CHAPTER XXIX

THE END OF THE FIGHT

Dad subconsciously recalled what the captain had said about his company taking their noon rest a half-mile beyond.

A cavalry company at that, from the captain’s uniform and saber. Probably one of the many small bodies of horse thrown out to guard the rear of Lee’s army and to forage.

At any moment some of the men in search of their leader might come down the winding path that led from their temporary bivouac to the hillock.

Yet Dad hated to leave temporarily helpless a man whom he himself had crippled. He hesitated.

“I--I suppose I am your prisoner, suh?” muttered the captain.

“You surrender?”

“I’m afraid I’ve no alternative. You have me at your mercy. And this confounded hand and arm are torturing me. They’re useless. I surrender.”

“Good,” sighed Dad, in genuine relief.

He was very tired. He wanted to sit down somewhere and get back his breath and his sorely overtaxed strength.

“There is my sword, on the grass yonder,” went on the Southerner. “It is yours by right of war.”

“My dear boy,” laughed Dad. “I don’t want your hardware. Keep it. What earthly use is it to me? It’s a saber. And I’m an infantry officer.”

“It is customary, suh, as you know,” stiffly returned the captain, “for a prisoner to give up his sword to--”

“But, man, dear, you’re not my prisoner,” interrupted Dad. “_I_ don’t want you. What would I do with you? There are more men in the prisons now than we can afford to feed well.”

“Do I understand, suh,” asked the bewildered captain, “that you release me on parole?”

“Parole?” mused Dad reflectively. “I ought to, I suppose. I ought to demand your sacred word of honor that you’ll never again draw sword in the Cause you think is right. That you go back home, eating your heart out, while your brothers are at the front.

“But I’ve had much those same things happen to me in my time. And it’s a hell I wouldn’t send my worst enemy through.

“No, Mister Confed, I’m not going to parole you or any other man. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to do what you want to.”

“Do you mean that I--”

“By the way,” went on Dad, “I had my grandson borrow your horse. I’m sorry. It was a military necessity. You can take that sorrel over there in its place. The horse is foundered, I’m afraid, but your regimental farrier can bring him back to condition in a day or so. And he’s got good blood and plenty of speed in him.”

“You mean, suh,” muttered the captain, dazed, “that after capturing me you’ll give me not only my freedom but a horse, as well?”

“I’ve tried to make it plain,” said Dad patiently.

The captain made as though to speak; then turned his head abruptly away. When he faced Dad again, the look of physical pain in the sleepy eyes was all but effaced by one of utter shame.

“It is only fair to tell you, suh,” he began jerkily, his glance downcast, like a scolded schoolboy, “it’s only fair to tell you that I had every intention, a while back, of taking you and your orderly prisoner and turning you over to our provost marshal to be shipped off to prison.”

“Well,” responded Dad, “suppose you had? That is your affair. Every man to his own whim. Perhaps when you get to my age, friend, you’ll think twice before sticking a harmless old codger and a little boy into the living death of a war prison. Or perhaps you won’t. It is your own affair, as I told you. And now let me finish with those hurts of yours. I must be on my way.”

Briskly, if a whit stiffly, he went on with his “first aid” work. The Confederate, as in a trance, sat still, and let his conqueror work over him. He seemed for the time bereft of the power of speech.

Emp, ordered back by his master and scolded by Dad for interfering, had sat gravely on the hillock top, and with cocked head and critical eye had surveyed the combat below. Still brooding over Jimmie’s defection and the cruel order not to follow, the dog remained on the hilltop and, the fight being over, fell to studying the world at large in the hope of seeing his master return, penitent at his act of desertion, and make friends with him again.

But Jimmie did not come back. Once Emp thought the boy was drawing near, for his keen-pricked ears caught the sound of approaching horse-hoofs.

A second of listening, however, told him that these hoofs were walking; not galloping. Also, that there were several horses approaching in single file and from a direction opposite to that in which Jimmie had vanished.

The hoof-beats drew nearer. Emp’s watchdog instincts--one of his multi-breed ancestors having perhaps been guardian of a farmstead--stirred within him. War experience had taught him that where there were horses there were likely to be men.

Indeed, his twitching, moist nostrils had already caught the scent of men--several men--strange men, approaching.

These outsiders assuredly had no right to intrude on Dad and the new friend, who were resting so comfortably. Emp’s fur, between the shoulders and then down along the spine-ridge, began to bristle with resentment.

Far down in his thirsty throat a growling “Woof!” was born. Then another.

Then the dog jumped to his feet, the stifled growls bursting forth in a storm of yapping barks.

Dad, at the shrill warning, glanced up from his task of surgery. He glanced up--to see at the path’s end, a few yards distant, a half-dozen lean, finely mounted Confederate cavalrymen, seated carelessly in their saddles and eyeing in grave astonishment the unusual spectacle of a Federal infantry major tending the hurts of a Confederate cavalry officer.

“Fortune of war!” remarked Dad, with dreary philosophy.

At his words, the Confederate captain looked up. And he, too, saw the clump of gray-clad troopers, barely ten yards off, staring down at him.

As they met their captain’s eyes, the cavalrymen’s hands went up in salute. But their gaze still rested in wonder on the odd scene that lay before them.

“Friend,” said Dad to the captain, “there’s a favor I’d like to ask of you.”

The Confederate looked up at him in quick surprise.

“It’s this,” continued Dad. “My sword here was given me by someone--by someone I care for. I wish you’d keep track of what becomes of it and where it’s stored. Because some day I’m likely to be exchanged or set free in some other way, and when I am I want to get it back if I can.”

“I--I don’t understand it, suh,” said the captain.

Dad nodded toward the troopers.

“There doesn’t seem much mystery about it,” he said. “Both of my horses up there are too tired to go much above a walk. Even if I could get to one of them, your men would overhaul me before I’d ridden fifty feet. And your men are between me and the only cover I could hide in if I should try to get away on foot.”

“My men?” repeated the captain dully. “Oh, yes! My men. I’d forgotten.”

Rousing himself by strong effort from the inertia due to exhaustion and pain, he turned toward the troopers.

“Fauquier!” he drawled.

A corporal saluted.

“Go back to camp and have a stretcher brought here for me. I’m hurt. Take the men with you. ’Tention! Threes about! Wheel! _Trot!_”

Obedient, if still wondering, the perfectly disciplined Southern cavalrymen wheeled and trotted off in double rank of threes along the path and its bush-encroaching sides.

“Suh,” continued the captain, turning back to Dad, “you seem to have a singularly queer opinion of a Virginia officer’s sense of decency. May I correct it by suggesting you mount one of those two horses up yonder and get well out of the way before my men come back? Good day, sir.

“And--thank you for a lesson in wrestling--and--and in other things.”