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The first day I merely hunted for whim, character, and absurdity, according to my usual custom; the second day being rainy, I sat in the bar-room at the Seventh Ward, and read a volume of 'Galatea, which I found on a shelf; but before I had got through a hundred pages, I had three or four good Feds sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering hand-bill.
Approaching cautiously, he discovered with a dull sense of horror that a soldier had been buried where he had fallen, but covered so slightly that the tumulus scarcely more than outlined his form. "Ob cose I knowed I d hab ter see dese tings foh I started. What I such a fool fer? De Feds nor de Yanks am' a-gwine ter bodder me if I am' steppin' on 'em or ober 'em."
"But in which direction does their main camp lie, Sergeant?" He shook his head gravely. "Durn it; thet's just what I can't quite figure out, sir whether we uns be to ther north or south of ther white church. Then, somehow or other, it seems like to me as if this yere road lay a bit too close ter the edge of ther plateau ter ever be the main pike what the Feds marched over.
An' that guerilla, Ackert, hed been ridin' a hundred mile at a hand-gallop ter overhaul him, an' knowin' thar warn't but one outlet to Tanglefoot Cove, he expected ter capshur the Feds as they kem out agin. So he sot himself ter ambush Tolhurst, an' waited fur him up thar amongst the pines an' the laurel an' he waited an' waited! But Tolhurst never came!
"The Feds got in on it then. There'd been that business in Mantelish's lab. There were similarities in the pattern. You knew Mantelish. You'd been on Harvest Moon with him. They thought there could be a connection." "But what connection?" she protested. "I know I don't know anything that could do anybody any good!" He shrugged. "I can't figure it either, Trigger girl.
In his last letter to Captain Lewis, which was to reach the explorers before they started, Jefferson said: "The acquisition of the country through which you are to pass has inspired the country generally with a great deal of interest in your enterprise. The inquiries are perpetual as to your progress. The Feds alone still treat it as a philosophism, and would rejoice at its failure.
Just the same, he couldn't help wondering about the strange relationship between the Consolidation of People's Governments and the Federation of Free Nations. Connies and Feds, mostly Planeteers but sometimes spacemen, were constantly skirmishing. They fought over property, over control of ports on distant planets and moons, and over space salvage. Often there was bloodshed.
"When was that?" "Some months ago. Before you and I left Manon. The professor was out, and 113-A had gone along in his pocket as usual. But his two lab guards and one of the raiders were killed. The others got away. Gess Fayle's defection was a certainty by then, and everybody was very nervous. The Feds got there, fast, and dead-brained the raider. They learned just two things.
The first day I merely hunted for whim, character, and absurdity, according to my usual custom; the second day being rainy, I sat in the bar-room at the Seventh Ward, and read a volume of 'Galatea, which I found on a shelf; but before I had got through a hundred pages, I had three or four good Feds sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering hand-bill.
I reckon I fell behind a quarter of a mile or more, and just as I started I looked back, and a party of ten or twelve fellows was just riding in through them big gates onto the front lawn. But them fellows was soldiers for sure; they rode regular like, and all of them wore caps. It was so far off I couldn't tell the color of their clothes, but them caps made me think they was Feds."
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