ONE:Shorty took off his belt and white gloves, unbuttoned his blouse, and lounged down the street to the quarter where the soldiers most congregated to be fleeced by the harpies gathered there as the best place to catch men going to or returning from the front. Shorty soon recognized running evil-looking shops, various kinds of games and drinking dens several men who had infested the camps about Nashville and Murfreesboro until the Provost-Marshal had driven them away.For the very first time in his whole life Shorty had run away from a crisis. With his genuine love of fighting, he rather welcomed any awkward situation in which men were concerned. It was a challenge to him, and he would carry himself through with a mixture of brass, bravado and downright hard fighting. But he would have much more willingly faced the concentrated fire of all the batteries in Bragg's army than Maria's eyes as she raised them from that letter; and as for the comments of her sharp tongue��well, far rather give him Longstreet's demons charging out of the woods onto Snodgrass Hill. He walked out into the barn, and leaned against the fanning-mill to think it all over. His ears burned with the imagination of what Maria was saying. He was very uncomfortable over what the rest of the family were thinking and saying, particularly the view that dear old Mrs. Klegg might take. With the Deacon and Si it was wholly different. He knew that, manlike, they averaged him up, one day with another, and gave him the proper balance to his credit. But Maria��there everything turned to gall, and he hated the very name of Bad Ax, the whole State of Wisconsin and everybody in it. He would never dare go back into the house and face the family. What could he do? There was only one thing��get back to his own home, the army, as soon as possible.