These farmer boys, as they heard the
unceasing menace of the big guns, would double the numbers of their foe,
and attribute to him an unrelaxing energy.
Thus another gray day of winter wore away, and the two forces drew
a little nearer to each other. Far away the rival Presidents at
Washington and Richmond were wondering what was happening to their
armies in the dark wilderness of Western Tennessee.
The night was more quiet than the one that had just gone before.
The booming of the cannon as regular as the tolling of funeral bells had
ceased with the darkness, but in its place the fierce winter wind had
begun to blow again. Dick, relaxed and weary after his day's work,
hovered over one of the fires and was grateful for the warmth. He
had trodden miles through slush and snow and frozen earth, and he was
plastered to the waist with frozen mud, which now began to soften and
fall off before the coals.
Warner, who had been on active duty, too, also sank to rest with a sigh
of relief.
"It's battle tomorrow, Dick," he said, "and I don't care. As it didn't
come off today the chances are at least eighty per cent that it will
happen the next day. You say that when you were lying in the snow last
night, Dick, you saw your uncle and that he's a colonel in the rebel
army. It's queer."
"You're wrong, George, it isn't queer. We're on opposite sides, serving
at the same place, and it's natural that we should meet some time or
other.
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