A figure approaching in the dusk greeted Dick with a shout of delight. Another just behind repeated the shout with equal fervor. Warner and Pennington had come, unharmed as he had expected, and they were exultant over the victory.
“Come over here,” said Warner to Dick. “Sergeant Whitley has cooked a glorious supper and we’re waiting for you.”
Dick joined them eagerly, and the sergeant received them with his benevolent smile. They were commissioned officers, and he gave them all the respect due to rank, but in his mind they were only his boys, whom he must watch and protect.
While the fires sprang up about them and they ate and talked of the victory, Washington was knowing its darkest moments. Lee had already been marching thirteen days toward Gettysburg, and he seemed unbeatable. Grant, who had won for the North about all the real success of which it could yet boast, was lost somewhere in the Southern wilderness. The messages seeking him ran to the end of the telegraph wires and no answer came back. The click of the key could not reach him. Many a spirit, bold at most times, despaired of the Union.
But the old and hackneyed saying about the darkest hour just before the dawn was never more true. The flame of success was already lighted in the far South, and Lincoln was soon to receive the message, telling him that Grant had not disappeared in the wilderness for nothing. Thereafter he was to trust the silent and tenacious general through everything.
They were up and away at dawn. Dick was glad enough to leave the hill, on which many of the dead yet lay unburied, and he was eager for the new field of conflict, which he was sure would be before Vicksburg. Warner and Pennington were as sanguine as he. Grant was now inspiring in them the confidence that Lee and Jackson inspired in their young officers.
“How big is this city of Vicksburg?” asked Pennington.
“Not big at all,” replied Warner. “There are no big cities in the South except New Orleans, but it’s big as a fortress. It’s surrounded by earthworks, Frank, from which the Johnnies can pot you any time.”
“Well, at any rate, I’ll be glad to see it-from a safe distance. I wouldn’t mind sitting down before a town. There’s too much wet country around here to suit me.”
“It’s likely that you’ll have a chance to sit for a long time. We won’t take Vicksburg easily.”
But the time for sitting down had not yet come. The confidence of the soldiers in their leader was justified continually. He advanced rapidly toward Vicksburg, and in pursuit of Pemberton’s defeated men. The victory at Champion Hill had been so complete that the Southern army was broken into detached fragments, and the Southern generals were now having the greatest difficulty in getting them together again.
Grant, with his loyal subordinate, Sherman, continued to push upon the enemy with the greatest vigor. Sherman had not believed in the success of the campaign, had even filed his written protest, but when Grant insisted he had cooperated with skill and energy. He and Grant stood together on a hill looking toward the future field of conflict, and he told Grant now that he expected continued success.
It was the fortune of the young officers of the Winchester regiment sitting near on their horses to see the two generals who were in such earnest consultation, and who examined the whole circle of the country so long and so carefully through powerful glasses.
The effects of the victory deep in the South were growing hourly in Dick’s mind, and the two figures standing there on the hill were full of significance to him. He had a premonition that they were the men more than any others who would achieve the success of the Union, if it were achieved at all. They had dismounted and stood side by side, the figure of Grant short, thick and sturdy, that of Sherman, taller and more slender. They spoke only at intervals, and few words then, but nothing in the country about them escaped their attention.
Dick had glasses of his own, and he, too, began to look. He saw a region much wooded and cut by deep streams. Before them lay the sluggish waters of Chickasaw Bayou, where Sherman had sustained a severe defeat at an earlier time, and farther away flowed the deep, muddy Yazoo.