“You’d better keep it to yourself,” he said.  “It’s too vague and mysterious to make a peg upon which to hang anything.  Since we’ve cleared the bush of enemies we’ll go eat the fish you and your friends have caught.”

Sergeant Whitley cooked them, and, as Dick and a score of others sat around the fire and ate fish for supper, they were so exuberant and chaffed so much that he forgot for the time all about Slade.

CHAPTER VII

SHERIDAN’S ATTACK

More days passed and the army of Sheridan lay waiting at the head of the valley, apparently without any aim in view.  But Dick knew that if Little Phil delayed it was with good cause.  As Colonel Winchester was high in the general’s confidence Dick saw the commander every day.  He soon learned that he was of an intensely energetic and active nature, and that he must put a powerful rein upon himself to hold back, when he had such a fine army to lead.

Many of the younger officers expressed impatience and Dick saw by the newspapers that the North too was chafing at the delay.  Newspapers from the great cities, New York, Philadelphia and Boston, reached their camp and they always read them eagerly.  Criticisms were leveled at Sheridan, and from the appearance of things they had warrant, but Dick had faith in their leader.  Yet another period of depression had come in the North.  The loss of life in Grant’s campaign through the Wilderness had been tremendous, and now he seemed to be held indefinitely by Lee in the trenches before Petersburg.  The Confederacy, after so many great battles, and such a prodigious roll of killed and wounded, was still a nut uncracked, and Sheridan, who was expected to go up the valley and turn the Southern flank, was resting quietly in his camp.

Such was the face of matters, but Dick knew that, beneath, great plans were in the making and that the armies would soon stir.  The more he saw of Sheridan the more he was impressed by him.  He might prove to be the Stonewall Jackson of the North.  Young, eager, brave, he never fell into the fault some of the other Union commanders had of overestimating the enemy.  He always had a cheery word for his young officers, and when he was not poring over the maps with his lieutenant of engineers, Meigs, he was inspecting his troops, and seeing that their equipment and discipline were carried to the highest pitch.  He was the very essence of activity and the army, although not yet moving, felt at all times the tonic of his presence.

Cavalry detachments were sent out on a wider circle.  Slade and his men had no opportunity to come so close again, but Shepard informed Dick that he was in the mountains hemming in the valley on the west, and that the statement of his having formed a junction with a band under Skelly from the Alleghanies was true.  He had seen the big man and the little man together and they had several hundred followers.