"Lordy! I tell you we gave it ter 'em!" exclaimed another in excited jerks.
"Fight! Wall, that's what I call fightin', leastways it's put. I declar' I
reckon I hit six Yankees plum on the head with the butt of this here
musket."
He paused to knock the head off a champagne bottle, and lifting the broken
neck to his lips drained the foaming wine, which spilled in white froth
upon his clothes. His face was red in the firelight, and when he spoke his
words rolled like marbles from his tongue. Dan, looking at him, felt a
curious conviction that the man had not gone near enough to the guns to
smell the powder.
"Wall, it may be so, but I ain't seed you," returned the first speaker,
contemptuously, as he stroked his bandage. "I was thar all day and I ain't
seed you raise no special dust."
"Oh, I ain't claimin' nothin' special," put in the other, discomfited.
"Six is a good many, I reckon," drawled the wounded man, reflectively, "and
I ain't sayin' I settled six on 'em hand to hand--I ain't sayin' that." He
spoke with conscious modesty, as if the smallness of his assertion was
equalled only by the greatness of his achievements. "I ain't sayin' I
settled more'n three on 'em, I reckon."
Dan left the group and went on slowly across the field, now and then
stumbling upon a sleeper who lay prone upon the trodden clover, obscured by
the heavy dusk. The mass of the army was still somewhere on the long
road--only the exhausted, the sickened, or the unambitious drifted back to
fall asleep upon the uncovered ground.
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