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.”