"Dod durn it, what're you all runnin' away from me for?" he gasped. "Want to lose me? Want to git into the fight all by yourselves, and leave me out? Think because I'm little I can't help? I kin shoot as well as anybody in the crowd, dod durn you."
ONE:An instant later the two companies rushed across the field, making a bewildering transformation in the rebels' minds from charging to being charged. The rebels were caught before they could complete their formation. There was a brief tumult of rushes and shots and yells, and they were pushed back through the woods, with some losses In killed and wounded and stampeded horses.
"Go on, now. Don't you dare threaten me," shouted Billings."Where is this place?""Injianny!" sneered the old man. "Meanest people in the world live in Injianny. Settled by scalawags that we'uns run outen Tennessee bekase they'uns wuz too onery to live heah."If, of course, there was going to be a tomorrow ... that, he thought, was always in doubt. He managed sometimes to find a sort of illusory peace in thinking of himself as dead, scattered into component atoms, finished, forever unconscious, no longer wanting anything, no longer seeing the blinking words in his mind. Somewhere in his brain a small germ stirred redly against the prospect, but he tried to ignore it: that was no more than brute self-preservation, incapable of reasoning. That was no more than human nature.