"I think it's Jackson himself. We saw heavy columns coming up. They
were pressing forward, too, as if they meant to brush aside whatever got
in their way."

"Then we'll show them!" exclaimed Colonel Winchester. "We've only seven
thousand men here on Cedar Run, but Banks, who is in immediate command,
has been stung deeply by his defeats at the hands of Jackson, and he
means a fight to the last ditch. So does everybody else."

Dick, at that moment, the thrill of the gallop gone, was not so sanguine.
The great weight of Jackson's name hung over him like a sinister menace,
and the Union troops on Cedar Run were but seven thousand. The famous
Confederate leader must have at least three times that number. Were
the Union forces, separated into several armies, to be beaten again in
detail? Pope himself should be present with at least fifty thousand men.

Their horses had been given to an orderly and Dick threw himself upon the
turf to rest a little. All along the creek the Union army, including his
own regiment, was forming in line of battle but his colonel had not yet
called upon him for any duty. Warner and Pennington were also resting
from their long and exciting ride, but the sergeant, who seemed never to
know fatigue, was already at work with his men.

"Listen to those skirmishers," said Dick. "It sounds like the popping of
corn at home on winter evenings, when I was a little boy."

"But a lot more deadly," said Pennington. "I wouldn't like to be a
skirmisher. I don't mind firing into the smoke and the crowd, but I'd
hate to sit down behind a stump or in the grass and pick out the spot on