Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/569

Rh

hard pinch comes I am exposed just as much as any of them."

"But are you never afraid?" I asked.

"If I was I should not be ashamed of it," he said. "If I should follow my natural impulse, I should run away—always, at the beginning of the danger: the men who say they are never afraid in a battle do not tell the truth."

I talked a great deal with Sheridan and his officers, while at Cedar Creek, on the condition of the valley, and what should be done to hold it. The active campaign seemed to be over in that region for the year. The enemy was so decidedly beaten and scattered, and driven so far to the south, that he could scarcely be expected to collect his forces for another immediate attempt. Besides, the devastation of the valley, extending, as it did, for a distance of about 100 miles, rendered it almost impossible that either the Confederates or our own forces should make a new campaign in that territory. It looked to me as if, when Sheridan had completed the same process down the valley to the vicinity of the Potomac, and when the stores of forage which were yet to be found were all destroyed or removed, the difficulty of any new offensive operations on either side would be greatly increased.

The key to the Shenandoah Valley was, in Sheridan's judgment, the line of the Opequan Creek, which was rather a deep canon than an ordinary water-course. Sheridan's idea I understood to be to fall back to the proper defensive point upon that creek, and there to construct fortifications which would effectually cover the approach to the Potomac.