Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/354

 334 he confided, evidently willing the others close about should hear. "We ain't tied up with no Yanks, 'cept fer maybe a few hours. Hell! thar wasn't nothin' else ter do, but be friendly. Thar wus thirty o' us runnin' kerbump inter thet bunch o' cavalrymen, with ther wagon train a comin' a hundred yards away.

"We weren't in no shape fer ter fight about a hundred an' fifty sojers. I reckon tho' we'd a had to if that young popinjay hed been in command—he ain't got the sense of a dried louse. But Cap Fox, he rode out, an' we sorter talked it over. He don't feel very blame kind toward me since our fracas tother night, but he's a sojer, an' he knows what Ramsay wants. Thet's what I banked on, fer I knew the gineral had give his orders ter use every means possible ter git us ter help out the Yanks. So I just up an' told ther Cap thet we wus out huntin' fer ther same feller he wus; thet my father had been killed, an' I reckoned the Reb spy did it, an' thet frum now on we wus goin' fer ter fight on their side. I don't reckon as how he believed much o' what I sed, but all ther same, he had ter pretend he did, an' let us go 'long without no fightin'. So he done sent us on ahead, an' sent thet young snip along fer ter watch me. Thet's the how it happened."

"I see, an' termorrer we leaves them holdin' the