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The guard was only ten in number, while we, including the Tennesseeans, were twenty a great falling off in precaution from their former custom. We were crowded into rude box-cars, and soon began to suffer severely with the cold, for the night air was most piercing. It was the 3d of December, and we had only summer clothing, which was, in addition, very ragged.
This naturally led the surplus sparrows out through the many thoroughfares leading from any large city. Where horses went sparrows could follow. Accordingly along the great lines of travel this bird found the simple path by which he could enter new territory. Meanwhile box-cars came into our large cities with freight. Sometimes they had carried grain, sometimes cattle.
As soon as he got home he would go to the refrigerator for a piece of raw beefsteak for his swollen eye. Darn that eye anyway! He would have to hibernate up in the woods till it became more presentable. Far behind him in the mist somewhere the yard-engine was still coughing; across the water came a subdued squeal of protesting flanges, followed by the distant bang of shunted box-cars.
There were flat cars loaded with sections of houses, and box-cars full of furniture. Benton was growing every day. At least a thousand persons got off that train, adding to the dusty, jostling melee. Suddenly Neale came face to face with Larry King. "Red!" he yelled, and made at the cowboy. "I'm shore glad to see you," drawled Larry. "What 'n hell busted loose round heah?"
Riding hither and thither and swinging a long, heavy musket like a marshal's baton, the Sioux warrior, almost everywhere at once, urged his men to the fighting, and the fate of the few white men they were able to cut down or scalp before Stanley could cover the line of box-cars seemed to add vigor to their onslaught.
Out in the yards the night men were making up a westbound freight, and the crashing of box-cars carelessly "kicked" into place added its note to the discord of inefficiency and destructive breakage. Over in the town a dance-hall piano was jangling, and the raucous voice of the dance-master calling the figures came across to the Crow's Nest curiously like the barking of a distant dog.
Walk slowly, and carelessly, as though you were simply out to stretch your legs. Brown and Knight will go with me to the engine, and you, Burns" he pointed to Tom "you come with us, too. I want you as fireman. Ross will uncouple the train after the third box-car. The box-cars are empties being sent to Chattanooga for supplies which the rebs are storing in Atlanta. The doors will be unlocked.
They climbed the iron ladders on the sides of the box-cars; built fires behind piles of old ties; waved to favorite brakemen. But to Carol it was magic. She was motoring with Kennicott, the car lumping through darkness, the lights showing mud-puddles and ragged weeds by the road. A train coming! A rapid chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck.
On the 17th of December, I left Camp Beauregard with a car-load of ammunition, attached to a train of twenty-five box-cars, containing the 27th Tennessee regiment, Colonel Kit Williams commanding, for Bowling Green, where a battle was expected. Colonel Williams' orders were, to go through with all possible dispatch. Here was a new field for observation to me, and one of great interest.
Not so many days, weeks, months back he had been a different man. At Bordeaux, when his squad first set foot upon French soil! That was a splendid reality. How he had thrilled at the welcome of the French sailors! Then he thought of the strenuous round of army duties, of training tasks, of traveling in cold box-cars, of endless marches, of camps and villages, of drills and billets.
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