s what that majo' told us. Says 'e, 'Ladies,
we got to fight a battle here to-morrow, but yo'-all's quickest way out
of it'll be to stay right hyuh. There'll be no place like home
to-morrow, not even this place,' says 'e, with a sort o' twinkle that
made us laugh without seein' anything to laugh at!"

LVII

GATES OF HELL AND GLORY

The next sun rose fair over the green, rolling, open land, rich in
half-grown crops of cotton and corn between fence-rows of persimmon and
sassafras. Before it was high the eager Callenders were out on a main
road. Their Mobile boy had left them and given the reins to an old man,
a disabled and paroled soldier bound homeward into Vicksburg. Delays
plagued them on every turn. At a cross-road they were compelled to wait
for a large body of infantry, followed by its ordnance wagons, to sweep
across their path with the long, swift stride of men who had marched for
two years and which changed to a double-quick as they went over a
hill-top. Or next they had to draw wildly aside into the zigzags of a
worm-fence for a column of galloping cavalry and shroud their heads from
its stifling dust while their driver hung to his mules' heads by the
bits. More than once they caught from some gentle rise a backward
glimpse of long thin lines puffing and crackling at each other; oftener
and more and more they heard the far resound of artillery, the
shuffling, clattering flight of shell, and their final peal as they
reported back to the guns that had sent them; and once, when the ladies
asked if a certain human note, rarefied by distance, was not the
hurrahing of boys on a school-ground, the old man said no, it was "the
Yanks charging." But never, moving or standing from aides or couriers
spurring to front or flank, or from hobbling wounded men or unhurt
stragglers footing to the rear, could they gather a word as to Brodnax's
brigade or Kincaid's Battery.

"Kincaid's Battery hell! You get those ladies out o' this as fast as
them mules can skedaddle."

By and by ambulances and then open wagons began to jolt and tilt past
them full of ragged, grimy, bloody men wailing and groaning, no one
heeding the entreaties of the three ladies to be taken in as nurses.
Near a cross-road before them they saw on a fair farmhouse the yellow
flag, and a vehicle or two at its door, yet no load of wounded turned
that way. Out of it, instead, excited men were hurrying, some lamely,
feebly, afoot, others at better speed