“Of course we can,” said Pennington, who was always of a most buoyant temperament.

Sergeant Whitley went to the shutterless window, and looked out at the forest and the long array of tents.

“The rain is about over,” he said.  “It was just a passin’ shower.  But it looks as if it had already added a fresh shade of green to the leaves and grass.  Cur’us how quick a rain can do it in spring, when everything is just waitin’ a chance to grow, and bust into bloom.  I’ve rid on the plains when everything was brown an’ looked dead.  ‘Long come a big rain an’ the next day everything was green as far as the eye could reach an’ you’d see little flowers bloomin’ down under the shelter of the grass.”

“I didn’t know you had a poetical streak in you, sergeant,” said Dick, who marked his abrupt change from the discussion of the war to a far different topic.

“I think some of it is in every man,” replied Sergeant Whitley gravely.  “I remember once that when we had finished a long chase after some Northern Cheyennes through mighty rough and dry country we came to a little valley, a kind of a pocket in the hills, fed by a fine creek, runnin’ out of the mountains on one side, into the mountains on the other.  The pocket was mebbe two miles long an’ mebbe a mile across, an’ it was chock full of green trees an’ green grass, an’ wild flowers.  We enjoyed its comforts, but do you think that was all?  Every man among us, an’ there was at least a dozen who couldn’t read, admired its beauties, an’ begun to talk softer an’ more gentle than they did when they was out on the dry plains.  An’ you feel them things more in war than you do at any other time.”

“I suppose you do,” said Dick.  “The spring is coming out now in Kentucky where I live, and I’d like to see the new grass rippling before the wind, and the young leaves on the trees rustling softly together.”

“Stop sentimentalizing,” said Warner.  “If you don’t it won’t be a minute before Pennington will begin to talk about his Nebraska plains, and how he’d like to see the buffalo herds ten million strong, rocking the earth as they go galloping by.”

Pennington smiled.

“I won’t see the buffalo herds,” he said, “but look at the wild fowl going north.”

They left the window as the rain had ceased, and went outside.  All this region was still primitive and thinly settled, and now they saw flocks of wild ducks and wild geese winging northward.  The next day the heavens themselves were darkened by an immense flight of wild pigeons.  The country cut up by so many rivers, creeks and brooks swarmed with wild fowl, and more than once the soldiers roused up deer from the thickets.

The second day after the talk of the four in the little church Dick, who was now regarded as a most efficient and trusty young staff officer, was sent with a dispatch to General Buell requesting him to press forward with as much speed as he could to the junction with General Grant.  Several other aides were sent by different routes, in order to make sure that at least one would arrive, but Dick, through his former ride with Colonel Winchester to Nashville, had the most knowledge of the country, and hence was likely to reach Buell first.