“You'd better get Pinetop to daub your chinks for you,” he suggested. “He can make a mixture of wet clay and sandstone that you couldn't tell from mortar.”
“You jest wait till I git through these shoes an' I'll show you,” remarked Pinetop, from the woodpile, where he was making moccasins of untanned beef hide laced with strips of willow. “I ain't goin' to set my bar' feet on this frozen groun' agin, if I can help it. 'Tain't so bad in summer, but, I d'clar it takes all the spirit out of a fight when you have to run bar-footed over the icy stubble.”
“Jack Powell lost his shoes in the battle of Fredericksburg,” said Baker, as he carefully fitted his notched sticks together. “That's why he got promoted, I reckon. He stepped into a mud puddle, and his feet came out but his shoes didn't.”
“Well, I dare say, it was cheaper for the Government to give him a title than a pair of shoes,” observed Dan, cynically. “Why, you are going in for luxury! Is that pile of oak shingles for your roof? We made ours of rails covered with pine tags.”
“And the first storm that comes along sweeps them off—yes, I know. By the way, can anybody tell me if there's a farmer with a haystack in these parts?”
“Pinetop got a load about three miles up,” replied Dan, emptying his pipe against the door sill. “I say, who is that cavalry peacock over yonder? By George, it's Champe!”
“Perhaps it's General Stuart,” suggested Baker witheringly, as Champe came composedly between the rows of huts, pursued by the frantic jeers of the assembled infantry.
“Take them earrings off yo' heels—take 'em off! Take 'em off!” yelled the chorus, as his spurs rang on the stones. “My gal she wants 'em—take 'em off!”
“Take those tatters off your backs—take 'em off!” responded Champe, genial and undismayed, swinging easily along in his worn gray uniform, his black plume curling over his soft felt hat.
As Dan watched him, standing in the doorway, he felt, with a sudden melancholy, that a mental gulf had yawned between them. The last grim months which had aged him with experiences as with years, had left Champe apparently unchanged. All the deeper knowledge, which he had bought with his youth for the price, had passed over his cousin like the clouds, leaving him merely gay and kind as he had been of old.