles. The fellow was not just a fighter, but almost had a brain.
    “Drilling,” Miles told him. “Have to put the new men through their paces. Your skirmishing evolutions.”
    “Meade sent down a compliment for you. Regarding the review. He thought your brigade looked splendid. Now come into the tent, for God’s sake. I could bear losing you to a bullet, but not to sunburn. What’s on your mind? Drink?”
    “Just water. For now, sir.”
    As Barlow poured from a pitcher, Miles looked about. “I see the new saber arrived.”
    “Here. At least the well water’s decent in this godforsaken place. Nice blade. Good and heavy. Whack a coward with the flat of that one, and he’ll think twice. Sit down, sit down. Hancock was just here. Not sure his leg’s all it should be.”
    “Any news?” Miles took the camp chair, weary and forgetful of decorum. Barlow let it go.
    “He thinks we’ll get marching orders any day now.”
    Miles looked around. As if he could see through the canvas. “Shame to waste this good weather. Rather fight now, before the heat sets in. Listen, Frank”—in private, they were “Frank” and “Nelson” or, when Barlow was in the spirit, “Nellie”—“maybe you should address the men. I know you don’t go in for that sort of thing … but all of the other division commanders are doing it. They’re hollering up a storm fit for shouting Methodists: ‘God bless the sacred Union … our holy cause triumphant … damnation to the Confederacy…’ You know the sort of thing. The men expect it.”
    Barlow’s grimace took his jaw a good inch out of alignment. “If I’d wanted to preach from a pulpit, I would have pursued a different vocation.” He thought of Coriolanus, the much maligned. “All the men need to hear from me is ‘Fix bayonets!’ and ‘Charge!’ And, really, only you and the other brigade commanders need to hear that much. The men need clear orders, not rhetoric.”
    Barlow abhorred and dreaded public speaking. Even as a lawyer, he had preferred settling things in chambers. Fighting a battle was easy compared to addressing a throng. He had sat through enough pandering lectures in churches, parlors, assembly halls, and classrooms to know exactly what speeches were worth, and what a shabby thing it was to plead for the mob’s approval.
    “Frank”—Miles tried again—“you’ve got the old Third Corps men disgruntled that they’ve been resubordinated to Second Corps. And everyone’s grumbling—company commanders included—about your order to strip the men’s packs of everything not on your list. At least show them you’re human.”
    “They’ve been loading themselves like donkeys. Lighten the packs, and we’ll have fewer stragglers. I want men on the firing line, not lining the damned roads and playing possum.” He folded his arms. “The Johnnies don’t carry gewgaws