The Deacon was deeply absorbed in an editorial on "President Lincoln's duty in this Crisis," and paid no attention. Shorty craned his long neck out of the window.
"Excuse me. General," answered the Deacon hastily, "I"
ONE:"What we ought to do," Dodd said abruptly, "is we ought to do a thorough anthropologicalanthropological study on you people. A really big job. But that's uneconomic, see? Because we know what we have to know. Where to find you, what to feed you, how to get you to work. They don't care about the rest."
ONE:"Well, I thought them was bright boys, that it'd be no trouble to drill. I'd ruther break in the stoonidest lot o' hayseeds that ever breathed, rather than boys that think they know more'n I do. Now I'm goin' to have the time o' my life learnin' 'em the right face."
"No," answered Shorty, as he rubbed the whittlings from his plug to powder in the hollow of his hand.Wat looked back over his shoulder and saw a single adventurous rebel who, divining what was going on, had slipped forward in the darkness, with his gun leveled on the squad bearing Si. Wat realized instantly that the rebel must be suppressed with out alarm to others that might be behind him. He dropped Shorty's foot, and with a backward sweep of his mighty right took the rebel in the stomach with such force as to double him up. The next instant Wat had his throat in his terrific grip, and tried to tear the windpipe from him. Then he flung the rebel forward down the hill, gathered up Shorty's feet again, and gave the command:"Halt, there! drop that gun. If you move I'll kill this whelp here and then you."Sophy's suggestion was carried out. Abraham Lincoln was directed to get out the spring wagon, and the Deacon helped hitch up, while the "women folks" got ready.Shorty at last found a poor little cabin such as he had been looking for. It was hidden away in a little cove, and had never been visited by the men of either army. It had the usual occupantsa weak-eyed, ague-smitten man, who was so physically worthless that even the rebel conscripters rejected him; a tall, gaunt woman, with a vicious shrillness in her voice and a pipe in her mouth; a half score of mangy yellow dogs, and an equal number of wild, long-haired, staring children. They had a little "jag" of meal in a bag, a piece of sidemeat, and a half-dozen chickens. The man had that morning shot an opossum, lean from its Winter fasting. Shorty rejected this contemptuously.
