“Let up on this Shakespeare, and get to busiess, said the corporal, as he reached up to my neck to unbutton the top button of my dress. He was looking at my dress, and wondering what he would find concealed within, when I brought down both fists and took him with one in each eye, with a force that would have knocked a mule down. He fell backwards, and gave a yell that could have been heard a mile. Then one of his men started for me and I knocked him in the ear, and he fell beside the corporal. The other man was going to come for his share, when the officer who had been stationed outside the lines rode up with his men and asked what was the matter. The soldier-who was not hit said I had assassinated the corporal. The officer said that was wrong, and women who would go around killing off the Union army with their fists ought to be arrested. Just then the corporal raised up on his elbow and tried to open two of the blackest eyes that ever were seen. Turning to the officer, he said:
“That woman is a smuggler, and she struck me with a brick house!
“Ancient female,” said the officer, looking at me and laughing, “why do you go around like a besum of destruction, wiping out armies, one man at a time. You ought to be ashamed of myself, and you should be muzzled.
“Don't call me a female,” said I, in my natural hoarse voice. “That is something that I will not submit to.”
The corporal looked up at me with one eye, the other being almost closed from the effects of the fall of the brick house. He looked as though he smelled woolen burning, as the old saying is. The officer said he guessed he would take us all to headquarters, and inquire into the affair. The corporal said that there was nothing to inquire into. That this female came along and insisted on going outside of the lines, and when he asked her, in a polite manner, to show her pass, she struck him down with a billy, or some weapon she had concealed about her person.
“You are not much of a liar, either,” said I, jumping on to my horse astraddle, like a man.
The corporal looked at me as though he would sink, but he maintained that he had done nothing that should offend the most fastidious female. The corporal and his men mounted, and we all started for headquarters. I rode beside the officer, and the corporal was right behind me. After we had got started I pulled out my pipe, filled it, lit a match as soldiers usually do, though it was quite unhandy, and began to smoke. As the tobacco smoke rolled out under my veil, from the alleged rosebud mouth, the scene was one that the corporal and the most of the men had never thought of, though the officer was “on” all right enough. The corporal could hardly believe his eyes, or one eye, for the other one had gone closed. I was a fine enough looking female as we rode through the regiment, except the pipe, which I puffed along just as though I had no dress on. As we rode up to the colonel's tent, it was noised around that a scout had captured a daring female rebel, and she had almost killed a corporal, and the whole regiment gathered around the colonel's tent.
“What is the trouble, corporal?” asked the colonel of my black-eyed friend.
“Well this woman wanted to go outside, and when I objected, she knocked me down with a rail off a fence.”