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.”