"I guess that's fair. Here goes—but, hold on. How is it, now? Say it over again."
"Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face, man. Don't you see? If it comes head, then I take the pictures and you take the jewelry. If it comes tail, then you take the jewelry and I take the pictures. Nothing could be plainer than that; so, flop her up, corporal."
"All right, Harry. Here she go—. But hold on!" said he, as a new light seemed to dawn on his mind, while he raised his cap and thoughtfully scratched his head. "Let me see. Ah! you young rascal! You're sharp, you are! Going to gobble up the whole grist of illuminated generals and statesmen, and leave me this handful of brass earrings and breastpins to send home to the girl I left behind me—eh?"
But every dog has his day, and whether or not Harter bided his time for retaliation, or had quite forgotten about 'heads I win, tails you lose,' by the time we got down into Virginia, yet so it was that in more than one camp he gave Andy and myself a world of trouble. More than one evening in winter-quarters, as we sat about our fire, cartridges were dropped down our chimney by some unseen hand, driving us out of our tent in a jiffy; and it was not seldom that our pan of frying hard-tack was sent a flying by a sudden explosion. It was wasted breath to ask who did it.
We were lying in camp near the Rappahannock some time along in the fall of 1863, when Andy said one day,—
"Look here, Harry, let's have some roast beef once. I'm tired of this everlasting frying and frizzling, and my mouth just waters for a good roast. And I've just learned how to do it, too, for I saw a fellow over here in another camp at it, and I tell you it's just fine. You see, you take your chunk of beef and wrap it up in a cloth or newspaper, and then you get some clay and cover it thick all over with the clay, until it looks like a big forty-pound cannon-ball, and then you put it in among the red-hot coals, and it bakes hard like a brick; and when it's done, you just crack the shell off, and out comes your roast fit for the table of a king."
We at once set to work, and all went well enough till Harter came along that way. While Andy was off for more clay, and I was looking after more paper, Harter fumbled around our beef, saying he didn't believe we could roast it that way.
"Just you wait, now," said Andy, coming in with the clay; "we'll show you."
So we covered our beef thick with stiff clay, and rolled the great ball into the camp-fire, burying it among the hot ashes and coals, and sat down to watch it, while the rest of the boys were boiling their coffee and frying their steaks for dinner. The fire was a good one, and there were about a dozen black tin cups dangling on as many long sticks, their several owners squatting about in a circle,—when all of a sudden, with a terrific bang, amid a shower of sparks and hot ashes, the coffee-boilers were scattered, right and left, and a dozen quarts of coffee sent hissing and sizzling into the fire. Our poor roast beef was a sorry looking mess indeed when we picked it out of the general wreck.
We always believed that Harter had somehow smuggled a cartridge into that beef of ours while our backs were turned, and we determined to pay him back in his own coin on the very first favorable opportunity. It was a long time, however, before the coveted opportunity came; in fact it was quite a year afterward, and happened in this wise.