"O, no, we don't," said Si patiently, for her ignorance seemed beautifully feminine, where Maria's was provoking. "You see, dear, he's my Captaincommands about a hundred sich as me, and wears a sword and shoulder-straps and other fine clothes, and orders me and the rest around, and has his own tent, all by himself, and his servant to cook for him, and we have to salute him, and do jest what he says, and not talk backat least, so he kin hear it, and jest lots o' things."
ONE:MUCH to their amazement, the boys waked up the next morning in Nashville, and found that they had passed through the "dark and bloody ground" of Kentucky absolutely without adventure.
ONE:"Understand," the Albert said."Umum-um," hemmed the Deacon, getting red in the face, and avoiding answering the question by a vigorous stirring of the fire, while Si slily winked at Shorty. "I impressed that on son Jed's mind when he enlisted," continued the brother. "Jed was always a good, straight up-and-down boy; never gave me or his mother a minute's uneasiness. I told him to have no more to do with cards than with smallpox; to avoid liquor as he would the bite of a rattlesnake; to take nothin' from other people that he didn't pay full value for; that swearin' was a pollution to the lips and the heart. I know that Jed hearkened to all that I said, and that it sank into his heart, and that he'll come back, if it's God's will that he shall come back, as good a boy as when he went away."
THREE:Air conditioning had done something to minimize the reek inside, but not much. Albin devoted most of his attention to keeping his face a complete mask. The last thing he wanted was to retchnot in front of the Alberts, who didn't really exist for him, but in front of Derban. And the party (which he wasn't going to think about) hadn't left his stomach in perfect shape.
THREE:The bodies of Bob Willis and Jim Humphreys were wrapped in their blankets, and mournfully consigned to the earth. A cedar bush was stuck in the head of each grave, and Si, finding a piece of smooth board and a chunk of soft charcoal from a fire, sat down on the bank, and begun laboriously composing the following inscription:
"Sure." Albin went up to the door and knocked. From inside they could hear a dim babel of voices. After a second he knocked again, more loudly.His volubility excited that of the "Captain," who related how he had been doing a prosperous business running a bar on a Lower Mississippi River boat, until Abolition fanaticism brought on the war; that he had then started a "grocery" in Jeffersonville, which the Provost-Marshal had wickedly suppressed, and now he was joining with others of his oppressed and patriotic fellow-citizens to stop the cruel and unnatural struggle against their brethren of the South."Y're a liar," hotly responded another voice. "Thar was more'n 50 o' them Yankees, if thar was a man. We fit 'em awful, before we give away, and they'd killed Burt Dolson and Bob Whittyker, and I don't know how many more. They come bulgin' right on toward the mill, arter they'd reformed. I know hit, bekase Eph and me staid and watched 'em, and shot at 'em, till we thought hit best to run back and warn ye."
