ONE OF THE MISSING

Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sherman’s army, then confronting the enemy at and about Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned his back upon a small group of officers with whom he had been talking in low tones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared in a forest.  None of the men in line behind the works had said a word to him, nor had he so much as nodded to them in passing, but all who saw understood that this brave man had been intrusted with some perilous duty.  Jerome Searing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks; he was detailed for service at division headquarters, being borne upon the rolls as an orderly.  “Orderly” is a word covering a multitude of duties.  An orderly may be a messenger, a clerk, an officer’s servant—­anything.  He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders and army regulations.  Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favor, upon accident.  Private Searing, an incomparable marksman, young, hardy, intelligent and insensible to fear, was a scout.  The general commanding his division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing what was in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, but formed a fraction of the line of the army; nor was he satisfied to receive his knowledge of his vis-a-vis through the customary channels; he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by the corps commander and the collisions of pickets and skirmishers.  Hence Jerome Searing, with his extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes, and truthful tongue.  On this occasion his instructions were simple:  to get as near the enemy’s lines as possible and learn all that he could.

In a few moments he had arrived at the picket-line, the men on duty there lying in groups of two and four behind little banks of earth scooped out of the slight depression in which they lay, their rifles protruding from the green boughs with which they had masked their small defenses.  The forest extended without a break toward the front, so solemn and silent that only by an effort of the imagination could it be conceived as populous with armed men, alert and vigilant—­a forest formidable with possibilities of battle.  Pausing a moment in one of these rifle-pits to apprise the men of his intention Searing crept stealthily forward on his hands and knees and was soon lost to view in a dense thicket of underbrush.

“That is the last of him,” said one of the men; “I wish I had his rifle; those fellows will hurt some of us with it.”

Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground and growth to give himself better cover.  His eyes penetrated everywhere, his ears took note of every sound.  He stilled his breathing, and at the cracking of a twig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged the earth.  It was slow work, but not tedious; the danger made it exciting, but by no physical signs was the excitement manifest.  His pulse was as regular, his nerves were as steady as if he were trying to trap a sparrow.