“Dad!” screamed Jimmie, the smoke-mists gouged out of his eyes and his gaze for the first time resting on the stern, loving old face above him.
“Dad!” he repeated, his short arms clasping the veteran convulsively about the waist. “Oh, Dad, it’s--it’s--_you_!”
“Jimmie, dear lad,” broke in his grandfather, “joy can wait, but trouble can’t. Sound that recall!”
“I’d play ‘Dixie’ or the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ if you ordered it,” he said adoringly, and the roll of the “Recall” cracked out.
Again and again he played it until the pursuing Federals heard it and obeyed; halted and turned back to their duty.
Meantime, Dad was saying to his grandson: “Maybe you think we’ve won a little victory. We have. Maybe you think the retreat of those Confeds was our victory. It wasn’t. The victory was our getting these guns of theirs, especially that big swivel-gun.
“If we can save every cannon used here and get them all safe back to our own lines, that’ll spell victory. Not the fact that one crowd made another crowd run away.
“In war the victor isn’t the fellow who chases the other fellow. He’s the man who is able to grab the weapons and provisions and ammunition that make the other fellow dangerous. We can’t buy batteries and guns like these for less than a fortune, and the Confederates can’t replace them at any price.
“That’s how we harm them more than if we killed fifty thousand of them. That’s why I told you to sound the recall.”
“I--I see,” admitted Jimmie shamefacedly. “They’re beginning to come back now. Gee, if a party of Confeds had flanked us and run off the guns while I was refusing to sound the recall, I’d ’a’ wanted to shoot myself.”
“That’s all right, sonny. A man often has to stop to revise his list of the world’s great men and give himself a lower place in it. It’s lucky for him if his blunder’s no worse than yours in telling an old fool--”
“Dad! You know blamed well. I’d ’a’ bit my tongue out sooner’n have called you that if I’d known it was _you_ had a hold of me.”
“No hard feelings, son. No hard feelings _ever_ between you and me. Only--you saw I was old. I was fairly certain to be someone’s dad or granddad. Someone wouldn’t relish hearing his dad or granddad called an ‘old fool’ any more than you would. Maybe it’d be well to remember that.”