Some one rode up whom the captain saluted.
"How many left here?"
"About forty."
"Colonel Morley?"
"In the cornfield."
"Major Cutting?"
"All right, sir, over there."
"How are your men?"
"Pretty fair, sir. They'll go in again."
A mile down the valley the fight was growing hotter; a ravine was full of smoke, a jam around a bridge, a line of blue hills beyond; up nearer, columns were massing by a sunken road, under batteries playing from opposite hills across the creek; a village lay to the west. The sun made another jump up the sky. The fields around were empty, except for the lines in covert behind the fences, and here and there a horseman galloping, here and there a horse but no horseman. The enemy were in the corn again, shooting intermittently. Smoke drifted up and turned white against the glistening blue. The batteries beyond the woods on the right broke out again. New clouds of smoke floated overhead and dimmed the sun. In the grass-fields still the crouched lines waited in covert of weeds and fences. Hours that had shot past in the charge, the struggle and retreat, now stretched like sleepless nights. Company B muttered and swore.