CHAPTER III.

THE BOUNTY-JUMPER.

When Lafe Hornbeck looked into the countenance of the strange man who appeared thus unexpectedly before him in the deserted breastwork, it needed no second glance to tell him that he had to deal with a scoundrel. A threatening and formidable scoundrel he seemed, too, with his heavy, slouching shoulders, his long arms ending in huge, hairy hands, and the surly scowl on his low-browed, frowzy face.

He wore the dark-blue jacket and light-blue trousers of the Federal infantry, and their relative newness showed that he was a fresh recruit. His badge was the Maltese cross of the Fifth Corps, and its color, red, indicated the First Division. This was the corps and division of Boyce's brigade.

Even in the first minute of surprised scrutiny of the fellow Lafe found himself thinking that he probably belonged to that Ohio regiment which he had seen bringing up the rear of the line forming for battle.

"Drop it, I say!" the man repeated, harshly.

Lafe drew his hand from the haversack slowly and reluctantly.

"There's enough more of 'em here," he protested, nodding at the pile in the corner of the earthwork. "I haven't had a mouthful since before sunrise, and I'm hungry."

"Where'd you come from, anyway, and what business have you got here?" the other demanded, with an oath and a forward step.

"I'm Fifth Corps, same as you are," replied Lafe, making an effort to keep his voice bold and firm, "and I came here by tumbling head over heels down that hill there, right spang from top to bottom." He took courage from the indecision apparent in the man's eyes to add, "And that's why I'm going to have something to eat."

The stranger gave a grunt, which, bad-tempered though it was, did not seem to forbid the action, and Lafe drew forth the bread again. It was dry and tasteless enough, but he almost forgot to look at his unwelcome companion in the satisfaction which he had in gulping down the food.

The man lounged over to the pile of haversacks, muskets, and clothing, and seemed to be trying to make out whether anything was missing. He grunted again, and turned to Lafe just as the last crust was disappearing.

"You're a drummer, ain't you?" he said roughly. "Where do you belong?"

Lafe held up his hand to signify that his mouth was too full to talk. "Boyce's brigade," he explained, after a little.

"That ain't what I asked. What's your regiment?"

"Haven't got any regiment," replied Lafe. "I'm in the brigade band."

"Oh!" growled the man, and turned on his heel. The information seemed to relieve his mind, for when he had taken a few loitering steps about the enclosure, and confronted Lafe again, his tone was less quarrelsome. "Left the hospital camp up there, eh?" he asked, with a sidelong nod of his head toward the top of the hill.

"Well, yes--and no," responded the boy. "It was there when I left it, but it ain't there now. Or rather, it _is_ there, but _we_ ain't there."

"What are you driving at?" the man demanded, once more in a rougher voice.

"The rebs have gobbled it," said Lafe. "Our folks were skedaddling and the rebs were coming in the last I saw."

The man gave a low whistle of surprise and interest. He began walking about again, bending his ugly brows in thought meanwhile. From time to time he paused to ask other questions, as to which way the people of the brigade camp had fled, how large was the force which had captured the camp, and the like.

The news evidently impressed him a good deal. Lafe got the idea that somehow it changed his plans. What were these plans? the boy wondered. The whole thing was very hard to make out. More than once he had had it in mind to say that he had left another member of the band, a very nice fellow indeed, up on the side-hill above them, who must also be hungry, and to suggest that he should call him down.

But every time, when this rose to his tongue, a glance at the evil face of the man restrained him. He could not but remember what Foldeen had hinted, that there was some "deviltry" going on down below here. What was it?

"There must have been some pretty tough fighting right here," he ventured to remark, after a while.

"You bet there was!" the other assented. He seemed not averse to a little talk, though his mind was still on other things.

"I don't quite figure it out," the boy went on, cautiously. "Of course, wrastling round in the woods like this, you can't make head nor tail of how things go, or who's on top, or where--but how does it stand--right here, I mean? We're in our own lines here, ain't we?"

The stranger fixed a long, inquiring glance upon the boy's face. Lafe returned the gaze with all the calmness he could muster. He could not help feeling that there was a good deal of stupidity in the stare under which he bore up. The man was not quick-minded; that was clear enough. But it was also plain that he was both a stubborn and a brutal creature.

"Yes," he growled, after he had stared Lafe out of countenance, "yes, these are our own lines."

The phrase seemed to tickle his fancy, for something like the beginning of a grin stirred on the stubbly surface about his mouth. "Yes--our own lines," he repeated. How strange it was! All at once, like a flash, Lafe remembered having seen this man before. That slow, sulky wavering of a grimace on his lips betrayed him. Swiftly pursuing the clue, the boy reconstructed in his mind a scene in which this man had played the chief part.

It must have been in the early part of the previous December--just after the army went into winter quarters behind the line of the Orange railroad, cooped up in its earth-huts all the way from Culpeper Court House to Brandy Station. Lafe had gone over on leave one afternoon to the corps headquarters--it must have been of a Thursday, because there was to be a military execution the next day, and these were always fixed for Friday.

The army was then receiving almost weekly large batches of raw recruits, sent from the big cities, some the product of the draft, others forwarded by the enlistment bureaus. Among these new-comers were many good citizens and patriots; but there were also a great many cowards and a considerable number of scoundrels who made a business of enlisting to get the bounty, deserting as soon as they could, and enlisting again from some other point.

To prevent wholesale desertions, both of the cowards and the "bounty-jumpers," the utmost vigilance was needed. Their best chance to run away was offered by picket duty, when they found themselves posted out in comparative solitude, in the dark, on the very outskirts of the army line.

To checkmate this, a cordon of cavalry had to be drawn still farther out than the pickets--cavalry-men who slept all day, and at night patrolled the uttermost confines of the great camp, watching with all their eyes and ears, ready on the instant to clap spurs and ride down any skulking wretch who could be discovered attempting his escape.

Even in the teeth of this precaution, the attempts were continually made, and it was the rarest event for a Friday to pass without the spectacle of summary punishment being meted out to some captured deserter on the corps' shooting-ground. Often there were more than one of these victims to martial law.

Lafe now remembered how, with a boy's curiosity, he had prowled about the provost marshal's guard quarters, fascinated by the idea that inside the log shanty, where the two sentinels with fixed bayonets walked constantly up and down, there were men condemned to be shot at six the following morning.

Standing around, and gossiping amiably with these sentinels, who shared the common feeling of the army in making pets of the drummer-boys, he had managed at last to get a glimpse at one of these fated prisoners.

A face had appeared at the little window, square-cut in the logs. It was a bad, unkempt face, with a reddish stubble of beard on jaws and cheek. There may have been some rough jest passed by the other prisoners inside the hut, for as the boy watched this face, a grim, mean sort of smile flickered momentarily over it.

Then the face itself disappeared, and left the boy marvelling that a man could grin in presence of the fact that he was to be shot on the morrow.

The smile, and the countenance it played upon for that instant of time, burned themselves into his memory. Lafe racked his brain now for some recollection of having heard that these particular prisoners were reprieved, or had succeeded in escaping from their log jail. His memory was a blank on the subject. Yet he felt sure that the face he had seen at that window was the identical face he now saw before him.

For the life of him, he could not resist the temptation to venture upon this dangerous topic.

"You're one of the new regiments brought over to us from the old First Corps, ain't you?" he asked, with an effort at an ingratiating tone.

The man nodded his head in indifferent assent. He seemed to be listening intently to the sounds of battle in the air. These were reduced now to faint, far-away cracklings of rifle-firing, as if only distant sharpshooters were engaged.

"Suppose this is about the first time you've been under fire, then," Lafe remarked. He added, with a bragging air: "I was all through the Payne's Farm and Mine Run racket last November! That was hot enough, I tell you!"

The man made that inarticulate grunt of contempt which we try to convey by the word humph! "So was I," he growled, "and plenty more fights worse than them."

"Oh, got your discharge and 'listed again?" commented the boy.

Again the stranger turned upon him that steady, dull stare of inquiry--like the gaze of a vicious ox. He seemed satisfied at length with the artlessness of Lafe's countenance, but did not trouble himself to answer his suggestion.

"What do you figure on doin' with yourself?" he abruptly asked the boy, after a pause.

"How do I know?" retorted Lafe. "I'd try and join brigade headquarters, if I knew where they were, but I don't. The next best thing is to try and find some other brigade's headquarters. It's all clear enough outside here now. I guess I'll take some bread with me, and make a break through the woods down the run there. I'll fetch up somewhere, all right."

He bent over the pile of knapsacks, as if to pick one of them up.

"No," the man called out. "Leave 'em alone! You can't take no more of them rations, and you can't go down the run. You can't go anywhere."

Lafe straightened himself. "Why not?" he asked, with an assumption of boldness.

"Because you can't," the other retorted curtly.

"What can I do, then?" Lafe inquired defiantly.

The man looked him over. "You can turn up your toes to the daisies in about another minute, if you don't mind your own business. That's what you can do," he remarked, with an ugly frown.

"What's the use of talking that way?" said Lafe. "I haven't done you any harm, have I?"

"No--and you ain't going to, either," was the reply.

The stranger, as he spoke, took a two-barrelled pistol from his inside jacket-pocket. It was a beautiful weapon, ornamented with a good deal of chased silver. Lafe had seen pistols like this before, in the possession of officers, and knew that they were called Derringers. Private soldiers were not likely to carry weapons of that sort.

He was sure that this man must have stolen the pistol, and the conviction did not assist Lafe to calmness, as he observed the man push one of the hammers back with his thumb to full-cock. It is as bad to be shot by stolen firearms as by those which have been bought and paid for.

The stranger drew from another pocket a gold watch, with a long loop of broad black silk braid hanging from its ring. He held it in the palm of his free hand, and glanced at its open face.

"It must be getting along toward noon," Lafe had the temerity to remark. There were cold shivers through his veins, but he managed to keep his tongue steady. If "cheek" could not help him, nothing could.

"About as nigh noon as you're ever likely to git," said the other, making a pretence of again consulting the watch.

Instinct told the lad with a flashlight swiftness that this looking at the watch was buncombe. Men who really meant to kill did not parade timepieces like that.

"I haven't got anything on me that would be of any use to you," he said, with an immense effort at unconcern. "Even if I had, you wouldn't need a gun to take it away from me."

"You've got a mouth on you," said the man, eying him, "and it'll be of use to me to shut it up."

He lifted the pistol as he spoke, and Lafe instinctively closed his eyes, with a confused rush of thoughts in which he seemed to see his old mother sitting in the garden with the Book on her knees, and also the young Ohio officer, who somehow came in among the tall flowers beside her, and these flowers themselves were the regimental flags which the color-sergeant was unfurling.

Then, as nothing happened, the boy opened his eyes again, and found himself able to look into the two black disks of the Derringer's muzzle without flinching.

He could even look beyond the muzzle, as the barrels sloped downward toward him, and he now saw distinctly that the two little upright steel nipples bore no caps. The discovery made him annoyed at his own cowardice. It was easier now to be bold.

"What's your idea, anyway?" he asked the man, with an added effrontery in his tone. "If you'd been going to shoot, you'd have done it long ago. This thing doesn't scare me at all, and I don't see how it does you any good. What are you getting at, anyhow?"

"I'd as soon shoot you as look at you!" the other declared with angry emphasis, but lowering the weapon.

"Yes, but seeing you ain't going to shoot, what are you going to do?" Lafe put in.

The ruffian eyed him again. "If I agree not to hurt you, will you do what I tell you?" he demanded.

"Well, maybe I will," replied the boy. His spirits rose as his contempt for this slow and shilly-shallying sort of scoundrel increased. "What is it you want me to do?"

"I want you to help me carry some things I've got together over there, on the other side of the creek. Well go over now, and bring 'em back here."

"I'll take another bite of bread, first," it occurred to the boy to say. He lifted a haversack, and shoved in one hand to burrow among its contents, while with his foot, as if by accident, he pushed one of the muskets lengthwise so that he might grab it the more readily if occasion required.

Biting in leisurely fashion on the new crust he had found, Lafe felt emboldened to make the conversation personal.

"That's a mighty fine watch you've got there," he remarked, affably. "I suppose it went with the pistol--sort o' thrown in, like."

The man put the watch back into his trousers pocket. He seemed for a moment disposed to annoyance. Then the furtive, mean grin curled over the lower part of his face. "Yes--it was thrown in," he replied, almost with a chuckle. "Come on," he added. "You can chew that bread as you go along."

"But what am I to get?" the boy queried, slowly turning the crust over to select a place for the next bite. "Do I come in for any watches and silver-mounted Derringers, too?"

"You jest help me for all you're worth," replied the man, after a moment's pause, "and I'll see to it you git something worth your while."

"It's got to be something pretty good," said Lafe, meditatively chewing on the hard bread. "A fellow can't be expected to risk the chance of being shot for nothing."

"There ain't no danger of gittin' shot," the other replied.

"Well, hung, then," Lafe said impudently.

"What's that you say?" the man growled, with reawakened suspicion. "Who said anything about hangin'? What kind o' nonsense are you talkin', anyway?"

It might be a desperately foolish thing to do, but Lafe could not hold himself from doing it--and for that matter didn't try.

"Why, they hang men caught robbing the dead on battle-fields, don't they--specially when they're bounty-jumpers to begin with?"

He had called this out as swiftly as he could, holding himself in readiness as he spoke, and now he pounced downward, and clutching the musket, lifted it for defence.

The man sprang forward with a quicker motion than the boy had counted upon, and before Lafe had got erect he felt the stifling grasp of big, hard fingers around his throat.