Free Chickamauga by Shelby Foote

git back home old Bragg’ll have to send his whole damn army before he gits me out of thar again.”
    Well, he was gone two months or more, and I never knowed what happened—whether he got ashamed of himself when his wound healed up all right, or whether Martha talked him out of hit. But he was back with us again by late July—the grimmest, bitterest-lookin’ man you ever seed. He wouldn’t talk to me about hit, he wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but I knowed from that time on he’d never draw his breath in peace until he left the army and got back home fer good.
    Well, that was Shiloh, that was the time we didn’t miss, that was where we lost our grin, where we knowed at last what hit would be until the end.
    I’ve told you of three battles now, and one was funny, one was strange, and one was—well, one showed us what war and fightin’ could be like. But I’ll tell you of a fourth one now. And the fourth one was the greatest of the lot.
    We seed some big fights in the war. And we was in some bloody battles. But the biggest fight we foughtwas Chickamauga. The bloodiest fight I ever seed was Chickamauga. Thar was big battles in the war, but thar never was a fight before, thar’ll never be a fight again, like Chickamauga. I’m goin’ to tell you how hit was at Chickamauga.
    All through the spring and summer of that year Old Rosey follered us through Tennessee.
    We had him stopped the year before, the time we whupped him at Stone’s River at the end of ’62. We tard him out so bad he had to wait. He waited thar six months at Murfreesboro. But we knowed he was a-comin’ all the time. Old Rosey started at the end of June and drove us out to Shelbyville. We fell back on Tullahoma in rains the like of which you never seed. The rains that fell the last week in June that year was terrible. But Rosey kept a-comin’ on.
    He drove us out of Tullahoma too. We fell back across the Cumberland, we pulled back behind the mountain, but he follered us.
    I reckon thar was fellers that was quicker when a fight was on, and when they’d seed just what hit was they had to do. But when it came to plannin’ and a-figgerin’, Old Rosey Rosecrans took the cake. Old Rosey was a fox. Fer sheer natural cunnin’ I never knowed the beat of him.
    While Bragg was watchin’ him at Chattanooga to keep him from gittin’ across the Tennessee, he sent some fellers forty mile up stream. And then he’d march ’em back and forth and round the hill and back in front of us again where we could look at ’em, until you’d a-thought that every Yankee in the world was there. But laws! All that was just a dodge! He had fellers a-sawin’t and a-hammerin’, a-buildin’ boats, a-blowin’ bugles and a-beatin’ drums, makin’ all the noise they could—you could hear ’em over yonder gittin’ ready—and all thetime Old Rosey was fifty mile or more down stream, ten mile past Chattanooga, a-fixin’ to git over way down thar. That was the kind of feller Rosey was.
    We reached Chattanooga early in July and waited fer two months. Old Rosey hadn’t caught up with us yet. He still had to cross the Cumberland, push his men and pull his trains across the ridges and through the gaps before he got to us. July went by, we had no news of him. “Oh Lord!” said Jim, “perhaps he ain’t a-comin!” I knowed he was a-comin’, but I let Jim have his way.
    Some of the fellers would git used to hit. A feller’d git into a frame of mind where he wouldn’t let hit worry him. He’d let termorrer look out fer hitself. That was the way hit was with me.
    With Jim hit was the other way around. Now that he knowed Martha Patton he was a different man. I think he hated the war and army life from the moment that he met her. From that time he was livin’ only fer one thing—to go back home and marry that gal. When mail would come and some of us was gittin’ letters he’d be the first in line; and if she wrote him why he’d walk away like someone in a