CHAPTER XXXII. JACK’S DIPLOMACY--HIS RETURN TO CAMP--A NEW MOVE.
|General Curtis remained a few days in the camp near where the battlewas fought, and then, as the country around was exhausted of supplies,he drew back a few miles to Keitsville, Missouri; but not until he hadpositively ascertained that the rebel army had retired to Fort Smith andVan Buren, on the line of the Arkansas river.
A day or two after the battle negotiations were begun for an exchange ofprisoners. Both the commanders were favorable to the exchange, as theywere so hard pressed for supplies that the prisoners on their hands wereburdensome in the way of devouring rations, and, besides, they requireda strong guard to hold them securely. Each side wanted its men backunder their own colors, and as the number of prisoners was about equalthe exchange was speedily arranged.
Colonel Hebart, of the Third Louisiana, was a prisoner in GeneralCurtis’s hands, and was traded off for Colonel Herron, and each armythus secured the return of an honored officer. There was some delayin arranging the exchange of the men of the rank and file, and inconsequence of this it looked as though Jack would have to remain behindwhen Colonel Herron started from Van Buren for the Union camp.
Jack was equal to the emergency, and when he learned that the colonelhad been exchanged and was to start on the following morning, he deviseda plan, which he unfolded as follows to his friend, the rebel captain,already-mentioned:
“It’s clear the colonel can’t walk or can’t ride on horseback. He’s gotto be carried in an ambulance or a wagon.”
The captain admitted that this was the case.
“He’s to go in an ambulance,” said the captain, “and I’m to accompanyhim on horseback. Dr. ------ will go along, too, to take care of thecolonel’s leg.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Jack; “but who’ll drive the ambulance?”
“One of the drivers, I suppose,” replied the captain.
“Now, there’s just where I can come in,” said the persistent youth.
“How so?”
“Why, don’t you see, Captain? Let me drive the ambulance. I can do itjust as well as anybody else.”
The officer shook his head with an emphasis that indicated the proposalto be something quite out of the ordinary run of things, and not to beentertained. But Jack was not to be put off thus.
“I ask it as a great favor, Captain,” said he, “and I ‘ll be sure toreturn it with interest one of these days. Let me drive the ambulance,and when it gets to our lines we ‘ll have one of your men drive it back,and it will bring some wounded officer along, if there’s one to bring.It will be in your charge and protected by the flag of truce, and you‘ll save having one of your drivers go up to our camp and back again.”
Viewed in this light, the proposal did not seem so very far out of theway, and as it met the wishes of Colonel Herron, who was highly popularamong the rebel officers with whom he had been brought in contact byreason of his amiability and courtesy of manner, the matter was speedilyarranged. The ambulance started at the time appointed, and Jack handledthe reins as though he had been bred to the business and intended to beat the head of it before very long. The fact is, no great handling wasnecessary, as the horses were not at all fiery in their natures, and hadbeen very much reduced in flesh by the experiences of the campaign.
There were no adventures of consequence on the journey, the presence ofthe captain and the white flag that fluttered in front of the vehiclebeing sufficient to protect it from any kind of molestation. The colonelsuffered considerably with the jolting of the ambulance, and more thanonce he half wished he had remained in captivity long enough to allowthe wound to heal. But, on the other hand, he was elated at the prospectof soon being among his own friends, and you can be sure he was receivedwith open arms by his fellow-officers.
As for Jack, he was a person of great consequence when he returned tocamp and told the story of his adventures among the rebels. His firstthought was for Harry, whom he hunted up with the least possible delay.In fact, the two youths were hunting for each other, as Harry had heardof Jack’s return with Colonel Herron from a soldier who had seen theflag of truce on its way to the headquarters of General Curtis andrecognized Jack as the driver of the vehicle.
Leave of absence was granted to Colonel Herron, and he returned to St.Louis and thence to his home in Iowa, where he remained until he wasrestored to health. As soon as he could do so he went into activeservice again, and long before the end of the war his uniform wasadorned with the double stars of a major-general. But he never forgothis experiences in captivity after Pea Ridge, nor the devotion of Jackthrough all those days of suffering.
Jack offered to go with him as far as Rolla, or even to Iowa, if hedesired; but as the colonel had his own servant with him, and was to beaccompanied by one of the newspaper correspondents, who was returning toSt. Louis, he declined the offer, as he readily divined that theyouth had no desire to go home just then. In spite of their numerousexperiences, both Harry and Jack thirsted for more, their appetiteshaving been sharpened rather than dulled by what they had gone through.
“Wonder what we ‘ll do now?” said Harry one morning as they werestrolling about the camp.
“That’s for the general to say,” replied Jack, “and the most we can doon the subject is to guess.”
“Well, here’s for a guess,” said Harry, and the pair sat down for acouncil of war on their own account.
“From several things that were dropped in my hearing,” said Jack, “whileI was at Van Buren, I should n’t wonder if the most of Van Dorn’s armywas sent off to the east of the Mississippi to join the rebel forces inTennessee. This will leave Arkansas with no army large enough to opposeus, and so we can go where we please.”
“That may be so,” said Harry, musingly; “but where’s all our supplies tocome from? We’re a long way from Rolla now, and if we get down into theinterior of Arkansas we ‘ll be farther still. We ‘ll have to live on thecountry, and must do as the rebels do. We ‘ll get along without tea andcoffee and other luxuries, and settle down to corn-bread and bacon. Butbefore we start we’ve got to replenish our stores of ammunition, andmake up for what was consumed at Pea Ridge. In my opinion that’s whatthe general is waiting for, and we sha’n’t get orders to march untileverything is ready. It won’t do to go down into the middle of Arkansaswithout being ‘well heeled,’ as they say in this part of the country.”
“Yes, but where do you think we ‘ll go when we start?” queried Jack.
“We ‘ll go for the capital of the state, and I ‘ll bet on it,” saidHarry. “When we have taken Little Rock we shall virtually have the Statein our possession, and that will be a blow to the rebels. Of course,there ‘ll be parts of it still in their hands, but the possession of thecapital is a strong point on our side.”
The youths mentioned their belief to some of their comrades, and thelatter repeated it to others. The story grew with each repetition, andby the end of the day it was currently reported throughout the camp thatthe army was about to advance on Little Rock, and was only waiting forsupplies and reinforcements. Inasmuch as that was the objective pointthat General Curtis then had in view, he was naturally puzzled to knowhow the story arose when it was reported to him. Careful and closeinquiry traced it to Harry and Jack, who promptly acknowledged theirauthority to be nothing more nor less than guesswork.
There was a vast amount of this amateur generalship during the war, andit was by no means confined to the men in the field. Every cross-roadsgrocery, and every place, in fact, where men assembled to the numberof half a dozen or more, was a center of strategy, in which campaignsinnumerable were laid out and battles without number were fought, andalways won by the side on which the sympathies of the strategists wereenlisted. There was hardly an editor of a newspaper who did not feelhimself fully competent to direct the generals in the field how toconduct their campaigns, and if all the editorial advice and criticismof the war could be gathered and printed in a book, it would formprobably the largest, and und
oubtedly the heaviest, volume ever known.
It was no more than natural that the soldiers in the field should puttheir brains at work to discover what moves were intended, and veryoften the generals were obliged to use a good deal of deception toprevent the premature working-out of their plans. Some of the generalslost their temper whenever they learned that any one besides themselveshad been thus using his brains, but the majority of them took itgood-naturedly, and regarded it as the evident outcome of an army drawnfrom the intelligent population of the North. General Curtis was one ofthose men of broad views, and he had a hearty laugh to himself when hefound that the camp rumor was founded upon the amateur strategy of thoseenterprising youths, Jack and Harry.
“By the way,” said Jack to Harry, “do you know what the difference isbetween strategy and tactics?”
“I can’t say exactly,” was the embarrassed reply; “only I think strategyis a good deal bigger than tactics, and means more.”
“There’s one more syllable in it, anyhow,” said Jack; “but that doesn’ttell the whole story. Here comes Mr. Fayel, the correspondent of theMissouri _Democrat_; lets ask him.”
Harry agreed to it, so the momentous question was propounded to thegood-natured gentleman, who had been with the army since its departurefrom Springfield.
“Harry was right,” said Mr. Fayel, “when he thought strategy was larger,and included more than tactics. Strategy is the art of moving armiesthrough a country and conducting a military campaign. It is the scienceof military command, or the science of directing great movements. Onthe other hand, tactics is the science of disposing military and navalforces in order of battle and performing military and naval evolutions.It was strategy to bring the army here from Rolla, and to fall back tothe position on Sugar Creek and get everything in shape for fighting.The general showed his tactics in handling the troops on thebattlefield, and by winning the fight he showed himself a successfultactician.”
“Ever so much obliged to you for the explanation,” said Harry, to whichJack added his vote of obligation.
Harry was about to ask another question, but was interrupted bythe sudden arrival of an orderly, who said the youths were wantedimmediately at General Vandever’s tent.
Wondering what the sudden summons could mean, they started at once toobey it.