American Front

Начало книги

The leaves on the trees were beginning to go from green to red, as if swiped by a painter's brush. A lot of the grass near the banks of the Susquehanna, down by New Cumberland, had been painted red, too, red with blood.

A courier came galloping back to Robert E. Lee's headquarters, his face smudged with black-powder smoke but glowing with excitement beneath the minstrel-show markings. "We have 'em, sir!" he cried to Lee as he reined in his blowing horse. "We have 'em! General Jackson says for me to tell you D. H. Hill's division is around McClellan's left and rolling 'em up. 'God has delivered them into our hands,' he says."

"That is very fine," Lee murmured. He peered through the thick smoke, but piercing it was impossible, even with the polished brass spyglass that lay on the folding table in front of him. He had to rely on reports from couriers like this eager young man, but all the reports, from just after the rising of the sun when the battle was joined till now with it sinking in blood- more blood, he thought-behind him, had been what he'd prayed to hear.

Читать дальше →