With his own force, the army already gathered there and a division sent by Grant from his station at Corinth, in Mississippi, he was at the head of a hundred thousand men, and Bragg could not muster more than half as many.
So rapid had been the passage of events that Dick found himself a member of Buell's reorganized army, and ready to march, only thirteen days after the sun set on the bloody field of Antietam, seven hundred miles away.

Bragg, they said, was at Lexington, in the heart of the state, and the Union army was in motion to punish him for his temerity in venturing out of the far south.
Dick felt a great elation as he rode once more over the soil of his native state.

He beheld again many of the officers whom he had seen at Donelson, and also he spoke to General Buell, who although as taciturn and somber as ever, remembered him.
Warner and Pennington were by his side, the colonel rode before, and the Winchester regiment marched behind.

Volunteers from Kentucky and other states had raised it to about three hundred men, and the new lads listened with amazement, while the unbearded veterans told them of Shiloh, the Second Manassas and Antietam.
"Good country, this of yours, Dick," said Warner, as they rode through the rich lands east of Louisville.

"Worth saving.