At this point Johnny Garrett lied:
“Oh, we can’t stay to supper, and the fact is we couldn’t eat if we did. It’s only half an hour since we ate the best part of a ham out of our haversacks. And besides we’ve got to get to Gordonsville to-night.”
I am afraid I was accessory after the fact to the telling of that lie. At least I didn’t contradict it.
We pushed on a little way till we had got out of sight of the house. Then we stopped by mutual consent under a tree and dismounted.
“The grass is pretty good,” I said, “and we’ll let the horses crop it while we wait for it to get good and dark.” It did not seem necessary to mention what we were to wait for darkness for.
“Yes,” said Johnny, “there are the sheep, and I’ll keep an eye on them.”
When it was thoroughly dark we committed a double crime.
It was sheep stealing as well as a violation of the other law, but we were not in a mood to consider such things just then. Under cover of the darkness we killed the fattest sheep in the lot, dressed it as well as we could, and then by the light of some matches I wrote a little note on a leaf from my memorandum book. It said simply this:—
“There is no law to forbid some hungry women to eat a sheep that somebody else has killed in violation of law.”
Pinning this to the carcass we carried the mutton to the house, and hung it to a tree where it would be seen with the dawn.