“The real danger lies in front—in the force that lies between us and our main body. A force that has let us get into this trap to catch our whole demi-corps, as Jackson has done more than once with bigger detached bodies of Federals than ours in the past six months. That or drive us back into another Confederate army somewhere to the south.”
“Do you—do you really think—” stammered the general, his horror making him insensible to his adviser’s tone of insubordination. “Do you—”
“I think, sir, that we have one chance, and only one—to strike forward at full speed for that hill-top. The nearer we get to the summit before we come in touch with the enemy, the better our chances.
“Throw the whole force ahead, letting the men who were in the charge at the woods be brought up as quickly as possible to form our rear guard. It is just one chance; but a delay will leave us no chance.”
The young commander, pitiable in the fright of crass inexperience, clung metaphorically to the one stable power in sight. And then he did the one wise thing in his whole brief military career up to this point.
Reading calm self-confidence in Dad’s face, he said loudly:
“Captain Dadd, you are hereby appointed temporarily to my personal staff.” Under his breath he murmured: “What orders?”
Readily and without change of expression Dad whispered a score of successive sentences to his chief—sentences whose technicalities the bewildered politician-general himself did not half-grasp, but which he as promptly transmitted to his couriers.
In almost no time the inert body of men was buzzing with orderly activity. The front ranks—at the double, and their heavier accouterments consigned to the baggage train—were on the march, hastening eagerly toward the hill summit, the successive regiments pressing close after.
“You see, sir,” Dad was explaining to the general, “it is easier to advance fifty yards toward a foe over level ground, or a hundred yards down a slope, than ten yards up a hill. If we can seize and hold the crest before they reach it, it is so much net gain.