Again wondering a little, Dad left the tent and made his way hurriedly down the camp street to his own company’s quarters.
There it was the work of two minutes to make his soldierly preparations for the trip.
Then, with nothing to do but to await the arrival of the expected horse, he filled and lighted a pipe, sat down on a roll of blankets in the tent doorway, and with a stick fell to tracing in the dirt a line of his proposed route, that each step of the way might thereafter be fresh in his mind as he started on his errand.
This act of concentration was by no means easy, for a half score of lounging infantrymen were lying on the grass near by, smoking and talking over the events of the preceding day’s battle.
Realizing that a soldier in the ranks knows far less about the actual actions and effects of a battle in which he has just been engaged than does the non-combatant stay-at-home who reads a telegraphed account of it next day in his morning newspaper, Dad gave no particular heed to their frankly voiced conjectures and boasts.
Presently, as they were discussing a certain disastrous attempt to rally a retreating regiment, he heard a newly joined member of his company—who formerly had fought in the army of the West—break loudly in upon the group’s debating:
“Talk of rallying! We ought to have had Battle Jimmie along. He’d have drummed that whole skedaddling regiment to a halt in less than no time; and then he’d have led ’em back to the firing-line, blackguarding them for a rabble of cowards every step of the way.”
“What’s Battle Jimmie?” drawled a lank New Englander. “That’s a new name to me. What is it—a dog or a bird or a patent medicine?”
“Don’t know who Battle Jimmie is?” cried the Westerner in scornful incredulity. “Next you’ll be askin’ who’s Little Mac or Father Abraham or Fightin’ Joe.”
“Maybe I will at that,” answered the New Englander. “But who the dickens is—”