"Is there anything else, Mr. Curtis?" asked Colonel Talbot.
"That is all my agent sends me concerning its results, but he says that it lasted two days, and that it was fierce and bloody beyond all comparison with anything that has happened in the West. He estimated that the combined losses are between thirty and forty thousand men."
A heavy silence fell upon them all. The victory was great, but the price for it was great, too. Yet exultation could not be subdued long. They were soon smiling over it, and congratulating one another. But Harry was still unable to share wholly in the joy of victory.
"Why this gloom in your face, when all the rest of us are so happy?" asked St. Clair.
"My father was there. He may have fallen. How do I know?"
"That's not it. He always comes through. What's the real cause? Out with it!"
"You know that part of the dispatch saying, 'No part of the Union army was able to hold fast save one wing under Thomas.' How about that wing! You heard, too, what the colonel said about General Bragg. He always overestimates the strength of the enemy, and while he may win a victory he will not reap the fruits of it. That wing under Thomas still may be standing there, protecting all the rest of the Union army."
"Come now, old Sober Face! This isn't like you. We've won a grand victory! We've more than paid them back for their Gettysburg."
Harry rejoiced then with the others, but at times the thought came to him that Thomas with one wing might yet be standing between Bragg and complete victory. When he and Dalton went back home—they were again with the Lanhams—they found the whole population of Richmond ablaze with triumph. The Yankee army in the West had been routed. Not only was Chickamauga an offset for Gettysburg, but for Vicksburg as well, and once more the fortunes of the South were rising toward the zenith.
Dalton had returned from the army a little later this time than Harry, but he had joined him at the Lanhams', and he too showed gravity amid the almost universal rejoicing.