"I think things have changed a lot in the last three days," said Harry.
"Then the Yankees didn't know much about us. They charged almost
blindfolded into our ambush. Now we don't know much about them.
We don't know by any means where the attack is coming. It is they who
are keeping us guessing."
"But there are only two fords and two bridges across Bull Run," said
Langdon, "and they have got to choose one out of the lot."
"Which means that we've got to accumulate our forces at some one of four
places, one guess out of four."
Harry did not speak at all in a tone of discouragement, but his
intelligent mind saw that the Northern leaders had profited by their
mistakes and that the Southern general did not really know where the
great impact would come. The Northern scouts and skirmishers swarmed on
the other side of Bull Run, and even in the darkness this cloud of wasps
was so dense that Beauregard's own scouts could not get beyond them and
tell what the greater mass behind was doing. Harry was summoned at
midnight by Colonel Talbot. Behind a clump of trees some distance back
of the bridge, Beauregard, Johnston, Evans, who was in direct command at
the ford, Early, and several other important officers were in anxious
consultation. Colonel Talbot told Harry that he would be wanted
presently as a messenger, and he stood on one side while the others
talked. It was then that he first heard Jubal Early swear with a
richness, a spontaneity and an unction that raised it almost to the
dignity of a rite.
Harry gathered that they could not agree as to the point at which the
Northern attack would be delivered, but the balance of opinion inclined
to the bridge, before which the command of Evans was encamped. Hence he
was sent farther down the stream, with a message for a North Carolina
regiment to move up and join Evans.
The regiment lay about a mile away, but Harry walked almost the whole
distance among sleeping men. They lay on the grass by thousands,
and exhausted by the movement and marching of recent days they slept
heavily. In the moonlight they looked as if they were dead. It was so
quiet now that some night birds in the trees uttered strange moaning
cries. But far across Bull Run lights still moved and Harry had no
doubt that the great battle, delayed so long, was really coming in the
morning.
The North Carolina regiment rose sleepily and marched with him to the
bridge, where it was incorporated into the force of Evans. Beauregard,
Johnston and Early had gone to other points, and Harry knew that
they were still anxious and of divided opinions. Colonel Talbot and
Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire, to whom he had to report, and who moved
their own regiment down near Evans, did not conceal the fact from him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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