Your question pointed my in the right direction and I solved the problem without looking at that page (I'll read it soon as I am sure has interesting stuff for me to learn).

It turns out I need to use back ticks when I invoke a remote command AND print the output, not only return it. If I print the output, that makes it catchable in a cascaded chain of calls. When I execute the command locally (the command is the real stuff, not just a requirement for forwarding) I execute it with 'system' and thus my "parent" 's back ticks can capture the output.

To summarize: capture with back ticks and also print it for chaining. I was happy to learn this and wanted to share.

Thanks again!