"You bet I will," responded the boy, with his eyes dancing. "Goin' to run away? I'm goin to run away myself some day. I'm awful tired o' havin' to git up in the mornin', wash my face and comb my hair, and do the chores, and kneel down at family prayers, and go to Sunday, school, and stay through church, and then have to spell out a chapter in the Bible in the afternoon. I'm goin' to run away, and be a soldier, or go out on the plains and kill Injuns. I'm layin' away things now for it. See here?"
ONE:
TWO:The country roundabout was discouragingly poor, and had been thoroughly foraged over. But Shorty had a scent for cabins that were hidden away from the common roads, and so escaped the visitations of ordinary foragers. These were always miserably poor, but generally had a half-dozen chickens running about, and a small store of cornmeal and sidemeat. Ordinarily he would have passed one of these in scorn, because to take any of their little store would starve the brood of unkempt children that always abounded. But now, they were his hope. He had been playing poker recently with his usual success, and as the bets were in Confederate money, he had accumulated quite a wad of promises to "Pay in gold, six months after the ratification of a Treaty of Peace between the Confederate States and the United States." He would make some mountaineer family supremely happy by giving them more money than they had ever seen in their lives, in exchange for their stock of meal, chickens and sidemeat. They would know where to get more, and so the transaction would be a pleasant one all around.
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ONE:
TWO:
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ONE:"Fine lot o' marksmen you are, for a fact. Halfa dozen o' you bangin' away at a hundred yards, and not comin' close enough to a nigger to let him know you was shootin' at him. Now will you lay down and go to sleep? Here, Si, you take charge o' this gang and let me go to sleep. I've had enough o' them for one night."
TWO:"Take it cool, boys, and eat all you kin," he admonished them. "It's generally a long time between meals sich times as these, and the more you eat now the longer you kin go without.""EhWhat's that?" said the rebel, startled by the new proposition and its coolness.
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TWO:"McGillicuddyCapt. McGillicuddy, Maria. Why can't you get his name right?""No; you let him alone," snapped Shorty impatiently. "He'll keep. Lay down and git some sleep, I tell you. What need you bother about a dead rebel? He ain't makin' no trouble. It's the livin' ones that need lookin' out for."
FORE:But the astute Deacon had overlooked one thing in his calculations. The crisp morning air was filled with the pungent smell of burning feathers and flesh, and the fragrance of stewing chicken. It reached hungry men in every direction, made their mouths water and their minds wonder where it could come from.
FORE:"If you don't I'll kick the whole kettle over. An old fool citizen like you 's got no business in camp, any way, and no right to be havin' things that ought to go to the laborin' men."FOR a short time a silence that seemed oppressive followed the fierce turmoil of the last charge of the rebels upon Snodgrass Hill and its repulse. Both sides had exhausted themselves in the awful grapple, and had to regain breath and thought. Then the night was pierced by the agonizing groans of the innumerable wounded, the stern commands of officers to their men to re-form, the calls of scattered men seeking their regiments and companies.
FORE:"The man writes a mighty nice hand," said Maria, scanning the superscription. "Just like that man that taught writing-school here last Winter. It can't be from him, can it? Didn't s'pose there was anybody in your company that could write as well as that. Look, Si, and see if you can tell whose handwritin' it is." W. L. Elliot.
FORE:"Take the position of a soldier," he commanded.
FORE:
FORE:The Deacon took his position behind a big black walnut, while he reconnoitered the situation, and got his bearings on the clump of willows. He felt surer than ever of his man, for he actually saw a puff of smoke come from it, and saw that right behind the puff stood a willow that had grown to the proportions of a small tree, and had its bark rubbed off by the chafing of driftwood against it."But we must know where Marvor stays."
FORE:"Joslyn, you're after Jones, 3d. MMMackall, you come after Lawrence.""Great Jehosephat," exploded Shorty; "you kin certainly be the stubbornest mule over nothin', Si Klegg, that I ever seen. We've done fightin' enough to excuse sich a report, or any that we've a mind to make."
TWO:He was still standing, those few thoughts expanding and filling his mind like water in a sponge, when the building, quite without warning, shook itself.As the light broadened, and revealed the familiar hills and woods, unpeopled by masses of enemies, the shivery "2 o'clock-in-the-morning-feeling" vanished from the boys' hearts, and was succeeded by eagerness to see the redoubtable rebels, of whom so much had been said.
TWO:"Why are those cotton-cars still standing there this morning, after the orders I gave you yesterday?" asked Levi, in tones of severest reprehension, as that official came up.
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TWO:"They're makin' me learn, and that's one reason why I want to run away," with a doleful remembrance of his own grievances. "What's the use of it, I'd like to know? It cramps my fingers and makes my head ache. Simon Kenton couldn't write his own name, but he killed more Injuns than ary other man in the country. I guess you'd want to run away, too, if they made you learn to write."
TWO: Korprils. ive jest time 2 ketch the nekst traine, & ime"It's all right ... calm down now ... you'll be all right...."
"Even the dogs bark differently up here. Shorty," he said. "It's full and honest, and don't mean no harm. You know that old Towser ain't barkin' to signal some bushwhackers that the Yankees 's comin'. It sounds like real music.""Well," Albin said cheerfully, "that's what we are doing. Keeping them alive, for instance. And teaching them."