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.