It was hard to conceal his delight as the light battery of horse artillery galloped into position, guns bouncing and careening behind their caissons, mounted gunners yelling with delight
Stuart snapped off a salute as the unit raced past him, deploying out into an open field to the northeast of the wooded hill flanking the cemetery held by the Army of the Potomac. The range was extreme. The fire would be nothing more than a nuisance, but that was not the main intent.
For the last hour he had "been running the brigade of infantry ragged. They had marched five miles, swinging far north of the town, cutting across fields and down lanes beyond the sight of the Yankees, finally to emerge into view along a stretch of the road leading back to York. After marching in plain sight for several hundred yards, the column dipped out of view, heading to the east then countermarched back around by a concealed lane, only to re-emerge and do the march in sight yet again.
Farther afield small troops of cavalry simply galloped back and forth along roads and farm lanes, dragging brush, kicking up dust while the bulk of his command concentrated east of town skirmished with the Union cavalry that was beginning to come up and probed down around the right flank of the Union lines.
It reminded him of the stories of Magruder down on the Peninsula the year before. A passionate devotee of amateur theater, Magruder had hoodwinked McClellan into believing that two thousand men before Yorktown were actually twenty to thirty thousand.
Though still smarting from the rebuke and the clear threat from Lee, he had to admit that this afternoon he was beginning to enjoy his work.