FORE:"Nonsense!" answered Si. "We've done enough for one day. I've bin up for two nights now, and am goin' to have a rest. Let some o' the other fellers have a show for their money. We haint got to fight this whole war all by ourselves.""Authority figure, parent-surrogate, phi factorthere's no mystery about the why, Norma. If you're content with jargon, and we know all the jargon, don't we?" Now instead of a laugh it was a smile, surprisingly warm but very brief. "We ought to, after all; we ladle it out often enough."
FORE:"You loosened everybody up," Norma said.
FORE:A similar scene was taking place at the next gun, with a little blackamoor about the size of Sandy Baker.
THREE:"So you're sure they can't do more harm to the bridge?"
THREE:"Let me see it," said the General, who had an inveterate disposition for looking into the smallest details. "What's this? One of the 200th Ind.? Why, that was in my brigade. The 200th Ind. was cut all to pieces, but it stuck to that Snodgrass Hill tighter than a real-estate mortgage. One of the boys in trouble? We'll just go over to the Provost-Marshal's and see about him. It may be that I know him.""Them cowardly, sneaking, death-deserving rebels in Nashville," broke out Conductor Madden, with a torrent of oaths. "Every man in Nashville that wears citizen's clothes ought to be hung on sight, and half the women. They don't do nothing but lay around and take the oath of allegiance, watch every move we make like a cat does a mouse, and send information through the lines. You can't draw a ration of hardtack but they know it, and they're looking down your throat while you're eating it. They haint got the gravel in their craws to go out and fight themselves, and yet they've cost us a hundred times as many lives as if they had. Why does the General allow them to stay there? He ought to order rocks tied to the necks of every blasted one of 'em and fling 'em into the Cumberland River and then pour turpentine on the infernal old town and touch a match to it. That's what I'd do if I had my way. There's more, brimstone trouble to the acre in Nashville than in any town on the footstool, not barring even Richmond."
