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Title: Dad
Author: Terhune, Albert Payson
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Dad" ***
[Illustration: “Get into the hall there and shut the door behind you."]
DAD
BY
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
_Author of_
“THE FIGHTER,”
“CALEB CONOVER,” “THE WOMAN,” etc.
FRONTISPIECE BY
W. D. GOLDBECK
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1914 BY
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
TO
“The Sunnybank People”
THIS STORY IS
LOVINGLY DEDICATED
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Interruption 1
II. Disgrace 11
III. Outcast 19
IV. Fourteen Years Later 30
V. Past-Worthy 40
VI. The Chums 48
VII. Left Behind 55
VIII. Council of War 63
IX. A Lesson in Manners 75
X. Sergeant Dadd 84
XI. Devil and Deep Sea 97
XII. The Little Lady 103
XIII. The Alarm 112
XIV. Dad the Paladin 124
XV. Fighting Joe 132
XVI. The Chickahominy 139
XVII. “Battle Jimmie” 148
XVIII. “General” Dadd 155
XIX. The Clash 165
XX. The Prodigal Father 174
XXI. The Little Lady Again 181
XXII. The Afterglow 189
XXIII. The Attack 200
XXIV. A Lost Burden 209
XXV. The Three Comrades 218
XXVI. The Iron Chess-Game 226
XXVII. A Stern Chase 237
XXVIII. Check and Countercheck 248
XXIX. The End of the Fight 260
XXX. Battle Jimmie, Courier 266
XXXI. Jimmie and the Generals 273
XXXII. Love 283
XXXIII. War! 290
XXXIV. The Man at Washington 297
“DAD”
CHAPTER I
THE INTERRUPTION
Across the plaza, under the white sun-glare, marched and countermarched
the crack regiment’s bronzed men in their heavy high caps and the rest
of the odd regimentals of the late Forties.
From walls and roofs hung a myriad of more or less soiled American
flags. On the plaza band stand a group of Mexican musicians were
wrestling with “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.”
This last feature of the celebration was a bit of tragic irony
attributed to no less a humorist than the arch-victor, the hero of the
day--Major-General Winfield Scott. The native musicians were in no wise
loath, on patriotic grounds, to play “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.”
They were professional performers. One tune meant as much, and as
little, to them as another.
They had not the faintest notion that they were playing a national air
of their nation’s conquerors. The pained looks on their simian little
faces and the sad havoc they wrought upon a noble melody were due
solely to the fact that the tune was new to them, unlike anything they
had ever before heard; and that they had had insufficient time to
rehearse it.
But the effect was there.
At the first halting notes, a grin of wondering delight twisted the
faces of the marching regiment. The episode appealed to their Yankee
humor. The grin was reflected on the visages of the crowd of officers
and civilians who filled the dais at the plaza’s northern end.
The onlooking Mexicans--from peon to hidalgo--who fringed the square’s
edges, listened in stark apathy. Most of them were ignorant of the air’s
import. To them it was but a gringo melody; far inferior to “La Paloma.”
The few who recognized it showed no resentment. To their Spanish-Indian
minds it was but natural that the victors should thus crow.
They themselves were beaten; hopelessly beaten. They and their country.
They were glad enough to get off as easily as they seemed like to.
A little vaunting--the playing of their new masters’ national song--was
nothing to what they would have done had the conditions been reversed.
General Scott sat at the center of the dais-front. Portly, his round,
red face framed by white chin-whiskers and thin white hair, he was
decked out in all the blue-and-gold glory of a United States
major-general’s dress uniform.
This was perhaps the crowning day of his career. At all events he was
celebrating it in accord with that idea.
Mexico had fallen. The hectic, iniquitous war was at an end. Vera Cruz
and Popocatepetl had become names of new meaning. The capital city
itself had surrendered.
To-day, the United States, in the person of its armies’ commander, was
to receive formal notification of the fall of the last native
stronghold.
And Scott had turned the war-drama’s last scene into a pageant.
To the strains of “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” the local army’s
best regiment was going through wondrous evolutions before coming to a
halt opposite the dais. The local Mexican authorities, their speeches
ready, stood waiting to step forward to the dais and deliver them.
Among the dais’s civilian occupants, a Congressman and a foreign chargé
d’affaires were to follow with suitable addresses. And General Scott
himself was to reply with a few well-chosen remarks; his military
secretary having done the choosing.
Altogether, it was an affair worthy of full-page accounts in all the
administration newspapers throughout the United States, and for a
paragraph or two in history.
(That neither the newspapers nor history made much if anything of it was
wholly due to a dusty man in fatigue uniform who was just then riding a
very tired horse toward the plaza.)
Mexico had fallen.
More than a decade earlier the gringo pioneers in Texas had clashed with
the Mexican lords of the soil. And, after many a bloody conflict, red
with mediæval barbarity, they had seized Texas from Mexico and made a
republic of it.
Later the Lone Star republic had been annexed to the United States.
Mexico had protested. Then our government had declared that Texas not
only belonged to the United States, but that its southern boundary was
the Rio Grande, instead of the Nueces River.
Again Mexico had protested.
Whereat, President Polk had sent an old Indian fighter, Zachary Taylor,
to the Rio Grande with four thousand troops, to maintain the frontier.
Taylor, with his handful of men, had calmly plowed his way southward,
thrashing Mexican armies double the size of his own, until all northern
Mexico was his.
President Polk, “viewing with alarm” the repute that Taylor, a political
foe of his own, was gleaning, hustled the army’s commander-in-chief,
General Scott, south to snatch any remaining laurels.
Scott stripped Taylor’s little band of its best officers and men and
continued the war to a triumphant end; Taylor, meantime, at Buena Vista,
opposing his own remnant of an army to a Mexican force five times its
size and nearly annihilating the enemy in the most important and
spectacular battle of the whole war.
But now that the conflict was over, Scott was in his element. He was the
ideal god of war; a far more impressive figure on this climax day than
down-at-heel, tobacco-chewing old Zachary Taylor could have hoped to be.
The regiment came to a halt. At a barked order, eight hundred cumbrous
muzzle-loading muskets clicked to the “present,” then, with a double
click, to the “carry.”
The last off-key strains of “Columbia” moaned out, and the sweating
musicians laid aside their instruments.
A gold-laced Mexican, whose uniform coat bore as many decorations as a
champion swimmer’s, stepped into the open space in front of the
platform, unrolled a terrifying parchment document that jingled with
seals, cleared his throat and prepared to read. General Scott folded his
plump arms across his plumper chest, assumed an air of gracious dignity,
and prepared to listen.
His staff and the civilians on the dais stood in impressive attitudes to
hear a document in a tongue few of them had troubled to master; and
prepared to be bored.
None of the three sets of preparations was destined to ripen into
fulfillment.
For just then, riding unceremoniously through the close-packed crowd of
natives at the left of the dais, appeared a horseman in the fatigue
uniform of a colonel of cavalry. His uniform was stained and old, and
was further disfigured by a coating of white dust and foam-fleck. The
big sorrel horse was sweat-streaked and evidently half-exhausted.
The man took in the scene in a single quick look. Touching his tired
horse with the spur, he rode straight up to the dais, almost tramping
the Mexican dignitary under foot; saluted mechanically, and then sat
blinking in moody reverie at General Scott.
There was a moment’s hush through which a bugle call was drifted, faint
but wholly audible from the American camp far to the east of the plaza.
Scott squinted in annoyed perplexity at the newcomer.
The latter suddenly straightened in the saddle, saluted again and rasped
out:
“Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton of General Taylor’s personal staff.
Present in reply to General Scott’s request that General Taylor send a
representative to this celebration.”
Real pleasure effaced the annoyance in Scott’s face. Even as no Roman
triumph was complete without the presence of humbled rivals, so his day
of glory was immeasurably sweetened by the fact that the general whose
prowess had all but overshadowed his own was, by proxy at least, a
witness to the scene.
Scott beamed with lofty graciousness on Lieutenant-Colonel James
Brinton. He would vastly have preferred that his rival’s delegate should
have looked more like a military tailor’s dummy, on this day of days,
and less like a dust-sprinkled scarecrow.
But Scott had sent somewhat belated word--an afterthought--to Taylor.
The distance was long. He had scarce expected that any representative of
the other would be able to reach the spot on time. Even more likely his
rival would plead lack of time as excuse for failure to comply.
The evidences of haste and hard riding on Brinton’s part were, perhaps,
in their way as high a tribute to the occasion as could well have been
paid by more gaudy costume. Wherefore, the smile of lofty welcome.
“I thank General Taylor for his courtesy,” said the commanding general,
“and I commend his representative’s speed. Leave your horse with an
orderly, Colonel Brinton. I have had a seat reserved for you here.”
Scott turned again toward the Mexican official who, shuffling and
fidgeting, was trying to find some new position wherefrom to launch his
many-sealed address.
But before the general could request the reader to proceed Brinton
interposed.
With ponderous gravity he maneuvered his horse so that the tired brute’s
flank well-nigh collided with the Mexican. Thus, having sent the
official scuttling out of the exact center of the space before the
platform, Brinton reined his mount into the hurriedly vacated spot.
General Scott scowled. One of the broadcloth-clad civilians snickered.
The staff stared open-eyed. This solemn equestrian with the bloodshot
eyes and drawn face was behaving with strange lack of military decorum
in the presence of his chief.
“General Scott,” declaimed Brinton in a voice which, though not
consciously uplifted, penetrated through the still noonday air to the
far corners of the plaza. “General Scott, I am going to say just a few
words.”
Again the general’s Jovelike displeasure softened. This interruption in
the cut-and-dried proceedings of the day grated harshly upon his craze
for method. Yet, on an instant’s thought, he recognized its probable
value.
That his rival’s proxy should ride up to the dais in this dramatic
fashion and there publicly transmit General Taylor’s respects and
compliments, was an unannounced but none the less acceptable feature of
the programme. It was a tribute that ought to silence forever the
oft-repeated Mexican query as to whether or not Scott outranked Taylor.
With an Olympian nod, the general said:
“Proceed, sir. I am ready to hear General Taylor’s message.”
“General Scott,” began Brinton once more, and this time his deep voice
rose to oratorical volume, “on the platform before me I behold a sea of
upturned faces. And not one honest face in the lot. I see in the place
of honor--the place by rights due to General Taylor--a pompous and fat
popinjay, lovingly known throughout the Union as ‘Old
Fuss-and-Feathers.’ I see--”
The dais was in an uproar. A sheaf of sabers were whipped sibilantly
from their scabbards.
Scott, his rotund face purple, rolled out of his seat and onto his plump
legs.
“Sir!” he bellowed. “Consider yourself under arrest! General Taylor--”
“General Taylor,” snarled Brinton, “sent me here with some fool message
or other. It was congratulatory, I believe, and therefore hypocritical.
I’ve forgotten it. Because it was too good to waste on the man who has
tried to reap where Taylor sowed--the jackal that seeks to ape our lion.
And I left my dress uniform at the _fonda_, back there, too. Why should
I put it on just to humor old Fuss-and-Feathers?”
By this time fifty officers were clambering down from the dais or
running up from the edges of the cleared space to silence the man who
had spoiled their patron’s day of homage.
Brinton heeded their approach not at all. Shifting in his saddle he
faced the throng of gaping natives.
“Mexicanos!” he called in Spanish. “You have been conquered. But it was
by General Taylor. Not by this overdressed old incompetent who has
stolen Taylor’s laurels. He--”
The harangue ended abruptly.
A dozen hands were upon the speaker. A dozen hands dragged him from the
saddle. A dozen hands itched to close on his throat and to choke out
every possibility of future insult.
But there was no need. After a bare second of feeble struggle Brinton
lay inert and moveless in his captors’ grasp.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed an officer, leaning over him in wonder. “The
man’s--the man’s _asleep_!”
CHAPTER II
DISGRACE
Winfield Scott, the “general commanding” the United States armies, sat
in the high-ceiled living-room of his temporary headquarters.
Night had come--the night of the day that was to have marked so
elaborate a tribute to the United States in the person of the general
commanding.
The general had discarded his gaudy dress uniform in favor of a fatigue
suit that left his chest unpadded and allowed far more waist room for a
no longer gracefully restricted circumference. He sat at the head of a
deal table whereon burned two sconces of candles.
The center of the room, where stood the table, was softly alight, but
ceiling and walls were in wavering gloom.
The general was writing, handling his white quill-pen with wondrous
facility, considering the size and gnarled condition of his hands.
He came to the end of a page, reached ponderously across the table for a
perforated box, and carefully sanded the ink-scrawled sheet; then
started on another page. His rubicund face wore a scowl, and his shaven
lip-corners were almost ludicrously drawn down.
At the first line of the new page he paused and looked up from under his
bushy, white brows, threateningly as might a charging bull. An orderly
stood in the dim-lit doorway opposite him.
“Captain Grant, sir,” reported the orderly, saluting.
A grunt from Scott and the man withdrew. Presently in his place entered
a thick-set officer of middle height, clean-shaven, and evidently still
in the late twenties or very early thirties.
“Well?” rapped out Scott.
“He is awake, sir,” replied Captain Grant, “and quite sober again. I
made the inquiries you ordered.”
“Well?” again demanded the general.
“He is Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton of General Taylor’s staff, as he
said,” went on Grant. “And he was sent here with a message from General
Taylor. The message--”
“Never mind the message, sir!” broke in General Scott. “That can wait.”
“Colonel Brinton says,” continued the unruffled captain, “that he
reached the outskirts of the city an hour before the time set for the
celebration. He had ridden hard, having miscalculated the time.
“When he found he had an hour on his hands he stopped at a _fonda_ to
quench his thirst. They offered him _pulque_. He had never before tasted
it, and he drank several glasses in quick succession. That is the last
thing he remembers until he woke in the guard-house half an hour ago.”
“Drunk!” sneered the general. “Drunk on a military mission. What I might
have expected from one of Taylor’s men.”
“I have been talking with two or three officers who were with General
Taylor last year,” ventured Captain Grant. “And they tell me Colonel
Brinton is not a drinking man. His record is good and--”
“His record ends here and now,” interrupted Scott, “as far as the United
States army is concerned. I am writing an account of the case to
President Polk. He will indorse the action I am about to take. A drastic
action such as is needed to prevent any repetition of such disgraceful
conduct among American officers in Mexico. Bring the man here.”
Grant saluted and turned toward the door. On the threshold he paused.
General Scott, blinking at him through the shadows, said peremptorily:
“You may go, Captain Grant. Bring him here at once.”
“_Pulque_ is not the kind of liquor our men are used to, general,”
hesitated the captain. “A man who does not know its strange effects
might readily--”
“For an officer with a reputation for taciturnity, Captain Grant,” said
Scott coldly, “you are wasting a great deal of breath. Bring the man
here, and after that you may retire to your quarters.”
Grant saluted again and left the room.
To the general’s long-nursed wrath the well-meant intercession added
fresh zest. He straightened himself in his chair, loosened his shirt at
the throat, and sat staring in expectant fury at the dark gap the
oblong of the open doorway made in the scarce-lighter wall.
Presently Grant’s dimly seen figure reappeared in the opening. The
captain raised his hand to his fatigue cap, faced about and vanished,
leaving in his place a second and taller figure.
The newcomer, at a rough word of command from Scott, slowly moved
forward into the radius of candlelight.
His hair and clothes were in disorder, his face was pasty, and his eyes
were red and bleared. The hand that went to his throbbing head, as he
stood at attention across the table from Scott, trembled from
nerve-rack.
The general leaned back again in his chair and eyed Brinton through
half-shut lids. Now that his victim was actually in his presence the old
chief was able to force back rage for the moment and to substitute for
it the no less fierce martinet discipline for which he had long been
famed.
“You are Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton?” he asked. “Of General
Taylor’s staff, I believe?”
“Yes, sir,” came the unsteady reply.
“You were sent here by General Taylor with a message to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which message you publicly delivered in the plaza to-day.”
“No, sir!” almost shouted Brinton.
The involuntary eagerness wherewith he made the denial drove
drink-pains tearing madly through his head and sent an ensuing wave of
nausea over his whole numbed body.
“No?” queried Scott with dangerous gentleness.
“No, sir. At least--I--I have no recollection of what I said to you
to-day. But from what Captain Grant and the others tell me--”
“So?” put in Scott in seeming amazement. “General Taylor entrusted you
with a message to me and you have no recollection of delivering it?
General Taylor has indeed an excellent knowledge of men. When it comes
to selecting a trustworthy courier or representative--”
“I remember the message, sir,” said Brinton, the pastiness of his cheeks
tinged with red. “But I am told I did not deliver it; that I said--”
“I am a rough soldier, Colonel Brinton,” returned Scott. “I am not a
member of the diplomatic corps. My mind cannot grasp the intricacies of
General Taylor’s motive in sending here a representative who admits that
he had one message to deliver, that he did not deliver it, and that he
delivered another message whose purport he cannot remember. If General
Taylor deals with other military affairs as wisely as he chooses his
messengers--”
“General Taylor’s unbroken line of triumphs speaks for him, sir!”
flashed Brinton.
“And you are one of those triumphs? A fair sample of the rest?”
“I was drunk, sir.”
“No! You astonish me. And _in vino veritas_? When your tongue was
unguarded by your brain, you inadvertently expressed opinions of me that
you and the rest of General Taylor’s staff have no doubt frequently
heard from your chief?”
“No, sir. I have never heard General Taylor speak slightingly of you nor
of any other man.”
“Really,” said Scott incredulously; then, feeling he had almost
exhausted his ability to torture the man through the latter’s loyalty to
Taylor, he began on a new tack.
“Then, Colonel Brinton,” he charged, dropping the ironic suavity that
had sat upon him as gracefully as a satin coat on a camel, “your insult
to me to-day was gratuitous?”
“If a contrite apology will--”
“It will not. The case stands like this: in time of war and in the
enemy’s country you were entrusted with a message from one of your
country’s generals to another. You suppressed that message and
substituted one wholly different. Do you acknowledge that, Colonel
Brinton?”
Brinton opened his mouth as though to protest against this peculiar
version of the affair. Before he could speak Scott continued:
“Or am I to believe that General Taylor so far forgot himself as to send
the message you delivered to-day? If so, in my report to the President I
shall embody--”
“No, no!” exclaimed Brinton, covertly moistening his cracked lips and
seeking to rally his benumbed brain to a comprehension of what was going
on.
“Then,” pursued Scott, “you do acknowledge that in war-time you
deliberately suppressed the message sent by one general to another and
that you willfully substituted--”
“Y-yes, sir,” muttered Brinton.
“Very good. As an officer of the United States army you are familiar,
Colonel Brinton, with the articles of war?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know the penalty attaching to such a military crime as you confess
you have committed?”
Brinton squared his shoulders, raised his pain-crazed head, and made
answer:
“Yes, sir.”
Scott paused for an instant as though to let the fact sink in, then was
off on a new theme.
“How old are you, Colonel Brinton?” he asked.
“Forty-one, sir.”
“A West Pointer?”
“No, sir. Militia. I raised a cavalry company in Ideala, Ohio, at the
outbreak of the present war. I am a merchant there.”
“You are married?”
“I was married, sir.”
“A widower? You have children?”
“One son, sir--and one grandson.”
“Grandson!”
“I married at nineteen,” answered Brinton, sorely puzzled at this odd
trend of the queries. “My son married at twenty. His son was born since
I left Ideala.”
“Colonel Brinton,” resumed Scott, “for the sake of your son, and for the
grandson you have never yet seen, I am inclined to be merciful in
dealing with you. For insubordination, for insulting the general
commanding, for malicious substitution of a verbal dispatch, a court
martial would unquestionably condemn you to a long term of imprisonment,
if not to death. Are you content to waive court martial and to leave
your punishment to my discretion?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Brinton, the reaction and nausea from his recent
spree once more dulling his mind almost to coma.
“I--I understand the idea,” he went on sleepily. “You don’t want to make
a martyr of me and have the story told all over America. You prefer to
kick me out of the army with no fuss and feathers.”
He spoke almost subconsciously, not realizing in his momentary numbness
of brain that he was thinking aloud.
Scott’s carefully repressed rage broke its bounds at hearing his motives
so mercilessly voiced. Nor did Brinton’s unlucky use of the phrase “fuss
and feathers”--Scott’s favorite nickname among his swarm of
enemies--soften matters.
“Colonel Brinton!” roared the general, getting to his feet. “You are a
disgrace to the uniform of the United States army, and to the mother who
bore you. You are a disgrace to the flag, and this day you have made
your army and its general a laughing stock before their enemies. You are
a drunkard and an incompetent; unfit to wear a uniform!”
Beside himself with blind fury, the general lurched forward across the
table, seized Brinton by the shoulders, and ripped off both his
epaulets.
“You are herewith degraded from rank!” he bellowed. “And you are
dishonorably dismissed from the service you have disgraced. The
President of the United States will confirm your dismissal. Leave this
camp inside of one hour, and do not set foot in an army encampment or on
official ground again. To-morrow, the announcement of your dismissal as
a common drunkard shall be read to every regiment in the army.
“Go! Get out of here! And go on foot. The horse you rode is the property
of the government you have disgraced. If you take him or any other army
mount I will have you arrested as a horse-thief and add theft to
drunkenness and insubordination in the published list of your
achievements. Go!”
Brinton forced his horrified senses to a brief rally; clicked his booted
heels together, raised to the salute a hand that no longer shook;
wheeled, and with shoulders squared, marched from the room.
CHAPTER III
OUTCAST
A stretch of yellow ground broken here and there by black-green foliage
patches and gray rocks. Above, a blazing white sun in a copper sky; the
hot expanse broken by an occasional buzzard that hung moveless on broad
serrated wings between earth and heaven.
And alone--almost infinitesimal in the boundless expanse--over the
baking area of plain and rolling ground moved a dark blue speck.
On nearer observation this speck of blue resolved itself into a man. A
man whose tangle of hair was covered by the discarded straw sombrero of
some peon, whose face was haggard and unshaven, whose body was
whimsically draped in the tatters of what had once been a United States
army uniform, whose feet had by long tramping worn apart the soles and
uppers of a once-spruce pair of cavalry boots.
More than a second glance would have been needed for any of the man’s
former fellow-officers to recognize in the military scarecrow the
faultlessly groomed Lieutenant-Colonel Brinton of General Zachary
Taylor’s personal staff.
East and northeast he had plodded; at first in a daze and guided only by
the homing instinct.
Leaving General Scott’s headquarters, he had delayed not a minute in
beginning his homeward march. Afoot in a land where all save the meanest
rode, he had shaped his course without conscious effort.
Dawn had found him far beyond the American lines. After that, for a
time, dawn and noon and sunset had been one to him. Thirst--the terrible
thirst that follows upon a _pulque_ debauch--had gripped him with
agonizing pains.
And he had found himself stopping at cisterns and even at roadside
puddles.
Late at night his legs had given way as he breasted a hill. He had
fallen forward and slept where he fell; to stagger stiffly onward at
dawn. From a peon vender he had bought a great stack of _tortillas_ and
a bundle of _tamales_ on the second day, and had stuffed them into all
his pockets; munching now and then when he chanced to think of it.
The purchase had been half-involuntary; some latent campaigning instinct
leading him to buy the food for future use. In payment he had given a
five-dollar gold piece; the only coin he chanced to have in his pocket;
and it had not occurred to him to ask for change.
Somewhere along the road he had seen the broad-brimmed straw hat lying;
its frayed brim and a hole in the crown testifying to its uselessness to
a former owner. He had picked it up and put it on, in exchange for his
shelterless military cap, as a better shield against the sun’s broiling
heat.
For several days Brinton continued his blind progress northeastward.
He had met few people. And at these he had not so much as glanced.
Such of them as were Mexicans noted appraisingly his ragged state (for
cactus spines and rocks had claimed their full toll of cloth-scraps in
the blundering journey), and decided he was not worth molesting and had
let him go in peace.
A stray American soldier, here and there, had taken him for a deserter
and, out of pity, had looked the other way. The war was practically at
an end. They saw no reason for dragging back to punishment a man who
seemed so anxious to get home; nor to report seeing him.
At last the numbness lifted, bit by bit, from Brinton’s mind. And he
knew it had not been the numbness of drink, but of shock.
He came to his senses to find himself repeating mechanically, for the
thousandth time:
“Dishonorably--dismissed--from the service you have--disgraced!”
The odd repetition of the prefix “dis” in the three pregnant words of
the sentence stood out in his memory. He could shut his eyes and see
Scott’s rage-bloated face, as the general had flung the phrase at him.
“Dishonorably dismissed from the service you have disgraced!”
That was it. And the torn-off epaulets had dangled from Scott’s gnarled
fists as the sentence was spoken. “Dishonorably dismissed!”
Brinton, like a child who bites on a sore tooth, fell to recalling his
own father--veteran of the war of 1812.
The grandfather whom he dimly remembered as a bent, withered giant--the
once herculean captain who at the battle of Saratoga had with a single
backhand stroke of his cavalry saber sliced off the head of a British
dragoon.
At home hung the musket--the “Queen’s Arm” gun--that his
great-grandfather had carried in the French and Indian War, and later,
as a very old man, at Concord and Lexington.
“Three generations of them,” he mumbled, half-aloud. “Fighters all. And
I don’t know how many generations before that. One in every one of our
wars. And I was the fourth. I guess it meant more to me than to any of
them.
“‘Dishonorably dismissed from the service you have disgraced’--‘Herewith
degraded from rank,’” he added, another sentence of the fearful
condemnation flashing into his thoughts.
He did not know how long he had traveled. He knew--some sixth sense told
him--he was moving in the right direction for home.
Home! The lively little Ohio town through whose main street he had
ridden so proudly, at the head of his company, not two years before!
What would his return be like?
The fancy stung Brinton to new anguish. He halted; and was minded to
shift his course for some refuge where his name and his disgrace would
not be known; where he could begin all over again.
Then came the thought--not of his stay-at-home son, but of the grandson
he had never seen. And into the man’s burning hot eyes came a mist of
unbidden tears.
His baby grandson--and Brinton plodded along his former course.
He expected little sympathy from his severely correct if unwarlike son;
the worthy youth who had so smugly refused to join his father in going
to the front on the plea that the business would suffer if both senior
and junior partner were away for so long a time. But the grandson--
Brinton passed his hand over the unshaven stubble of his chin; and
sought to gauge by its length the time his march had lasted. He seemed
to have been tramping for an eternity on swollen and tender feet under a
murderous hot sun. Yet for days he continued; once bartering his watch
for another batch of _tortillas_.
At last nature gave out.
For nearly a day he had found no water. His lips were fevered, his
tongue unduly large and as dry as parchment. There was but the fragment
of one crumbling and greasy _tortilla_ left in his pocket.
He dared not eat it, faint though he was, lest it add to his already
unbearable thirst.
He noted, too, that he was lurching and reeling in his walk. It appeared
to him that the buzzards that floated above him had begun to take a new
and personal interest in his movements. They were more numerous than on
earlier days, and they seemed to follow him; flying very low.
So had he seen them track a sick cavalry horse.
Before him, as dusk fell, rose a low ridge. Beyond it, evidently, was a
dip in the rolling ground, and beyond that rose a higher ridge.
At sight of the two prospective climbs, Brinton’s heart turned sick
within him. Then he set his teeth and breasted the first rise. After an
interminable time he gained its low summit and stood, panting loudly, to
rest.
In the gulch just below he saw a fire twinkling through the gloom.
Brinton took a step forward. His awkward foot trod on a rolling stone.
Losing his balance and too weak to recover it, he pitched helplessly
forward, fell headlong, and rolled down the steep little slope.
As he lay at the bottom, breathless and half-stunned, unseen hands
lifted him none too gently to his feet. A glare of light was in his
eyes.
He stood there, swaying, blinking, supported by the two men who had
picked him up.
Then he saw that he had rolled to the very edge of a campfire. Around
the fire lounged a dozen or more men in army uniforms, while one of
their fellow soldiers roasted, over a bed of coals, to one side of the
blaze, a whole kid. Farther on, a short line of cavalry horses were
picketed.
Brinton knew he had stumbled upon an American scouting party. And he
would have turned and fled, but for the hands that held him.
A beardless young lieutenant strolled forward, drawn by the exclamations
of his troopers. He eyed the tattered, disreputable fugitive in strong
contempt; taking in, by the uncertain glow of the fire, Brinton’s
general aspect of vagrancy and the fact that he wore what had once been
a cavalry uniform.
“Deserter,” at length announced the lieutenant. “What regiment?”
Brinton made no reply.
“What regiment, I said?” repeated the lieutenant sharply.
But shame and shock held Brinton speechless.
“You wear a cavalry uniform!” accused the lieutenant. “In what regiment
are you a private?”
“It is a colonel’s uniform,” involuntarily answered Brinton.
But so thick was the utterance of his thirst-swollen tongue that his
words were unintelligible.
“Come nearer to the light!” ordered the lieutenant, leading the way to
the fire from whose glare Brinton had been edging away.
While the supposed deserter was under interrogation by their officer,
the two men who had held him had released their grasp on his feeble
arms. Now, as the lieutenant moved away, Brinton turned and bolted.
He made for the steep gulch-side down which he had just rolled. But
before he could take a half-dozen tottering steps the cavalrymen were
upon him.
They dragged him back to the fire, yanking him roughly from side to side
as though shaking a naughty child. Part of his torn clothing came away
in their grasp.
Brinton swayed dizzily and unresistingly at every haul and jerk.
“Tie him up!” snapped the officer. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
Brinton was thrown down, and his legs and arms were trussed with leather
bearing reins whose knots cut deeply into the chafed skin of wrists and
ankles. Then he was rolled to one side and left there while the troopers
gathered around the now roasted kid.
Even in his stark misery, the victim’s military training disgusted him
with the needless cruelty of his treatment and the carelessness
wherewith his captors were maintaining their camp.
In the darkness he lay, helpless, sore in every joint and tortured by
thirst. But for the time his bodily agony was as nothing to him by
comparison with the anguish wherewith his present plight filled his
mind.
He foresaw that he would be carried to the regimental headquarters of
this scouting party. Probably to General Taylor’s own headquarters, or
possibly even to those of General Scott.
There the whole truth must come to light. And the shameful flight must
begin all over again!
Nor could he, by explaining the situation to his jailers here, hope to
win their credence.
They had evidently been on a more or less prolonged scouting trip. They
could not know the story of his degradation. Nor could they be expected
to credit so improbable a tale. He could not expect them to believe that
Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton--of whom they might or might not have
heard--of General Taylor’s personal staff, was the scarecrow prisoner
they had seized as a deserter.
He tugged at his bunglingly tied wrist-bonds. But he could not loosen
them. Almost he could draw one hand out from the leather strap. But he
could not quite release it.
Supper over, a trooper, at the lieutenant’s command, brought a shallow
little tin dish of water and a piece of hardtack to where Brinton lay
and set it beside him.
The sight of the water set the prisoner well-nigh insane. Yet, by an
effort that called for all his strength of mind, he refrained from
drinking it.
Instead, he lay still, looking up at the big southern stars until
sentries were posted for the first watch and the other troopers rolled
into their blankets. Then, cautiously, he stretched forth his bound
hands and laid his wrists in the shallow tin dish of water.
The touch of the cool liquid brought on another mad craving to drink.
But Brinton, after a second battle of will, conquered, and forebore to
waste the precious water in the mere quenching of thirst.
For ten minutes he let his wrists and their leathern thongs soak in the
dish. Then he drew them out and exerted all his weak force to pulling
his close-fastened wrists asunder.
The leather, as he had foreseen, had softened and stretched from
immersion. A desperate tug that scraped off most of the skin of one
wrist--and his right hand was free.
It was a simple matter to double over and to reach the bonds that tied
his ankles. The knot was soon untied. And Brinton lay unbound and half
fainting.
For hours he lay thus. Then, at a change of sentries, he began to
wriggle noiselessly away from the camp.
Giving the drowsy sentry a wide berth, he crept on hands and knees
through the darkness until the camp lay a furlong behind him and the
sides of the farther and higher ridge loomed directly above him.
An hour later, at first glimmer of dawn, Brinton gained the ridge’s
summit and lay resting for a time on its crest. After which he rose and
looked ahead. In front of him, far below, and a few miles beyond the
ridge, something broad and silvery lay glittering in the dawn light.
With a hoarse cry, Brinton recognized it.
“The Rio Grande!” he croaked. “The Rio Grande! Yonder to the left is the
ford we crossed! And--beyond, lies God’s country!”
At noon, Brinton reached the river’s bank. Hope had replaced strength
and had made the last stage of the journey possible. Waist deep he
waded into the stream, crouching down and rolling over in the tepid
water; sucking in pints of it as he assuaged his thirst.
To his feet once more and floundering on, across the ford; then he fell
on his face at full length, on the northern bank; his hands digging
deeply into the soil.
“My country!” he sobbed, hysterically. “My own, _own_ country!”
Then, as an echo, chilling his wild joy, he found himself murmuring
incoherently:
“Dishonorably--dismissed!”
CHAPTER IV
FOURTEEN YEARS LATER
“Dad” leaned right luxuriously against the bar of the Eagle House, a
brimming whisky-skin in one hand, a long and ill-smelling cigar in the
other.
His shining frock coat was thrown back wide from a vest that had once
been white. A slouch hat was pushed far back on his head, and a mass of
gray-white hair fell carelessly over his forehead. His somewhat bleared
eyes gazed loftily upon the habitués of the place, and his aristocratic,
but slightly reddened nose was curved in mild contempt at something one
of them happened at that moment to be saying.
Dad was an imposing figure. There was not lacking those who declared he
was even yet a fine figure of a man--even though a covert grin went with
the praise.
And more than one woman was wont to follow, with a gaze almost as
admiring as it was disapproving, his stately thrice-a-day progress down
Main Street from his riverside cottage to the Eagle barroom.
No one in Ideala was so ignorant of Dad’s habits as to imagine for a
moment that three daily visits to the Eagle entailed only three drinks
thereat. Indeed, his regular evening sojourn at that hospitable tavern
was often prolonged until closing time, and his return bedward was not
infrequently under a highly necessary escort.
Still, though he might--and continuously did--drink with them, Dad could
never be induced to regard the Eagle’s other patrons as his equals;
either mentally or morally. And he took no pains to cloak his feelings.
Which did not add appreciably to his popularity among the convivial
band.
To-day--on his first morning visit--Dad was unwontedly superior in his
bearing toward his fellow tipplers.
For the talk was on war--the time was the summer of 1861--and the Civil
War had already entered bloodily upon the first of its four years.
One company, three months earlier, had marched gayly forth from Ideala
upon the calcium path of patriotism--to be shot to atoms in the first
battle of Manassas. And now a second and a third were forming.
“Yes,” a crippled oldster was declaring from the far end of the bar, his
words percolating ludicrously through a double set of misfit teeth,
“yes, gentlemen, Uncle Sam will find he’s in for a good long siege of it
before he’s done. He thought he’d have Jeff Davis licked to a standstill
in three months. Well, the three months are up. And, so far, it’s been
Uncle Jeff that’s done all the licking. I tell you, this war’s going to
last out the year and maybe part of next.”
Dad, through his mildly rubicund nose, made a weird sound, variously
and incorrectly expressed in print as “H-m!” or “Humph!” It was a sound
as derisive as it was wordless.
The misfit-teeth man glowered at him.
“Well,” he drawled, “I take it, Dad, that you don’t agree with me. You
generally don’t. But that don’t make it any the less true.”
“No, Mr. Stage,” returned Dad, “I don’t. This war will be wound up
inside of another three months at longest. When the fighting spirit of
the North is once aroused--when this glorious Union, one and
indissoluble, once sets its foot down; the Confederacy will collapse
like a pricked toy balloon. You must grant me credence, when I prophesy
this. I know the United States and I know war.”
“Let me see,” mused Stage, scratching his chin in deep reflection. “Let
me see--you _do_ know war, don’t you, now? I seem to remember you were
in our little unpleasantness down in Mexico, some years back. And
speaking of wars, I wonder you don’t enlist. You’re still a hearty man.
And the North needs men. Why not go to the front again?”
Dad’s face flushed so hotly that his nose actually paled by contrast.
“I--I am forced to remain at home for business reasons,” he said,
coldly. “Otherwise--”
“There’s a whole lot of ‘otherwises,’ these days,” commented Stage.
“Some of ’em pleading business and some playing sick.”
“If you are questioning _my_ courage, Mr. Stage,” sternly interposed
Dad, emptying his whisky-skin at a gulp, “let me tell you that when I
was in Mexico--”
“Mexico,” echoed the cripple, chuckling as at some pleasant memory.
“That’s right, Mexico. I’d forgot. You held a commission of some sort in
our war down there, didn’t you? Queer you never showed it to any of us.
It’d be inte_rest_ing to see. Did you stay out the whole war? I
disremember, just now. Or did you skedaddle before it was over?”
A furtive snicker ran through the little knot of loungers. Someone
guffawed.
Dad swept the assemblage with an eye whose hint of bleariness had
momentarily been burned away by a blaze that startled them all.
Then, settling his hat farther forward on his head, he strode out into
the street without answering. As he passed through the swing-door he
heard Stage’s wheezy voice announce to nobody in particular:
“I guess that’s the time I scored one--or maybe a couple or more--on Mr.
James Brinton, Esq. Another time he won’t crow quite so loud, now that
I’ve took him down a peg. He needn’t think he can be cock-of-the-walk
over us all the time. Him that slunk back here in rags fourteen years
ago, after he was kicked out of the army for drunk and disorderly!”
The departing listener winced as he shuffled away out of ear-shot.
It was one thing to know that all the neighborhood must be aware of his
past. It was another to have the knowledge supplemented by auricular
proof. And the words, chuckled unctuously from between old Stage’s
misfit teeth-sets, stung like so many hornets.
Fourteen years! It had been so long--so unbelievably long. Surely their
space might well have dimmed the memory of a dead-and-gone disgrace. He
himself--except at excruciating moments like this--had taught himself to
forget. Why couldn’t others--especially such of them as consistently
used the same form of bottled nepenthe as did he?
It was so profitless to conjure up ghosts. Why not “let the dead past
bury its dead,” as this new Eastern poet, Longfellow, had recently put
it in a poem reprinted in the Ideala _Herald_?
Yet Stage’s slur had awakened memories as fierce as they were
infrequent. And they dogged Dad’s lagging steps as he shambled up Main
Street, goading him into an unwontedly lively pace.
Morbidly he forced his memory to cast back to that horror trip across
Mexico; to the shamefaced and semi-delirious return of the travel-beaten
outcast to his old home.
And now as though it were but a day before, instead of fourteen endless
years, he recalled that return: The grins or contempt of his old
neighbors; his son’s disgust, veiled in solicitude for the half-dead
wanderer; the totally unveiled scorn of his son’s rich young wife.
It had all been a hideous nightmare. To soften its horror he had--for
the first time in his life--willfully gotten drunk.
And liquor had laid a kindly benumbing hand on the shame-torn spirit.
So kindly and so benumbing a touch that he had sought its comfort again
and yet again.
His was not the drunkard temperament. He drank, at first not for what
drink could give him, but for what it could and did forgive him. So
that, in time, under the comforter’s aid, life had lost its razor-edge,
and the man was well content to drift on in not unhappy worthlessness.
In the beginning he had striven to take up his business where, two years
earlier, he had dropped it; the business that in his absence had thriven
and grown right flourishingly under the wise management of his
splendidly faultless son.
But two years in the open and the aftermath of disgrace had done much to
unfit the older man for every-day counting-room routine.
New methods, too, had come into vogue; methods to which he could not
readily adapt himself and which were as second nature to his son. The
latter, helped by his wife’s money, had branched out vigorously and
wisely in many lines of commerce.
The father soon felt himself an interloper in the business he himself
had founded. And drink did not aid either his work therein nor his
usefulness to the firm.
Wherefore he had eagerly seized upon his son’s tactful suggestion that
the senior member retire from active business and receive a small yearly
income from the concern’s revenues.
For the past twelve years he had lived thus; working not at all save
daily in the garden plot that surrounded a cottage he occupied on the
lower, or river, end of Main Street; a cottage that had belonged to his
mother and that was renovated for his use.
Here, tended by an aged negro--a former slave--ex-Lieutenant-Colonel
James Brinton rotted his years away; while at the far end of town, in
the new residence, or “Hill” section, dwelt his son, his son’s wife, and
their only child--the little grandson who had been born a few months
before Brinton’s return from Mexico.
Through all those early nightmare times it had been this little grandson
who formed James Brinton’s one worthy hold on life. He adored the child;
and from the beginning, the dissolute human wreck had commanded from the
youngster a greater and more complete love than did both the baby’s
highly correct parents combined.
Grandfather and grandson had ever been inseparable--to the hopeless
horror of the boy’s mother, who dared not for appearances’ sake prohibit
the intimacy--and had found in each other an exhaustless fund of truly
marvelous and worshipful traits.
From babyhood, the child, for some reason known to himself, had utterly
eschewed the stately title of “Grandfather” or even the milder term
“Grandpapa,” and had called Brinton “Dad.” His own male parent he always
addressed decorously as “Father,” but his grandfather was invariably and
lovingly “Dad.”
The quaint term from a child toward a grandsire had “caught the town.”
Before many years, half the nine thousand inhabitants of Ideala were
hailing, or referring to, Brinton as “Dad.” The phrase seemed to go
aptly with his disreputable yet lovably patriarchal personality.
And “Dad” had long since become fixed upon him as a permanent nickname.
Since the name had originated with his grandson, Brinton willingly
accepted it. His own son was perhaps the sole acquaintance who never
used it toward him.
When the South seceded and the first call to arms rang from California
to Maine, Dad’s blood had stirred like that of an ancient war horse. The
warlike heritage of centuries of fighters blazed like fire in his veins.
His impulse was to enlist at once.
Then had come the agony of second thought.
He had been “dishonorably dismissed from the service he had degraded.”
How could he return to it? Once cashiered, forever cashiered.
His services would unquestionably be rejected; as, for example, had
those of that young Captain Grant who had been so decent to him down in
Mexico.
Grant had not been cashiered from the army nor had he left it in
disgrace. He had merely resigned that he might better support his
family.
Yet when at the war’s outbreak--so a common friend had told
Brinton--Grant had written to the government offering his services, no
heed had been given to the offer.
No, Brinton dared not risk a repulse; perhaps an insult. So he banished
the tempting war-dream; and, to keep it banished, he had drunk a little
deeper.
But now--The morning air was cold and bracing. Only a single drink stood
between him, thus far to-day, and stark sobriety. On the square the two
companies of recruits were drilling.
Stage’s gleefully malicious words rankled sharply under Dad’s thickened,
yet vulnerable mental epidermis. Unconsciously his stooping shoulders
flattened and his steps fell into time to the fife-and-drum notes to
which the recruits were marching and counter-marching.
Up Main Street strode Dad. And the once-firm mouth under the straggling
gray mustache grew firm and set as of old, as he walked. The eyes, too,
took on a less dreamy look and lost their film.
Chagrin, sobriety, martial music and hereditary war-spirit were doing
their work.
Half-way along Main Street, in front of an imposing mercantile
establishment, Dad halted. Tightening his lips and setting his jaw, he
turned in at the open double doors. Down a long aisle he walked, looking
neither to left nor to right, nor seeing the amused and knowing glances
of sundry clerks he passed.
At a door marked “Private,” at the far end of the store, he paused; his
knuckles raised to knock on the glass. Then he changed his mind and,
opening the door, entered unbidden.
He walked with something of swagger into a pleasantly appointed office,
at whose fumed-oak desk sat a dapper man of early middle-age.
The man at the desk looked up in momentary vexation at this abrupt
advent. Then, recognizing his visitor, his somewhat ascetic face took on
a look of patient civility.
“Good-morning, father,” he said, rising. “Is anything the matter?”
“You ask because I came into a store I used to own?” inquired the older
man.
“Why, no. Of course not. You are always welcome. I only asked--”
“All right. I’m sorry I spoke as I did. I’m not quite myself to-day,
and--”
He paused as he saw an expression of worry replace the patient courteous
look he had come to loathe on his son’s countenance.
“No,” he went on, in response to the unasked query, “I am not drunk. It
is something else that has upset me. Can--can you give me a few minutes
of your time, Joe?”
Mr. Joseph Brinton glanced longingly at a pile of unfinished work on his
desk; then, seating himself and motioning his father to a chair, sighed
imperceptibly in regret as he said:
“Certainly, sir. Sit down. My time is always at your disposal.”
CHAPTER V
PAST-WORTHY
Dad seated himself on the edge of the chair and let his broad-brimmed
gray hat drop to the floor at his side.
The unwonted fit of purpose that had brought him so aggressively into
the sacred private office, however, had now begun slowly but noticeably
to ebb. And, as ever, he felt curiously sheepish and ill at ease in the
presence of this flawless son of his.
To gain new hold on his resolve, and incidentally to gain time, he
switched from the theme that had brought him thither on sudden impulse.
“Is it true,” he asked, “is it true--what Jimmie was telling me--that
you have enlisted?”
“Yes, sir. In the Second Company. I ought to be drilling with the rest
this very minute. We start in three days. But I had a pressure of work
here this morning, and Captain Scofield excused me.”
Again he glanced with polite furtiveness at his desk.
But Dad did not take the hint nor even notice the look. His face aglow,
the old fellow had stretched forth his hand, half-rising eagerly from
his seat.
“Joe, my boy,” he cried, gripping the slender and wholly unresponsive
fingers of his son, “I’m proud of you! Plumb proud of you! You’ll make
the fifth generation of fighting Brintons. This news does me good clear
down to the ground. I was afraid you’d think business came first. I’m
glad to see your Brinton blood’s red enough to make you forget work for
a while and send you hustling out to fight for your country.”
The younger man smiled with gentle indulgence into his father’s flushed
face.
“I’m afraid, sir,” said he, “that I can’t claim much credit for headlong
patriotism. To be frank, this is going to prove one of the best strokes
of business I ever did. You see, the most farseeing men believe the war
will not last more than three months longer at most. It may even be over
before we get to the front.”
“But--”
“But the spirit of hysterical excitement that goes under the name of
patriotism has swept the whole country. Men who go to the front are
acclaimed as heroes. Those who stay sanely at home suffer by comparison.
“It will be a good thing for me in this town and in the State and in the
future handling of government contracts if I go on record as joining the
army at this juncture.
“I am a one-year man. If the war ends earlier--as it will--many months
earlier--I have influence enough, I think, to get my discharge. In any
event, my patriotism will be a good thing for the firm and for my future
here. Business is slack just now, and--”
“And this is your idea of serving your country!” gasped Dad. “You
measure out your services to the flag as your clerks measure out
velvet! You sneer at patriotism, you whose father and grandfather and
great-grandfather--But, lad, you’re joking! You were always
undemonstrative. You’re cloaking your act of self-sacrifice under--”
“No, sir,” said Joseph, smiling again at the veteran’s outburst. “I am
quite sincere. I wish I might claim the noble intentions you try to
credit me with. But claptrap is not in my line. It is useful with the
public. But I don’t waste it in talking with members of my family.”
The old man stared slack-jawed at his faultlessly correct son. Then his
mouth snapped shut very suddenly to choke back a flood of furious
rebuke.
Joseph glanced down at his own polished nails; glanced again at the
work-laden desk and then remarked:
“I think you said something had ‘upset’ you? That was the term, I think.
Can I be of any use?”
“Yes,” snorted Dad. “Yes, you can. I was half-afraid to speak of it
before. But I’m not now. Joe, I want to go to this war. I want to
enlist.”
“Nonsense, father! You’re too old, for one thing. And besides--”
“Too old? I’m not quite fifty-five. Down South, men of sixty and
seventy, and boys as young as Jimmie are already enlisting.”
“I beg, sir,” hastily interposed his son, “you won’t put such crazy
notions into James’s head. Even at present he is a great worry to his
mother and myself by his incessant longing to become old enough to be a
soldier. I do not mean to be harsh, sir, but we have traced that foolish
ambition of his directly to his talks with you. And I must earnestly beg
of you not to--”
“Good little Jimmie! The fighting spirit skipped a generation when it
came to you, Joe. But Jim’s a Fighting Brinton from the top of his red
head to the soles of his stubby little feet.”
“I must request, sir, that you put no more foolish notions into--”
“That’s neither here nor there, Joe,” broke in Dad, impatiently. “We can
talk about Jimmie another time. I want to go to the front. I want to
enlist in this war. And I mean to.”
“Pardon me, father, for bringing up an unpleasant subject, but--”
“But, you’re going to say, I was kicked out of the army and I can’t get
back. That’s what I came to see you about to-day.”
“To see _me_ about?” echoed Joseph. “I don’t understand!”
“You spoke awhile back of having influence,” answered Dad, with
trembling eagerness. “And you have. With the State government and
through that with the folks in charge down in Washington.
“I believe if you’d use your influence to get one of the Ohio
congressmen to put the matter up to President Lincoln, he would
reconsider my case. They say he’s a real man. He wouldn’t be too hard on
a fellow who doesn’t ask anything better of him than a chance to fight
in the ranks for the flag he loves. As like as not, he’d let me enlist.
“Won’t--won’t you see if you can’t pull wires to get the case put up
before Lincoln, Joe? Won’t you do that? _Please_, son!”
He reached across and timidly stroked the other’s immaculate
coat-sleeve.
“Lincoln’s a man, clear through,” he went on. “And he’s got a big heart.
He’d--”
“He is a gross, apelike buffoon who is doing his best to make the
Presidential office the laughing-stock of Europe with his uncouth ways
and his ribald stories!” declared Joseph, with some heat. “I would not
accept a favor at the hands of such a man.”
“But I would, Joe!” pleaded Dad. “And you’re all wrong about Lincoln.
Honest, you are. I never met him. But I’ve read his speeches and I’ve
talked with folks who know him. I guess Europe and this country,
too--the kid-glove Bell-Douglas men--will change their minds about him
before he’s done. Won’t you do this for me, Joe? I don’t often ask you
favors. And this means such an awful lot to me.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” replied Joseph. “But it is quite out of the
question. Even if I wished to lower myself by an appeal to him and if I
were criminal enough to let you go to the war, any request of mine to
Lincoln would be refused.
“He is a politician. And politicians have long memories. You seem to
forget that I was chairman of the reception committee when Douglas spoke
here in Ideala last year. My request would be refused; even if it
chanced to pass the red-tape barriers and reach the President.
“Moreover, I would not do such a thing as to send an old man into the
ardors of a campaign. Even such a short campaign as this, from all the
surface evidence, will very likely be.”
“I am not an old man. Zach Taylor won the Mexican war when he was years
older than I am. Oh, son, I want to do something for my country!” The
man’s voice almost broke in his cry of appeal.
Joseph glanced critically at the pleading eyes beneath the disheveled
thatch of whitening hair.
“Do you really want to do something for your country?” he asked, as
though arguing with a stupid schoolboy. “Then I’ll tell you how you can
best do it. I am forced to go away. I must leave my wife and son with no
guardian or protector but yourself. By helping me you can help your
country.
“Stay here and take care of them. That will enable me to go to my duty
with a free mind and to keep my mind on the needs of the nation instead
of fearing always that some trouble may befall my dear ones.”
“But,” protested Dad, “you said you looked on this just as a business
venture, and--”
“I spoke lightly. As you guessed, to avoid praise for what is only my
clear duty.”
“Oh, I’m glad. But--”
“If I can be at rest about my wife and James, leaving them in your
care--and if I can be certain,” Joseph went on reluctantly, “that while
I am away you yourself will not--will not--”
“Will not get drunk too often and disgrace you,” finished Dad. “I
understand. Go on.”
“I--Marcia and I have talked it all over,” continued Joseph, visibly
relieved, “and we have decided to ask you to close the cottage for the
time I am away and come up to our house. A room will be ready for you
there. And I shall feel much easier, leaving you in charge. You can look
out for Marcia and James so much better when you are living under the
same roof with them. And so we--”
Slowly Dad rose. Stooping, he picked up his hat and stood facing his
son. The fire was gone from his eyes, the flush from his cheek. He
looked very old.
“You’re right, Joe,” he said at last. “Dead right. It’s a way you’ve
got. I see it. I was an old fool. I’m complimented that Marcia should
want me at the house. Because I always felt she hated my calling there.
“I’ll do as you say. I’ll take the best care of her and Jimmie that I
can. And I’ll--I’ll try not to do anything while you’re gone to make you
and Marcia too much ashamed of me.
“After all, I’ve had my fighting day. Had it and smashed it. And the
only way I can help now is to make it easier for my son to go to fight.
I’ll put the dream aside. I’ll do what you say.”
Turning, he walked gropingly from the office and down the long aisle.
His sight was suddenly dimmed. So much so that he almost collided with
a well-dressed woman who had just entered the store and was walking
toward the office.
The woman drew disgustedly aside from his wavering pathway and passed on
toward the glass door beyond. The man had not seen her.
But as he left the store he heard one clerk say to another:
“Dad’s establishing a new record. Drunk before 11 A.M.; and pretty near
ran into the boss’s wife, at that.”
“I--I hope Marcia doesn’t believe I’m in that condition,” he mused
remorsefully. “And just after she was so kind and forgiving as to want
me to take charge of the big house while Joe’s away.”
On the square the recruits were still drilling, a crowd of idlers
watching their gawky maneuvers. From the group of onlookers, as Dad
emerged into the street, a small figure detached itself and darted
joyously toward him.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHUMS
“I saw you go in,” hailed the boy, “and I was laying for you. I didn’t
want to go in there with you because I’m not very popular with father
to-day. What’s the matter, Dad? You look all done up.”
The little fellow slipped a grubby hand into his grandfather’s and
looked up at him in genuine concern.
There was nothing of the Lord Fauntleroy, grandpa-lean-on-me element
about Jimmie Brinton. Short enough to merit the loathed title of Runt,
he was stocky and deep of chest. His hair grew in very red and very
bristly formation. His face was plenteously freckled, his mouth rather
large, and his eyes a palish green.
In repose his face was positively ugly. But then, neither Jimmie Brinton
nor Jimmie Brinton’s face was ever long in repose. And there was an
elfin charm about the unbeautiful youngster.
“I’m feeling all right, thanks, Jimmie,” returned Dad, as together they
made for the square. “At least, as all right as a man can hope to when
he’s taking medicine he hates and that is the only medicine due to cure
him.”
“Has father been lecturing you again?”
“No. Just showing me my duty. He’s a wise man, your father, Jimmie.
Where he gets it from I don’t know. Sometimes he’s so wise it hurts. At
least, it hurts foolisher folks like me. I’m coming to live at your
house after Thursday.”
“I know,” said the boy with a queer constraint. “Mother told me.”
“Aren’t you glad?” asked Dad, wondering at the lad’s unusual tone.
“Yes,” said Jimmie briefly. “Of course I am. But I’m not glad for you.
You’ll try not to mind too much the way mother acts, won’t you?”
“You mustn’t talk that way, son.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking at how she treats me. I like her a lot. Only she
doesn’t seem to know what a brick you are. And it kind of riles me.”
“Oh, that’ll be all different now,” prophesied Dad. “She’s changed her
mind about me. If she hadn’t, would she be wanting me to come up to the
big house to live and to take charge of everything and look after you
and her while Joe’s away, fighting for his country?”
“H-m!” observed the boy, non-committally.
“Of course she wouldn’t,” declared his grandfather. “We’ll have a good
time up there, won’t we?”
“H-m!” repeated Jimmie.
“What’s the matter with you, son?” demanded the old man. “You look and
act as glum as bill day. Have things been going wrong? You said
something about not being popular with Joe.”
“Oh, that?” said Jimmie, eagerly seizing the chance of escape. “That’s
so. It’s nothing much. I was reading in the _Herald_ this morning how
Professor Garfield up at Hiram College is raising a regiment of college
fellers. And I told father that when a man gets to be pretty near
fifteen it’s time he was thinking of joining some such regiment as that.
He talked to me more than ten minutes without stopping. And then mother
took a turn at talking.
“They didn’t leave very much of me. They said I’m ungrateful and lazy
and undisciplined and a lot of other things. But I wouldn’t have minded
all that so much, only--”
“Only what?”
“Nothing.”
“Only they said,” supplemented Dad, “that it was I who put those notions
into your head by my gas-bag yarns about the Mexican war and the way I
feel about what a man owes as a duty to his country.”
“Did father tell you all that?” asked the boy quickly. “How mean of
him!”
“I’ve heard it before,” evaded Dad. “And the worst of it is, it’s true.”
“It isn’t!” vehemently denied Jimmie.
“Yes, it is, son. Not that my ideas about patriotism aren’t all right.
And a man who has risked his life is sure entitled to tell about those
risks. But I had no right to fill your mind with ideas of war when you
ought to be thinking about ciphering and grammar and--”
“What’s the use of school, anyway?” broke out Jimmie. “I’ll learn more
in one month at the war than I’d get in a year at school.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken, son. We both want to do big things. But
the manager has cast us for little unimportant rôles. And if we’re
yellow dogs we’ll sulk over those rôles and neglect ’em and do our
feeble best to spoil the whole show. But if we’re the kind of chaps I
think we are, Jimmie, you and I will just whirl in and play those two
measly little rôles as if they were leading parts and as if the whole
theater were applauding us. Sha’n’t we?”
The boy squeezed his hand encouragingly, but made no reply.
“You see,” went on Dad, “you’ve got a heap better chance than I have.
You’re due to be the lead some day. And the better you play the little
no-account parts that are handed out to you now, the sooner you’ll be
one. But I’m getting a littler rôle each year.”
“It’s a shame!”
“Most things are. But white men grin and bear it. I was foolish enough
to want to go to the war. But your father has shown me where my duty
lies. So while he’s down South there, putting a new polish on the old
fighting Brinton name, I’m going to make things easier for him by
staying here and taking care of the folks he loves. It isn’t such a poor
rôle if I can play it right.
“Look!” he broke off, pointing to the nearer of the two drilling
companies in strong disfavor. “See how those fellows are doing the
‘double!’ It’s a crime. That step will shake the backbones out of them
and knock out their strength and ginger in half a mile. What fool of a
drillmaster is that, anyhow, not to teach them to come down on the ball
of the foot when they double? They’re as flat-footed as a batch of
Digger Indians. Why, down in Mexico, we could keep at the double for
three miles without getting winded.”
“And didn’t the greasers who were chasing you get winded either?” asked
Jimmie in ponderous innocence.
Dad pulled one of the boy’s outstanding ears with finely simulated fury,
grinning broadly in spite of himself at the pert question.
“No, son,” he said. “It was the other way around. The best army will
have to run sometimes. But down there, under Zach Taylor, it just
happened that we did all our running forward. Even at Buena Vista, where
they were five to our one.
“Lad, I’ll never forget that day while there’s a wheeze of breath left
in me. We woke up in the morning after a big rain. We were all sopping
and chilled. And we found the greasers had made a forced march, and that
they’d hemmed us in the big hacienda where we were camped. They had us
right in the hollow of their hands. Five to one. And all the advantage
of position, too, do you see?
“Old Uncle Zach was sitting on a soap-box in front of his tent, trying
to mow a week’s beard with a dull razor. He was barefoot, and in a pair
of butternut pants and a red undershirt. Up rides a tailor’s dummy of a
Mexican adjutant, under a flag of truce. Looked as if he’d been born in
a bandbox. He salutes, haughty like, and asks:
“‘Do I address El Comandante Zaccaria Taylor?’
“‘Uh-huh’ grunts Taylor, scraping away hopeless like at his stiff gray
stubble.
“‘The illustrious Generalissimo Santa Anna bids me say to you,’ goes on
the tailor’s dummy, ‘that you are irretrievably in his power.’
“‘All right,’ says Uncle Zach, tugging at his razor. ‘Let him come
along, then, and get me, if that’s the case. I’m right here.’
“Half an hour later they charged us. It looked like a million-to-one
shot, with no takers. Along toward afternoon, when we’d been fighting
till we were half-dead, a staff officer said to me:
“‘Taylor’s been beaten to a standstill no less than three times to-day!’
“‘Yes,’ said I, grinning back at him; ‘but he doesn’t know it.’
“And no more he did. By night the Mexican army was smashed like a basket
of eggs that have fallen under a road roller.
“That’s the whole secret, son--not to know when you’re licked. Maybe a
man can put up as pretty a fight, in his own way, right here at home, as
if he were riding a white horse and waving a thirty-dollar sword. I’m
going to try to, anyhow.”
“If it’s good enough for you, Dad,” sighed the boy, “I guess it’s good
enough for me. We’ll make a try at it, anyhow.”
“That’s the hero-talk,” approved his grandfather. “We’ll be General
Jimmie and Colonel Dad. And each evening we’ll have a military
conference, and report to each other the day’s victories and reverses.
Let’s see if we can’t make it a line of victories as unbroken as Uncle
Zach’s, down in Mexico. The crowd won’t be cheering us; but something
clear down inside of us will. Shall we try?”
The boy drew himself up at attention.
“I approve your plan, colonel!” he rasped out, military fashion. “It is
worthy of the man who helped Uncle Zach lick the greasers. We’re going
to win out on this campaign. Take your post, sir, and report to me this
evening.”
CHAPTER VII
LEFT BEHIND
Main Street was alive with bunting and with multicolored dresses. Across
the thoroughfare hung banners. Flags were draped from window to window.
The sidewalks were jammed with people whose attire was gay and whose
faces were sad.
From the square at last came the fife-and-drum notes of “The Girl I Left
Behind Me.” The Ideala Cornet Band took up the strains--half a beat
behind. The waiting sidewalk crowds massed to the curb; and Ideala’s
twelve policemen were sore put to it to maintain the lines.
Down Main Street, from the square, toward the river wharf where they
were to embark for Columbus, marched Ideala’s two recruit companies. The
uniforms were new--glaringly new--and as ill fitting as cheap government
contract’s ingenuity could make them.
One hundred and ninety-four men, their muskets shouldered, their backs
galled by the unwonted chafing of new haversacks, their feet already
flinching from the harsh caress of loose army shoes, strode eastward
between the double lines of spectators.
The men were still painfully conscious of themselves and their aspect.
The art of keeping step was still new to them.
Wherefore they walked--not marched--with stiff bodies and compass legs.
Such of them as might survive would march home with a mile-eating swing
of leg and body, and with a gait that involved the maximum of speed to
the minimum of effort. But only months of campaigning could teach them
that motion.
As the foremost rank turned into Main Street a thousand waving
handkerchiefs caught the sunlight. A great, ragged cheer went up. A
cheer to which wet-eyed, flushed women lent a shrill treble sub-tone.
The procession had scarce covered two hundred yards when it came to a
shuffling and unsteady halt.
Something blocked its path. Something that seemed to have the right of
way.
Debouching from a side street, and crossing Main Street to the opposite
egress, crept a hearse, dourly resplendent in its sable panoply of plume
and polished glass. Behind moved a line of musty black coaches filled
with folk in mourning. The single touch of color was a little
half-masted American flag carried by a crape-hatted foot mourner at the
extreme rear of the cortège.
For the man who went to-day to his burial was Captain Otis, commander of
the first militia company that Ideala had sent forth. He had been
invalided home, a bullet in his lungs, directly after the battle of Bull
Run. And, two days ago, he had died.
The recruits, as, halted, they watched the gruesome counter-parade cross
their line of march, lost some of the patriotically eager look their
faces had worn. From the crowd on the sidewalks went up something very
like a groan. Then came a ruffle of half-stifled sobs.
The funeral had rubbed a black smear across the occasion’s glitter.
People all at once began to realize what war meant, and just what their
husbands and fathers and sons were facing.
An old woman on the curb’s edge reached forth a timid hand and touched
the shoulder of a gray-bearded recruit who had halted near her. He
turned, momentarily forgetting newly acquired discipline; and they
looked into each other’s time-scarred faces. Then the man shifted
slightly from his place in the ranks and, as she leaned forward, kissed
her.
A younger woman--brave in yellow organdy with red ribbons--at sight of
the kiss broke into unrestrained weeping and threw her arms about the
neck of a man in the next rank--the husband she had married but three
months earlier and who was never to see their child.
In the instant a score of women had invaded the carefully aligned ranks;
and the sound of strangled weeping rose clamorously to high heaven.
“Company, _attention_!” bellowed a right-amateurish militia captain.
“Carry _arms_! Present _arms_! Left shoulder--_arms_! Forrerd--_march_!”
The funeral had passed. Once more the fife-and-drum corps and the
Ideala Cornet Band--still a half-beat at variance--struck up “The Girl I
Left Behind Me.”
The invading women scuttled back to the sidewalk, crying and protesting.
The two companies caught step and moved forward with their former stiff
and unaccustomed stride.
And so down the street they passed, and to the wharf, where awaited the
river transport that was to bear them to the recruiting camp at
Columbus.
The occasion was over. Some of the crowd followed the soldiers to the
river. The rest broke into oddly silent and disorganized groups and
melted away.
Dad, tightening his grip on Jimmie’s hand, turned out of Main Street and
set his face toward the big house on the hill--his assigned post of war
duty.
Mrs. Joseph Brinton had not been in the throng on the sidewalks. She did
not like crowds. They made her head ache. Nor did she believe in public
exhibition of one’s feelings. So her good-by to her professionally
patriotic husband had occurred behind closed doors in the big house, an
hour earlier.
Dad and Jimmie had taken up a strategic position on the most promising
street corner, however, and had seen everything. The old man was
curiously silent as they turned away. But the boy was bubbling over with
words and excitement.
“Gee, but it was great, Dad!” he exploded. “Finer’n any circus parade
that ever struck this town. Only, did you hear how rottenly Hank Ebbets
played the snare-drum? If I couldn’t hammer a drum better’n he does I’d
learn to knit instead. I can play the drum all around any feller in that
corps. And I never had a lesson, either. I just picked it up. The leader
says I’m a ‘natural-born drummer.’ I wish I could be thumping a drum
down South there, this minute, in a battle.”
“Insubordination, general!” reproved Dad, his voice a trifle husky.
“Against our agreement. Seventeen more forbidden wishes like that and
you’ll have to order yourself court-martialed.”
“I forgot. I’m sorry. Say, father looked el’gant in his uniform, didn’t
he? Had it made to order. I heard a man behind us say a funny thing when
father marched past. Someone said: ‘Joseph Brinton is more patriotic
than I thought.’ And this other feller says: ‘Patriotic for revenue
only.’ What does ‘patriotic for revenue only’ mean, Dad?”
“It means too much nowadays, son. But it doesn’t mean your father. You
can bet on that. He’s a true fighting Brinton. Right down to the ground.
I used to be afraid he wasn’t. But that just shows how wrong a
suspicious old fool can be.”
“Wasn’t it a shame the way that horrible funeral tried to spoil the
procession?” exclaimed Jimmie, off on a new tack. “What did it have to
traipes across the route for, just when we were having such a good time
cheering?”
“When you grow up,” said Dad, “you’ll find that’s a way funerals
have--and, oftenest, funerals that go by other names.”
They had gained the hill’s summit, and had turned in at the gate of a
house whose architecture in garish ugliness outdid that of nearly all
its pretentious neighbors. Jimmie opened the front door without ceremony
and stood aside to let Dad pass in.
“Your headquarters, colonel!” he announced proudly. “You are hereby
placed in full command of the Brinton corps. Take your post.”
Dad stepped in and stood for an instant within the broad hall.
The big and overfurnished rooms filled him, as always, with a sort of
awe. He had long since offered Joseph the solid, early Victorian and
Georgian furniture his own mother had so prized. But Marcia, who had
once lived in the metropolis of Cincinnati and was an authority on all
matters of taste, had rejected the offer.
Mahogany, she declared, was hideously old fashioned, and rosewood was
worse. Also, Sheraton and Hepplewhite styles had forever gone out; and
no up-to-date home could afford to harbor their makers’ works.
So the antique lumber had gone in ignominy to storage, and the big house
was outfitted with the most ultramodern gems of furniture from
Cincinnati, Chicago, and even far-off New York.
Dad was to-day sensible, as never before, of the grandeur of his
surroundings. The marble-topped center tables, the plush chairs and
lambrequins, the art plaques and Rogers groups, all struck him afresh
with their splendor.
He felt a vague thrill of pride that he was chosen as master _pro tem_.
of it all. He hoped that Stage and the rest of the Eagle’s habitués
would appreciate how great a dignity was his. He had taken good care
that all of them should know of his new trusteeship.
He must be seen less in their company, he reflected. The master of the
big house on the hill did not belong in a barroom. His visits to the
Eagle must be fewer and less protracted.
He must do nothing to shake the sudden respect and desire for his
presence wherewith his daughter-in-law had so recently become imbued.
As Dad hesitated in the hallway, Jimmie behind him, just then from one
of the rear rooms Marcia Brinton appeared.
Dad, as he stepped toward her, tried to inject something of chivalric
protection and fatherliness into the greeting he tendered this
daughter-in-law of whom he had always been more than a little afraid.
“I have not had a chance,” he began rather pompously, “to tell you in
person how I appreciate the honor you have done me in choosing me to
represent your home and to look after its interests and yours in Joe’s
absence. Though I asked Joe to say so for me. I shall do all I can to
take his place worthily as head of the house and to serve you in every
way in my power.”
Mrs. Brinton made no immediate answer, but looked at the elderly and not
over-neat figure before her.
Her lips were thin. So was her nose. Her alert eyes showed no traces of
tears.
Presently she spoke.
“You seem to have a false idea of your position here,” she said. “I
don’t know what gloss Joseph may have put on my request that you stay in
this house while he is away. But I think it is always better to be
honest and to have a mutual understanding in advance.”
“But I don’t understand,” faltered Dad. “I--”
“I don’t wish to hurt your feelings,” she continued. “But, as I said, it
is best to be honest and above-board. I told Joseph you had better stay
here, so that there would be fewer chances of your--of your doing what
might pass discredit on us while he is away. And I told him there were
many light bits of work by which you could make yourself useful to me
and avoid the idleness that might send you into bad companionship. I
hope you will not abuse my trust; or add to my annoyances in any way.”
“I--I shall try not to,” said Dad dazedly.
“And now,” added Marcia briskly, “I’ll have to ask you to get your
dinner down-town to-day. My brother and his wife are dining with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” assented the old man.
CHAPTER VIII
COUNCIL OF WAR
Dad lay on a bed a little too short for him and looked up wide-eyed at
the rafters above his head.
The room to which Marcia had assigned him was under the eaves and had
not yet been ceiled. Through its one window poured in a flood of summer
moonlight.
To the old campaigner the bare quarters were not physically
uncomfortable. He had slept--and slept snug--in worse beds, and indeed
in no bed at all.
But his thoughts were stretching him on a couch of fire.
Now that the miserable day was over, he had time to think, time to
realize. And his reflections turned him heart-sick. At times he would
sink into an apathy of misery. Again a wave of angry shame would scourge
him.
This was his post of responsibility, of protectorship--to be assigned to
the office of unpaid servant and unwelcome hanger-on in the house of his
own son! To endure weeks, perhaps months of snubs, of petty insults, of
orders worse than insults. To have his cronies of the Eagle see him
pottering around town on household errands such as in those days were
usually performed in Ideala by negro servants.
He could hear in anticipation old Stage’s disgusting toothful chuckle.
To drink he had turned for refuge, in every crisis or bitterness, for
the past fourteen years. And to drink and its nepenthe his mind now
rushed. He was prompted to get up and dress and go to the Eagle. The
barroom there would not be closed for another half-hour.
Then he remembered that Marcia, following her nightly custom, had locked
the lower doors and had put their keys into her housewife-bag. The lower
windows, too, were lock-shuttered.
There was, clearly, no egress by the ordinary route.
As difficulties arose, his thirst increased with them, and grew to a
gnawing, sentient thing. And with added desire came calculation.
Before going to bed he had looked out of the window at the moonlit town
below. And subconsciously he had noted the stout iron waterpipe--nearly
a foot wide, including its supports--that ran transversely down the
eaves, crossing just under the window and extending at the same angle to
within a few feet of the ground, before turning and going directly
downward.
An agile and cool-headed man might readily descend by means of this
pipe. Whether or not he could return by the same route was quite another
problem and one that the man’s rapidly wakening drink-lust did not
trouble to take into account.
At worst he would be but anticipating a disgrace that was morally
certain to come, soon or late.
Dad raised himself on his elbow. As he did so the door of his room
opened and closed in utter noiselessness, and a square-shouldered little
figure clad in white stood beside his bed.
“I knew I’d find you awake,” whispered Jimmie, perching on the bed’s
edge. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Dad. I wanted to tell you before. But mother
kept me in the room all the time the folks were here. It’s awful hard
lines.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Dad, with an effort at philosophy.
“I got a hint of how it was going to be,” said the boy. “I heard mother
and father talking. But I didn’t have the sand to tell you when you were
so tickled at being asked here. And, anyway, I didn’t know how bad it
would turn out. Mother is--”
“Mother is mother, Jim. Let’s try to remember that. She’s a good woman.
She means it all for the best.”
“You told me once that Uncle Zach Taylor said the hot place was paved
with the failures of folks who ‘meant it all for the best,’ Dad.”
“He never meant people like your mother, son. She does what she thinks
is right. Remember we’re soldiers, you and I. And when soldiers are
expecting a square meal and the commissary train gets lost they don’t
whine. They just buckle their belts tighter and keep on the best they
can. That’s the way it’s got to be with me for a while. It can’t be
helped, and--”
“It _can_ be helped, Dad. That’s why I sneaked in here to-night. We got
to hold a council of war, you and I. And I guess I’m the one with the
only idea.”
“Fire away, general, but make it brief. It’s time little boys--I mean
little generals--were asleep.”
“No,” contradicted Jimmie. “It’s time they woke up, if they’re going to
save Colonel Brinton. Listen, Dad: how far did you tell me you tramped
in one day when you went on that hunting trip last April? Twenty-two
miles, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, about twenty-two. Why?”
“Tuckered out after it?”
“Not a bit. You see, I’m used to exercise. And the work I do in my
garden keeps me in pretty good shape. But why--”
“Dad, you can’t stay here.”
“What? Has your mother--”
“She hasn’t said a thing. I guess there’s nothing left for her to say.
She’s said about everything already. But you can’t. It will be like
being in jail. You saw how it was to-day. Well, it’ll be like that
to-morrow and the next day and the next day after that and all the days.
And it’ll keep getting worse.”
The old man shuddered involuntarily at the prospect.
Jimmie pressed his advantage.
“There’s just one thing you got to do, colonel,” he declared, “you got
to break prison.”
“To--”
“Yep. To--to absquatulate. To run away.”
“Jimmie! I--”
“Wait a second. I’m the general and this is a council of war. You got to
run away. I’ve planned it all out. And I’ve planned where you’ve got to
run away to.”
“Where, general?” asked Dad in mild amusement as the boy paused for
dramatic effect. “To sea, or the North Pole, or--”
“To the front!”
“Don’t, son!” expostulated Dad in sharp pain. “Don’t talk that way.”
“Why not? You said you’d stay here because you thought you could be of
use to mother. Well, you see what kind of use you are to her and how
much she’d miss you if you were gone. Say, Dad--colonel--honest, I hate
like poison to hurt your feelings by talking like that, but it’s true.
So why don’t you hike out for the front? You’re crazy to go to the war.
Just as I am. Only, you can do it and I can’t. No one’s got the right to
stop _you_ or pack you back to school.”
Dad fell back on the hard pillow, again staring wide-eyed up at the bare
rafters. The drink-longing had left him, driven out by a fifty-fold
stronger yearning.
“To go to the front!” he muttered.
“That’s it,” encouraged Jimmie. “That’s the idea, Dad. Why don’t you?”
Dad sighed, the bright vision fading.
“I can’t, boy,” he said simply.
“Because--” began Jimmie with a queer shyness, “because you think maybe
they wouldn’t take you back?”
“You’ve guessed it, son.”
Jimmie reached forward and patted the man’s cheek in rough sympathy.
“I know,” he answered. “It’s a rotten shame. But I’ve thought all that
out, too. I got the idea to-night when Uncle Cephus was telling how a
boy up at Cleveland ran away to the war--under another name.”
“Another name?” repeated Dad, a confused hope jumping into life within
him.
“That’s it. Now the gov’ment was silly enough not to want
Lieutenant-Colonel Brinton back in the army. Even as a private, most
likely. But how is the gov’ment going to know you’re Lieutenant-Colonel
James Brinton unless you tell ’em so? Why, there ain’t a chance in a
billion you’ll run across anyone you used to know. And if you did--well,
a man changes a whole lot in fourteen years. I know _I_ have.”
The veteran’s mind blazed with the new thought--a plan so simple, so
safe, so feasible that he marveled at his own drink-dulled brain for not
sooner seizing upon it.
Details were still in a jumble; but the basic thought possessed him to
the very soul.
“I read in the _Herald_,” went on Jimmie, his voice cracking with
excitement, “that there’s a new recruiting camp at Cincinnati. Go there.
It’s only forty miles. You can make it in two days easy. And there you
won’t run into any of the home folks. They’re all enlisting at
Columbus.”
Dad was sitting bolt upright in bed, his every nerve tense. Twenty years
had tumbled from his suddenly straightened shoulders.
“Jimmie!” he gasped. “Jimmie! Oh, son, you’re a wonder!”
“You--you’ll _do_ it, Dad?” cried the boy.
“Do it?” echoed Brinton. “_Yes!_”
The boy gave his grandfather a rapturous hug and squealed aloud in glee.
“Mother won’t be very nice about it,” he said presently, “but--”
“No,” agreed Dad, a shade of his elation ebbing. “She won’t. I hadn’t
thought of that. That’ll be the only hard part of it all. Somehow, son,
I’m such a rank old coward I’d rather face a dozen crazy men armed with
knives than one terribly good woman armed with a righteous temper. But
I’ll have to go through with it some way. I’ll speak to her the first
thing in the morning.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But how--”
“Remember the night I went cat-fishing with you? Well, how do you s’pose
I got out of the house? By that window just behind you. I shinned down
the water-pipe. It’s dead easy. _I_ did it. I stump _you_ to. Right this
very night. It isn’t twelve o’clock yet. You could be ten miles out of
town before to-morrow morning at sunrise.”
Dad was on his feet, drawing on his clothes with the careful haste of a
veteran.
“I’ll do it!” he said, feeling delightfully like a runaway schoolboy.
“I’ll do it, Jimmie. Oh, lad, you’re such a little brick!”
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” adjured Jimmie. “There’s something else
you’ve got to think of. What name are you going to have them call you?”
“Any name will do,” said Brinton impatiently as he bent to lace his
shoes. “John Smith is as good as another, I suppose.”
“Well, you s’pose wrong,” chided Jimmie. “S’pose an off’cer or one of
the men says: ‘Hey, there, Smith!’ Half the time you won’t remember
you’re John Smith at all, and you won’t know enough to answer. And then
everybody’ll know it isn’t your own name.”
“That’s so!” laughed Brinton. “I’ll have to teach myself my new name as
I go along. That’ll be the way to get around _that_!”
“It takes an awful long time to get used to a name,” philosophized
Jimmie. “Even now, when mother calls me ‘James’ I don’t always catch on,
because I’m so much useder to being Jimmie.
“But I’ve thought out that, too. You’re name is Dadd. D-A-D-D. You
pronounce it just the same as D-A-D. James Dadd. It ain’t as swell a
name as Claude Reginald de Montmorency. But it’s safer.
“You see,” he explained, “when anyone calls you ‘James,’ then, or
‘Dadd,’ why, you’ll be so used to both names that you’ll answer to
either of ’em right straight off without having to stop to think about
it at all. That’s the idea. Do you see what I mean?”
“Jimmie,” said Dad, with heartfelt conviction, “if you had one speck
more sense your brain would explode! I take off my hat to you. You’re
not a wonder. You’re two wonders--even three. James Dadd it shall be.”
Fully dressed now, he paused, and, dropping his hands on his grandson’s
shoulders, looked down at the ugly, earnest little face upturned to his
own in the white moonshine that filtered into the room.
“My boy,” he said very tenderly, very earnestly, “the Book of Books says
something about ‘out of the mouths of babes.’ And, as usual, the Book is
right. For fourteen years I’ve been wandering off the path and into
dirtier sloughs than you’d understand about if I were to tell you.
To-night you’ve put my feet on the firm, hard road again. And, please
God, they’ve strayed from it for the last time.
“I’m no hand at sermonizing, and this is no time to preach. But I’m
going to make up for what I’ve lost. I’m going to make you proud of me.
I’m going to serve this dear country of ours as only a man who loves her
as I do _can_ serve her. I’m going to break with the worthless sot I’ve
been for fourteen years. And I’m going to win back so help me! I’m going
to be a man--a _man_!”
He paused, his clasp tightening on his little grandson’s shoulders, the
expression in his eyes as he looked down into the still rigidly
upturned face before him softening to warmer tenderness.
“And, son, it’s you who have shown me the way. Just remember that
always. And--if it turns out that I shouldn’t happen to come back, just
remember it’s the cleanest, whitest way a man could wish to die. And
remember, then, that it’ll some day be your turn to take the place
that’s come down to you through the generations--to be a Fighting
Brinton.”
His voice choked. Stooping down, he kissed the boy; then, lightly as a
man of twenty, he swung over the sill and let himself down to the pipe
below.
* * * * *
Dad halted in his long, nervous stride; turned and looked back.
He had reached the highest ground in the lowland region; the top of a
low, rolling hillock. Five miles away, in the valley, lay Ideala, the
town he had quitted less than an hour and a half earlier.
Under the flood of summer moonlight it lay, it’s ugly lines almost
beautiful in the soft radiance.
Dad gazed long and earnestly at the town that had been his home since
babyhood; the town whose foremost merchant and leading citizen he had
once been; the town that had laughingly witnessed his disgrace and had
for fourteen miserable years been the scene of his daily degradation.
He looked back at the place with much the feeling wherewith a released
soul might view the twisted and crippled body that had so long been its
prison-house.
The disgrace, the sneers, the shame, dulled by liquor--all were things
of the past. Ahead--somewhere to the southward--lay a new world, a new
career, a new chance under a new name. The shackles had been struck
away. The convict was free.
Dad’s keen eyes traced the bulk of a big house on a rise of ground at
the town’s northern end. In a room of that house a boy was lying awake,
praying for the good fortune of his grandfather. A boy--the only being
on earth who loved James Brinton and whom James Brinton loved.
Unwitting his own quick impulse, the man fell heavily to his knees,
gripped his hands tight across his chest, and stared up into the
moon-illumined sky.
“God bless him and keep him!” he muttered incoherently.
“God bless my little boy and make me halfway the man he thinks I am!”
A spasm as of physical pain seized and shook the kneeling man. The very
depths were stirred.
Something to which he had long been a stranger possessed and mastered
him. His eyes still upraised, the white moon glare beating upon his
face, he spoke aloud--spoke as though addressing a visible friend, not
an unseen God.
“You’ve lifted me out of the mire,” he breathed. “You have shown me the
light after all these black years. You have given me the chance to
strike for this country that You made free and great. Make my deeds
thank You as my words can’t!”
The voice ceased; then continued once more, firm yet vibrant with mighty
emotion:
“You have made good Your promise that ‘a little child shall lead them.’
A child has been Your instrument in starting me in the right direction.
Keep me on that road, nor let my grosser self triumph over my manhood
again. I offer my life to You--it is all I have to offer in atonement.
Make it clean and strong as once it was. Give me the chance to lay it on
Your altar as a sacrifice to liberty and patriotism. Oh, teach me to
deserve the chance that has come to me this night!”
He rose to his feet, full of a strange, exalted calm. He felt that every
word of his heart-wrung prayer had reached beyond the frontier of the
star country overhead and to the very throne of the Hearer and Answerer.
Somewhere on that dusty, moonlit road Dad Brinton, town drunkard, was
forever left behind.
And hastening blithely to his country’s service marched James Dadd, army
recruit!
CHAPTER IX
A LESSON IN MANNERS
Ten days later an interminably long transport-train puffed out of the
Cincinnati station. Its three engines were gay in polished brass and red
smokestacks. All three were decked with sooty American flags.
At the station a brass band was braying and a brazen-lunged crowd was
still cheering, for this was the first of the several troop-trains,
bearing drafts of recruits from Cincinnati to the training-camps outside
of Washington.
The day was stiflingly hot. The wooden cars were packed to overflowing.
When the windows were closed the air promptly became unbreathable. When
they were open a whirlwind of soft-coal embers and soot from the gaudy
locomotive gushed in.
The recruits, however, were as jubilant as though they were starting on
a picnic.
Singly there were choking memories of dear ones left behind, and there
was perhaps dread of what might lie before. But collectively all was
noisy, even boisterous, gayety.
One car, whose occupants were largely recruited from Cincinnati
water-front and similar purlieus, was deafeningly rackety. Songs,
cheers, catcalls, horseplay, and the more or less surreptitious
circulation of flat, brown flasks were the chief components of the fun.
The officers in charge, acting on a hint from headquarters not to press
too heavily the lever of discipline until the recruits should reach the
training-camps, did little to suppress the jolly riot in this particular
car.
Yet as the racket swelled they exchanged many uneasy looks.
They themselves were for the most part civilians, still new to martial
ways and to the handling of men. Wherefore, they had gathered in the
officers’ compartment at the forward end of the troop-car, where there
was at least breathing room, and left the men pretty much to themselves.
A new-made militia major went through the car, glaring sternly from side
to side, at a loss for the exact words wherewith to restore quiet. As he
passed there was but slight lessening of the din, and as he entered the
officers’ compartment the horseplay broke out afresh.
A drillmaster, ranking as first lieutenant and veteran of the Mexican
War, looked up as the major entered.
“A few of those fellows need a taste of the cells or the log and chain,”
hazarded the lieutenant. “And they’ll get plenty of both if they keep up
this sort of thing after we reach the camps. It seems a pity we were
ordered to go easy with them on the trips.”
“It’s mostly that big bargemaster who enlisted last week,” said the
major. “You remember? The fellow you told me about--the one who smuggled
a flask of whisky onto the parade-grounds and tried to drink during
drill? He’s cast himself for the rôle of village cut-up. He starts the
noise every time. His latest feat is to pelt one of the older men with
peanut-shells. He picked out the meekest-looking, oldest man in sight, I
suppose, to make the sport safer. Every shot brings a laugh and every
hit a chorus of yells.”
The lieutenant glanced out of the compartment and down the length of the
thronged car.
“It’s a dirty shame,” he reported as he drew back from investigating.
“He’s chosen as his butt one of the finest old fellows in all the draft
of recruits. A man I’ve had my eye on since the day he joined. A man
with a mystery behind him, I should say.”
“Who?” asked the major, waking to mild interest at the magic word
“mystery.” “The old codger the bargee is pelting? Seems a harmless,
unromantic sort of fellow.”
“He joined a little over a week ago,” replied the lieutenant. “I was
cranky that day, and I hated to see a gray-haired man among the rookies
I was drilling, for the old ones are awkwardest and take twice as long
to learn the simplest tactics as the young chaps. But he’d passed the
physical exam, and had been sworn in, so I tried to make the best of it.
But, as it turned out, I didn’t have to.”
“Why not?”
“I put him in an ‘awkward squad’ and started in to teach the squad how
to stand and how to step out. Well, the instant this old man ‘fell in’ I
saw he was a soldier. I yanked him out of that awkward squad in five
seconds and put him in a company. I kept on watching him. He had the
tactics down to his finger-ends. I’ve used him two or three times at a
pinch to help me drill awkward squads.”
“Nothing very mysterious about that, is there?” yawned the major. “I’ve
read several more thrilling mystery stories by Poe and Gaboriau.”
“The mystery is this,” said the lieutenant, ignoring the elephantine
sarcasm. “I can’t get him to admit he’s ever served before. He just shut
up like a clam when I asked him. His name is Dadd--James Dadd. I took
the bother to look up the name on the old army rolls. There’s never been
such a name in the United States army. He isn’t a foreigner, either.”
“May be serving under another name,” suggested the major, whom the story
did not at all interest.
“Is it probable? Nowadays men are only too anxious to be known as
enlisting for the flag. And there are big chances for promotion for men
who have served before. He wouldn’t be likely to miss those chances by
changing his name and refusing to admit he was a veteran. No, it’s a bit
mysterious. And--”
A redoubled chorus of yells from the car brought the several officers in
the compartment instinctively to their feet. Crowding to the door, they
peered out over each other’s shoulders into the traveling bedlam.
The humorist had just put a capstone on his achievement of wit by
creeping slyly up behind the old man whom he had been bombarding with
peanut-shells, and emptying the entire residue of the paper-bag’s
contents down the back of his patient victim’s neck.
The exploit brought forth tumultuous applause from the uncouth crowd of
onlookers near by.
Dad, who had smiled amusedly as each peanut of the earlier volleys had
chanced to hit him, now laughed aloud in tolerant mirth. He had seen
new-comers far more mercilessly hazed in his earlier army days. To him
the rude fun was the mere animal spirit of a gathering of children, bent
on larking it while out for a holiday.
And while he did not greatly enjoy the task of scraping harsh
peanut-shells from between his collar and his neck, it struck him as
decidedly amusing that a full-grown man like this partly drunk bargee
should find joy in such foolishness and that others should deem it funny
enough to send them into recurrent and boisterous guffaws.
He was glad, though, that they could laugh. It would shift their
thoughts from the grief of leave-taking. He was quite willing to be the
butt of their laughter so long as it served so good a purpose.
The bargee, however, was far from pleased at his victim’s tolerant
attitude. He would have preferred to see the old man stamp and swear in
impotent rage or mumble piteously futile threats at his tormentor.
To achieve some such end he came around in front of Dad and, hands on
hips, leered down at the pleasantly smiling target of his clownish
activities.
“Well, gran’pa,” said he, “ain’t you goin’ to thank me for them generous
gifts I been lavishin’ so freehanded and kind on you?”
“Certainly,” agreed Dad. “Much obliged, my friend. Only you mistook the
location of my mouth. It’s in front here, not at the back of my neck, as
you seem to have made the mistake of thinking.”
Some one tittered at this very mild pleasantry.
The titter nettled the bargee. He desired a monopoly of laughs, and
through vexation his merrymaking at once assumed a more caustic tone.
“Kind of a smart Abe, ain’t ye?” he queried. “Guess that kind o’ talk
passes for funny back in the Old Men’s Home, don’t it? Or did they dig
you up out of somebody’s fam’ly vault?”
“Aw, drop it, Cy!” expostulated a softer-hearted recruit across the
aisle.
“That’s right,” assented the bargee. “He may be somebody’s
great-great-granddaddy. Gran’ma starved him and larruped him with a
broom-handle back home, so he run away to get a square feed at Uncle
Sammy’s expense. Ain’t that the way of it, gran’pa?”
“Sonny,” replied Dad, still smiling and in perfect good nature, “I ran
away because somebody stole my comic almanac, and I couldn’t get on
without it. I missed it a lot--till I met you.”
The titter rose again, this time swelled by several voices. The bargee
reddened as he sought to digest the dubious repartee.
Nevertheless, he essayed to answer the none too subtle gibe in like
vein.
“It’s bad enough,” he grumbled, “to stand up and get shot at for
thirteen dollars a month. But when we’ve got to stomach an old goat like
you, along with the job, by gollies, it adds new horrors to war! You
talk like you’re the same breed as old monkey-faced Abe, down there in
Washington.”
The smile was wiped clean off Dad’s face now. His eyes were cold, and
his mouth was set in a very straight, thin line.
“My friend,” he said with slow gravity, “you don’t realize what you are
saying. So I will explain to you, if you will let me. President Abraham
Lincoln is commander-in-chief of the army to which you have sworn
allegiance. In speaking of your commander-in-chief as you have just
done, you do not insult _him_--he is too high for insults to reach
him--but you insult your army, and likewise your own self-respect. You
didn’t stop to think of that when you spoke, did you? I’m sure you
didn’t. But you will another time.”
The bargee’s head shot forward from between his suddenly hunched
shoulders. There was a menacing scowl on his low, receding brow, below
which his eyes had narrowed to pinpoints that gleamed redly.
“I don’t want no lectures,” he snarled, “from any fat-headed old
blowhard.” Angry, the bargee, nevertheless, rejoiced in secret that at
last he had aroused his foe from his former kindly calm. “And I’ve got a
right to speak my opinions as I choose to. This is a free country. Or it
was till they stuck up a lantern-jawed, backwoods booby in the
President’s chair. That’s some more of my opinions; how d’ye like that?”
Somebody hissed. The hiss was taken up from various parts of the car.
But at the next moment every man was on his feet; and on the instant
hush that had fallen a hundred necks were craned.
With almost incalculable swiftness Dad had sprung up and faced the
bargee. The latter, reading the white-fire message in the lately kind
blue eyes, hesitated not the fraction of a second, but struck out
instinctively.
The hamlike fist swished portentously through the air.
But the air was all it encountered. Dad, ducking the blow, ran in.
Before the bargee could grapple, he was lifted bodily on high.
Down he came. Not to the floor, but to a bended knee that caught him
lengthwise athwart the middle of the body. The bargee doubled, face
downward, across Dad’s knee--like a jack-knife.
One iron hand on the back of his fat neck pinioned his head to the
floor. With the other hand Dad smote--smote again, and yet again and
again.
Wide-handed he struck and with open palm on the portion of the bargee’s
anatomy which, in that position, presented the largest and, in all
respects, the most convenient striking surface.
The blows of the spanking resounded like prolonged theater applause. The
bargee struggled and writhed and kicked. But all in vain. The hand and
arm that held him fast were as strong as they were deft.
With no shadow of annoyance on his handsome face, Dad continued to
spank, while the car shook with howls of delight from a hundred
throats--howls that quite downed the bargee’s lurid vocabulary.
At length Dad paused. Palm significantly upraised, he asked gently:
“President Lincoln is a great man, isn’t he?”
“Y-yes,” groaned the bargee, after a moment of hesitation.
“You’ll never forget that again?”
“No.”
“I’m glad. Get up now, and let’s be friends. Won’t you share my seat?
Or--perhaps, under the circumstances, you’ll feel more comfortable to
stand up for a while.”
CHAPTER X
SERGEANT DADD
A sea of pale-green sward, bathed in a drift of pink-white
apple-blossoms. Above, the softest of blue spring skies.
In the middle distance the hazy mountains brave in their spring panoply.
And, between mountains and apple-orchard, a line of trampled
grain-fields, sown now with hundreds of sprawling dead men in dark blue
and in light gray.
Back of the glowing white orchard a dingy white city that had sprung to
life overnight. A city of many long streets, each lined with battered
canvas tents.
Over one of these tents--a tent large and less dingy than its humbler
fellows--floated an American flag topped by a gilded eagle. The veriest
three-month recruit would have known the tent by its insignia as the
temporary abode of the general commanding.
Through the opening made by the pinned-back flap the interior was
visible. At the back was a cot; beside it a shabby campaign trunk.
In the tent’s center was a collapsible table, at which, on a campaign
stool, sat a bearded man in a gold-laced blue coat which bore the rank
mark of a general officer of the Union army.
At attention in front of the general stood a tall, wiry man, bronzed of
face, his grizzled hair close clipped, his eye the eye of a boy.
Sergeant’s stripes adorned the arm of his fatigue jacket.
Few of the old Eagle Hotel coterie back in Ideala would have recognized
at a glance, in the trim, alert figure, their old crony, the portly and
shambling Dad.
The loose flesh that had accumulated during fourteen years of bibulous
indulgence had vanished; to be replaced by hard muscle. The alcohol had
been utterly banished from his system by nine months of hard working and
clean, outdoor living.
At Ideala he would have passed for sixty; here for little more than
forty.
“Sergeant Dadd,” said the general, looking up from some papers and maps
on the table as the non-commissioned officer’s shadow fell athwart his
vision, “I have sent for you to act as courier in getting copies of some
important plans through to General Hooker. Your success in carrying a
message across thirty miles of country infested by the enemy’s
skirmishing parties last month has been reported to me. That is why I
have sent for you now.”
Dad’s face did not relax its look of military blankness. But a faint
flush of pleasure tinged the tan of his cheeks.
The general as he spoke was sorting from the heap before him several
papers whereon were written pages, columns of figures and rough-drawn
plans. These he thrust into an envelope, which he triple-sealed with
wax heated in a tallow dip that sputtered for that purpose on one
corner of the table.
Then, addressing the envelope, he sanded it and passed it across the
table into the outstretched hand of Dad.
“To General Hooker himself, and no other,” he said succinctly.
Dad saluted, thrusting the envelope into the bosom of his flannel shirt.
Vaguely he wondered why he, an infantry sergeant, should be chosen for
this task in a camp that bristled with aids and couriers.
His former feat of the sort had been performed in a moment of dire
emergency, for which volunteers had been requested. He had volunteered,
had accomplished the ticklish task, and had thereby won promotion from a
second to a first sergeancy in his company.
But as the general spread out a pocket map on the table and pointed to
the present position of General Hooker’s headquarters, Dad began to
understand why a specially equipped man, instead of an ordinary courier,
had been selected for this particular purpose.
Dad was familiar with the surrounding region. His corps of the Army of
the Potomac had marched and fought and countermarched and bivouacked and
advanced and retreated across nearly every square foot of it for the
past two months.
He saw from a glance at the map the location General Hooker had chosen
for his new headquarters. It was nearly forty miles away, and between it
and the camp behind the apple orchard lay a section of country that the
Confederate victory of the preceding day would set a-swarm with
graycoats.
This battle--whose grim harvest still lay ungathered along the mountain
foot, ten miles distant--had driven back a portion of the Union line
that was seeking to wriggle its way along the Virginia peninsula toward
Richmond.
The several corps were widely scattered.
And in the interstices--notably between this spot and General Hooker’s
headquarters--were masses of Confederate guerrilla-bands, Confederate
skirmish companies, Confederate scout-parties, and even swift-marching
Confederate regiments and brigades.
To cross the intervening space unmolested was an exploit easier for a
high-flying crow to accomplish than for a human being--particularly when
that human being chanced to be a blue-uniformed Yankee soldier.
The general, raising his eyes from the map on which with a pencil-butt
he was tracing the route from start to destination, read in Dad’s eyes
the knowledge of what the journey must mean.
“It is an expedition for a full brigade,” said the general, “or--for one
resourceful man. I do not underestimate the peril of capture, nor do I
formally command you to go. I merely give you a chance to volunteer for
the mission if you wish to assume its responsibilities.”
Dad saluted again.
“I beg to volunteer, sir,” said he with decisive military brevity.
“I was certain you would,” nodded the general. “I made the request as a
technicality. I warn you, sergeant, that the chances of capture are at
least ten to one against you. That is why I wish you to go in uniform.
It may lessen your prospects of success, but in the event of capture you
will be a prisoner of war and not hanged.”
Dad looked more keenly at the speaker. This general of his had not the
reputation of nursing carefully his men’s lives, nor of placing those
lives ahead of successful achievement.
Dad wondered a little at the man’s unusual consideration. But quickly he
dismissed the problem as not only too deep for him, but as immaterial.
He was eager to be off upon this hazardous venture. He knew the country.
He knew his route, and he was anxious to pit his brains and his luck
against whatever foes might infest the intervening districts.
“You ride?” asked the general.
“Yes, sir.”
“You will gain time that way. The risk is greater, but so is the speed.
Go to your quarters and get ready. I will order a fast horse sent there
to you in five minutes. Start at once when it arrives. Well,” he went on
impatiently as Dad hesitated, “what is it?”
“Pardon me, sir,” ventured Dad. “A man who is captured may sometimes get
away, but the papers he has are seized as soon as he is caught. If I am
taken and if I get away again without my papers, is there any verbal
message that I may take to General Hooker? Any outline of the nature of
those plans I am to carry?”
“No!”
The general spoke sharply and in a tone of stark finality, turning his
back on the volunteer courier and resuming his work at the table. His
manner toward him had all at once changed from the unwontedly familiar
to the customarily dictatorial.
Again wondering a little, Dad left the tent and made his way hurriedly
down the camp street to his own company’s quarters.
There it was the work of two minutes to make his soldierly preparations
for the trip.
Then, with nothing to do but to await the arrival of the expected horse,
he filled and lighted a pipe, sat down on a roll of blankets in the tent
doorway, and with a stick fell to tracing in the dirt a line of his
proposed route, that each step of the way might thereafter be fresh in
his mind as he started on his errand.
This act of concentration was by no means easy, for a half score of
lounging infantrymen were lying on the grass near by, smoking and
talking over the events of the preceding day’s battle.
Realizing that a soldier in the ranks knows far less about the actual
actions and effects of a battle in which he has just been engaged than
does the non-combatant stay-at-home who reads a telegraphed account of
it next day in his morning newspaper, Dad gave no particular heed to
their frankly voiced conjectures and boasts.
Presently, as they were discussing a certain disastrous attempt to
rally a retreating regiment, he heard a newly joined member of his
company--who formerly had fought in the army of the West--break loudly
in upon the group’s debating:
“Talk of rallying! We ought to have had Battle Jimmie along. He’d have
drummed that whole skedaddling regiment to a halt in less than no time;
and then he’d have led ’em back to the firing-line, blackguarding them
for a rabble of cowards every step of the way.”
“What’s Battle Jimmie?” drawled a lank New Englander. “That’s a new name
to me. What is it--a dog or a bird or a patent medicine?”
“Don’t know who Battle Jimmie is?” cried the Westerner in scornful
incredulity. “Next you’ll be askin’ who’s Little Mac or Father Abraham
or Fightin’ Joe.”
“Maybe I will at that,” answered the New Englander. “But who the dickens
is--”
“Battle Jimmie? There ain’t a man in the army of the West who’d ask that
question. And yet--I dunno who he is. Nobody does. First time we ever
saw him was back in the late fall. We were chargin’ a line of batteries
on a hill, and as fast as we’d get halfway up the hill we’d break and
scuttle back to cover, which sure wasn’t none too healthy on that
hillside.
“The fourth time we tackled the hill we hadn’t any too much love for the
job, and we began to waver and get unenthusiastic before we’ve gone a
quarter of the distance. Then all of a sudden, skallyhootin’ out of
nowhere, comes Battle Jimmie.
“He’s in a cast-off uniform miles too big for him, and he’s got hold of
a drum somehow or other. And, say, boys, the noise he could tease out of
that old drum was sure a caution to snakes.
“Right in front of our first rank he runs, hammerin’ away at that
blessed drum; chargin’ up the hill ahead of us in a whole beehive of
bullets and grape, yellin’: ‘Come along, you lazy coots! Shake a leg
there! Don’t keep me waitin’ when I get to the top. I don’t want the
bother of havin’ to clean out them Johnnie Reb batteries all by myself!’
“There was one great big laugh went up that was more like a cheer. It
came roarin’ out from the whole line. We forgot to be discouraged any
more, and up the hill we kited after that fool boy and his drum.
“We didn’t stop till we was over the breastworks and right in among the
guns, and the Confeds was scramblin’ out the opposite side to get away.
After that Battle Jimmie could have his pick of anythin’ the army of the
West had in their whole camp--”
The arrival of a roan cavalry charger, led by an orderly, ended the
narrative of Battle Jimmie, so far as Dad was concerned. His mind full
of his mission, he had given little attention to it.
Now, swinging into the saddle, he set off at an easy canter.
Ahead of him lay an errand whose chances of success the general himself
had estimated as one in ten. The prospect of such fearful odds sent a
glad thrill of combat tingling warmly through the veteran.
“Jockeys have won races against bigger odds than that,” he mused
joyously, “with only a purse as reward. It’ll go hard if I can’t do as
well with the country’s fortunes maybe as my stake. I’ll win out, or--I
won’t be alive to know I’m a failure.”
* * * * *
For twenty miles Dad rode in safety.
That did not mean he covered twenty straight-away miles of his journey.
On the contrary, he lessened the distance between himself and Hooker’s
headquarters by less than twelve miles.
Avoiding main roads as far as possible; reconnoitering and then making
détours when danger seemed to threaten or when fresh hoof-marks denoted
the recent passing of cavalrymen; going out of his way to take advantage
of hillock-and-forest shelter--he had almost doubled the distance that
would have been needful had he followed the direct route.
Thus far he had met with no mishap. Once he had plunged into a thicket,
halted abruptly there, and dismounted as a troop of gray-coated patrols
jingled past on the road barely twenty yards distant. Cautiously
reaching downward, he had snatched a handful of sweet fern, and with it
had rubbed his horse’s nostrils; lest the beast catching the scent of
the patrols’ horses, should whinny.
Again he had turned quickly into a high-banked and twisting lane at
sight of a dust-cloud far ahead and thus avoided a battalion of
Jackson’s cavalry.
A third time he had spurred his horse into a gully of red clay on sound
of hoof-beats, just before a band of guerrillas, or bushwhackers, had
cantered by.
His senses super-tense, calling on himself for every scouting trick that
old-time experience could devise, Dad wound his tortuous way safely
through a score of pitfalls that would have entrapped a lesser man.
The farther he rode the more fully he realized the truth of his
general’s forecast that the chances against his winning through to
Hooker were ten to one.
In fact, the prospect of any one’s making the whole trip in safety was
negligible.
The whole countryside was alive with Confederates. Dad could see traces
of their passage everywhere. More than once he was tempted to dismount
and trust to the greater safety, if lesser speed, of a foot journey.
Halting, as usual, before rounding the bend of a byroad, he strained his
ears to catch any sound of riders ahead. There was only the drowsy
spring silence.
He trotted around the wooded curve--and passed four men who sprawled,
half asleep, on the wayside grass, their grazing horses hobbled behind
them.
A glance told Dad the occupation and character of the resting quartet.
They were guerrillas; such as infected both Northern and Southern
armies. Irregular troops in demi-uniform, who pursued a system of
free-lance fighting, and often of free-lance plundering as well.
He had ridden too far into their line of vision to retreat. His uniform
was an instant introduction. The fine horse that he rode was, alone,
worth a chase from these horse-loving Confederate marauders.
At sight of the rider one of the somnolent guerrillas opened an eye. The
spectacle of a blue uniform set both eyes wide-open.
He called loudly to his fellows. All four sat up with the grotesque
suddenness of jumping-jacks.
Then they scrambled to their feet and flung themselves at the horseman.
Dad had already dug spurs into his mount. Now he flashed out the pistol
he had brought along. But, finger on trigger, he hesitated and forbore
to fire, lest the report bring to the scene every possible Confederate
within a half-mile.
The foremost guerrilla reached his bridle and jumped for it as the horse
darted nervously forward under the sudden double impact of the spurs.
Dad threw his own body far forward and with his pistol-butt caught the
guerrilla’s outflung wrist a numbing blow that deflected the grasp from
the bridle leather.
A second guerrilla clutched at the leg of the rider himself, missed it
by a scant inch, and rolled in the dirt from a glancing contact with the
roan’s flank.
Dad was clear of the men and was still riding at top speed. A glance
over his shoulder gave him a momentary picture of the four turning back
and running for their hobbled horses. Apparently it was to be a chase.
Dad settled himself low in the saddle, returned his pistol to its
holster, and nursed his eager horse along at every atom of speed the
mettled brute possessed.
The horse was not fresh, but was strong and swift. Dad, despite his five
feet eleven inches of muscular height, was slender and no galling weight
in the saddle.
Also, there was every probability that his pursuers’ mounts were little
fresher than his own.
Yet he was riding straight into the enemy’s country, with no further
chance of subterfuge or skulking. At any point he might be headed off,
or speedier horses might be added to the chase.
He must trust to blind luck and to no other mortal agency, that he might
possibly be able to gain sufficient lead to give the four guerrillas the
slip before they could drive him into some body of Confederates coming
from an opposite direction or rouse the whole region against him.
And so he rode as never before he had ridden.
Once and again he looked back. The guerrillas were mounted now and in
full pursuit, strung out in a long line of three vari-sized groups. As
he looked the second time the foremost gave voice to the Virginian
foxhunters’ “View-halloo!”
It was an insult that stung the fugitive to hot rage.
Snake-fences, copses, and fields swept past on either hand. The roan was
well in his mile-eating stride, and thus far showed no sign of distress
at the fearful strain put upon him. Yard by yard, he was pulling away
from the four laboring steeds that thundered along in his dusty wake.
The by-road, at an acute angle, met and merged with the highway.
Here was added danger of meeting foes. But there was no other course to
take.
And into the yellow highway Dad guided the fleeing roan. As he did so he
rose in his stirrups and peered forward, the sharp, old eyes scanning
the broad ribbon of road for a full three miles ahead.
The next moment he had brought his horse to a mercilessly quick and
sliding standstill that well-nigh threw the gallant beast off balance.
Directly in front hung a dust-cloud seemingly no larger than a man’s
hand.
CHAPTER XI
DEVIL AND DEEP SEA
The campaigner instinct told Dad what raised so odd a cloud on the dry
dust of the road. From its position and formation, he knew it hung above
a cavalry column of considerable size.
A glance at the road at his feet showed him that no such large body of
horsemen had passed during the past two hours. The column, then, was
coming toward him.
And between him and it lay no crossroad.
There was but one possible move for him; for already the hoof-beats of
the four guerrillas’ horses were growing louder.
Dad wheeled his horse and rode back at a dead gallop along the main road
he had just entered.
Past the byway’s mouth he sped and straight on. The guerrillas, still on
the byway, noted the maneuver and, with a quadruple yell, struck out
across the intervening field to cut him off.
And for a brief space their action favored the refugee.
For the field they entered was newly and deeply plowed. Moreover,
through its center, in a depression, was a bit of boggy ground almost
worthy the name of quagmire.
The horses lumbered heavily over the plowed ground and sank almost to
their knees when they came to the strip of mire. The roan, meantime,
tore along the hard, yellow highway with undiminished speed.
One of the guerrillas whipped out a pistol and fired thrice in quick
succession.
A bullet whined querulously past Dad’s head. A second caught him fairly
in the bridle arm.
The shot was fired at longest pistol-range, and its force was almost
spent before it reached its mark. Yet it bit its way through the uniform
coat and the shirt-sleeve, and inflicted a light flesh-wound in the
forearm.
The shock of the blow knocked the rein from Dad’s left hand and numbed
his left arm to the shoulder. At the jerk on the bit the great roan
swerved sharply in surprise.
Dad caught the loose-flung rein in his right hand and guided the
terrified horse back into the road’s center.
As he did so a chinkapin and live-oak forest shut him off from the view
of the floundering guerrillas.
“They never knew I was hit,” he growled. “That’s one comfort.”
He glanced down at his left arm. Already an inordinately large patch of
blood was discoloring the blue uniform on either side of the bullet
hole.
“Must have tapped a big vein or maybe an artery,” he conjectured, as he
saw the blood trickle fast from the edge of his cuff. “At this rate,
I’ll be too weak in a few minutes to sit in the saddle. I’ll have to
stop somewhere to stanch it.”
He looked back. No sign yet of the guerrillas. He had been too far away
from the larger cavalry column, he knew, for any of its riders to
distinguish himself or his uniform. The thick woods still closed in the
road on either side.
Dad looked for a likely spot to penetrate the forest.
But on both sides of the road a high snake-fence arose, a fence too high
for any horse to jump.
There would be no time to dismount, tear down a panel of the fence, lead
his horse through, and repair the gap so that the guerrillas’ sharp eyes
would not detect the recent break.
So on he galloped, hoping for a gate or a lane farther ahead.
With a deal of wriggling Dad got his right arm out of his jacket and
managed to wind the jacket itself roughly around his left arm, that a
trail of bloodspots on the road’s dust might not mark his path to his
pursuers.
Around another bend swept the galloping roan. And now both forest and
snake-fence stopped abruptly, to continue a furlong farther on. The
intervening space was filled by a soft, green lawn dotted with trees,
and cut off from the road by a four-foot stone wall.
Far back on the lawn and bowered by oaks stood a rambling house of
colonial style.
On its pillared front porch sat the littlest and daintiest woman
imaginable. She was in black and wore a little, frilled, white apron.
Her grayish hair formed a mass of soft curls around her forehead. On her
lap was a basket of knitting.
All these details Dad’s eyes saw without fairly grasping them as he
galloped into view. And his heart sank.
He had heard of Southern women’s splendid loyalty to “the cause.” This
woman would assuredly tell his pursuers that she had seen a man in
Yankee uniform ride past. She would add that he was very palpably
wounded.
Thus would die his last hope that they might give extra time by pausing
to beat up the woods for him.
Dad was turning away from his fleeting glance to scan the road ahead for
a lane or other opening, when suddenly he shifted his gaze in
astonishment back toward the white-columned portico.
The little woman had sprung to her feet with the agility of a child and
was waving her knitting to him in frantic summons.
He had traversed fully half the length of the cleared lawn’s space as he
saw the signal. Acting on lightning instinct, he reined in his mount,
wheeled him to one side, and put him at the wall.
The roan, with a mighty effort, cleared the obstacle, came down heavily
on all fours on the springy turf of the lawn, and bounded toward the
house.
The little lady had run down the steps and was jumping up and down in
wild excitement in the driveway.
“Tumble off, quick!” she ordered. “Get into the hall there and shut the
door behind you. I’ll tie your horse in that magnolia copse over yonder.
It’s so thick-grown I guess they’d hunt a week before suspicioning a
critter was hid there.”
Dad rolled out of the saddle in dazed obedience, staggered weakly up the
steps and into a broad hall that bisected the house from front to rear.
The dim coolness struck him like a blow. He groped for a horsehair sofa
that he could just distinguish in the half-light, sank down on it, and
slid helplessly from its slippery seat to the polished floor--in a dead
faint.
Within a minute he opened his eyes and broke into a fit of strangled
coughing. A most horrible odor had gripped his sense of smell.
Above him knelt the little woman. In one hand she held a bunch of
feathers tom from a duster; in the other a still lighted match. A fume
of smoke from the feathers spoke eloquently of the odor’s origin.
“Nothing like burning a bunch of feathers under a body’s nose to bring
them out of a fainting fit,” she was saying cheerily. “Don’t look so
wild, man. You’re safe enough. Or you will be presently. Can you stand
up? Try.”
Dad called on all his failing strength and, helped by the little lady
and a hand on the sofa-arm, reeled to his feet.
“So!” she approved. “Now, you just lean on me and on the banisters.
We’ve got some climbing to do. Your horse is safe hid. And the men that
were chasing you have ridden past. But they’ll be back.”
CHAPTER XII
THE LITTLE LADY
Gritting his teeth to keep his will-power up to the task, Dad began
mounting the spiral stairs that led from the big hallway to the upper
regions of the house. He leaned heavily on the mahogany banisters on one
side, and as lightly as possible on the little lady’s black bombazine
shoulder upon the other.
Once or twice dizziness again overcame him. But he forced it back.
They reached the upper hall. Dad would have stopped, but his inexorable
guide urged him on.
Down the hall they went, and at the farther end came to a door that she
unlocked and opened. Before them rose a shorter, narrower, steeper
flight of steps.
A herculean struggle brought Dad to the summit of these. Around him were
dim spaces, vaguely redolent of old lavender. Somewhere near bees were
sleepily booming and crooning.
His eyes growing used to the dim light, he saw that he was in a huge
garret--a garret wherein were strewn quaint bits of bygone furniture,
horse-hide trunks, ghostly garments in white muslin wrappings, and
broken-down household goods of every description.
“Sit there!” ordered the little lady, thrusting him gently into the
depths of a soft, old armchair whose upholstery was shamelessly
moth-eaten.
“Now,” as he gratefully followed her command, “just stay there till I
come back.”
She vanished.
Dad stared after her in dull wonder. His mind was still hazy. He knew he
had fainted momentarily through loss of blood. But he wondered that he
had since then felt no weaker as the minutes had gone on. Gingerly he
unwound the coat from his injured arm and rolled up the sleeve of his
shirt.
Then he understood.
The vein that had been tapped--it was assuredly no artery nor even one
of the very largest veins--had bled in crass profusion for a space. Then
the caking of the blood had checked further flow.
Dad was surgeon enough to realize that that meant there could be little
if any more flow of blood from so petty a wound.
He was looking from side to side in search of something better than a
uniform jacket wherewith to bind the hurt, when again the little lady
stood before him.
Tucked under one arm was a black case, under the other were rolls of
white bandages. In both hands she bore a basin of hot water in which a
soft sponge bobbed like a floating island.
“There!” she said soothingly. “Just you lean back and rest. I’ll ’tend
to the wound.”
With deft fingers she bathed the arm, then sponged the bullet-graze
clean of blood. From the black case she drew a bottle filled with some
pungent liquid. With this liquid she washed out the wound, then
proceeded to bind it skillfully with a roll of the bandages.
So slight was the hurt that, but for the accident of its touching the
wrong vein, it might well have caused so healthy a man no more annoyance
than would the process of vaccination.
Yet for once in his life Dad felt no inclination to belittle a physical
mishap.
He discovered--and wondered vaguely at the discovery--that it was
marvelously pleasant to lie back like this and let his strange little
hostess minister to his hurt. Her touch, too, held for him a strange and
soothing magnetism all its own. Not for twenty years had a gentlewoman
laid her hand upon him.
The novelty of it was delightful. Yet in his heart Dad felt the novelty
was by no means all.
As she worked, the little lady’s tongue went as nimbly as her fingers.
“Isn’t this what Ehud used to call rank good luck?” she was saying.
“This afternoon of all afternoons, too. Why, three days out of four I’m
as busy as tunket all afternoon. And here, just to-day, I said to
myself: ‘I guess I’ll sit on the stoop a spell and play lady, and do
some knitting.’ And I hadn’t been there three minutes, hardly, when past
you came prancing.
“There’s another piece of luck, too. Only this noon I let all three of
the house servants run over to the Winstons’ plantation to a wedding in
the servants’ quarters over there. And I sent Tom--he’s my gardener,
the only man slave I’ve got left here--over to see they didn’t stay too
late. Any other day they’d be screeching like a pack of wildcats at
sight of a Yankee.”
“But, madam,” expostulated Dad, finding his voice at last, “surely you
run a risk, harboring a fugitive Union soldier. It was selfish in me not
to--”
“Risks?” She caught him up gayly. “Sakes! I run risks every day of my
blessed life these times. When the Confederates aren’t stealing my
chickens the Yankees are stealing my pigs. Or both of them in turns are
stealing my cows. It’s a mercy my teeth are my own, or those would have
gone, too, long ago.”
“Still, there must surely be a risk in hiding me here. You said those
men would come back. And if they do--”
“If they do,” she finished, “I’ll have to ask the recording angel to
blot out some of the fibs I’ll tell them. Risk? There’s no risk. They
aren’t likely to search the house. Not upstairs, anyhow. The servants
won’t know anything, and I don’t believe anyone will search the magnolia
thicket to see if there’s a horse tethered there.
“Just you rest easy. There’s no risk--either for you or for me.”
“I can’t thank you,” he faltered. “I haven’t words to. But I think you
know how grateful I am.”
“Grateful for what? For not letting you ride on until you ran into some
picket-party down the road? Nonsense! There’s nothing to be grateful
about.
“When I saw you streaking past my house, wounded, on that fine big
horse of yours, I knew well enough no Yankee soldier would be choosing
these parts to take a pleasure ride in, I knew by the way you rode there
must be someone after you. So what was there to do but ask you in?”
“I--I thought you Southern ladies hated all Yankees like poison. I
hardly expected--”
“Southern ladies? _Me?_ Dear man, southern Massachusetts is the farthest
south _I_ was born. Born and bred there. In South Wilbr’am, ten miles
out of Springfield. Do I talk Southern?”
“No. I--that is why I wondered--”
“We came South here, to Virginia, ten years ago. My husband--he was
Captain Ehud Sessions--captain in the Mexican War, you know--his health
failed him, and Dr. Ballard said he’d best go South to live. So we sold
out in Wilbr’am and came down here. We and our daughter. She’s married
now and living out in New York City.
“A couple of years later Ehud died. It didn’t seem to do him any good
down here, and all the time he kept peaking for the Wilbr’am mountains.
After he died I kept on running the place here. Because it was less
lonely here than it would have been back home without Ehud.
“I’ve been doing it now for eight years. All alone. Except the servants.
But a body that’s busy hasn’t much time for pining. So--Have I fastened
that bandage too tight?”
“No. It is perfect. You are a wonderful nurse.”
“Ehud always said so,” she answered, highly gratified at the praise. “He
knew a lot about doctoring and nursing. Picked it up in the Mexican War.
And he taught it to me. I’ve thought sometimes, if this war keeps up,
maybe I’ll close the place here and run up to Washington and volunteer
as a nurse. They say they’re needed badly sometimes after battle; and
there aren’t any too many of them.”
“You would put a premium on recklessness. Every man would be trying to
get sick or step in the way of a bullet.”
“Now isn’t that a real pretty speech!” she cried, flushing delicately.
“And a woman fifty years old her last birthday, too.”
“Madam,” said Dad, right gallantly, “I beg you won’t tax my credulity by
saying you are a day over thirty.”
“Listen to the man!” she laughed happily. “Yes, sir. I’m fifty years old
last May. According to the record in my family Bible.”
“Never before in my life,” returned Dad, “have I been tempted to doubt
the truth of one word that is written in the Book of Books. But--”
“Wait!” she said, as though reminded of some neglected duty; and again
she vanished.
This time she was gone for fully ten minutes; leaving the fugitive to
dream strange, sweet, vague dreams in the shadows of the quaint,
old-world garret.
At last she came back, bearing this time a tray whereon rested a most
delectable little supper.
Dad had eaten nothing since dawn. At her behest he fell to with a will.
And as he ate his strength came slowly back to him. Rest and food were
steadily repairing whatever damage the temporary loss of blood might
have wrought upon his seasoned constitution.
“I took a good look for those guerrillas of yours,” she said, as he
finished eating. “But there’s no sign of them yet. This road, in the
direction you were going, winds and twists like a sick adder. They might
ride on for ten miles before they could be sure you weren’t riding just
ahead of them. And they’d have to search all along the way back before
they could get here.”
“I must go,” he said, starting up. “I’ve lost too much time already.”
“If you’re aiming to lose time,” said she, “go by all means. But if you
want to get safely to wherever you were riding, you’ll stand a better
chance after nightfall, and especially after those fellows pass here on
their way back. Otherwise you might run into them at the gate. There’s
much less traveling at night on these roads. Only the patrols. And they
generally sing to keep from falling asleep in their saddles. So you’ll
probably hear them in time to get out of their way. Oh, and I sneaked
out and fed and watered your horse.”
Inclination for once sided with common-sense, and Dad sank back again in
the big chair. The thought that this utterly charming little woman might
be annoyed by a search of her house on his account sent his hand
involuntarily to his pistol holster.
It was empty.
With a thrill of dismay the man realized that he must make the rest of
his perilous journey weaponless.
He remembered thrusting back the revolver into its holster after his
brush with the guerrillas on the byroad. He had thrust it back
carelessly. And hard riding had evidently caused it to slip out of its
resting place and tumble, unnoted by him, to the ground.
His start of surprise drew the little lady’s attention.
“What ails you?” she asked solicitously. “Does the wound hurt?”
“I wish it did,” he replied in the ponderous gallantry which suddenly
had seemed to come so easy to him, “so that I might get you to bind it
for me again. But it is something more important than a petty scratch on
the forearm that bothers me just now. I’ve somehow lost my pistol. I
have no weapon to protect you in case those ruffians should try to come
in; and no weapon to protect myself for the balance of my ride.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” she sympathized. “It beats all how careless a man
is about losing weapons. Ehud was just like that with his razors.
“Don’t you worry about protecting _me_. I won’t need any protecting. But
if you want something to fight with in case you should be held up on the
road--why, I’ve got just the very thing for you. Take good care of it,
though, won’t you?”
She darted across the attic floor and in among the shadows; returning
presently with a straight-bladed infantry sword of a somewhat antique
make.
Handling it almost with reverence, she offered it hilt foremost to Dad.
“It was Ehud’s,” she said gently. “He set a lot of store by it. He
carried it all through the Mexican War. I think I told you he was a
captain there. It cost thirty-two dollars and seventy-five cents,
including the lettering. Is the light too dim for you to see the
lettering? It’s on the blade.
“It says ‘_Draw me not without cause. Sheathe me not without honor._’
“I--I kind of think you’re the kind of man who can keep that
commandment. Take the sword.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE ALARM
Dad received the weapon from her hands as reverently as she had tendered
it. His fingers closed about the fretted ivory hilt, and he read in the
fading light the inscription on its blue-steel blade.
Then he handed it back.
“A beautiful sword,” he said, a catch in his voice, “and one that any
soldier might rejoice to wear at his side. The sword of a brave man, I
am sure. Such a man as would to-day be striking gallantly for our dear
country if he were still living. I am honored past words at your gift.
But--I cannot accept it.”
“What?” she asked, her eyes big with wondering disappointment. “Why not?
I don’t grudge it to you, a mite. Nor Ehud wouldn’t either.”
“You don’t understand,” he explained, feeling as though he had brutally
rejected the love-offering of a child. “I cannot wear this splendid
sword because I am not entitled to. Such a weapon is worn by none but
commissioned officers. I am only a sergeant. And a sergeant is not
permitted to carry a sword of this kind. Any more than he is allowed to
wear epaulets.”
“But--”
“I should treasure this gift above any other I have ever had,” he went
on, “if the laws of warfare would let me take it. I shall never forget
that you offered it to me--an utter stranger--out of the generous bounty
of your heart. Please don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
Reluctantly she restored the sword to its hook on the raftered ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “If Ehud’s sword could go on fighting, I’d feel
happier.”
“If I could carry it to victory, madam, I’d feel prouder than I can tell
you.”
“Well, maybe you’ll be able to wear a sword at your side some of these
days. If you’re a sergeant now and if you had the pluck to ride alone
into this nest of hornets--By the way, _did_ you come alone or were you
separated from your regiment?”
“I came alone. I am carrying dispatches. To General Hooker.”
“Fighting Joe, eh? That’s a man after my own heart. Where is he?”
Dad told her.
“Sakes alive!” she ejaculated. “That’s the best part of twenty miles
from here. And all the district just abuzzing with Confeds. You must be
brave!”
“No one in our war is brave,” he corrected. “Some are cowardly. Some are
foolhardy. But the bulk of us on both sides of the quarrel just plod
along and do our duty, as I’ve tried to do mine to-day. It isn’t
bravery. It’s duty.”
“I’ve an idea,” she suggested, “that bravery and duty add up to pretty
much the same thing; whether it’s in storming a fort or selling a yard
of calico. Anyhow, mister--mister--”
“Dadd,” he answered glibly. “James Dadd.”
“Anyhow, Sergeant Dadd,” she continued, smiling ever so faintly at the
odd name, “I know men pretty well. And I believe you’d do your duty,
squarely and honestly, whether it was in war or in a shop.”
“Madam,” said Dad, miserably, “I didn’t do my duty in either. And, as
for honesty, I have been even more remiss. Why, I have just told a lie
that shames me to the soul. I have told it to the ministering angel who
saved me from death or capture and who has since played Good Samaritan
to me. The only woman in years who has shown me her sex’s divine pity.
“I have lied to you about my name. It is not James Dadd. It is James
Brinton.”
He dared not look at her, but spoke rapidly, his eyes downcast, his
fingers foolishly busy with the torn fringe of the chair in which he
sat.
“I--I call myself James Dadd,” he blundered on. “And I suppose I have a
right to. For it doesn’t harm anyone, and it gives me a chance to be in
the army. They wouldn’t take me under my own name. But, oh, I love the
old name, and it makes me ashamed every time I have to use the other
one. Still, I’ve always figured--till now--that it’s nobody’s business.
But--somehow I can’t lie to a woman that’s got eyes like yours.”
“Unless I’m very wrong,” she said, after a little breathless silence,
“you aren’t given to telling lies to anyone at all, man or woman,
Mr.--Brinton. As for going to the war under another name, I can’t see
anything very terrible in that. I take it you didn’t enlist with the
idea of cheating folks out of anything?”
“No!” he declared, almost fiercely. “No!”
And again silence fell, there in the dusty, lavender-scented garret.
Dusk was pushing the shadows forward from the mysterious corners and
shoving them farther and farther into the little window-lit space where
sat the man and woman.
At last Mrs. Sessions said:
“I s’pose all women are inquisitive.”
“They must have one drawback to keep them mortal,” he countered, with a
brave attempt at his earlier tone of gallantry.
“But,” she went on impersonally, “why a fine, upstanding man like you
should go to war under a silly name like Dadd, when he’s got such a fine
name as Brinton, certainly does make me curious. Not,” she added, in
polite haste, “not that it’s any of my business--as maybe you were going
to say.”
“I was going to say,” he contradicted, “that any of my affairs are also
your affairs. As far as you honor me, ma’am, by making them so.”
“You say pretty things,” she laughed in pleased embarrassment. “I wonder
if a woman ever gets too old to love to hear them. Pretty speeches
wasn’t Ehud’s way. But he always liked to hear other menfolk make them
to me. It flattered his judgment, he used to say.”
“I fancy his judgment used to get flattered tolerably often,” ventured
Dad.
But she did not hear. Her brows were puckered, and she was murmuring his
name in perplexity.
“Brinton,” she mused. “Brinton. It’s queer how natural that name seems
to me. Because it isn’t such a common name either. Wait a second and I
can tell you where I heard it. My brain’s all full of little scraps of
things I’ve heard and tucked away there. I’m rummaging there now, like
fury. Presently I’ll find it. Oh, I know!” she broke off.
Then she stopped, ashamed.
“You remember?” he asked miserably.
“No,” she denied. “That is, I can’t remember but one man of that name.
Ehud told me about him. Long ago. And it made an impression on me at the
time.”
“Tell me about him,” urged Dad.
“Oh, ’tisn’t a nice story. Besides there’s just a bare chance that maybe
he was some kin of yours--the name being so uncommon--and I’d hate to
hurt your feelings.”
“Go ahead!” he begged, in the same perverse spirit that had prompted
him, since his turn of the conversation, to pursue it toward the bitter
end. “There are many Brintons. I--I believe a man named Brinton was down
in Mexico during the war there. Perhaps that’s where Captain Sessions
heard the name?”
“That was the place and that was the man,” she said. “Ehud was in
General Scott’s army, you know. A captain of infantry. His regiment was
on duty one day at a celebration--for some victory or other--and up
rides this Brinton man disgustingly drunk and spoils the whole
celebration.
“He insulted General Scott something terrible, Ehud said. Then he fell
off his horse asleep, and they lugged him to the guard-house; and that’s
the last Ehud was ever able to find out about him. They never
courtmartialed the man or anything. Ehud said he guessed Brinton escaped
in the night; the wicked old sot! What’s the matter, sir? Is the wound
hurting you so bad?”
“Yes!” panted Dad. “But not the silly scratch on my arm. It is a
thousand times deeper.”
“And you never told me!” she cried in genuine alarm. “Here I’ve been
chatting so selfishly with you and never doing a thing to help you! Wait
till I fetch you some brandy.”
“I--I don’t need it, thank you,” he replied, “and I never touch it any
more. I’ve sworn I never will. The wound I spoke of is on my soul; not
my body. I--”
“I thought all army men drank once in a while. Shall I get--”
“No, thank you. I’m all right again. I don’t know that the majority of
army men drink. Though a drink is a consoler after a long day’s march,
and it helps drown the memory of the comrade who was shot to pieces at
one’s side. But it is a consolation that’s not for me. It consoled me
too often--till nothing else worth while would trouble to console me.
“Mrs. Sessions, you have been very good to me. I haven’t the words to
tell you how good; and--
“And because of that, as well as because no man could lie to eyes like
yours, I wanted to tell you something. Something that may make you sorry
you’ve done so much for a worthless old derelict. Something that will
surely make you ashamed that you honored him with the offer of your
husband’s sword. I--I am the James Brinton whose story Captain Sessions
told you.”
“Land’s sake! You never are!”
“And the reason he heard no more of me was because I was ‘dismissed from
the service I had degraded,’ and was secretly kicked out of the army.
And because I was forever kicked out of it, I had to sneak back into the
service under a false name.”
“Is that all?” she asked, quietly.
“That is all--except to say good-by and get out of the house where I’ve
let myself be entertained under false pretenses.”
He rose as he spoke; sick at heart, and all at once feeling very, very
old and wretched.
He realized with a queer pang that the last hour had somehow been the
happiest he had ever known. And by contrast the future seemed to stretch
away before him dreary and barren as a rainy sea.
Dad took an uncertain step toward the head of the attic stairs. A small
and determined figure barred his way.
“Go back!” came the imperious command. “Go right back where you were,
and sit down there. You may have said all _you’ve_ got to say. But _I_
haven’t, by a long shot.”
Dully he obeyed her. His flesh shrank from the thought of listening to
the merited tongue-lashing that he felt was his due. Yet, like a scared
schoolboy, he recognized and meekly obeyed the note of authority in his
hostess’s voice.
“Now, then!” she said, planting herself squarely in front of him.
“Aren’t you ashamed, Sergeant James Brinton? Aren’t you _ashamed_?
Tolling me on like that to say scand’lous things about a poor man whose
story I only half-knew. Oh, I’m a cruel, shrewish old woman to go on
like I did about Brinton--about you.
“Who am I to sit in judgment on a poor, weak man whose love for drink
overcomes him sometimes? Why, I’m just every mite as bad myself. Without
my morning cup of tea, I’m no good at all. I lean on it as men lean on
whisky.”
“But, madam--” he stammered.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am for talking like that,” she rushed
on, unheeding. “And to tell you that no man who looks and talks the way
you do was ever a sot or a scoundrel. Weak, maybe. Yes, we all are. But
never bad.”
“Would--would you let me tell you?” he faltered, gripped by a sudden,
overwhelming impulse to make this wonderful little woman his mother
confessor--to tell her what he had never clearly told himself.
She nodded eager, kindly assent.
In a voice at first incoherent, almost broken, but that soon steadied
into narrative force, Dad told the whole pitiful tale.
He did not strive for effect. He spared no needful detail. He spoke as
though of a third person; calmly, impartially.
When the story of his Mexican disgrace was done, he went on to tell her
of his homecoming, his futile life for the past fourteen years, his
continued degradation, the sordid surroundings, the unworthy
hopelessness of it all.
Only when he spoke of Jimmie did an unconscious softness and a thrill of
pride come into the deep voice.
He told of his son’s departure for the front, the bedside talk with
Jimmie in the moonlight, the escape from Ideala, the kneeling vigil on
the hill-top where he had forever shaken off his dead self. Of his later
army achievements he said little.
It was twilight now, all over the battle world. The long twilight of
early summer. And in the attic darkness left the faces of the man and
woman visible only as dim white rifts in the gloom.
Presently Dad’s deep voice ceased. There was a hush; through which the
far-off throb of a complaining whippoorwill, from down in the
bottom-lands, by the river, came to their ears.
Mrs. Sessions had drawn insensibly closer to the speaker as the story
progressed. But she had not once interrupted. Nor, now that the tale was
done, did she speak.
“Now you know it all,” he said, breaking the long silence. “And I
suppose you’re as disgusted with me as I am with myself. As General
Scott was when I--”
He caught his breath with a gasp. Something in falling had touched the
back of his outflung hand.
Something tiny, and stingingly hot--a tear!
“Mrs. Sessions!” he exclaimed in wonder.
“I--I’m not given to blubbering,” she answered, choking back her sobs.
“I didn’t know I was doing it. Oh, you poor, _poor_ dear!”
“You don’t despise me, after all I’ve told you about--”
“Despise you?” she echoed, almost shrilly. “_Despise_ you? Listen to me,
sergeant! Any man can strut around, pompouslike, on the top of the
mountain if he was born up there or boosted up there. But the man who
can _climb_ there--as you’ve done--who can climb there out of the mire
and muck that he’s been shoved down into; that man’s a--a _man_! And the
mud on his garments comes pretty close to looking like royal ermine.
“I’m talking like a schoolgirl that reads novels. But it’s all true.
Sergeant Brinton, I’d like to shake you by the hand, please. I wish Ehud
was here to do it, too!”
Dad, even as he groped for and found the warm and slender little hand
in the darkness, could not bring himself to give mental endorsement to
the last half of her wish. He was quite satisfied that the late Captain
Ehud should remain in Paradise, instead of invading his earthly home’s
attic just then.
The two hands met in a clasp that each sought to make frank and hearty.
But hands are less docile than faces in masking their heart’s mandates.
And the fingers that met so formally forgot somehow to unclasp. Dad
found the little woman’s hand nestling quite comfortably and contentedly
in the big grip of his own. And if she struggled to withdraw it, the
struggle was so very faint as to escape the notice of either of them.
Dad had risen to his feet. Through the gloom he was looking down at the
half-seen figure whose hand he held. And something long, long dead was
stirring strangely in his heart and his soul.
Very reverently he lifted the little hand and laid it against his lips;
holding it there a moment while the tender sweetness of the contact
mounted like music to his brain. Reluctantly he unclasped his fingers
from about their precious burden. And for a space he and his hostess
stood staring wide-eyed into each other’s half-invisible faces.
Then--
“If my daughter could see me now,” said Mrs. Sessions, a little break in
the laugh she forced to her lips, “she’d say I was an old fool.”
“If my son could see me now,” answered Dad, “he’d say I was not only an
old fool, but an old scoundrel as well. But Jimmie wouldn’t. Jimmie
would understand. Jimmie always understands. Oh, you must meet Jimmie!”
“I’d love to. I’d love to be just like a mother to the boy who’s done so
much for--”
“If you don’t mind,” ventured Dad bashfully, “I’d a lot rather you’d be
just like a--a grandmother to him.”
Then in the dark there--very simply, like two little children, they
kissed.
And on the instant, the quaint old-world stillness of the attic was
split by the noise of many pounding hoof-beats.
CHAPTER XIV
DAD THE PALADIN
The ground-shell of the driveway below resounded thickly to the thudding
of hard-ridden horses. Then, with a multifold shuffle, the hoofs came to
a standstill.
There were heavy steps on the porch. A hammering broke out, as of
gunbutt or sword hilt against the front door panels. And a voice shouted
“Let us in!”
“Sakes!” whispered Mrs. Sessions. “I’d clean forgot! There must be a
hundred of ’em from the sound.”
“No,” corrected Dad, his practiced ear having enumerated the hoof-beats.
“Not more than four or five, I should say. Probably the men who chased
me this morning. They’ve come back, as you said, and--”
She was gone, slipping down the stairs in swift noiselessness, closing
the attic stairway door behind her.
Pausing only long enough to light a sconce of candles on the table in
the wide hallway, Mrs. Sessions sped to the front door, whence the
clamor had risen to a deafening pitch.
Unbarring the door, she flung it open, and stood on the threshold, a
tiny spirit of wrath.
“What do you folks mean?” she demanded hotly. “What do you folks mean by
banging all the varnish off my door panels like that? Couldn’t you use
the brass knocker? What do you want, anyway; disturbing an old woman,
like this?”
Four guerrillas gave back for an instant--if only for a bare
instant--before her indignant outburst. Then one of them laughed.
The spell was broken. Pushing past her, the quartet trooped into the
hallway.
At a glance, Mrs. Sessions could see they were tired, cross,
and--apparently--more or less drunk. They had evidently moistened more
than once the dry tedium of their afternoon’s search.
“You’re old Yankee Sessions’s widder, I reckon,” said one of the four.
“Yes,” she snapped, “I am. But I’ve lived hereabouts for ten years
without ever before hearing rude language from any Southern man. No
regular Confederate soldier would speak to a woman that way, either, or
burst into her house without a ‘by-your-leave.’ It’s you guerrillas that
are the pest of both armies. But you aren’t going to be the pest of _my_
house. Out you go, all of you!”
“You spitfire!” hiccoughed the camp-follower. “I wish there was still a
ducking-stool for scolds. Keep a civil tongue in your head or we’ll find
a way to revive the ducking.”
“What do you want here?”
“We’re looking for a runaway Yank. Seen him go past?”
“Why didn’t you say so first, instead of cluttering up my clean hall
with mud and kicking the polish off my door? Yes,” she added with
perfect truth, “I saw a Yankee. He was riding lickety-split along the
road there.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Quite a while back. He seemed to be wounded.”
The four moved excitedly toward the door.
“I said so!” cried one of the men. “Just what I told you. He sneaked
into the woods somewhere, and we rode past him. Then he doubled back.”
“Wounded, hey?” said another. “My shots don’t miss. I knew I winged him.
If we can get another mile or two of speed out of those nags, we may
overhaul him yet.”
Three of the men were at the door. The fourth, following, paused to
light a cheroot by one of the candles on the table.
As he was starting on after the others, he came to a sudden stop. His
exclamation brought the three bushwhackers back into the hall. The man
pointed melodramatically at a little pool of drying blood on the
polished hardwood floor in the full glare of the candlelight. Beside the
pool lay a Federal infantry cap.
There was no need for words. The story told itself. The four men with
one accord turned on Mrs. Sessions.
She had, as though by sheer chance, taken up a position at the stair
foot. And there she stood; magnificently futile and as futilely
magnificent as a sparrow that bars a prowling tomcat’s way to her nest.
“Well,” she demanded shrilly, “what are you going to do about it?”
“Do?” laughed the drunkest of the four. “Root him out, of course. And
you’re li’ble to keep your hair tidier if you’ll take us straight off to
where you’ve hid him.”
“I’ve told you twice to get out of here,” she replied, not a faintest
trace of fear in her authoritative voice. “And now I tell--”
“Yes,” growled the man, suddenly turning savage at her words, “and your
husband, old Yankee Sessions, told me to get out of his house once, a
few years back. I was just out of pen, and I was hungry. I stopped here
and told his black butler to rustle me some grub and a little
spending-money, or I’d cave his woolly head in. That’s the way to speak
to niggers. And he--”
“That’s the way nobody but ‘poor white trash’ ever speaks to them, down
here,” contradicted Mrs. Sessions. “I remember the time. Ehud was sick
abed with quinsy and--”
“And just as I’d got that nigger so scared that he’d do anything I told
him,” snarled the bushwhacker, drink and a sour memory combining to
enrage him, “down them stairs rushes old Yankee Sessions, half-dressed,
and wavin’ a sword in his hand. And he kicked me--yes, kicked _me_--out
of his house, the dirty Yank. I reckon here’s where I square accounts
with his long-tongued widder.”
He lurched to the stair-foot and caught Mrs. Sessions roughly by the
shoulder.
“Show us where you’ve hid the blue-backed cur!” he ordered. “Or we’ll--”
He got no further.
At his brutal touch Mrs. Sessions had involuntarily cried out. A cry of
stark indignation, not of terror.
And in the midst of the guerrilla’s surly threat she saw the unshaven
mouth grow speechless and slack; the drink-bleared eyes widen in crass
horror.
The unwashed paw fell inert from her shoulder. The man reeled back a
step as though struck across the face. He was staring stupidly at the
stairway. And his fellows had followed the direction of his gaze.
All this in the fraction of a second; even as Mrs. Sessions turned to
note the cause of the strange panic.
Out of the darkness of the upper landing had sprung a terrible figure.
For an instant, as it gathered itself to bound down the broad and
shallow flight of stairs, it was vaguely and weirdly outlined by the
uncertain candlelight below.
A man, towering, fierce; coatless and without waist-coat. His face was
white and distorted with wrath. His eyes blazed in the half-light like
living coals. His gray hair was a-bristle.
Above his head flashed a sword-blade.
“Yankee Sessions!” croaked the drunken guerrilla, in babbling fear.
“Yankee Sessions’s ghost! Just as he came at me that day when--”
The man at the stair-head cleared the intervening steps in three bounds.
With a berserk yell he was among the guerrillas, his swirling sword
giving forth a million sparks of reflection from the candle-glow.
There was a moment of wild turmoil; of clashing, of yells, of madly
stamping feet.
Mrs. Sessions, leaning weakly against the newel-post of the banisters,
saw an indistinguishable mass of figures, whirling, jostling, screaming;
while once and again above the ruck flashed the sword-blade like a
tongue of silver flame.
A cleverly aimed sweep of the blade as the knot of men swayed bodily
toward the table, and both candle sconces were knocked violently to the
floor.
The sudden darkness was too much for the guerrillas’ drink-shaken
nerves. Still in strong doubt as to whether the hero who had attacked
them were ghost or human, they had made shift momentarily to hold their
ground.
But to cope in the dark with a possible wraith--a homicidal wraith at
that--was more than they had bargained for.
Panic--mad and unreasoning--possessed them. Behind, an oblong of lesser
gloom through the blackness showed the location of the door.
And through the door they surged pell-mell.
Down the steps they rushed and flung themselves upon their waiting
horses. Out of the grounds they galloped and down the road.
A hundred yards farther on they drew rein as by common consent. But
before they could bring their mounts to a halt the clatter of hoofs
behind them sent their scared gaze backward.
By the pale starlight they could just distinguish their half-clad
foe--enormous and ghostly in the dim light--astride a monster horse,
bearing down on them at the speed of an express-train. The sword still
gleamed above his head.
There was no pause; there was no consultation; there was no impulse to
investigate.
Swayed by a single purpose, the four guerrillas urged their tired horses
to a run. Down the road they streamed, their ghostly foe in close
pursuit.
Presently--or, as it seemed to them, after a thousand years of
terror-flight--the foremost of them reached the by-road. And, with the
instinct of a burrow-seeking rabbit, he wheeled his horse into it. His
three comrades followed his example.
They had ridden for perhaps a mile when the rear-most of them paused to
make certain of what he had begun to hope, that their terrible ghost-foe
had ceased his pursuit.
One by one the guerrillas drew in their exhausted horses. No hoof-beats
or any other sound came to them on the summer night’s still air.
Shamefacedly the men looked at one another. Then, without a word, they
set off at a walk for their camp, five miles away.
* * * * *
Dawn was breaking as Dad rode into a tent-street and up its long,
straight course. At his side was a Union cavalry captain whom he had
encountered when the first sentry and corporal of the guard at Hooker’s
outposts had halted him.
On a little rise of ground, from which the streets of tents fell away on
every side, was a farmhouse, commandeered by Major-General Hooker as
temporary headquarters. And into a front room of this house, five
minutes after his arrival, Dad was conducted.
General Hooker was picturesquely clad in a mere fraction of his uniform
and was gulping down large mouthfuls of very black and very hot coffee
from a tin dipper. In his other hand was a slice of unbuttered bread.
“Sergeant James Dadd, of the Blankth Ohio Infantry,” announced Dad,
saluting, “with dispatches from Brigadier-General----”
He paused in consternation midway in his formal announcement.
To his amaze, General Hooker set down his portable breakfast on a
window-sill, gaped in wonder for an instant at the courier, then burst
into a fit of unextinguishable laughter.
“The dispatches, sir,” volunteered Dad, “are of the utmost importance,
so I was told by General----”
“Importance!” gasped Hooker, weak with laughter. “Oh, man! _Importance?_
Do you mean to say he didn’t tell you? Didn’t you even _guess_?”
CHAPTER XV
FIGHTING JOE
“Guess?” echoed Dad, returning the general’s amused gaze with an
expression upon his own face of gross perplexity. “I--I don’t
understand, sir.”
General Hooker seemed to realize that his habitual, easy informality
toward his subordinates--for which they adored him and whereon none had
been known to presume--had gone well-nigh beyond bounds.
For he checked his laughter and, with a touch of authority in his big
voice, said:
“Make your report.”
Briefly Dad outlined the orders given him by his brigade commander, the
adventures he had undergone on the previous day, and the clever scout
work and hard riding which had marked the night stage of his journey.
Hooker listened with real interest; his eyes, under half-closed lids,
narrowly reading the speaker’s features. Yet when the short recital was
finished the mirth sprang back unbidden into the general’s tanned face.
“Sergeant Dadd,” he asked whimsically, “do you ever think?”
The odd question, tenfold more strange coming from a general officer to
an enlisted man, deepened Dad’s bewilderment.
“Think?” he repeated.
“Yes. Or do you prefer to be the supposedly model soldier who works like
a machine and who leaves to his superior officers the task of thinking?”
“When thinking can help,” answered Dad, “I suppose I do my share of it.
But I don’t let it interfere with the orders given me.”
“Did you happen to think when you were told to ride across nearly forty
miles of hostile country with these dispatches for me?” insisted the
general, the same quizzical look in his half-shut eyes.
“Frankly, sir,” returned Dad, “I did. I remember that I thought--”
“Well?” urged Hooker impatiently. “Out with it, man! If it wasn’t
complimentary to anyone in particular don’t be afraid to say so.”
“I thought, sir,” answered Dad, “that if those documents weren’t
all-important it was strange that a man’s life or freedom should be
risked in delivering them. And I thought if they _were_ all-important
there must be some safer and surer way of getting them to you than by
sending that same man through a region where there was barely one chance
in a dozen--in a score--of his being successful in reaching you.”
Hooker nodded approval.
“Good!” he vouchsafed. “And, wondering that, you still did all in your
power to win through safely?”
“I had orders, sir.”
“And you set out to obey them? Well, sergeant, you did not obey them.”
“The envelope--” began Dad.
“Is here. With its contents undisturbed. But it doesn’t belong here. By
this time it ought to be in Jackson’s hands. Perhaps even in Lee’s. You
still do not understand?”
Dad essayed to speak; then hesitated.
“You set down your general for a fool,” insisted Hooker. “Don’t deny it,
man. Well, he isn’t one. He hit on a wise scheme. The scheme he proposed
to me last week and which had my endorsement. These papers were
carefully made out--lists, maps, directions, and all. For the exclusive
benefit of--Jackson and Lee.
“Do some more thinking for a moment and then see if you can’t guess the
riddle.”
Dad had forestalled the command. Already his brain was hot on a trail of
conjecture. He recalled what his general had said of the chances against
the mission’s success, and of the unaccustomed care that same general
had taken in warning him to lose liberty rather than life should danger
threaten.
He fell to rehearsing what General Hooker had first said. And, bit by
bit, the truth came to him.
“You begin to understand?” asked General Hooker, reading his every
expression.
“I hope, sir,” returned Dad stiffly, his color rising, “that I am
mistaken in supposing that my commanding officer sent me into the
enemy’s country, expecting me to be captured. He said the chances
against my reaching you were ten to one, and even worse. But--”
“Ten to one?” mocked Hooker. “A hundred to one--that’s how much worse--a
thousand to one. Humanly speaking, there was _no_ chance that a Federal
courier--least of all a mounted courier--could get through. For forty
miles the whole country is alive with Confederates. A trained spy might
have hoped to do it; yes. In disguise and on foot and with three days to
make the trip. But a mounted man in uniform, with instructions to
hurry--there was no chance. Such a man could not possibly have avoided
capture. Yet you did.”
“The dispatches, then, that I have just now handed you--”
“The dispatches you just handed me are no longer worth the paper they’re
scrawled on. Yet, in the Confederates’ hands, they would have been worth
their weight in gold--no, diamonds--to _us_.”
“Then--”
“They were very carefully prepared--for the enemy. They are crammed with
vital and categorical misinformation of the most interesting kind as to
our movements, our numbers, our disposition. It is an old trick. But the
papers were so carefully prepared that, carried by a palpably honest
man--”
“I see, sir,” broke in Dad, a wave of honest hot wrath driving all
thought of discipline momentarily from his brain. “And I was the dupe.
The honest fool who would make a blundering effort to get through to
you and would honestly and vehemently resist capture; so that on my
dead or captured body the false information would be found. I catch the
idea.”
“A soldier’s duty,” began Hooker, “is to--”
“Is to obey orders. And in a war like this most soldiers enlisted
prepared to throw away their lives blithely for their endangered
country.
“I am no exception. If my commanding officer had told me what I was
expected to do those documents would be in General Jackson’s camp now,
and I would be on my way to the hell of a Southern war-prison. I am not
indignant at being used in this way for the good of my country, nor even
at being used as a catspaw. But I _am_ indignant at failing to serve the
cause through my very effort to succeed in doing it.
“If I have spoken too freely I ask your pardon, sir. But, if I may
suggest it, it would be better another time to tell me frankly what I am
supposed to do, or else to choose some less zealous man as dupe.”
Hooker, no whit offended by his subordinate’s unusual language, listened
patiently to the close of the angered outburst.
“What is that for?” he asked as Dad paused for breath.
And as he asked he pointed toward the courier’s left hip. Dad glanced
down, following the direction of the inquiring gesture.
Thrust through his belt was the naked sword Mrs. Sessions had given him.
Vaguely he remembered placing it there for safe keeping and to have it
out of his way, as he had ridden on after the four fleeing guerrillas
had galloped up the by-way. In the night’s stirring perils and need for
eternal watchfulness he had forgotten it.
Now, blushing like a schoolboy--his keen soldier-sense horrified by so
glaring an error in his equipment--more chagrined at the unpardonable
lapse than had he been caught going barefoot to a Presidential
review--shame swallowed his former resentment.
“I--I apologize, sir,” he said contritely, “for appearing in your
presence wearing a commissioned officer’s sword.”
“Where did you happen on it?”
“I lost my revolver. The sword was--was given me for self-defense at a
house where I hid when guerrillas were after me. I used it in getting
away again; then stuck it in my belt in case I should be attacked in
close quarters at some time during the night.”
“You need not apologize to me or to anyone,” said Hooker slowly, “from
this time on, for wearing a commissioned officer’s sword. Your
commission as first lieutenant of infantry will be signed by President
Lincoln as soon as my next courier goes to him. In the meantime you are
an acting-lieutenant.
“Keep the sword. I wish all newly commissioned officers had as good a
right to one as you have just shown yourself to possess.”
Dad’s head swam. He tried to stammer out halting phrases of gratitude.
Hooker cut him short with another brusk laugh.
“If we played a trick and you were chosen as the catspaw,” said he,
“you’ll at least bear witness that I know how to reward a catspaw whose
claws are as alert as yours. Go across to the staff mess and get some
breakfast. Then take a few hours of sleep. You look as if you could make
use of it.”
Dad saluted with the sword he had drawn and turned to go. Hooker
recalled him as he reached the threshold of the tent door.
“Lieutenant Dadd,” he said inquisitively, “do you chance to have been at
the Point?”
“No, sir. I am not a West Point man.”
“Were you ever an officer in the army?”
“You will not find the name, ‘James Dadd,’ on any army list, I am
afraid, sir,” answered the new-made lieutenant, shaking inwardly.
“H’m!” mused Hooker. “Probably not. Probably not. It’s no affair of mine
or of anyone’s. But don’t deny it too strenuously to other people who
may ask you--or, rather, if you don’t want them to ask you, don’t draw a
sword and salute with it as if you had handled such weapons for years.
“Infantry privates do not carry swords. And when they are first
promoted, they don’t handle them as you do. That is all. Good-by,
Lieutenant--Dadd.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE CHICKAHOMINY
A boggy, tree-strewn stretch of lowlands where whitish mists hung thick
at dawn and whence miasma vapors rose under the broiling sun of midday.
A delightful place for duck and quail shooting in midwinter. In summer a
rank plague spot--and incidentally, on this particular summer of 1862,
the camping ground of the army of the Potomac. The malarial region whose
name, even to-day, sends a shudder along the bent spine of many an
oldster.
Chickahominy Swamp.
For months Major-General McClellan, commander of the army of the
Potomac, had pursued his fated peninsula campaign. Along the peninsula
in early spring he had marched his mighty army to the speedy capture of
Richmond.
Battles were lost; battles were won. Chances were lost; chances were
blindly thrown away.
More than once the spires of Richmond were in plain view to the grim,
tired men of the ranks. On one occasion, had they been allowed to press
their advantage, they could have charged into the Confederate capital’s
streets at the heels of a lesser body of foes who were in headlong
flight.
But that one golden chance had been lost through official hesitation;
and it could never come again.
For Lee and Jackson, by massing their scattered forces, rendered the
city impregnable. Whenever fresh danger seemed to threaten Richmond, Lee
made a demonstration toward Washington, which caused a rushing of
Federal regiments to repel the supposed danger and rendered a mass
attack on Richmond out of the question.
So, through a terrible summer of non-achievement, the once redoubtable
army of the Potomac lay for the most part in Chickahominy Swamp. Lay
there and rotted.
Pestilence did not “stalk” through the camps. It swept through them like
the lightning breath of the death-angel.
To one man who died in battle four died of disease. A locality that even
the heat-hardened Virginians were wont to shun in summer, Chickahominy
Swamp exacted horrible toll of lives from the Northern invaders.
Thus rested, wearily inactive, the army that was the hope and pride of
the Union. And at every turn Lee and Jackson outgeneraled its leaders;
the Confederate force opposing to the ill-led Northerners’ greater bulk
a speed and deftness that paralyzed its foe.
So that at last the North, which had so excitedly shouted “On to
Richmond!” beheld in growing amaze the reverses of its bravest sons, and
clamored vainly for a change. From Washington, too, came first
protests, then rebukes, then an imperative command that the peninsula
campaign be brought to an end and the army of the Potomac remove from
the Chickahominy pesthole.
Back from the swamp and to less fatal ground, farther away from the lost
goal of its ambition, the huge army was withdrawn, the Confederates
working havoc upon their retreating foes.
It was in one of these flank attacks--a mere fleabite for the main body
of the army, but as vital as Gettysburg itself to the army corps
directly concerned in it--that Lieutenant James Dadd won his captaincy
for gallant conduct in the face of the enemy.
A week later the demi-corps to which his regiment was attached chanced
to be far to the left of the massed army on special detail, and was
returning to headquarters.
The regiments, marching in close formation, were ascending the long,
gradual slope of an almost interminable hill when their videttes
appeared over the summit, riding back like mad, while at almost the same
moment from a wood to their left, and slightly to their rear, broke out
an irregular line of white smoke.
A masked battery in the forest, supported by several regiments of
Confederate riflemen, had opened fire on them.
Before the nearest Federal ranks could wheel to repel the attack the
flying videttes from in front reported a large body of Confederates who
had somehow gotten between the detachment and the main army, and were
approaching at the “double” from the far side of the hill up which the
line of march led.
Even the Federal corps commander--a political appointee with three
months’ actual military experience--saw the gravity of the position. Cut
off from in front and attacked on the left flank, they might well be
captured as had been more than one equally large body of Federals during
the calamitous year.
And on realizing that fact the newly appointed corps commander, who was
still weak in nerve and body from a touch of swamp-fever, proceeded to
lose his head.
Regardless of the presumably greater danger that was approaching from
behind the far-off hilltop to the front, he noted only the more palpable
peril in that booming cannonade and rifle-fire from the wood to the
left. Being only a temporary fool and not a coward, he stuttered to his
aids a series of orders that sent fully half his attenuated corps
swinging leftward in close-formation attack on the forest.
Fully twelve hundred yards of open country lay between the wood-edge and
the Federal line.
To charge a seen foe is one thing; to attack an invisible enemy who is
ensconced in unknown numbers behind a screen of leaves is quite another.
And this the advancing line promptly realized.
The order to charge was given. Across the field of fresh-cut rye-stubble
started the Federals.
(A charge, in a picture-book, is an inspiring sight. In real life it
consists of various blocks and lines and other formations of uniformed
pawns moving awkwardly and with exasperating slowness, all in one
direction, athwart the vast checker-board. A retreat is far more
picturesque and less geometrical.)
Advancing by order, in close alignment, the blue-clad men offered a mark
not to be missed. A nearsighted child in the thick wood-fringe could
scarce have failed to wreak vengeance in their ranks.
The whole edge of the forest was white now with belching smoke from
which spat jets of yellow and red fire. Solid shot, grape and rifle-fire
tore grotesque gaps in the oncoming ranks.
With no opportunity to avenge their losses or even to see their slayers,
the Federals plunged onward.
First at the double they moved, their officers trotting, sword in hand,
at the side of the companies, barking sharp commands and closing as well
as might be each new and ugly rent in the lines. Then the orderly,
rhythmic run grew shambling.
One man in a regiment’s front rank wheeled and tried to bolt
back--anywhere out of reach of the whizzing, crashing, viewless death
that was striking down his companions at every step.
A lieutenant struck the coward across the face with the flat of his
sword and howled curses at him, striving to beat him back to his duty.
But by this time another man, and yet other men, had followed the panic
example. Here and there, from the chokingly tight front rank, men had
begun to drop out, or to plunge back into the line just behind them,
throwing out of gear the exactness of company formations, infecting
hundreds with their terror.
It was no longer possible for officers to check individual cases of
fear. Their whole attention was taken up in keeping the bulk of their
men in line and in keeping them advancing.
The dead strewed the stubble ground in windrows. The fire-streaked smoke
rolled out in a blinding, acrid wave from the nearing fringe of trees.
And at every yard of distance gained the Confederate volleys waxed more
and more accurate, the piles of dead higher and thicker.
Unscathed, the wood’s defenders were killing by wholesale. And a corps
commander’s folly was paid for in the lives of hundreds of better,
wiser, braver men than himself.
A riderless horse, his back broken by a grapeshot, crawled along the
space between the Federals and the wood, dragging his hind legs behind
him and screaming hideously above the near-by din.
A major, sword in hand, running ten yards in advance of his regiment and
hallooing to them to come on, stopped abruptly, his brown face turning
suddenly to a mask of blood, and fell where he stood.
He was major in Dad’s regiment.
And Dad himself, as the men wavered on seeing their loved officer fall,
leaped forward, sword aloft, to take the dead man’s place ahead of the
line.
His lean body tense, his mild eyes aflame, the sword of old Ehud
Sessions whirling in wild encouragement above his bared head, Captain
James Dadd charged onward, yelling to his men to follow. And not only
his own company, but the whole regiment, obeyed that call.
For another fifty yards the Federal line--now irregular as a
snake-fence--plunged forward; Dad’s regiment, the Blankth Ohio Infantry,
forming its foremost point.
But flesh and blood could not stand the increasingly galling fire from
the forest. Mortal nerves were not proof against the horrible strain of
advancing to be struck down by the invisible, with no chance to strike a
single return blow.
To have halted, if only once, and to have fired a chance volley, even
ineffective, or its effect unseen, into the trees and underbrush whence
poured that hail of death, would have been infinite relief.
But the officers had had their orders from the chattering corps
commander. And those orders were to advance at the double and to
continue to advance until the Federal line should come to grips with the
foe.
Despite the frenzied exertions of their officers, the men began to lag.
The trot slacked to a walk. The walk to an almost general and very
wavering halt.
Dad, hoarse and exhausted, knew that the next move would be a cave-in of
the demoralized line, then a retreat that would change to panic flight
and a universal hurling away of rifles and knapsacks. Moreover, that
soldiers who once allowed themselves to flee in that fashion would never
again be the same men.
Their usefulness in war would be impaired by full fifty per cent., even
as a horse that once has run away is no longer to be trusted.
The old man redoubled his furious efforts to rally his regiment and to
force it onward to the charge. The whole crooked line had halted.
It was wavering like the tail of a kite. Presently it must snap.
Then--from nowhere in particular--from the skies, some vowed
afterward--came a diversion.
Down the field, in a line parallel to the woods, and a dozen rods in
front of the wavering Federal line, galloped a gun-carriage horse, its
harness flapping and flying about its flashing hoofs.
Astride the barebacked horse was a small and marvelous figure. The
figure of a short and stocky boy, fiery red of hair, his powder-blacked
face freckled, his little eyes glaring. He was clad in the obviously
chopped-down uniform of an artilleryman.
On his back, suspended by a strap that was fastened around his neck,
bounced and rattled an enormous drum. In the boy’s trouser waistband
were stuck two drumsticks.
The lad was kicking vehemently with his heels at his horse’s stomach.
But as he came midway adown the Federal line he jerked his mount to a
halt, slid to earth and, in the same gesture, unslung his drum.
He had halted not twenty feet from Dad.
“Now, then,” shrilled the boy, his harsh young voice ringing out like a
trumpet-call, “what’re you longlegged loafers waiting for? Hey? Charge,
you chumps! Charge!”
He faced the woods. His drum rolled out a deafening tattoo.
“Battle Jimmie!” shouted someone in the ranks.
“Jimmie!” echoed Dad. “Jimmie! Oh, it’s _my_ boy!”
“_Charge!_” shrilled Jimmie, his drum seconding the fiery command.
And they charged.
CHAPTER XVII
“BATTLE JIMMIE”
There is a baffling yet no less true psychological element in man which,
after he has come to the uttermost limit of his powers, enables him to
keep on past all seemingly possible bounds.
The Federal line, that had sagged and wavered and was on the brink of
retreat, forgot momentarily its panic impulse; forgot the flying death
that bit deep into its very vitals; forgot all save the fact that an
absurd-looking little boy was advancing--fearlessly, gayly--where they,
grown men, had faltered and feared to go.
The mad roll of the drum, the treble shout of “Charge!” the spectacle of
a youngster berating middle-aged veterans as though they were bad
nursery children--all this infected the line with a queer,
half-hysterical impetus.
Someone laughed aloud. The laugh ran along the ranks in every cadence of
surprised mirth. Dad and a score of other officers caught up the word
“Charge!”
Irregularly, in shockingly bad formation, staggering like drunkards--yet
staggering _forward_--the men got into motion.
Now they were on the run, a laughing, swearing, wholly unafraid mob.
Following close behind the boy they made for the forest death-trap--the
trap they no longer feared.
Fast as they ran, two figures were ever in advance of them: Major James
Dadd, and, close at his side, “Battle Jimmie.”
No word did either of the two speak to the other--there was no space for
words--and Jimmie had not so much as seen his grandfather. Yet Dad,
after that one gasp of recognition, had pressed as close as possible to
the lad and, in a daze of dread and incredulous delight, was charging
shoulder to shoulder with him.
The Federals crashed pell-mell into the forest edge. There was a long
minute of turmoil, of blind hand-to-hand fighting with gray-clad foes,
who had all at once for the first time become visible.
Behind the first thick line of chinkapin and hazel underbrush at the
forest fringe twisted a somewhat rotted, but still formidable,
snake-fence. Behind this excellent double barrier--the tree foliage
dropping to beneath the tops of the bushes--were three howitzer
batteries and a number of detached pieces of light artillery.
This armament was reënforced by one of the new-fangled “mountain
batteries” and a vast, unwieldy swivel-gun (part of the Norfolk
navy-yard loot).
Apart from the guns and their crews, a scant two thousand Confederate
infantrymen, chiefly made up of such marksmen as at that day were found
only south of the Mason-Dixon line, comprised the forest defense.
By the well-established tactical rule that “one man may defend what four
men cannot storm,” the odds were comfortably in the Southerners’ favor.
These odds and their own invisibility had rendered their flank attack on
the Federal demi-corps an all but absolute success.
But for the unforeseen effect that one red-haired child had had upon the
charging-line, the Federals would even now have been reeling back upon
their main body and helping still further to render that body helpless
against the impending attack from the larger Confederate force that had
not yet breasted the hill. As it was--
Through natural hedge and through rotting snake-fence crashed the
charging Yankees. In a shouting, laughing, cheering mass they flung
themselves, bayoneted guns leveled, upon their gray foes.
All at once the wood that had been so murderously easy for the
Confederates to hold against their charging enemies grew too hot to
contain them.
Back against the batteries the infantrymen were driven. Around the
guns--and chiefly around the giant swivel--swirled the fight in tangled
blue-gray eddies.
The man who shoots from behind a tree is as terrible as fate--so long as
he remains behind his tree and his opponent is in the open. Once routed
out of his shelter, he is but a mortal.
And these erstwhile terrifying Confederates, seen now at close range,
were mere humans--and humans who were on the ragged edge of retreat.
Jimmie, drum slung momentarily behind him, had gone through the thicket
like a woodchuck. He struck the fence, taller than his own head, and
swarmed up its irregular side.
As he reached the top Dad vaulted the barrier and gained the far side,
turning to help the boy down. Just then the charging men who followed
them collided with the fence, and it went to matchwood under their rush.
Jimmie was sent sprawling through the air, and landed breathless against
the bole of a live-oak. Dad lifted the gasping boy to his feet.
Not noticing who had done him this service, nor indeed that it had been
done, Jimmie with a single gesture twisted the drum forward, and,
running at full speed to regain his lead over the others, set the
drum-sticks flying with unimpaired ardor to their noisy task again.
But in the inferno of noise, here among the roaring big guns, where the
hand-to-hand fighting was, and where the arching foliage acted as a
sounding-board, the drum’s babel went almost unheard.
Its work was done. The fire it had kindled needed now no fuel.
Dad still close at his side, Jimmie plunged on through the biting
smoke-whirl. Out of the blinding reek just in front towered a Virginia
rifleman, stripped to the waist, his rifle clubbed.
Glimpsing the blue of Jimmie’s uniform, the man aimed his clubbed gun
for the lad’s head, doubtless ignorant in that haze and confusion that
it was a boy and not a man at whom he smote.
Up whirled the gunbutt.
Jimmie, his eyes straight ahead, did not see the peril. But Dad, his
eyes everywhere, saw it.
Saw and forestalled it. Before the impending blow could fall his sword
had flashed with the speed of light, and into the rifleman’s bare throat
the point bit deep and far.
The Virginian reeled back into the smoke-drift, his rifle clattering
harmless to earth. Jimmie, blissfully excited, unaware of the danger
averted from him, was running onward as fast as his stocky legs could
move.
For now, just in front, the fight was surging about one huge pivot--a
point whose center was the great swivel-gun.
Around this well-nigh priceless bit of war treasure--which, by the way,
had no place in such an engagement--the Confederates rallied for their
final stand.
Ten gunners wheeled its black muzzle into play, but before a shot could
be fired the Federals were upon them.
Then it was hand-to-hand work, with no scope for solid shot or other
artillery advantage.
Into the mêlée plunged Battle Jimmie, shoulder to shoulder with the man
to whose presence he was still oblivious.
There was a confused second of tight-packed, grinding, breathless
strife. Then in an instant the gray fighters fled--fled in every
direction, leaving the gun and the rest of their artillery.
After them through the shadowy tree-aisles, gray with smoke-clouds,
rushed their Northern pursuers.
Dad gripped the fast-following Jimmie by the shoulder, bringing the
indignant youngster to a very sudden and fruitlessly wriggling halt.
“Leggo!” snapped Jimmie, his war-lust at full flood. “Leggo, you old
fool! They’re needing me out in front there; can’t you see--”
“They’re needing you--and themselves a lot more right _here_!” panted
Dad, his voice hoarse and spent with the battle. “Sound the recall!”
“What?” yelled Jimmie in the unbelieving tone of a soldier who is
ordered to retreat even before the first volley has been fired.
“Sound the recall!” repeated Dad. “Sound it, quick! My voice is gone,
and they’re plumb crazy! They’re liable to run into an ambuscade beyond
there and lose all we’ve gained. Sound the recall!”
“The recall,” sneered Jimmie insolently as he strove in vain to tug free
from the hand on his shoulder, “is the one piece of war-music I’ve never
took the trouble to learn, nor wanted to, neither.”
“Jimmie Brinton,” declaimed Dad in a terribly solemn and awe-compelling
rumble, “I’ve never laid hand to you in my life, and I hoped I’d never
have to. But unless you sound the recall, and sound it loud enough to
bring those lunatics back here on the double--why, I’m going to take
you over my knee right here and now and--”
“Dad!” screamed Jimmie, the smoke-mists gouged out of his eyes and his
gaze for the first time resting on the stern, loving old face above him.
“Dad!” he repeated, his short arms clasping the veteran convulsively
about the waist. “Oh, Dad, it’s--it’s--_you_!”
“Jimmie, dear lad,” broke in his grandfather, “joy can wait, but trouble
can’t. Sound that recall!”
Jimmie snatched up his drum.
“I’d play ‘Dixie’ or the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ if you ordered it,” he said
adoringly, and the roll of the “Recall” cracked out.
Again and again he played it until the pursuing Federals heard it and
obeyed; halted and turned back to their duty.
CHAPTER XVIII
“GENERAL” DAD
Meantime, Dad was saying to his grandson: “Maybe you think we’ve won a
little victory. We have. Maybe you think the retreat of those Confeds
was our victory. It wasn’t. The victory was our getting these guns of
theirs, especially that big swivel-gun.
“If we can save every cannon used here and get them all safe back to our
own lines, that’ll spell victory. Not the fact that one crowd made
another crowd run away.
“In war the victor isn’t the fellow who chases the other fellow. He’s
the man who is able to grab the weapons and provisions and ammunition
that make the other fellow dangerous. We can’t buy batteries and guns
like these for less than a fortune, and the Confederates can’t replace
them at any price.
“That’s how we harm them more than if we killed fifty thousand of them.
That’s why I told you to sound the recall.”
“I--I see,” admitted Jimmie shamefacedly. “They’re beginning to come
back now. Gee, if a party of Confeds had flanked us and run off the guns
while I was refusing to sound the recall, I’d ’a’ wanted to shoot
myself.”
“That’s all right, sonny. A man often has to stop to revise his list of
the world’s great men and give himself a lower place in it. It’s lucky
for him if his blunder’s no worse than yours in telling an old fool--”
“Dad! You know blamed well. I’d ’a’ bit my tongue out sooner’n have
called you that if I’d known it was _you_ had a hold of me.”
“No hard feelings, son. No hard feelings _ever_ between you and me.
Only--you saw I was old. I was fairly certain to be someone’s dad or
granddad. Someone wouldn’t relish hearing his dad or granddad called an
‘old fool’ any more than you would. Maybe it’d be well to remember
that.”
“I--I understand. I’m sorry. Oh, Dad, it’s gorgeous to be with you
again. I’ve asked and I’ve looked and I’ve even--”
“One second, Jimmie!”
Dad turned on the foremost group of the returning Federals. Briefly and
clearly he issued a series of orders. Then to a similar approaching
group and to a third and to a fourth. Soon the former fighting line was
swarming with men at work over the captured guns. Without waiting
further, Dad sprang astride a straying troop horse, lifted Jimmie to the
saddle in front of him, and set off at a lumbering gallop to render a
report to his corps commander.
On the way he scarcely spoke, saying only, as they started:
“If you and I have any sort of luck, Jimmie, we’ll have plenty of years
to tell each other what’s happened since we said good-by that night back
at Ideala.
“But just this minute we belong to Uncle Sam; and he needs us a lot. Our
best, quickest thoughts, most of all. For there’s trouble ahead for the
man who isn’t fitted to think it out.
“What’s become of my superior officers back there in the woods I don’t
know. They’ll show up when the glory is handed out. But just now they’re
a trifle scarce. And there may be work for me. I’ve got to do some
planning--some mighty tall planning, too.”
Presently they drew up at a small, cleared space in the center of the
portion of the demi-corps that had not been tossed into the forest
charge.
Dad dismounted, leaving the horse to an orderly, and, with Jimmie at his
side, walked up to the white and wildly excited corps commander. The
latter, with his staff, had witnessed through binoculars the hot little
charge.
The commander was fairly bubbling with questions.
“Sir,” formally announced Dad, at attention, “I have to announce that we
carried the Confederate position at the edge of the woods yonder, and
that we have captured between twenty-eight and thirty cannon of various
sizes. The exact list, with those of our losses, will be delivered to
you as soon as it can be determined. I have returned to--”
“Splendid!” broke in the young general, with a fine fervor. “A complete
victory! I shall send full report at once to General McClellan at
headquarters; and you can be assured, Captain Dadd, that your own
gallant conduct shall by no means be forgotten in my report. As for this
little hero with the drum--”
“General,” interposed Dad, dropping his voice and moving a step nearer
to the exuberant commander, “may I speak plainly?”
“By all means, sir!” bleated the commander, with his best Napoleon air.
“The hero of such a victory as this has just proved may well--”
“This is no victory, general,” urged Dad, with terrible earnestness. “It
was a flank movement that amounts to but one move in a big game. Our
videttes reported the approach of Confederates in force beyond the hill
there, you may recollect. Has--”
“Bless me!” cried the young general, aghast. “I’d forgotten. In the
glory of that charge I--”
“In the taking of one trick you have thrown away the whole hand!” burst
forth Dad in righteous wrath. “That affair at the woods was just a flank
movement to distract and weaken us and later perhaps to enfilade us.
“The real danger lies in front--in the force that lies between us and
our main body. A force that has let us get into this trap to catch our
whole demi-corps, as Jackson has done more than once with bigger
detached bodies of Federals than ours in the past six months. That or
drive us back into another Confederate army somewhere to the south.”
“Do you--do you really think--” stammered the general, his horror
making him insensible to his adviser’s tone of insubordination. “Do
you--”
“I think, sir, that we have one chance, and only one--to strike forward
at full speed for that hill-top. The nearer we get to the summit before
we come in touch with the enemy, the better our chances.
“Throw the whole force ahead, letting the men who were in the charge at
the woods be brought up as quickly as possible to form our rear guard.
It is just one chance; but a delay will leave us no chance.”
The young commander, pitiable in the fright of crass inexperience, clung
metaphorically to the one stable power in sight. And then he did the one
wise thing in his whole brief military career up to this point.
Reading calm self-confidence in Dad’s face, he said loudly:
“Captain Dadd, you are hereby appointed temporarily to my personal
staff.” Under his breath he murmured: “What orders?”
Readily and without change of expression Dad whispered a score of
successive sentences to his chief--sentences whose technicalities the
bewildered politician-general himself did not half-grasp, but which he
as promptly transmitted to his couriers.
In almost no time the inert body of men was buzzing with orderly
activity. The front ranks--at the double, and their heavier
accouterments consigned to the baggage train--were on the march,
hastening eagerly toward the hill summit, the successive regiments
pressing close after.
“You see, sir,” Dad was explaining to the general, “it is easier to
advance fifty yards toward a foe over level ground, or a hundred yards
down a slope, than ten yards _up_ a hill. If we can seize and hold the
crest before they reach it, it is so much net gain.
“To prevent that, and to delay us further, the flank movement at the
forest edge was planned. In open order, as our men are now marching, and
as they must continue to march, they avoid presenting a good target to
volley-fire.”
Regiment after regiment wheeled into line and breasted the long slope,
the rear being brought up by the returning heroes of the forest fight.
Only the first half of the force was sent ahead at the double. The rest
of the demi-corps, baggage and big guns with them, moved at a more
sedate pace.
It was needful only to assure the capture of the crest and that it
should be held until the entire force could come up.
If there seems something comic-operalike in the idea of a Federal force
marching rapidly to battle against a foe whose numbers were unknown and
whose vanguard was unseen--a foe whose full description a dozen scouts
had not given hours earlier--the reader is respectfully, but very sadly,
referred to War Department records of no less than nine similar
occurrences in the Virginia campaigns of 1862 and 1863.
Dad (his long years of supposedly aimless reading of military tactics,
during such evenings as the Eagle bar had not called him, bearing sudden
and glorious fruit) knew the glow that can be equaled by none other the
world has to offer--the inspiration of seeing a mighty mass of fellow
men moving and acting on the sole impulse of his own brain.
He grew young again. As he rode close to the general’s bridle rein,
briefly mapping out the future movements of the detachment, he felt that
failure and he had forever bidden each other adieu.
Then--
A scurrying figure that scuttled up to the general, ducking under his
very bridle rein.
“Hey, general!” shouted Jimmie full fiercely. “They sent me back.
There’s going to be fun up there ahead by and by. I smell it. I can
_always_ smell it in advance. And that’s where I and my drum belong.
Give me a chance at those Rebs, won’t you? Oh, _please_!”
There was a chuckle from a hundred throats as the shrill plea went up.
The general glanced inquiringly at Dad, in whose company Jimmie had
arrived on the scene.
“He is my grandson, sir,” explained Dad. “Though what he is doing here
is beyond all my guessing. I left him back at Ideala, Ohio, a year and
more ago. I never heard of him or from him again till to-day. I’d
written often, but the letters were never answered. I see now they never
were received. The boy’s silence worried me. But not half as much as his
presence in this inferno does just at this particular time.”
“Can I please go to the front, gen’ral?” pleaded the boy.
His voice had swelled to a whine. But it was the frantic whine of the
leashed hunting-dog when it sees the pack afield.
The general turned to Dad.
“He is your grandson, Captain Dadd,” said he. “Use your own judgment
about giving him the permission he wants. I have enough to answer for
this day without sending a little boy to probable death.”
“Little boy?” scoffed Jimmie, outraged to the paladin soul. “_Little_
boy, hey? With a regiment of such ‘little’ boys you could storm
Vicksburg. And with a brigade of us you could have Richmond for the
asking.
“_Little_ boy? I take notice that just now when a passel of big, wise
men were holding back and wanting to call it a day and run home, it was
a little boy that jacked ’em up and showed ’em the way to win. And it’s
the same little boy who’ll do the same thing again out front yonder if
you’ll give him half a chance. Aw, lemme go! Out there where the fun is.
Me and my drum!”
“Jimmie!” reproved Dad sternly--though his eyes softened at
manifestation of the fighting spirit he loved--“Apologize! Apologize at
once for speaking disrespectfully to your superior officer. He could
rightly send you to the guard-house for impertinence. A soldier’s duty
is no duty when it lets him criticize his superiors. If nothing else
proved you were still a little boy, your behavior just now proves it.
Apologize!”
“I--I apologize,” meekly answered Jimmie, accompanying his humble words
with a horrible glower at the general by his grandfather’s side.
“Don’t mention it, my lad,” returned the general, choking back a guffaw
at the ludicrous contrast between face and voice. “And now, if your
grandfather thinks well of it, you can go forward. Take your orders from
him.”
Dad’s eyes were wide with sudden distress.
He knew what type of work was likely to be afoot beyond the hill-crest.
He knew, too, that where the lead should rain thickest there would this
irrepressible grandson of his be found. Once already, that day, the boy
had escaped death almost miraculously.
By the law of chance he could scarce count on the intervention of a
second miracle in his behalf.
“Jimmie!” he said. “I’ve missed you so, lad. And the world’s been so
empty without my chum. It’s hard to risk a longer parting, now that
we’ve just had the blind, unbelievable luck to meet again.”
Jimmie sighed, thrust the drum behind him, dutifully saluted, and fell
into step alongside his grandfather’s horse with chin stiffly set.
Dad leaned down sideways in the saddle and smote him on the shoulder.
“It takes a good soldier to go willingly into action. But it takes a
blamed-sight better soldier to stay out of the action where his spirit
is waiting for him to join it. Go ahead, lad! Forward! Do your own work
your own way. I’ve no right to stay you.”
The boy leaped forward, gripped Dad’s hand in an ecstatic instant’s
pressure, then scuttled off up the hill ahead of the more slowly
advancing staff.
And from every hurrying regiment that he outdistanced rose a laughing
cheer for Battle Jimmie. And so he went on toward the hill-crest, and
beyond it, where crouched the unknown.
CHAPTER XIX
THE CLASH
Thanks to Dad’s foresight, or to the Confederate leader’s confidence in
his flank movement’s power to detain his proposed prey, the hilltop was
gained by the Yankee vanguard while the Confederates were still slowly
toiling up its farther and far-steeper slope.
Before the advancing Confederates could clearly realize what was
happening the Federal vanguard was bearing down upon them.
This ruse of Dad’s (gleaned by him from the tale of a battle of
Frederick the Great) took the enemy wholly and dumfoundedly by surprise.
By every modern tradition of warfare the force on the hilltop, at sight
of the approaching enemy, should have halted and thrown up some sort of
defenses, or at the least should have awaited the foe’s approach.
Instead the leading Yankee regiments, moving in semi-open formation,
started down the hill at the double, straight at the climbing foes.
And other regiments and yet others appearing over the summit joined in
the charge. The crest and the upper slope of the hill were alive with
running men.
And five yards in advance of the foremost line leaped and ran and
yelled and drummed a deliriously excited small boy.
When a man, toiling laboriously up a steep hill, collides with a man
running down the same hill, which is the more apt to be bowled over by
the impact?
The runner is reënforced by his own great impetus, the climber
handicapped by his own fatigue and the sloping of the ground behind.
And what is true of two men is true of two hundred or of two thousand or
of any larger number of men.
The Federal line crashed down upon the slow-moving Confederates, smashed
their ranks and tore through them with scarce a halt. The Confederates,
reeling from the collision, were sent in every direction, with no
earthly chance to reform or to battle against the resistless onrush.
The trap, so well planned and so badly sprung, was no longer a trap. For
the proposed victims had torn their way out of it ere its proposed iron
jaws could close relentlessly upon them.
Straight on moved the Federals; slowly as they neared the hillfoot, to
keep their whole depth intact and guard their baggage and heavy guns.
But by this time the Confederates on either side of the advancing column
were scattered beyond rallying.
And the Confederate center, which had given back before the rush, was
running for shelter toward a group of rambling houses that made up a
creek-side village a half-mile behind and a bit to the left of the
routed lines of gray.
“Straight on,” advised Dad, “closing your formation. Three hours’ march
should put us in touch with the main body of the Army of the Potomac.
Leave a couple of regiments to make a demonstration against that
village, so that the rest can get well out of reach without fear of a
flank attack. Then when we have moved past, let them retreat and join
us.”
The corps commander, with just sense enough left not to tamper with his
own unbelievable good luck, issued orders accordingly, leaving Dad
behind as his staff representative with the two regiments and the
mountain battery detailed to hold the village’s defenders in play.
Jimmie, the fun being over, found his way back to his grandfather’s
side, a very tired, very happy, very flushed little hero.
Dad gripped both the perspiring and weary hands in silent gratitude for
the lad’s safety.
Then, as he was not on active duty for the moment, he drew aside under a
big tree out of the line of fire, sat down, and lighted his pipe.
The boy dropped with a full sigh of content at his feet.
“The real work is done. You and your drum can take a little holiday,”
said Dad. “All these two regiments and the battery are to do is to keep
up some sort of fire on the village, and pretend, if necessary, to rush
it. Just to keep those fellows on the defensive till the rest of our
line is well past.
“One of those is an Ohio regiment, by the way. It joined our corps only
yesterday. I’ve been wanting to ride over to its quarters, about three
miles from ours. Because it was recruited at Columbus, and may have some
of our Ideala boys in it.”
He had been speaking lightly, for several officers were loitering within
earshot. Now, as the last of them passed out of hearing, Dad laid his
hand lovingly on his grandson’s shoulder.
“Jimmie, lad,” he said, “tell me about everything. I’ve wanted so to
know. And it’s the first minute when we’ve been alone together and that
I’ve had the right to ask. First of all, how do you happen to be here
and not in the Ideala high school where you belong?”
“I stood it for a couple of months after you left,” began Jimmie.
“And--say, mother was as mad as wrath about your going. I told her,
after a while, that you’d enlisted. But I don’t quite think she believed
it. Mother said she was going to Europe for a year, now that there was
nothing to hold her at home; and she fixed it for me to board with Uncle
Cyrus and go to high school while she was gone. And--and--”
“I see,” murmured Dad, readily visualizing the lonely boy’s plight and
his yearning to desert such a humdrum, boresome existence as had been
mapped out for him in favor of joining the excitement at the front.
“I wrote to you,” said Jimmie, “a lot of letters. But they all came back
to me. I didn’t know what department or regiment to address. I wasn’t
even sure you’d taken the name ‘James Dadd’ that I’d picked out for
you.”
“Why, _I_ wrote to _you_, son. A dozen times. Telling you--”
The boy flushed uncomfortably.
“I--I s’pose mother has a right to do whatever she likes with letters
that come to our house,” he mumbled. “It’s _her_ house, you know. And
after she left--well, I wasn’t there either.”
“Yes. Yes. It’s all right. No one’s to blame. Go on.”
“Two fellers on our block, only a year older’n I was, went away to
Columbus to enlist,” pursued Jimmie. “They were pretty big. And they
swore they were eighteen. So they got accepted. That was too much for
me. Nobody needed me at Uncle Cyrus’s. And I missed you such a lot. And
all the time I could hear the war whispering and calling to me the way
you said it always does to men who love their country. So--I ran away to
Columbus, the way the other fellers had, too.”
“Yes? But you weren’t even fifteen yet, let alone eighteen. How could--”
“That was the trouble. The recruiting sergeant sized me up the minute he
set eyes on me--for all I’d stuffed hay in my shoes to make me taller
and walked on my toes. But he got a bounty for all the fellers he put
through, so he just shoved the Bible at me and told me to put my hand on
it and say I was eighteen and it would be all right. And--and--I
couldn’t.”
“Of course not, Jimmie,” assented Dad softly. “We’re the fighting
Brintons. Not the perjuring Brintons. It’s a terrible thing at best to
have to lay your hand on the Book and swear to anything. But when
there’s any shadow of doubt about the truth of the thing you swear
to--why, a real _man_ can’t.”
“How about the two other fellers? Aren’t they guilty of--”
“‘Guilty’s’ a pretty big word for anybody except God to use. What
happened next?”
“I had eighteen dollars in my window-bank. I bought a second-hand
uniform, cut it down myself, and then bought a second-hand drum. And I
lit out for the Mississippi, where I heard some of the Ohio regiments
were fighting. I had a kind of hope I’d find you.
“I got to a place where our men were trying to storm a battery. I--I
couldn’t wait, the way I meant to, to ask some drum major to take me on
as drummer-boy. First thing I knew I was in front of our line, banging
the drum and telling the men to come on. And--they came.”
“Good boy! Fighting Brinton!”
“After that they kind of adopted me in the army of the West. Let me come
and go as I would. And called me ‘Battle Jimmie’ and tried to make a pet
of me. Gee! Do _I_ look like a pet?
“I asked everywhere for you, and I got hold of all the army lists I
could. There wasn’t any news of you in the army of the West. But I saw a
man there--a man those Western soldiers say is a wonder--who may be the
same man you used to tell me about. The one you used to know in Mexico
as Captain Grant. I guess he’s the same one, because he was a captain
in the Mexican War. He’s general now. A man without a word in his mouth,
but with all the military sense there is.
“One day last month I came across a list of commissioned officers of the
Army of the Potomac. It had your name. So here I came.
“I got to the army’s headquarters yesterday and I found what corps you
were with and where it was. I borrowed an artillery horse and cut across
country to look for you. I got here just as you fellers were charging
the woods.
“That’s all about me. Now, how about _you_, Dad? You’ve succeeded.
You’re a captain. Isn’t it wonderful? How did it happen? I knew it
would.”
Briefly, Dad sketched his adventures; the hot little hand in his,
thrilling with the recital, the boy’s light eyes raised to his in stark
hero-worship.
As Dad came to the scene in the old Virginia homestead his voice shook a
little with embarrassment. He glossed over all that part of the tale
save the little widow’s surpassing goodness to himself. He congratulated
himself on the tactful secrecy wherein he was shrouding any hint of
sentiment.
Jimmie made no comment, and Dad went on with the rest of the story. At
its close the boy said, as though picking up the thread of a
long-discussed theme:
“Yes, I shed think she’d make a bully grandmother for any feller.”
“She?” rasped Dad. “Who? What on earth are you bleating about?”
“About Mrs. Sessions, of course, Dad. Why, don’t you?”
“Son,” coldly declaimed his grandfather, “there’s things a fool boy has
no right to--to--Oh, Jimmie, lad, how’d you guess? She’s a wonderful
little woman. And I told her all about you. And she feels just like a
mother to you already. She says so, son, and--
“My lad,” Dad caught himself up pompously, “this is not a subject I care
to discuss. Have you heard anything from your father? Or have you seen
him?”
“N--no, sir,” said the boy, strangling a laugh at his grandfather’s
abrupt change of tone, and wisely humoring the whim of reticence. “I
haven’t seen him. I was afraid to look him up for fear he might want to
pack me off out of this back to that old school.”
“He might,” agreed Dad. “A year ago he would. But perhaps this past year
he’s learned something himself in this war-school that will make him
understand you better. It will be great when we are all three home again
and can have camp-fires and yarn over our exploits. I make no doubt
Joseph is a commissioned officer long ago. He is bound to become one,
yes. Unquestionably, a man of his solid wisdom--”
A crackle of musketry broke in on the talk.
The two Federal regiments, in fan-formation, were moving slowly forward
toward the village. Advancing a few yards under fire, they would halt,
drop to earth, and let fly at the village walls and windows; crawling
forward once more and repeating the maneuvers.
“It’s a good move,” Dad approved. “It would be crazy for them to try to
carry the village by storm. But they just want to keep the Confeds
amused and hold them where they are for a half-hour or so. Our boys will
fall back presently, and start the same tactics over again.”
The rippling fire from the Federals was answered by a truly vicious
outpour of smoke and flame-jet from the doors and windows and angles of
the little village.
Back ran the maneuvering Federals to cover. And as they did so, Dad
jumped to his feet with an involuntary cry of dismay.
CHAPTER XX
THE PRODIGAL FATHER
The fan-formation made the Federal line wide-scattered, as in “deploying
skirmishers.” Every man had fully fifty feet of space between himself
and the next soldier.
This formation, and the eccentric method of advance and retreat,
combined with the long range, made the Yankee regiments extremely
difficult targets for volley fire.
Almost unscathed, they had made their advance. And almost unscathed they
were coming back.
It was not a battle. It was merely a bit of bull-baiting.
And now it was over; and the two regiments, at a command, were
withdrawing from range, preparatory to massing and resuming their march,
to catch up with their own main body.
The few men who had fallen were easily “brought in” by their comrades.
But Dad’s alert eyes had just seen, from his point of vantage, what the
half-wriggling, half-crawling skirmishers had not. A man at the extreme
left of the “fan” had jumped to his feet midway in the return, had
whirled clean about and had fallen.
The wounded man got to his hands and knees, tried to move back, and fell
again.
And now, from a roof in the village, two or three sharpshooters were
evidently at work amid the din of useless volleying. And one or more of
these sharpshooters began to single out this crawling man--the only
Federal still within range--as a mark.
The fellow had once more risen to his knees, and was working his way
back toward his unseeing comrades.
A bullet whipped up a puff of dust just behind him. A second carried
away his cap. A third grazed him on hand or wrist and knocked him from
his balance.
Then it was that Dad shouted aloud. For, as the stumbling man lurched
forward, head thrown backward like a hurt animal’s, Dad had seen his
face.
“Jimmie!” cried the old man. “It’s--it’s Joe! He’s bronzed and he’s got
a beard; but it’s Joe! And those sharpshooters back there are testing
their aim on him. Wait for me here, son, for a minute!”
As he spoke a bugle sounded--the bugle that summoned the re-formed
Federal regiments to the march.
Dad, running low, and darting eccentrically from side to side to confuse
the aim of the sharpshooters, dashed out onto the deserted field.
Quickly he was seen, as was tested by renewed spits of fire from a roof.
And bullets began to whine past him.
Untouched, he gained the spot where his son lay momentarily senseless
from pain.
He bent over the fallen man, caught him up in his arms, and started
heavily back toward the tree, keeping his own body between Joseph and
the village.
Then it was that Dad discovered Jimmie close at his side.
“I told you to wait--back there--for me to come back!” he panted.
“I couldn’t!” muttered Jimmie in the same short-of-breath tone. “Gimme
his feet to carry--I want to help some way.”
Dad assented, and the limp weight was shifted between the two.
Bullets spatted the ground near them. One rifle-ball ripped through the
wooden sides of Jimmie’s worshiped drum slung at the lad’s hip.
“Over to the right,” ordered Dad. “To that cottage over yonder. We can
get him there, I guess. And then you can cut ahead and see if you can
overhaul a company of our men to come back for us.”
A one-story stone hut stood some fifty yards distant; and thither they
bore the injured man.
It was no longer a task of peril, for suddenly the firing had stopped
from the now-beyond-range rooftops of the village.
Dad, as they reached the cottage porch, glanced back toward the town to
learn the reason; pessimistically certain that the cessation of firing
meant a detachment of Confederates had been detailed to capture them.
But a single look relieved his fears and explained the situation to him.
The village was a-buzz with hurrying men. They were pouring out of
houses and barns like ants from a hill in an excited swarm.
The Confederates had evidently just discovered the meaning of the
Federal ruse and the fact that the two regiments which had attacked them
were again on the march.
Wherefore, to seize at least a remnant of glory from the day of defeats,
the Confederate leader was taking his men in pursuit of the withdrawing
regiments in the hope of overhauling and thrashing them before they
could come up with the remainder of the demi-corps, which had now passed
out of sight.
At such a moment the capture or killing of three fugitive Yankees was
too trivial a matter to think of. The village was emptied with
incredible speed.
The hut’s occupants were as devoid of danger as they were devoid of
reasonable chance, by this move on the part of the enemy, of rescue.
Dad explained this in a dozen words to Jimmie as they laid Joseph’s body
on a truckle bed in the half-furnished front room of the cottage.
“We’ve got to tend to him ourselves,” he ended. “We can’t carry him,
wounded like this, to headquarters. It might kill him. If there was just
someone here who understood something more than we do about nursing--”
“There is!” spoke up Jimmie.
“What?”
“When that general of yours hustled all the guns and the baggage along
he left the two biggest wagons to follow. I know why, too. They’re Red
Cross wagons. Volunteer nurses, sawbones, and all that sort of thing.
They’re immune from getting shot or nabbed. So he didn’t clog up the
‘rush’ baggage with ’em.
“I got all that while I was waiting for leave to go ahead with my drum.
They can’t be over a mile or so off. They’ll be on that main road over
yonder somewhere.”
“Go and find one of the wagons if you can,” ordered Dad. “Beg a nurse
and a surgeon--both, if you can, and get back as quickly as possible.
You’ve got a good head, son, to remember all that. It’s the real man who
stores up petty details and makes use of them. Hurry!
“Wait!” he exclaimed, the memory of a woman’s chance words flashing
athwart his mind. “Wait! She--she said she might become a nurse. Ask if
there is a Mrs. Sessions--remember the name--_Sessions_--in the corps of
nurses there. If there is, ask if she can be detailed for this work!”
Jimmie was gone.
Dad turned back to the couch and loosened the throat of his son’s jacket
and shirt.
Joseph had grown thinner and darker and older this past year. The smugly
self-sufficient look seemed gone from his face, as his father bent
solicitously to scan it.
Dad’s hands ran over his body in search of the wound.
The graze on the wrist was a mere nothing. But a spent ball had struck
the shoulder and, without piercing the skin, had snapped the
shoulder-blade by its impact--one of the most painful and least perilous
of injuries.
It was this hurt which had caused Joseph to spring up, stumble and fall,
and whose pain had later made him swoon.
The man came back to his senses. Opening his eyes and seeing above him
an officer in the uniform of a captain, he raised his uninjured arm with
difficulty in an all-but-involuntary salute.
“Joe!” cried the old man. “Don’t you know me? Don’t you know me? It’s
Dad. I--mean ‘father.’”
Joseph Brinton looked up dully; with eyes that had in them no faintest
glint of recognition. He had known the uniform. He did not at all know
the face.
His father, to the best of his son’s belief, was still spending the bulk
of his days and nights lording it in frowzy dignity in the Eagle bar;
his long, silvery hair hanging down above his film-eyed and somewhat
bloated face; his pursy form incased in the shiny old-fashioned frock
suit.
Mrs. Joseph Brinton had not thought best to notify her absent lord that
his father had run away.
Partly for fear of worrying the soldier-husband; partly lest Joseph be
inclined in his primly perfect way to blame her for not keeping closer
watch on the old man, or of making his stay at the big house happier
than had been her frigid course in reality.
Of Jimmie’s deflection from the home nest, Joseph knew nothing, for the
very good reason that Mrs. Brinton, still in Europe, had not herself
been to date apprised of the fact. Her family had feared her lofty
wrath, and they still hoped that, his war craze satiated, Jimmie might
return home before his mother should arrive back at Ideala.
In the alert and muscular soldierly figure and the lean, strong face
bent above him, Joseph now saw not one lineament of a father whose
vagaries he had borne so long and with such exemplary patience.
But at a repetition of the words: “Don’t you know me, Joe?” something in
the voice struck him as vaguely familiar. Not in the intonation which
was wholly new; but the timber.
He blinked perplexedly. Then a new twinge of pain made him wince.
“You are not dangerously hurt,” said Dad. “It is a painful wound, but it
is not serious. Try to stand it like a soldier.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Joseph.
“You still don’t know me? Think, man! I am your father.”
“My--my _father_!” echoed Joseph incredulously.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LITTLE LADY AGAIN
Dad looked up, and his gaze through the window fell on Jimmie. The boy
had paused in his flight across the field--almost at the threshold of
the cottage.
His grandfather passed out to see what was delaying him.
On the porch Dad halted, staring into the hot haze of sunshine and dust
that rolled up from the fields.
In the shade of a magnolia, Battle Jimmie was squatting on all fours,
pulling a bayonet out of the ground.
“What are you doing?” asked Dad.
The boy looked up half guiltily.
“I saw this bayonet stuck here,” he explained. “And--”
“And your father is waiting for a nurse,” reproved Dad.
“I know. I’m sorry. But I thought this would be nice to take along. I’ve
always wanted one. There isn’t any great hurry about father. He isn’t
badly hurt. I knew that as soon as I looked at him. I’ve seen enough of
them to know. I guess he’s mostly scared.”
“Jimmie!”
“When I saw him it seemed like I was almost a kid again. You don’t
suppose he’ll make me go back to school again, do you, Dad? I--I wonder
who used to own this bayonet, and why he threw it away, whoever he was?
Or if he had no more use for bayonets and things.”
The boy fell silent there in the acrid haze, looking into unnamable
distances, seeing in his mind’s eye the ceaseless columns of sternly
marching men.
Dad looked at the bayonet. On its haft there was a dried spot--a spot
that had once been red and wet--
It was the jack-knife that war gives its children. Dad felt a queer
sensation in the corners of his eyes, and, surreptitiously wiping them,
muttered something about “this blamed hay-fever,” and pretended to be
very brusk and ordered, with an abominably poor imitation of sarcasm:
“When--when you get through with all the important duties that seem to
be worrying you so, you skedaddle across the fields and see if you can
find me that nurse or surgeon for your father. Get out! Keep a running!
It isn’t like you to loaf like this. And I’m surprised at you.
And--remember to ask for a Mrs. Sessions, as I told you. It is an
off-chance. But in war, off-chances are the kind that happen. Now,
scurry. Stop wasting time.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jimmie. “I guess it’s the sight of father that’s
somehow taken all the ginger out of me. I’m going.”
Boyish memories of the dread men he had seen
marching--marching--marching--faded from Jimmie’s face. He sprang up to
attention, his eyes bright and keen, his thin, brown little hand at his
temple in a cocky salute, while he cried:
“As you order, captain!”
He started off across lots.
He was not a small boy going on an errand. He was a well-trained and
extremely weary and unconsciously pathetic little soldier who had seen
death ride down the ranks of drawn battle. His reaction had, boylike,
taken the form of mischievous perverseness.
He was very tired. He made his short legs carry him on and on, though he
wanted to drop; while his eyes swept every thicket for possible
Confederate stragglers or skirmishers along his way.
As he reached the main road running back to the town and the distant
Federal lines, he saw a movement in the sumac-bushes, now glittering
with the fire of approaching autumn.
What was it? He couldn’t afford to get shot or captured now. He had to
bring a nurse. Dad had told him to.
Jimmie instantly dropped to the ground and lay without movement.
He could almost see the stern, quiet, deadly face of the foeman who must
be hidden there in that nearest bush, perhaps already aware of him and
taking his aim--perhaps taking aim right at his breast as he lay there
so quietly. But he did not move. He waited.
Then the sumac-bushes parted, and out from between the roots peered the
furry, eager face of a dog; impudent, inquiring, with his ragged left
ear flapping gayly over his eyes while he stared indignantly at the
silent figure in the roadside ditch.
That eye seemed to be volubly remarking:
“What the dickens are you doing there? Trying to fool a poor dog that
ain’t either Johnnie Reb or Yank; but just a plain, ornery, scared
mongrel, boy’s dog as can hunt you out gophers?”
At least, that’s what Jimmie would have sworn the forlorn mongrel said
as he peered out from the sumacs.
“Howdy, dog? Where y’ going?” Jimmie inquired, sitting up.
The dog himself said nothing but “Y-e-e-e-e-e-h.” But his tail, going
flippety-flip, flippety-flip against the brush, announced its entire
friendliness.
The answer was much the same as before, while the dog looked still more
friendly and whined a little. He cocked his ears up over his head.
“Think you’re Napoleon Bonaparte, don’t you, with your cocked hat made
out of ears? All right; that’s your name, then--let’s see?--Emperor
Napoleon Peter Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, Esquire. I give you that name
all for your own. Got a master? Well, come on then. Gotta hurry. Come
on, boy!” He whistled.
And down the road started the boy afresh, cheered by companionship. And
the dog, which seemed to take it for granted that he had a new owner,
followed.
As they drew up to the line of sentries about the hospital bivouac,
panting with haste, a sentry stopped them, mumbling: “Wh’ go th’r’?”
“Aw--y’ know me!” snapped Jimmie. “Lemme by. I’m in a hurry.”
“Sure I know you,” grinned the sentry. “You’re Gen’ral McClellan. But
who’s that four-footed gent with you? He must be a gen’ral, too--ain’t
he? I notice he’s a little gray--all of him as ain’t brown or red or
yaller or just plain dirt-colored.”
Jimmie drew himself up to the dread height of his full four foot seven
and stalked by, meekly followed by Napoleon Peter Bub Bonaparte Brinton
Dog, Esq., while the sentry scoffed after the twain:
“He’s a well-bred trick, all right; he’s got more kinds o’ breedin’ in
him than all the dogs I ever see. Them forepaws look to me like South
Boston bull, but I guess his second toe-nail on his lift hind foot is
St. Bernard.”
Across the camp trailed a couple of Q. M. wagons drawn by tired mules,
which had come pounding down the turnpike laden with nurses. The
lieutenant-surgeon in charge cantered beside them on a bay mare. Running
up to him, Jimmie bawled out in a commanding treble:
“Halt! Beg pardon, loot’nant, but--”
“Well, well, well, well, well!” snapped the surgeon, drawing rein
sharply. “What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?”
“Jimminy crickets! Zif once saying it wouldn’t be enough!” complained
Jimmie, down inside himself; while aloud he begged, quickly:
“Captain James Dadd sent me for a nurse for an awful dangerous wounded
man he’s looking after down there in the cottage off to the right from
the road.”
“Captain Dadd, eh? But who’re you?”
“Battle Jimmie, sir.”
“Oh, yes! Sure! I’ve heard of you. All right. I’ll detail--”
“I was to ask,” piped Jimmie, belatedly remembering--“I was to ask if
there’s a Mrs. Sessions in the nurse corps. If there is, please--”
“Me?” suggested a pleasant voice from the foremost wagon of nurses which
had stopped during the colloquy.
The officer and Jimmie looked to see, peering out from under the canvas
cover, a rosy-cheeked, delicate-skinned, smiling little old lady--a
sweet and silvery-voiced little old lady--with sleek white hair shining
under the edge of her nurse’s cap.
“Eh?” snapped the officer.
“I know Captain Dadd, and I’m going to help him,” said the old lady in
nurse’s uniform, sweetly but decisively, starting to climb out of the
wagon. “Especially since he’s bothered to ask for me.”
While the newly appointed officer stared in wrathy silence, wondering
just what the military regulations for volunteer army surgeons said
about the proper method of coercing nurse-ladies almost old enough to be
one’s mother, the old lady climbed briskly down from the wagon, one
trim foot, in a neat slipper with a coquettish silver buckle, on the
wheel hub.
She seized Jimmie’s arm, patted Napoleon on the head, and started
trotting off without another look back, while the surgeon wheeled,
shouted “Forward!” and moved off.
“Do you know, my dear, I fancy you must be Jimmie Brinton,” laughed the
old lady, panting a little with the fast walk into which she had led
Jimmie.
“Yessum,” wondered Jimmie, looking up adoringly at the rosy-cheeked old
lady.
Somehow she seemed to mean to him gingerbread cookies--and long stories
and sleepy Sunday afternoons when the hammock swung among June
roses--and a motherly breast on which to whisper out his griefs and
disillusions.
Somehow the halt while he had investigated the grim bayonet rusted with
a dead man’s blood, and the hot afternoon, and the pattering footsteps
of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte behind him, and the comfortable
mother-face of the plump and gentle old lady trotting beside him--they
all blurred together, and he knew that he was very tired and wanted to
be taken care of.
For a second he was quite sure that he was going to faint with the heat,
confessing all the burden of the reaction and his weariness; that he was
going to lie down in the shade and just be a tired small boy nursed by a
kindly old lady.
Then he straightened himself up and bit his lip till it stung and
clutched her soft arm protectingly, while he mumbled:
“Yessum, I’m Jimmie--Battle Jimmie, they call me--and I’ll watch out for
you, I will, if any of them blamed Rebs try to get funny with you,
ma’am!”
“Oh, you _dear_ boy!” she caroled in a voice that sounded to him like a
running brook and a mother-song and a laughing girl, all at once.
And, without ever for a second ceasing her puffing little trot, she
leaned over and kissed his tangle of soft red hair.
“I know your grandfather, my dear, and I’m _sure_ you’ll take care of
me, because he says you’re a chip of the old block--and I know it, now
I’ve seen you.”
“You know--Dad?” he asked in wonder.
“Yes--and now I know Dad’s dear chum and grandson, too,” she answered,
laughing. “I’m the Mrs. Sessions you were sent for. At least, I used to
be when I knew your grandfather. But for the last month I’ve been
Volunteer Nurse Sessions, of the Army of the Potomac. So, you see, we
are all three soldiers together: you and I and--Dad!”
CHAPTER XXII
THE AFTERGLOW
While Jimmie was hastening over across the sun-sodden fields in search
of a nurse, Captain James Dadd returned to the cottage and stood by the
cot of his son, looking down at him again.
Private Joseph Brinton stared back, trying to make sure that his father,
the wastrel, really wore the insignia of an army captain.
Trying to make sure--not to understand. That was beyond him.
“Jimmie’s doing some real brave work, isn’t he?” said the father
timidly.
“Why, he’s--Father, I wish you’d tell me how you--”
“Jimmie’s well thought of by everyone--officers and men,” Dad continued
hastily, feeling suddenly guilty the moment the conversation turned to
his own unworthy self. “I’m glad you have such a son, Joseph. Maybe
he’ll make it up to you for my having wasted so much of my life.
Because, you see, I do know, I do understand, that your own life has
always been founded on big principles. And I guess there has always been
something careless about--”
“Stop!” ordered Private Joseph Brinton dazedly; and Captain James Dadd
meekly obeyed.
“Stop! As far as I can see, father, you must have done some wonderful
work as a soldier--however it all came about--and--”
He paused, blinked, and caught up the thread of his words:
“But honestly, father--and I think you understand that I am not a man
who has been accustomed to be apologetic--I really feel that I have
learned something during the past year of fighting for the old flag.
Somehow, honestly, father--though perhaps you won’t believe it--”
Joseph stopped, almost shy, while his father hastened to assure him.
“Oh, yes, yes! I do believe you, Joseph.”
“Well, father, sometimes nights, when I’ve sat by a camp-fire or paced a
lonely post doing sentry-go, I’ve wondered if my business was
necessarily as important as I used to think it was; and I wondered if I
didn’t make the mistake of thinking that Almighty God created the world
just for that business of mine; and if I wasn’t rather harsh with you.”
“Joe!” exclaimed Dad in wonder; but his son plunged on:
“And now when I’ve found how dev’lishly hard--yes, dev’lish, though you
know I never did believe in cussing--how dev’lishly hard it was just to
be a private, and forget your own cold feet and stinging eyes when you
were ordered out in the night to trot down in front--ugh!--down there
in the darkness where little flashes showed the enemy were waiting for
you--when I found out how hard that was, and now I find _you_ here an
officer--and you so much older than I--_oh_!”
His voice rose almost to a shriek.
“Those flashes--us sitting by the fire, thinking of home and the office,
and feeling so safe, and then having to shoulder Springfields and trot
down there where there might be a Reb behind every tree--father, I swear
to you that often--_often_--it was because I remembered that I was the
son of a soldier that I was able to do it.
“Business had killed something in me, but war seems to have brought it
to life again, and I’m proud of you--proud--oh, Daddy--oh, I’ve wanted
to tell you--”
He choked. The wound and the shock were doing their work on
self-contained Joseph Brinton.
Captain James Dadd, falling on his knees beside the rude and cluttered
cot, smoothed his son’s hair. He darted out to the spring at the back of
the cottage and brought his cap full of water, and bathed Joseph’s
forehead, all the while agitatedly insisting:
“There, there, my boy! You were right--I wasn’t much good, and if you
did think of me as a soldier, it’s more than I deserved. Don’t--don’t,
my boy! I don’t at all understand what you mean about business having
killed something in you. You were always an upright man.”
“I--”
“I’ve always been proud of you--I’ve always prayed that the dear God
would forgive me for my own useless life because my son was a man who
helped build up progress and helped keep his world going. And you were
always so honest--”
The prim Joseph Brinton of the office was not yet all transformed into a
soldier of the legion. The sick man, his moment of breakdown passing,
listened to his father’s praise quite calmly, taking it quite as a
matter of fact.
There was no little pride in the manner in which he assented:
“Well, yes, I suppose I always was honest, as you say.”
Nor did he offer any protest as Dad bustled about, bathing his cheeks
and twitching his hot pillow into shape, and running to the door to gaze
out into the stifling haze for a sign of Jimmie and the nurse.
But when Dad at length settled down beside the cot, patting Joseph’s
hand, the two of them sat quiet there in the dusk of the little room.
And for the first time since Joseph had thought of his father as
disgraced, there was peace and love hovering about them, glorifying the
dingy cottage between the battle lines.
Loud hummed the great locusts outside, a drowsy, distant z-z-z, z-z-z,
like the lazy croon of the death-bearing Minie balls which Dad (that
inveterate old child, who would never stop his making believe!)
half-unconsciously pretended they really were.
Sitting in the little cottage, stroking Joseph’s hands, suddenly he
heard voices coming--the shy little laugh of Battle Jimmie and, running
through Jimmie’s chatter like a silver thread, a voice which startled
him--a familiar voice he could not place, but which seemed rich with a
peculiar magic that attaches itself to the beloved.
Softly laying Joseph’s hands back on the cot, he tiptoed to the door and
saw--Jimmie and Mrs. Sessions, his dream-lady of the lavender-scented
attic!
And his greeting to her might have been the shy effusiveness of a boy
lover of eighteen.
“Why--it isn’t you, is it? I told him to ask for you, but I didn’t dare
to hope--And it’s really _you_!”
“Guess it is!” chuckled the old lady delicately. “I--somehow--”
She blushed and hesitated. Then she frowned--oh, such a portentous
frown!--as she suddenly remembered that she was a nurse in the service
of U. S. A., and said severely:
“Who’s the patient?”
“It’s--my--son,” faltered Dad.
“Oh, my _dear_! Has he--bullied you again as he used to?” she said, with
the quick, familiar affection of two who have gone through the same
trials together.
“No, ma’am; he’s never done that, I shouldn’t say. But somehow we do
seem a little nearer together now.”
“Let me take a look at him.”
As she entered the cottage the dusty, mildewed air seemed to shiver
with a crisp and delicate fragrance of lavender.
And as her nimble, slender fingers, with their one ring--a worn, thin
band of chased gold--passed softly over Joseph’s brow, the room seemed
to change from a battle hospital to a home of mother love.
“He’s doing fine,” she smiled. “Did _you_ put on those bandages?”
“Yessum!” mumbled Captain Dadd, again shy and anxiously wondering if he
by chance had been so fortunate as to put them on properly.
“Needn’t be so frightened, child,” she laughed. “They’re very nice--very
nice, indeed. All I’ll need to do will be to watch him and change them
in an hour or two.”
Then she stopped, and blushed again, and fidgeted with the pillow. On
the opposite side of the cot Dad fidgeted with his collar and looked
embarrassed and wished he could think of something to say.
While the superior Private Joseph Brinton said nothing at all, Jimmie
stared with wonder at the sudden silence that had come upon his beloved
Dad and the dear lady of the rosy cheeks.
“Uh!” said Dad, who really believed that he was going to say something
sound and valuable about the weather.
But, as it occurred to him that, on the whole, it was rather foolish to
talk about the weather in a day of battles and sudden death, he didn’t
get beyond the “Uh--” only, stopped and looked slightly foolish.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Sessions wistfully, glancing involuntarily at the door.
Dad peeped at the face of Joseph. He was wishing that he could take
charge of things. But in the presence of his formidable son dared he say
to Mrs. Sessions all the things he wanted to--things that had rung
through his brain in lonely nights of marching and hot noons of battle?
It was Jimmie who solved their shyness.
“Say, gee, if you want to talk, why don’t you g’wan outdoors and _do_
it? I’ll look after father while you’re gone; and do it as well as you
can, I guess.”
And Dad, not daring even to glance at Joseph for approval or scorn,
offered his arm with slow and stately old-world deference to Mrs.
Sessions, and they passed thus together quietly out of the door.
Down by the spring towered a great laurel, which shut off the waves of
heat that were dancing their devil-dance across the hot fields. Under it
was a weather-grayed wooden bench carved with initials and rude
heart-symbols of lovers long since forgotten.
Dad led the little lady to the bench. And she sat there, panting with
her recent exertions, but smiling up at him as he stood shyly fingering
the hilt of the sword she had given him.
“So you’re a captain--a _captain_!” she said, looking proudly at his
shoulder insignia, shiny and new on the worn blue coat that had served
him for strenuous months.
“Yessum--and--I wanted to tell you, time and time, that I owe a lot of
it to you. I don’t really care so very much whether I’m captain or
general or high private, so long as I’m serving this country of ours;
except that perhaps as an officer I’m able to use a certain amount of
technical knowledge of military tactics which it has been my hobby to
acquire. But whatever I have done has largely, I think, been done
because you regarded me as a _man_--not just as an old man--and gave me
this sword as a symbol of your belief.”
Suddenly the old lady pulled out of the tiny pocket of her nurse’s
costume a frail lavender-scented handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
Reaching up her hand, she squeezed the mighty gnarled hand of Dad.
That was her only answer.
They were silent for a moment. All about them swirled the heat, while
the shrill of the locusts was like a wall of sound, pierced only by the
very far-off clanking of artillery harnesses, and once or twice by the
faint, creepy boom of a cannon.
And into that silence stole a feeling that they had known each other
always. They did not have youth’s slow, diffident reticences. They had
lived and learned that when one finds an understanding heart it must be
linked to one’s own very quickly and surely.
“You have--I am glad it has helped you,” she said softly.
For answer he bent his head and reverently kissed her hand.
“And your son--you are a little closer together?” she asked.
“Yes. I am more glad than I could tell you, ma’am, to say that we are.”
“And I love your grandson. Dear boy, he told me that he would take care
of me. And do you know, I didn’t feel a bit like laughing at the tiny
fellow, because I felt as though it were _you_ speaking.”
“You knew him then, ma’am?”
“Yes. He spoke your name and--you mustn’t go and think that you’re the
only one who has been influenced by things.
“There, now! Laws! Laws! These men folks! They will always be taking the
high and sacred rights for themselves, while of course we poor women
just sit home and keep the wood-box filled and pick lint and don’t have
any high aspirations. Of course my mother back in Wilbr’am never wanted
to do anything but cook father’s vittles. Oh, no!”
Her thin, charming little voice pretended to be very severe, but somehow
Dad didn’t mind it. Indeed, he grinned a lively, happy, young little
grin as he sat down beside her while she ran on.
“Well, if you must know, you had just as much influence over me as I had
over you. I got thinking that it was a shame and a disgrace that I
should be there at home just sitting and holding my hands that the good
Lord gave me to do something with, when you were out fighting for your
country. So I up and enlisted as a nurse.
“I did! Land o’ Goshen, if I hadn’t I guess it’d ’a’ pretty near driven
me into high strikes to sit there day after day while you were riding
off, land knows where, being shot and never, never changing your shoes
and socks, no matter how wet they got!”
Dad’s hand had slipped along the worn old seat of many lovers toward
hers, where it lay pink and soft and everlastingly capable against the
weather-gray pine.
“So,” she went on, “I just went out and enlisted as a nurse. But what
_do_ you think? That snippet of a little lieutenant--and he’s just a
doctor, and no more of a lieutenant than I am--he that was in charge of
the nurses--he wa’n’t going to let me come when you called for me, and I
just up and went. Captain, can’t you speak to him, you being his
superior officer and all, and tell him he mustn’t be so high and mighty
to women old enough to be his mother?”
She seemed to take him for the commander of all men--the man who had
arranged everything and made everything just and good.
It was balm to Dad. Yet he said: “I’m afraid you were very
insubordinate, Mrs.--”
He hesitated a little. The words tripped over one another in his throat.
Then he brought out, roundly and commandingly:
“Ma’am, it isn’t right we should go on mistering each other when we’ve
been such good friends and all, and--my name’s James.”
“And mine,” said she softly, “is Emily.”
Silence again.
His hand had strayed over to hers, and suddenly hers curled into a
little ball, and his brown, strong hand closed over it protectingly.
“Emily,” he half-whispered, “you didn’t quite forget me.”
“No,” she whispered back.
“And you don’t think I’m just a drunken old--”
“Oh, my dear--oh, no, _no_!” she half-sobbed. “You’re a good man. You
have loved God, and now, in the day of need, He has not forgotten His
servant.”
“Emily--”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE ATTACK
“Fa-ather!” rang out a querulous voice from the cottage.
“Drat that child!” said Mrs. Sessions almost viciously. “James, I’ll
give your boy Joseph an earful. He’s a fretful, suspicious fellow, and
if ’twa’n’t for his father and his son I’d nurse him with a field
battery, I would.”
But she marched into the cottage. She turned Battle Jimmie out to talk
to Dad. She changed bandages and tenderly smoothed Joseph’s head,
through which the pains were shooting like heat lightning, and on the
little old cannon-ball stove in the corner made him toast out of a piece
of army hardtack she found and split.
Then she sat down beside the cot and straightway began:
“Joseph--I s’pose you’re ‘Mr. Brinton’ to them that works for you; but
I’m older than you, my dear, besides being your nurse. And I want to
tell you while I have the chance that if you weren’t so badly wounded
I’d want to take and spank you like a house afire for always being so
snippy to that splendid father of yours. Why, if I wasn’t just an old,
old woman, I’d be tempted to fall in love with him right here on the
spot, I would.”
She chuckled comfortably and patted the wounded man’s hand. And right
there Joseph Brinton made a mistake which, if duplicated in his
business, would have ruined the same beyond recall.
We all of us, when we are ill, feel that the world owes us the privilege
of being querulous about our pet grievances; and Joseph now lifted his
voice and complained:
“I can’t understand why you make all this fuss over my father. If it
hadn’t been for the trouble I’ve had all these years in caring for him,
and the shame he’s so often brought on me--”
Emily Sessions changed instantly from a kindly and wise, though
easy-going, nurse into a small, almost youthful, spitfire.
“D’ you ever see a Newfoundland dog?” she snapped.
“Why, yes,” he said wonderingly.
“A big, gentle, kind, self-respecting Newfoundland dog?”
“Why, yes--I suppose so.”
“_Suppose!_ Don’t you suppose me any supposes!”
“Well, then, I have. Though why--”
“Well, now, tell me,” she demanded, sitting more and more erect, “if you
ever saw a terrier pup trying to dig out a gopher and busy as he could
be, and lands! no more chance of catching that gopher than if he was a
hundred miles away.”
“Yes. But--”
“Well, then, that’s your father and you. He’s the Newfoundland; and
you’re the little rat of a terrier that’s always been so busy with his
own self-important concerns that--”
“The Confeds are coming!” shrilled a voice at the door.
It was Battle Jimmie, outlined against the heat-trembling outdoors.
“What?” groaned Emily Sessions.
“Squadron of Reb cavalry riding hell-bent-for-leather toward us,” cried
Jimmie and disappeared.
The old lady ran toward the doorway.
“Don’t leave me!” begged the wounded man; but she disappeared.
Outside she found Captain Dadd standing quietly under the big
locust-tree, gazing tranquilly down the turnpike, where a gallop of
horses’ hoofs rang out from a cloud of dust, through which gray uniforms
now and then flashed forth.
Quiet he stood, but expectant, and his sword hung by its strap from his
right hand, while even as Mrs. Sessions looked she saw him gently lift
the butt of his Colt’s to see if it was loose in the holster.
She ran up beside him and clutched his arm. He looked down at her,
smiled quietly, and even more quietly put his arm about her slender
waist. She nodded.
Jimmie stood beside them, in his hand a huge .44--resurrected, like the
bayonet, from the stricken field.
And so they waited.
The Confederate troop came swinging up the turnpike; lean, capable,
hard-bitten men on a raid.
“Halt!”
They drew up at the gate, with a scrabble of hoofs and a confusion of
horses’ bodies.
“Take that man and boy prisoner,” came the voice from the big,
black-bearded man at the head--a man with the bars of a captain.
Four troopers spurred into the yard and approached.
“Shoot till they get us,” ordered Captain Dadd. “Better anything than a
Southern military prison. Especially for Joe when he’s wounded. Good
luck, Emily; good luck, Jimmie. Stand behind that tree there, Emily
dear. They’re real men. They won’t pester you. Careful aim, Jimmie. Let
’er go!”
The revolvers of two men--one a boy and one gray of hair, but men
both--rang out together.
Two troopers, now but ten feet away, swayed in the saddle and one very
quietly slid off.
Again rang the revolvers, but before anyone could tell whether the shots
had taken effect, the whole troop came hurtling up the lane, and
thundering, whirling around them, caught at the two.
A swift down-swoop by the black-bearded captain of Southern cavalry, and
a revolver butt laid Captain Dadd out senseless and bleeding.
A quick twirl of a halter and Jimmie was swung up to a trooper’s saddle,
kicking, but helpless. A nasty saber scratch was across the lad’s
forehead.
The old lady was left alone beside the fallen body of Dad. She knelt
beside him with great tears in her eyes, her voice keening the world-old
sob of sorrow that brave women give their dying lovers.
Nurse as she was, she did not now stop to realize that a blow from a
pistol butt is far more likely to stun than to kill.
The captain of Confederate cavalry swung off his horse and looked in at
the doorway.
Emily Sessions, frantically kissing the forehead of Dad, didn’t hear,
but within the cottage the erstwhile sedate Joseph Brinton staggered
from his bed, dizzy with pain, and snarled out hysterically:
“You get the hell out of here!”
The huge, black-bearded captain merely smiled and, mounting, rode back
along the lane toward the highroad.
He stopped so suddenly that the horse of the trooper behind almost piled
up on the haunches of the captain’s horse.
Facing the Confederates in the lane, standing beside the body of her
wounded, stood an old lady steadily and ferociously aiming a huge .44.
Beside her, bristling and fearless, was another adversary--Emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte Dog, who was tearing his little heart out as he
leaped up, trying to reach the boot of the trooper who firmly held the
still struggling and kicking Jimmie.
“You stop!” demanded Emily Sessions.
Gone was the rosy and placid look of her. Very old and very terrible
were her cold eyes. She seemed to glare into the eyes of death, but
gallantly; and she had drawn a bead full on the captain’s heart.
Rather whimsically smiling, the black-bearded captain held up both his
hands, crying “Halt!” to his troop, who obeyed the command in somewhat
amused wonder.
“You needn’t to smile so nice as all that,” snapped the old lady. “I’ve
half a mind to shoot you. And you tell that man of yours to let Jimmie
go. You got the captain, but you ain’t goin’ to get Jimmie, too!”
And then she felt around her shoulders the iron arm of one of the
Confederate troopers, whose horse had been concealed by the cottage, but
who had slipped round in back of her.
Desperately she tried to turn the muzzle of the gun on him, but his
strong hand slipped down on her arm, caught the revolver and wrenched it
from her.
She faced the captain again, her shoulders up, ready.
“Tell your murderers to finish me, too,” she said.
The captain of cavalry, for all his big bulk, slipped from his horse as
easily as a youngster dismounting before his sweetheart.
“Ma’am,” he said, “we’re soldiers, but Ah reckon we ain’t quite
murderers. Mah mother’s a powerful lot like you, ma’am, and Ah reckon Ah
love her most’s well most sons do. Sanders, let that boy go. And Ah hope
your husband ain’t killed, ma’am. And, ma’am, Ah reckon you’re a praying
woman--will you think of my mother to-night when you say your prayers?
Last Ah heard, there was a right smart o’ Yanks burnin’ an’ raidin’
near her house, an’--
“Mount! Ride! Trot!”
Standing in the lane, watching the bunch of Confederate cavalry go
swirling along the turnpike, bound on a raid right for the Federal
lines, the old lady suddenly bent back her shoulders and saluted.
And the boy Jimmie, beside her, saluted their dust-hidden troop with
her.
Then immediately:
“Take his feet, Jim dear. He ain’t dead. I hear his heart,” said Mrs.
Sessions.
And stooping, straining, she lifted Dad’s shoulders.
They bore him into the house. She ordered Joseph peremptorily to move to
the corner, where she laid out a “comfortable” for him to lie on, and
she straightened out the still form of Dad on the cot.
“Bring water, Jim!” she commanded almost harshly.
The boy sped back down the lane with a can of cool water, and she sat
bathing Dad’s head, sobbing softly, but always with a pitiful,
artificial, unreal, golden little smile ready to spring out if he should
come to consciousness.
The Confederate captain had called Dad her husband. She caught herself
trembling with a soft, happy little emotion, which died swiftly as she
realized that Dad might--might never speak to her again.
In a corner of the room Jimmie stood anxiously watching beside the
recumbent Joseph. He looked down. His father was looking up as
anxiously.
Suddenly all their former lack of sympathy for one another was
forgotten.
“Dad--grandad--” gasped the boy.
It was all he could say, but it expressed many things--and Joseph
Brinton understood them.
“Yes, yes!” said he gently, and stroked his son’s hair.
The silent, grim woman by the bed still watched and her lips moved in
many prayers--prayers that Dad might recover--a prayer, too, for the
mother of the Confederate captain.
More than an hour passed. Dad’s heart still beat, evenly, soundly, but
he did not awaken.
Perhaps he would not, dreaded the old lady. A passionate tenderness came
over her. She crossed to the corner where sat Jimmie and Joseph, and
with soft words made her peace with Joseph and renewed his bandages.
Jimmie’s hand she patted. She went to the door and snapped her fingers
to Napoleon Bonaparte Dog, who was lying in the shade by the doorstone,
but awake, ready for his little god to come out of the cottage again.
Napoleon jumped up and came running. Emily tossed him a corner of
hardtack.
As she swiftly stepped to Dad’s cot again she found him lying awake, his
eyes on her, filled with a great, soft-shining reverence.
She knelt by the bed.
“All right?” she whispered.
“Yes, Emily.”
Then their cheeks were together.
All at once Mrs. Sessions sprang up and snapped out:
“Well, I declare! We’re a fine lot. Jimmie, you go out and get me some
fresh water. Never see such a shiftless lot as we are.”
And up the road jingled the slow-moving hospital wagons.
CHAPTER XXIV
A LOST BURDEN
Dad, his trifling hurts nearly well again, stood at attention in General
Hooker’s new headquarters across the Maryland border.
Thither, almost as soon as the Army of the Potomac had mobilized in
Maryland, he had been summoned.
The corps commander, for a miracle, had been as honest as he was
inexpert, and had made full report to General McClellan, through Hooker,
of the part Dad had played in drawing forth the endangered demi-corps
from the Confederate trap during the retreat from Virginia.
With the result that Captain James Dadd found himself promoted to the
rank of brevet-major, and found himself incidentally the day’s hero of
his corps. The latter honor he shared with his grandson, who, as Battle
Jimmie, was enthusiastically adopted by the officers and men alike.
The two chums bore their laurels with a similar and schoolboy
sheepishness, seeking to hide as much as possible from the noisy
adulation that was their meed.
And now, in the thick of it all, came the summons from Hooker. As Dad
stood in Fighting Joe’s presence once more he recalled keenly his first
interview with the eccentric fire-eater, when, despite his error in
failing to be captured, he had won the general’s approval and his own
first commission.
This time he found Hooker dictating to a military secretary on the porch
of a farmhouse. Hooker dismissed the secretary with a nod and turned to
the waiting officer.
“Major Dadd,” he began abruptly, “General McClellan has asked me to
thank you personally, in his name, for your share in the affair of last
week. Which I herewith do. That ends my official business with you at
the moment. But I would like to add a question or so on my own
account--questions you are not bound to answer unless you choose.”
He hesitated, then went on:
“I am told that several of the officers of your corps planned a little
supper in your honor a night or two ago to celebrate your promotion and
its cause--also, that you refused to attend it.
“May I ask why you offered this slight to them?
“I repeat--you need not answer unless you wish to do so.”
“Slight?” Dad caught up the word. “I--I surely did not intend it so,
sir. And I’m heartily sorry they took it as such. I made my refusal as
courteous as I could. And--”
“But why did you refuse?”
“I had done nothing worthy of any special ovation,” evaded Dad.
Hooker frowned.
“Modesty is supposed to be an excellent quality,” said he, “though for
my own part I could never see any particular use for it. But false
modesty is absurd. You know well enough the worth of what you did. Also,
you are dodging the issue. That surely was not your reason for refusing
a courtesy tendered you by your brother officers.”
“No, sir,” assented Dad simply. “It was not. I refused because--because
there was certain to be more or less drinking. And--”
“And, as the guest of honor, you might have had to get very pleasantly
drunk? Or are you a temperance devotee?”
“Neither, sir. I would probably have been foolish enough to drink. And
then--all I have been striving for this past year would have gone for
nothing. I was afraid. So I ran away from the danger.”
Hooker was eying him narrowly.
“You couldn’t trust yourself where drink was?”
“I don’t say that,” corrected Dad. “I only say it was safer for me not
to. That’s why I refused.”
“You have not the look of a man who has been a heavy drinker,” said
Hooker, noting the lean and muscular figure, the clear and level eyes,
the firm mouth.
Dad made no comment.
Hooker spoke again.
“There is much curiosity about you in your corps, Major Dadd,” said he.
“And while I have no wish to pry into any man’s personal affairs, yet
the interests of all my officers are close to me. And I do not like to
have rumors about them spread among the men. Soldiers are worse gossips
than spinsters.
“Your action in last week’s affair was not like that of a man recently
promoted from the ranks--a man who, until a year or so ago, was a mere
civilian. The tactics you made use of in extricating your demi-corps
from a bad corner were those of a strategist. Other officers are
commenting on that.”
He paused.
Dad looked at him miserably. The past that he had so carefully buried
was stirring in its grave. The old disgrace threatened to rise, to rob
him of all he had so hardly earned.
Where there was gossip and curiosity there was fairly certain to be
plenty of amateur investigation. And investigation might readily unearth
the truth. There were many men in the Army of the Potomac who had served
in Mexico.
“Is there any good reason for concealing the fact that you had held a
commission before this present war?” went on the general. “It was clear
to me the first day I saw you. I knew it by the way you drew your sword.
Let me say again that I have no wish to break in upon any man’s privacy.
But I wish you to know that others are asking questions. And to tell you
that the truth often stops the circulation of such rumors as you might
not care to have circulated.”
“Rumors?”
“One is that you deserted from the army at some earlier time and
that--”
“Pardon me, general,” interposed Dad stiffly, “but if you can persuade
the man who voiced such a lie to face me with it, I shall be your
debtor.”
“Who can nail army gossip? One man guesses at a thing to-day. To-morrow
fifty men are quoting it as a proven fact.
“I like you, Dadd. You are a good deal of a man. That is why I have
bothered to advise you in this matter. Not officially, but as man to
man. If you do not care to speak I have no wish to urge you. That is
all.”
He turned back to a notebook in which close-scrawled hieroglyphics
crammed every page. Dad saluted, turned, and walked away.
At the top step of the porch Dad halted, wheeled and, on impulse,
returned to the table where Hooker lounged.
“I thank you, general,” he said, speaking in a rush, as though fearing
to lose hold on his new-made resolve. “It was kind of you to take an
interest in me, and I am sorry if I seemed ungracious. I--I served for
more than two years in the United States army, in the Mexican War. I was
a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry and I was afterward attached to General
Taylor’s staff.”
Hooker looked up in quick interest. Speaking from an almost phenomenal
memory of American war-history, he hastily interjected:
“There was no officer on Taylor’s staff--and no commissioned officer in
the Mexican War--named James Dadd. I will stake my reputation on that.”
“No, sir. ‘Dadd’ is not my name. I--I assumed it when I reëntered the
service.”
“But why, man, why? Surely you knew that commissioned officers with
military experience were at a premium when the Civil War began, and that
they were certain of promotion. Look at the men in the army who have had
war experience and how they have risen. Dozens of them.”
“I enlisted under an assumed name,” said Dad slowly and forcing each
word from his whitened lips, “because I did not believe I would be
accepted under my own name.”
“But why? With a war record--By the way, if it is a fair question, what
is your name?”
“My name,” said Dad, bidding farewell to hope, “is James Brinton.”
“Brinton?” repeated Hooker reflectively. “Brinton?”
He was evidently racking his brain. And presently he found what he
sought. For he glanced up, wide-eyed.
“Not--not the Brinton who--”
“Who was kicked out of the army for drunkenness and for grossly
insulting the general commanding,” supplemented Dad, his voice dead as
though he were reciting some entirely impersonal fact.
“I remember,” said Hooker briefly.
Then fell a pause. The two men were eying each other. Hooker’s face a
mask; Dad’s white and wretched. It was Dad who broke the silence.
“You will wish--General McClellan will wish--my resignation?” he said
haltingly. “It irks me to beg a favor of any man, sir. But I entreat you
not to drive me from the army. You can take away my commission if it
seems best to you. But let me serve in the ranks.
“If I did wrong I have paid for it. Paid more heavily than I have words
to tell you or than you would care to hear.
“I do not ask anything except leave to serve my country at a time when
she needs every man she can get. Drunkards, thieves, blackguards are
recruited in every regiment nowadays and no questions are asked. May I
not serve, too? If I have forfeited a right to my commission, at least
let me--”
“Major Dadd,” interposed Hooker, his voice harsh and more abrupt than
ever, “you talk like a fool. You have brooded over a silly piece of
ancient history till it has made you lose all judgment.
“Why, man,” he broke out angrily, “what in blazes does Uncle Sam care
about your getting drunk fifteen years ago and telling old
Fuss-and-Feathers what you thought of him? Many a perfectly sober man
has said worse things of poor old Scott.”
“But--but, sir--”
“But nothing! Here you’ve been doing a real man’s work for a year or
more and getting none of the benefits of it, first because you are dunce
enough to think the American nation has nothing to do but remember you
once got drunk! Why, half the country has even forgotten the Mexican
War. And the other half doesn’t care if a man named Brinton chased
Scott with an ax. Ever hear of Grant in those Mexican days? He was down
there.”
“Yes, sir,” stammered Dad, his brain a-whirl. “I--”
“Well, he’s doing big things out West, just now. And some idiot
complained the other day to Lincoln that Grant enjoys a bout with John
Barleycorn, now and then.
“Do you know what the President said? He said: ‘I wish I knew what brand
of whisky Grant uses. I’d buy a hogshead of it for every other general
in the army.’
“That’s what Lincoln thinks of such things. And I, for one, would rather
be judged by Abraham Lincoln than by any other man alive. Man, don’t
look so dumfounded! You’ve been in a fool nightmare. Wake up!”
“Do you mean, sir, that--”
“I mean I’m going to tell your story to everyone who asks me about you.
And I’m going to write to the President about it next time I send him a
report. It’s the sort of story he likes to hear.
“Good Lord! Do you think it’s nothing for a man to drop drink at your
age and make his life all over afresh? Why, why--curse it all, shake
hands! And get out of here. I’m busy.”
Dad walked away, his feet on air; the angry fuming of the general behind
him sounding like wondrous music in his ears.
All at once he seemed like Christian in his favorite “Pilgrim’s
Progress” to have dropped from his shoulders a world-heavy burden which
had crushed him to earth. All at once his terrible secret was seen by
him through Hooker’s keen eyes. And from that moment it forever lost its
terror.
“I--I wish,” he murmured, “I wish I knew just exactly where Mrs.
Sessions is. I’d love to tell her. And, till I can tell her--I guess
I’ll be happy over it all alone. James Brinton. Lieutenant-Colonel James
Brinton. Of Taylor’s staff!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE THREE COMRADES
Brevet-Major James Dadd, of the Blankth Ohio Infantry, was one of his
own tent’s three occupants.
Seated cross-legged on a blanket roll facing the cot where sat his
grandfather, was Battle Jimmie. Between the boy’s knees reclined the
tent’s third inmate, his Canine Majesty, Emperor Napoleon Peter Bub
Bonaparte Brinton Dog, whose august title had been whittled down by
custom and verbal necessity to “Emp.”
Emp was exploring regions of his yellow back for fleas, biting at the
unseen pests with multitudinous, swift little chattering snaps of
half-shut jaws.
“I wonder just exactly what breed Emp really is?” conjectured Jimmie.
“Why,” answered Dad reflectively, “I should say, at a broad guess, that
the blood of the finest thoroughbreds flows in his veins.”
“Gee! Honest? What kinds of thoroughbreds, I wonder?”
“All kinds,” responded Dad gravely.
Jimmie glanced at him in doubt. But the man’s face was solemn, even
judicious; and the boy eyed his pet with respect.
To Jimmie, Dad’s word was gospel. And if Dad declared Emp the scion of
many thoroughbreds there was no room for arguing the statement.
“H’m!” commented Jimmie. “And father called him a mongrel.”
“Son,” explained Dad, “there’s two kinds of folks in this funny world of
ours--the sort that sees the quality of the various bloods in a yellow
dog, and the kind that sees only the quantity. Let’s you and I always
try to see the quality. We won’t make so much money as those that see
the quantity; but we’ll have a higher regard for dogs--and for
everything else.
“Not that I’m criticizing your father, for one minute,” he added
hastily. “He’s a fine man, and a son to be proud of. And he’ll go far.
But not as a soldier.
“Now that he’s been invalided home, and his year of service is up
anyhow, I guess he’ll call it a day and go back to the store. I’m only
grateful he didn’t make you go with him. It’s where you ought to be. I
know that. But I’d be awful lonely, Jimmie, lad, without you.”
“Why ought I go back home?” demanded Jimmie. “Anybody can go to school.
School will always be there. So will home. But maybe the war won’t. And
I _am_ of use here. You said so, yourself. So did the men. Lot’s of
’em.”
“It isn’t what folks say that counts,” said Dad, though his face glowed
a little. “Anybody can get a cheer by spectacular work. I’d rather have
you back in Ideala, learning the rule of three, than fighting because
you like to have the boys trundle you around on their shoulders the way
they did that day when we got back to the corps after that charge.
“It’s nice to be praised. No one but a hypocrite will say he doesn’t
like it. But it isn’t the real thing to work for.
“The real thing is this country of ours. I keep dinning that into your
ears because I don’t want you to forget it for a second. We’re here to
work for it, you and I. I had a hard time to make your father
understand. But at last he did. That’s why he let you stay. He’s changed
a good deal, your father has, this past year. A year ago he would have
proven wisely to me that I was quite wrong.”
“A year ago you would maybe have believed him,” suggested Jimmie. “Isn’t
that part of the change?”
“Perhaps,” mused Dad. “Perhaps so. Jimmie, there are times when you have
almost too much sense. How about the fearful and ghastly wound? Is it
getting all right?”
The boy chuckled. The hurts which he and his grandfather had sustained
during the little flurry of attack on the cottage had both been quick of
healing.
There had been no occasion to go to hospital; and a few days of
semi-invalidism had left the two tough bodies well-nigh as good as new.
Yet each was daily in the habit of inquiry, with new superlative
adjectives and expressions of sympathy, after the other’s injury. And
to each the joke held a pristine freshness.
“Emp was the slowest of us three to get on his legs again,” said Jimmie.
“And even he’s all right now. Say, I wonder will he ever catch that
flea? He’s been hunting for it and biting at it ever since the day I
found him.”
“Maybe Emp’s just four-flushing. A lot of us spend our spare time
hunting for what we know isn’t there. It gives us something to exercise
our mind.”
“He fights that flea so long and makes such little headway, I’ve a good
mind to change his name and call him General McClellan.”
“Hush, lad!” warned Dad, half-serious, half-jesting. “There’s enough
criticism all over without our joining in. The whole country is
hammering little Mac just now. And maybe the whole country’s wrong, or
maybe the whole country’s right. Anyhow, neither the country nor the
army nor Mac is the better for it. So don’t let’s you and I add our
lung-power to it.
“It’s easy enough to sit back and criticize. But Little Mac is where a
word of praise would help more. So is President Lincoln.”
“Dad,” the boy leaned forward earnestly, as though consulting an
all-wise oracle, “is it always going to be like this?”
“Like what, son?”
“The thing that’s gone on all year. The Confeds licking us any time and
any way they please, and mussing up all our plans and fooling our
generals and slipping out of our traps and then belting us in the jaw?
Are we always going to be the licked ones? It’s getting just a little
monotonous.
“We win a skirmish--or a little battle, like the one back there with the
demi-corps that you got your brevet-majorship for--or same other small,
third-rate fight. And then they go to work and thrash us in all the
other big battles and turn our campaigns upside down.
“Except out West. There our boys are winning all right. But here we get
all the lickings. Isn’t the Army of the Potomac good for anything except
for the Rebels to trounce? Is it going to be like this all the time?
That’s what I want to know.”
Dad’s face was very grave as he listened. Now he laid aside his pipe and
made answer, with none of the former whimsicality in his voice.
“No, lad. It won’t last forever. Here’s the whole idea in just a
mouthful of words: For years the South has been getting ready. And for
years, up North, we’ve been saying there’d be no war. So, when the real
fighting began, it was like a middleweight, trained to the minute,
tackling a great big lazy giant who was in bad condition.
“The middleweight has hammered the giant all around the ring in most of
the fights so far. But every day the giant is getting wiser and stronger
and more used to fighting. And pretty soon his weight and strength has
got to begin to tell.
“The South is made up of men who are fighting like heroes. But there
aren’t enough of them, and they have mighty few resources, and every day
they grow fewer, and their resources get weaker. And the North’s men and
money will never give out. Pretty soon the difference has got to show.
“Be patient. We’re fighting for our Union, we Northerners. For the
country that my grandfather helped to make free, and that my
great-grandfather helped to win from the Indians and the Frenchies. And
that country and the Union are going to last forever; no matter how
black the sky happens to look just now, make up your mind to that!”
“But, see,” urged the boy impatiently; “they beat us on the Peninsula.
And now Lee and Jackson have driven us clean back to Maryland. And
they’re coming after us into the North, so the papers say.”
“Yes,” assented Dad. “They’re coming after us into the North. And they
may do as they boast and ‘stable their horses in Boston’s Faneuil Hall,’
before we can drive them back. But we will drive them back. Soon or
late, son. Don’t doubt that, either, for a minute. As soon as the giant
is strong enough. And he gets stronger every day.
“They drove us out of the Peninsula. And now that he’s licked us so easy
on his own ground, Lee’s getting ready to try a turn at us on ours.
Whether he can get past us or not--”
“Shucks!” growled Jimmie. “I’m sick of waiting. Here, the war was
started to free the slaves. And what does Lincoln do? Hasn’t raised a
finger to free ’em. Why, if he’d freed ’em all at the start, and then
kept plugging away at Richmond--”
“Don’t be foolish, son,” exhorted Dad, “and the foolishest thing on
earth you can do is to join in the howl against Mr. Lincoln. He’s doing
the only thing that can be done. And he’s the only man in America that
can do it.
“Suppose he’d ordered all the slaves set free. What would have happened?
About the same thing that would happen if we ordered the sun to shine at
night instead of in the day. Nothing does a boss so much harm as to give
an order he can’t enforce. And if he declared the slaves free until he
was black in the face, they wouldn’t be free. He must wait till the tide
turns. And the giant begins to hold his own against the middleweight
before he can give the order. In the meantime--”
“In the meantime,” said Jimmie, with ponderous solemnity, “McCluskey
told me this morning that the Third Ambulance Corps came up last night.
It came on the Frederick road. Not more’n about seven miles from here.”
“What’s that got to do with--”
“With Mrs. Sessions?” asked the boy innocently. “Nothing, except that
she’s quartered with that corps. I know. Because McCluskey showed me the
list of nurses there.”
“Son,” said Dad, after glaring coldly at the wholly unimpressed lad for
a full minute, “let’s go for a ride. I’m off duty for three hours yet.”
“Fine!” agreed Jimmie. “We’ll go any direction you like, except,
perhaps, toward Frederick. The scenery isn’t as pretty out that way.”
“Jimmie,” observed Dad, “there are times when I feel that a spanking
would do you worlds of good!”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE IRON CHESS-GAME
War is not a matter of prancing steeds, troops charging, heroic feats of
arms. These spectacular adjuncts typify war as the little finger-nail of
one hand might typify the whole human body.
War itself is a huge problem in mathematics; combined with an element of
puzzle and gross chance.
In short, a game. An iron game, more like chess in its general mode of
playing than any other.
Here in brief was the iron chess-game situation in the early autumn of
1862; an all-important crisis in the long-drawn contest:
Lee had wearied at last of acting solely on the defensive. Since the
Civil War’s outset, the Confederates had thus far contented themselves
with defending their own territory. On Virginia fell the brunt of the
fighting. The Old Dominion had from the very first been the chief
battleground of the two conflicting forces.
There the South had won victory after victory; with ludicrous ease
defeating its more numerous and better-equipped Northern foes. McClellan
in vain had hurled his forces against Richmond. In Northern Virginia, at
Manassas, the North had also been beaten; there and nearly everywhere
else throughout the length and breadth of the State.
Lee, master strategist, had confuted every Federal plan. Jackson, by a
wizardry of generalship, had all but annihilated various Union armies in
the mountain district.
It had all been easy conquest for the South, prepared and self-girded
beforehand for the conflict.
And now, finding the defensive so simple, Lee had determined to take the
aggressive; to cease merely to defend his own and to strike a blow at
the very heart of the North to carry war directly and vehemently into
the enemy’s own well-bulwarked territory itself.
His plan was clever.
Maryland, adjoining Virginia to the north, had ever been loud in
protestations of sympathy to the South. The State had all but seceded.
It was alive with ardent Confederate well-wishers.
The song “Maryland, My Maryland,” vied with “Dixie” itself. From a
thousand Baltimoreans and other Southern sympathizers Lee had received
word that the moment his armies should set foot in Maryland the whole
State would rise as one man to his support.
Lee, believing all this, decided to invade the North by way of Maryland,
where aid and reënforcements by the wholesale presumably awaited him.
Thence he planned to march straight to Pennsylvania, and so through to
New York, and even, perhaps, to Boston itself.
Washington, too, might prove vulnerable to a flank attack.
In front of him, seeking to bar his way, lay the Army of the Potomac,
sullen from many beatings, yet fearlessly awaiting a chance to check the
invader. But Lee, having outwitted and outfought that same army so often
in Virginia, had scant doubt he could do the same thing in Maryland.
He hoped to dodge the Army of the Potomac in his northward march,
forcing it to follow him to some point where he could conveniently
thrash it and drive it back, demoralized. In such an event the whole
North would lie practically helpless and paralyzed before him, and there
would be no troops to spare for a counter invasion of Virginia.
The plan was as simple as it was shrewd. And on September 5, 1862, Lee
proceeded to put it into operation.
First bewildering his foes as to his exact position and projects, he
safely crossed the Potomac with his whole army into that land of much
promise, the State of Maryland.
Here his first setback awaited him.
Maryland had been noisy and voluble in loyalty to the South. But, now
that the moment had come to prove that loyalty, the State failed to
“rise as one man” to Lee’s support.
In fact, it failed ignominiously to rise at all.
Maryland, as a whole, received Lee coolly. There was no demonstration in
his favor. The erstwhile ardent Marylanders did not care to go on
record as favoring Lee. For should his invasion fail they were likely
thus to find themselves in the unenviable position of the small boy who
has prematurely gone to the help of the school bully’s victim.
There had been plenty of sympathy for Lee. There was no aid there for
him.
And Bret Harte’s parody on “Maryland, My Maryland,” was sung derisively
throughout the North; a parody beginning:
In battle thou art strangely meek,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thy politics are changed each week,
Maryland, my Maryland!
The Army of the Potomac dashed to the defense of the invaded State.
As Lee marched out of Frederick, McClellan marched into the town. The
hour for the decisive clash drew near; the clash that should once and
for all decide the invasion’s fate.
In Washington--where the fear of the Union capital’s falling into Lee’s
hands was monstrously acute--Abraham Lincoln’s rugged face grew paler
and more haggard.
To his advisers he announced that he had taken a solemn vow. A vow that,
should the invasion be repelled, he would at once issue a proclamation
freeing the slaves.
Word of this pledge reached Lee through underground channels. And the
Southern leader knew the promise would be kept; moreover, that, on the
heels of such a repulse, the Emancipation Proclamation would prove
well-nigh a death-blow to all hope of the South’s ultimate success.
The die was cast. The death duel was at hand.
* * * * *
Thus stood the situation on the September day that Dad and Battle
Jimmie, on borrowed horses, cantered forth from camp and on to the
Frederick road.
Behind them the far-spread Union camps buzzed and hummed and fermented.
Excitement was in every breath of air; excitement and the suspense of
stark expectancy.
Days would probably pass before the bulk of the Army of the Potomac
would be set in motion. But every man knew just what was coming.
Every man knew that the next move would bring the rival forces to grips,
and under more pregnant circumstances than ever before.
Wherefore the vast camp stirred and muttered like waking monsters
underseas at the surface turmoil of mounting wave and wind-blown
foam-crest that presages storm.
Ahead for some distance the road was half-choked with provision trains,
ammunition wagons, and baggage carts, through which Dad and the boy
threaded their way with no great degree of ease.
The fields on either hand were dotted with couriers and returning
skirmish-parties taking short cuts back from Frederick, the town whence
Lee’s rear guard, under General D. H. Hill, had departed scarce fifteen
hours earlier, which had been formerly occupied by the Union vanguard a
short time afterward--three hours, in fact.
As the man and the boy jogged along the press in the road grew thinner
and thinner, and in time resolved itself into a semi-occasional stray
rider or belated wagon or two.
Dad rode with the careless ease of a lifelong equestrian to whom the
saddle was as familiar as a rocking-chair; and his sorrel mount’s
occasional passaging and curvets gave the rider not the remotest
trouble, nor so much as a conscious thought.
With Battle Jimmie it was different. Until the last few months he had
never been astride a horse. And hitherto most of his rides had been on
the broad back of some caisson or baggage horse whose lumbering gallop
was highly uncomfortable, but to whose moorings--or harness--it was
possible to cling with an unsportsmanlike grip that was highly needful,
in the light of his inexperience.
Of late, though, Dad had taken his grandson’s equestrian education in
hand, with the result that Jimmie now restrained the keen yearning to
seize the pommel of his army saddle or the equally tempting mane of his
mount in the effort to stick on. He rode in shortened stirrups, sat his
saddle stiffly, held the reins as nearly as possible after the correct
and approved army fashion--and during the entire operation was as
physically miserable as it was possible for him to be.
His horse to-day, a huge, raw-boned bald-face, would have proven a
handful for a more expert rider. Jimmie sawed viciously at the brute’s
hard mouth more than once; and the horse retaliated by jerking back his
head and then suddenly leaning on the bit with a tug that all but pulled
the reins free from the rider’s grubby little hands.
Dad viewed the boy’s efforts with covert amusement; now and then, as in
the case of the jerked reins, offering a word or two of criticism, then
of brief, if kindly spoken, advice.
“I can stay aboard,” panted Jimmie brokenly, as the horse broke into a
hard trot that shook the breath from his lungs. “I can stay aboard, all
right. But I could get more fun out of a nice gun-carriage without
strings or a--Gee, Emp!” he interrupted himself, apostrophizing the
many-breeded dog that frisked coquettishly along just ahead of him. “You
ain’t got a ghost of an idea how lucky you are to have four feet instead
of riding something that has. And when _you_ sit down you’ve always got
something to sit on that won’t jog you up in the air again. Say, Dad,
what old duffer ever invented the fool idea that folks mustn’t hang on
by the pommel and the mane?”
“The same man, I suppose,” responded Dad, “who invented all the rules
that pester us. The rule that you mustn’t run away when you’re scared,
and that you must tell the truth when a lie would seem to help, and that
you must share the half rations you’re so hungry for with the chap who
hasn’t any; and every other rule that’s hard to obey and that makes man
something better than an animal.
“Stick on, son. It’ll come easier by and by. Everything does. And the
outside of a horse is the best thing for the inside of a man. There’s
nothing else on earth to equal riding. It’s--Keep the hand lower and the
heels higher, son! Ball of the foot, not the instep, in the stirrup.
So!”
“It’s funny,” mused Jimmie, “how we happened to take this Frederick road
when there are so many others. If we aren’t careful we’re liable to run
into the Third Ambulance Corps wagon train before long. Emp!” he went
on, hastily, forestalling any possible retort, “you and I are a lonely
pair of youngsters, aren’t we? I wonder if you ever had a grandmother.
Maybe dogs don’t. I don’t remember mine.
“But sometimes it kind of almost seems to me as if maybe I can look
forward to her, Emp. And it makes me feel pretty good. ’Cause I think
she’s just the dandiest little lady that ever fell in love with the
dandiest man that ever was, or ever will be, Emp.”
“Jimmie!” remarked Dad, sternly. “Your shoulders are hunched over like a
black bear cub’s. Square them when you ride. Don’t look more like a
meal-sack or a Cherokee squaw than you can help.”
The boy straightened himself to erect military carriage. And at once the
jarring trot of the big horse shook his spine excruciatingly.
He slowed his mount to a walk, thereat, with promptitude.
“Want to turn back, son?” queried Dad. “Had enough of it?”
There was a wistfulness in the kind query that went to the boy’s
jouncing heart and made him resolve to be shaken to a pulp sooner than
deprive Dad of a chance to see the one woman in the ambulance corps.
“Nope!” he lied blithely. “I’m getting to enjoy it fine.”
Their horses plodded along at a comfortable walk, neck and neck, and the
boy breathed more easily and shifted his position in the torturing
saddle. Emp took advantage of the slackened pace to dart to the roadside
and begin to explore truculently a quite-deserted woodchuck hole.
“Sic ’im, Emp!” encouraged Jimmie. “Dig ’im out, boy! Wrassle ’im!”
Thus exhorted, Emp bent his entire canine energy to the task of
unearthing a woodchuck from the hole where no woodchuck was. The dog’s
yellow forepaws flew like pistons, widening the mouth of the hole; and
his red little tongue was speedily flaked with earth.
Backward from the swift-plied paws, as he dug, flew a cloud of yellow
dust.
And a generous share of that same yellow dust was hurled against the
spotless gaiters and new baggy trousers of a corporal of Zouaves who
chanced to be passing by, on foot, at that side of the road.
The corporal, with a single glance at the cause of this defacing of his
dandified raiment, swore fluently and launched a kick at the highly
industrious Emp. Jimmie cried out in indignant protest. The kick,
conscientiously, but too hastily, delivered, barely grazed the flank of
the burrowing dog.
Emp, at the alien touch, ceased his excavations and whirled about to
investigate. He was just in time to witness the start of the second and
even more vicious kick.
With admirable strategy, Emp leaped to one side as the gaitered calf
swung past him and, in practically the same motion, sunk his white
little teeth in the Zouave’s other gaiter.
The whole series of maneuvers had occupied scarcely a second, hardly
enough time for the two riders to bring their mounts to a halt. The
Zouave, with a yell, whipped out the bayonet from his belt and made a
right-murderous lunge at the puppy which clung to his leg.
The fierce thrust that should have impaled the little dog did not find
its intended lodgment. Instead, the bayonet hopped free of the Zouave’s
grasp as though endowed with life, and tumbled into the ditch at the far
side of the road.
The man nursing his numbed right hand, glowered upward; to find towering
above him a giant horseman, bared sword flashing in ready and righteous
menace.
“It says on this blade,” drawled Dad, in an almost confidential tone,
to the wrath-dumb Zouave--“it says ‘_Draw me not without cause_.’ But I
guess the man who made up that motto wouldn’t have thought the less of
me for drawing sword to save a poor, fluffy puppy-dog from getting
spitted like a turkey. There’s worse uses for a white man’s sword than
to save the life of one of God’s little wards.”
“The brute bit me!” growled the Zouave.
“Only when a _grosser_ brute kicked him,” corrected Dad. “I’m no
pet-animal coddler, my friend, and sometimes a dog needs
punishment--almost as much as a human does. But always from his own
master, and never by a kick. Just bear that in mind, and you won’t force
a superior officer to work a swordsmanship disarming trick on you
again.”
The man, shifting his ground so that the sun no longer dazzled him, saw
for the first time that his quiet-voiced conqueror wore the insignia of
a major.
He swallowed back a hot mouthful of oaths, sulkily raised his hand in
salute, then slouched across the road in search of his flown bayonet.
“You see, Jimmie,” began Dad, turning, “there’s no harm done, and--”
He broke off with an exclamation of amaze. Jimmie was nowhere in sight.
Neither up nor down the road, far as eye could travel.
The boy and his horse seemed to have been caught up to the skies or to
have sunk into the solid earth!
CHAPTER XXVII
A STERN CHASE
For a brief instant Dad sat blinking, incredulous. Then he saw and
understood.
Crossing the field to right of the road and at an acute angle to it, a
full quarter of a mile ahead, thundered a runaway horse. And on the
horse’s back, clutching frantically to the saddle, his new-learned
principles of riding quite forgotten, swayed and clung Battle Jimmie.
At flash of steel against steel the boy’s half-trained cavalry horse had
shied violently. The flying bayonet’s point in passing had pricked his
shoulder top, narrowly missing Jimmie.
With a wild bound of fear and pain the horse had cleared the roadside
ditch and had struck off at a bounding gallop across the field.
Jimmie, almost unseated by that first leap, grabbed the pommel with one
hand, while with the other he sawed at the reins.
He might as readily have pulled against an artillery tug-of-war team.
The horse merely lunged his long neck forward a little, caught the bit
between his teeth, and sped on, frantic with fear.
With high-pitched voice, and futile, brave little hand the boy sought
in vain to check or guide the mad, pounding flight. The horse, which the
regimental farrier had that morning vouched for to Dad as “a little
rough yet, but as gentle as a kitten,” was an old and incurable offender
in the vice of running away.
As a matter of fact it was for this grievous fault that his civilian
master had recently sold him cheap to a cavalry contractor.
Dad after a first glance saw that the boy was not frightened and that he
was likely to keep his seat far more easily at a sweeping run than at a
bone-shaking trot. Unless the horse should buck, shy, or catch his foot
in some hole in the field, the rider was safe enough.
On the bare chance of one of the casualties Dad put his own horse at the
ditch and galloped down the field in pursuit. But it was more in
amusement than in fear that he gave chase.
Well-mounted though he was, he was too far behind, and the runaway was
going at too furious a pace for Dad to hope to overhaul Jimmie for some
time. So he merely settled down to an enlivening gallop, with the hope
that the boy’s horse would soon run himself out.
For two miles or more they continued this; Dad gaining little if at all.
The runaway’s panic fear and the light weight of his rider helped him
maintain his great pace.
Dad began to worry. They were almost abreast of Frederick by this time,
and a full half-mile to south of the town. Beyond, somewhere in that
tumble of light green valleys and dark green hills was the rear guard of
the Confederate army.
Perhaps only a few miles away might lurk a belated troop of
camp-followers or even a company of bushwhackers.
To the Confederate army, where boys of fifteen were daily enlisting as
regular soldiers, a lad of Jimmie’s age in a Federal uniform would
readily pass as an enlisted man and, as such, if captured, would be
liable to confinement in one of the Southern war-prisons--a possible
fate which turned Dad sick with dread for his adored grandson.
He loosed his rein and for the first time touched spur to his sorrel.
The mettled horse, unbreathed by the gallop, responded with the
readiness of a machine. The gallop changed to a run. The stubble field
over which they were passing became a yellowish blur under the flying
feet.
Little by little, steadily, but ever so slowly, the gap between the
blooded sorrel and the coarser-grained runaway began to close. By the
end of another mile there was a scant hundred yards between them.
Frederick was well behind them now. The last Union outposts, a half-mile
beyond the town and as far to the north of the two riders, were past.
Into “no-man’s land,” into that most perilous of regions, the “debatable
ground” between two hostile armies, sped pursuer and pursued.
Hearing the ever-nearing drumming of hoofs behind him, the runaway
increased his flagging speed.
Jimmie heard, too, and, glancing back over his shoulder, grinned
delightedly at the white-faced man who rode so furiously in pursuit of
him.
To the boy it was a glorious lark. The long, smooth gait of the runaway
did not toss him about in the saddle as had the rough trot and gallop.
Jimmie, helpless as he was to curb his mount’s pace, was thoroughly
enjoying the novelty of this exploit.
Dad’s spurs were blood-flecked. Dad’s gallant horse was beginning to
breathe in gasps. The September wind hammered and whipped the man’s hot
face and blurred his eyes. The octuple thud of hoofs was nauseating him.
Another mile and the runaway breasted a steep hillock. Dad was a bare
ten yards behind.
“Now, then, Jimmie!” he sung out. “Now’s your chance as he takes that
rise. Both hands on the reins. Forget the pommel. Both hands on the
reins, I said. Lean back with all your weight. Hold the right rein
stiff, and saw on the left. With your whole weight, son!”
The lad obeyed, though with visible reluctance, for he was having a
beautiful time and saw no good reason for ending it so soon.
The maneuver with the reins jerked back the bit from between the
runaway’s teeth. It incidentally caused him to break momentarily his
long stride.
The steepness of the hillock did the rest.
At the summit Dad was alongside. He reached for the boy’s bridle.
As his fingers were almost closing on the rein, a vagrant gust of wind
snatched up from under a bush (whither another gust had evidently
whisked it) a piece of white paper.
The paper swirled upward in the very track of the runaway like a
sentient thing, and danced in air before his bloodshot eyes.
The fear-crazed brute forgot his exhaustion long enough to swerve
violently to the right. Dad’s clutching hand closed upon nothingness.
Jimmie remained stationary in mid air--the horse having shied from under
him--for the most infinitesimal fraction of a second.
Then he descended to earth with considerable force; landed, still in a
sitting posture, with an impact that knocked the breath completely out
of him; and stared dazedly upward at his grandfather.
Dad, slipping from his horse, picked the boy up and stood him on his
feet.
“Are you hurt, dear lad?” he cried. “Are you badly hurt?”
“No,” responded Jimmie, albeit uncertainly. “But--but it’s blamed lucky
for me I got so many spankings from father when I was home.
They’ve--they’ve kind of calloused me, I guess. Gee, Dad, but that was
one gorgeous ride; and I stuck on, all right, didn’t I, Dad? As long as
we kept going. What’s the matter, sir? You’re all gray-white and you
look ’most a hundred.”
Dad did not answer. He turned from the boy, brushing the back of a
shaking hand over his eyes. He fell to examining his panting horse.
The sorrel stood with drooped head and red eyes and nostrils. There were
blood-flecks on his sweat-drenched sides. He was heaving and
wind-broken.
“Foundered!” pronounced Dad, sorrowfully. “I don’t wonder. The going was
harder than any foxhunt. Now, how in blue and pink blazes are we going
to get back? It’s a good two miles and more to our outposts.”
He glanced about. Twenty yards distant the runaway, reeking with sweat
and breathing in snorts, had come to a standstill, his senseless
nightmare fear lost in exhaustion, and was cropping grass.
A hand slipped into Dad’s.
“Honest, sir, I didn’t do it on purpose,” Jimmie was saying. “I’m sorry
the horses are so done up. And--and I’m a lot sorrier we missed getting
to where the Third Ambulance Corps is. Maybe it isn’t too late, yet. We
could walk the horses back, you know. It’s only a few miles. Hallo! Here
comes Emp! All tuckered out. But as game as tunket, the good little
cuss!”
Sure enough, up the slope toiled the yellow puppy, his tongue hanging
out to an unbelievable length, his multishaded fur coated with dust.
He had kept up as well as he could. But he was no fox-hound--at least,
not more than perhaps one or two per cent.--and the pace had proven far
too hot for him to be in at the death.
Still he had done his level four-legged best. And here at last he was, a
trifle belated and very leg-weary, but triumphant at having finally
overtaken his little master.
Emp gamboled weariedly yet joyfully about the boy; then, to show his
spirit was less impaired than his body, he dashed awkwardly to one side
and seized in his teeth the crumpled piece of paper that had caused
Jimmie’s tumble.
The paper, its mission accomplished, had lodged at the base of a rock.
Thence Emp dragged it and, professing to recognize in it a deadly yet
very conquerable foe, shook it fiercely, accompanying his shakes with
short, breathless growls of extreme fury.
“Here, you!” exhorted Jimmie, pouncing on Emp and forcibly taking the
wad of paper from the dog’s reluctant paws, seeking to mask his own
fall-shaken nerves under a display of juvenile bombasity. “Here, you;
Emperor Napoleon Pete Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, Esq., you drop that!
It’s a war-relic, and I’m a goin’ to keep it and show it to my
grand-children.
“I’m goin’ to say to ’em: ‘You little numskulls, just you gaze on this
yellowed sheet of parchment. Your grandfather had been a-ridin’
horseback, man and boy, for pretty near six months, when this priceless
relic gave him his first fall.’ I’m going to inscribe on it--on it--
“Why, hello! There _is_ something written on it already. I’ll have to
rub it out and write my inscription over it.”
He had partly unfolded the paper as he meandered on.
Now he read aloud, slowly, and with difficulty deciphering the
half-chewed screed:
“Special Order No. 191. Headquarters of the Army of Northern
Virginia, September 9, 1862.
“The army will resume its march to-morrow, taking the Hagerstown
road. General Jackson’s command will form the advance and, after
passing Middletown, with such portion as he may select--”
“Aw, shucks!” yawned the boy. “Just a lot of military bosh. I kind of
had a hope it might turn out to be something interesting.”
Dad, who had been loosening the girth of his foundered horse, turned
sharply.
Accustomed as he was to his grandson’s love for enacting all sorts of
rôles and declaiming laughably impossible orations, he had listened with
real pride to this latest effusion. Deeming that the boy was
improvising, he had wondered at the concise and professional wording of
the supposedly imaginary dispatch.
But at Jimmie’s exclamation of disgust over the uninteresting nature of
the document, he began to wonder if, after all, something of interest,
even of importance, might not be sprawled on that much mishandled sheet
of paper.
It was over this ground that part of the Confederate army had passed but
a few hours earlier. Perhaps--
He took the paper from the boy, spread out its crumbled surface once
more, verified at a glance what Jimmie had read aloud, then went on with
the reading:
--“take the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most
convenient point, and by Friday night take possession of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and capture such of the enemy as may be
at Martinsburg and intercept such as may attempt to escape from
Harper’s Ferry.
“General Longstreet’s command will--”
Dad’s staring eyes shifted at this point to the bottom of the page; past
much more closely written matter, in search of the signature.
He found it.
“(By command of General Robert E. Lee.) R. H. Chilton, Assistant
Adjutant-General.”
On the line below was written:
“To Major-General D. H. Hill, Commanding Division.”
Unbelieving, dumfounded, Dad went back to the point where he had left
off and read to the end.
* * * * *
To-day all the world knows the contents of “Special Order No. 191”--that
order, a copy of which was sent by Lee to every division commander. The
document telling of Lee’s plan to detach a part of his main army and,
under Stonewall Jackson, to send it to capture the unprepared garrison
and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, while Lee himself should strive to hide
from McClellan the fact that the Confederate host was sadly depleted by
the sending of this detachment; and thus to prevent the Union armies
from attacking him until Jackson’s force should return.
Like most of Lee’s plans it was brilliant and simple. It had every
prospect of success.
And its success would probably have meant the wrecking of the Union
cause through the invasion’s achievement.
Yet General D. H. Hill somehow let drop from a pocket his copy of the
order, and that copy really was picked up through sheer chance.
* * * * *
Dad read to the end; then hurriedly reread.
Then he turned to Jimmie; his firm mouth twitching grotesquely.
“This--this has got to get to General McClellan--now--_now_!” he
babbled. “It means--Lord of Battles!--it means _everything_ to us!
_Everything!_ It must go to him as fast as a horse can be flogged into
running. And--my horse is dead beat; and so, I guess, is yours! Oh,
_what’s_ to be done?”
He strode nervously across to where the runaway still cropped grass,
half-way down the slope of the farther hillock.
And as he came within arm’s length of the animal a rather pleasant
voice called to him from a thicket to the left:
“Hands up, Yank! Hands up, _both_ of you. Up. ‘Way up!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHECK AND COUNTER-CHECK
Dad wheeled. At the hillock’s foot, just in front of him, a bare ten
feet away, stood a man in the frayed and stained gray uniform of a
captain of Confederate cavalry.
A path, running down the hill, wound through thick undergrowth beyond.
And along this thicket-grown path, from somewhere in the rear of the
Confederate army, the captain had evidently ridden.
At sight of the two Northerners he must have dismounted; for his horse
stood directly behind him within the high screen of bushes.
So silently had the man approached, and so engrossed had Dad been in the
mighty fate that hung on his own strangely acquired tidings, that no
warning of the enemy’s approach had come to put him on his guard.
And now the boy on the hillock crest and his grandfather near the
hillock foot found themselves looking into the steadily leveled mouth of
an army revolver.
The Confederate eyed them with a slight smile of almost deprecatory
politeness.
“Hands up, I _said_,” he repeated.
“Hands up, Jimmie!” called Dad cheerfully, over his shoulder. “He’s got
the drop on us. And a loaded pistol is apt to be a nasty thing to argue
with. It’s got a snappish way of insisting on having the last word.”
He set his grandson the example by raising his own hands well above his
head. Striding forward toward his captor, he smiled back into the
Confederate’s smiling face and said:
“What next, sir? We seem to be at your orders. Or, rather, at your
pistol’s. What do you want of us?”
“Why,” said the captain politely, his soft, slurring accent unruffled by
the faintest trace of excitement, “I’m mighty sorry to discommode you,
suh. But I’m afraid I’ll have to get you-all to walk ahead of me a
half-mile or so along that path to where my company is resting for
dinner.
“After that I’m afraid it’ll be Libby for you, suh, and Belle Isle
prison for your little orderly up yonder. Off’cers to the right;
privates to the left. May I trouble you to stand still in that
uncomfortable attitude just a minute longer, suh?”
Shifting his pistol muzzle ever so little, and embracing both Dad and
Jimmie in the same glance of his sleepy eyes, the Confederate raised his
voice:
“You orderly up there!” he called. “Walk back to that sorrel horse!
Straight back! He’s in line with you! Keep your hands up! Go back there
and unfasten the bearing-rein from the bit. Then, with your hands still
up, come down this slope in the same line and tie this gentleman’s
wrists together with the rein.
“You see, suh,” he explained courteously to Dad, “the way is pretty
crooked. And there’s bushes both sides of the road. I can’t quite make
certain of you both, walking ahead of me, unless at least one of you is
tied. Hurry up there, orderly! Get me that rein.”
“I’ll see you and Jeff Davis and Bob Lee and all the rest of the South
in Kingdom Come, first!” shrilled Jimmie. “I put up my hands because Dad
told me to. Not because I’m afraid of that pop-gun of yours. But if you
think I’m going to tie him up for you--say, Reb, I could pretty near
lick you myself. And I’ll try it, if you’re man enough to gimme half a
show by pocketin’ that gun.”
“They breed ’em game in your part of the world, sonny,” smiled the
captain. “And now that you’ve said your little piece, just shut up on
the heroics and do as I tell you. A bullet hole in your little stomach
would be a mighty unbecoming sight. Step lively!”
“I won’t!” roared Jimmie. “You soft-voiced bully! I’m getting to hate
every bone in your body. Dad! Dad! Say, can I put my hands down, and
I’ll take a chance with his gun. I licked Roddy Slade, and Roddy’s
pretty near as big as that Reb is--I can do _him_, I bet you!”
“Jimmie!” called Dad, his voice steady with a gentle authority. “Do as
he says.”
“_Dad!_”
“Exactly as he says,” ordered Dad.
“Oh, Dad! Let me--”
“Jimmie! Obey orders.”
There was now no doubt as to the authority in Dad’s voice. Jimmie
groaned aloud and started at snail-pace toward the sorrel.
“I’d a lot rather charge a gun battery,” he lamented. “Say, Reb, I’m
doing this because my grandfather tells me to. And he’s my s’perior
officer. Not because you told me to, or because I’m scared of your gun.
And say, you! Don’t you go getting the notion Dad’s a-scared of you,
either. He isn’t scared of anything. I don’t know why he’s surrendering,
but if he’s doing it, it’s all right, somehow.”
Still grumbling, mouthing horribly murderous threats, the boy began to
unfasten the bearing rein from bit and saddle bow.
“You’ll pardon my grandson’s heat, sir,” apologized Dad to his captor.
“He’s only a youngster, and he hasn’t learned philosophy yet. You see,
we--
“Pardon me, captain,” broke off Dad, with a sudden wide grin as his eyes
chanced to drop from the Confederate’s face to the leveled revolver
whose muzzle was now less than a yard from his own chest, “but when you
try to hold men up with a pistol, mightn’t it be just a trifle wiser to
see that your pistol is cocked?”
The Confederate involuntarily glanced down at his weapon--which, by the
way, chanced to be fully cocked--and at the same instant Dad struck.
He struck palm-wide with the speed of a cat. His open hand smote the
Confederate across the knuckles; all the force of trained sinews and
scientific skill behind the lightning-swift blow.
The pistol was knocked clean out of the captain’s hand and tumbled into
the bushes; happily and irretrievably removed from the situation.
Dad’s hand in a flash was at his own holster.
But too late he remembered that he had left his pistol in his
tent--having had no idea that he should be riding that day beyond his
own army’s lines. He knew, too, that Jimmie was unarmed; for he himself
had very vigorously vetoed the boy’s yearning to keep on carrying a huge
revolver.
The ruse, to this point had succeeded with ridiculous ease. The
Confederate, deceived by his captive’s meek submission, had been wholly
unsuspecting.
Wherefore Dad had been able, without trouble, to edge up within striking
distance and by use of a time-honored trick to distract and then disarm
his would-be captor.
But as he reached in vain for his pistol the situation shifted once
more. For the captain, his revolver lost, whipped out the light cavalry
saber he carried, and, springing forward, swung the slender blade aloft
for a stroke that should avenge his tricking. His colossal and courteous
calm had momentarily forsaken him.
There was no time for Dad to snatch his own sword, no chance for
thinking. But the blind instinct, wherewith a thousand primeval
ancestors have succeeded in enrolling themselves among the “fittest,”
came to Dad’s aid.
As the saber fell, he leaped back out of reach--yet barely far enough,
for the blade grazed his arm in whizzing past; grazed it, glancingly;
shearing a gash in coat and shirt sleeve, and the deflected blade
raising a welt on the flesh of the upper arm.
Before the weapon could be swung aloft for a second slash, or its
wielder’s arm shortened for a lunge, Dad was at the Confederate’s
throat.
Bare-handed, unafraid, he ran in; too close to his foe to allow the use
of saber play. The instinct that had prompted him to dodge and then to
attack, had also warned him to come to grips before the saber could be
put to use.
Had Dad sought to strike or to keep for an instant longer at long range,
the sword would have rendered him helpless. As it was at close quarters
he rendered the saber a handicap rather than an aid to his enemy.
Dad’s right hand found the captain’s throat. His left shot aloft and
seized the wrist that brandished the saber. His lithe old body twisted
forward and sideways into the “hiplock.”
The Confederate, meantime tugging furiously to free his own imprisoned
sword-arm, struck with all his might, his left fist clenched, at Dad’s
face.
Dad ducked and the blow landed full on the tough crown of his head.
Dad saw a choice assortment of stars, but he held his grip, dogged,
tense, unyielding in spite of the dizzy nausea that the head blow had
caused him.
The Confederate, on the contrary, cried out in sharp pain, and Dad, with
a grim thrill of joy, knew why.
The fist, crashing with all its force on Dad’s skull, had met the same
fate as has many a pugilist’s in landing a blow in the same inauspicious
spot. Two of the Confederate’s fingers were broken by the jarring
impact, and his wrist was badly sprained.
Dad, instinctively seeking to protect his own face, had resorted,
without intent, to a favorite street-fight maneuver; by opposing his
head-crown to a blow instead of his jaw. Hundreds of hands have been
broken or otherwise put out of commission by that simple ruse.
The Confederate’s left hand being helpless, Dad shifted his own right
from the man’s throat to the sword wrist. A heaving wrench of both hands
and the saber flew from the captain’s back-twisted arm.
Jimmy (who, during the second or two that had elapsed since Dad and the
Confederate had so unexpectedly shifted their rôles of captor and
captive, had stared fascinated at the fray) now jumped forward with a
whoop and snatched up the fallen saber.
“Where’ll I give it to him, Dad?” he yelled exultantly. “Not to hurt him
much, but to make him let up on you.”
“Keep out of this!” panted Dad.
He could not, now, use his sword with honor, and it would hamper him.
Leaping back he unbuckled belt and all, flung them in Jimmy’s direction,
and closed again.
Disregarding the broken hand, the Confederate threw both arms about the
old man in a right-unloving embrace, and the two crashed to earth.
Over and over they rolled; the Confederate pounding and struggling like
mad; Dad seeking merely to gain the upper hand.
Jimmy danced about them, saber threateningly poised, shouting:
“Surrender, you! Surrender or I’ll stick this sword into you!”
He could not have carried out his threat, even had he so chosen. For the
two men on the ground were so inextricably snarled together and were
writhing and pummeling and shifting their relative positions with such
suddenness, that the boy could not possibly attack one of them without
an equal chance of injuring the other.
Presently they were on their feet, and Dad secured the hold he had been
groping for. By use of a simple old wrestling trick known to athletes of
those days as “bustling the bridge,” he whirled his foe fully a yard in
air and brought him down breathless on his back with a thump that
half-stunned the fallen man. As he fell Dad heard the shoulder bone
crack.
Dad wasted no time. Kneeling on the Confederate’s forearms, he called to
Jimmy:
“Son! That paper? Is it where I dropped it? The one I was reading
when--”
“Lemme help you hold him down, Dad!” pleaded the boy, unhearing. “Maybe
he’ll--”
“Jimmie!” roared Dad, the old voice vibrant with an authority the lad
could not disregard. “Listen to me! (No, I don’t need any help. Keep
away from his feet.) That bit of paper you found. The one that scared
your horse. The one I was reading. Where is it? Find it! _Quick!_”
He bent to the task of quieting the wriggling Confederate; then went on:
“Find it! Is--”
“Here it is,” said Jimmy, sighting the fallen paper a few feet away and
going to pick it up. “But, say, let me help--”
“Have you got it?” demanded Dad, far too busy with his fallen antagonist
to look around.
“Yes, sir. Here it is. Oh, Dad, smash him! Don’t let him wriggle free.
Why don’t you hit him? He ain’t really down! Make him say he’s had
enough. Want any help, sir? Shall I pitch in, too? Or can I sic Emp onto
him? I--”
“Quick, son!” broke in Dad, his voice shaken by passionate earnestness,
as he bent every atom of strength to maintain his position above his
foe. “Take that paper, jump on the horse in the path yonder, and _ride_
straight to General McClellan! I pointed out his headquarters to you.
Get that paper to him. No matter what happens to stop you. _Get_ it to
him, and tell him how we found it. Ride, lad! Hang on by mane, or
saddle, or any way you like, but _ride_! It’s for our country. It may
even save the Union. You can serve America to-day better than fifty
generals. Get that paper to him! Into his own hands! Ride the horse to
death if you have to!”
Each sentence came in a shouted gasp. At the first words the Confederate
had redoubled his struggles and, by a mighty heave, had all but reversed
their positions. Despite the handicap of a broken hand and wrenched
shoulder the Southerner was fighting like a wildcat.
And knowledge of the injuries made Dad gentle in dealing with him. The
old man struck no blow; merely held to earth his writhing opponent, and
shouted the gasping commands to his grandson.
In all his fifteen years, Battle Jimmie had never heard so excited, so
madly pleading a tone in his beloved grandfather’s voice.
In no way understanding the cause for the vehemence, he felt none the
less the pressing need to obey. If, in that tone, Dad had bidden him eat
one of the horses, Jimmie would at once have started to gnaw the nearest
hoof.
He ran down the slope, seized the rein and pommel of the captain’s
horse, a black Virginia thoroughbred, scrambled to the saddle, sticking
the sheet of paper inside the neck of his shirt, and dug his heels into
the horse’s side with every ounce of his energy.
Much has been written--chiefly in verse--of the intelligence and loyalty
of a thoroughbred horse. But that same loyalty and intelligence does not
prevent him from allowing himself to be ridden away by a thief from
under the very eyes of his master.
Wherein even the best horse appears to show infinitely less sense and
affection than does a mongrel dog or even an alley cat.
Under his new and clumsy rider’s exhortations, the black thoroughbred
bounded up the slope.
“I’m off!” called Battle Jimmie, stopping. “But--say! I wish I could
stay and help you. Are you dead sure you can finish licking him without
me, Dad?”
“Yes!” gasped Dad. “Go--everything depends on it! You’re carrying the
fate of the whole army! _Ride!_ And--God go with you, lad!”
“All right, sir! Get back there, Emp! Go back! Wait for Dad! You can’t
keep up with me!”
Over the hillock crest swept the black horse, the boy clinging to his
mane and, by kicks and shouts, urging him to top speed. Over the hill
summit and down the steep slope and on until the thud of hoofs died to
the straining ears of Dad.
Then Dad turned back to the business in hand; first angrily shoving off
Emp, who, with shrill barks, had been encircling the fighters, seeking
for a good chance to sink his teeth into some part of the Confederate’s
struggling anatomy.
But there was little more to do. With a final kick and a straining heave
of the shoulders, the Southerner’s body all at once grew limp.
“Fainted from the pain, poor cuss!” mused Dad, rising. “But maybe it’s
best to make sure.”
He passed the dropped bearing rein about the senseless man’s ankles;
then fell to examining the hurt hand and shoulder. As Dad worked over
him, the Confederate opened his eyes and lay very quiet, staring up at
his conqueror.
“Nothing dangerous,” cheerily reported Dad. “Broken fingers and--I guess
your collar bone needs attention.”
CHAPTER XXIX
THE END OF THE FIGHT
Dad subconsciously recalled what the captain had said about his company
taking their noon rest a half-mile beyond.
A cavalry company at that, from the captain’s uniform and saber.
Probably one of the many small bodies of horse thrown out to guard the
rear of Lee’s army and to forage.
At any moment some of the men in search of their leader might come down
the winding path that led from their temporary bivouac to the hillock.
Yet Dad hated to leave temporarily helpless a man whom he himself had
crippled. He hesitated.
“I--I suppose I am your prisoner, suh?” muttered the captain.
“You surrender?”
“I’m afraid I’ve no alternative. You have me at your mercy. And this
confounded hand and arm are torturing me. They’re useless. I surrender.”
“Good,” sighed Dad, in genuine relief.
He was very tired. He wanted to sit down somewhere and get back his
breath and his sorely overtaxed strength.
“There is my sword, on the grass yonder,” went on the Southerner. “It is
yours by right of war.”
“My dear boy,” laughed Dad. “I don’t want your hardware. Keep it. What
earthly use is it to me? It’s a saber. And I’m an infantry officer.”
“It is customary, suh, as you know,” stiffly returned the captain, “for
a prisoner to give up his sword to--”
“But, man, dear, you’re not my prisoner,” interrupted Dad. “_I_ don’t
want you. What would I do with you? There are more men in the prisons
now than we can afford to feed well.”
“Do I understand, suh,” asked the bewildered captain, “that you release
me on parole?”
“Parole?” mused Dad reflectively. “I ought to, I suppose. I ought to
demand your sacred word of honor that you’ll never again draw sword in
the Cause you think is right. That you go back home, eating your heart
out, while your brothers are at the front.
“But I’ve had much those same things happen to me in my time. And it’s a
hell I wouldn’t send my worst enemy through.
“No, Mister Confed, I’m not going to parole you or any other man. As far
as I’m concerned, you’re free to do what you want to.”
“Do you mean that I--”
“By the way,” went on Dad, “I had my grandson borrow your horse. I’m
sorry. It was a military necessity. You can take that sorrel over there
in its place. The horse is foundered, I’m afraid, but your regimental
farrier can bring him back to condition in a day or so. And he’s got
good blood and plenty of speed in him.”
“You mean, suh,” muttered the captain, dazed, “that after capturing me
you’ll give me not only my freedom but a horse, as well?”
“I’ve tried to make it plain,” said Dad patiently.
The captain made as though to speak; then turned his head abruptly away.
When he faced Dad again, the look of physical pain in the sleepy eyes
was all but effaced by one of utter shame.
“It is only fair to tell you, suh,” he began jerkily, his glance
downcast, like a scolded schoolboy, “it’s only fair to tell you that I
had every intention, a while back, of taking you and your orderly
prisoner and turning you over to our provost marshal to be shipped off
to prison.”
“Well,” responded Dad, “suppose you had? That is your affair. Every man
to his own whim. Perhaps when you get to my age, friend, you’ll think
twice before sticking a harmless old codger and a little boy into the
living death of a war prison. Or perhaps you won’t. It is your own
affair, as I told you. And now let me finish with those hurts of yours.
I must be on my way.”
Briskly, if a whit stiffly, he went on with his “first aid” work. The
Confederate, as in a trance, sat still, and let his conqueror work over
him. He seemed for the time bereft of the power of speech.
Emp, ordered back by his master and scolded by Dad for interfering, had
sat gravely on the hillock top, and with cocked head and critical eye
had surveyed the combat below. Still brooding over Jimmie’s defection
and the cruel order not to follow, the dog remained on the hilltop and,
the fight being over, fell to studying the world at large in the hope of
seeing his master return, penitent at his act of desertion, and make
friends with him again.
But Jimmie did not come back. Once Emp thought the boy was drawing near,
for his keen-pricked ears caught the sound of approaching horse-hoofs.
A second of listening, however, told him that these hoofs were walking;
not galloping. Also, that there were several horses approaching in
single file and from a direction opposite to that in which Jimmie had
vanished.
The hoof-beats drew nearer. Emp’s watchdog instincts--one of his
multi-breed ancestors having perhaps been guardian of a
farmstead--stirred within him. War experience had taught him that where
there were horses there were likely to be men.
Indeed, his twitching, moist nostrils had already caught the scent of
men--several men--strange men, approaching.
These outsiders assuredly had no right to intrude on Dad and the new
friend, who were resting so comfortably. Emp’s fur, between the
shoulders and then down along the spine-ridge, began to bristle with
resentment.
Far down in his thirsty throat a growling “Woof!” was born. Then
another.
Then the dog jumped to his feet, the stifled growls bursting forth in a
storm of yapping barks.
Dad, at the shrill warning, glanced up from his task of surgery. He
glanced up--to see at the path’s end, a few yards distant, a half-dozen
lean, finely mounted Confederate cavalrymen, seated carelessly in their
saddles and eyeing in grave astonishment the unusual spectacle of a
Federal infantry major tending the hurts of a Confederate cavalry
officer.
“Fortune of war!” remarked Dad, with dreary philosophy.
At his words, the Confederate captain looked up. And he, too, saw the
clump of gray-clad troopers, barely ten yards off, staring down at him.
As they met their captain’s eyes, the cavalrymen’s hands went up in
salute. But their gaze still rested in wonder on the odd scene that lay
before them.
“Friend,” said Dad to the captain, “there’s a favor I’d like to ask of
you.”
The Confederate looked up at him in quick surprise.
“It’s this,” continued Dad. “My sword here was given me by someone--by
someone I care for. I wish you’d keep track of what becomes of it and
where it’s stored. Because some day I’m likely to be exchanged or set
free in some other way, and when I am I want to get it back if I can.”
“I--I don’t understand it, suh,” said the captain.
Dad nodded toward the troopers.
“There doesn’t seem much mystery about it,” he said. “Both of my horses
up there are too tired to go much above a walk. Even if I could get to
one of them, your men would overhaul me before I’d ridden fifty feet.
And your men are between me and the only cover I could hide in if I
should try to get away on foot.”
“My men?” repeated the captain dully. “Oh, yes! My men. I’d forgotten.”
Rousing himself by strong effort from the inertia due to exhaustion and
pain, he turned toward the troopers.
“Fauquier!” he drawled.
A corporal saluted.
“Go back to camp and have a stretcher brought here for me. I’m hurt.
Take the men with you. ’Tention! Threes about! Wheel! _Trot!_”
Obedient, if still wondering, the perfectly disciplined Southern
cavalrymen wheeled and trotted off in double rank of threes along the
path and its bush-encroaching sides.
“Suh,” continued the captain, turning back to Dad, “you seem to have a
singularly queer opinion of a Virginia officer’s sense of decency. May I
correct it by suggesting you mount one of those two horses up yonder and
get well out of the way before my men come back? Good day, sir.
“And--thank you for a lesson in wrestling--and--and in other things.”
CHAPTER XXX
BATTLE JIMMIE, COURIER
Battle Jimmie was riding.
If his general posture on the black thoroughbred’s back tended to
suggest a monkey strapped to the back of a circus pony, he was none the
less riding. And at a breakneck speed.
Wholly ignorant of horsemanship’s finer shades, he yet had two great
qualifications for a jockey: the lightest of weight and a stark dearth
of fear.
He kicked his heels into the black sides of his mount just as often as
he could remain in any one spot long enough to direct the kick, and ever
and again he would release his grip on the mane long enough to wallop
the straining black flanks with the bearing-rein he still held.
The splendid thoroughbred needed none of these incentives to flight.
Indignant at his new rider’s gawky horsemanship and at his ignorance at
the way a blooded horse should be handled, the black none the less
realized that he was called upon to display his fleetest pace.
And he did it.
The futile little heel-thumps and the occasional larrup of the
bearing-rein hurt the horse not at all. But they insulted his feelings,
and he took out his indignation in the form of frantic speed.
Ears flattened back, head and neck in straight line with the withers;
long, sinuous black body stretched out close to earth, the beautiful
black cleared the uneven ground like a swallow.
A veteran of wild Virginia fox-hunts, the rough going was as nothing to
him. Hill, plowed field, and gully were traversed as easily as level
sward.
The rider’s weight was a bagatelle, but the rider’s behavior was a gross
affront.
Jimmie, in his earlier and runaway ride of the day, had not been too
excited to note his general direction--a trait taught him by Dad years
before in their rambles through the Ohio forests beyond Ideala.
And the habit served him well to-day, for he was able with no difficulty
to follow his former route on the return journey.
The black charger was perfectly amenable to the reins’ guidance, and his
gait was as easy as a hobby-horse’s.
Presently the few spires of Frederick came into view; then the house
roofs. Topping another rise, Jimmie found he was a scant fifty feet from
the Frederick road.
For safer and smoother travel he guided his horse to it, the black
clearing a low wall and ditch without breaking his smooth stride.
Down the Frederick pike the headlong ride continued. At a turn of the
road two Union sentinels slung their guns forward and demanded the
pass-word. Jimmie had reached the Federal outposts.
The black sped between the two forward-pressing sentries, and Jimmie
yelled:
“Courier! Dispatches for General McClellan!”
Seeing that the boy was in blue uniform, the sentinels did not make even
a futile effort to detain him.
Not until he had whirled past in a cloud of dust did one of them
belatedly recall that the horse’s saddle had borne in brass the letters
“C. S. A.,” instead of “U. S. A.”
And he and his comrade fell to speculating bewilderedly as to why a
small-boy courier in Union uniform should happen to be riding on a
Confederate cavalry saddle.
On galloped Jimmie, giving the dust to the few riders and pedestrians,
who now began to appear on the white turnpike.
Into Frederick and through its unpaved, rutted main street galloped the
lad. The street through which, less than a week earlier, Stonewall
Jackson had led his dusty legions.
From an upper window of one of the thoroughfare’s wooden houses
(according to a tale as apocryphal as it was dramatic) aged Barbara
Frietchie had waved the bullet-ridden stars and stripes and by her
gallant loyalty had touched the chivalric Southern chief’s heart.
The sole basis for the Barbara Frietchie legend, moreover, according to
Jackson’s own tale and his staff’s, was this:
As the Confederate swung down the street two little girls, each waving a
tiny American flag, ran out from the sidewalk and shook their flags
defiantly--almost in Jackson’s very face--whereat, instead of fiercely
ordering the flags to be fired on, Jackson had turned to one of his aids
and smilingly commented:
“We don’t seem to be especially popular here.”
Jimmie, who had heard of neither the fact nor the more inspiring legend,
dashed on, looking neither to right nor left. His horse, wholly unaided
by the rider, eluded the scant traffic of the street and saved Jimmie
from more than one bad collision.
Pedestrians scattered to left and right before the thundering hoofs and
yelled angry warnings after the fast-disappearing horseman. Mounted
military men drew to one side and laughed aloud at the scarlet-faced
little figure bunched over on the withers of the great charger.
Through the street and beyond galloped Jimmie. He drew up at last (with
a suddenness that sent the horse back on his haunches and the rider
well-nigh over his mount’s ears) in front of a house whose walk from
porch to road was patrolled by a sentinel.
On the veranda lounged several gaudily attired staff officers. From the
porch roof jutted a white flagstaff, gold-eagle crowned, supporting a
huge silken American flag.
A quarter-mile away that morning Dad had pointed out the house to his
grandson as temporary headquarters of Major-General George Brinton
McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac--a leader who partly
for the sake of his middle name had always held Jimmie’s admiring
curiosity.
Off the horse scrambled the boy, his body aching all over, and his
short, cramped legs all but doubling under him. Through the gate he
lurched and up the path.
The sentinel halted him before he had taken three steps.
“Courier! Dispatches!” snapped Jimmie, and forestalled further argument
or delay by ducking nimbly under the soldier’s arm and scampering for
the porch.
“Courier! Dispatches!” he repeated grandiloquently to the veranda’s
occupants at large as he climbed the steps. “Where’s General McClellan?”
A gorgeous staff officer bustled forward, stepping officiously between
the boy and the open front door of the house.
“Dispatches?” echoed the officer. “Give them here.”
“Not much I won’t!” retorted Jimmie. “These are for General McClellan.
They aren’t for anyone else.”
“I am General McClellan’s acting secretary,” the officer announced
harshly, his dignity rasped by a laugh from fellow officers lounging
near by.
The spectacle of a small boy in a big uniform, caked with dust and
horse-foam, defying the pompous acting secretary was one of mild joy to
everyone.
“I am General McClellan’s acting secretary,” repeated the officer
impatiently. “I will take--”
“I wouldn’t care if you was his maiden aunt,” declared Jimmie stoutly.
“Dad told me to give a paper to General McClellan himself. He didn’t say
anything about giving it to anyone else--even if the someone else
happened to be wearing seven diff’rent kinds of gold lace. And what Dad
tells me to do goes. Where’s General McClellan?”
“Who’s ‘Dad,’ sonny?” laughed a colonel who was sprawling in the sun on
the steps.
“He’s my s’perior off’cer,” returned Jimmie. “And he told me to--”
“Here!” snorted the secretary. “If you’ve got any papers, you little
ragamuffin, give them to me. If you haven’t, be off, or I’ll take my
riding-switch to you. I--”
“Look!” gasped Jimmie melodramatically, pointing a trembling, stubby
forefinger over the secretary’s shoulder.
The secretary involuntarily turned. Jimmie on the instant darted past
him through the door and into the hallway beyond.
The dimmer light half-blinded the boy, coming as he did from the glare
of the street. But he dared not pause. Vaguely, half-way down the long
hallway, he saw a sentinel posted in front of one of several closed
doors.
Jimmie needed no further directions. He made for that door. And the
sentinel, who had beheld the scene on the porch, made for Jimmie.
The boy halted and attempted to dodge. Out went the sentry’s arms to
seize him. And, with a sudden lunge forward, crash went Jimmie’s
bullet-head into the pit of the soldier’s stomach.
The sentinel doubled up in pain. But as he did so he managed to seize
the boy by the coat-collar.
Wriggling eel-like from the too loose garment, Jimmie leaped at the
closed door, flung it open, rushed into the room beyond and slammed the
door shut again behind him.
Two men were talking earnestly in an embrasure by a window.
One of them Jimmie recognized at once as General Hooker whom Dad had
pointed out to him a few days earlier. The shorter and stockier man he
also recognized from a hundred photographs he had seen.
Plunging one hand into his shirt-bosom, and pulling forth the precious
wad of paper, Battle Jimmie raised the other in salute.
“General McClellan,” he said, “Dad told me to give you this. He says a
whole lot depends on it. Read it. It’s more interesting, maybe, than it
sounds. Read it!”
CHAPTER XXXI
JIMMIE AND THE GENERALS
The two men had spun about from the window as the small human whirlwind
burst into the room. Jimmie’s first words had been launched at McClellan
with almost incoherent velocity.
The army of the Potomac’s commander frowned in annoyed perplexity at the
disheveled little apparition and the almost shouted address. Hooker, on
the contrary, stared for an instant, then burst into a great guffaw.
The next moment the door burst open again.
In rushed the military secretary, very purple of face. Behind him was
the stomach-smitten sentinel, his visage still greenish and pain-twisted
from the blow.
“General!” spluttered the secretary. “I--this--”
“What does this mean?” sternly demanded McClellan, finding his voice.
The sentinel, at a gesture from the secretary, collared the boy again
and started to carry him bodily from the room.
“Wait, you!” shrilled Jimmie. “You lemme go! There’s more to my message.
I forgot. Dad told me to tell--”
“Shut up, you crazy little scarecrow!” growled the sentinel under his
breath, bestowing a vicious shake which the boy promptly resented by an
excruciating kick on his captor’s shins.
“Dad told me to tell you how we came to find the paper,” finished Jimmie
loudly. “We picked it up on a hill out--”
The sentinel had him at the door of the room by this time, the empurpled
secretary bringing up the rear.
McClellan, into whose hand Jimmie had thrust the crumpled and far from
clean bunch of paper, let the document drop to the floor.
“Wait!” yelled the boy in despair. “A lot depends on it. Dad--”
“The brat is crazy,” declared the secretary. “He came to the house here
just now and said he was a--”
“Dad told me,” squealed Jimmie, clinging to the door-jamb and hanging on
for dear life as the sentinel sought to yank him free, “that I must--”
“Shut up!” exhorted the sentry. “And let go there!”
“A thousand apologies, sir,” went on the secretary to McClellan, “for my
allowing this intrusion upon your conference. It was not my fault,
nor”--generously--“was it this sentinel’s. I saw the boy assault him.
He--”
“General McClellan!” howled Jimmie. “Pick up that paper and _read_ it!
Dad says it--”
“The boy,” babbled on the secretary to all concerned, “was riding a
horse with a ‘C. S. A.’ cavalry saddle. He--”
“Pick it up and _read_ it!” wailed Jimmie again, feeling his hold on the
door-jamb slacken under the mighty yanking of the sentinel.
The soldier loosened one tugging hand from Jimmie’s shoulder long enough
to administer a sound cuff on the lad’s ear. Jimmie retaliated this time
by flinging his head back sharply and with the crown of it catching the
sentry a grievous whack on the chin.
“Lemme go!” he grunted. “Dad says the whole army’s fate depends on--”
“Shall I have him turned over to the provost-marshal, sir?” obsequiously
queried the secretary, “or--”
“Wait!”
It was “Fighting Joe” Hooker who, choking back his helpless laughter,
shouted the order.
The secretary, his question half-uttered, shut his mouth and stood at
attention. The sentinel paused with uplifted fist poised in the act of
seeking vengeance for the jaw-blow that had made him see stars and had
loosened two of his best teeth.
Even McClellan turned from the turmoil to stare in surprise at his
subordinate general.
“Wait!” repeated Hooker. “By your leave, General McClellan?”
He glanced at his chief for permission to take over the situation.
McClellan nodded.
“I think, general,” went on Hooker, “with your consent, we can do worse
than to wait for a minute or so. I don’t at all understand what any of
this means. But one or two things lead me to think it may be worth a
question or two. It isn’t an every-day occurrence for a boy in Federal
uniform trousers to ride up on a Confederate army horse and fight his
way into the commanding general’s presence, just for the sake of handing
that commanding general a bunch of soiled waste paper. May I suggest,
general, that we let the boy wait here an instant while we glance at the
paper?”
He stooped and picked up the crumpled sheet, handling its unclean outer
side gingerly as he proceeded to unfold it. Then he glanced at the
written words. The others standing at gaze, McClellan vexedly chewing
his mustache.
Hooker’s thin face wore a mask of crass perplexity as his eyes ran down
the sheet.
“General McClellan!” he exclaimed, his voice uncertain.
He handed the paper to his superior, who received it as under protest
and cast his eye over its first few lines. Then his face all at once
took on an aspect of amaze, ludicrously like that of Hooker.
McClellan strode hastily to the window embrasure, followed by Hooker.
Side by side, their backs to the others, the two generals read and
reread the paper.
Then they fell into eager, excited conversation, speaking in tense
whispers.
Meantime the gorgeous secretary stood looking blankly at their backs.
The sentinel, his hand still on Jimmie’s shirt-collar, stared at
everybody in turn, mouth ajar.
Jimmie alone had no special interest in the proceedings. He had
delivered the mysteriously precious paper into General McClellan’s own
hands, as Dad had bidden him; and General McClellan had read it.
Nothing remained now but to obey Dad’s second command to tell McClellan
how and where the paper had been found. And as the sentinel had been
called off from ejecting him from the room, there was every prospect
that he would be able to perform this part of his mission, too.
But all in good time.
At present General McClellan seemed far too busy to listen. Soon, no
doubt, he would get through making conjectures and begin to ask
questions. That was the way with grown people.
In the mean time Jimmie had a chance to recall that he himself was a
very tired, very ill-treated, very sore and dusty and thirsty and
battered little boy.
Also, that Dad was far away from him and so was Emp. And he was among
strangers who hadn’t seemed especially glad to see him and who surely
had treated him with more roughness than was absolutely needful.
Jimmie began to feel excessively sorry for himself. In fact, he was
suddenly aware of a most unmanly and overweening desire to cry.
He was heartily ashamed of such a babyish impulse. He was a man of
fifteen. But a very great many things had happened to him that day, and
the day was not yet over.
He choked back the big lump in his throat and tried to square his
shoulders and throw back his chest, no easy feat when the great,
hulking sentinel’s grip was still on his shirt-collar, almost choking
him. Jimmie found himself wondering just how soon he could hope to be
big enough and strong enough to lick a man of--well, of that sentinel’s
size!
Presently the wondering, whispered colloquy between the two generals in
the window embrasure ended. McClellan and Hooker came back toward the
center of the room.
McClellan seated himself at the table there, and with a word dismissed
the sentry, who, releasing Jimmie, departed. The secretary, at a gesture
from the general, followed the soldier, shutting the door behind him.
“Come here, my boy,” said McClellan kindly.
Jimmie advanced. He felt no special awe for this great little man. All
he wanted was to complete his mission, get back to Dad’s tent, and rest
for a long, long while.
He wondered when Dad would return, and he resolved to learn from him
every minutest detail of the duel. That Dad would worst his opponent
Jimmie had not the faintest doubt.
For was not Dad--was he not Dad?
“Tell me,” General McClellan was saying, “where and how did you get this
paper?”
“We found it up on the top of a hill. It was lying there. The wind blew
it in front of my horse and--”
“What hill?” interposed Hooker. “Where?”
“Out yonder. Miles the other side of Frederick. Out toward
Sharpesburg.”
“Sharpesburg?” echoed McClellan. “Right in the track of the Confederate
rear-guard. D. H. Hill’s division. You must have been well beyond our
lines.”
“We were,” said Jimmie.
“The paper was lying on the ground, you say?”
“Yes. Partly folded up, like it had dropped out of somebody’s pocket,”
said Jimmie, seeking to finish the story and get away. “But the wind had
opened it a little and it blew into the air, and my horse shied and I
got thrown--he was running away, anyhow--and then Emp grabbed the paper,
and I took it away from him and read some of it aloud. Just for fun. And
Dad grabbed it and--”
“Hold on! Hold on!” demanded McClellan. “Go more slowly. It doesn’t make
sense. Who are Emp and Dad and--”
“Emp,” said Jimmie in a tone of laboriously patient explanation as to a
stupid pupil--“Emp is my dog. That isn’t all his name; it’s just the
short of it. Dad’s my grandfather. He’s a brevet-major. I’m Jim
Brinton.”
“Brinton?” queried McClellan, repeating his own middle name.
“The soldiers call me ‘Battle Jimmie,’” explained the lad.
“Battle Jimmie!” cried Hooker. “So you’re the youngster who--”
“Yes, sir. I’m that one. Shall I go on about the paper?”
“Yes. More slowly.”
“Dad read it, and he got all het up over it. And he said it must get
here right away. That everything depended on it. And that must be so,
’cause Dad knows.”
“So he sent you here with it?” asked McClellan. “If he is an officer in
the army here, it would have saved time and explanation if he had
brought it here himself.”
“How could he?” flared Jimmie instantly aflame at the implied slur on
his idol. “How could he? Tell me that. He couldn’t stop fighting, could
he?”
“Fighting? No skirmish on the Sharpesburg road has been reported here.
What troops were engaged? Do you know?”
“Dad was. And the Confed, of course.”
“What Confederate?” asked the exasperated general.
“The one I left Dad thrashing. The one who said we were his prisoners.
Dad licked him long before this.”
“Hold on, sonny,” intervened Hooker, forestalling a movement of vexed
bewilderment on McClellan’s part. “Let’s get this straight. Just answer
my questions as simply as you can.”
In a dozen well-put queries Hooker got from the boy the whole story,
beginning with the runaway and ending with Jimmie’s arrival at
headquarters.
McClellan’s face lost its look of impatience as he listened; and it
lighted into keen interest.
“This Dad of yours must be a paladin of valor, besides having a quick,
cool brain of his own,” he commented as Jimmie finished. “His country
owes him an unpayable debt for sending this dispatch to me so promptly.
It is more important than I could make you understand. By the way, you
haven’t told us his name?”
“His name? Dad’s? Why, he’s Brevet-Major James Dadd. I thought I told
you that.”
The two generals exchanged a quick glance that was quite lost on Jimmie.
“James Dadd!” exclaimed McClellan.
“James Brinton,” gravely corrected Hooker.
Jimmie wheeled on him.
“Who told you that?” he demanded truculently, eyes ablaze and red hair
bristling.
“Never mind that, my lad!” laughed Hooker. “I--”
“Look here, you!” cried Jimmie, trembling with fierce indignation. “Now
that you people have spied on Dad and spotted his secret, I s’pose
you’ll want to turn him out of the army. He said you might. He told me
so before he joined. Well, if you do, it’ll be the rottenest trick
anyone ever played. He’s the dandiest fighter you’ve got. And he’s the
greatest man that ever was.
“Aw, let him stay!” he went on, his voice changing to an eager plea,
“Let him stay! It’ll kill him to be kicked out just when he’s doing so
fine and everything. _Please_ let him stay. It wasn’t his fault he was
turned out of the army the other time, back in Mexico. Gee! if I could
get you to understand what a grand man he is--Why, the fellers in the
regiment--”
Hooker put a big, kindly hand almost in caress on the boy’s heaving
shoulder.
“There, lad!” he said in rough gentleness. “Don’t waste all your good
powder blazing into the air. There’s no more danger of your Dad being
kicked out of the army than of Jeff Davis becoming President of the
United States.
“We all know the story. And we all honor him. Even President Lincoln
knows it. And by this time to-morrow President Lincoln will know what
Dad has done for the Union to-day in getting that paper to us.
“Now trot along. The paper you brought here is going to keep every
general and every courier in the Army of the Potomac busy all day and
all night. There’s no time to waste on boys. Not even on Battle Jimmies.
Clear out and run along!”
He gave the boy a friendly shove toward the door. As Jimmie, dazed but
infinitely relieved, passed out he saw the two generals, wholly
oblivious of him, bending once more over the paper.
CHAPTER XXXII
LOVE
Into Frederick rode Dad, astride the erstwhile runaway.
Since passing the Union outposts he had let the tired horse take its own
gait. At his heels trotted Emp. There was no hurry. And Dad was tired.
From the sentry at the outposts whom he questioned he had learned of
Jimmie’s whirlwind passage down the road, and at the head of the main
street of Frederick another query to a goober-vender elicited the fact
that Jimmie had entered the town at a gallop nearly an hour earlier.
Satisfied thus in his mind as to the safety of his grandson and of the
paper’s delivery to McClellan, he slowed his weary mount to a walk and
turned into a bystreet which formed a shorter route toward the Federal
camps.
It was a pretty lane into which he turned. Wide-branched trees met above
its winding center. Golden glow and asters and phlox bordered the little
gardens along either side.
A plump gray kitten in the middle of the byway was valorously stalking a
covey of sparrows that flew away in bored annoyance as she crept near.
Emp proceeded to pursue the pursuer, who, after scratching his nose with
unnecessary virulence, ran up a tree.
Emp returned sulky, yet relieved, to his post at the horse’s heels. The
lane was deserted of traffic. Somewhere in the arched trees above a
late-season mocking-bird was piping its clamorous sweet call.
The afternoon sun shone benignantly through a yellow dust-haze. Peace
lay everywhere. Peace, flowers, bird-song--and the brooding hush of
afternoon--in the very heart of a great war.
A white cottage, set somewhat back from the lane behind its own patch of
green lawn, bore across its porch-front the sign:
+--------------------------+
| THIRD AMBULANCE CORPS |
| Army of the Potomac |
| Temporary Headquarters |
+--------------------------+
On the lawn two or three uniformed nurses sat in rocking chairs,
scraping lint and sewing. On cots along the narrow porch lay several
gaunt-faced, partly dressed convalescents.
Dad instinctively drew his horse to a standstill as he read the sign.
The sewing nurses on the lawn glanced up as he halted.
One of them--silvery-haired little woman in gray--gave a joyous
exclamation and, springing to her feet, ran across to the open gate and
out into the lane to greet the rider.
On the instant Dad was off his horse and advancing with gladly
outstretched hands toward her.
“Emily!” was all he could find voice to say just at first.
“Oh, I was so hoping you’d find where we were, James!” she hailed him.
“And that you’d come to see me before I left.”
“Left? The corps is moved again?”
“No. But I’m detailed at one of the Washington hospitals. I’m to start
first thing in the morning.”
Dad had passed one arm through his horse’s bridle. Now, with a very
proprietary air, he tucked the little woman’s hand under his other arm.
“Walk a way down the lane with me,” he begged. “Now that you’re going to
Washington, I don’t know when I’ll ever see you again.”
Eagerly she assented.
Followed by the amused smiles of the group of nurses on the lawn, the
two elderly lovers sauntered down the deserted lane together, arm in
arm, the tired horse following; the mocking-bird calling to them from
the interlaced green branches above.
For a space neither of them spoke. Dad forgot his weariness; forgot
everything except the strangely sweet new sense of content; of reaching
at last a safe and perfect haven after long years of storm-tossed
misery.
The little old lady smiled up at him.
“It’s--it’s kind of like _home_ to be walking with you, James,” she said
shyly.
Then, her housewifely eye beginning to take in details, she exclaimed:
“Land sakes, James Brinton, if you haven’t gone and torn a great rent in
the shoulder of your coat! Such a careless man I never did see! And you
haven’t even noticed it.”
Dad looked down at the cut made by the Confederate captain’s saber when,
in the early stages of the encounter, it had grazed his upper arm.
“That’s so!” he admitted shamefacedly. “I never noticed it. It was
shiftless of me. I’ll get it mended as soon as I go back to camp. You
aren’t ashamed to be seen walking with a man who’s got a torn coat, are
you, Emily?” he finished anxiously. “Because--”
She interrupted him with another exclamation as she looked more keenly
at the rent.
“And the shoulder of your shirt, right under it, is torn, too,” she
said. “How could you ever get both of them torn like that and never know
it?”
She stood still, disengaged her arm from his, and, with the air of a
dressmaking expert, drew the sides of the coat’s rent together.
“Why, this isn’t a tear,” she went on, “it’s a cut! A clean cut! How
ever did you do it?”
She loosed her hold on the sides of the cut and the released sections of
cloth opened again.
So did the cut shirt-sleeve beneath them, revealing the angry red welt,
like a whiplash mark, on the hard, bronzed flesh of Dad’s upper arm.
“James Brinton!” she accused sternly. “You’ve been fighting again!”
“Yessum!” he confessed, hanging his head.
Once more, this time in swift solicitude, she was parting the rents in
coat and shirt, and her cool, light fingers were on the burning hot
flesh of the welt.
With the true nurse’s deftness she explored the injury, sighing with
happy relief on finding it so trivial.
“Tell me about it,” she demanded.
Briefly, he told her; keen shame possessing him as he related, as
modestly as possible, his exploit. She had taken his arm again, and as
he talked they resumed their sauntering stroll.
When his recital was finished she pressed his arm tightly for an instant
in silence. Then--
“Oh, I thank the dear Lord!” she breathed. “He brought you back safe!”
Dad’s other hand closed over hers as it lay on his arm.
“Back to--to you,” he said softly. And for a space they fell silent once
more. But their walk waxed slower and his hand did not release hers.
“Emily,” said Dad, at last, speaking with a rush, as one who fears his
courage may desert him at any moment, “I guess you know how much I care.
It’s--it’s just everything. I can’t put it in any prettier words,
because it means so much. Will--will you marry me?”
She looked up at him, her eyes big and dewy.
“Why, of course, James,” she made answer in gentle wonder. “I thought
you knew that.”
Regardless of the distant nurses, regardless of possible onlookers from
the scattered wayside houses, Dad stopped stock-still, gathered her into
his arms, then stooped and kissed her.
She raised her lips to his and smiled tenderly up at him.
Then of a sudden she drew back in ostentatious haste.
“There!” she declared vehemently. “It’s true there’s no fool like an old
fool. Here I am, a woman with a married daughter, making a spectacle of
myself in a public street. Shame on me! And shame on you, too, Jim
Brinton!”
“I never dreamed,” said Dad, “that shame could be such a nice thing. But
you’re wrong about one thing, dearie. About our being old. For a lot of
years I’ve been looking on myself as an old man. And now I know I’m not.
I’m just a man. And as for you, Emily--why, I don’t believe you’d know
how to be old if you lived to be a million.”
She laughed gayly, in dainty, old-world coquetry.
“I guess you’ve had plenty of practise in making cute speeches like
that, James,” she said, “You do it awful easy.”
A momentary vision of nausea came to him of the barren stretch of years
at Ideala, when he had believed that all good women shunned him as a
drunkard; of his pitiful efforts to make friends with his son’s wife;
his avoidance of her social-climber women friends.
“No,” he said shortly. “I’ve had no practise, dear. None.”
She understood.
“I’ll--I’ll make it up to you, Jim!” she whispered tremulously. “All of
it, dear man. All the horrid lonely years, and everything. I promise.”
Another divine silence, broken only by the mocking-bird among the
treetops.
“Emily,” he said, “the tide is going to turn in this war. The next move
will be the turning-point. And it’ll turn hard. I’ll be in the thickest
of it, dear.
“But I’ve got a kind of feeling that I’ll get through it safe. Because
your love will be taking me through it. And after that--”
“I’ll be waiting, Jim,” she said.
CHAPTER XXXIII
WAR!
All day, along the steep banks of Antietam Creek, the battle had roared
and bellowed and done its wholesale murdering.
All day, that red 17th of September, 1862--“the bloodiest single day’s
fighting of the Civil War”--the Army of the Potomac had flung itself in
dogged fury upon the V-shaped position of the Confederates on the
creek’s farther side.
It was the second day of the battle of Antietam; the first day having
been consumed in a more or less ineffectual artillery duel, and in
maneuvering for positions of strategic advantage.
Thanks to his foreknowledge of Lee’s plans--and, incidentally, thanks to
Dad and Battle Jimmie--McClellan had been able to take advantage of
Lee’s moment of comparative weakness by forcing battle upon him before
Stonewall Jackson’s force could return from the raid on Harper’s Ferry.
Thanks, also, to a delay that has never been explained, McClellan had
held off from the attack long enough to let Jackson’s vanguard of ten
thousand men join Lee.
Still, the bulk of Jackson’s soldiers--the flower of the Southern
host--were still absent when the battle was waged. Jackson, too, whose
presence and whose counsels at such a moment would have been worth more
than fifty thousand additional men, was still absent at Harper’s Ferry.
Lee was thus coerced by McClellan into giving battle, with his ablest
leader and his best fighters far away.
So much for the historic carelessness of the Confederate major-general,
D. H. Hill, in losing an all-important paper on the way from Frederick;
a carelessness that did untold harm to his cause; and that perhaps might
have done far more had McClellan seized all his opportunities instead of
merely part of them.
Yet, as historians agree, the finding of the lost paper, and its falling
into McClellan’s hands, turned the whole tide of the invasion and
changed Lee’s most brilliant campaign into a costly failure. A failure
that smote the Confederacy a well-nigh mortal blow on the bare heart.
On the morning of the seventeenth Hooker’s corps was entrenched on the
far side of the Antietam, the creek between him and the main Army of the
Potomac. On the preceding afternoon, at McClellan’s orders, Fighting Joe
had crossed one of the creek’s four stone bridges, defeated a
Confederate detachment under Hood, and had seized on a position.
Now, on the seventeenth, Hooker received further orders to attack the
Confederate line, engaging it closely; while the bulk of the main army
should cross the creek under cover of the fighting and throw itself on
the Confederates.
The plan met with only fair success. General Mansfield was killed early
in the action. Hooker was wounded.
The embattled Confederates stood firm as a rock; and all day long, at
close quarters, the mutual slaughter raged.
Four times with his regiment in Hooker’s corps Dad led his men against
the Confederate center. Four times the murderous volleys of the
Southerners sent back the assailants, almost cut to pieces.
Once more, Battle Jimmie far to the fore, clanging on his deafening
drum, the regiment charged with its brigade.
Half-way up the slope, Dad found himself senior officer, not only of his
regiment, but of his brigade.
Battles make field-promotion very swift.
Bare-headed, sword in hand, Dad toiled upward, calling to his
fast-thinning ranks to close up and follow. At his side drummed Jimmie,
crazy with excitement; screaming mingled insults, praise and
encouragement to the survivors.
Like some gaunt old war spirit, Dad raged at the head of his men; a
cyclone of lead roaring and whistling around him. His example, and that
of the howling, drumming boy at his side, proved infectious.
With a gasping cheer the depleted ranks staggered forward in the wake of
the gray-haired man and the drummer. Against the Confederate batteries
they crashed, headlong.
There was a mêlée of hand-to-hand fighting for an instant; then a break
and a scrambling run on the part of the defenders.
And the hill was won.
Dad whirled about on the handful of blue-coated victors who clustered
around him, yelling ecstatically.
“Bully!” cried Dad. “Good boys! We’ve got the hill. Now to hold it until
the support can come up. Captain Fitch, deploy--”
Dad saw ten million sparks leap into crackling life. A billion more
exploded within his brain.
He fell from a great, great height into a cool darkness that lovingly
wrapped itself about soul and mind and body.
Somewhere, he vaguely remembered, a battle was raging. But it had ceased
to interest him.
Then he fell quietly asleep.
* * * * *
Dad shook off the sweet lethargy and opened his eyes.
There was work to do. He recalled everything now. The senior officers of
his brigade were dead or incapacitated.
He had led his men up a hill that vomited fire and shot. They had barely
won the summit.
This surely was no moment for their leader to drop into a doze. He felt
heartily ashamed of himself.
With an effort he gripped at his sword-hilt--and his fingers closed
weakly over the folds of a hospital sheet.
His newly opened eyes focused at last--not on the blue sky, with its
hell of flame and smoke, but on the dingy gray canvas ceiling of a tent.
This was all wrong. He raised himself on one elbow to peer about him.
A sharp dizziness well-nigh made him swoon. At the same instant he was
aware that the unbearable din of musketry and artillery had ceased and
that soothing quiet reigned everywhere.
Exhausted, he fell back, his head sinking into the depths of a soft
pillow. Someone crossed the tent hastily and stood beside him.
It was Battle Jimmie.
For the briefest interval, as he lay blinking at his grandson, Dad
believed they were back at Ideala, and that the boy had crept into his
room, as had been his wont, for a good-night chat. Then he noted the
lad’s ill-fitting uniform, and reason came to its own again.
For a full minute they remained, without speech, looking into each
other’s eyes, while slowly Dad’s brain cleared and he began to realize
where he was.
“Dad!” whispered Jimmie at last. “Dad, do you know me?”
“Know you?” repeated Dad, in a weak but honestly surprised voice. “Why
shouldn’t I know you? What a crazy question, son, to ask me!”
Jimmie gripped one of Dad’s hands in both his own.
“You’re all right!” he exulted. “You’re all right! The surgeon said if
your mind was clear when you came to you’d be out of danger. Oh, gee,
but it’s grand to have you alive again!”
“Alive? What on earth do you mean?”
“Why--why, nothing,” ended the boy.
“What do you mean, dear lad?” insisted his grandfather. “Why shouldn’t I
be alive? I’ve been alive ever since I can remember. It’s a kind of
habit I got into ever so many years ago.”
Jimmie giggled in sheer relief; a shaky giggle, but vibrant with joy.
His grandfather’s voice was very weak and it faltered; but his
grandfather’s spirit still burned bright and strong.
And Jimmie rejoiced.
“Go ahead and tell me how I got here, and what’s the matter with me,”
murmured Dad haltingly. “I’m in a hospital tent, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir. Been here a week. Senseless all the time. Concussion of the
brain, the sawbones called it. Said if you came out of it sane you’d be
all right in just a few days. Oh, but it’s been a rotten time, Dad! They
let me stay, because I wouldn’t keep out. But you kept looking so--so
_dead_!”
The boy shuddered violently, then grinned again and squeezed Dad’s hand.
“Tell me all about it, son,” begged Dad. “Everything. From--from--”
“We’d just taken the hill,” answered Jimmie, seeking to marshal his
facts in correct order. “They were shelling us from a couple of
batteries to the left. Some shells burst over us. A piece of one hit
you in the head and over you went. Say, but I wished ’most a hundred
times that it had been me instead.”
Dad lifted a fractiously unsteady hand to his head. It was swathed in
cold, wet cloths.
Jimmie went on:
“They didn’t send us support and we couldn’t hold the hill, but we toted
you back with us.”
“The battle?” asked Dad in sudden anxiety.
“It lasted till after dark. We didn’t know who had won. Nobody did.
“But next morning Lee was gone. Helter-skelter back across the Potomac
into Virginia again. Invasion busted up for good.
“Some of the fellers say the folks in Washington are giving Little Mac
blazes for letting Lee get back safe into Virginia instead of catching
him before he could get to the Potomac. But I kind of guess it would
have been just a little bit like catching a rattlesnake by the tail.
“Anyhow, campaign’s over, and Johnnie Reb won’t stable his horses in
Faneuil Hall _this_ trip. Say, Dad, they’re talking a whole lot about
you everywhere--about how you--”
The boy checked himself. Through sheer weakness Dad had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE MAN AT WASHINGTON
Dad sat in the late September sunlight at the door of the hospital tent
where for ten days he had lain. Slowly, but very surely, the old, wiry
strength was beginning to creep back to the lean body.
No longer did the slightest sudden motion or an effort to concentrate
his thoughts set his head to aching blindly, and no longer did his knees
buckle under him when he tried to cross the tent from bed to door.
Dad was well out of danger, the surgeons said. Nothing but a few more
days of rest was needed to bring him back to health.
An injury to the head is always dangerous, but it has this redeeming
quality--it does not long keep its victim in suspense. It kills, crazes,
or gets entirely well in an unbelievably short time. The issue is
settled, one way or another, in far less time than in the case of an
equally severe wound in any other part of the anatomy.
The campaign was over.
The Confederate army, back in its lair, was licking the grievous wounds
sustained in the Antietam fight. The Army of the Potomac, nearly
thirteen thousand of its soldiers dead from that same fight, was
resting on its doubtful laurels.
Here and there skirmish parties or small detachments of the rival forces
were in motion, but between the main bodies of both armies brooded the
truce of exhaustion.
The Federals that summer and early fall had invaded Virginia, and after
a series of fearful defeats had been driven out. Lee in September had
invaded the North, and had met with like fate.
The season was too far advanced for any more extensive operations, and a
lull came.
Almost directly after Antietam’s battle President Lincoln had
electrified the world by issuing the so-called “Provisional
Proclamation,” declaring in effect that slavery within the limits of the
United States was forever dead, and that every negro in America was
henceforth a human being, not a piece of transferable property.
Three months later the more formal “Emancipation Proclamation” was to
follow. But its forerunner, the provisional proclamation, quite as
effectively struck the slavery shackles from a million wrists.
Lincoln had kept his solemn vow--the vow to free the slaves should the
tide of invasion be turned.
All these bits of news as they reached camp were faithfully transmitted
to Dad by that most zealous of nurses and entertainers, Battle Jimmie.
The old man listened in wondering gratitude as he realized the boundless
fruitage of the finding of “Order 191.”
To Dad the whole thing was a miracle, and most miraculous of all to him
was the praise showered on his embarrassed self by his fellow officers.
“I feel like a blackleg, Jimmie,” he confided to his grandson on this
his first day of removal from the tent’s interior to the sunshine
outside its doorway. “I feel like the original man who stole the
original other fellow’s thunder. Here folks keep coming to the tent and
shaking hands with me and telling me what a big thing I did in getting
that paper to Little Mac and what it’s meant to the country and all.
“And I don’t know which way to look. Anybody’d think I’d ridden up to
General Hill and grabbed him by the throat and held him helpless in the
presence of all his overawed men while I went through his pockets for
the order, instead of our just happening by a miracle of chance to find
it lying on the ground. Why, _anyone_ might have happened to pick it up.
It’s no credit.”
“That’s right,” bravely agreed Jimmie, scratching Emp’s rough head as
the multi-breed dog trotted back from a round of the cook-tents and lay
down with a little grunt of repletion at his master’s feet. “That’s
right. Anyone _might_ have found it, but ‘anyone’ didn’t. And if most
folks had they wouldn’t ’a’ caught the point of it or known what to do
with it. And it’s dead sure they wouldn’t ’a’ thought to send it in a
rush to Little Mac at the minute a man’s fingers were trying for their
throat.
“Oh, I guess there’s one or two worse impostors than you, Dad.”
The old man’s tired eyes suddenly grew bright with happy expectancy.
Jimmie without turning to look divined the cause.
“I can see fine out of the back of my head,” announced the boy. “For
instance, I can see the mail-courier coming down this row right now with
the hospital post-bag under his arm.”
He twisted his head as he spoke, and pointed in triumph at the
approaching post-bag bearer.
“See!” he exclaimed. “What did I tell you? Sometimes it just fairly
scares me to think how clever I’m getting to be. Lay back and rest. I’ll
jump over to the office tent, and I’ll bring you her letter the second
it tumbles out of the bag.”
He was off at a dead run.
Dad looked after him with the feeble impatience of the convalescent.
Mrs. Sessions’ letters had been the event of each day to him. Not until
Dad had recovered consciousness had Jimmie written to the little lady
that his grandfather was wounded.
A line from a staff surgeon, written at Jimmie’s plea, accompanied the
letter, vouching for Dad’s recovery.
The little lady, unable to leave her post at Washington, had done her
best to atone for her absence by long daily letters--letters as spicily,
sweetly old-fashioned as a garden of cinnamon roses and
lavender--letters containing learned exhortation as to the care the
patient must take of his precious self; throbbing with egregious pride
at the wounded man’s valor; seeking to entertain him by lively accounts
of the daily happenings in Washington.
Small wonder that helpless old Dad looked forward to these daily
epistles as a parched throat to cool drink.
Presently--or, as it seemed to Dad, after about two and a half
centuries--Jimmie came back at the double.
“I’m sorry,” began the boy ruefully, “but--”
The change in his grandfather’s face made him cry out in hot contrition:
“Aw, I was fooling, Dad! I just wanted to have a joke with you like we
used to. I’m a chump! Here it is--a dandy fat letter, too.”
Dad seized the letter, laughing perfunctorily to show Jimmie he
appreciated the jest that had constricted his heartstrings and throat.
The boy tactfully withdrew to a little distance and proceeded to engage
Emp in a thrilling game of “wrassle the bear,” Emp reluctantly enacting
the ursine rôle.
Dad opened the envelope with the luxurious slowness of one who seeks to
drag out a pleasure to its utmost bounds. He smoothed wide the crinkly
sheets with their fine, quaint handwriting, and began to read.
This letter began neither with admonitions to carefulness nor with eager
queries as to his health. In fact, it could scarce be said to “begin” at
all. It started off in the very middle of the writer’s burst of
excitement.
Dad read:
Something _wonderful’s_ happened. It’s got me so stirred up I don’t
know which end of it to begin to tell first, and my hand’s all
jumpy. Listen, Jim:
This morning, as I was coming on duty at the hospital, I could
tell the minute I got into the big outer hall something was up.
Everybody was hurrying around, all flustered and het up, but all
looking pleased as Punch. And the orderly at the door told me
President Lincoln was making an inspection of the wards.
I was crazy to see him; and I’d heard how he goes from bed to bed,
talking to the sick soldiers just like they were his babies. So I
started at a trot for the nearest ward, hoping I’d get one glimpse
of him.
And as I was starting to scuttle up the main stairway, what should
I do but run into a party of folks that was coming down from the
wards. Some of the doctors and officers were with them.
And I pretty near collided, bang slap, with the gentleman who was
coming down the stairs a step or two in front of the rest.
I stopped and said: “Excuse me, sir. I wasn’t looking.” And then I
_did_ look.
I looked up to where I thought his face would just naturally be.
And I’m blest if it wasn’t only his chest instead. I kept looking
up--up--up--till my neck near got a crick in it.
And at last I saw his face.
He looked about nine feet, thirteen inches high, and as thin as a
rail. And his black clothes and his high pot-hat made him look a
lot higher and thinner. But it wasn’t his figure I found I was
gawping at. It was his face.
Oh, Jim, such a face! Ugly, I suppose, and whiskered, and full of
gullies and ridges.
But it’s the strongest, wisest, kindest, wonderfulest face the Lord
ever made. And the great big gray eyes looked as if they were
holding the work and the bothers and the sorrows--and the fun,
too--of the whole eternal universe.
Yes, you’ve guessed who it was. Mr. Lincoln. No less.
I just stood there, all flabbergasted; staring and courtsying. And
he kept looking down at me with the sweetest, friendliest smile you
ever saw.
“Excuse me, sir,” I says again.
“That’s all right, little woman,” he answers, in that deep, gentle
voice of his. “The nurse deserves the right of way nowadays; even
over the President. She earns it.”
Just then, as I was moving aside (and longing, too, to thank him
for being such a wonderful man) the superintendent steps up to him
and says:
“Mr. President, this is Nurse Sessions you were asking about. Would
you care to speak to her now? My office is here to the right. You
won’t be disturbed there.”
Well, Jim, I could have gone through the floor, right then and
there. I couldn’t believe my ears were telling me the truth. What
could Mr. Lincoln have to say to me? And how could I have been away
when he asked for me?
I just stood trembling and looking foolish.
And then Mr. Lincoln was smiling and holding out his hand--I wanted
to kiss it!--and saying:
“Mrs. Sessions, one of the reasons I came here this morning was for
a little chat with you. Shall we step in here?”
And I followed him into the superintendent’s office and he set a
chair for me, just like I was a queen, and as if he was working for
our folks.
We sat down. And here’s what he said, as close as I can remember.
And I guess I’m not liable to have forgotten the words:
“Mrs. Sessions,” he began, “there is a very talkative little boy up
in the Army of the Potomac. And it seems that after Antietam
General Hooker sent for that little boy to ask him some questions
about a wounded officer that General Hooker takes considerable
interest in. And the boy, under Hooker’s questions, blabbed about
that officer’s being engaged to marry a very lovely and dear
little woman. General Hooker wrote to me about it. So I wanted a
word or two with that little woman--about _him_.”
Think of that, Jim! Just _think_ of it. I made up my mind, that
minute, I’d go to the hospital ear specialist right off and get him
to find out why I’d taken to hearing things that couldn’t possibly
have been said to me.
But Mr. Lincoln went on, more serious:
“Mrs. Sessions, I know Major Dadd’s story. All of it. He’s the kind
of man I think I’d like to be friends with. Do you think he’d feel
like meeting me?”
“Oh, Mr. President!” I sputtered.
I couldn’t say another word.
“Because,” he goes on, his mouth-corners twisting up in a smile.
“I’d like to have him come to see me. We owe him a good deal. And I
want we should pay some of that debt. If he hangs back, and doesn’t
think it’s worth while to come, just you tell him I’ve a couple of
little presents for him.
“One is from Congress. One is from me.”
Yes, I was sure I’d have to go to that ear specialist, Jim!
“The present from Congress, ma’am,” says Mr. Lincoln, “is a gold
Distinguished Service Medal. It was voted him yesterday for his
share in the Antietam campaign. But it wasn’t voted to James Dadd.
I’ve put an end to ‘James Dadd’s’ existence with six strokes of the
pen.”
“I--I don’t understand, Mr. President,” I blurted out; and neither
I did.
“James Dadd,” he says, with another of those smiles that makes a
body’s heart go all warm, “James Dadd was a mistake. I’ve rectified
it. He is James Brinton, henceforward and always. Tell him never to
forget that. For it’s the way his name has been altered on the
army lists.”
He kind of paused for a second, then he said:
“And, Mrs. Sessions, James Brinton is the name on a document I
signed last night. I’ve about decided that Brinton isn’t really
worthy to be a brevet-major any more after the way he behaved in
the Antietam campaign. So, to punish him, I’ve just signed a
commission making him a brigadier-general instead.”
I don’t know, Jim, if it was then, or a while earlier, that I began
crying. I guess it was then. I sat sopping my eyes and trying to
say grand, eloquent things. But I could hear myself just saying:
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” all kind of sobby, over and over
again, like a numb wit.
But he seemed to understand. I guess he always understands. That’s
what makes him different. He got up and took my hand again, and he
said:
“Tell him next time you write. And tell him, if he’s well enough, I
want him to come to the White House next Tuesday afternoon. I want
you to come, too, ma’am. And--don’t forget to tell him to bring
Battle Jimmie along. I want to thank him, too.
“And he and my boy, Tad, can get into mischief together while we
old folks are gabbling.”
He took his hat off of the table and he started for the door. When
he got to the threshold he turned around and he said:
“A man who has never stumbled is to be envied, Mrs. Sessions. But a
man who has stumbled and then fought his way back again, strong and
firm, to his feet, is the sort whose hands _real_ men like to
shake. Tell him that, too, ma’am, when you write. I guess he’ll
know what I’m driving at.”
Oh, _Jim_!
The old B. & O. station at Washington was crowded with hurrying soldiers
and civilians one early October afternoon in 1862. From an incoming
train alighted three figures who caught the interested gaze of more than
one passer-by.
The trio were a tall man in late middle-age, whose face was still thin
and white as from sharp illness; a small and red-headed boy whose alert
eyes gloated on the noisy bustle and confusion around him, and a small
yellow dog, whose nondescript coat had been painstakingly washed and
combed for the occasion until it shone (and reeked with the scent of
castile soap), and around whose short neck a wide red-white-and-blue
ribbon was tied into a tremendous bow.
As the three comrades won their way clear of the station crowds and to
the street outside a man in uniform stepped up to them.
“Major Brinton?” he asked cordially.
“Yes, sir,” replied Dad, thrilling at sound of the old name.
“I am President Lincoln’s military aid,” said the officer. “I was sent
here to meet you and take you to the White House. There is the carriage
at the curb. I am very glad indeed to see you, sir. Your services have
been great.
“By the way,” he added, glancing at Dad’s belt, “this is not to be a
formal reception. It isn’t necessary to wear your sword, if it
incommodes you at all.”
“This sword, sir,” answered Dad, laying a reverent hand on its hilt,
“was given me by a lady who’s waiting for me at the White House. I
promised her I’d never draw it without cause, or sheathe it without
honor. I’m going to wear it to the White House and tell her I’ve kept my
promise.”
“As you wish,” said the aid pleasantly. “The carriage is--”
“Will you mind, sir,” interposed Dad, “if we march instead? Once I left
the army--on foot. I would like to go on foot to a reward I don’t
deserve. A silly fancy, maybe. But I’ve looked forward to it a long,
long time. Especially since I was sick. March, Jimmie!”
Word had passed around as to the trio’s identity. A little crowd had
gathered. From the onlookers, as Dad and Battle Jimmie fell into step,
went up a cheer.
The two saluted, squared their shoulders, and set forth on their march
of triumph, Emp trotting proudly ahead of them in all the glory of his
patriotic ribbon and scoured coat.
And so did Dad Brinton come to his own.
THE END
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Dad" ***
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