"Come back to take keer o' the men that yo'uns swatted last night?" said the rebel incredulously. "That haint natural. 'Taint Yankee-like. What'd yo'uns keer for 'em, 'cept to see if they'uns's dead yit, and mebbe gin 'em a prod with the bayonit to help 'em along? But they'uns's mouty nigh dead, now. They'uns can't last much longer. But I'll kill the fust one o' yo'uns that tries to prod one o' they'uns with a bayonit. Let they'uns alone. They'll soon be gone."
ONE:"I tell you I'm not goin' back to the regiment under guard," said Shorty resolutely. "I've no business to go back at all, now. My furlough ain't up for two weeks more. I'm goin' back now of my own free will, and in my own way. Go along with your old guard, and pick up them deadbeats and sneaks, that don't want to go back at all. You'll have plenty o' work with them, without pesterin' me."
TWO:"How about Shorty?" inquired the Deacon."I guess so," Albin said. "History's not my field. Butgiven the setup, what else could there be? What other choice have you got?"
THREE:The llth of May, 1864, saw all the clouds of battle which had been whirling for days in such apparently diverse directions, gathering about the deep gorge in Rocky Face Ridge through which the railroad passed. "Buzzard Roost," as this was named, was the impregnable citadel behind which the rebel army had taken refuge after its rout at Mission Ridge the previous November, and the rebel engineers had since exhausted every effort to make it still more unassailable. The lofty mountain rose precipitously for hundreds of feet on either side the narrow gorge, and the last hundred feet was a sheer wall of perpendicular rock. The creek which ran through the gorge had been dammed, so that its waters formed a broad, deep moat before the mouth of the gorge. The top of the ridge swarmed with men, and to the rear of the gorge guns were massed in emplacements to sweep every foot of the passage.
