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While eating supper one evening in our camp at New Orleans, the men were seated in their usual manner on the open ground grouped around their mess kits containing their rations; a young lady with her escort was passing through the camp and observing the men eating supper, remarked to her companion that the soldiers looked like men. She had possibly never seen a soldier before.
I understood what her looks implied and answered her with an eye-glance, "I will sacrifice my soul for thee." And the tongue of the case wrote in our hearts these lines: How many a lover with his eyebrows speaketh * To his beloved, as his passion pleadeth: With flashing eyne his passion he inspireth * And well she seeth what kits pleading needeth.
Mean to let a feller be jumped on, and clawed something awful, do you? I give you my word that if I see a wildcat comin' for me, I'll jump overboard, and let him tackle the rest of you in the boat, that's what. Get your gun, Lil Artha; they're vicious you must know, specially when they've got kits around."
In addition, a red bandana handkerchief was twisted about the neck of each Overland Rider, in true western style, to keep the alkali dust from sifting down their necks. All the equipment except mess kits and emergency rations, and a canteen of water for each, had been sent forward on the burros in charge of the Chinaman, Ping Wing, whom the Overland girls had not yet met.
Tents were melting away like snow. Kits lay all naked and revealed upon the earth. The men were falling in. The waggons were going the wrong way round. The very headquarters and staff were being cleared out. The whole camp was, in fact, in motion. It was coming down into the town. In a few hours the familiar place was bare and deserted.
"Your son shall at once be rated as a midshipman in the ship's books;" and then he added, a shade of grief passing across his countenance, "He will have no difficulty in getting an outfit from the kits of the four youngsters who were killed on the 1st. By the by, what is he called?" "Pearce, sir Pearce Ripley is his name," answered the boatswain.
It was scattered between Chatham, Dover, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, and so on, merely to give the inland men a chance to get rid of their breakfasts. We don't like to concentrate and try a big embarkation at any one point. It makes the Continent jumpy. Otherwise," said Kyd, "I believe we could get two hundred thousand men, with their kits, away on one tide."
"You got him!" shrieked Bou; "I saw his hands come up to his face and he pitched right forward into the trench. Hooray! that's another one for Charlie Wendt." They are unarmed, but equipped with first-aid kits and stretchers.
The sight was strikingly picturesque, for, as they rode up, the order to dismount was given, and in an instant the whole squadron was at work, picketing and unsaddling their horses; forage was shaken out before the weary and hungry beasts; kits were unpacked, cooking utensils produced, and every one busy in preparing for the bivouac.
They already had made a great record on the plains, protecting the Union Pacific and the Kansas Pacific railroads; were just back from scouting against the Apaches in Arizona; and now they eagerly unpacked their campaign kits for another round. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, their old chief-of-scouts, was sent for, in the East where he had been acting on the stage with Texas Jack.
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