The Killer Angels Read Online Free PDF

“I think we should concentrate in this direction. This road junction will be useful.”
    “Yes,” Longstreet said.
    Lee looked up with black diamond eyes. “We’ll move at first light.”
    Longstreet felt a lovely thrill. Trust the old man to move. “Yes, sir.”
    Lee started to rise. A short while ago he had fallen from a horse onto his hands, and when he pushed himself up from the table Longstreet saw him wince. Longstreet thought: Go to sleep and let me do it. Give the order and I’ll do it all. He said, “I regret the need to wake you, sir.”
    Lee looked past him into the soft blowing dark. The rain had ended. A light wind was moving in the tops of the pines—cool sweet air, gentle and clean. Lee took a deep breath.
    “A good time of night. I have always liked this time of night.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well.” Lee glanced once almost shyly at Longstreet’s face, then looked away. They stood for a moment in awkward silence. They had been together for a long time in war and they had grown very close, but Lee was ever formal and Longstreet was inarticulate, so they stood for a long moment side by side without speaking, not looking at each other, listening to the raindrops fall in the leaves. But the silent moment was enough. After a while Lee said slowly, “When this is over, I shall miss it very much.”
    “Yes.”
    “I do not mean the fighting.”
    “No.”
    “Well,” Lee said. He looked to the sky. “It is all in God’s hands.”
    They said good night. Longstreet watched the old man back to his tent. Then he mounted and rode alone back to his camp to begin the turning of the army, all the wagons and all the guns, down the narrow mountain road that led to Gettysburg. It was still a long dark hour till dawn. He sat alone on his horse in the night and he could feel the army asleep around him, all those young hearts beating in the dark. They would need their rest now. He sat alone to await the dawn, and let them sleep a little longer.

2.
C HAMBERLAIN
    He dreamed of Maine and ice black water; he awoke to a murderous sun. A voice was calling: “Colonel, darlin’.” He squinted: the whiskery face of Buster Kilrain.
    “Colonel, darlin’, I hate to be a-wakin’ ye, but there’s a message here ye ought to be seein’.”
    Chamberlain had slept on the ground; he rolled to a sitting position. Light boiled in through the tent flap. Chamberlain closed his eyes.
    “And how are ye feelin’ this mornin’, Colonel, me lad?”
    Chamberlain ran his tongue around his mouth. He said briefly, dryly, “Ak.”
    “We’re about to be havin’ guests, sir, or I wouldn’t be wakin’ ye.”
    Chamberlain looked up through bleary eyes. He had walked eighty miles in four days through the hottest weather he had ever known and he had gone down with sunstroke. He felt an eerie fragility, like a piece of thin glass in a high hot wind. He saw a wooden canteen, held in the big hand of Kilrain, cold drops of water on varnished sides. He drank. The world focused.
    “… one hundred and twenty men,” Kilrain said.
    Chamberlain peered at him.
    “They should be arriving any moment,” Kilrain said. He was squatting easily, comfortably, in the opening of the tent, the light flaming behind him.
    “Who?” Chamberlain said.
    “They are sending us some mutineers,” Kilrain said with fatherly patience. “One hundred and twenty men from the old Second Maine, which has been disbanded.”
    “Mutineers?”
    “Ay. What happened was that the enlistment of the old Second ran out and they were all sent home except one hundred and twenty, which had foolishly signed
three
-year papers, and so they all had one year to go, only
they
all thought they was signing up to fight with the Second, and Second only, and so they mutineed. One hundred and twenty. Are you all right, Colonel?”
    Chamberlain nodded vaguely.
    “Well, these poor fellers did not want to fight no more, naturally, being Maine men of a certain intelligence, and refused,