“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.