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.