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.