Days would probably pass before the bulk of the Army of the Potomac would be set in motion. But every man knew just what was coming.
Every man knew that the next move would bring the rival forces to grips, and under more pregnant circumstances than ever before.
Wherefore the vast camp stirred and muttered like waking monsters underseas at the surface turmoil of mounting wave and wind-blown foam-crest that presages storm.
Ahead for some distance the road was half-choked with provision trains, ammunition wagons, and baggage carts, through which Dad and the boy threaded their way with no great degree of ease.
The fields on either hand were dotted with couriers and returning skirmish-parties taking short cuts back from Frederick, the town whence Lee’s rear guard, under General D. H. Hill, had departed scarce fifteen hours earlier, which had been formerly occupied by the Union vanguard a short time afterward—three hours, in fact.
As the man and the boy jogged along the press in the road grew thinner and thinner, and in time resolved itself into a semi-occasional stray rider or belated wagon or two.
Dad rode with the careless ease of a lifelong equestrian to whom the saddle was as familiar as a rocking-chair; and his sorrel mount’s occasional passaging and curvets gave the rider not the remotest trouble, nor so much as a conscious thought.
With Battle Jimmie it was different. Until the last few months he had never been astride a horse. And hitherto most of his rides had been on the broad back of some caisson or baggage horse whose lumbering gallop was highly uncomfortable, but to whose moorings—or harness—it was possible to cling with an unsportsmanlike grip that was highly needful, in the light of his inexperience.
Of late, though, Dad had taken his grandson’s equestrian education in hand, with the result that Jimmie now restrained the keen yearning to seize the pommel of his army saddle or the equally tempting mane of his mount in the effort to stick on. He rode in shortened stirrups, sat his saddle stiffly, held the reins as nearly as possible after the correct and approved army fashion—and during the entire operation was as physically miserable as it was possible for him to be.
His horse to-day, a huge, raw-boned bald-face, would have proven a handful for a more expert rider. Jimmie sawed viciously at the brute’s hard mouth more than once; and the horse retaliated by jerking back his head and then suddenly leaning on the bit with a tug that all but pulled the reins free from the rider’s grubby little hands.