“The fourth time we tackled the hill we hadn’t any too much love for the job, and we began to waver and get unenthusiastic before we’ve gone a quarter of the distance. Then all of a sudden, skallyhootin’ out of nowhere, comes Battle Jimmie.
“He’s in a cast-off uniform miles too big for him, and he’s got hold of a drum somehow or other. And, say, boys, the noise he could tease out of that old drum was sure a caution to snakes.
“Right in front of our first rank he runs, hammerin’ away at that blessed drum; chargin’ up the hill ahead of us in a whole beehive of bullets and grape, yellin’: ‘Come along, you lazy coots! Shake a leg there! Don’t keep me waitin’ when I get to the top. I don’t want the bother of havin’ to clean out them Johnnie Reb batteries all by myself!’
“There was one great big laugh went up that was more like a cheer. It came roarin’ out from the whole line. We forgot to be discouraged any more, and up the hill we kited after that fool boy and his drum.
“We didn’t stop till we was over the breastworks and right in among the guns, and the Confeds was scramblin’ out the opposite side to get away. After that Battle Jimmie could have his pick of anythin’ the army of the West had in their whole camp--”
The arrival of a roan cavalry charger, led by an orderly, ended the narrative of Battle Jimmie, so far as Dad was concerned. His mind full of his mission, he had given little attention to it.
Now, swinging into the saddle, he set off at an easy canter.
Ahead of him lay an errand whose chances of success the general himself had estimated as one in ten. The prospect of such fearful odds sent a glad thrill of combat tingling warmly through the veteran.
“Jockeys have won races against bigger odds than that,” he mused joyously, “with only a purse as reward. It’ll go hard if I can’t do as well with the country’s fortunes maybe as my stake. I’ll win out, or--I won’t be alive to know I’m a failure.”
That did not mean he covered twenty straight-away miles of his journey. On the contrary, he lessened the distance between himself and Hooker’s headquarters by less than twelve miles.
Avoiding main roads as far as possible; reconnoitering and then making détours when danger seemed to threaten or when fresh hoof-marks denoted the recent passing of cavalrymen; going out of his way to take advantage of hillock-and-forest shelter--he had almost doubled the distance that would have been needful had he followed the direct route.