"That father o' yours is certainly quite an innocent old party," Shorty answered, consolingly, "and the things he don't know about army life'd make more'n a pamphlet. But he has a way of wakin' up to the situation that is sometimes very surprisin'. I wisht I was able to go about with him, but I think he's fully able to take care o' himself around in camp. There's always somebody about who won't see an old man and a citizen imposed on. But what I'm afraid of is that he's wandered out in the country, huntin' for somethin' for us to eat, and the guerrillas've got him."
ONE:"Yit, how kin I git away from Si, now?" he murmured to himself. "And yit I'm so dead hungry to see her again that I'd be willin' to be a'most skinned alive to do it. Was ever anybody else so big a fool about a girl? I've plagued other fellers, and now I've got it worse'n anybody else. It's a judgment on me. But, then, nobody else ever seen such a girl as that. There's some sense in bein' a fool about her.""Fhat," said Barney contemptuously, surveying the cartridge. "There isn't enough powdher there to throw a ball as far as Oi can a pebble. Fwhy, Oi used to put a whole handful o' powdher in the old blunderbuss. Oi wud do betther to whack a man wid a shillelah. And fwhere is the flint to stroike foire?"
TWO:Beyond the "deadening" came a horde of pursuing rebels, firing and yelling like demons. The sight and sound swelled the boys' hearts with the rage of battle.Then they went reluctantly backshuddering with the certainty of what they should find, to bring in Jim Humphreys's body.