第45章

"An Apple Jack Raid."

This kind o' sojerin' ain't a mite like our October trainin', A chap could clear right out from there, ef it only looked like rainin';And the Cunnels, too, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An' send the Insines skootin' to the bar-room, with their banners, (Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted,) an' a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water.

--James Russel Lowell.

The morning after the battle, Kent Edwards was strolling around the camp at Wildcat."Shades of my hot-throated ancestors who swallowed several fine farms by the tumblerful, how thirsty I am!"he said at length."It's no wonder these Kentuckians are such hard drinkers.There's something in the atmosphere that makes me drier the farther we advance into the State.Maybe the pursuit of glory has something desiccating in it.At least, all the warriors I ever heard of seemed composed of clay that required as much moistening as unslaked lime.I will hie me to teh hill of frankincense and the mountain of myrrh; in other words, I'll go back where Abe is, and get what's left in the canteen."He found his saturine comrade sitting on a log by a comfortable fire, restoring buttons which, like soldiers, had become "missing by reason of exigencies of the campaign."The temptation to believe that inanimate matter can be actuated by obstinate malice is almost irresistible when one has to do with the long skeins of black thread which the soldiers use for their sewing.These skeins resolve themselves, upon the pulling of the first thread, into bunches of entanglement more hopelessly perverse than the Gordian knot, or the snarls in a child's hair.To the inexperienced victim, desirous of securing the wherewithal to sew a button on, nothing seems easier than to pull a thread out of the bunch of loose filament that lies before him.Rash man! That simple mesh hat a baffling power like unto the Labyrinth of Arsino, and long labor of fingers and teeth aided by heated and improper language, frequently fails to extract so much as a half foot of thread.

Abe had stuck his needle down into the log beside him.Near, were the buttons he had fished out of his pocket, and he was laboring with clumsy fingers and rising temper at an obdurate bunch of thread.

"I've been round looking over the field," said Kent, as he came up.

A contemptuous snort answered him.

"You ought to've been along.I saw a great many interesting things.""O, yes, I s'pose.Awful interesting.Lot o' dead men laying around in the mud.'Bout as interesting, I should say, as a spell o' setting on a Coroner's jury.The things you find interesting would bore anybody else to death."Abe gave the obstinate clump a savage twist which only made its knots more rebellious, and he looked as if strongly tempted to throw it into the fire.

"Don't do it, Abe," said Kent, with a laugh that irritated Abe worse still."Thread's thread, out here, a hundred miles from nowhere.

You don't know where you'll get any more.Save it--my dear fellow--save it.Perchance you may yet sweetly beguile many an hour of your elegant leisure in unraveling its fantastic convolutions with your taper fingers, and---""Lord! Lord!" said Abe with an expression of deep weariness, but without looking in Kent's direction, "Who's pulled the string o' that clack-mill and set it going? When it gets started once it rolls out big words like punkins dropping out o' the tail of a wagon going up hill.And there's no way o' stopping it, either.

You've just got to wiat till it runs down.""The Proverbs say so fittingly that 'A fool delighteth not in wise instruction,'" said Kent, as he stepped around to the other side of the fire.His foot fell upon a projecting twig, the other end of which flew up and landed a very hot coal on the back of Abe's hand.Abe's action followed that of the twig, in teh suddenness of his upspringing.He hurled an oath and a firebrand at his comrade.

"This is really becoming domestic," said Kent as he laughingly dodged."The gentle amenities could not cluster more thickly around our fireside, even if we were married."When Abe resumed his seat he did not come down exactly upon the spot from which he had arisen.It was a little farther to the right, where he had stuck the needle.He had forgotten about it, but he rose with a howl when it keenly reminded him that like the star-spangled banner, it "was still there.""Don't rise on my account, I beg," said Kent with a deprecatory wave of the hand, as he hurried off to wher he could laugh with safety.

A saucy drummer-boy, who neglected this precaution, received a cuff from Abe's heavy hand that thrilled the rest of the drum-corps with delight.

When Abe's wrath subsided from this ebullient stage back to its customary one of simmer, Kent ventured to return.

"Say," said he, pulling over the coats and blankets near the fire, "where's the canteen?""There it is by the cups.Can't you see it? If it was a snake it'd bite you.""It's done that already, several times, or rather its contents have.

You know what the Bible says, 'Biteth liek a serpent and stingeth like an adder?' Ah, here it is.But gloomy forebodings seize me:

it is suspiciously light.Paradoxically, its lightness induces gravity in me.But that pun is entirely too fine-drawn for camp atmosphere."He shook the canteen near his ear."Alas! no gurgle responds to my fond caresses--Canteen, Mavourneen, O, why art thou silent, Thou voice of my heart?

It is--woe is me--it is empty."

"Of course it is--you were the last one at it.""I hurl that foul imputation back into thy teeth base knave.Thou thyself art a very daughter of a horse-leech with a canteen of whisky."Abe looked at him inquiringly."You must've found some, some place," he said, "or you wouldn't be so awful glib.It's taken 'bout half-a-pint to loosen your tongue so that it'd run this way.

I know you."