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Cheer after cheer greeted each troop, as with silken guidons fluttering above them they marched from the ship, and finally a perfect roar of welcome announced the appearance of their Colonel. "There's Teddy!" cried Rollo, with a feeble attempt at waving his hat. "Oh, how good it is to see him again!" "But my boy!
"Magnifique, mais c'est vraiment magnifique," muttered my brother to himself, as the superb life-guards swept along with their polished steel helmets and breast-plates glittering like silver in the sunshine, and their plumes and guidons flashing and twinkling in the breeze. "Dieu de dieu! qu'ils sont geants les cavaliers, qu'ils sont colossaux les chevaux.
At last, when far beyond the last claimant, we turned and looked back upon a score of these glittering guidons of progress, banners of the army of settlement, I realized that I was a vedette in the van of civilization, and when I turned to the west where nothing was to be seen save the mysterious plain and a long low line of still more mysterious hills, I thrilled with joy at all I had won.
It was nearly train-time, and three or four horsemen could be seen at various distances, while, far out towards the fort, long skirmish-lines and fluttering guidons were sweeping over the slopes in mimic war-array. "I have missed all this," she said, pointing to the scene; "and I do love it so that it seems hard to go just as all the real soldier life is beginning."
The red, white, and blue of the standards, the brass of the eagle guidons; the gray, tossed manes of the chargers; the fierce, swarthy faces of the soldiery; the scarlet of the Spahis' cloaks, and the snowy folds of the Demi-Cavalry turbans; the shine of the sloped lances, and the glisten of the carbine barrels, fused together in one sea of blended color, flashed into a million prismatic hues against the somber shadow of the sunburned plains and the clear blue of the skies.
"It is some feint to cover the general movement." "I counted the flags, guidons, regimental insignia such force of cavalry, artillery, infantry," giving the numbers. "I saw and recognized General Sherman," said the scout briefly. His report was not, even then, credited, but, as a precaution, a brigade of cavalry, with his battalion in the van, was sent out to beat up the enemy.
There was, of course, no cheering; a handkerchief fluttered from a gallery here and there, but Sandy River was loyal only in spots, and the cavalry pressed past groups of silent people, encountering the averted heads or scornful eyes of young girls and the cold hatred in the faces of gray-haired gentlewomen, who turned their backs as the ragged guidons bobbed past and the village street rang with the clink-clank of scabbards and rattle of Spencer carbines.
"By Saint James!" said he, "if ye fall this day ye fall by no mean hands, for the flower of the knighthood of Castile ride under the banner of Don Tello, with the chivalry of Asturias, Toledo, Leon, Cordova, Galicia, and Seville. I see the guidons of Albornez, Cacorla, Rodriguez, Tavora, with the two great orders, and the knights of France and of Aragon.
"Aren't they just like pawns in the game!" remarked Captain Haskell of the Staff. Penhallow, intent, hardly heard them, but said presently, "There are guidons moving fast to their right." "Oh, artillery taking position. We shall hear from them," returned Gibbon. "Hancock thinks that being beaten on both flanks, Lee will attack our centre, and this is the lowest point."
Banners and guidons, clusters of white tents, and dark swarms of men marked where the foot of the invading stranger trod their soil. The Virginians loved the great valley. Enclosed between the blue mountains it was the richest and most beautiful part of all their state. It hurt them terribly to see the overwhelming forces of the North occupying its towns and villages and encamped in its fields.
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