A glance at a map of the Valley will show the reader clearly that in assailing Milroy and Schenck, Jackson in fact invited battle with all of Fremont's and Banks's forces--in other words, that with 9,000 men he risked and boldly challenged a conflict with no less than 34,000. But so careful and so masterly had his dispositions been that the chance of such a concentration against him amounted to scarcely more than zero. For Ewell with his 8,000 men was at Elk Run, and Ewell was an enterprising officer, greatly given to fighting upon the smallest provocation. Had Banks detached any considerable part of his force from the Harrisonburg position to aid Milroy and Schenck, Ewell would very certainly have moved to the conquest of Harrisonburg, and the success of such a movement would have meant of necessity the quick reconquering of the whole valley by the Confederates. Reckoning upon this Jackson joined Johnson and together they fell upon the Federals at McDowell, where a small but severe battle ensued on the eighth of May, in which after four hours of determined fighting the Federals were driven from the field and compelled, during the succeeding night, to withdraw from their position at McDowell, and fall back, the Confederates closely pursuing them. The retreat lasted for several days and was marked by some picturesque incidents. Schenck, though beaten in battle and driven into retreat, was still formidable and the fighting quality of his men had not been impaired. Jackson feared that the force retreating before him might be reinforced from Banks's strong army at Harrisonburg. In that case it would turn again and rend him. But the reinforcements, if sent at all, must be sent through certain narrow and heavily-wooded defiles, and to check their advance Jackson sent out detachments to obstruct those passageways by felling timber across them. He also asked the aid of the farmers in such work and right willingly they responded. In the meanwhile Schenck protected his retreat from too close a pursuit by setting fire to the dense woods and literally stifling his enemy with smoke. Jackson's men found it sometimes impossible to go forward without actual suffocation and so Schenck gained time in which to effect his retreat. The destruction of superb timber, the growth of fifty or a hundred years, which the operations of both the contestants involved, was only a small part of that waste which makes war the most costly of all human arbitraments. Human lives are of course more precious in many ways than forest growths, but human life is easily and quickly reproduced, while a forest destroyed upon steep mountain sides is so much of God's good gift to man forever taken away.