"Hey—youp!" yelled the captain, who began to understand the matter now.
"Price's men whooped and yelled worse'n that when they went by yesterday," said the man, jumping up and knocking his heels together like a boy who had just been turned loose from school. "That's Davis's dispatch right there. He went out from Richmond to watch the fight, and got there just in time to see the Yankees running."
The officer, who was worked up to such a pitch of excitement that the paper rustled in his trembling hands, glanced over the black headlines to which the planter directed his attention, and then read the dispatch aloud so that his men could hear it. It ran as follows:
"Night has closed upon a hard-fought field. Our forces were victorious. The battle was fought mainly on our left. Our forces were fifteen thousand; that of the enemy estimated at thirty-five thousand."
"And when the Yankees got a-going," chimed in the planter, clapping his hands and swaying his body back and forth after the manner of a negro who had been carried away by some sudden enthusiasm, "they never stopped. It was such a stampede that their officers couldn't do nothing with 'em. The soldiers who were running away from the battle met the civilians who were riding out from Washington to see it, and the two living streams of humanity, one going one way and t'other going t'other way, got all mixed up together; and all the while there were our batteries playing onto 'em and our cavalry riding through 'em and sabering first one and then another, till—Hey—youp! I'll be doggone if I can seem to get it through my head, although I have read it more'n a hundred times."
This astounding intelligence almost took away the breath of the men who listened to it. Of course they had known all the while that whipping the North was going to be as easy as falling off a log, but to have their opinions confirmed in this unexpected way almost overwhelmed them. They knew it was bound to come, but they hadn't looked for it so soon. They gazed at one another in silence for a moment or two, and then the shout they set up would have done credit to a larger squad than theirs. The planter, who really acted as though he had taken leave of his senses, joined in, laughing and shaking his head and slapping his knees in a way that set Rodney Gray in a roar. It was a long time before the captain could bring his squad to "attention."
"There's a good deal more in this paper," said he, "and if you will let me have it, I should like to read it to the boys when we go into camp. We belong to Price, and want to catch up with the men who went by here yesterday."
"Then you'll have to skip along right peart," replied the man. "That's the way they were going stopped long enough to drink my well 'most dry, and then went off in a lope. As for the paper, take it along. You don't reckon there's any chance for a mistake, do you?"
"Not the slightest. President Davis knew what he was doing when he sent that telegram to Richmond."
"But fifteen thousand against thirty-five thousand," said the planter, whose excitement had not driven all his common sense out of his head. "That's big odds, and it kinder sticks in my crop. Well, good-by, if you must be going, and good luck to you."