Dan ate it to the last morsel and licked the warm juice from his fingers.
“You lied, Pinetop,” he said, “but, by God, you saved my life. What place is this, I wonder. Isn't there any hope of our cutting through Grant's lines to-day?”
Pinetop glanced about him.
“Somebody said we were comin' on to Sailor's Creek,” he answered, “and it's about as God-forsaken country as I care to see. Hello! what's that?”
In the road there was an abandoned battery, cut down and left to rot into the earth, and as they swept past it at “double quick,” they heard the sound of rapid firing across the little stream.
“It's a fight, thank God!” yelled Pinetop, and at the words a tumultuous joy urged Dan through the water and over the sharp stones. After all the hunger and the intolerable waiting, a chance was come for him to use his musket once again.
As they passed through an open meadow, a rabbit, starting suddenly from a clump of sumach, went bounding through the long grass before the thin gray line. With ears erect and short white tail bobbing among the broom-sedge, the little quivering creature darted straight toward the low brow of a hill, where a squadron of cavalry made a blue patch on the green.
“Geriminy! thar goes a good dinner,” Pinetop gasped, smacking his lips. “An' I've got to save this here load for a Yankee I can't eat.”
With a long flying leap the rabbit led the charge straight into the enemy's ranks, and as the squirrel rifles rang out behind it, a blue horseman was swept from every saddle upon the hill.
“By God, I'm glad I didn't eat that rabbit!” yelled Pinetop, as he reloaded and raised his musket to his shoulder.