ONE:Alf set down his cup of coffee, and began laboriously unwinding the long bandage, while the rest stood around in anxious expectation. Yards of folds came off from around his forehead and chin, and then he reached that around his nose and the back of his head. Still the ghastly edges of the terrible wound did not develop. Finally the blood-soaked last layer came off, and revealed where a bullet had made a shallow but ugly-looking furrow across the cheek and made a nick in the ear."The best way's to settle him jest as he comes over the hill, half-a-mile away, with an ounce o' cold lead put where he lives. That'll take the pint offen his bayonet mighty certainly."
TWO:
ONE:"I wasn't in no hurry," answered Si. "That was only regler marchin' gait."
TWO:"Shorty," said the officer with a smile, "I admire your talents for prevarication more than I can express. As a good, off-hand, free-going, single-gaited liar you have few equals and no superiors. Your lies usually have so much probability in them that they seem better than the truthfor your purposes. But this has no probability whatever in it. I doubt if you are able to walk to Headquarters. If you were well and strong, I should believe you quite capable not only of stealing the cow from Army Headquarters, but President Lincoln's cow from his back-door of the White House. But you are good now because you haven't strength enough to be up to any devilment. Now, tell me, who brought that cow here?"
ONE:
TWO:Shorty had pushed his unavailing search for little Pete far past the point where he remembered to have seen the boy, in the midst of the fighting. He had torn his hands and worn out his strength in tearing aside the brush to expose every possible place that the dying boy or his dead body might be concealed. He had reached the further side of the obstruction, and sat down on a stump, in despair of heart and exhaustion of body.
