CHAPTER XXVII

A STERN CHASE

For a brief instant Dad sat blinking, incredulous. Then he saw and understood.

Crossing the field to right of the road and at an acute angle to it, a full quarter of a mile ahead, thundered a runaway horse. And on the horse’s back, clutching frantically to the saddle, his new-learned principles of riding quite forgotten, swayed and clung Battle Jimmie.

At flash of steel against steel the boy’s half-trained cavalry horse had shied violently. The flying bayonet’s point in passing had pricked his shoulder top, narrowly missing Jimmie.

With a wild bound of fear and pain the horse had cleared the roadside ditch and had struck off at a bounding gallop across the field.

Jimmie, almost unseated by that first leap, grabbed the pommel with one hand, while with the other he sawed at the reins.

He might as readily have pulled against an artillery tug-of-war team. The horse merely lunged his long neck forward a little, caught the bit between his teeth, and sped on, frantic with fear.

With high-pitched voice, and futile, brave little hand the boy sought in vain to check or guide the mad, pounding flight. The horse, which the regimental farrier had that morning vouched for to Dad as “a little rough yet, but as gentle as a kitten,” was an old and incurable offender in the vice of running away.

As a matter of fact it was for this grievous fault that his civilian master had recently sold him cheap to a cavalry contractor.

Dad after a first glance saw that the boy was not frightened and that he was likely to keep his seat far more easily at a sweeping run than at a bone-shaking trot. Unless the horse should buck, shy, or catch his foot in some hole in the field, the rider was safe enough.

On the bare chance of one of the casualties Dad put his own horse at the ditch and galloped down the field in pursuit. But it was more in amusement than in fear that he gave chase.

Well-mounted though he was, he was too far behind, and the runaway was going at too furious a pace for Dad to hope to overhaul Jimmie for some time. So he merely settled down to an enlivening gallop, with the hope that the boy’s horse would soon run himself out.

For two miles or more they continued this; Dad gaining little if at all. The runaway’s panic fear and the light weight of his rider helped him maintain his great pace.

Dad began to worry. They were almost abreast of Frederick by this time, and a full half-mile to south of the town. Beyond, somewhere in that tumble of light green valleys and dark green hills was the rear guard of the Confederate army.

Perhaps only a few miles away might lurk a belated troop of camp-followers or even a company of bushwhackers.

To the Confederate army, where boys of fifteen were daily enlisting as regular soldiers, a lad of Jimmie’s age in a Federal uniform would readily pass as an enlisted man and, as such, if captured, would be liable to confinement in one of the Southern war-prisons--a possible fate which turned Dad sick with dread for his adored grandson.

He loosed his rein and for the first time touched spur to his sorrel.

The mettled horse, unbreathed by the gallop, responded with the readiness of a machine. The gallop changed to a run. The stubble field over which they were passing became a yellowish blur under the flying feet.

Little by little, steadily, but ever so slowly, the gap between the blooded sorrel and the coarser-grained runaway began to close. By the end of another mile there was a scant hundred yards between them.

Frederick was well behind them now. The last Union outposts, a half-mile beyond the town and as far to the north of the two riders, were past.

Into “no-man’s land,” into that most perilous of regions, the “debatable ground” between two hostile armies, sped pursuer and pursued.

Hearing the ever-nearing drumming of hoofs behind him, the runaway increased his flagging speed.

Jimmie heard, too, and, glancing back over his shoulder, grinned delightedly at the white-faced man who rode so furiously in pursuit of him.

To the boy it was a glorious lark. The long, smooth gait of the runaway did not toss him about in the saddle as had the rough trot and gallop. Jimmie, helpless as he was to curb his mount’s pace, was thoroughly enjoying the novelty of this exploit.

Dad’s spurs were blood-flecked. Dad’s gallant horse was beginning to breathe in gasps. The September wind hammered and whipped the man’s hot face and blurred his eyes. The octuple thud of hoofs was nauseating him.

Another mile and the runaway breasted a steep hillock. Dad was a bare ten yards behind.

“Now, then, Jimmie!” he sung out. “Now’s your chance as he takes that rise. Both hands on the reins. Forget the pommel. Both hands on the reins, I said. Lean back with all your weight. Hold the right rein stiff, and saw on the left. With your whole weight, son!”

The lad obeyed, though with visible reluctance, for he was having a beautiful time and saw no good reason for ending it so soon.

The maneuver with the reins jerked back the bit from between the runaway’s teeth. It incidentally caused him to break momentarily his long stride.

The steepness of the hillock did the rest.

At the summit Dad was alongside. He reached for the boy’s bridle.

As his fingers were almost closing on the rein, a vagrant gust of wind snatched up from under a bush (whither another gust had evidently whisked it) a piece of white paper.

The paper swirled upward in the very track of the runaway like a sentient thing, and danced in air before his bloodshot eyes.

The fear-crazed brute forgot his exhaustion long enough to swerve violently to the right. Dad’s clutching hand closed upon nothingness.

Jimmie remained stationary in mid air--the horse having shied from under him--for the most infinitesimal fraction of a second.

Then he descended to earth with considerable force; landed, still in a sitting posture, with an impact that knocked the breath completely out of him; and stared dazedly upward at his grandfather.

Dad, slipping from his horse, picked the boy up and stood him on his feet.

“Are you hurt, dear lad?” he cried. “Are you badly hurt?”

“No,” responded Jimmie, albeit uncertainly. “But--but it’s blamed lucky for me I got so many spankings from father when I was home. They’ve--they’ve kind of calloused me, I guess. Gee, Dad, but that was one gorgeous ride; and I stuck on, all right, didn’t I, Dad? As long as we kept going. What’s the matter, sir? You’re all gray-white and you look ’most a hundred.”

Dad did not answer. He turned from the boy, brushing the back of a shaking hand over his eyes. He fell to examining his panting horse.

The sorrel stood with drooped head and red eyes and nostrils. There were blood-flecks on his sweat-drenched sides. He was heaving and wind-broken.

“Foundered!” pronounced Dad, sorrowfully. “I don’t wonder. The going was harder than any foxhunt. Now, how in blue and pink blazes are we going to get back? It’s a good two miles and more to our outposts.”

He glanced about. Twenty yards distant the runaway, reeking with sweat and breathing in snorts, had come to a standstill, his senseless nightmare fear lost in exhaustion, and was cropping grass.

A hand slipped into Dad’s.

“Honest, sir, I didn’t do it on purpose,” Jimmie was saying. “I’m sorry the horses are so done up. And--and I’m a lot sorrier we missed getting to where the Third Ambulance Corps is. Maybe it isn’t too late, yet. We could walk the horses back, you know. It’s only a few miles. Hallo! Here comes Emp! All tuckered out. But as game as tunket, the good little cuss!”

Sure enough, up the slope toiled the yellow puppy, his tongue hanging out to an unbelievable length, his multishaded fur coated with dust.

He had kept up as well as he could. But he was no fox-hound--at least, not more than perhaps one or two per cent.--and the pace had proven far too hot for him to be in at the death.

Still he had done his level four-legged best. And here at last he was, a trifle belated and very leg-weary, but triumphant at having finally overtaken his little master.

Emp gamboled weariedly yet joyfully about the boy; then, to show his spirit was less impaired than his body, he dashed awkwardly to one side and seized in his teeth the crumpled piece of paper that had caused Jimmie’s tumble.

The paper, its mission accomplished, had lodged at the base of a rock. Thence Emp dragged it and, professing to recognize in it a deadly yet very conquerable foe, shook it fiercely, accompanying his shakes with short, breathless growls of extreme fury.

“Here, you!” exhorted Jimmie, pouncing on Emp and forcibly taking the wad of paper from the dog’s reluctant paws, seeking to mask his own fall-shaken nerves under a display of juvenile bombasity. “Here, you; Emperor Napoleon Pete Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, Esq., you drop that! It’s a war-relic, and I’m a goin’ to keep it and show it to my grand-children.

“I’m goin’ to say to ’em: ‘You little numskulls, just you gaze on this yellowed sheet of parchment. Your grandfather had been a-ridin’ horseback, man and boy, for pretty near six months, when this priceless relic gave him his first fall.’ I’m going to inscribe on it--on it--

“Why, hello! There _is_ something written on it already. I’ll have to rub it out and write my inscription over it.”

He had partly unfolded the paper as he meandered on.

Now he read aloud, slowly, and with difficulty deciphering the half-chewed screed:

“Special Order No. 191. Headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia, September 9, 1862.

“The army will resume its march to-morrow, taking the Hagerstown road. General Jackson’s command will form the advance and, after passing Middletown, with such portion as he may select--”

“Aw, shucks!” yawned the boy. “Just a lot of military bosh. I kind of had a hope it might turn out to be something interesting.”

Dad, who had been loosening the girth of his foundered horse, turned sharply.

Accustomed as he was to his grandson’s love for enacting all sorts of rôles and declaiming laughably impossible orations, he had listened with real pride to this latest effusion. Deeming that the boy was improvising, he had wondered at the concise and professional wording of the supposedly imaginary dispatch.

But at Jimmie’s exclamation of disgust over the uninteresting nature of the document, he began to wonder if, after all, something of interest, even of importance, might not be sprawled on that much mishandled sheet of paper.

It was over this ground that part of the Confederate army had passed but a few hours earlier. Perhaps--

He took the paper from the boy, spread out its crumbled surface once more, verified at a glance what Jimmie had read aloud, then went on with the reading:

--“take the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most convenient point, and by Friday night take possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and capture such of the enemy as may be at Martinsburg and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harper’s Ferry.

“General Longstreet’s command will--”

Dad’s staring eyes shifted at this point to the bottom of the page; past much more closely written matter, in search of the signature.

He found it.

“(By command of General Robert E. Lee.) R. H. Chilton, Assistant Adjutant-General.”

On the line below was written:

“To Major-General D. H. Hill, Commanding Division.”

Unbelieving, dumfounded, Dad went back to the point where he had left off and read to the end.

* * * * *

To-day all the world knows the contents of “Special Order No. 191”--that order, a copy of which was sent by Lee to every division commander. The document telling of Lee’s plan to detach a part of his main army and, under Stonewall Jackson, to send it to capture the unprepared garrison and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, while Lee himself should strive to hide from McClellan the fact that the Confederate host was sadly depleted by the sending of this detachment; and thus to prevent the Union armies from attacking him until Jackson’s force should return.

Like most of Lee’s plans it was brilliant and simple. It had every prospect of success.

And its success would probably have meant the wrecking of the Union cause through the invasion’s achievement.

Yet General D. H. Hill somehow let drop from a pocket his copy of the order, and that copy really was picked up through sheer chance.

* * * * *

Dad read to the end; then hurriedly reread.

Then he turned to Jimmie; his firm mouth twitching grotesquely.

“This--this has got to get to General McClellan--now--_now_!” he babbled. “It means--Lord of Battles!--it means _everything_ to us! _Everything!_ It must go to him as fast as a horse can be flogged into running. And--my horse is dead beat; and so, I guess, is yours! Oh, _what’s_ to be done?”

He strode nervously across to where the runaway still cropped grass, half-way down the slope of the farther hillock.

And as he came within arm’s length of the animal a rather pleasant voice called to him from a thicket to the left:

“Hands up, Yank! Hands up, _both_ of you. Up. ‘Way up!”