"I s'pose that's all right and satisfactory," said Shorty, saluting. "It's got to be, anyway. In the army a man with a star on his shoulder's got the last say, and kin move the previous question whenever he wants to. I never had no hankerin' for a job around Headquarters, and now that I'm a Korpril I ought to be with my company. But they need you worse'n they do me, and I've noticed that you was always as near the front as anybody, so I don't think I'll lose no chances by stayin' with you."
he had? I would very much like to have you return me my"Perhaps."
ONE:Shorty at last found a poor little cabin such as he had been looking for. It was hidden away in a little cove, and had never been visited by the men of either army. It had the usual occupantsa weak-eyed, ague-smitten man, who was so physically worthless that even the rebel conscripters rejected him; a tall, gaunt woman, with a vicious shrillness in her voice and a pipe in her mouth; a half score of mangy yellow dogs, and an equal number of wild, long-haired, staring children. They had a little "jag" of meal in a bag, a piece of sidemeat, and a half-dozen chickens. The man had that morning shot an opossum, lean from its Winter fasting. Shorty rejected this contemptuously.
TWO:FOR the next few days there was a puzzling maze of movements, which must have completely mystified the rebel Generalsas was intendedfor it certainly passed the comprehension of our own keen-eyed and shrewdly-guessing rank-and-file and lower oflficers.
TWO:"No," said the Orderly, coming down from the right of the regiment. "We're to move forward about a mile, and establish a line for the rest of the brigade to form on. We're to go quietly, without noise or commands, and then bivouac without fires. Get your guns and fall in quietly."The roar of the battle would have told them as much, for it was now deafening. The earth seemed to throb and the trees shake with the awful shocks. As they passed the hospital they saw a grewsome pile of amputated legs and arms, while the ground around about was filled with wounded, whose groans pierced through the roar of battle.
"No," said the Orderly to Si, with a strong Yankee twang, "I don't know a mite about the 200th Ind. Leastwise, I don't remember it. Everybody down here's from Indiana, Ohio or Illinois. It's one eternal mix, like Uncle Jed Stover's fishcouldn't tell shad, herring nor sprat from one another. It seems to me more like a 'tarnal big town-meeting than an army. All talk alike, and have got just as much to say; all act alike. Can't tell where an Indiana regiment leaves off and Ohio one begins; can't tell officer from private, everybody dresses as he pleases, and half of them don't wear anything to tell where they belong. There wasn't a corps badge in the whole army when we come here."Si and Shorty rose promptly, and, experienced campaigners as they were, were in a moment ready to march anywhere or do anything as long as their rations and their cartridges held out.From A Cultural Record of Fruyling's World
荣誉榜
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