FIGHTING JOE
“Guess?” echoed Dad, returning the general’s amused gaze with an
expression upon his own face of gross perplexity. “I--I don’t
understand, sir.”
General Hooker seemed to realize that his habitual, easy informality
toward his subordinates--for which they adored him and whereon none had
been known to presume--had gone well-nigh beyond bounds.
For he checked his laughter and, with a touch of authority in his big
voice, said:
“Make your report.”
Briefly Dad outlined the orders given him by his brigade commander, the
adventures he had undergone on the previous day, and the clever scout
work and hard riding which had marked the night stage of his journey.
Hooker listened with real interest; his eyes, under half-closed lids,
narrowly reading the speaker’s features. Yet when the short recital was
finished the mirth sprang back unbidden into the general’s tanned face.
“Sergeant Dadd,” he asked whimsically, “do you ever think?”
The odd question, tenfold more strange coming from a general officer to
an enlisted man, deepened Dad’s bewilderment.
“Think?” he repeated.
“Yes. Or do you prefer to be the supposedly model soldier who works like
a machine and who leaves to his superior officers the task of thinking?”
“When thinking can help,” answered Dad, “I suppose I do my share of it.
But I don’t let it interfere with the orders given me.”
“Did you happen to think when you were told to ride across nearly forty
miles of hostile country with these dispatches for me?” insisted the
general, the same quizzical look in his half-shut eyes.
“Frankly, sir,” returned Dad, “I did. I remember that I thought--”
“Well?” urged Hooker impatiently. “Out with it, man! If it wasn’t
complimentary to anyone in particular don’t be afraid to say so.”
“I thought, sir,” answered Dad, “that if those documents weren’t
all-important it was strange that a man’s life or freedom should be
risked in delivering them. And I thought if they _were_ all-important
there must be some safer and surer way of getting them to you than by
sending that same man through a region where there was barely one chance
in a dozen--in a score--of his being successful in reaching you.”
Hooker nodded approval.
“Good!” he vouchsafed. “And, wondering that, you still did all in your
power to win through safely?”
“I had orders, sir.”
“And you set out to obey them? Well, sergeant, you did not obey them.”
“The envelope--” began Dad.
“Is here. With its contents undisturbed. But it doesn’t belong here. By
this time it ought to be in Jackson’s hands. Perhaps even in Lee’s. You
still do not understand?”
Dad essayed to speak; then hesitated.
“You set down your general for a fool,” insisted Hooker. “Don’t deny it,
man. Well, he isn’t one. He hit on a wise scheme. The scheme he proposed
to me last week and which had my endorsement. These papers were
carefully made out--lists, maps, directions, and all. For the exclusive
benefit of--Jackson and Lee.
“Do some more thinking for a moment and then see if you can’t guess the
riddle.”
Dad had forestalled the command. Already his brain was hot on a trail of
conjecture. He recalled what his general had said of the chances against
the mission’s success, and of the unaccustomed care that same general
had taken in warning him to lose liberty rather than life should danger
threaten.
He fell to rehearsing what General Hooker had first said. And, bit by
bit, the truth came to him.
“You begin to understand?” asked General Hooker, reading his every
expression.
“I hope, sir,” returned Dad stiffly, his color rising, “that I am
mistaken in supposing that my commanding officer sent me into the
enemy’s country, expecting me to be captured. He said the chances
against my reaching you were ten to one, and even worse. But--”
“Ten to one?” mocked Hooker. “A hundred to one--that’s how much worse--a
thousand to one. Humanly speaking, there was _no_ chance that a Federal
courier--least of all a mounted courier--could get through. For forty
miles the whole country is alive with Confederates. A trained spy might
have hoped to do it; yes. In disguise and on foot and with three days to
make the trip. But a mounted man in uniform, with instructions to
hurry--there was no chance. Such a man could not possibly have avoided
capture. Yet you did.”
“The dispatches, then, that I have just now handed you--”
“The dispatches you just handed me are no longer worth the paper they’re
scrawled on. Yet, in the Confederates’ hands, they would have been worth
their weight in gold--no, diamonds--to _us_.”
“Then--”
“They were very carefully prepared--for the enemy. They are crammed with
vital and categorical misinformation of the most interesting kind as to
our movements, our numbers, our disposition. It is an old trick. But the
papers were so carefully prepared that, carried by a palpably honest
man--”
“I see, sir,” broke in Dad, a wave of honest hot wrath driving all
thought of discipline momentarily from his brain. “And I was the dupe.
The honest fool who would make a blundering effort to get through to
you and would honestly and vehemently resist capture; so that on my
dead or captured body the false information would be found. I catch the
idea.”
“A soldier’s duty,” began Hooker, “is to--”
“Is to obey orders. And in a war like this most soldiers enlisted
prepared to throw away their lives blithely for their endangered
country.
“I am no exception. If my commanding officer had told me what I was
expected to do those documents would be in General Jackson’s camp now,
and I would be on my way to the hell of a Southern war-prison. I am not
indignant at being used in this way for the good of my country, nor even
at being used as a catspaw. But I _am_ indignant at failing to serve the
cause through my very effort to succeed in doing it.
“If I have spoken too freely I ask your pardon, sir. But, if I may
suggest it, it would be better another time to tell me frankly what I am
supposed to do, or else to choose some less zealous man as dupe.”
Hooker, no whit offended by his subordinate’s unusual language, listened
patiently to the close of the angered outburst.
“What is that for?” he asked as Dad paused for breath.
And as he asked he pointed toward the courier’s left hip. Dad glanced
down, following the direction of the inquiring gesture.
Thrust through his belt was the naked sword Mrs. Sessions had given him.
Vaguely he remembered placing it there for safe keeping and to have it
out of his way, as he had ridden on after the four fleeing guerrillas
had galloped up the by-way. In the night’s stirring perils and need for
eternal watchfulness he had forgotten it.
Now, blushing like a schoolboy--his keen soldier-sense horrified by so
glaring an error in his equipment--more chagrined at the unpardonable
lapse than had he been caught going barefoot to a Presidential
review--shame swallowed his former resentment.
“I--I apologize, sir,” he said contritely, “for appearing in your
presence wearing a commissioned officer’s sword.”
“Where did you happen on it?”
“I lost my revolver. The sword was--was given me for self-defense at a
house where I hid when guerrillas were after me. I used it in getting
away again; then stuck it in my belt in case I should be attacked in
close quarters at some time during the night.”
“You need not apologize to me or to anyone,” said Hooker slowly, “from
this time on, for wearing a commissioned officer’s sword. Your
commission as first lieutenant of infantry will be signed by President
Lincoln as soon as my next courier goes to him. In the meantime you are
an acting-lieutenant.
“Keep the sword. I wish all newly commissioned officers had as good a
right to one as you have just shown yourself to possess.”
Dad’s head swam. He tried to stammer out halting phrases of gratitude.
Hooker cut him short with another brusk laugh.
“If we played a trick and you were chosen as the catspaw,” said he,
“you’ll at least bear witness that I know how to reward a catspaw whose
claws are as alert as yours. Go across to the staff mess and get some
breakfast. Then take a few hours of sleep. You look as if you could make
use of it.”
Dad saluted with the sword he had drawn and turned to go. Hooker
recalled him as he reached the threshold of the tent door.
“Lieutenant Dadd,” he said inquisitively, “do you chance to have been at
the Point?”
“No, sir. I am not a West Point man.”
“Were you ever an officer in the army?”
“You will not find the name, ‘James Dadd,’ on any army list, I am
afraid, sir,” answered the new-made lieutenant, shaking inwardly.
“H’m!” mused Hooker. “Probably not. Probably not. It’s no affair of mine
or of anyone’s. But don’t deny it too strenuously to other people who
may ask you--or, rather, if you don’t want them to ask you, don’t draw a
sword and salute with it as if you had handled such weapons for years.
“Infantry privates do not carry swords. And when they are first
promoted, they don’t handle them as you do. That is all. Good-by,
Lieutenant--Dadd.”