The force sent out was but small; for the long line
was worn to a thin one in those days, and great changes were taking place,
the consequences of which were known only to the commanders. In a few days
the commander of the expedition found that he must divide his small force
for a time, at least, to accomplish his purpose, and sending the old Colonel
with one battery of artillery to guard one pass, must push on
over the mountain by another way to meet the expected force, if possible,
and repel it before it crossed the farther range. Thus the old battery,
on an April evening of 1865, found itself toiling alone up the steep
mountain road which leads above the river to the gap, which formed
the chief pass in that part of the Blue Ridge. Both men and horses looked,
in the dim and waning light of the gray April day, rather like shadows
of the beings they represented than the actual beings themselves.
And anyone seeing them as they toiled painfully up, the thin horses
floundering in the mud, and the men, often up to their knees,
tugging at the sinking wheels, now stopping to rest, and always moving
so slowly that they seemed scarcely to advance at all, might have thought them
the ghosts of some old battery lost from some long gone and forgotten war
on that deep and desolate mountain road.
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