In that fight and the remainder slogged tiredly through the rain

across the country toward the Chattahoochee River. The

Confederates could expect no more reinforcements, whereas the

railroad, which the Yankees now held from Tennessee south to the

battle line, brought Sherman fresh troops and supplies daily. So

the gray lines went back through the muddy fields, back toward

Atlanta.

With the loss of the supposedly unconquerable position, a fresh

wave of terror swept the town. For twenty-five wild, happy days,

everyone had assured everyone else that this could not possibly

happen. And now it had happened! But surely the General would

hold the Yankees on the opposite bank of the river. Though God

knows the river was close enough, only seven miles away!

But Sherman flanked them again, crossing the stream above them, and

the weary gray files were forced to hurry across the yellow water

and throw themselves again between the invaders and Atlanta. They

dug in hastily in shallow pits to the north of the town in the

Valley of Peachtree Creek. Atlanta was in agony and panic.

Fight and fall back! Fight and fall back! And every retreat was

bringing the Yankees closer to the town. Peachtree Creek was only

five miles away! What was the General thinking about?

The cries of "Give us a man who will stand and fight!" penetrated

even to Richmond. Richmond knew that if Atlanta was lost, the war

was lost, and after the army had crossed the Chattahoochee, General

Johnston was removed from command. General Hood, one of his corps

commanders, took over the army, and the town breathed a little

easier. Hood wouldn't retreat. Not that tall Kentuckian, with his

flowing beard and flashing eye! He had the reputation of a

bulldog. He'd drive the Yankees back from the creek, yes, back

across the river and on up the road every step of the way back to

Dalton. But the army cried: "Give us back Old Joe!" for they had

been with Old Joe all the weary miles from Dalton and they knew, as

the civilians could not know, the odds that had opposed them.

Sherman did not wait for Hood to get himself in readiness to

attack. On the day after the change in command, the Yankee general

struck swiftly at the little town of Decatur, six miles beyond

Atlanta, captured it and cut the railroad there. This was the

railroad connecting Atlanta with Augusta, with Charleston, and

Wilmington and with Virginia. Sherman had dealt the Confederacy a

crippling blow. The time had come for action! Atlanta screamed

for action!

Then, on a July afternoon of steaming heat, Atlanta had its wish.

General Hood did more than stand and fight. He assaulted the

Yankees fiercely at Peachtree Creek, hurling his men from their

rifle pits against the blue lines where Sherman's men outnumbered

him more than two to one.

Frightened, praying that Hood's attack would drive the Yankees

back, everyone listened to the sound of booming cannon and the

crackling of thousands of rifles which, though five miles away from

the center of town, were so loud as to seem almost in the next

block. They could hear the rumblings of the batteries, see the

smoke which rolled like low-hanging clouds above the trees, but for

hours no one knew how the battle was going.

By late afternoon the first news came, but it was uncertain,

contradictory, frightening, brought as it was by men wounded in the

early hours of the battle. These men began straggling in, singly

and in groups, the less seriously wounded supporting those who

limped and staggered. Soon a steady stream of them was

established, making their painful way into town toward the

hospitals, their faces black as negroes' from powder stains, dust

and sweat, their wounds unbandaged, blood drying, flies swarming

about them.

Aunt Pitty's was one of the first houses which the wounded reached

as they struggled in from the north of the town, and one after

another, they tottered to the gate, sank down on the green lawn and

croaked:

"Water!"

All that burning afternoon, Aunt Pitty and her family, black and

white, stood in the sun with buckets of water and bandages, ladling

drinks, binding wounds until the bandages gave out and even the

torn sheets and towels were exhausted. Aunt Pitty completely

forgot that the sight of blood always made her faint and she worked

until her little feet in their too small shoes swelled and would no

longer support her. Even Melanie, now great with child, forgot her

modesty and worked feverishly side by side with Prissy, Cookie and

Scarlett, her face as tense as any of the wounded. When at last

she fainted, there was no place to lay her except on the kitchen

table, as every bed, chair and sofa in the house was filled with

wounded.

Forgotten in the tumult, little Wade crouched behind the banisters

on the front porch, peering out onto the lawn like a caged,

frightened rabbit, his eyes wide with terror, sucking his thumb and

hiccoughing. Once Scarlett saw him and cried sharply: "Go play in

the back yard, Wade Hampton!" but he was too terrified, too

fascinated by the mad scene before him to obey.

The lawn was covered with prostrate men, too tired to walk farther,

too weak from wounds to move. These Uncle Peter loaded into the

carriage and drove to the hospital, making trip after trip until

the old horse was lathered. Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Merriwether sent

their carriages and they, too, drove off, springs sagging beneath

the weight of the wounded.

Later, in the long, hot summer twilight, the ambulances came

rumbling down the road from the battle field and commissary wagons,

covered with muddy canvas. Then farm wagons, ox carts and even

private carriages commandeered by the medical corps. They passed

Aunt Pitty's house, jolting over the bumpy road, packed with

wounded and dying men, dripping blood into the red dust. At the

sight of the women with buckets and dippers, the conveyances halted

and the chorus went up in cries, in whispers:

"Water!"

Scarlett held wobbling heads that parched lips might drink, poured

buckets of water over dusty, feverish bodies and into open wounds

that the men might enjoy a brief moment's relief. She tiptoed to

hand dippers to ambulance drivers and of each she questioned, her

heart in her throat: "What news? What news?"

From all came back the answer: "Don't know fer sartin, lady. It's

too soon to tell."

Night came and it was sultry. No air moved and the flaring pine

knots the negroes held made the air hotter. Dust clogged

Scarlett's nostrils and dried her lips. Her lavender calico dress,

so freshly clean and starched that morning, was streaked with

blood, dirt and sweat. This, then, was what Ashley had meant when

he wrote that war was not glory but dirt and misery.

Fatigue gave an unreal, nightmarish cast to the whole scene. It

couldn't be real--or it was real, then the world had gone mad. If

not, why should she be standing here in Aunt Pitty's peaceful front

yard, amid wavering lights, pouring water over dying beaux? For so

many of them were her beaux and they tried to smile when they saw

her. There were so many men jolting down this dark, dusty road

whom she knew so well, so many men dying here before her eyes,

mosquitoes and gnats swarming their bloody faces, men with whom she

had danced and laughed, for whom she had played music and sung

songs, teased, comforted and loved--a little.

She found Carey Ashburn on the bottom layer of wounded in an ox

cart, barely alive from a bullet wound in his head. But she could

not extricate him without disturbing six other wounded men, so she

let him go on to the hospital. Later she heard he had died before

a doctor ever saw him and was buried somewhere, no one knew

exactly. So many men had been buried that month, in shallow,

hastily dug graves at Oakland Cemetery. Melanie felt it keenly

that they had not been able to get a lock of Carey's hair to send

to his mother in Alabama.

As the hot night wore on and their backs were aching and their

knees buckling from weariness, Scarlett and Pitty cried to man

after man: "What news? What news?"

And as the long hours dragged past, they had their answer, an

answer that made them look whitely into each other's eyes.

"We're falling back." "We've got to fall back." "They outnumber

us by thousands." "The Yankees have got Wheeler's cavalry cut off

near Decatur. We got to reenforce them." "Our boys will all be in

town soon."

Scarlett and Pitty clutched each other's arms for support.

"Are--are the Yankees coming?"

"Yes'm, they're comin' all right but they ain't goin' ter git fer,

lady." "Don't fret, Miss, they can't take Atlanta." "No, Ma'm, we

got a million miles of breastworks 'round this town." "I heard Old

Joe say it myself: 'I can hold Atlanta forever.'" "But we ain't

got Old Joe. We got--" "Shut up, you fool! Do you want to scare

the ladies?" "The Yankees will never take this place, Ma'm."

"Whyn't you ladies go ter Macon or somewheres that's safer? Ain't

you got no kinfolks there?" "The Yankees ain't goin' ter take

Atlanta but still it ain't goin' ter be so healthy for ladies

whilst they're tryin' it." "There's goin' ter be a powerful lot of

shellin'."

In a warm steaming rain the next day, the defeated army poured

though Atlanta by thousands, exhausted by hunger and weariness,

depleted by seventy-six days of battle and retreat, their horses

starved scarecrows, their cannon and caissons harnessed with odds

and ends of rope and strips of rawhide. But they did not come in

as disorderly rabble, in full rout. They marched in good order,

jaunty for all their rags, their torn red battle flags flying in

the rain. They had learned retreating under Old Joe, who had made

it as great a feat of strategy as advancing. The bearded, shabby

files swung down Peachtree Street to the tune of "Maryland! My

Maryland!" and all the town turned out to cheer them. In victory

or defeat, they were their boys.

The state militia who had gone out so short a time before,

resplendent in new uniforms, could hardly be distinguished from the

seasoned troops, so dirty and unkempt were they. There was a new

look in their eyes. Three years of apologizing, of explaining why

they were not at the front was behind them now. They had traded

security behind the lines for the hardships of battle. Many of

their number had traded easy living for hard death. They were