They laid their burden down tenderly enough by a watch fire.
"A little more gently, burn your bones!" groaned Lottery Paul, throwing off the buffalo robe coats and blankets kindly laid over him; "Don't you want to leave me one whole bone among 'em."
"What's come to you, friend?" queried the captain.
"A stupid question; better ask who came at me?—I can reply to that, after a fashion."
"Thunder! My poor boy, your accident seems to have soured your usually sweet temper."
"Oh, you call that an accident, do you, old man? Much obliged for an explanation of your notion of an accident. What's your name for the fire of a battery of nine-pounders and a charge of dragoons?"
"Why don't you speak out! Tell us, or go to death your own way—if we can't do any good to you."
"I know you can. Hand over the whisky!"
"You ass! That would be a gulp of 'sudden death' in fact."
"More nonsense! How do you know what state I am in before I tell you? I am dying of thirst, that's just what ails me—so pass along the bottle, or I'll speak nothing."