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The voice of Private Tom Clary, who was posted as sentinel No. 1, challenged: "Halt! who comes there?" "A friend Corporal Frank Burton," was the answer. "Blest be the saints! Corpril Frank, laddie, is it you and aloive?" said the sentinel, forgetting in his joy to continue the usual formality of the challenge or to call the corporal of the guard.
He'll think me a purty Sarjint to send out into the country in charge o' men, and you a fine Corpril." "Say," said Shorty, his face illuminated with a bright idea. "We might report the rations 'lost in action. That'd fix it fine. We had two good fights, and come out ahead. That'll tickle the Captain so that he won't be partickler what we report." "Hurroo!" echoed Hennessey; "that's the ticket."
Boys,'tis what he's been driving at these six months our superior corpril with his education and his copies of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He's been sent for the purpose and that's where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That man's a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a belt-buckle.
"It's goin' to be extry fatigue to be daddy to a little cuss as lively as a schoolhouse flea, and Corpril of Co. Q, at the same time, but I'm going to do it, if it breaks a leg." He was passing a clump of barberry bushes when he overheard Pete Skidmore's voice inside: "I'll bet $10 I kin pick it out every time. I'll bet $25 I kin pick it out this time. Don't tech the cards."
"Why, them fellers hain't brains enough to tell a battery from a regiment, nor pluck enough to take a settin' hen offen her nest. Let them go at once." "Why, Corpril Elliott told us that every man in Kentucky, particularly them what sold pies, wuz dangerous, and liable to go guerrillying at any minute," said Harry in an aggrieved tone.
Maria did not go free herself. The other girls had not been blind to Shorty's condition of mind, and rather suspected that Maria was not wholly indifferent to him. When she came into the kitchen for another supply. Cousin Susie, younger sister of Martha, remarked: "Maria, I've a notion to take your advice, and set my cap for Corpril Shorty.
Use your reins, curb, and spurs," replied the boy. "True for you, corpril; a pull to stop, and a spur to go ahead. That's a language that nades no interpreter." For myself, I proposed to follow up the Navajos with the rest of the company as soon as they were fairly within the cañon, and I expected to capture them without blood-shed.
Wisht I knowed jest how much o' the kind remembrance was Maria's, and if it differed in any way from her mother's and sister's?" The next evening the Orderly-Sergeant handed Shorty a badly-thumb-marked and blotted yellow envelope, on which was scrawled in a very schoolish hand: "To Mister Corpril Elliott, "Co. Q, Two Hundred Injianny Volintears, "Chattynoogy, 10-S-E."
"Say, Corpril," inquired Harry, "what's to be done with them rebels over there at the end o' the bridge?" "Them that we shot?" said Shorty carelessly, feeling around for his tobacco to refill his pipe. "Nothin'. I guess we've done enough for 'em already." "Don't we do nothin' more?" repeated Harry.
Everywhere men were marching to and fro, and long trains of army wagons struggling through the mud of the valleys and up the steep hillsides. "My, what lots o' men," gasped Harry Joslyn. "We won't be once among sich a crowd. Wonder if Sergeant Klegg and Corpril Elliott kin keep us from bein' lost?" "Trust Corpril Elliott," said Gid, returning to his old partisanship of the taller veteran.
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