GRANT MOVES


The Winchester regiment had not suffered greatly. A dozen men who had
fallen were given speedy burial, and all the wounded were taken away on
horseback by their friends. Dick rejoiced greatly at their escape from
Forrest, and the daring and skill of Grierson. He felt anew that he was
in stronger hands in the West than he had been in the East. In the East
things seemed to go wrong nearly always, and the West they seemed to
go right nearly always. It could not be chance continued so long. He
believed in his soul that it was Grant, the heroic Thomas, and the great
fighting powers of the western men, used to all the roughness of life
out-of-doors and on the border.

They turned their course toward the Mississippi and that afternoon they
met a Union scout who told them that Grant, now in the very heart of the
far South, was gathering his forces for a daring attack upon Grand Gulf,
a Confederate fortress on the Mississippi. In the North and at
Washington his venture was regarded with alarm. There was a telegram
to him to stop, but it was sent too late. He had disappeared in the
Southern wilderness.

But Dick understood. He had both knowledge and intuition. Colonel
Winchester on his long and daring scout had learned that the Confederate
forces in the South were scattered and their leaders in doubt. Grant,
taking a daring offensive and hiding his movements, had put them on the
defensive, and there were so many points to defend that they did not know
which to choose. Joe Johnston, just recovered from his wound at Fair
Oaks the year before, and a general of the first rank, was coming,