The clanging and whistling of the trains kept up unabated, and Si thought they made the most hateful din that ever assailed his ears.But a chicken was no more to be had in Chattanooga than a Delmonico banquet. The table of the Major-General commanding the Army of the Cumberland might have a little more hardtack and pork on it than appeared in the tents of the privates, and be cooked a little better, but it had nothing but hardtack and pork.
It wasn't that the natives were hideous, either. Their very name had been given to them by men in a kind of affectionate mockery, since they weren't advanced enough even to have such a group-name of their own as "the people." They were called Alberts, after a half-forgotten character in a mistily-remembered comic strip dating back before space travel, before the true beginnings of Confederation history. If you ignored the single, Cyclopean eye, the rather musty smell and a few other even more minor details, they looked rather like two-legged alligators four feet tall, green as jewels, with hopeful grins on their faces and an awkward, waddling walk like a penguin's. Seen without preconceptions they might have been called cute."All right," Dodd said. "I'm here, aren't I? You've convinced mestop the propaganda."
