“Time you fellers quit your talkin',” said Brayton, “a major or a colonel may come strollin' 'long here any minute, an' they don't like for us fellers to be too friendly. Dan, I'm powerful glad to see you ag'in, an' I hope you won't get killed. I've a feelin' that you an' me will be ridin' over the plains once more some day, an' we won't be fightin' each other. We'll be fightin' Sioux an' Cheyennes an' all that red lot, just as we did in the old days. Here's a good-bye.”
He thrust out the muzzle of his gun, an' Whitley thrust out his. Then they shook them at each other in friendly salute, and the little group moved away from the river bank.
“I'm glad I've seen Bill again,” said the sergeant. “Fine feller an' that Mississippian with him was quaint like. Mighty big bragger.”
“You did some bragging yourself, sergeant,” said Dick.
“So I did, but it was in answer to Henderson. I'm glad we had that little talk across the river. It was a friendly thing to do, before we fall to slaughterin' one another.”
They rejoined Colonel Winchester, and Dick worked through a part of the night carrying orders and other messages. A great movement was going on. Fresh troops were continually coming up, but there was little noise beyond the Antietam, although he saw the light of many fires.
He slept after midnight and awoke at dawn, expecting to go at once into battle. Some of the troops were moved about and Colonel Winchester began to rage again.
“Good God! can it be possible!” he exclaimed, “that another day will be lost? Is General McClellan instead of General Lee waiting for Jackson to come? With the enemy safely within the trap, we refuse to shut it down upon him!”
He said these things only within the hearing of Dick, who he knew would never repeat them. But he was not the only one to complain. Men higher in rank than he, generals, spoke their discontent openly. Why would not McClellan attack? He had claimed that the rebels had two hundred thousand men at the Seven Days, when it was well known that half that figure or less was their true number. Why should he persist in seeing the enemy double, and even if Lee did have fifty thousand men on the other side of the Antietam, instead of the twenty thousand the scouts assigned to him, the Army of the Potomac could defeat him before Jackson came up.
But McClellan was overcome by caution. In spite of everything he doubled or tripled the numbers of the enemy. Personally brave beyond dispute, he feared for his army. The position of the enemy on the peninsula seemed to have changed somewhat through the night. He believed that the batteries had been moved about, and he telegraphed to Washington that he must find out exactly the disposition of Lee's forces and where the fords were.