“All the same, if I ever catch that young jackanapes of a St. Clair- it’s an easy name to remember-I’ll strip my uniform off him and turn him loose for his own comrades to laugh at.”
“But we won’t catch either him or his comrades for a long time.”
“That’s so, but in the end we’ll catch ’em. Now, Mr. Mason, you don’t agree with me about many things, but you’re only a boy and you’ll know better later on. Anyway, I like you, and if you need help at any time and can reach me, come.”
“I’ll do so, and I thank you now,” said Dick, who saw that the contractor’s tone was sincere.
“That’s right, good-bye. I see a senator whom I need.”
They shook hands and Watson hurried away with great lightness and agility for so large a man.
Dick stayed two days longer in Washington, visiting Warner twice a day and seeing with gladness his rapid improvement. When he was with him the last time, and told him he was going to join the Army of the Potomac, Warner said:
“Dick, old man, I haven’t spoken before of the way you brought me in from that last battlefield. Pennington has told me about it-but if I didn’t it was not because I wasn’t grateful. Up in Vermont we’re not much on words-our training I suppose, though I don’t say it is the best training. It’s quite sure that I’d have died if you hadn’t found me.”
“Why, George, I looked for you as a matter of course. You’d have done exactly the same for me.”
“That’s just it, but I didn’t get the chance. Now, Dick, there’s going to be another big battle before long, and I shall be up in time for it. You’ll be there, too. Couldn’t you get yourself shot late in the afternoon, lie on the ground, feverish and delirious until far in the night, when I’d come for you. Then I could pay you back.”
Dick laughed. He knew that at the bottom of Warner’s jest lay a resolve to match the score, whenever the chance should come.
“Good-bye, George,” he said. “I’ll look for you in two weeks.”
“Make it only ten days. McClellan will need me by that time.”
But it seemed to Dick that McClellan would need him and every other man at once. Lee was marching. Passing by the capital he had advanced into Maryland, a Southern state, but one that had never seceded. The Southerners expected to find many reinforcements here among their kindred. The regiments in gray, flushed with victory, advanced singing:
“The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland, my Maryland!”
Dick knew that the South expected much of Maryland. Her people were Southerners. Their valor in the Revolution was unsurpassed. People still talked of the Maryland line and its great deeds. Many of the Marylanders had already come to Lee and Jackson, and now that the Southern army, led by its famous leaders and crowned with victories, was on their soil, it was expected that they would pour forward in thousands, relieved from the fear of Northern armies.
Alarm, deep and intense, spread all through the North. McClellan, as usual, doubled Lee’s numbers but he organized with all speed to meet him. Dick heard that Lee was already at Frederick, giving his troops a few days’ repose before meeting any enemy who might come. The utmost confidence reigned in the South.
McClellan marched, but he advanced slowly. The old mystery and uncertainty about the Southern army returned. It suddenly disappeared from Frederick, and McClellan became extremely cautious. He had nearly a hundred thousand men, veterans now, but he believed that Lee had two hundred thousand.
Colonel Winchester again complained bitterly to Dick, who was a comrade as well as an aide.
“What we need,” he said, “is a general who doesn’t see double, and we haven’t got him yet. We must spend less time counting the rebels and more hammering them.”
“A civilian in Washington told me that,” said Dick. “I believed then that he was right, and I believe it yet. If General Grant were here he’d attack instead of waiting to be attacked.”