Just now the war was going well for the South. At the start, the new Confederacy had held nothing of Tennessee except Chattanooga south of the mountains and the southwestern plains around Memphis. That had been on Beauregard's advice, for he was high in the councils of the Southern military. He had felt it too dangerous to try to hold the lines as far north as Nashville, Knoxville and Paducah until the South mobilized its strength.
He had proved right. The Northern bulge down into Tennessee had been a weak point, and the Southern sympathies of many Tennesseans had hampered their defense. The Army of West Tennessee had driven up along the Mississippi River plains to the Kentucky line and the Army of East Tennessee now stood at the gates of Knoxville. Outflanked by these two threats, the Union forces were pulling back toward Nashville before Beauregard Courtney's Army of Middle Tennessee, and he did not intend to stop his offensive short of the Ohio River.
"Head back for Winchester, Sergeant," he commanded his driver. The man started the staff car and swung it around on the highway.
He should not go to Chattanooga, Beauregard thought as the car bumped southward over the rutted road. His executive officer was perfectly capable of taking care of things for the few hours he would be gone, but it ran against his military training to be away from his command so soon before an attack.
Had the summons come from his wife, Beauregard would have sent her a stern refusal, even had she been in Chattanooga instead of New Orleans. She had been a soldier's wife long enough to know that duty's demands took precedence over conjugal matters.
But there was a weakness in him where Piquette was concerned. Nor was that all. She knew, as well as Lucy did, the stern requirements of military existence; and she was even less likely than Lucy to ask him to come to her unless the matter was of such overwhelming import as to overshadow what he gained by staying.
Beauregard sighed. He would eat a light supper on the plane and be back in Winchester by midnight. The pre-attack artillery barrage was not scheduled to open before four o'clock in the morning.
The plane put down at the Chattanooga airport at dusk, and a swift military car took him down Riverside Drive, past the old Confederate cemetery, and downtown.
Chattanooga was a military city. Grey-uniformed military police stood at the intersections, and soldiers on rest leave from both East and Middle armies trooped in laughing gangs along darkened Market Street. Few civilians were abroad.