Dick’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm as he spoke of the cousin and comrade of his childhood.
“The chances of war bring about strange situations, or at least I have heard so,” said Warner. “Now, Dick, if you were to meet your cousin face to face on the battlefield with a loaded gun in your hand what would you do?”
“I’d raise that gun, take deliberate aim at a square foot of air about thirty feet over his head and pull the trigger.”
“But your duty to your country tells you to do otherwise. Before you is a foe trying to destroy the Union. You have come out armed to save that Union, consequently you must fire straight at him and not at the air, in order to reduce the number of our enemies.”
“One enemy where there are so many would not count for anything in the total. Your arithmetic will show you that Harry’s percentage in the Southern army is so small that it reaches the vanishing point. If I can borrow from you, George, x equals Harry’s percentage, which is nothing, y equals the value of my hypothetical opportunity, which is nothing, then x plus y equals nothing, which represents the whole affair, which is nothing, that is, worth nothing to the Union. Hence I have no more obligation to shoot Harry if I meet him than he has to shoot me.”
“Well spoken, Dick,” said Sergeant Whitley. “Some people, I reckon, can take duty too hard. If you have one duty an’ another an’ bigger one comes along right to the same place you ought to ‘tend to the bigger one. I’d never shoot anybody that was a heap to me just because he was one of three or four hundred thousand who was on the other side. I’ve never thought much of that old Roman father—I forget his name—who had his son executed just because he wasn’t doin’ exactly right. There was never a rule that oughtn’t to have exceptions under extraordinary circumstances.”
“If you can establish the principle of exceptions,” replied the young Vermonter very gravely, “I will allow Dick to shoot in the air when he meets his cousin in the height of battle, but it is a difficult task to establish it, and if it fails Dick, according to all rules of logic and duty, must shoot straight at his cousin’s heart.”
The other two looked at Warner and saw his left eyelid droop slightly. A faint twinkle appeared in either eye and then they laughed.
“I reckon that Dick shoots high in the air,” said the sergeant.
Dick, after a pleasant hour with his friends, went back to Colonel Newcomb’s quarters, where he spent the entire evening writing despatches at dictation. He was hopeful that all this writing portended something, but more days passed, and despite the impatience of both army and public, there was no movement. Stories of confused and uncertain fighting still came out of the west, but between Washington and Bull Run there was perfect peace.
The summer passed. Autumn came and deepened. The air was crisp and sparkling. The leaves, turned into glowing reds and yellows and browns, began to fall from the trees. The advancing autumn contained the promise of winter soon to come. The leaves fell faster and sharp winds blew, bringing with them chill rains. Little Mac, or the Young Napoleon, as many of his friends loved to call him, continued his preparations, and despite all the urgings of President and Congress, would not move. His fatal defect now showed in all its destructiveness. To him the enemy always appeared threefold his natural size.
Reliable scouts brought back the news that the Southern troops at Manassas, a full two months after their victory there, numbered only forty thousand. The Northern commander issued statements that the enemy was before him with one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. He demanded that his own forces should be raised to nearly a quarter of a million men and nearly five hundred cannon before he could move.
The veteran, Scott, full of triumphs and honors, but feeling himself out of place in his old age, went into retirement. McClellan, now in sole command, still lingered and delayed, while the South, making good use of precious months, gathered all her forces to meet him or whomsoever came against her.
Youth chafed most against the long waiting. It seemed to Dick and his mathematical Vermont friend that time was fairly wasting away under their feet, and the wise sergeant agreed with them.
The weather had grown so cold now that they built fires for warmth as well as cooking, and the two youths sat with Sergeant Whitley one cold evening in late October before a big blaze. Both were tanned deeply by wind, sun and rain, and they had grown uncommonly hardy, but the wind that night came out of the northwest, and it had such a sharp edge to it that they were glad to draw their blankets over their backs and shoulders.
Dick was re-reading a letter from his mother, a widow who lived on the outskirts of Pendleton. It had come that morning, and it was the only one that had reached him since his departure from Kentucky. But she had received another that he had written to her directly after the Battle of Bull Run.
She wrote of her gratitude because Providence had watched over him in that dreadful conflict, all the more dreadful because it was friend against friend, brother against brother. The state, she said, was all in confusion. Everybody suspected everybody else. The Southerners were full of victory, the Northerners were hopeful of victory yet to come. Colonel Kenton was with the Southern force under General Buckner, gathered at Bowling Green in that state, but his son, her nephew Harry, was still in the east with Beauregard. She had heard that the troops of the west and northwest were coming down the Ohio and Mississippi in great numbers, and people expected hard fighting to occur very soon in western and southern Kentucky. It was all very dreadful, and a madness seemed to have come over the land, but she hoped that Providence would continue to watch over her dear son.
Warner and the sergeant knew that the letter was from Dick’s mother, but they had too much delicacy to ask him questions. The boy folded the sheets carefully and returned them to their place in the inside pocket of his coat. Then he looked for a while thoughtfully into the blaze and the great bed of coals that had formed beneath. As far as one could see to right and left like fires burned, but the night remained dark with promise of rain, and the chill wind out of the northwest increased in vigor. The words just read for the fifth time had sunk deep in his mind, and he was feeling the call of the west.
“My mother writes,” he said to his comrades, “that the Confederate general, Buckner, whom I know, is gathering a large force around Bowling Green in the southern part of our state, and that fighting is sure to occur soon between that town and the Mississippi. An officer named Grant has come down from Illinois, and he is said to be pushing the Union troops forward with a lot of vigor. Sergeant, you are up on army affairs. Do you know this man Grant?”
Sergeant Whitley shook his head.
“Never heard of him,” he replied. “Like as not he’s one of the officers who resigned from the army after the Mexican War. There was so little to do then, and so little chance of promotion, that a lot of them quit to go into business. I suppose they’ll all be coming back now.”
“I want to go out there,” said Dick. “It’s my country, and the westerners at least are acting. But look at our army here! Bull Run was fought the middle of summer. Now it’s nearly winter, and nothing has been done. We don’t get out of sight of Washington. If I can get myself sent west I’m going.”
“And I’m going with you,” said Warner.
“Me, too,” said the sergeant.
“I know that Colonel Newcomb’s eyes are turning in that direction,” continued Dick. “He’s a war-horse, he is, and he’d like to get into the thick of it.”
“You’re his favorite aide,” said the calculating young Vermonter. “Can’t you sow those western seeds in his mind and keep on sowing them? The fact that you are from this western battle ground will give more weight to what you say. You