Shorty slipped his hand into his pocket, grasped his revolvers and eased them around so that he could be certain to draw them when he wanted to. He was determined that those men should not leave the train before the stopping place arranged for his fellow-soldiers. He felt confident of being able to handle the two, but did not know how many confederates might be in waiting for them.Awful Destruction. 242
FORE:Exceedingly startled, Si and Shorty sprang up, seized their guns, bounded to the door and looked out. They could see nothing to justify the alarm. There was not a rebel, mounted or unmounted, in sight. In the road below were two or three army teams dragging their slow way along, with their drivers yelling and laughing at a negro, whose mule was careering wildly across the fenceless field. The negro had been apparently jogging along, with a collection of plunder he had picked up in an abandoned camp strung upon his mule, when the latter had become alarmed at the firing and scattered his burden in every direction. The rider was succeeding in holding on by clinging desperately to the mule's neck."Vhat golor off a gravat do you vant?" asked the Jewish vender of haberdashery, who was rapidly amassing a fortune from the soldiers. "Dere's plack, red, kreen, plueall lofely golors, unt de vinest kint off silk. Yoost de same as Cheneral Krant vears. He puys lods off me. Von't puy off nopody else vhen he gan ket to me. Now, dere's vun dat'll yoost suit your light gomplexion. You gan vear dat on St. Batrick's day."
ONE:"Kin we plug up the holes, anyway, then, and start agin?"
TWO:"Si, you orter to be more careful in talkin' to your sisters," he remonstrated when they were alone."I can't make it out no more than you kin," assented Si. "And I've thought o' that crazy idee, too. You know them boys over there in Rousseau's old division was under Sherman once before, when he was in command at Louisville, and they say that he got crazier'n a locoed steeractually looney, so's they had to relieve him and send him back home to git cured. They'd be really scared about things, but their officers heard old Pap Thomas say that things wuz goin' along all right, and that satisfied 'em. I ain't goin' to worry so long's old Thomas is in command o' the Army o' the Cumberland, and we're in it. He'll take care that things come out straight."
THREE:Somewhere, he told himself, there would be someone....But the use does not matter. The master tells me a use. He says arithmetic and all of the things in the school raise the cultural level. I do not know what a cultural level is or if it is good to be raised. The masters do not care whether I know this. They make me do what they want me to do.
FORE:("There," mused Shorty, complacently; "that'll amuse her. Girls like a little fun throwed into letters, when it's entirely respectful.)
"They're coming again," called out Capt. McGillicuddy. "Lieut. Bowersox, look out there for the left. Men, if we haven't stopped them when we've fired out last shot, we'll fix bayonets and charge them. We must keep them off this hill or die right here.""Why we've bin talkin' to the train men, and they said they wuz shot at wunst, about a year ago, from that swamp back there, and we got some catridges from them, and we thought we saw something moving in there, though Jim Humphreys said it wuz only burned stumps that we took for men, and them other boys back there had bin shootin' off their gunn and tryin' 'em, and we thought we could too"
$120
$340
$250
$378
$428
