McClellan nodded, but otherwise seemed to take no notice of Thorne’s words.

“For God’s sake, sir,” Thorne said, “attack now! Lee can’t have twenty thousand men under arms.”

“Nonsense.” McClellan was goaded into the argument. “Believe that, Colonel, and you’ll believe anything.” He laughed and his aides sniggered dutifully.

“Sir.” Thorne deliberately made his voice respectful. “We know when Harper’s Ferry surrendered, sir, and we know that Jackson’s troops cannot have reached Sharpsburg yet. Not troops can cover that distance that fast, but if we wait till this evening, sir, they’ll be here. Then Lee will have forty or fifty thousand men waiting for us.”

“General Lee,” McClellan said icily, “has eighty thousand men already. Eighty thousand!” His voice rose in indignation. “And if this benighted government saw fit to provide me with the men necessary to prosecute a successful war I would already have attacked, but I cannot attack until I know, with utter certainty, the enemy’s dispositions!”

“The enemy’s disposition, sir, is desperate!” Thorne insisted. “They’re tired, they’re hungry, they’re outnumbered, and in three hours, sir, you can have a victory as complete as any in history.”

McClellan shook his head in anger, then glanced at Allen Pinkerton, who slouched low in his flower-printed armchair. He wore an ill-fitting jacket and had a hard, round hat on his blunt head. “Colonel Thorne believes we outnumber the enemy, Major Pinkerton,” McClellan gave the chief of his secret service his honorary rank, “is that your determination?”

“Wish it was, chief!” Pinkerton took a stubby pipe out of his mouth, then went on in his broad Scottish accent and with a tone of utter confidence. “There are many more of them than of us, that I’ll wager. We had a laddie ride the creek bank yesterday, what was his name? Cluster! That’s the fellow. Hordes of them, he says, just hordes! A good lad, young Custer.”

“You see, Thorne?” McClellan asked, vindicated.

Thorne pointed west and southward to where a smear of hazy whiteness was smudged across the midday sky. “Sir,” he appealed. “You see that white cloud? It’s dust, sir, dust, and it marks where Jackson’s leading men are hurrying to reinforce Lee, but they’re ten miles off yet, sir, and so I beg you, sir, I beg you, just go now! Attack!”

“War is always a simple matter to amateurs,” McClellan said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Lee would not be standing against us with twenty thousand men, Colonel, though I’ve no doubt he’d like us to think he has so few. It’s called setting a trap, Colonel Thorne, but I’m too old a dog to fall for that one.” McClellan’s staff officers laughed at this evident shaft of wit. The General smiled. “You heard Major Pinkerton’s evaluation, Colonel,” he said, “do you doubt him?”

Thorne’s opinion of Pinkerton was unpronounceable, but he made one more effort to hammer sense into his opponents. “This man who rode the lines yesterday,” he demanded of Pinkerton. “Did he cross the river?”