"Hello, Groundhog, is that you? Ain't you dead yit? Say, have you seen a squad o' recruits around hereall boys, with new uniforms, and no letters or numbers on their caps?""Only be too glad of the dooty, sir," answered Si, saluting. "It'll give the boys something to think of besides hanging guerrillas. Besides, they're just crazy to git hold o' guns. Where kin I git muskets for 'em?""The punch," she announced, "is authentic. It is totally authentic. One glass and you forget everything. Two, and you remember. ThreeI don't know what happens with the third glass yet. But I'm going to find out."
TWO:Si and Shorty carefully avoided one another on their way back to the company, and declined to discuss their exploits with either the Orderly-Sergeant or Capt. McGillicuddy.
FORE:"Let the drapes give us away," the girl said. "We're entitled to have quiet little gatherings, right? And who knows what goes on behind the drapes?"
FORE:"I'll just ask the Captain a few questions for the defense," said Lieut. Bowersox. "How did you know that the prisoner was drunk?""All o' you are always imposin' on me 'cause I'm little," whimpered Pete. "And that stuck-up Alf Russell's the worst of all. Just because he's goin' to be a doctor, and leads in singin' at church, he thinks he knows more'n the man what writ the arithmetic, and he's down on me because I won't take all he says for law and gospel, in spite of his airs. Jim Humphreys is down on me, because I writ home that I'd shot a man back there at the burnt bridge, and Jim got skeered at a coon-huntin' nigger."
FORE:"Annabel?" gasped Si.THERE were the same perplexing sounds of battle in many places and directions when the 200th Ind. went into line as there had been around Buzzard Roost.
FORE:There was an air-conditioning duct, but Cadnan did not know what such a thing was, nor would he have understood without lengthy and tiresome explanations. He didn't know he needed air to live: he knew only that the room was dark and that he was alone, boxed in, frightened. He guessed that somewhere, in another such room, Dara was waiting, just as frightened as he was, and that guess made him feel worse.
FORE:"Maria," called out Si, "if you don't stop plaguin' Shorty I'll come back there and wring your neck. You kin make the worst nuisance o' yourself o' any girl that ever lived. Here, you go up there and walk with Cousin Marthy. I'll walk with Shorty. I've got something I want to say to him."
FORE:"But even if he does send them at once, they can't git here till evenin', and I hate powerfully to let him and the rest know that we didn't have sense enough to take care o' our victuals after we'd drawed 'em," said Si.
FORE:MRS. B.: But just postcards"But we are not masters," Cadnan said, with the air of a person trying to bring reason back to the discussion. "We do not look like masters, and we do not know what they know."
THREE:"Hain't got your shoes on; can't find but one o' my own," snorted Gid in reply. "You helter-skelter little fly-up-the-crick, you never know where your own things are, and you lose everybody else's."
THREE:Shorty remembered him at once as the man with whom he had had the adventure with the loaded dice at Murfreesboro. With the fraternity of the class, neither remembered that little misadventure against the other. They had matched their wits for a wrestle, and when the grapple was over it was over.There was a strangeness about everything that they could not comprehend.
"It's right. It's all right. It's God's ways," said the mother.The division of the rations proceeded, with some jars between Russell and Humphreys over the apportionment of fat and lean meat, and angry protests from little Pete Skidmore because they made his share smaller than anybody else's.Dodd, his job completed, dropped the beam. For one instant four words lit up in his mind, and then everything went out into blankness and peace. The body remained, the body moved, the body lived, for a time. But after those four words, blinding and bright and then swallowed up, Johnny Dodd was gone.And remember those servants, friends. Maybe the greenies like their life, too. It's their world and their metalthey have a right to help send it along.