CHAPTER XVIII. NO PEACE FOR SI AND SHORTY"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.
FORE: And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.""O, that bog-trottin' old section boss, that hairy-handed artist with the long shovel, is there, is he with his crucifix and his prayers to the Saints. That's all right. He's bin stormin' and swearin' ever since the fight begun; because he's bin obliged to stay inside and shoot, and instid of making a grand rush and settling things, according to Donnybrook Fair rules. I tell you what you do. You work the boys carefully down through the brush toward the race, and git 'em into position in easy range of the rebels, covering 'em behind logs. I'll take a circuit around to the left, and git over to the hill, behind the rebels, and near enough the mill for Hennessey to hear me. Then I'll fire a shot and yell for Hennessey. He knows my voice, and he'll bring his men out like a pack o' hornets. Then you let into the rebels from your side. They can't git across the race at you, and we'll have 'em where we kin whipsaw 'em."
"Maybe," Cadnan said with care, "it is bad."The tone was so harsh and repellant that the Deacon thought that he would disarm hostility by announcing himself a plain citizen, like themselves. So he replied:"My boss'll be powehful disappunted," said the negro, with his big, white eyes full of tears. "He's powehful weak, foh sartin. A leetle sup ob broth'd do him an everlastin' world ob good. He ain't no Kunnel or Majah. He's only a Cappen Cappen McGillicuddy, ob the 200th Injianny.""It was different," Cadnan said. "It was not good. This is better." He tried to imagine a world without masters, but the picture would not come. Obviously, then, the world he lived in was better: it was better than nothing.Cadnan knew from gossip about the field: that was the place where the metal lay. Alberts worked there, digging it up and bringing it to the buildings where Cadnan and many like him took over the job. He nodded slowly, bending his body from the waist instead of from the neck like the masters, or Marvor. "If you are in the field," he said, "why do you come here? This is not a place for diggers."