CAPTAIN DINGFIELD'S STRATEGY
The officer at the head of the approaching force, wounded in the head
and arm, could be no other than Captain Dingfield; but there was no one
present who knew anything about the brief action in which the commander
of the Texan force had been defeated, and from which he had made a very
hasty retreat. Major Lyon had sent Captain Gordon with half his company
in pursuit of the fleeing enemy; the passage of both the pursuers and
the pursued across the east road had been reported by the scouts at the
cross-roads.
Deck had not been able to force his way into the thickest of the fight;
and, being near the side of the road, he was the first to discover the
approach of the second detachment of the enemy. The action was in
progress in a broad, open space in the road, where the trees had been
cut off from the land; and the ground occupied was partly in this
field. He could readily determine that Belthorpe had chosen this place
for the action because it presented more open space.
Doubtless his scouts had reported to him the approach of the first
section of the enemy, and he had concealed his force in the grove to
which Deck had retreated to observe the movements of both parties in the
conflict. But he thought the lieutenant had made a mistake in delaying
his attack until the detachment of the enemy had advanced too far, and
he had thrown his men upon the rear instead of the flank.
The lieutenant had less than fifty men, and the enemy fought with
desperate courage and determination. But his men were fresh; for they
had been moving leisurely about in quest of the foe, and had been
resting a short time in the grove, while the Rangers had ridden a long
distance. The arrival of the rest of their company would throw all the
advantage, both in position and numbers, over to the side of the enemy;
and Deck saw in an instant that the battle would be lost if it continued
under these unfavorable circumstances.
"Lieutenant!" he shouted, flourishing his sabre to attract attention,
when he had approached as near as he could to the officer.
Tom Belthorpe was using his sabre vigorously, and he had just smote to
the ground a trooper, when he heard the voice of Deck. He had not seen
him before, and was not aware of his presence. He concluded on the
instant that the son of the major was the bearer of an order from his
father; and he knew the young man well enough to understand that he
would not call him at such a time on an unimportant matter, and he rode
towards him.
"What is it, Deck?" he demanded, full of the excitement of the conflict.
"Yon are flanked and outnumbered!" shouted Deck; though in the noise and
fury of the action no one but the lieutenant heard or noticed his call.
"There is another detachment of the Rangers coming up the road. You are
beaten if you don't get out of it!"
"I don't understand you, Deck," replied the officer, glancing at his men
still engaged in the furious strife.
"There is a force of the enemy of at least fifty men coming up the road,
and in three minutes more they will fall upon your rear!" repeated
Deck, speaking as clearly as though he had been reading his piece in
school.
"Where do they come from?" demanded Tom, as he looked back in the
direction indicated by the sabre of his friend, and they were the best
of friends.
"I don't know anything at all about it," answered Deck impatiently.
The fresh troopers of the lieutenant's command were driving the enemy
before them by the vigorous fighting they had put into the attack, and
they were somewhat superior in numbers. By the time Deck had given his
warning the enemy had been forced back to the point where the wagon had
emerged from the fields and woods. The lieutenant was obviously very
unwilling to give an order to retreat when victory was almost within his
grasp. It was the first action in which he had been engaged, and his
pride as a soldier was implicated.
Tom looked again at the approaching re-enforcement of the enemy; and
then very reluctantly he summoned the bugler, and ordered him to sound
the call, "To the rear." It was given in the quickest of time; and the
faces of the troopers indicated their astonishment and chagrin at the
nature of the call, when victory was only a question of minutes.
The men fell back; but the enemy were not disposed to follow them, and
perhaps believed they had gained a victory. They were facing down the
road, and they could not help seeing that a re-enforcement for their
side was approaching. The lieutenant in command reformed his men, but he
did not order them to charge upon their retiring foe.
"I don't understand this business, Deck," said Tom Belthorpe, when he
realized that the officer in command of the enemy did not intend to
pursue him.
"I don't understand anything beyond what I can see with my own eyes,"
replied Deck. "I have just come over this region in a wagon, and I
advise you to retreat towards the railroad, if you will excuse me for
saying so."
The lieutenant gave the order for his men to retire in the direction
indicated, and the officer and Deck followed them.
"We were within two minutes of a victory, Deck," said Lieutenant
Belthorpe, still panting with the exertion he had put forth in the
combat.
"But you would have lost it, and had the tables turned on you two
minutes later," replied Deck.
"What next?" asked the officer, who, in his inability to understand the
situation, was perplexed and baffled. "I don't feel like running away
just as we were whipping those Texans."
"But it is easier to run away before you have been whipped yourself than
it would be afterwards. I should judge that the force approaching is the
other half of the Rangers' company. There they come," added Deck, as the
furious riders seen in the distance halted in the road near where the
bridge-burners had proposed to camp for the night.
Without consulting his friend and companion in regard to the expediency
of doing so, the lieutenant gave the order for his platoon to halt at
the moment when they had encircled one of the knolls so common in that
region. He and Deck were in the rear; and though the men could not see
the road, it was in full view from the position occupied by the officer.
"I am not feeling like doing any more running away just yet," said Tom,
who was quite willing to forget that he was a lieutenant in the presence
of Private Deck Lyon.
"They have halted, and there is no occasion to run away just yet; but it
is best to take the bull by the horns before he gores you," added the
private. "I think we had better rest under that big tree, and keep out
of sight till you get a better idea of this thing, Lieutenant."
The suggestion was adopted, and they rode to a position under the tree
where they could see without being seen.
"They have come together, and they don't seem to know where they are any
better than we do," said the lieutenant. "I should say they had had a
hard ride by the looks of their horses;" and the officer had looked at
the reunited company through a small opera-glass he carried in his
pocket, though the distance was hardly more than five hundred feet.
"Hold on a minute, Tom!" exclaimed Deck, as he slid from his horse, and
fastened him to a branch.
"What are you going to do now, Deck?" demanded the lieutenant.
"I am going up there to find out what is going on," replied the private,
as he detached his sabre, and fastened it to his saddle.
"But you will be picked up," suggested Tom.
"If I am I will let you know; but I am determined to get posted, so that
I can give you reliable information," answered Deck. "But I obey your
orders; and, if you tell me not to go, of course I shall not."
"Do as you think best, Deck," replied the lieutenant, who found it
difficult to realize that he was the military superior of his friend.
Deck waited for nothing more. His carbine was still slung at his back;
but he had provided that the clang of his sabre as he walked should not
betray him. He had looked the ground over before that day, and knew
where he was locally, though he was ignorant of the positions of the
several bodies of troopers other than those before his eyes. He was on
the border of the grove, consisting of large trees, rather far apart. He
got behind the trunk of one of these, and then picked his way from one
to another, till he was within thirty feet of the officers in command
of the company.
The lieutenant of the platoon which had done the fighting had ridden
away from his command a short distance; and when Deck first saw him he
was peering into the region between the railroad and the road, doubtless
anxious to ascertain what had become of the force with which he had just
been engaged. The man with his head tied up and his arm in a sling
called upon a sergeant to rearrange the bandage on his head; and he had
just completed his task when Deck reached the shelter of the tree he had
selected. The wounded officer, for such his uniform and shoulder-straps
indicated that he was, appeared to be ready for business.
"Where is Lieutenant Redway?" he demanded very impatiently.
"There he comes, Captain Dingfield," replied the sergeant at his side.
The lieutenant hurried up his jaded steed, and saluted his captain.
"I thought I saw a fight going on here," continued the commander of the
company, though Deck had never heard his name before.
"So there was, Captain Dingfield; and a very sharp one at that," replied
Lieutenant Redway. "But we defeated the enemy, whipped them out of
their boots, and they fled like a flock of frightened sheep down that
opening;" and the reporter of this information pointed in the direction
in which Tom's command had retired.
"If the Father of Lies, who is always swinging his caudal appendage over
the world in search of the biggest liars, should come here for one,
where could Captain Dingfield hide you, Lieutenant Redway?" said Deck to
himself; for it would not have been prudent to say it out loud.
"Why didn't you follow them up?" demanded the captain, with some
indignation in his tones and manner.
"Because you were in sight with the rest of the company; and I deemed it
my duty to wait for orders, especially as you had sent me directions to
hurry forward the bridge brigade," replied the lieutenant.
"But I am closely pursued by a force in the rear; and it cannot be far
behind me by this time. How large was the detachment you fought,
Redway?" asked the captain, looking behind him at the road, as though he
believed his pursuers were close at hand.
"About the size of my command; fifty men, I should say."
"You ought to have wiped them out; and you have made a mess of it by not
doing so," added the captain.
The two officers had withdrawn from the immediate vicinity of their men,
and chosen a place within twenty feet of Deck's tree, so that he could
hear them very distinctly. The conversation was exceedingly interesting
to him, especially the fact in regard to the pursuing force.
"I acted upon my best judgment."
"I had a rough fight in the road, on my way to the bridge, and I have
hardly forty men left, while the Yankees will have a full company when
the detachment behind me comes up," added the captain, who was evidently
in a contemplative mood. "The force you whipped must be at no great
distance from this road."
"I think they will keep on running for the next three miles," said
Redway. "I went up the road to look for them, but I could see nothing of
them."
"But we shall be outnumbered if we let the two parts of this company
come together. I have found that they fight like Texans. If we meet the
whole of them together, we shall be whipped, as Makepeace was. There is
only one thing to do. Form the whole company in column by fours, and we
must go back and beat our pursuers, before they get as far as this,"
said Captain Dingfield, suddenly becoming very animated and energetic.
Deck concluded that the time had come for him to leave his retreat; and
he felt that he had not lost his time in carrying out the plan he had
suggested. But it would be safer for him to retreat in five minutes more
than at that moment. He looked on while the Rangers formed, and saw them
march on their present mission. He had not a very high opinion of the
strategy of Captain Dingfield; and if his subordinate officer had given
him correct information, perhaps he would have adopted a different
course.
The Rangers could no longer see him, and he broke into a run as soon as
they had gone. He found everything as he had left it, and he proceeded
to report his intelligence to Lieutenant Belthorpe.