“It does, and we need help,” said Sherburne. “Even as it is they would have been pushing upon us if it hadn't been for the cavalry and the artillery. Every time a detachment advanced we'd open up on it with a masked battery from the woods, and if pickets showed their noses too close horsemen were after them in a second. We've had them worried to death for days and days, and when they do come in force Old Jack will have something up his sleeve.”
“I wonder,” said Harry.
CHAPTER VII. ON THE RIDGES
As they rode in the shadow of the Massanuttons Harry continued to wonder. The whole campaign in the valley had become to him an interminable maze. Stonewall Jackson might know what he intended to do, but he was not telling. Meanwhile they marched back and forth. There was incessant skirmishing between cavalry and pickets, but it did not seem to signify anything. Banks, sure of his overwhelming numbers, pressed forward, but always cautiously and slowly. He did not march into any trap. And Harry surmised that Jackson, much too weak to attack, was playing for time.
Sherburne and his troop paused at the very base of the Massanuttons and Harry, who happened to be with them, looked up again at the lofty summits standing out so boldly and majestically in the middle of the valley. The oaks and maples along their slopes were now blossoming into a green that matched the tint of the pines, but far up on the crests there was still a line of snow, and white mists beyond.
“Why not climb the highest summit?” he said to Sherburne. “You have powerful glasses and we could get a good view of what is going on up the valley.”
“Most of those slopes are not slopes at all. They're perpendicular like the side of a house. The horses could never get up.”
“But they can certainly go part of the way, and some of us can climb the rest on foot.”
Sherburne's eyes sparkled. The spirit of adventure was strong within him. Moreover the task, if done, was worth while.