“Jimmie, dear lad,” broke in his grandfather, “joy can wait, but trouble can’t. Sound that recall!”
Jimmie snatched up his drum.
“I’d play ‘Dixie’ or the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ if you ordered it,” he said adoringly, and the roll of the “Recall” cracked out.
Again and again he played it until the pursuing Federals heard it and obeyed; halted and turned back to their duty.
CHAPTER XVIII
“GENERAL” DAD
MEANTIME, Dad was saying to his grandson: “Maybe you think we’ve won a little victory. We have. Maybe you think the retreat of those Confeds was our victory. It wasn’t. The victory was our getting these guns of theirs, especially that big swivel-gun.
“If we can save every cannon used here and get them all safe back to our own lines, that’ll spell victory. Not the fact that one crowd made another crowd run away.
“In war the victor isn’t the fellow who chases the other fellow. He’s the man who is able to grab the weapons and provisions and ammunition that make the other fellow dangerous. We can’t buy batteries and guns like these for less than a fortune, and the Confederates can’t replace them at any price.
“That’s how we harm them more than if we killed fifty thousand of them. That’s why I told you to sound the recall.”
“I—I see,” admitted Jimmie shamefacedly. “They’re beginning to come back now. Gee, if a party of Confeds had flanked us and run off the guns while I was refusing to sound the recall, I’d ’a’ wanted to shoot myself.”