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.