CHAPTER XXV

THE THREE COMRADES

Brevet-Major James Dadd, of the Blankth Ohio Infantry, was one of his own tent’s three occupants.

Seated cross-legged on a blanket roll facing the cot where sat his grandfather, was Battle Jimmie. Between the boy’s knees reclined the tent’s third inmate, his Canine Majesty, Emperor Napoleon Peter Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, whose august title had been whittled down by custom and verbal necessity to “Emp.”

Emp was exploring regions of his yellow back for fleas, biting at the unseen pests with multitudinous, swift little chattering snaps of half-shut jaws.

“I wonder just exactly what breed Emp really is?” conjectured Jimmie.

“Why,” answered Dad reflectively, “I should say, at a broad guess, that the blood of the finest thoroughbreds flows in his veins.”

“Gee! Honest? What kinds of thoroughbreds, I wonder?”

“All kinds,” responded Dad gravely.

Jimmie glanced at him in doubt. But the man’s face was solemn, even judicious; and the boy eyed his pet with respect.

To Jimmie, Dad’s word was gospel. And if Dad declared Emp the scion of many thoroughbreds there was no room for arguing the statement.

“H’m!” commented Jimmie. “And father called him a mongrel.”

“Son,” explained Dad, “there’s two kinds of folks in this funny world of ours--the sort that sees the quality of the various bloods in a yellow dog, and the kind that sees only the quantity. Let’s you and I always try to see the quality. We won’t make so much money as those that see the quantity; but we’ll have a higher regard for dogs--and for everything else.

“Not that I’m criticizing your father, for one minute,” he added hastily. “He’s a fine man, and a son to be proud of. And he’ll go far. But not as a soldier.

“Now that he’s been invalided home, and his year of service is up anyhow, I guess he’ll call it a day and go back to the store. I’m only grateful he didn’t make you go with him. It’s where you ought to be. I know that. But I’d be awful lonely, Jimmie, lad, without you.”

“Why ought I go back home?” demanded Jimmie. “Anybody can go to school. School will always be there. So will home. But maybe the war won’t. And I _am_ of use here. You said so, yourself. So did the men. Lot’s of ’em.”

“It isn’t what folks say that counts,” said Dad, though his face glowed a little. “Anybody can get a cheer by spectacular work. I’d rather have you back in Ideala, learning the rule of three, than fighting because you like to have the boys trundle you around on their shoulders the way they did that day when we got back to the corps after that charge.

“It’s nice to be praised. No one but a hypocrite will say he doesn’t like it. But it isn’t the real thing to work for.

“The real thing is this country of ours. I keep dinning that into your ears because I don’t want you to forget it for a second. We’re here to work for it, you and I. I had a hard time to make your father understand. But at last he did. That’s why he let you stay. He’s changed a good deal, your father has, this past year. A year ago he would have proven wisely to me that I was quite wrong.”

“A year ago you would maybe have believed him,” suggested Jimmie. “Isn’t that part of the change?”

“Perhaps,” mused Dad. “Perhaps so. Jimmie, there are times when you have almost too much sense. How about the fearful and ghastly wound? Is it getting all right?”

The boy chuckled. The hurts which he and his grandfather had sustained during the little flurry of attack on the cottage had both been quick of healing.

There had been no occasion to go to hospital; and a few days of semi-invalidism had left the two tough bodies well-nigh as good as new. Yet each was daily in the habit of inquiry, with new superlative adjectives and expressions of sympathy, after the other’s injury. And to each the joke held a pristine freshness.

“Emp was the slowest of us three to get on his legs again,” said Jimmie. “And even he’s all right now. Say, I wonder will he ever catch that flea? He’s been hunting for it and biting at it ever since the day I found him.”

“Maybe Emp’s just four-flushing. A lot of us spend our spare time hunting for what we know isn’t there. It gives us something to exercise our mind.”

“He fights that flea so long and makes such little headway, I’ve a good mind to change his name and call him General McClellan.”

“Hush, lad!” warned Dad, half-serious, half-jesting. “There’s enough criticism all over without our joining in. The whole country is hammering little Mac just now. And maybe the whole country’s wrong, or maybe the whole country’s right. Anyhow, neither the country nor the army nor Mac is the better for it. So don’t let’s you and I add our lung-power to it.

“It’s easy enough to sit back and criticize. But Little Mac is where a word of praise would help more. So is President Lincoln.”

“Dad,” the boy leaned forward earnestly, as though consulting an all-wise oracle, “is it always going to be like this?”

“Like what, son?”

“The thing that’s gone on all year. The Confeds licking us any time and any way they please, and mussing up all our plans and fooling our generals and slipping out of our traps and then belting us in the jaw? Are we always going to be the licked ones? It’s getting just a little monotonous.

“We win a skirmish--or a little battle, like the one back there with the demi-corps that you got your brevet-majorship for--or same other small, third-rate fight. And then they go to work and thrash us in all the other big battles and turn our campaigns upside down.

“Except out West. There our boys are winning all right. But here we get all the lickings. Isn’t the Army of the Potomac good for anything except for the Rebels to trounce? Is it going to be like this all the time? That’s what I want to know.”

Dad’s face was very grave as he listened. Now he laid aside his pipe and made answer, with none of the former whimsicality in his voice.

“No, lad. It won’t last forever. Here’s the whole idea in just a mouthful of words: For years the South has been getting ready. And for years, up North, we’ve been saying there’d be no war. So, when the real fighting began, it was like a middleweight, trained to the minute, tackling a great big lazy giant who was in bad condition.

“The middleweight has hammered the giant all around the ring in most of the fights so far. But every day the giant is getting wiser and stronger and more used to fighting. And pretty soon his weight and strength has got to begin to tell.

“The South is made up of men who are fighting like heroes. But there aren’t enough of them, and they have mighty few resources, and every day they grow fewer, and their resources get weaker. And the North’s men and money will never give out. Pretty soon the difference has got to show.

“Be patient. We’re fighting for our Union, we Northerners. For the country that my grandfather helped to make free, and that my great-grandfather helped to win from the Indians and the Frenchies. And that country and the Union are going to last forever; no matter how black the sky happens to look just now, make up your mind to that!”

“But, see,” urged the boy impatiently; “they beat us on the Peninsula. And now Lee and Jackson have driven us clean back to Maryland. And they’re coming after us into the North, so the papers say.”

“Yes,” assented Dad. “They’re coming after us into the North. And they may do as they boast and ‘stable their horses in Boston’s Faneuil Hall,’ before we can drive them back. But we will drive them back. Soon or late, son. Don’t doubt that, either, for a minute. As soon as the giant is strong enough. And he gets stronger every day.

“They drove us out of the Peninsula. And now that he’s licked us so easy on his own ground, Lee’s getting ready to try a turn at us on ours. Whether he can get past us or not--”

“Shucks!” growled Jimmie. “I’m sick of waiting. Here, the war was started to free the slaves. And what does Lincoln do? Hasn’t raised a finger to free ’em. Why, if he’d freed ’em all at the start, and then kept plugging away at Richmond--”

“Don’t be foolish, son,” exhorted Dad, “and the foolishest thing on earth you can do is to join in the howl against Mr. Lincoln. He’s doing the only thing that can be done. And he’s the only man in America that can do it.

“Suppose he’d ordered all the slaves set free. What would have happened? About the same thing that would happen if we ordered the sun to shine at night instead of in the day. Nothing does a boss so much harm as to give an order he can’t enforce. And if he declared the slaves free until he was black in the face, they wouldn’t be free. He must wait till the tide turns. And the giant begins to hold his own against the middleweight before he can give the order. In the meantime--”

“In the meantime,” said Jimmie, with ponderous solemnity, “McCluskey told me this morning that the Third Ambulance Corps came up last night. It came on the Frederick road. Not more’n about seven miles from here.”

“What’s that got to do with--”

“With Mrs. Sessions?” asked the boy innocently. “Nothing, except that she’s quartered with that corps. I know. Because McCluskey showed me the list of nurses there.”

“Son,” said Dad, after glaring coldly at the wholly unimpressed lad for a full minute, “let’s go for a ride. I’m off duty for three hours yet.”

“Fine!” agreed Jimmie. “We’ll go any direction you like, except, perhaps, toward Frederick. The scenery isn’t as pretty out that way.”

“Jimmie,” observed Dad, “there are times when I feel that a spanking would do you worlds of good!”