[19]March 22d, 1863.
[19]March 22d, 1863.
The rebel cavalry were now within four hundred yards, and still advancing, though at moderate speed. Crawford looked at them closely a moment.
"From two to three hundred, I should think," was the answer.
"By the Lord you shall have a chance!" said the veteran. "You think you can scatter them with less than two hundred. Try it, steel against steel. Take two squadrons, and away with you!"
"Squadrons on the right—attention!" rung out the sharp voice of the Captain, no despondency or vexation in it now! "Draw sabres! Squadrons forward! Column to the left—march" and rapidly as the words were uttered the movement was executed. Other words of command followed and were executed with equal rapidity, as the squadrons moved down to the left, then formed on the right into line facing the foe; and it seemed but an instant after, when the concluding words rung out: "Squadrons forward! trot—march! Gallop—march! Charge!" and the two squadrons of the light dragoons, headed by the new Captain, were sweeping across the plateau to meet the advancing rebels. Their long line of white steel glittered ominously, and the solid earth of the plateau shook under the hoofs of their galloping horses, few in number as they were. As they swept on, coming nearer they discovered that their scant one hundred and fifty were even more fearfully outnumbered than they had at first believed; but no man drew rein and every one grasped the hilt of his blade with a fiercer determination, as he drove the cruel spurs still deeper into the flanks of his flying horse—lacerating the animal in haste perhaps to impale himself!
In the more important details of the main battle of Antietam, this cavalry charge has been almost overlooked by the newspaper chroniclers; and yet it is doubtful whether even the Galloping Second when they dashed into Fairfax Court-House, or Zagonyi's "Body-Guard" and Frank White's "Prairie Scouts," at Springfield, displayed more of the true dash of this undervalued arm of the American service, than those two squadrons of Pleasanton on the little plateau over Antietam Creek. The rebels met them with fierce determination and the inspiring consciousness of superior numbers, but nothing could break that headlong charge. Scarcely a pistol-shot was fired, until the rebel ranks were completely broken. Like tongues of white flame those fierce blades rose and fell, lopping arms, crashing through brains and emptying saddles; and scarce once that they rose without some new stain caught from the reeking life-blood. Poor little Mary Crawford's sword, before so bright and spotless, caught terrible flames of red in its course, as the Captain sped onward at the head of his destroying angels; and it was only when the rebels wore completely broken and in full flight, and the Union cavalry wheeling to rejoin the main body with their sadly diminished number, that the blade so bloodily baptized grew still.
Crawford, at the very head of the charge, had passed beyond many of the rebel horsemen, now flying fugitives; and as he turned to ride back, drawing a long breath of exhaustion and relief, two or three of the escaping rebels dashed towards him. He raised his sword and spurred forward, for the moment unconscious of personal danger at the moment of victory. But at that instant the hand of one of the rebel horsemen dropped to his holster—before the Union officer could meet the motion there was a quick flash, a report, and the bullet struck him full in the throat. One gasp, one convulsive spouting of blood from the great arteries, in which the whole flood of life seemed to be discharging itself—and he reeled in his saddle and fell headlong from the stirrup, his eyes already glazing in death, and the stained sword of the Oneida Valley falling useless from his stiffening right hand.
Let the Koran be true, for him at least. Let the death of a patriot soldier on the battle-field, when striking for the perilled land at its sorest need, be held to atone for much of wrong and error, and even something of crime, in the past. And let us say of him, as the master-dramatist says of the perished Cawdor, and as some tired reader may be disposed to say of this long and desultory narration—that "nothing in his life became him like the leaving it."
The End.