"The rest of you," he called to the three hundred men who had watched
their fellows move away, "go to the Valley. You can loaf until we
scare up something to eat for you and until the horses rest a bit.
I'll send right away to Crawfordsville--"
"Mr. Conniston," interrupted Jimmie Kent, "in those two wagons back
there is a lot of grub. And tools," he added. "Mr. Crawford had me
pick them up in Littleton."
CHAPTER XXI
Never had Conniston known a busier forenoon, never a happier. The
fatigue, the despondency, the utter hopelessness of the early morning
was swept away. He felt a new life course through his veins, there
came a fresh elasticity to his stride, his voice rang with confidence.
For he was as a leader of a lost hope within the walls of a
beleaguered city to whom, when all hope was gone, reinforcements had
come.
He felt that now nothing could tire him in body or in mind, nothing
drive from his heart his glorious conviction of success to come.
And yet he had no faintest idea how busy the day was to be. When two
hours had passed and the wagons carrying three hundred men had started
for the Valley, Conniston had the two hundred and fifty men at Deep
Creek working with a swiftness, an effectiveness which would have told
a chance observer that they had been familiar many days with the work.
He was to leave them before noon, to hurry on horseback to overtake
the wagons that he might personally oversee the arrangements to be
made upon their coming into the Valley.
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