"Well, I'll bet a hatful o' red apples," said Si, "that them was guerrillas that we saw, and they're makin' for this train. The rebels in Nashville somehow got information to 'em about it."
"Them's guerrillas," affirmed Shorty, "sure's the right bower takes the left. None o' our cavalry's stringin' around over the hill-tops. Then, I made out some white horses, which our cavalry don't have. It's just as Si says, them Nashville spies 's put the rebel cavalry onto us."
"Them cowardly, sneaking, death-deserving rebels in Nashville," broke out Conductor Madden, with a torrent of oaths. "Every man in Nashville that wears citizen's clothes ought to be hung on sight, and half the women. They don't do nothing but lay around and take the oath of allegiance, watch every move we make like a cat does a mouse, and send information through the lines. You can't draw a ration of hardtack but they know it, and they're looking down your throat while you're eating it. They haint got the gravel in their craws to go out and fight themselves, and yet they've cost us a hundred times as many lives as if they had. Why does the General allow them to stay there? He ought to order rocks tied to the necks of every blasted one of 'em and fling 'em into the Cumberland River and then pour turpentine on the infernal old town and touch a match to it. That's what I'd do if I had my way. There's more, brimstone trouble to the acre in Nashville than in any town on the footstool, not barring even Richmond."
"Nashville certainly is tough," sighed Shorty. "'Specially in gamblers. Worst tin-horn crowd that ever fumbled a deck or skinned a greeny out o' the last cent o' his bounty. Say, Si, do you remember that tin-horny that I cleaned out o' his whole pile down there at Murfreesboro, with them cards that I'd clipped with a pair o' scissors, so's I'd know 'em by the feel, and he never ketched on till his last shinplaster was gone, and then I throwed the pack in the fire? Well, I seen him down there at the depot smellin' around for suckers. I told him to let our boys alone or I'd snap his neck off short. Great Jehosephat, but I wanted a chance to git up town and give some o' them cold-deckers a whirl."
"Well," said Conductor Madden, after some deliberation, "I believe what you boys say. You're not the kind to get rattled and make rebels out of cedar-bushes. All the same, there's nothing to do but go ahead. My orders were to take this train through to Chattanooga as quick as I could. I can't stop on a suspicion."
"No, indeed," assented Si and Shorty.
"There's no place to telegraph from till we get to Bridgeport, on the Tennessee, and if we could telegraph they wouldn't pay any attention to mere reports of having seen rebels at a distance. They want something more substantial than that."
"Of course they do, and very properly," said Si. "Is your engineer all right?"
"Game as they make 'em, and loyal as Abraham Lincoln himself," responded the conductor.
"Well, I believe our boys 's all right. They're green, and they're friskier than colts in a clover field, but they're all good stuff, and I believe we kin stand off any ordinary gang o' guerrillas. I'll chance it, anyhow. This's a mighty valuable train to risk, but it ought to go through, for we don't know how badly they may need it. You tell your engineer to go ahead carefully and give two long whistles if he sees anything dangerous."