Grant read the telegram and sighed with relief. Hancock had held. The fight, according to the report, was over in a matter of minutes and Lee was already withdrawing.
Grant looked over at the map Ely had spread on the table.
It had to be Poolesville. That was the only other way out now. Strike for Edwards Ferry or a crossing in between. But moving the bridges over that road would be a nightmare.
"Ely."
"Here, sir."
"Orders to General Sheridan. General advance along the line the hour before the dawn. I suspect General Longstreet will abandon the line here during the night. Orders to Hancock to move the Edwards Ferry garrison up to Poolesville to block that road. Also to bring down the garrisons at Point of Rocks, they are no longer needed there. Sykes to now turn due south."
"Yes, sir."
Grant sat back down in the chair he had occupied most of the day, looking out across the Frederick plains. The air was heavy with the cloying stench of bodies rotting. It would be good to leave this terrible place.
Behind him, an endless train of supplies was coming down the mountain pass, priority now given to medical supplies. The first of the wounded who could be moved were being sent back to Hagerstown and from there to hospitals in Harrisburg.
To the east the sky was beginning to glow and he knew what that meant. He lit a cigar and watched the glow begin to rise, punctuated by distant explosions.
On the Baltimore and Ohio All over, goodbye, now blow it to hell!" Pete shouted. Men were running down the tracks, throwing torches into boxcars, tossing in cans of coal oil, loose straw, anything to get them burning. Fires had been lit in several train boilers, steam was up, and the locomotives were now rolling down the tracks, crashing into burning cars, or tumbling off where rails had been severed.
One full ammunition train, a half mile away, went up with a tremendous roar, fireball rising hundreds of feet into the air. He watched it with grim satisfaction. Enough ammunition to keep an entire corps in action for a day, but he would be damned if the Yankees would have it now. And as far as the wreckage to the Baltimore and Ohio- the hell with them. If we have lost this war, it was their blame as much as anyone's. He was in no mood to be forgiving now.
He caught the eye of a colonel, leading a detail of men and an ambulance.
"Ammunition's gone," Pete said. The colonel shook his head.
"Damn sir, I'm down to maybe twenty rounds a man." "Just get your men formed up. We're marching at midnight." 'To where, sir?" Pete smiled sadly.
'To Virginia if we can, but to hell if we must."