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After the two armies had murdered each other for four or five days in the Wilderness, by fighting so close together that much of the time you could almost shake hands with the Graybacks, both hauled off a little, and lay and glowered at each other. Each side had lost about twenty thousand men in learning that if it attacked the other it would get mashed fine.
It was some minutes before he said anything more. "Shorty," he said, with a sadness in his tone that would almost have moved a mule to tears, "who'd a-thought rd ever git as low down 's this, to have them all-fired graybacks, 's ye call 'em, crawlin' over me. How'd mother feel if she knew about 'em. She wouldn't sleep a wink fer a month!" "Ye'll have to come to it. Si.
I tell you that as sure as there is a God who reigns and judges in Israel, before the Spring breezes stir the tops of these blasted old pines their Confederacy and all the lousy graybacks who support it will be so deep in hell that nothing but a search warrant from the throne of God Almighty can ever find it again. And the glorious old Stars and Stripes " Here we began cheering tremendously.
We found everything exactly as we had left it, with the exception of the increased number of graybacks, which seemed to have propagated a thousand-fold since we left, and they were crawling about like ants, making little paths and tracks in the dirt as they wiggled and waddled about, hunting for ye old Rebel soldier.
I had no desire, in that frigid atmosphere, to strip down to what Artemus Ward called "the skanderlous costoom of the Greek Slave;" so I pulled out of my pocket my little store of wealth ten dollars in greenbacks, sixty dollars in Confederate graybacks and displayed it as Turner came up with, "There's all I have, sir." Turner pocketed it without a word, and did not search me.
Maybe I'd find things so quiet I just couldn't stand it. Wars are mighty unsettling." "I'm thinking," said Dick, "that before this war is over all of us will get enough of it to last a lifetime. We've got the edge on 'em now, since Vicksburg and Gettysburg, but the Graybacks are not yet beaten by a long shot.
"I'd rather be salivated till my teeth drop out and my hair falls off than be carried off in large chunks by fleas and graybacks. Come along." "Mebbe the Surgeon has something else that'll pizen these little cusses," said Si, falling in with his comrade.
"I hope there was nothing wrong in my coming," said Mark, beginning to feel uneasy. "Nothing whatever. You have a right to go where you please and do what you like, so long as you do not set the graybacks on us." "Graybacks?" said Mark inquiringly. "Yes. Johnnies rebel cavalry." "Oh!
They don't give ye no show at all. I rayther think the graybacks likes the ossifers best if they could have their ch'ice, 'cause they's fatter 'n the privits; they gits better grub." Si fairly turned pale as he contemplated the picture so graphically portrayed by Shorty.
It did not take long to solve the mystery, and to say that I was thoroughly disgusted and overcome to find my worst fears realized, in discovering two good, fat, healthy-looking graybacks under the seams of my drawers, would but faintly express the sensations I experienced.
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