Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/343

Rh. 'Here,' I said, 'you take that ring back to your brother Charlton, and tell him if he 's ever penned up in Camp Chase again and I go there to see him, it 'll be to see him hanged.'"

The lieutenant was grinning. "It was a wonder he did n't have you shot."

"Young man," he said grimly; "it would be a bigger man than John Morgan that 'd have the nerve to have me shot, at any stage of the game. He took the ring from the officer who picked it up, and he looked at the seal on it, and then he said: 'Send him back to his railroad in charge of some one.' He said it in the voice of a man who did n't want to be bothered with anything as unimportant as I was, and that stuck in my crop—but I swallowed it—and I remembered it.

"Before they started me out I heard him tell Harris they 'd exchange horses with him; and Harris said: 'With pleasure. General. With pleasure'—though he knew it meant leaving him a lot of broken nags in exchange for a stable of the finest horses in Ohio. He never held up his head afterward—Harris. He died of it.

"All right," he said to the waiter, with the soup. "Serve it."

"When we got back to the hand-car, the raid had passed, and the two soldiers asked me, if they surrendered, would I take them back to Cincinnati and give them something to eat. They fell asleep on the car. I had to pump the whole load myself. But I got back