"I didn't know it was like this," he muttered thickly. "Why, they're
no better than mangled rabbits--I didn't know it was like this."
They wound through the little ravine, climbed a hillside planted in thin
corn, and were ordered to "load and lie down" in a strip of woodland. Dan
tore at his cartridge with set teeth; then as he drove his ramrod home, a
shell, thrown from a distant gun, burst in the trees above him, and a red
flame ran, for an instant, along the barrel of his musket. He dodged
quickly, and a rain of young pine needles fell in scattered showers from
the smoked boughs overhead. Somewhere beside him a man was groaning in
terror or in pain. "I'm hit, boys, by God, I'm hit this time." The groans
changed promptly into a laugh. "Bless my soul! the plagued thing went right
into the earth beneath me."
"Damn you, it went into my leg," retorted a hoarse voice that fell suddenly
silent.
With a shiver Dan lay down on the carpet of rotted pine-cones and peered,
like a squirrel, through the meshes of the brushwood. At first he saw only
gray smoke and a long sweep of briers and broom-sedge, standing out dimly
from an obscurity that was thick as dusk. Then came a clatter near at hand,
and a battery swept at a long gallop across the thinned edge of the pines.
So close it came that he saw the flashing white eyeballs and the spreading
sorrel manes of the horses, and almost felt their hot breath upon his
cheek.
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