CHAPTER XXXI

JIMMIE AND THE GENERALS

The two men had spun about from the window as the small human whirlwind burst into the room. Jimmie’s first words had been launched at McClellan with almost incoherent velocity.

The army of the Potomac’s commander frowned in annoyed perplexity at the disheveled little apparition and the almost shouted address. Hooker, on the contrary, stared for an instant, then burst into a great guffaw.

The next moment the door burst open again.

In rushed the military secretary, very purple of face. Behind him was the stomach-smitten sentinel, his visage still greenish and pain-twisted from the blow.

“General!” spluttered the secretary. “I--this--”

“What does this mean?” sternly demanded McClellan, finding his voice. The sentinel, at a gesture from the secretary, collared the boy again and started to carry him bodily from the room.

“Wait, you!” shrilled Jimmie. “You lemme go! There’s more to my message. I forgot. Dad told me to tell--”

“Shut up, you crazy little scarecrow!” growled the sentinel under his breath, bestowing a vicious shake which the boy promptly resented by an excruciating kick on his captor’s shins.

“Dad told me to tell you how we came to find the paper,” finished Jimmie loudly. “We picked it up on a hill out--”

The sentinel had him at the door of the room by this time, the empurpled secretary bringing up the rear.

McClellan, into whose hand Jimmie had thrust the crumpled and far from clean bunch of paper, let the document drop to the floor.

“Wait!” yelled the boy in despair. “A lot depends on it. Dad--”

“The brat is crazy,” declared the secretary. “He came to the house here just now and said he was a--”

“Dad told me,” squealed Jimmie, clinging to the door-jamb and hanging on for dear life as the sentinel sought to yank him free, “that I must--”

“Shut up!” exhorted the sentry. “And let go there!”

“A thousand apologies, sir,” went on the secretary to McClellan, “for my allowing this intrusion upon your conference. It was not my fault, nor”--generously--“was it this sentinel’s. I saw the boy assault him. He--”

“General McClellan!” howled Jimmie. “Pick up that paper and _read_ it! Dad says it--”

“The boy,” babbled on the secretary to all concerned, “was riding a horse with a ‘C. S. A.’ cavalry saddle. He--”

“Pick it up and _read_ it!” wailed Jimmie again, feeling his hold on the door-jamb slacken under the mighty yanking of the sentinel.

The soldier loosened one tugging hand from Jimmie’s shoulder long enough to administer a sound cuff on the lad’s ear. Jimmie retaliated this time by flinging his head back sharply and with the crown of it catching the sentry a grievous whack on the chin.

“Lemme go!” he grunted. “Dad says the whole army’s fate depends on--”

“Shall I have him turned over to the provost-marshal, sir?” obsequiously queried the secretary, “or--”

“Wait!”

It was “Fighting Joe” Hooker who, choking back his helpless laughter, shouted the order.

The secretary, his question half-uttered, shut his mouth and stood at attention. The sentinel paused with uplifted fist poised in the act of seeking vengeance for the jaw-blow that had made him see stars and had loosened two of his best teeth.

Even McClellan turned from the turmoil to stare in surprise at his subordinate general.

“Wait!” repeated Hooker. “By your leave, General McClellan?”

He glanced at his chief for permission to take over the situation. McClellan nodded.

“I think, general,” went on Hooker, “with your consent, we can do worse than to wait for a minute or so. I don’t at all understand what any of this means. But one or two things lead me to think it may be worth a question or two. It isn’t an every-day occurrence for a boy in Federal uniform trousers to ride up on a Confederate army horse and fight his way into the commanding general’s presence, just for the sake of handing that commanding general a bunch of soiled waste paper. May I suggest, general, that we let the boy wait here an instant while we glance at the paper?”

He stooped and picked up the crumpled sheet, handling its unclean outer side gingerly as he proceeded to unfold it. Then he glanced at the written words. The others standing at gaze, McClellan vexedly chewing his mustache.

Hooker’s thin face wore a mask of crass perplexity as his eyes ran down the sheet.

“General McClellan!” he exclaimed, his voice uncertain.

He handed the paper to his superior, who received it as under protest and cast his eye over its first few lines. Then his face all at once took on an aspect of amaze, ludicrously like that of Hooker.

McClellan strode hastily to the window embrasure, followed by Hooker. Side by side, their backs to the others, the two generals read and reread the paper.

Then they fell into eager, excited conversation, speaking in tense whispers.

Meantime the gorgeous secretary stood looking blankly at their backs. The sentinel, his hand still on Jimmie’s shirt-collar, stared at everybody in turn, mouth ajar.

Jimmie alone had no special interest in the proceedings. He had delivered the mysteriously precious paper into General McClellan’s own hands, as Dad had bidden him; and General McClellan had read it.

Nothing remained now but to obey Dad’s second command to tell McClellan how and where the paper had been found. And as the sentinel had been called off from ejecting him from the room, there was every prospect that he would be able to perform this part of his mission, too.

But all in good time.

At present General McClellan seemed far too busy to listen. Soon, no doubt, he would get through making conjectures and begin to ask questions. That was the way with grown people.

In the mean time Jimmie had a chance to recall that he himself was a very tired, very ill-treated, very sore and dusty and thirsty and battered little boy.

Also, that Dad was far away from him and so was Emp. And he was among strangers who hadn’t seemed especially glad to see him and who surely had treated him with more roughness than was absolutely needful.

Jimmie began to feel excessively sorry for himself. In fact, he was suddenly aware of a most unmanly and overweening desire to cry.

He was heartily ashamed of such a babyish impulse. He was a man of fifteen. But a very great many things had happened to him that day, and the day was not yet over.

He choked back the big lump in his throat and tried to square his shoulders and throw back his chest, no easy feat when the great, hulking sentinel’s grip was still on his shirt-collar, almost choking him. Jimmie found himself wondering just how soon he could hope to be big enough and strong enough to lick a man of--well, of that sentinel’s size!

Presently the wondering, whispered colloquy between the two generals in the window embrasure ended. McClellan and Hooker came back toward the center of the room.

McClellan seated himself at the table there, and with a word dismissed the sentry, who, releasing Jimmie, departed. The secretary, at a gesture from the general, followed the soldier, shutting the door behind him.

“Come here, my boy,” said McClellan kindly.

Jimmie advanced. He felt no special awe for this great little man. All he wanted was to complete his mission, get back to Dad’s tent, and rest for a long, long while.

He wondered when Dad would return, and he resolved to learn from him every minutest detail of the duel. That Dad would worst his opponent Jimmie had not the faintest doubt.

For was not Dad--was he not Dad?

“Tell me,” General McClellan was saying, “where and how did you get this paper?”

“We found it up on the top of a hill. It was lying there. The wind blew it in front of my horse and--”

“What hill?” interposed Hooker. “Where?”

“Out yonder. Miles the other side of Frederick. Out toward Sharpesburg.”

“Sharpesburg?” echoed McClellan. “Right in the track of the Confederate rear-guard. D. H. Hill’s division. You must have been well beyond our lines.”

“We were,” said Jimmie.

“The paper was lying on the ground, you say?”

“Yes. Partly folded up, like it had dropped out of somebody’s pocket,” said Jimmie, seeking to finish the story and get away. “But the wind had opened it a little and it blew into the air, and my horse shied and I got thrown--he was running away, anyhow--and then Emp grabbed the paper, and I took it away from him and read some of it aloud. Just for fun. And Dad grabbed it and--”

“Hold on! Hold on!” demanded McClellan. “Go more slowly. It doesn’t make sense. Who are Emp and Dad and--”

“Emp,” said Jimmie in a tone of laboriously patient explanation as to a stupid pupil--“Emp is my dog. That isn’t all his name; it’s just the short of it. Dad’s my grandfather. He’s a brevet-major. I’m Jim Brinton.”

“Brinton?” queried McClellan, repeating his own middle name.

“The soldiers call me ‘Battle Jimmie,’” explained the lad.

“Battle Jimmie!” cried Hooker. “So you’re the youngster who--”

“Yes, sir. I’m that one. Shall I go on about the paper?”

“Yes. More slowly.”

“Dad read it, and he got all het up over it. And he said it must get here right away. That everything depended on it. And that must be so, ’cause Dad knows.”

“So he sent you here with it?” asked McClellan. “If he is an officer in the army here, it would have saved time and explanation if he had brought it here himself.”

“How could he?” flared Jimmie instantly aflame at the implied slur on his idol. “How could he? Tell me that. He couldn’t stop fighting, could he?”

“Fighting? No skirmish on the Sharpesburg road has been reported here. What troops were engaged? Do you know?”

“Dad was. And the Confed, of course.”

“What Confederate?” asked the exasperated general.

“The one I left Dad thrashing. The one who said we were his prisoners. Dad licked him long before this.”

“Hold on, sonny,” intervened Hooker, forestalling a movement of vexed bewilderment on McClellan’s part. “Let’s get this straight. Just answer my questions as simply as you can.”

In a dozen well-put queries Hooker got from the boy the whole story, beginning with the runaway and ending with Jimmie’s arrival at headquarters.

McClellan’s face lost its look of impatience as he listened; and it lighted into keen interest.

“This Dad of yours must be a paladin of valor, besides having a quick, cool brain of his own,” he commented as Jimmie finished. “His country owes him an unpayable debt for sending this dispatch to me so promptly. It is more important than I could make you understand. By the way, you haven’t told us his name?”

“His name? Dad’s? Why, he’s Brevet-Major James Dadd. I thought I told you that.”

The two generals exchanged a quick glance that was quite lost on Jimmie.

“James Dadd!” exclaimed McClellan.

“James Brinton,” gravely corrected Hooker.

Jimmie wheeled on him.

“Who told you that?” he demanded truculently, eyes ablaze and red hair bristling.

“Never mind that, my lad!” laughed Hooker. “I--”

“Look here, you!” cried Jimmie, trembling with fierce indignation. “Now that you people have spied on Dad and spotted his secret, I s’pose you’ll want to turn him out of the army. He said you might. He told me so before he joined. Well, if you do, it’ll be the rottenest trick anyone ever played. He’s the dandiest fighter you’ve got. And he’s the greatest man that ever was.

“Aw, let him stay!” he went on, his voice changing to an eager plea, “Let him stay! It’ll kill him to be kicked out just when he’s doing so fine and everything. _Please_ let him stay. It wasn’t his fault he was turned out of the army the other time, back in Mexico. Gee! if I could get you to understand what a grand man he is--Why, the fellers in the regiment--”

Hooker put a big, kindly hand almost in caress on the boy’s heaving shoulder.

“There, lad!” he said in rough gentleness. “Don’t waste all your good powder blazing into the air. There’s no more danger of your Dad being kicked out of the army than of Jeff Davis becoming President of the United States.

“We all know the story. And we all honor him. Even President Lincoln knows it. And by this time to-morrow President Lincoln will know what Dad has done for the Union to-day in getting that paper to us.

“Now trot along. The paper you brought here is going to keep every general and every courier in the Army of the Potomac busy all day and all night. There’s no time to waste on boys. Not even on Battle Jimmies. Clear out and run along!”

He gave the boy a friendly shove toward the door. As Jimmie, dazed but infinitely relieved, passed out he saw the two generals, wholly oblivious of him, bending once more over the paper.