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 cutoff near Decatur. We got to reinforce 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 through Atlanta by
thousands, exhausted by hunger and weariness, depleted by seventy-six days of bat-tie 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 veterans now, veterans of brief service, but veterans just the same, and they had acquitted themselves well. They searched out the faces of friends in the crowd and stared at them proudly, defiantly. They could hold up their heads now.
The old men and boys of the Home Guard marched by, the graybeards almost too weary
to lift their feet, the boys wearing the faces of tired children, confronted too early with adult problems. Scarlett caught sight of Phil Meade and hardly recognized him, so black was his face with powder and grime, so taut with strain and weariness. Uncle Henry went limping by, hatless in the rain, his head stuck through a hole in a piece of old oilcloth. Grandpa Merriwether rode in on a gun carriage, his bare feet tied in quilt scraps. But search though she might, she saw no sign of John Wilkes.
Johnston's veterans, however, went by with the tireless, careless step which had carried
them for three years, and they still had the energy to grin and wave at pretty girls and to call rude gibes to men not in uniform. They were on their way to the entrenchments that ringed the town--
no shallow, hastily dug trenches, these, but earthworks, breast high, reinforced with sandbags and tipped with sharpened staves of wood. For mile after mile the trenches encircled the town, red gashes surmounted by red mounds, waiting for the men who would fill them.
The crowd cheered the troops as they would have cheered them in victory. There was fear
in every heart but, now that they knew the truth, now that the worst had happened, now that the war was in their front yard, a change came over the town. There was no panic now, no hysteria.
Whatever lay in hearts did not show on faces. Everyone looked cheerful even if the cheer was strained. Everyone tried to show brave, confident faces to the troops. Everyone repeated what Old Joe had said, just before he was relieved of command: "I can hold Atlanta forever."
Now that Hood had had to retreat, quite a number wished, with the soldiers, that they had Old Joe back, but they forbore saying it and took courage from Old Joe's remark:
"I can hold Atlanta forever!"