The Affair at Coulter's Notch
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by Ambro Bierce
"Do you think, Colonel, that your brave Coulter would like to put one of his guns in here?" the general asked.
He was apparently not altogether rious; it certainly did not em a place where any artillerist, however brave, would like to put a gun. The colonel thought that possibly his division commander meant good-humoredly to intimate that in a recent conversation between them Captain Coulter's courage had been too highly extolled.
"General," he replied warmly, "Coulter would like to put a gun anywhere within reach of tho people," with a motion of his hand in the direction of the enemy.
"It is the only place," said the general. He was rious, then.
The place was a depression, a "notch," in the sharp crest of a hill. It was a pass, and throug
h it ran a turnpike, which reaching this highest point in its cour by a sinuous ascent through a thin forest made a similar, though less steep, descent toward the enemy. For a mile to the left and a mile to the right, the ridge, though occupied by Federal infantry lying clo behind the sharp crest and appearing as if held in place by atmospheric pressure, was inaccessible to artillery. There was no place but the bottom of the notch, and that was barely wide enough for the roadbed. From the Confederate side this point was commanded by two batteries posted on a slightly lower elevation beyond a creek, and a half-mile away. All the guns but one were masked by the trees of an orchard; that one--it emed a bit of impudence--was on an open lawn directly in front of a rather grandio building, the planter's dwelling. The gun was safe enough in its exposure--but only becau the Federal infantry had been forbidden to fire. Coulter's Notch--it came to be called so--was not, that pleasant summer afternoon, a place where one would "like to put a gun."
Three or four dead hors lay there sprawling in the road, three or four dead men in a trim row at one side of it, and a little back, down the hill. All but one were cavalrymen belo
nging to the Federal advance. One was a quartermaster. The general commanding the division and the colonel commanding the brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had ridden into the notch to have a look at the enemy's guns--which had straightway obscured themlves in towering clouds of smoke. It was hardly profitable to be curious about guns which had the trick of the cuttle-fish, and the ason of obrvation had been brief. At its conclusion--a short remove backward from where it began--occurred the conversation already partly reported. "It is the only place," the general repeated thoughtfully, "to get at them."
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复数形式The colonel looked at him gravely. "There is room for only one gun, General--one against twelve."
"That is true--for only one at a time," said the commander with something like, yet not altogether like, a smile. "But then, your brave Coulter--a whole battery in himlf."
The tone of irony was now unmistakable. It angered the colonel, but he did not know what to say. The spirit of military subordination is not favorable to retort, nor even to depr
ecation.
At this moment a young officer of artillery came riding slowly up the road attended by his bugler. It was Captain Coulter. He could not have been more than twenty-three years of age. He was of medium height, but very slender and lithe, and sat his hor with something of the air of a civilian. In face he was of a type singularly unlike the men about him; thin, high-nod, gray-eyed, with a slight blond mustache, and long, rather straggling hair of the same color. There was an apparent negligence in his attire. His cap was worn with the visor a trifle askew; his coat was buttoned only at the sword-belt, showing a considerable expan of white shirt, tolerably clean for that stage of the campaign. But the negligence was all in his dress and bearing; in his face was a look of inten interest in his surroundings. His gray eyes, which emed occasionally to strike right and left across the landscape, like arch-lights, were for the most part fixed upon the sky beyond the Notch; until he should arrive at the summit of the road there was nothing el in that direction to e. As he came opposite his division and brigade commanders at the road-side he saluted mechanically and was about to pass on. The colonel signed to him t
falling outo halt.
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"Captain Coulter," he said, "the enemy has twelve pieces over there on the next ridge. If I rightly understand the general, he directs that you bring up a gun and engage them."
There was a blank silence; the general looked stolidly at a distant regiment swarming slowly up the hill through rough undergrowth, like a torn and draggled cloud of blue smoke; the captain appeared not to have obrved him. Prently the captain spoke, slowly and with apparent effort:
"On the next ridge, did you say, sir? Are the guns near the hou?"
i promi"Ah, you have been over this road before. Directly at the hou."
"And it is--necessary--to engage them? The order is imperative?"
His voice was husky and broken. He was visibly paler. The colonel was astonished and mortified. He stole a glance at the commander. In that t, immobile face was no sign; it
哥伦比亚大学官网was as hard as bronze. A moment later the general rode away, followed by his staff and escort. The colonel, humiliated and indignant, was about to order Captain Coulter in arrest, when the latter spoke a few words in a low tone to his bugler, saluted, and rode straight forward into the Notch, where, prently, at the summit of the road, his field-glass at his eyes, he showed against the sky, he and his hor, sharply defined and statuesque. The bugler had dashed down the speed and disappeared behind a wood. Prently his bugle was heard singing in the cedars, and in an incredibly short time a single gun with its caisson, each drawn by six hors and manned by its full complement of gunners, came bounding and banging up the grade in a storm of dust, unlimbered under cover, and was run forward by hand to the fatal crest among the dead hors. A gesture of the captain's arm, some strangely agile movements of the men in loading, and almost before the troops along the way had cead to hear the rattle of the wheels, a great white cloud sprang forward down the slope, and with a deafening report the affair at Coulter's Notch had begun.
It is not intended to relate in detail the progress and incidents of that ghastly contest--a co
cheersntest without vicissitudes, its alternations only different degrees of despair. Almost at the instant when Captain Coulter's gun blew its challenging cloud twelve answering clouds rolled upward from among the trees about the plantation hou, a deep multiple report roared back like a broken echo, and thenceforth to the end the Federal cannoneers fought their hopeless battle in an atmosphere of living iron who thoughts were lightnings and who deeds were death.
Unwilling to e the efforts which he could not aid and the slaughter which he could not stay, the colonel ascended the ridge at a point a quarter of a mile to the left, whence the Notch, itlf invisible, but pushing up successive mass of smoke, emed the crater of a volcano in thundering eruption. With his glass he watched the enemy's guns, noting as he could the effects of Coulter's fire--if Coulter still lived to direct it. He saw that the Federal gunners, ignoring tho of the enemy's pieces who positions could be determined by their smoke only, gave their whole attention to the one that maintained its place in the open--the lawn in front of the hou. Over and about that hardy piece the shells exploded at intervals of a few conds. Some exploded in the hou, as could be s
een by thin ascensions of smoke from the breached roof. Figures of prostrate men and hors were plainly visible.
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