Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/394



HEN Gaston reached Hambright the following day, and whispered to his mother the good news, he hastened to tell his friend Tom Camp. The young man's heart warmed toward the white-haired old soldier in this hour of his victory. With sparkling eyes, he told Tom of his stormy scene with the General, of its curious ending, and the hours he spent in heaven beneath the limbs of an old magnolia.

Tom listened with rapture. "Ah, didn't I tell you, if you hung on you'd get her by-and-by? So you bearded the General in his den did you? I'll bet his eyes blazed when he seed you! He's got an awful temper when you rile him. You ought to a seed him one day when our brigade was ordered into a charge where three concealed batteries was cross firin' and men was failin' like wheat under the knife. Geeminy but didn't he cuss! He wouldn't take the order fust from the orderly, and sent to know if the Major-General meant it. I tell you us fellers that was layin' there in the grass listenin' to them bullets singin' thought he was the finest cusser that ever ripped an oath.

"He reared and he charged, and he cussed, and He damned that man for tryin' to butcher his men, and he never moved till the third order came. That was the night ten thousand wounded men lay on the field, and me in the middle of 'em with a Minie ball in my