CHAPTER XXX

BATTLE JIMMIE, COURIER

Battle Jimmie was riding.

If his general posture on the black thoroughbred’s back tended to suggest a monkey strapped to the back of a circus pony, he was none the less riding. And at a breakneck speed.

Wholly ignorant of horsemanship’s finer shades, he yet had two great qualifications for a jockey: the lightest of weight and a stark dearth of fear.

He kicked his heels into the black sides of his mount just as often as he could remain in any one spot long enough to direct the kick, and ever and again he would release his grip on the mane long enough to wallop the straining black flanks with the bearing-rein he still held.

The splendid thoroughbred needed none of these incentives to flight. Indignant at his new rider’s gawky horsemanship and at his ignorance at the way a blooded horse should be handled, the black none the less realized that he was called upon to display his fleetest pace.

And he did it.

The futile little heel-thumps and the occasional larrup of the bearing-rein hurt the horse not at all. But they insulted his feelings, and he took out his indignation in the form of frantic speed.

Ears flattened back, head and neck in straight line with the withers; long, sinuous black body stretched out close to earth, the beautiful black cleared the uneven ground like a swallow.

A veteran of wild Virginia fox-hunts, the rough going was as nothing to him. Hill, plowed field, and gully were traversed as easily as level sward.

The rider’s weight was a bagatelle, but the rider’s behavior was a gross affront.

Jimmie, in his earlier and runaway ride of the day, had not been too excited to note his general direction--a trait taught him by Dad years before in their rambles through the Ohio forests beyond Ideala.

And the habit served him well to-day, for he was able with no difficulty to follow his former route on the return journey.

The black charger was perfectly amenable to the reins’ guidance, and his gait was as easy as a hobby-horse’s.

Presently the few spires of Frederick came into view; then the house roofs. Topping another rise, Jimmie found he was a scant fifty feet from the Frederick road.

For safer and smoother travel he guided his horse to it, the black clearing a low wall and ditch without breaking his smooth stride.

Down the Frederick pike the headlong ride continued. At a turn of the road two Union sentinels slung their guns forward and demanded the pass-word. Jimmie had reached the Federal outposts.

The black sped between the two forward-pressing sentries, and Jimmie yelled:

“Courier! Dispatches for General McClellan!”

Seeing that the boy was in blue uniform, the sentinels did not make even a futile effort to detain him.

Not until he had whirled past in a cloud of dust did one of them belatedly recall that the horse’s saddle had borne in brass the letters “C. S. A.,” instead of “U. S. A.”

And he and his comrade fell to speculating bewilderedly as to why a small-boy courier in Union uniform should happen to be riding on a Confederate cavalry saddle.

On galloped Jimmie, giving the dust to the few riders and pedestrians, who now began to appear on the white turnpike.

Into Frederick and through its unpaved, rutted main street galloped the lad. The street through which, less than a week earlier, Stonewall Jackson had led his dusty legions.

From an upper window of one of the thoroughfare’s wooden houses (according to a tale as apocryphal as it was dramatic) aged Barbara Frietchie had waved the bullet-ridden stars and stripes and by her gallant loyalty had touched the chivalric Southern chief’s heart.

The sole basis for the Barbara Frietchie legend, moreover, according to Jackson’s own tale and his staff’s, was this:

As the Confederate swung down the street two little girls, each waving a tiny American flag, ran out from the sidewalk and shook their flags defiantly--almost in Jackson’s very face--whereat, instead of fiercely ordering the flags to be fired on, Jackson had turned to one of his aids and smilingly commented:

“We don’t seem to be especially popular here.”

Jimmie, who had heard of neither the fact nor the more inspiring legend, dashed on, looking neither to right nor left. His horse, wholly unaided by the rider, eluded the scant traffic of the street and saved Jimmie from more than one bad collision.

Pedestrians scattered to left and right before the thundering hoofs and yelled angry warnings after the fast-disappearing horseman. Mounted military men drew to one side and laughed aloud at the scarlet-faced little figure bunched over on the withers of the great charger.

Through the street and beyond galloped Jimmie. He drew up at last (with a suddenness that sent the horse back on his haunches and the rider well-nigh over his mount’s ears) in front of a house whose walk from porch to road was patrolled by a sentinel.

On the veranda lounged several gaudily attired staff officers. From the porch roof jutted a white flagstaff, gold-eagle crowned, supporting a huge silken American flag.

A quarter-mile away that morning Dad had pointed out the house to his grandson as temporary headquarters of Major-General George Brinton McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac--a leader who partly for the sake of his middle name had always held Jimmie’s admiring curiosity.

Off the horse scrambled the boy, his body aching all over, and his short, cramped legs all but doubling under him. Through the gate he lurched and up the path.

The sentinel halted him before he had taken three steps.

“Courier! Dispatches!” snapped Jimmie, and forestalled further argument or delay by ducking nimbly under the soldier’s arm and scampering for the porch.

“Courier! Dispatches!” he repeated grandiloquently to the veranda’s occupants at large as he climbed the steps. “Where’s General McClellan?”

A gorgeous staff officer bustled forward, stepping officiously between the boy and the open front door of the house.

“Dispatches?” echoed the officer. “Give them here.”

“Not much I won’t!” retorted Jimmie. “These are for General McClellan. They aren’t for anyone else.”

“I am General McClellan’s acting secretary,” the officer announced harshly, his dignity rasped by a laugh from fellow officers lounging near by.

The spectacle of a small boy in a big uniform, caked with dust and horse-foam, defying the pompous acting secretary was one of mild joy to everyone.

“I am General McClellan’s acting secretary,” repeated the officer impatiently. “I will take--”

“I wouldn’t care if you was his maiden aunt,” declared Jimmie stoutly. “Dad told me to give a paper to General McClellan himself. He didn’t say anything about giving it to anyone else--even if the someone else happened to be wearing seven diff’rent kinds of gold lace. And what Dad tells me to do goes. Where’s General McClellan?”

“Who’s ‘Dad,’ sonny?” laughed a colonel who was sprawling in the sun on the steps.

“He’s my s’perior off’cer,” returned Jimmie. “And he told me to--”

“Here!” snorted the secretary. “If you’ve got any papers, you little ragamuffin, give them to me. If you haven’t, be off, or I’ll take my riding-switch to you. I--”

“Look!” gasped Jimmie melodramatically, pointing a trembling, stubby forefinger over the secretary’s shoulder.

The secretary involuntarily turned. Jimmie on the instant darted past him through the door and into the hallway beyond.

The dimmer light half-blinded the boy, coming as he did from the glare of the street. But he dared not pause. Vaguely, half-way down the long hallway, he saw a sentinel posted in front of one of several closed doors.

Jimmie needed no further directions. He made for that door. And the sentinel, who had beheld the scene on the porch, made for Jimmie.

The boy halted and attempted to dodge. Out went the sentry’s arms to seize him. And, with a sudden lunge forward, crash went Jimmie’s bullet-head into the pit of the soldier’s stomach.

The sentinel doubled up in pain. But as he did so he managed to seize the boy by the coat-collar.

Wriggling eel-like from the too loose garment, Jimmie leaped at the closed door, flung it open, rushed into the room beyond and slammed the door shut again behind him.

Two men were talking earnestly in an embrasure by a window.

One of them Jimmie recognized at once as General Hooker whom Dad had pointed out to him a few days earlier. The shorter and stockier man he also recognized from a hundred photographs he had seen.

Plunging one hand into his shirt-bosom, and pulling forth the precious wad of paper, Battle Jimmie raised the other in salute.

“General McClellan,” he said, “Dad told me to give you this. He says a whole lot depends on it. Read it. It’s more interesting, maybe, than it sounds. Read it!”