THREE:While Si and Shorty were still worrying about what to do for arms for the remainder of their men, they heard what seemed to be about a company marching toward them through the darkness.
THREE:While Si and Shorty were still worrying about what to do for arms for the remainder of their men, they heard what seemed to be about a company marching toward them through the darkness.
THREE:
THREE:"Where?" asked Si, running up to him.Chapter 14
THREE:Unless you think we can make money selling weapons to be used against our own people on Fruyling's World.'the Prisoners Had Too Much Solicitude About Their Garments to Think of Anything Else.' 185
THREE:Similarly, the Sergeants stood behind their sections, except that one after another they stepped forward to the guns to take the places of men who had fallen and could not be replaced. At the guns the men were working with the swiftness of light flashes, and the unerring certainty of machines. To the watchers at the base of the slope they seemed to weave back and forth like some gigantic, demoniac loom, as they sprang at their guns, loaded them, "broke away" as they fired, leaped back again, caught the gun in its recoil, hurled it forward, again reloaded, "broke away" and fired, all quicker than thought. A shell took off a sponger's head, but the sponge-staff was caught by another before it fell, and the gun fired again without a pause. A shrapnel swept away every man about one gun. The Lieutenant looked inquiringly at the Sergeant, and in an instant another squad seemed to spring up from the ground to continue the firing without missing a note in the battery's rhythm.
THREE:"Inasmuch as we'll have to trust to the Lord at last, anyway," said Shorty, with a return of his old spirit, "why not go the whole gamut? A day or two more or less won't make no difference to Him. I feel as if I could eat 'em all myself without Si's help."
THREE:
THREE:Shorty started to gasp. "But I done all that""All the same, Elliott was dead-stuck on her. Bimeby he heard some way that some stay-at-home widower was settin' up to her, and she was encouragin' him, and finally married him. When Elliott heard that he was completely beside himself. He lost all appetite for everything but whisky and the blood of widowers. Whenever he found a man who was a widower he wanted to kill him. At Chickamauga, he'd pick out the men that looked old enough to be widowers, and shoot at them, and no others. In the last charge he got separated, and was by himself with a tall rebel with a gray beard. 'I surrender,' said the rebel. 'Are you a widower?' asked Elliott. 'I'm sorry to say that my wife's dead,' said the rebel. 'Then you can't surrender. I'm goin' to kill you,' said Elliott. But he'd bin throwed off his guard by too much talkin'. The rebel got the drop on him, and killed him."