“General Straggler has a pretty God-forsaken crew,” taunted the sergeant, looking back as he stepped on briskly. “I've seen his regiments lining the road clear up from Chantilly.”
“If you'd kept your fat eyes open at Manassas the other day, you'd have seen them lining the battle-field as well,” pursued Dan pleasantly, chewing a long green blade of corn. “Old Stonewall saw them, I'll be bound. If General Straggler didn't win that battle I'd like to know who did.”
“Oh, shucks!” responded the sergeant, and was out of hearing.
The regiment passed by and another took its place. “Was that General Lee you were yelling at down there, boys?” inquired Dan politely, smiling the smile of a man who sits by the roadside and sees another sweating on the march.
“Naw, that warn't Marse Robert,” replied a private, limping with bare feet over the border of dried grass. “'Twas a blamed, blank, bottomless well, that's what 'twas. I let my canteen down on a string and it never came back no mo'.”
Dan lowered his eyes, and critically regarded the tattered banner of the regiment, covered with the names of the battles over which it had hung unfurled. “Tennessee, aren't you?” he asked, following the flag.
The private shook his head, and stooped to remove a pebble from between his toes.
“Naw, we ain't from Tennessee,” he drawled. “We've had the measles—that's what's the matter with us.”
“You show it, by Jove,” said Dan, laughing. “Step quickly, if you please—this is the cleanest brigade in the army.”
“Huh!” exclaimed the private, eying them with contempt. “You look like it, don't you, sonny? Why, I'd ketch the mumps jest to look at sech a set o' rag-a-muffins!”