“Chase them to the Potomac! Chase them to the Potomac!”
Harry and Dalton, hearing the cry, took it up and shouted it, too. Before them was a vast bank of smoke and dust, shot with fire, and the battle thundered as it rolled swiftly into Winchester. The Northern officers, still strove to prevent a rout. They performed prodigies of valor. Many of them fell, but the others, undaunted, still cried to the men to turn and beat off the foe.
Winchester suddenly shot up from the dust and smoke. The battle went on in the town more fiercely than ever. Torrents of shell and bullets swept the narrow streets, but many of the women did not hesitate to appear at the windows and shout amid all the turmoil and roar of battle cheers and praise for those whom they considered their deliverers. Over all rose the roar and flame of a vast conflagration where Banks had set his storehouses on fire, but the women cheered all the more when they saw it.
Harry did his best to keep up with his general, but Jackson still seemed to be aflame with excitement. He was in the very front of the attack and he cried to his men incessantly to push on. It was not enough to take Winchester. They must follow the beaten army to the Potomac.
Harry had a vision of flame-swept streets, of the whizzing of bullets and shell, of men crowded thick between the houses, and of the faces of women at windows, handkerchiefs and veils in their hands. Before him was a red mist sown with sparks, but every minute or two the mist was rent open by the blast of a cannon, and then the fragments of shell whistled again about his ears. He kept his eyes on Jackson, endeavoring to follow him as closely as possible.
He heard suddenly a cry behind him. He saw Dalton’s horse falling, and then Dalton and the horse disappeared. He felt a catch at the heart, but it was not a time to remember long. The Southern troops were still pouring forward driving hard on the Northern resistance.
He heard a moment or two later a voice by his side and there was Dalton again mounted.
“I thought you were gone!” Harry shouted.
“I was gone for a minute but it was only my horse that stayed. He was shot through the heart but I caught another-plenty of riderless ones are galloping about-and here I am.”
The houses and the narrow streets offered some support to the defense of Banks, but he was gradually driven through the town and out into the fields beyond. Then the women, careless of bullets, came out of the houses and weeping and cheering urged on the pursuit. It always seemed to Harry that the women of this section hated the North more than the men did, and now it was in very fact and deed the fierce women of the South cheering on their men.
He came in the fields into contact with the Invincibles. St. Clair was on foot, his horse killed, but Langdon was still riding, although there was a faint trickle of blood from his shoulder. Some grim demon seized him as he saw Harry.
“We said we were coming back to Winchester,” he shouted in his comrade’s ear, “and we have come, but we don’t stay. Harry, how long does Old Jack expect us to march and fight without stopping?”
“Until you get through.”
Then the Invincibles, curving a little to the right, were lost in the flame and smoke, and the pursuit, Jackson continually urging it, swept on. He seemed to Harry to be all fire. He shouted again and again. “We must follow them to the Potomac! To the Potomac! To the Potomac!” He sent his staff flying to every regimental commander with orders. He had the horses cut from the artillery and men mounted on them to continue the pursuit. He inquired continually for the cavalry. Harry, after returning from his second errand with orders, was sent on a third to Ashby. There was no time to write any letter. He was to tell him to come up with cavalry and attack the Federal rear with all his might.