'"
"Well, I'm willing enough to do battle for my country," said Jack Powell,
"but I'll be blessed if I'm going to have my elbow jogged by the poor white
trash while I'm doing it."
"He was scolding at us yesterday because when we were detailed to clean out
the camp, we gave the order to the servants," put in Baker. "Clean out the
camp! Does he think my grandmother was a chambermaid?" He suddenly broke
off and helped himself to a drink of water from a dripping bucket that a
tall mountaineer was passing round the group.
"Been to the creek, Pinetop?" he asked good-humouredly.
The mountaineer, who had won his title from his great height, towering as
he did above every man in the company, nodded drowsily as he settled
himself upon the ground. He was lithe and hardy as a young hickory, and his
abundant hair was of the colour of ripe wheat. At the call to arms he had
come, with long strides, down from his bare little cabin in the Blue Ridge,
bringing with him a flintlock musket, a corncob pipe, and a stockingful of
Virginia tobacco. Since the day of his arrival, he had accepted the pointed
jokes of the mess into which he had drifted, with grave lips and a flicker
of his calm blue eyes. They had jeered him unmercifully, and he had
regarded them with serene and wondering attention. "I say, Pinetop, is it
raining up where you are?" a wit had put to him on the first day, and he
had looked down and answered placidly:--
"Naw, it's cl'ar.
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