ONE:"What're you talkin' about, you dumbed fool?" said Si, irritably. "We haint no Injuns nor heathens, to kill wounded men. We're Injiannians and Christians, what read the Bible, and foller what it says about lovin' your enemies, and carin' for them what despitefully use youthat is, after you've downed 'em good and hard."It was planned that they should sleep until near morning, when the spies of the Knights of the Golden Circle were not alert, enter a freight-car, which they would keep tightly shut, to escape observation, while the train ran all day toward a point within easy reach of their quarry. It would arrive there after dark, and so they hoped to catch the Knights entirely unawares, and in the full bloom of their audacity and pride.
ONE:"There, that's best I can do," he said, surveying the screed. "It'll have to go that way, and let the Deacon study it out. He's got more time 'n I have, and mebbe knows all about it. I can't spend no more time on it. No. 3, passenger, from the West 's due in 20 minutes, and I've got to get ready for it. Good luck; there comes the Deacon's darky now, with a load of wheat. I'll send it out by him.""Excuse me. Doctor," said Si, recovering himself and saluting. "I'm very hungry, and worried to death with these frisky kids that I'm trying to git to my regiment. The only trouble is that some of the trundle-bed graduates took their first chaw o' terbacker this mornin' on empty stomachs and it keeled 'em over. Come here and look at 'em yourself. You'll see it in a minute."
ONE:The 200th Ind. moved forward and took its place in the line on a hill commanding a view of the entrance to the gorge, and there waited its orders for the general advance, which seemed imminent any instant.Perhaps we were wrong: perhaps the slavery which was dictated to us by the conditions which prevailed upon Fruyling's World was not the best sort available. But freedom is not, in any case, the answer. A man may die as the result of too much oxygen: a culture, likewise, may die of too much freedom.
