"The man you want to see don't live here no more. He done moved outen the country two year ago come next July. Clear yourself. I'm that skeared of gray-back soldiers that I can't sleep none fur a week after seein' one of 'em."
"Aw! Quit your nonsense," growled Lambert, "or, by gum! I'll come there and lick ye even if you aint got but one leg to defend yourself with." He hitched his horse at the fence, shook hands with the veteran, then seated himself on the porch close by his chair and continued: "Me and you have always been the best kind of friends, Abner, and I don't want you to sniff at me just kase you've been shot by the Yankees and I aint."
"I won't, Sile; I won't never do the like no more. But a Home Guard! And lickin' a gunboat that's got 'leven inches of iron on her sides and four foot of solid oak back of that, with nothing in the wide world but popguns!" said the veteran, taking his pipe from his mouth to indulge in a hearty peal of laughter. "And Tom Randolph fur a cap'n. That there is a leetle the worst I ever heard of. Hey-youp! Steady on the left centre!" he yelled, dropping his crutch upon the gallery and grasping with both hands the stump of his leg, which he had wrenched a little too severely during his paroxysms of merriment. "I almost disremembered that I aint got only part of a leg on this side. I left the rest up to Shiloh. I'm glad to see you again, Sile; I am so. But I would be a heap gladder if me and you had chawed hard-tack and fit the Yanks together. Then you wouldn't be no such triflin' thing as a Home Guard."
"But I don't want to fight no Yanks," said Lambert truthfully.
"Don't you want to fight no Yanks? Well, I don't know's I'm blamin' you fur that. They aint by no means the easy fellers to lick that we uns thought they was goin' to be, and when they set up that yell of theirn to let we uns know they was comin' fur us—I tell you, Sile, my hair always riz when I heard that yell, and I wisht I was to home grabblin' fur taters."
"Then what makes you poke fun at me fur?" demanded Lambert. "I am to home now and I want to stay; but Cap'n Roach he allows that if we uns don't do something pretty sudden we're liable to be conscripted."
"Like enough. Then why don't you uns do something?"
"That's what I come here to see you about. What is they, I'd like to know, that we can do? If the Yanks would only come where we be [you will notice that Lambert did not say "Yankees" any more. He copied the veteran and used the shorter word], we uns could show the folks about here that we Home Guards aint by no means the useless truck they take us to be; but we can't go all the way to New Orleans fur the sake of fightin' 'em."
"You uns will see Yanks enough if you stay right where you be," said the veteran, with another laugh. "I aint spilin' fur a sight at any more of 'em, but all the same I look to see them ridin' right along this road while I am settin' on my gallery watchin' of 'em. They aint come this clost to Mooreville to go away without seein' it. They're hoppin' us right along, and we had oughter be whopped."