"If that cloud of dust encloses gray uniforms we're lost!" shouted Warner
in Dick's ear.

"But it mustn't enclose 'em," Dick shouted back. "Fate wouldn't play us
such an awful trick! We can't lose, after having done and suffered so
much!"

Fate would not say which. They could not send men to see, but as they
fought they watched the cloud coming nearer and nearer, and Dick, whose
lips had been moving for some time, realized suddenly that he was
praying. "O God, save us! save us!" he was saying over and over.
"Send the help to us who need it so sorely. Make us strong, O God,
to meet our enemies!"

He and all his comrades wore masks of dust and burned gunpowder, often
stained with scarlet. Their clothing was torn by bullets and reddened
by dripping wounds. When they shouted to one another their voices came
strained and husky from painful throats. Half the time they were blinded
by the smoke and blaze of the firing. The crash did not seem so loud to
them now, because they were partly deafened for the time by a cannonade
of such violence and length.

Dick looked back once more at the great cloud of dust which was now
much nearer, but there was nothing yet to indicate what it bore within,
the bayonets of the North or those of the South. His anxiety became
almost intolerable.

Thomas himself stood at that moment entirely alone in a clump of trees on
the elevation called Horseshoe Ridge, watching the battle, seeing the