TWO:The Deacon came back with his bucket, and after filling the man's cup as full as it would hold, handed it to him, and then began drawing the rest into his own bucket."You can't, very well. You see, guerrilain' is peculiar. There's somethin' in the air and water down in Kentucky and Tennessee that brings it on a man. You'll see a plain farmer man, jest like them around your home, and he'll be all right, goin' about his place plowin' and grubbin' sprouts and tendin' to his stock, and tellin' you all the time how much he loves the union and how he and his folks always bin for the union. Next thing you know he'll be out behind a cedar bush with a shotgun loaded with slugs, waitin' to make a lead mine o' some feller wearin' blue clothes. You see him before he does you, and he'll swear that he was out after the crows that's bin pullin' up his corn. He'll take' the oath of allegiance like it was a dram of old apple-jack, and tears'll come into his eyes at the sight o' the Old Flag, which he and his'n has always loved. He'll go ahead plowin' and grubbin' sprouts and tendin' his cattle till the fit comes on him agin to go gunnin' for bluecoats, and off he is, to go through the whole performance agin. You kin never tell how long his loosid interval will last, nor when the fit's comin' on him. Mebbe the changes o' the moon's somethin' to do with it. Mebbe it's somethin' that they eat, like what the cattle eat out West that makes 'em go crazy."
TWO:And so they set outon a walk long enough to serve as an aboriginal Odyssey for the planet. The night-beasts, soft glowing circles of eyes and mouths which none of their race had ever seen before: the giant flesh-eating plants: the herd of bovine monsters which, confused, stampeded at them, shaking the ground with their tread and making the feathery trees shake as if there were a hurricane: all this might have made an epic, had there been anyone to record it. But Cadnan expected no more and no less: the world was strange. Any piece of it was as strange as any other.It was not brilliant pleasantry, but it served. It set them to thinking of something else. They hastily filled their cartridge-boxes, adjusted their blankets, and when the bugle sounded forward they started with something of their original nerve.
