"Naw; git out. Don't bother me with no questions, I tell you," impatiently said a man in citizen's clothes, who with arms outspread was signalling the switching engines. "'Tain't my business to give information to people. Got all I kin do to furnish brains for them bull-headed engineers. Go to that Quartermaster you see over there in uniform. The Government pays him for knowin' things. It don't me."
"But that's the pointdon't you see?"The firing grew pretty noisy.
ONE:"What's this?" said Si to Shorty the next day at Jeffersonville, when they had reported to the Provost-Marshal, and had mustered before them the squad of recruits that they were to conduct to their regiment. "Have they bin roundin' up some country school-houses, and enlisted all the boys that was in the fourth reader and Ray's arithmetic?"
ONE:Her merry laugh filled the room, and rang even into the dark cells inside. Shorty shambled to his feet, pulled off his hat, and stood with downcast eyes and burning face. He had never encountered anything so beautiful and so terrifying.The first speaker had seemed to start at the sound of Shorty's voice, but he recovered himself, and saying, "You're right, my brother," put out his hand for the grip.
TWO:"But they haint killed no citizen. They haint bin riotin' around, and I ain't a-goin' with you. You've no right, I tell you, to interfere with me.""That last shell's saved me a good deal o' work diggin'. It, tore out a hole that'll just do to bury the carcasses of these dogs."
TWO:From the Report of Genmo. Darad Farnung, Commanding Confederation Expeditionary Force, 3rd Sector From Base of Occupation, Fruyling's World (NC34157:495:4)
TWO:"Why, what in the world have I got on that's military?" asked Billings, looking himself over.
THREE:"Not on their butternut-dyed lives they ain't," said Shorty scornfully. "They've got their dirty hides as full o' lickin' as they kin hold for one day. They'll set around for a while, and rub their hurts, and try to think out jest how it all happened."
THREE:"Well, you beat me," said Shorty admiringly, as he studied over the Deacon's booty. "I used to think I was as slick a forager as there was in the army, but I simply ain't in the same class with a man that kin go out in this Sahara Desert o' starvation and bring in a four-year-old horse and a wagon-load o' cooked vittles. I'd never even see the distance pole runnin' with him. Gen. Rosecrans ought to know you. He'd appoint you Commissary-General o' the army at once. When I get a little stronger I want you to take me out and learn me the ABC's o' foragin'. To think that me and Si wuz grievin' about your being ketched by the guerrillas. What fools we wuz. It wuz lucky for the guerrillas that you didn't run acrost 'em, for you'd a ketched 'em, instid o' 'em you."
