“Not much I didn’t. I took leg bail, and got into the woods. You see the men up there are acquainted with us, and if they got us they would make us stretch hemp.” Another quotation from his father.
“Well, we shall have to ask you to stay here until we come back,” said the captain. “We shan’t be gone but a little while. Forward, and hold your sabres in so that they won’t hit against your heels.”
The two boys stood there in the road and saw them ride around the first bend, and they went so silent and still that one who didn’t know they were there would not have suspected anything. As soon as they were out of hearing Dan showed off a little of the enthusiasm that was in him.
“Captain! Captain Dan Newman!” said he, with a violent attempt to refrain from giving a wild hurrah. “And I never was in the army in my life! And you are a lieutenant, Cale. But you don’t seem to think much of it.”
“The fact is, I don’t know whether I am an officer or not,” replied Cale, looking down at the ground. “I don’t believe that officer had any right to promote us.”
“Well, I declare, you are a dunce,” said his brother, more than half inclined to get angry with him. “Didn’t you hear what the officer said to his men—‘I want you all to address him as captain and his brother as lieutenant’—I tell you that’s enough for me.”
“But this officer was a captain.”
“No matter for that.”
“And I don’t believe that he had a right to promote you to the same rank as himself. They don’t do business like that in Jones county.”
“What way?”