CHAPTER XVI.
A FIGHT AND ITS RESULTS.
Let us now return to the cavalrymen and see how they came out in their assault on the Union men who had been left to guard the bridge, and particularly to tell how Dan and Cale felt when they found themselves going back among those who would be sure to know them. Cale was frightened, and consequently he said nothing, but Dan was just scared enough to have plenty of talk in him.
“Take that man up behind you,” said Captain Cullom, addressing himself to one of the leading fours of his company.
“Up you come with a jump,” said the man, reaching down to catch Dan by the hand.
“Oh, now, I tell you I don’t want to get up there,” said Dan. “Those people at the bridge will surely know me, and I’ll be tumbled off with the first volley you get.”
“Get on up there,” said Captain Cullom, and he reached over as if he was going to draw his sword.
“Give us your hand,” said the man, getting impatient. “Now throw your leg over the back of the horse. You are Southerner enough to do that.”
Dan finally made out to get on the cavalryman’s horse, but it was more the effects of the sword, which had leaped half-way out of its scabbard while the captain was talking to him. Cale was already seated behind his man, and in response to the adjutant’s order, “Forward!” they moved toward the bridge. Dan was more than half-inclined to cry when he found that he must go whether he wanted to or not, and the man he was with began to torment him.
“Oh, they will give it to you if they catch you up there,” said he, in a tone so low that the captain couldn’t hear it. “Say, Charlie, you remember what they done to those two fellows they caught down to Mobile?”
“You’re[You’re] right, I do,” replied the man thus addressed. “They hung ’em up to the nearest tree.”