"You're right. What's your name, my boy?""Tollably well, General, thank you. Look here, General, please let me take those boys home. If you will, I'll send 'em back to you in a few weeks good as new. All they need is mother's cookin' and mother's nursin' to bring 'em right out. And I want to go home, too. The army is demoralizin' me. I guess I'm gittin' old, and 'm not as strong to resist sin and the suggestions of sin as I once was. I'm gittin' scared of myself down here."
ONE:"Reglar clay-knob whiteoak," whispered Shorty; "couldn't split it with a maul and wedge. Don't mind that a mite, since we got that flag. But how's my pardner over there?"
ONE:CHAPTER X. SHORTY AS ORDERLYShorty and the others walked up to the fence and looked over. There was the old razor-back King of the woods still raging around sniffing the air of combat.
TWO: "And there lay the steed, with his nostrils all wide,The boys looked at him in amazement, that he should jest at such a momentous time.
TWO:Shorty started over to where some of the boys were trying to extricate a rebel limber abandoned in a ravine. He spied a pair of fine field glasses lying on the ground, and picked them up with an exclamation of delight."All right, then. Load at will. Load! Forward!March!" commanded Si.
TWO:"My idee is to down a rebel whenever you git a good chance," said Shorty. "'Do the work nearest thy hand,' I once heard an old preacher say. Le's jump these hounds right here."He rapidly repeated the magic formula, and pronounced Gid Mackall "it."
THREE:The night was long, so long it could have been the night before the end of the world, the universe drawing one last deep breath before blowing out the candles and returning, at last, to peace and darkness and silence. Dodd spent it posted as one of the guards around the two cells where the Alberts were penned.
THREE:Little Sammy Woggles came out presently to get some wood. Shorty called him to him. There was something fascinatingly mysterious in his tones and actions to that youth, who devoured dime novels on the sly.The members all looked up in astonishment.
