“Anything I ask for? Did you say that, sir?”
He nodded.
“Even if I ask for—his pardon?”
The general laughed a distorted laugh.
“I guess we’ll bar that,” he said. “Will you breakfast, ma’am? The next room is free, if you want it.”
Headquarters bugles began to sound as she crossed the hall, jacket dangling over her arm, and pushed open the door of a darkened room. The air within was stifling, she opened a window and thrust back the blinds, and at the same moment the ringing crack of a rifled cannon shattered the silence of dawn. Very, very far away a dull boom replied.
Outside, in dusky obscurity, cavalry were mounting; a trooper, pumping water from a well under her window, sang quietly to himself in an undertone as he worked, then went off carrying two brimming buckets.
The sour, burned stench of stale campfires tainted the morning freshness.
She leaned on the sill, looking out into the east. Somewhere yonder, high against the sky, they were signaling with torches. She watched the red flames swinging to right, to left, dipping, circling; other sparks broke out to the north, where two army corps were talking to each other with fire.
As the sky turned gray, one by one the forest-shrouded hills took shape; details began to appear; woodlands grew out of fathomless shadows, fields, fences, a rocky hillock close by, trees in an orchard, some Sibley tents.