第6章

"Abe!" said Jake Alspaugh to his file-leader--a red-headed, pock-marked man, whose normal condition was that of outspoken disgust at every thing--"this means a fight.""Your news would've been fresh and interesting last night," growled Abe Bolton."I suppose that's what we brought our guns along for.""Yes; but somebody's likely to get killed.""Well, you nor me don't have to pay their life insurance, as I know on.""But it may be you or me,"

"The devil'd be might anxious for green wood before he'd call you in.""Come, now, don't talk that way.This is a mighty serious time.""I'll make it a durned sight seriouser for you if you don't keep them splay feet o'your'n offen my heels when we're marching.""Don't you think we'd better pay, or--something?""You might try taking up a collection."

"Try starting a hymn, Jake," said a slender young man at his right elbow, whose face showed a color more intimately connected with the contents of his canteen than the heat of the day."Line it out, and we'll all join in.Something like this, for example:

'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound Mine ears attend the cry.

Ye living men, come view the ground Where you must shortly lie.'"Alspaugh shuddered visibly.

"Come, spunk up, Jake," continued the slender young man."Think how proud all your relations will be of you, if you die for your country.""I'm mad at all of my relations, and I don't want to do nothing to please 'em," sighed Jake.

"But I hope you're not so greedy as to want to live always?" said the slender young man, who answered roll-call to Kent Edwards.

"No, but I don't want to be knocked off like a green apple, before I'm ripe and ready.""Better be knocked off green and unripe," said Kent, his railing mood changing to one of sad introspection, "than to prematurely fall, from a worm gnawing at your heart."Jake's fright was not so great as to make him forego the opportunity for a brutal retort:

"You mean the 'worm of the still,' I s'pose.Well, it don't gnaw at my heart so much as at some other folkses' that I know'd."Kent's face crimsoned still deeper, and he half raised his musket, as if to strike him, but at that moment came the order to march, and the regiment moved forward.

The enemy was by this time known to be near, and the men marched in that silence that comes from tense expectation.

The day was intensely hot, and the stagnant, sultry air was perfumed with the thousand sweet odors that rise in the West Virginia forests in the first flush of Summer.

The road wound around the steep mountain side, through great thickets of glossy-leaved laurel, by banks of fragrant honeysuckle, by beds of millions of sweet-breathing, velvety pansies, nestling under huge shadowy rocks, by acres of white puccoon flowers, each as lovely as the lily that grows by cool Siloam's shady rill--all scattered there with Nature's reckless profusion, where no eye saw them from year to year save those of the infrequent hunter, those of the thousands of gaily-plumaged birds that sang and screamed through the branches of the trees above, and those of the hideous rattlesnakes that crawled and hissed in the crevices of the shelving rocks.

At last the regiment halted under the grateful shadows of the broad-topped oaks and chestnuts.A patriarchal pheasant, drumming on a log near by some uxorious communication to his brooding mate, distended his round eyes in amazement at the strange irruption of men and horses, and then whirred away in a transport of fear.Acrimson crested woodpecker ceased his ominous tapping, and flew boldly to a neighboring branch, where he could inspect the new arrival to good advantage and determine his character.