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“Are we to lose after all?” exclaimed Dick.

It seemed strange to him, even at that moment, that he should hear his own voice amid such a roar of cannon and rifles. But it was an undernote, and he heard with equal ease the sergeant’s reply:

“It ain’t decided yet, Mr. Mason, but we’ve got to fight as we never fought before.”

The Union men, both those who had faced Jackson before and those who were now meeting him for the first time, fought with unsurpassed valor, but, unequal in numbers, they saw the victory wrenched from their grasp. Jackson now had his forces in the hollow of his hand. He saw everything that was passing, and with the mind of a master he read the meaning of it. He strengthened his own weak points and increased the attack upon those of the North.

Dick remained beside the sergeant. He had lost sight of Colonel Winchester, Warner and Pennington in the smoke and the dreadful confusion, but he saw well enough that his fears were coming true.

The attack in front increased in violence, and the Northern army was also attacked with fiery energy on both flanks. The men had the actual physical feeling that they were enclosed in the jaws of a vise, and, forced to abandon all hope of victory, they fought now to escape. Two small squadrons of cavalry, scarce two hundred in number, sent forward from a wood, charged the whole Southern army under a storm of cannon and rifle fire. They equalled the ride of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, but with no poet to celebrate it, it remained like so many other charges in this war, an obscure and forgotten incident.

Dick saw the charge of the horsemen, and the return of the few. Then he lost hope. Above the roar of the battle the rebel yell continually swelled afresh. The setting sun, no longer golden but red, cast a sinister light over the trampled wheat field, the slopes and the woods torn by cannon balls. The dead and the wounded lay in thousands, and Banks, brave and tenacious, but with bitter despair in his heart, was seeking to drag the remains of his army from that merciless vise which continued to close down harder and harder.

Dick’s excitement and tension seemed to abate. He had been keyed to so high a pitch that his pulses grew gentler through very lack of force, and with the relaxation came a clearer view. He saw the sinking red sun through the banks of smoke, and in fancy he already felt the cool darkness upon his face after the hot and terrible August day. He knew that night might save them, and he prayed deeply and fervently for its swift coming.

He and the sergeant came suddenly to Colonel Winchester, whose hat had been shot from his head, but who was otherwise unharmed. Warner and Pennington were near, Warner slightly wounded but apparently unaware of the fact. The colonel, by shout and by gesture, was gathering around him the remains of his regiment. Other regiments on either side were trying to do the same, and eventually they formed a compact mass which, driving with all its force back toward its old position, reached the hills and the woods just as the jaws of Stonewall Jackson’s vise shut down, but not upon the main body.

Victory, won for a little while, had been lost. Night protected their retreat, and they fought with a valor that made Jackson and all his generals cautious. But this knowledge was little compensation to the Northern troops. They knew that behind them was a great army, that Pope might have been present with fifty thousand men, sufficient to overwhelm Jackson. Instead of the odds being more than two to one in their favor, they had been two to one against them.

It was a sullen army that lay in the woods in the first hour or two of the night, gasping for breath. These men had boasted that they were a match for those of Jackson, and they were, if they could only have traded generals. Dick and his comrades from the west began to share in the awe that the name of Stonewall Jackson inspired.

“He comes up to his advertisements. There ain’t no doubt of it,” said Sergeant Whitley. “I never saw anybody fight better than our men did, an’ that charge of the little troop of cavalry was never beat anywhere in the world. But here we are licked, and thirty or forty thousand men of ours not many miles away!”

He spoke the last words with a bitterness that Dick had never heard in his voice before.

“It’s simple,” said Warner, who was binding up his little wound with his own hand. “It’s just a question in mathematics. I see now how Stonewall Jackson won so many triumphs in the Valley of Virginia. Give Jackson, say, fifteen thousand men. We have fifty thousand, but we divide them into five armies of ten thousand apiece. Jackson fights them in detail, which is five battles, of course. His fifteen thousand defeat the ten thousand every time. Hence Jackson with fifteen thousand men has beaten our side. It’s simple but painful. In time our leaders will learn.”

“After we’re all killed,” said Pennington sadly.

“And the country is ripped apart so that it will take half a century to put the pieces back together again and put ‘em back right,” said Dick, with equal sadness.

“Never mind,” said Sergeant Whitley with returning cheerfulness. “Other countries have survived great wars and so will ours.”

Some food was obtained for the exhausted men and they ate it nervously, paying little attention to the crackling fire of the skirmishers which was still going on in the darkness along their front. Dick saw the pink flashes along the edges of the woods and the wheat field, but his mind, deadened for the time, took no further impressions. Skirmishers were unpleasant people, anyway. Let them fight down there. It did not matter what they might do to one another. A minute or two later he was ashamed of such thoughts.

Colonel Winchester, who had been to see General Banks, returned presently and told them that they would march again in half an hour.

“General Banks,” he said with bitter irony, “is afraid that a powerful force of the rebels will gain his rear and that we shall be surrounded. He ought to know. He has had enough dealings with Jackson. Outmaneuvered and outflanked again! Why can’t we learn something?”

But he said this to the young officers only. He forced a cheerfulness of tone when he spoke to the men, and they dragged themselves wearily to their feet in order to begin the retreat. But though the muscles were tired the spirit was not unwilling. All the omens were sinister, pointing to the need of withdrawal. The vicious skirmishers were still busy and a crackling fire came from many points in the woods. The occasional rolling thunder of a cannon deepened the somberness of the scene.

All the officers of the regiment had lost their horses and they walked now with the men. A full moon threw a silvery light over the marching troops, who strode on in silence, the wounded suppressing their groans. A full moon cast a silvery light over the pallid faces.

“Do you know where we are going?” Dick asked of the Vermonter.

“I heard that we’re bound for a place called Culpeper Court House, six or seven miles away. I suppose we’ll get there in the morning, if Stonewall Jackson doesn’t insist on another interview with us.”

“There’s enough time in the day for fighting,” said Pennington, “without borrowing of the night. Hear that big gun over there on our right! Why do they want to be firing cannon balls at such a time?”

They trudged gloomily on, following other regiments ghostly in the moonlight, and followed by others as ghostly. But the sinister omens, the flash of rifle firing and the far boom of a cannon, were always on their flanks. The impression of Jackson’s skill and power which Dick had gained so quickly was deepening already. He did not have the slightest doubt now that the Southern leader was pressing forward through the woods to cut them off. As the sergeant had said truly, he came up to his advertisements and more. Dick shivered and it was a shiver of apprehension for the army, and not for himself.

In accordance with human nature he and the boy officers who were his good comrades talked together, but their sentences were short and broken.

“Marching toward a court house,” said Pennington. “What’ll we do when we get there? Lawyers won’t help us.”

“Not so much marching toward a court house as marching away from Jackson,” said the Vermonter.

“We’ll march back again,” said Dick hopefully.

“But when?” said Pennington. “Look through the trees there on our right. Aren’t those rebel troops?”

Dick’s startled gaze beheld a long line of horsemen in gray on their flank and only a few hundred yards away.

CHAPTER II. AT THE CAPITAL

The Southern cavalry was seen almost at the same time by many men in the regiments, and nervous and hasty, as was natural at such a time, they opened a scattering fire. The horsemen did not return the fire, but seemed to melt away in the darkness.

But the shrewdest of the officers, among whom was Colonel Winchester, took alarm at this sudden appearance and disappearance. Dick would have divined from their manner, even without their talk, that they believed Jackson was at hand. Action followed quickly. The army stopped and began to seek a strong position in the wood. Cannon were drawn up, their mouths turned to the side on which the horsemen had appeared, and the worn regiments assumed the attitude of defense. Dick’s heart throbbed with pride when he saw that they were as ready as ever to fight, although they had suffered great losses and the bitterest of disappointments.

“What I said I’ve got to say over again,” said Pennington ruefully: “the night’s no time for fighting. It’s heathenish in Stonewall Jackson to follow us, and annoy us in such a way.”

“Such a way! Such a way!” said Dick impatiently. “We’ve got to learn to fight as he does. Good God, Frank, think of all the sacrifices we are making to save our Union, the great republic! Think how the hateful old monarchies will sneer and rejoice if we fall, and here in the East our generals just throw our men away! They divide and scatter our armies in such a manner that we simply ask to be beaten.”

“Sh! sh!” said Warner, as he listened to the violent outbreak, so unusual on the part of the reserved and self-contained lad. “Here come two generals.”

“Two too many,” muttered Dick. A moment or two later he was ashamed of himself, not because of what he had said, but because he had said it. Then Warner seized him by the arm and pointed.

“A new general, bigger than all the rest, has come,” he said, “and although I’ve never seen him before I know with mathematical certainty that it’s General John Pope, commander-in-chief of the Army of Virginia.”

Both Dick and Pennington knew instinctively that Warner was right. General Pope, a strongly built man in early middle years, surrounded by a brilliant staff, rode into a little glade in the midst of the troops, and summoned to him the leading officers who had taken part in the battle.

Dick and his two comrades stood on one side, but they could not keep from hearing what was said and done. In truth they did not seek to avoid hearing, nor did many of the young privates who stood near and who considered themselves quite as good as their officers.

Pope, florid and full-faced, was in a fine humor. He complimented the officers on their valor, spoke as if they had won a victory—which would have been a fact had others done their duty—and talked slightingly of Jackson. The men of the west would show this man his match in the art of war.

Dick listened to it all with bitterness in his heart. He had no doubt that Pope was brave, and he could see that he was confident. Yet it took something more than confidence to defeat an able enemy. What had become of those gray horsemen in the bush? They had appeared once and they could appear again. He had believed that Jackson himself was at hand, and he still believed it. His eyes shifted from Pope to the dark woods, which, with their thick foliage, turned back the moonlight.

“George,” he whispered to Warner, “do you think you can see anything among those trees?”

“I can make out dimly one or two figures, which no doubt are our scouts. Ah-h!”

The long “Ah-h!” was drawn by a flash and the report of a rifle. A second and a third report came, and then the crash of a heavy fire. The scouts and sentinels came running in, reporting that a great force with batteries, presumably the whole army of Jackson, was at hand.

A deep murmur ran through the Union army, but there was no confusion. The long hours of fighting had habituated them to danger. They were also too tired to become excited, and in addition, they were of as stern stuff at night as they had been in the morning. They were ready to fight again.

Formidable columns of troops appeared through the woods, their bayonets glistening in the moonlight. The heavy rifle fire began once more, although it was nearly midnight, and then came the deep thunder of cannon, sending round shot and shells among the Union troops. But the men in blue, harried beyond endurance, fought back fiercely. They shared the feelings of Pennington. They felt that they had been persecuted, that this thing had grown inhuman, and they used rifles and cannon with astonishing vigor and energy.

Two heavy Union batteries replied to the Southern cannon, raking the woods with shell, round shot and grape, and Dick concluded that in the face of so much resolution Jackson would not press an attack at night, when every kind of disaster might happen in the darkness. His own regiment had lain down among the leaves, and the men were firing at the flashes on their right. Dick looked for General Pope and his brilliant staff, but he did not see them.

“Gone to bring up the reserves,” whispered Warner, who saw Dick’s inquiring look.

But the Vermonter’s slur was not wholly true. Pope was on his way to his main force, doubtless not really believing that Jackson himself was at hand. But the little army that he left behind fighting with renewed energy and valor broke away from the Southern grasp and continued its march toward that court house, in which the boys could see no merit. Jackson himself, knowing what great numbers were ahead, was content to swing away and seek for prey elsewhere.

They emerged from the wood toward morning and saw ahead of them great masses of troops in blue. They would have shouted with joy, but they were too tired. Besides, nearly two thousand of their men were killed or wounded, and they had no victory to celebrate.

Dick ate breakfast with his comrades. The Northern armies nearly always had an abundance of provisions, and now they were served in plenty. For the moment, the physical overcame the mental in Dick. It was enough to eat and to rest and to feel secure. Thousands of friendly faces were around them, and they would not have to fight in either day or dark for their lives. Their bones ceased to ache, and the good food and the good coffee began to rebuild the worn tissues. What did the rest matter?

After breakfast these men who had marched and fought for nearly twenty hours were told to sleep. Only one command was needed. It was August, and the dry grass and the soft earth were good enough for anybody. The three lads, each with an arm under his head, slept side by side. At noon they were still sleeping, and Colonel Winchester, as he was passing, looked at the three, but longest at Dick. His gaze was half affection, half protection, but it was not the boy alone whom he saw. He saw also his fair-haired young mother in that little town on the other side of the mountains.

While Dick still slept, the minds of men were at work. Pope’s army, hitherto separated, was now called together by a battle. Troops from every direction were pouring upon the common center. The little army which had fought so gallantly the day before now amounted to only one-fourth of the whole. McDowell, Sigel and many other generals joined Pope, who, with the strange faculty of always seeing his enemy too small, while McClellan always saw him too large, began to feed upon his own sanguine anticipations, and to regard as won the great victory that he intended to win. He sent telegrams to Washington announcing that his triumph at Cedar Run was only the first of a series that his army would soon achieve.

It was late in the afternoon when Dick awoke, and he was amazed to see that the sun was far down the western sky. But he rubbed his eyes and, remembering, knew that he had slept at least ten hours. He looked down at the relaxed figures of Warner and Pennington on either side of him. They still slumbered soundly, but he decided that they had slept long enough.

“Here, you,” he exclaimed, seizing Warner by the collar and dragging him to a sitting position, “look at the sun! Do you realize that you’ve lost a day out of your bright young life?”

Then he seized Pennington by the collar also and dragged him up. Both Warner and Pennington yawned prodigiously.

“If I’ve lost a day, and it would seem that I have, then I’m glad of it,” replied Warner. “I could afford to lose several in such a pleasant manner. I suppose a lot of Stonewall Jackson’s men were shooting at me while I slept, but I was lucky and didn’t know about it.”

“You talk too long,” said Pennington. “That comes of your having taught school. You could talk all day to boys younger than yourself, and they were afraid to answer back.”

“Shut up, both of you,” said Dick. “Here comes the sergeant, and I think from his look he has something to say worth hearing.”

Sergeant Whitley had cleansed the blood and dust from his face, and a handkerchief tied neatly around his head covered up the small wound there. He looked trim and entirely restored, both mentally and physically.

“Well, sergeant,” said Dick ingratiatingly, “if any thing has happened in this army you’re sure to know of it. We’d have known it ourselves, but we had an important engagement with Morpheus, a world away, and we had to keep it. Now what is the news?”

“I don’t know who Morpheus is,” replied the sergeant, laughing, “but I’d guess from your looks that he is another name for sleep. There is no news of anything big happenin’. We’ve got a great army here, and Jackson remains near our battlefield of yesterday. I should say that we number at least fifty thousand men, or about twice the rebels.”

“Then why don’t we march against ‘em at once?”

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. It was not for him to tell why generals did not do things.

“I think,” he said, “that we’re likely to stay here a day or two.”

“Which means,” said Dick, his alert mind interpreting at once, “that our generals don’t know what to do. Why is it that they always seem paralyzed when they get in front of Stonewall Jackson? He’s only a man like the rest of them!”

He spoke with perfect freedom in the presence of Sergeant Whitley, knowing that he would repeat nothing.

“A man, yes,” said Warner, in his precise manner, “but not exactly like the others. He seems to have more of the lightning flash about him. What a pity such a leader should be on the wrong side! Perhaps we’ll have his equal in time.”

“Is Jackson’s army just sitting still?” asked Dick.

“So far as scouts can gather, an’ I’ve been one of them,” replied Sergeant Whitley, “it seems to be just campin’. But I wish I knew which way it was goin’ to jump. I don’t trust Jackson when he seems to be nappin’.”

But the good sergeant’s doubts were to remain for two days at least. The two armies sat still, only two miles apart, and sentinels, as was common throughout the great war, became friendly with one another. Often they met in the woods and exchanged news and abundant criticism of generals. At last there was a truce to bury the dead who still lay upon the sanguinary field of Cedar Run.

Dick was in charge of one of these burial parties, and toward the close of the day he saw a familiar figure, also in command of a burial party, although it was in a gray uniform. His heart began to thump, and he uttered a cry of joy. The unexpected, but not the unnatural, had happened.

“Oh, Harry! Harry!” he shouted.

The strong young figure in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Southern army turned in surprise at the sound of a familiar voice, and stood, staring.

“Dick! Dick Mason!” he cried. Then the two sprang forward and grasped the hands of each other. There was no display of emotion—they were of the stern American stock, taught not to show its feelings—but their eyes showed their gladness.

“Harry,” said Dick, “I knew that you had been with Jackson, but I had no way of knowing until a moment ago that you were yet alive.”

“Nor I you, Dick. I thought you were in the west.”

“I was, but after Shiloh, some of us came east to help. It seemed after the Seven Days that we were needed more here than in the west.”

“You never said truer words, Dick. They’ll need you and many more thousands like you. Why, Dick, we’re not led here by a man, we’re led by a thunderbolt. I’m on his staff, I see him every day. He talks to me, and I talk to him. I tell you, Dick, it’s a wonderful thing to serve such a genius. You can’t beat him! His kind appears only a few times in the ages. He always knows what’s to be done and he does it. Even if your generals knew what ought to be done, most likely they’d do something else.”

Harry’s face glowed with enthusiasm as he spoke of his hero, and Dick, looking at him, shook his head sadly.

“I’m afraid that what you say is true for the present at least, Harry,” he said. “You beat us now here in the east, but don’t forget that we’re winning in the west. And don’t forget that here in the east even, you can never wear us out. We’ll be coming, always coming.”

“All right, old Sober Sides, we won’t quarrel about it. We’ll let time settle it. Here come some friends of mine whom I want you to know. Curious that you should meet them at such a time.”

Two other young lieutenants in gray uniforms at the head of burial parties came near in the course of their work, and Harry called to them.

“Tom! Arthur! A moment, please! This is my cousin, Dick Mason, a Yankee, though I think he’s honest in his folly. Dick, this is Arthur St. Clair, and this is Tom Langdon, both friends of mine from South Carolina.”

They shook hands warmly. There was no animosity between them. Dick liked the looks and manners of Harry’s friends. He could have been their friend, too.

“Harry has talked about you often,” said Happy Tom Langdon. “Says you’re a great scholar, and a good fellow, all right every way, except the crack in your head that makes you a Yankee. I hope you won’t get hurt in this unpleasantness, and when our victorious army comes into Washington we’ll take good care of you and release you soon.”

Dick smiled. He liked this youth who could keep up the spirit of fun among such scenes.

“Don’t you pay any attention to Langdon, Mr. Mason,” said St. Clair. “If he’d only fight as well and fast as he talks there’d be no need for the rest of us.”

“You know you couldn’t win the war without me,” said Langdon.

They talked a little more together, then trumpets blew, the work was done and they must withdraw to their own armies. They had been engaged in a grewsome task, but Dick was glad to the bottom of his heart to have been sent upon it. He had learned that Harry still lived, and he had met him. He did not understand until then how dear his cousin was to him. They were more like brothers than cousins. It was like the affection their great-grandfathers, Henry Ware and Paul Cotter, had felt for each other, although those famous heroes of the border had always fought side by side, while their descendants were compelled to face each other across a gulf.

They shook hands and withdrew slowly. At the edge of the field, Dick turned to wave another farewell, and he found that Harry, actuated by the same motive at the same time, had also turned to make a like gesture. Each waved twice, instead of once, and then they disappeared among the woods. Dick returned to Colonel Winchester.

“While we were under the flag of truce I met my cousin, Harry Kenton,” he said.

“One of the lucky fortunes of war.”

“Yes, sir, I was very glad to see him. I did not know how glad I was until I came away. He says that we can never beat Jackson, that nothing but death can ever stop him.”

“Youth often deceives itself, nor is age any exception. Never lose hope, Dick.”

“I don’t mean to do so, sir.”

The next morning, when Dick was with one of the outposts, a man of powerful build, wonderfully quick and alert in his movements, appeared. His coming was so quick and silent that he seemed to rise from the earth, and Dick was startled. The man’s face was uncommon. His features were of great strength, the eyes being singularly vivid and penetrating. He was in civilian’s dress, but he promptly showed a pass from General Pope, and Dick volunteered to take him to headquarters, where he said he wished to go.

Dick became conscious as they walked along that the man was examining him minutely with those searching eyes of his which seemed to look one through and through.

“You are Lieutenant Richard Mason,” said the stranger presently, “and you have a cousin, Harry Kenton, also a lieutenant, but in the army of Stonewall Jackson.”

Dick stared at him in amazement.

“Everything you say is true,” he said, “but how did you know it?”

“It’s my business to know. Knowledge is my sole pursuit in this great war, and a most engrossing and dangerous task I find it. Yet, I would not leave it. My name is Shepard, and I am a spy. You needn’t shrink. I’m not ashamed of my occupation. Why should I be? I don’t kill. I don’t commit any violence. I’m a guide and educator. I and my kind are the eyes of an army. We show the generals where the enemy is, and we tell them his plans. An able and daring spy is worth more than many a general. Besides, he takes the risk of execution, and he can win no glory, for he must always remain obscure, if not wholly unknown. Which, then, makes the greater sacrifice for his country, the spy or the general?”

“You give me a new point of view. I had not thought before how spies risked so much for so little reward.”

Shepard smiled. He saw that in spite of his logic Dick yet retained that slight feeling of aversion. The boy left him, when they arrived at headquarters, but the news that Shepard brought was soon known to the whole army.

Jackson had left his camp. He was gone again, disappeared into the ether. “Retreated” was the word that Pope at once seized upon, and he sent forth happy bulletins. Shepard and other scouts and spies reported a day or two later that Jackson’s army was on the Rapidan, one of the numerous Virginia rivers. Then Dick accompanied Colonel Winchester, who was sent by rail to Washington with dispatches.

He did not find in the capital the optimism that reigned in the mind of Pope. McClellan was withdrawing his army from Virginia, but the eyes of the nation were turned toward Pope. Many who had taken deep thought of the times and of men, were more alarmed about Pope than he was about himself. They did not like those jubilant dispatches from “Headquarters in the Saddle.” There was ominous news that Lee himself was marching north, and that he and Jackson would soon be together. Anxious eyes scanned the hills about Washington. The enemy had been very near once before, and he might soon be near again.

Dick had an hour of leisure, and he wandered into an old hotel, at which many great men had lived. They would point to Henry Clay’s famous chair in the lobby, and the whole place was thick with memories of Webster, Calhoun and others who had seemed almost demigods to their own generation.

But a different crowd was there now. They were mostly paunchy men who talked of contracts and profits. One, to whom the others paid deference, was fat, heavy and of middle age, with a fat, heavy face and pouches under his eyes. His small eyes were set close together, but they sparkled with shrewdness and cunning.

The big man presently noticed the lad who was sitting quietly in one of the chairs against the wall. Dick’s was an alien presence there, and doubtless this fact had attracted his attention.

“Good day to you,” said the stranger in a bluff, deep voice. “I take it from your uniform, your tan and your thinness that you’ve come from active service.”

“In both the west and the east,” replied Dick politely. “I was at Shiloh, but soon afterward I was transferred with my regiment to the east.”

“Ah, then, of course, you know what is going on in Virginia?”

“No more than the general public does. I was at Cedar Run, which both we and the rebels claim as a victory.”

The man instantly showed a great increase of interest.

“Were you?” he said. “My own information says that Banks and Pope were surprised by Jackson and that the rebel general has merely drawn off to make a bigger jump. Did you get that impression?”

“Will you tell me why you ask me these questions?” said Dick in the same polite tone.

“Because I’ve a big stake in the results out there. My name is John Watson, and I’m supplying vast quantities of shoes and clothing to our troops.”

Dick turned up the sole of one of his shoes and picked thoughtfully at a hole half way through the sole. Little pieces of paper came out.

“I bought these, Mr. Watson, from a sutler in General Pope’s army,” he said. “I wonder if they came from you?”

A deeper tint flushed the contractor’s cheeks, but in a moment he threw off anger.

“A good joke,” he said jovially. “I see that you’re ready of wit, despite your youth. No, those are not my shoes. I know dishonest men are making great sums out of supplies that are defective or short. A great war gives such people many opportunities, but I scorn them. I’ll not deny that I seek a fair profit, but my chief object is to serve my country. Do you ever reflect, my young friend, that the men who clothe and feed an army have almost as much to do with winning the victory as the men who fight?”

“I’ve thought of it,” said Dick, wondering what the contractor had in mind.

“What regiment do you belong to, if I may ask? My motive in asking these questions is wholly good.”