"No. Stack 'em; stack 'em, I tell you," said Si impatiently. "And be quick about it. They'll all git ahead o' you. Don't you see the rest stackin' arms?"
The boys obeyed as if dazed, and started to follow little Pete's lead toward the clump of willows.
The boy, full of the old nick, found an Orderly's horse nipping the grass close by the path to the spring and, boy like, jumped on its back. The clatter of the canteens frightened the horse, and he broke into a dead run.
"Do ye s'pose the fight's really over?" whispered Pete to Alf Russell, who was just behind him. "Don't you think the rebels just let go to get a fresh hold?"
"Seems so to me," answered Alf. "Seems to me there was just millions of 'em, and we only got away with a little passel, in spite of all that shootin'. Why, when we come out on the ridge the valley down there seemed fuller of 'em than it was at first."
"We oughtn't to get too far away from our guns," said Monty Scruggs. "Them woods right over there may be full o' rebels watching to jump us when we get far enough away."
"I don't like the looks of that hill to the left," said Gid Mackall, nervously. "An awful lot o' them went behind it, and I didn't see any come out."
"There, them bushes over there are shaking—they're coming out again," said Harry Joslyn, turning to run back for his gun.