- THREE:"Wonder if I'm ever goin' to have a chanst for a little private sociable with Billings? Just as I think I'm goin' to have it, something interferes. That feller's bin so long ripe for a lickin' that I'm afraid he'll be completely spiled before my chanst comes." ONE:He shrugged. "You know I don't."Maria passed the letter over to Si to read again, and without more ado opened the inclosure. As she did so, a glance of recognition of the handwriting flashed upon Shorty, and he started to take the letter from her, but felt ashamed to do so. GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE:"Shorty," said the officer with a smile, "I admire your talents for prevarication more than I can express. As a good, off-hand, free-going, single-gaited liar you have few equals and no superiors. Your lies usually have so much probability in them that they seem better than the truthfor your purposes. But this has no probability whatever in it. I doubt if you are able to walk to Headquarters. If you were well and strong, I should believe you quite capable not only of stealing the cow from Army Headquarters, but President Lincoln's cow from his back-door of the White House. But you are good now because you haven't strength enough to be up to any devilment. Now, tell me, who brought that cow here?""Prisoner," said Lieut. Bowersox, "this court has met to try you. Look around upon the members, and see if there is any one to whom you have objection. If so, state it." ONE:One by one, and very slowly, other nerves awoke. He became conscious that there was a sharp stone or knot under his head, which hurt, and he tried to move it, but queerly his head would not move, and then he found that neither would his hands. This was faintly puzzling, as things are in dreams. Then his throat became on fire with thirst, and somehow there came a dream of the deliciously cool well on the farm at home, the bucket covered with green moss swinging over it, the splash of cool water when it was lowered, the trough by the side, where they used to pour water for the fowls to drink, the muddy spot around, where water plants grew on the splashings and drippings. Then were visions of the eternal, parching thirst of the damned, which he had often heard preachers describe, and he was conscious of a faint curiosity as to whether he had died and waked up in the home of the lost. GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE:Shorty softly parted the bushes and looked in. Two of the well-known sharpers who hung around the camps had enticed little Pete in there, and to a game of three-card monte. They had inflamed his boyish conceit by allowing him to pick out two cards in succession, and with small bets."Naw; git out. Don't bother me with no questions, I tell you," impatiently said a man in citizen's clothes, who with arms outspread was signalling the switching engines. "'Tain't my business to give information to people. Got all I kin do to furnish brains for them bull-headed engineers. Go to that Quartermaster you see over there in uniform. The Government pays him for knowin' things. It don't me." ONE:"I'm Captain enough for you," answered Si, thrusting the muzzle of his gun close to his face. "Surrender this minute, or off goes your head." GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
THREE:"I noticed you," the girl said. "And I said to myself, I said: 'What can a person as grim as all that be doing at a Social as gay as all this?' So I stopped you to see if I could find out."
THREE:"All right," assented the Lieutenant quite willingly. "Form the men just back of the edge of the woods. Keep them out of sight, and caution them not to shoot till they get the order. We must wait till we get the rebels just right.""Now, there's three loaves o' bread for the Sargint," said Harry, laying them down on a newspaper. "There's three for the Corpril; there's three for me; there's three for you."
THREE:He was none too soon, for there were getting to be thousands of very hungry men in Chattanooga who remembered the axiom about the early bird catching the worm, and thought the best time for "snatching" something was in the dark just before reveille. If they could find nothing better, and too often they did not, they would rob the mules of their scanty rations of corn, and soon a mule's feed-box had to be as carefully guarded as the commissary tent of the Headquarters mess.
