Then it was that Dad discovered Jimmie close at his side.
“I told you to wait—back there—for me to come back!” he panted.
“I couldn’t!” muttered Jimmie in the same short-of-breath tone. “Gimme his feet to carry—I want to help some way.”
Dad assented, and the limp weight was shifted between the two.
Bullets spatted the ground near them. One rifle-ball ripped through the wooden sides of Jimmie’s worshiped drum slung at the lad’s hip.
“Over to the right,” ordered Dad. “To that cottage over yonder. We can get him there, I guess. And then you can cut ahead and see if you can overhaul a company of our men to come back for us.”
A one-story stone hut stood some fifty yards distant; and thither they bore the injured man.
It was no longer a task of peril, for suddenly the firing had stopped from the now-beyond-range rooftops of the village.
Dad, as they reached the cottage porch, glanced back toward the town to learn the reason; pessimistically certain that the cessation of firing meant a detachment of Confederates had been detailed to capture them.
But a single look relieved his fears and explained the situation to him. The village was a-buzz with hurrying men. They were pouring out of houses and barns like ants from a hill in an excited swarm.