“To prevent that, and to delay us further, the flank movement at the forest edge was planned. In open order, as our men are now marching, and as they must continue to march, they avoid presenting a good target to volley-fire.”
Regiment after regiment wheeled into line and breasted the long slope, the rear being brought up by the returning heroes of the forest fight.
Only the first half of the force was sent ahead at the double. The rest of the demi-corps, baggage and big guns with them, moved at a more sedate pace.
It was needful only to assure the capture of the crest and that it should be held until the entire force could come up.
If there seems something comic-operalike in the idea of a Federal force marching rapidly to battle against a foe whose numbers were unknown and whose vanguard was unseen—a foe whose full description a dozen scouts had not given hours earlier—the reader is respectfully, but very sadly, referred to War Department records of no less than nine similar occurrences in the Virginia campaigns of 1862 and 1863.
Dad (his long years of supposedly aimless reading of military tactics, during such evenings as the Eagle bar had not called him, bearing sudden and glorious fruit) knew the glow that can be equaled by none other the world has to offer—the inspiration of seeing a mighty mass of fellow men moving and acting on the sole impulse of his own brain.
He grew young again. As he rode close to the general’s bridle rein, briefly mapping out the future movements of the detachment, he felt that failure and he had forever bidden each other adieu.
Then—
A scurrying figure that scuttled up to the general, ducking under his very bridle rein.
“Hey, general!” shouted Jimmie full fiercely. “They sent me back. There’s going to be fun up there ahead by and by. I smell it. I can always smell it in advance. And that’s where I and my drum belong. Give me a chance at those Rebs, won’t you? Oh, please!”