CAPTAIN DINGFIELD'S STRATEGY

The officer at the head of the approaching force, wounded in the head and arm, could be no other than Captain Dingfield; but there was no one present who knew anything about the brief action in which the commander of the Texan force had been defeated, and from which he had made a very hasty retreat. Major Lyon had sent Captain Gordon with half his company in pursuit of the fleeing enemy; the passage of both the pursuers and the pursued across the east road had been reported by the scouts at the cross-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 the approach of the second detachment of the enemy. The action was in progress in a broad, open space in the road, where the trees had been cut off from the land; and the ground occupied was partly in this field. He could readily determine that Belthorpe had chosen this place for the action because it presented more open space.

Doubtless his scouts had reported to him the approach of the first section of the enemy, and he had concealed his force in the grove to which Deck had retreated to observe the movements of both parties in the conflict. But he thought the lieutenant had made a mistake in delaying his attack until the detachment of the enemy had advanced too far, and he had thrown his men upon the rear instead of the flank.

The lieutenant had less than fifty men, and the enemy fought with desperate courage and determination. But his men were fresh; for they had been moving leisurely about in quest of the foe, and had been resting a short time in the grove, while the Rangers had ridden a long distance. The arrival of the rest of their company would throw all the advantage, 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 continued under 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 to the ground a trooper, when he heard the voice of Deck. He had not seen him before, and was not aware of his presence. He concluded on the instant that the son of the major was the bearer of an order from his father; and he knew the young man well enough to understand that he would not call him at such a time on an unimportant matter, and he rode towards 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 and fury 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 are beaten if you don't get out of it!"

"I don't understand you, Deck," replied the officer, glancing at his men still 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!" repeated Deck, speaking as clearly as though he had been reading his piece in school.

"Where do they come from?" demanded Tom, as he looked back in the direction indicated by the sabre of his friend, and they were the best of friends.

"I don't know anything at all about it," answered Deck impatiently.

The fresh troopers of the lieutenant's command were driving the enemy before them by the vigorous fighting they had put into the attack, and they were somewhat superior in numbers. By the time Deck had given his warning the enemy had been forced back to the point where the wagon had emerged from the fields and woods. The lieutenant was obviously very unwilling to give an order to retreat when victory was almost within his grasp. It was the first action in which he had been engaged, and his pride as a soldier was implicated.

Tom looked again at the approaching re-enforcement of the enemy; and then very reluctantly he summoned the bugler, and ordered him to sound the call, "To the rear." It was given in the quickest of time; and the faces of the troopers indicated their astonishment and chagrin at the nature of the call, when victory was only a question of minutes.

The men fell back; but the enemy were not disposed to follow them, and perhaps believed they had gained a victory. They were facing down the road, and they could not help seeing that a re-enforcement for their side was approaching. The lieutenant in command reformed his men, but he did not order them to charge upon their retiring foe.

"I don't understand this business, Deck," said Tom Belthorpe, when he realized that the officer in command of the enemy did not intend to pursue 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 I advise you to retreat towards the railroad, if you will excuse me for saying so."

The lieutenant gave the order for his men to retire in the direction indicated, and the officer and Deck followed them.

"We were within two minutes of a victory, Deck," said Lieutenant Belthorpe, still panting with the exertion he had put forth in the combat.

"But you would have lost it, and had the tables turned on you two minutes later," replied Deck.

"What next?" asked the officer, who, in his inability to understand the situation, was perplexed and baffled. "I don't feel like running away just as we were whipping those Texans."

"But it is easier to run away before you have been whipped yourself than it would be afterwards. I should judge that the force approaching is the other half of the Rangers' company. There they come," added Deck, as the furious riders seen in the distance halted in the road near where the bridge-burners had proposed to camp for the night.

Without consulting his friend and companion in regard to the expediency of doing so, the lieutenant gave the order for his platoon to halt at the moment when they had encircled one of the knolls so common in that region. He and Deck were in the rear; and though the men could not see the 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 presence of Private Deck Lyon.

"They have halted, and there is no occasion to run away just yet; but it is best to take the bull by the horns before he gores you," added the private. "I think we had better rest under that big tree, and keep out of sight till you get a better idea of this thing, Lieutenant."

The suggestion was adopted, and they rode to a position under the tree where they could see without being seen.

"They have come together, and they don't seem to know where they are any better than we do," said the lieutenant. "I should say they had had a hard ride by the looks of their horses;" and the officer had looked at the reunited company through a small opera-glass he carried in his pocket, though the distance was hardly more than five hundred feet.

"Hold on a minute, Tom!" exclaimed Deck, as he slid from his horse, and fastened 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 that I can give you reliable information," answered Deck. "But I obey your orders; and, if you tell me not to go, of course I shall not."

"Do as you think best, Deck," replied the lieutenant, who found it difficult 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 not betray him. He had looked the ground over before that day, and knew where he was locally, though he was ignorant of the positions of the several bodies of troopers other than those before his eyes. He was on the border of the grove, consisting of large trees, rather far apart. He got behind the trunk of one of these, and then picked his way from one to another, till he was within thirty feet of the officers in command of the company.

The lieutenant of the platoon which had done the fighting had ridden away from his command a short distance; and when Deck first saw him he was peering into the region between the railroad and the road, doubtless anxious to ascertain what had become of the force with which he had just been engaged. The man with his head tied up and his arm in a sling called upon a sergeant to rearrange the bandage on his head; and he had just completed his task when Deck reached the shelter of the tree he had selected. The wounded officer, for such his uniform and shoulder-straps indicated 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 the company, though Deck had never heard his name before.

"So there was, Captain Dingfield; and a very sharp one at that," replied Lieutenant Redway. "But we defeated the enemy, whipped them out of their boots, and they fled like a flock of frightened sheep down that opening;" and the reporter of this information pointed in the direction in which Tom's command had retired.

"If the Father of Lies, who is always swinging his caudal appendage over the world in search of the biggest liars, should come here for one, where could Captain Dingfield hide you, Lieutenant Redway?" said Deck to himself; for it would not have been prudent to say it out loud.

"Why didn't you follow them up?" demanded the captain, with some indignation in his tones and manner.

"Because you were in sight with the rest of the company; and I deemed it my duty to wait for orders, especially as you had sent me directions to hurry forward the bridge brigade," replied the lieutenant.

"But I am closely pursued by a force in the rear; and it cannot be far behind me by this time. How large was the detachment you fought, Redway?" asked the captain, looking behind him at the road, as though he believed 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 not doing 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 could hear them very distinctly. The conversation was exceedingly interesting to 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 have hardly forty men left, while the Yankees will have a full company when the detachment behind me comes up," added the captain, who was evidently in a contemplative mood. "The force you whipped must be at no great distance from this road."

"I think they will keep on running for the next three miles," said Redway. "I went up the road to look for them, but I could see nothing of them."

"But we shall be outnumbered if we let the two parts of this company come together. I have found that they fight like Texans. If we meet the whole of them together, we shall be whipped, as Makepeace was. There is only one thing to do. Form the whole company in column by fours, and we must 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; and he felt that he had not lost his time in carrying out the plan he had suggested. But it would be safer for him to retreat in five minutes more than at that moment. He looked on while the Rangers formed, and saw them march on their present mission. He had not a very high opinion of the strategy of Captain Dingfield; and if his subordinate officer had given him correct information, perhaps he would have adopted a different course.

The Rangers could no longer see him, and he broke into a run as soon as they had gone. He found everything as he had left it, and he proceeded to report his intelligence to Lieutenant Belthorpe.