第78章

Bragg, like the worm, will at last turn, and after a year of footraces we'll have a fight which will settle who is the superfluous cat in this alley.There is certainly one too many.""The sooner it comes the better," said Harry firmly."It has to be sometime, and I'm getting very anxious for an end to this eternal marching and countermarching.""My winsome little feet," Kent Edwards put in plaintively, "are knobby as a burglar-proof safe, with corns and bunions, all of them more tender than a maiden's heart, and painful as a mistake in a poker hand.They're the ripe fruit of the thousands of miles of side hills I've had to tramp over because of Mr.Bragg's retiring disposition.Now, if he's got the spirit of a man he'll come out from under the bed and fight me.""O, he'll come out--he'll come out--never you fear," said Abe, sardonic as usual."He's got a day or two's leisure now to attend to this business.A hundred thousand of him will come out.They'll swarm out o' them cedar thickets there like grass-hoppers out of a timothy field.""Boys," said Harry, returning after a few minutes' basence, "the Colonel says we'll go into camp right here, just as we stand.Kent, I'll take the canteens and hunt up water, if you and Abe will break some cedar boughs for the bed, and get the wood to cook supper with.""All right," responded Kent, "I'll go after the boughs.""That puts me in for the wood," grumbled Abe."And, I don't suppose there's a fence inside of a mile, and if there is there's not a popular rail in it.""And, Doctor," continued Harry, flinging the canteens over his shoulder, "you'll stay and take a cup of coffee and sleep with us to-night, won't you? The trains are all far behind, and the hospital wagon must be miles away.""Seems to me that I've heard something of the impropriety of visiting your friends just about mealtime," said the Doctor quizzically, "but a cup of coffee just now has more charms for me than rigid etiquette, so I'll thankfully accept your kind invitation.Some day I'll reciprocate with liberality in doses of quinine."In less time than that taken by well-appointed kitchens to furnish "Hot Meals to Order" the four were sitting on their blankets around a comfortable fire of rails and cedar logs, eating hard bread and broiled fat pork, and drinking strong black coffee, which the magic of the open air had transmuted into delightfully delicate and relishable viands.

"You are indebted to me," said Dr.Denslow, as he finished the last crumb and drop of his portion of the food, "for the accession to your company at this needful time, of a tower of strength in the person of Lieutenant Jacob Alspaugh."Abe groaned; the Doctor looked at him with well-feigned astonishment, and continued:

"That gore-hungry patriot, as you know, has been home several months on recruiting duty, by virtue of a certificate which he wheedled out of old Moxon.At last, when he couldn't keep away any longer, he started back, but he carefully restrained his natural impetuosity in rushing to the tented field, and his journey from Sardis to Nashville was a fine specimen of easy deliberation.There was not a sign of ungentlemanly hurry in any part of it.He came into my ward at Nashville with violent symptoms of a half-dozen speedily fatal diseases.I was cruel enough to see a coincidence in this attack and the general marching orders, and I prescribed for his ailments a thorough course of open air exercise.To be sure that my prescription would be taken I had the Provost-Marshal interest himself in my patient's case, and the result was that Alspaugh joined the regiment, and so far has found it difficult to get away from it.It's the unexpected that happens, the French say, and there is a bare possibility that he may do the country some service by the accidental discharge of his duty.""The possibility is too remote to waste time considering," said Harry.

They lay down together upon a bed made by spreading their overcoats and blankets upon the springy cedar boughts, and all but Harry were soon fast asleep.Though fully as weary as they he could not sleep for hours.He was dominated by a feeling that a crisis in his fate was at hand, and as he lay and looked at the stars every possible shape that that fate could take drifted across his mind, even as the endlessly-varying cloud-shapes swept--now languidly, now hurriedly--across the domed sky above him.And as the moon and the stars shone through or around each of the clouds, making the lighter ones masses of translucent glory, and gilding the edges of even the blackest with silvery promise, so the thoughts of Rachel Bond suffused with some brightness every possible happening to him.

If he achieved anything the achievement would have for its chief value that it won her commendation; if he fell, the blackness of death would be gilded by her knowledge that he died a brave man's death for her sweet sake.

He listened awhile to the mournful whinny of the mules; to the sound of artillery rolling up the resonant pike; to the crashing of newly-arrived regiments through the cedars as they made their camps in line-of-battle; to little spurts of firing between the nervous pickets, and at last fell asleep to dream that he was returning to Sardis, maimed but honor-crowned, to claim Rachel as his exultant bride.

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