A roar went up from the camp-follower audience at the hopeless tangle which ensued. No two of the boys seemed to have done the same thing. Several had turned to the left, and all were sprinting around in various ways in a more or less genuine pretense of executing the order. Meanwhile the news that Si's squad of recruits were having fun with him spread through the camp, and a crowd gathered to watch the performance and give their jeering advice in that characteristic soldierly way when they see a comrade wrestling with a perplexing job.
"Word came to Headquarters," explained the Lieutenant, "that a squad of recruits were rioting, and had killed a citizen, and I was sent down here on the run to stop it and arrest the men. This Sergeant, who seems to be in command, refuses to go with me."
TWO:"No, Harry," said Si, kindly and encouragingly. "But we'll find some way to git through. There's probably a path that we kin strike. Stay close by me, and we'll try our best."
THREE:"Humph," said the woman. "He's run acrost Stevenson's old boar, that runs in them woods up thar, and is mouty savage this time o' year. He'd take a laig offen a youngster quicker'n scat, if he ketched him. He done well to run."
TWO:"If you say a word, or try to, you're a dead man," Si whispered, as he dropped the gun, and substituted his left hand at the man's throat for his right arm. Taking silence for acquiescence, Si picked up his own gun and started with his prisoner for the Colonel. He walked upright boldly now, for the watchers on the rebel works could not see that there was more than one man in the path.
TWO:Behind her the hum had risen to a chorus of mad clatter, conversation, laughter, songthe girl dragged Albin and Dodd inside and shut the door. "I'm always in trouble," Albin was saying. "It keeps life interesting." But it was hard to hear him, hard to hear any single voice in the swell of noise.
"Come on, boys," yelled Shorty to the others. "Go ahead. We're almost through, and then we'll salivate them whelps of damnation.""If we disobey the masters the machines and the trees will not obey us, and there will be no more work and no small ones. For this is the order of the world: some obeying and some to be obeyed. It is visible and plain. When the chain is broken all the chain breaks.""Can't tell. Guerrillas's like the nose-bleedlikely to come on you at any time. They're jest where you find 'emthat's when they're jumpin' you.. When they aint jumpin' you, they're lawabiding union citizens, entitled to the protection o' the laws and to draw rations from the Commissary. To make no mistake, you want to play every man in citizen's clothes south of the Ohio River for a rebel. And when you don't see him, you want to be surer than ever, for then he's layin' for you.""I was bound to give 'em a little straight goods before I quit, and they got it. Old Dan Webster's very words.""They'll all be certain to be there tonight."
荣誉榜
THREE: Mister ShorteeThey walked to it. In the darkness they could not see it, but they knew the tree: they had spent time knowing it before that night. Cadnan reached out a slow hand and touched the back of the tree, almost as smooth as metal, with only minute irregularities throughout its surface. Once again a long time seemed to pass, but it was not long.
THREE:"We must wait until they sleep," Dara said in a sudden return to practicality. "Then we go."
