Si quietly deployed his boys to the left of the road, and worked them through the brush until they came to the crest overlooking the mill-race. They took readily to this sort of work. They had all hunted rabbits over the hills of southern Indiana, and they came into position so softly that the rebels beyond did not suspect their presence."Goin' to be a full attendance at the services this evenin'," he muttered to himself. "But the more the merrier. It'll insure a goodly number at the mourner's bench when we make the call for the unconverted."
ONE:"Jest as I expected, Si," Shorty called back to him. "The rebels have throwed back a squad to watch for us."
ONE:"Where's your shoulder-straps?"Dr. Haenlingen went on as if she hadn't heard. "The action serves two different, indeed two contradictory purposes. If you think that's something rare in the actions of mankind, you must be more naive than you have any right to be."
TWO:Si and Shorty gathered the boys together on the bank above the railroad cut, had fires built, posted a few guards, and ordered the rest of the boys to lie down and go to sleep. They set the example by unrolling their own blankets at the foot of a little jack-oat, whose thickly-growing branches, still bearing a full burden of rusty-brown leaves, made an excellent substitute for a tent."Army o' the Cumberland, down at Chattanoogy."
THREE:Now, after sunset, they filed in, thirty or so jewel-green cyclopean alligators at the end of their first day of training, waddling clumsily past the doorway and settled with a grateful, crouching squat on the leaves that served as bed and food. None were bothered by the act of sitting on the leaves: for one thing, they had no concept of dirt. In the second place, they were rather remarkably clean. They had neither sex organs, in any human sense of the word, or specific organs of evacuation: their entire elimination was gaseous. Air ducts in the room would draw off the waste products, and the Alberts never noticed them: they had, in fact, no conception of evacuation as a process, since to them the entire procedure was invisible and impalpable.Everything not compulsory was forbidden. Even the parties were forbidden ... though it was always possible to find one. Dodd had avoided them completely, afraid now of another breakdown, this time in public. He had not seen Greta or called her (though he had her number now): he had stayed alone as much as possible.
