ONE:"I think," continued the General, after having properly vindicated discipline, "that that blow you received on your head may affect your brain at times, and make you unduly irritable. I think I'll have the Surgeon examine you. Put him in an ambulance, Wilson, and take him over to the Surgeon. Then bring him to Headquarters with the report.""No," gasped Pete. "I was hunting out there for a deer, or a elk, or a bear, when suddenly I come acrost the queerest kind of an animal. It looked more like a hog than anything else, yet it wasn't a hog, for it was thinner'n a cat. It had long white tusks, longer'n your hand, that curled up from its mouth, little eyes that flashed fire, and great long bristles on his back, that stood straight up. I shot at it and missed it, and then it run straight at me. I made for the fence as hard as I could, but it outrun me and was gaining on me every jump. Just as I clim the fence it a-most ketched me, and made a nip not six inches from my leg. I could hear him gnash them awful tusks o' his'n."
TWO:He heard himself speak. "You must go."This time the boys seemed to be firing effectively. There was a commotion in the woods beyond, and the sound of groans on the damp air.
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ONE:"Here, you're out, Gid. Gi' me the bat," shouted Harry Joslyn, as he caught the ball which Mackall had vainly struck at."In consideration solely of the previous excellent character of the prisoner, I vote not guilty on all the charges and specifications, but with a distinct warning to the man as to the future."
TWO:"General, me and my pardner here," began Si, "have bin home on wounded furlough. Wounded at Chickamauga and promoted. We got orders to bring on this squad o' recruits from Jeffersonville for our rijimint. We got in last night and this mornin' me and my pardner started out to see if we could find someone to direct us to the rijimint, leavin' the squad alone for a few minutes. While we wuz gone this feller, who's bin fired out of our rijimint and another one that he was in, come along and tolled our boys off, intendin' to sneak 'em into another rijimint and git pay for 'em. By great good luck we ketched him in time, just before you come up. You kin ask the boys themselves if I hain't told you the truth."
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ONE:Arabella took no seeming notice of the shot, but came back sweetly:Chapter 20
TWO:
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TWO:"Maria, I've a notion to take your advice, and set my cap for Corpril Shorty. Do you know, I think he's very good lookin'. He's a little rough and clumsy, but a girl could take that out o' him. I believe I'll begin right away. You stay in here and bake and I'll wait on the table."
FORE:"Well, I believe our boys 's all right. They're green, and they're friskier than colts in a clover field, but they're all good stuff, and I believe we kin stand off any ordinary gang o' guerrillas. I'll chance it, anyhow. This's a mighty valuable train to risk, but it ought to go through, for we don't know how badly they may need it. You tell your engineer to go ahead carefully and give two long whistles if he sees anything dangerous."
FORE:Shorty, by watching the motions of the other's hand, was skillful enough to catch on to the grip this time, and get it exactly. He expressed himself satisfied, and as the car lay on the siding waiting for another train to arrive and pass he favored his two companions with one of his finest fictions about his home in Tennessee, his service in the rebel army, the number of Yankee Abolitionists he had slain with his own hand, and his present mission with important communications to those "friends of the South in Illinois" who were organizing a movement to stop the bloody and brutal war upon his beloved Southland.
FORE:"You have? Well, you've got more than we have left. You'll act as Major. Poor Wilkinson just got his dose. You can see him lying down there in the rear of the left. Put your men in anywhere. Mix them up with the others.. It don't matter much about formation. The main thing's to stand and shoot. The rebels have been charging us all after noon, but we have whipped them back every time.The Colonel permitted this, for he anticipated that a charge on the rebel works would follow the beating down of the artillery fire, and he wanted his regiment to be where it would get a good start in the race to capture a rebel battery. He simply cautioned the Captains to keep their men in hand and ready. As Capt. McGillicuddy called Co. Q closer together, it occurred to Shorty that in the interest he had taken in the artillery duel he had not looked after Pete Skidmore for some time, and he began casting his eyes around for that youth. He was nowhere to be seen, and, of course, no one knew anything about him.
FORE:CHAPTER X. THE BOYS HAVE A COUPLE OF LITTLE SKIRMISHES
FORE:
FORE:Onward they rushed full into the smoke that drifted backward down the hill. As they gained the crest the air became clearer, and they saw the sadly-shrunken remnant of their regiment strung in an irregular line along the forward edge. Some were binding up wounds more or less severe, some were searching the boxes of the dead and wounded for cartridges, some were leaning on their hot guns, looking curiously into the woods at the foot of the slope into which the rebels had fled.
FORE:"You haint no right to give us orders no more," asserted Humphreys, flourishing his bat defiantly. "You're only an enlisted man, same as the rest o' us. They told us so, last night, and that we mustn't let you impose on us, as you'd bin doin'. Only the Captain and the Colonel command us. We've bin posted. And if you dare hit any o' us we'll all jump on you and maul your head offen you."
FORE:"But"
FORE:"All the same, you don't want to be robbed o' what's yours. You don't want to be skinned out o' your money by a gang o' snoozers who're gittin' rich off of green boys like you. Where's this Sarjint Klegg and Corpril Elliott that brung you here?""No," said the Orderly to Si, with a strong Yankee twang, "I don't know a mite about the 200th Ind. Leastwise, I don't remember it. Everybody down here's from Indiana, Ohio or Illinois. It's one eternal mix, like Uncle Jed Stover's fishcouldn't tell shad, herring nor sprat from one another. It seems to me more like a 'tarnal big town-meeting than an army. All talk alike, and have got just as much to say; all act alike. Can't tell where an Indiana regiment leaves off and Ohio one begins; can't tell officer from private, everybody dresses as he pleases, and half of them don't wear anything to tell where they belong. There wasn't a corps badge in the whole army when we come here."
TWO:"Chicken feathers 's mighty tell-tale things," he said to himself. "I once knowed a man that was finally landed in the penitentiary because he didn't look out for chicken feathers. He'd bin stealin' hosses, and was hidin' with them in the big swamp, where nobody would 've suspicioned he was, if he hadn't stole chickens from the neighborhood to live on, and left their feathers layin' around careless like, and some boys, who thought the foxes was killin' the chickens, followed up the trail and run onto him."
TWO:"Now, wait a minute," Dodd said. Norma had been brain-washed into some silly set of slogans: it was his job to break them down. "The clan can elect leaders"
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TWO:"No," Greta said. "He waswell, confused maybe. Never been to a party of ours before, or anyhow not that I remember. I was trying toloosen him up."
TWO:"Nonsense!" answered Si. "We've done enough for one day. I've bin up for two nights now, and am goin' to have a rest. Let some o' the other fellers have a show for their money. We haint got to fight this whole war all by ourselves."
"I'm sorry, General, that you felt that Click place so bad that you were compelled to take personal action. I have known for some time that something ought to be done, but I've been trying to collect evidence that would hold Glick on a criminal charge, so that I could turn him over to the civil authorities."They tried to obey, but an instant later all leaped to their feet, as a volley of mule screechers mixed with human oaths and imprecations came up from a neighboring ravine."And I promise you," said Shorty solemnly, "that you shall have all the chance you want sooner'n you think for. I know a great deal more'n I dare tell you now, but things is workin' to a head mighty fast, and you'll hear something drop before the next change o' the moon. You kin jest bet your shirt on that."