by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER XXIV
CAPTAIN DINGFIELD'S STRATEGY
The officer at the head of the approaching force, wounded in the headand arm, could be no other than Captain Dingfield; but there was no onepresent who knew anything about the brief action in which the commanderof the Texan force had been defeated, and from which he had made a veryhasty retreat. Major Lyon had sent Captain Gordon with half his companyin pursuit of the fleeing enemy; the passage of both the pursuers andthe pursued across the east road had been reported by the scouts at thecross-roads.
Deck had not been able to force his way into the thickest of the fight;and, being near the side of the road, he was the first to discover theapproach of the second detachment of the enemy. The action was inprogress in a broad, open space in the road, where the trees had beencut off from the land; and the ground occupied was partly in thisfield. He could readily determine that Belthorpe had chosen this placefor the action because it presented more open space.
Doubtless his scouts had reported to him the approach of the firstsection of the enemy, and he had concealed his force in the grove towhich Deck had retreated to observe the movements of both parties in theconflict. But he thought the lieutenant had made a mistake in delayinghis attack until the detachment of the enemy had advanced too far, andhe had thrown his men upon the rear instead of the flank.
The lieutenant had less than fifty men, and the enemy fought withdesperate courage and determination. But his men were fresh; for theyhad been moving leisurely about in quest of the foe, and had beenresting a short time in the grove, while the Rangers had ridden a longdistance. The arrival of the rest of their company would throw all theadvantage, both in position and numbers, over to the side of the enemy;and Deck saw in an instant that the battle would be lost if it continuedunder these unfavorable circumstances.
"Lieutenant!" he shouted, flourishing his sabre to attract attention,when he had approached as near as he could to the officer.
Tom Belthorpe was using his sabre vigorously, and he had just smote tothe ground a trooper, when he heard the voice of Deck. He had not seenhim before, and was not aware of his presence. He concluded on theinstant that the son of the major was the bearer of an order from hisfather; and he knew the young man well enough to understand that hewould not call him at such a time on an unimportant matter, and he rodetowards him.
"What is it, Deck?" he demanded, full of the excitement of the conflict.
"Yon are flanked and outnumbered!" shouted Deck; though in the noise andfury of the action no one but the lieutenant heard or noticed his call."There is another detachment of the Rangers coming up the road. You arebeaten if you don't get out of it!"
"I don't understand you, Deck," replied the officer, glancing at his menstill engaged in the furious strife.
"There is a force of the enemy of at least fifty men coming up the road,and in three minutes more they will fall upon your rear!" repeatedDeck, speaking as clearly as though he had been reading his piece inschool.
"Where do they come from?" demanded Tom, as he looked back in thedirection indicated by the sabre of his friend, and they were the bestof friends.
"I don't know anything at all about it," answered Deck impatiently.
The fresh troopers of the lieutenant's command were driving the enemybefore them by the vigorous fighting they had put into the attack, andthey were somewhat superior in numbers. By the time Deck had given hiswarning the enemy had been forced back to the point where the wagon hademerged from the fields and woods. The lieutenant was obviously veryunwilling to give an order to retreat when victory was almost within hisgrasp. It was the first action in which he had been engaged, and hispride as a soldier was implicated.
Tom looked again at the approaching re-enforcement of the enemy; andthen very reluctantly he summoned the bugler, and ordered him to soundthe call, "To the rear." It was given in the quickest of time; and thefaces of the troopers indicated their astonishment and chagrin at thenature of the call, when victory was only a question of minutes.
The men fell back; but the enemy were not disposed to follow them, andperhaps believed they had gained a victory. They were facing down theroad, and they could not help seeing that a re-enforcement for theirside was approaching. The lieutenant in command reformed his men, but hedid not order them to charge upon their retiring foe.
"I don't understand this business, Deck," said Tom Belthorpe, when herealized that the officer in command of the enemy did not intend topursue him.
"I don't understand anything beyond what I can see with my own eyes,"replied Deck. "I have just come over this region in a wagon, and Iadvise you to retreat towards the railroad, if you will excuse me forsaying so."
The lieutenant gave the order for his men to retire in the directionindicated, and the officer and Deck followed them.
"We were within two minutes of a victory, Deck," said LieutenantBelthorpe, still panting with the exertion he had put forth in thecombat.
"But you would have lost it, and had the tables turned on you twominutes later," replied Deck.
"What next?" asked the officer, who, in his inability to understand thesituation, was perplexed and baffled. "I don't feel like running awayjust as we were whipping those Texans."
"But it is easier to run away before you have been whipped yourself thanit would be afterwards. I should judge that the force approaching is theother half of the Rangers' company. There they come," added Deck, as thefurious riders seen in the distance halted in the road near where thebridge-burners had proposed to camp for the night.
Without consulting his friend and companion in regard to the expediencyof doing so, the lieutenant gave the order for his platoon to halt atthe moment when they had encircled one of the knolls so common in thatregion. He and Deck were in the rear; and though the men could not seethe road, it was in full view from the position occupied by the officer.
"I am not feeling like doing any more running away just yet," said Tom,who was quite willing to forget that he was a lieutenant in the presenceof Private Deck Lyon.
"They have halted, and there is no occasion to run away just yet; but itis best to take the bull by the horns before he gores you," added theprivate. "I think we had better rest under that big tree, and keep outof sight till you get a better idea of this thing, Lieutenant."
The suggestion was adopted, and they rode to a position under the treewhere they could see without being seen.
"They have come together, and they don't seem to know where they are anybetter than we do," said the lieutenant. "I should say they had had ahard ride by the looks of their horses;" and the officer had looked atthe reunited company through a small opera-glass he carried in hispocket, though the distance was hardly more than five hundred feet.
"Hold on a minute, Tom!" exclaimed Deck, as he slid from his horse, andfastened him to a branch.
"What are you going to do now, Deck?" demanded the lieutenant.
"I am going up there to find out what is going on," replied the private,as he detached his sabre, and fastened it to his saddle.
"But you will be picked up," suggested Tom.
"If I am I will let you know; but I am determined to get posted, so thatI can give you reliable information," answered Deck. "But I obey yourorders; and, if you tell me not to go, of course I shall not."
"Do as you think best, Deck," replied the lieutenant, who found itdifficult to realize that he was the military superior of his friend.
Deck waited for nothing more. His carbine was still slung at his back;but he had provided that the clang of his sabre as he walked should notbetray him. He had looked the ground over before that day, and knewwhere he was locally, though he was ignorant of the positions of theseveral bodies of troopers other than those before his eyes. He was onthe border of the grove, consisting of large trees, rather far apart. Hegot behind the trunk of one of these, and then picked his way from oneto another, till he was within thirty feet of the officers in commandof the company.
The lieutenant of th
e platoon which had done the fighting had riddenaway from his command a short distance; and when Deck first saw him hewas peering into the region between the railroad and the road, doubtlessanxious to ascertain what had become of the force with which he had justbeen engaged. The man with his head tied up and his arm in a slingcalled upon a sergeant to rearrange the bandage on his head; and he hadjust completed his task when Deck reached the shelter of the tree he hadselected. The wounded officer, for such his uniform and shoulder-strapsindicated that he was, appeared to be ready for business.
"Where is Lieutenant Redway?" he demanded very impatiently.
"There he comes, Captain Dingfield," replied the sergeant at his side.
The lieutenant hurried up his jaded steed, and saluted his captain.
"I thought I saw a fight going on here," continued the commander of thecompany, though Deck had never heard his name before.
"So there was, Captain Dingfield; and a very sharp one at that," repliedLieutenant Redway. "But we defeated the enemy, whipped them out oftheir boots, and they fled like a flock of frightened sheep down thatopening;" and the reporter of this information pointed in the directionin which Tom's command had retired.
"If the Father of Lies, who is always swinging his caudal appendage overthe world in search of the biggest liars, should come here for one,where could Captain Dingfield hide you, Lieutenant Redway?" said Deck tohimself; for it would not have been prudent to say it out loud.
"Why didn't you follow them up?" demanded the captain, with someindignation in his tones and manner.
"Because you were in sight with the rest of the company; and I deemed itmy duty to wait for orders, especially as you had sent me directions tohurry forward the bridge brigade," replied the lieutenant.
"But I am closely pursued by a force in the rear; and it cannot be farbehind me by this time. How large was the detachment you fought,Redway?" asked the captain, looking behind him at the road, as though hebelieved his pursuers were close at hand.
"About the size of my command; fifty men, I should say."
"You ought to have wiped them out; and you have made a mess of it by notdoing so," added the captain.
The two officers had withdrawn from the immediate vicinity of their men,and chosen a place within twenty feet of Deck's tree, so that he couldhear them very distinctly. The conversation was exceedingly interestingto him, especially the fact in regard to the pursuing force.
"I acted upon my best judgment."
"I had a rough fight in the road, on my way to the bridge, and I havehardly forty men left, while the Yankees will have a full company whenthe detachment behind me comes up," added the captain, who was evidentlyin a contemplative mood. "The force you whipped must be at no greatdistance from this road."
"I think they will keep on running for the next three miles," saidRedway. "I went up the road to look for them, but I could see nothing ofthem."
"But we shall be outnumbered if we let the two parts of this companycome together. I have found that they fight like Texans. If we meet thewhole of them together, we shall be whipped, as Makepeace was. There isonly one thing to do. Form the whole company in column by fours, and wemust go back and beat our pursuers, before they get as far as this,"said Captain Dingfield, suddenly becoming very animated and energetic.
Deck concluded that the time had come for him to leave his retreat; andhe felt that he had not lost his time in carrying out the plan he hadsuggested. But it would be safer for him to retreat in five minutes morethan at that moment. He looked on while the Rangers formed, and saw themmarch on their present mission. He had not a very high opinion of thestrategy of Captain Dingfield; and if his subordinate officer had givenhim correct information, perhaps he would have adopted a differentcourse.
The Rangers could no longer see him, and he broke into a run as soon asthey had gone. He found everything as he had left it, and he proceededto report his intelligence to Lieutenant Belthorpe.