‘If the bridge at Port Republic can be carried,’ agreed the brigadier cautiously.
‘If!’ repeated Shields with some irritation. ‘There is no _if_ about it, sir. It must be carried. It cannot fail to be. The whole attention of the enemy will be by this time centred on their left to repulse Frémont’s demonstration at Cross Keys. By ten o’clock my headquarters will be at Port Republic.’
The brigadier did not answer, but he thought his own thoughts. He was not above learning a lesson, even from an enemy, and his experience of Stonewall Jackson as a leader and strategist led him to believe that this confident, even boastful tone was not justified in the face of recent happenings in the valley. However, he was silent in the presence of his commanding officer.
‘Jackson will not expect an attack on the bridge,’ went on Shields, enclosing a slice of ham between two biscuits. ‘He will know nothing of the movement until he finds himself driven out of Port Republic, and then it will be too late.—By the way,’ he broke off, ‘that reconnaissance yesterday was shamefully muddled.’
‘It was,’ agreed the brigadier; ‘and if you will excuse my saying so, I thought it rather an error of judgment to entrust it to Colonel Spriggs. You remember his appearance at Bull Run.’
‘His disappearance, you mean,’ corrected General Shields with a grim smile. ‘Well, perhaps it was; but I couldn’t well help myself.’
‘I am at a loss to know why we are bothered with such a fellow,’ put in the third officer, a staff colonel.
‘Yes, heartily confound all these political generals and colonels,’ said Shields. ‘If those meddling carpet warriors would only mind their own business, and leave us to manage ours in the field, instead of incessantly pulling the ropes, we should have another story to tell. This fellow Spriggs and others like him are pitched into colonelcies and even higher commands by their friends the politicians, while the real soldiers go begging for a place, or, rather than do nothing, serve their country unostentatiously in the ranks.’
‘He has good stuff in his regiment, too,’ said the brigadier. ‘The “Trailing Terrors,” or whatever ridiculous name he calls them by, are stark fighters when they get a chance, or are properly led.’