He went to Si and examined him. Shorty turned on his side and watched him with eager eyes. His heart sickened as he saw the Surgeon's face grow graver as he proceeded. The Surgeon probed the bullet's track with his fingers, and drew out a piece of folded letter paper stained with blood. Instinctively he unfolded it, and read through the ensanguined smears, written in a cramped school-girl hand:
Shorty fumed around at this while he was cooking his breakfast, for he wanted Pete to be there and eat heartily, in preparation for the arduous struggles of the momentous day which was breaking for them.This is the end.
<024>
ONE:"How can you be a commanding officer, when everybody else bosses you about?" persisted the argumentative Monty Scruggs. "Everybody that comes near you orders you around, just the same as you used to us, and you mind 'em. That ain't no way for a commanding officer. We don't want anybody bossing us that everybody else bosses."
ONE:The Colonel ordered Si to bring his prisoner back into a gully some distance behind the line, where he could be interrogated without the sound reaching the men in the works."How in the world'd we ever git clean through the State without the least bit o' trouble?" asked Harry Joslyn, as they stood together on the platform awaiting the return of Si and Shorty, who had gone to see about their breakfast. "It was fight from the word go with the other men from the minute they struck Kentucky."
TWO:"Jerusha," said Shorty, pulling out the letters and picture, rising to his feet, and assuming as well as he could in the rocking car the pose and manner of the indignant lovers he had seen in melodramas, "I'm Dan Elliott, and your own true love, whose heart you've broke. When I learned of your faithlessness I sought death, but death went back on me. I've come back from the grave to reproach you. You preferred the love of a second-hand husband, with a silver watch-chain and a raft o' logs, to that of an honest soldier who had no fortune but his patriotic heart and his Springfield rifle. But I'll not be cruel to you. There are the evidences of your faithlessness, that you was so anxious to git hold of. Your secret's safe in this true heart. Take 'em and be happy with your bridge-timber contractor. Be a lovin' wife to your warmed-over husband. Be proud of his speculations on the needs o' his country. As for me, I'll go agin to seek a soldier's grave, for I cannot forgit you."
