Harry, with an hour’s leave, visited once more his friends of the Invincibles. He had begged a package of fine West Indian cigarettes from Sherburne, and he literally laid them at the feet of the two colonels-he found them sitting together on the grass, lean gray men who seemed to be wholly reduced to bone and muscle.
“This is a great gift, Harry, perhaps greater than you think,” said Colonel Leonidas Talbot gravely. “I tried to purchase some from the commissariat, but they had none-it seems that General Stonewall Jackson doesn’t consider cigarettes necessary for his troops. Anyhow, the way our Confederate money is going, I fancy a package of cigarettes will soon cost a hundred dollars. Here, Hector, light up. We divide this box, half and half. That’s right, isn’t it, Harry?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Harry passed on to the junior officers and found St. Clair and Happy Tom lying on the grass. Happy pretended to rouse from sleep when Harry came.
“Hello, old omen of war,” he said. “What’s Old Jack expecting of us now?”
“I told you never to ask me such a question as that again. The general isn’t what you’d call a garrulous man. How’s your shoulder, Arthur?”
“About well. The muscles were not torn. It was just loss of blood that troubled me for the time.”
“I hear,” said Langdon, “that the two Yankee armies are to join soon. The Massanuttons won’t be between them much longer, and then they’ll have only one of the forks of the river to cross before they fall upon each other’s breasts and weep with joy. Harry, it seems to me that we’re always coming to a fork of the Shenandoah. How many forks does it have anyhow?”
“Only two, but the two forks have forks of their own. That’s the reason we’re always coming to deep water and by the same token the Yankees are always coming to it, too, which is a good thing for us, as we get there first, when the bridges are there, and when the Yankees come they are gone.”
But not one of these boys understood the feeling in the Northern armies. Late the day before a messenger from Shields had got through the Massanuttons to Fremont, and had informed him that an easy triumph was at hand. Jackson and his army, he said, fearing the onset of overwhelming numbers, was retreating in great disorder.
The two generals were now convinced of speedy victory. They had communicated at last, and they could have some concert of movement. Jackson was less than thirty miles away, and his army was now but a confused mass of stragglers which would dissolve under slight impact. Both had defeats and disappointments to avenge, and they pushed forward now with increased speed, Shields in particular showing the greatest energy in pursuit. But the roads were still deep in mud, and his army was forced to toil on all that day and the next, while the signalmen on the top of the Massanuttons told every movement he made to Stonewall Jackson.
The signals the second evening told Jackson that the two Northern armies were advancing fast, and that he would soon have before him an enemy outnumbering him anywhere from two to three to one. He had been talking with Ewell just before the definite news was brought, and Harry, Dalton and other officers of the staff stood near, as their duty bade them.
Harry knew the nature of the information, as it was not a secret from any member of the staff, and now they all stood silently on one side and watched Jackson. Even Ewell offered no suggestion, but kept his eyes fixed anxiously on his chief. Harry felt that another one of those critical moments, perhaps the most dangerous of all, had arrived. They had fought army after army in detail, but now they must fight armies united, or fly. He did not know that the silent general was preparing the most daring and brilliant of all his movements in the valley. In the face of both Shields and Fremont his courage flamed to the highest, and the brain under the old slouch hat grew more powerful and penetrating than ever. And flight never for a moment entered into his scheme.