KILGARIFF HEARS NEWS
AS soon as Major Irby had possessed himself of the hospital and the region round about, he gave orders to throw out pickets a mile or so in every direction, in order to guard against surprise. He posted Kilgariff’s guns on a little hill, where their fire could sweep all of the roads over which an advance of the enemy was possible. Then he ordered the officer of the guard to post a strong line of sentinels around the house itself, which served as hospital, and to send a corporal’s guard into the building with orders to dispose themselves as Kilgariff might direct.
Kilgariff, who had stripped the chevrons off his sleeves, and sewed a captain’s three bars on his collar in obedience to General Early’s order, immediately entered the house and made his way to the separate room in which Campbell’s cot had been placed. Kilgariff turned to the corporal of the guard, and commanded:—
“Place two sentinels in that outer room. Order them to see to it that there is no eavesdropping. You understand?”
“Perfectly, Captain.”
There is this advantage about military over other arrangements, that they can be absolutely depended upon. The sentinel who has “orders” is an autocrat in their execution. He has no discretion. He enters into no argument. He parleys with nobody, whatever that somebody’s rank may be. He simply commands, “Halt”; and if the one advancing takes one other step, the sentinel fires a death shot at short range and with absolutely certain aim. Killing, on the part of a sentinel whose command of “Halt” is disregarded, is not only no crime in military law—it is a virtue, a simple discharge of peremptory duty. And the sentinel himself, if ordered to stand twenty feet away from a door, stands there, not encroaching upon the distance by so much as a foot, under pain of punishment “in the discretion of a court-martial,” as the military law phrases it.
So, when Kilgariff entered the room in which the man who had ruined his life lay wounded, in answer to that man’s summons, he knew that his conversation would be neither interrupted nor overheard in any word or syllable of it. The absoluteness of military law and practice forbade that, even as a possibility.
Kilgariff advanced to the man’s bedside, took his seat upon a camp stool, and without the remotest suggestion of a greeting in his voice or manner, abruptly said:—
“I am here. What do you want?”