He was hardly fair to himself in his sharp self-upbraiding. To run had been the Grizzly’s own command, and he had obeyed implicitly. He began to take a little comfort. Perhaps they had only missed one another in the dark. Perhaps the Grizzly was even now in safety, waiting opportunity to make a dash for the Confederate lines. He would go on. Then again the cruel thought, ‘What if he be a captive while I am free?’ ‘Go on and save yourself, at all events,’ whispered self-preservation. ‘It is what he himself would have you do.’
‘And just because it is what he would have me do,’ answered the spirit of manliness in the boy’s breast, ‘I will not do it. I will go back and find him, if I have to march right into the Federal camp.’
He was almost beside himself with pain and grief, but the one idea took possession of him, and in his brain the words repeated themselves over and over again: ‘Go back and find him! Go back and find him!’
‘Oh, if I had but a gun!’ he sighed, ‘I would make somebody pay for this.’
His hands struck against his cartridge belt. ‘Pah!’ he said in disgust, opening the pouch. ‘What is the use of you without a gun?’ Then a gasp of astonishment escaped him. His fingers, idly groping in the pouch, had encountered a piece of folded paper—two pieces.
For a moment he could not understand it, and then the meaning flashed across him, and everything became clear. In the dark of the cave he had picked up and assumed Ephraim’s belt instead of his own. The papers were General Shields’s despatch to General Frémont, and the written order to Colonel Spriggs regarding the escaped prisoners.
Luce’s first feeling was one of joy that, even if the Grizzly were taken, at all events nothing compromising would be found upon him. His second, a wild impulse to fling away the despatch, and rid himself of its dangerous companionship. But something restrained him in the very act, and the thought crossed him: ‘The fate of an army may depend upon that paper, and that army your own. You must carry it to General Jackson.’
Poor Lucius! He was on the horns of a dreadful dilemma. If he were caught with that paper upon him, it would be short shrift, he knew, and few questions asked. Yet if he did not deliver it, the consequences to the Confederates might be fearfully disastrous. And yet again, if he did attempt to carry it through, he must turn his back upon his friend, presuming him to be a prisoner, and after the thoughts of self-preservation in which he had indulged, how could he do that without laying himself open to the charge of grasping an excuse to ensure his own safety by an attempt to reach the Confederate lines?