"I'm sure you're not a ghost, from the way you eat," said Shorty, who was beginning to recover his propensity for sarcasm. "If ghosts et like you there'd have to be a steam bakery an' a pork packery run in connection with every graveyard."
"And I'd never take no ghost to board," said Billy.
"Come, Si," said Jimmy Barlow, filling his briarwood pipe with kinnikinnick, lighting it from the fire, taking a few puffs to start it, and handing it to Si, "tell us just what happened to you. We're dyin' to hear."
"Well," said Si, settling down with the pipe into a comfortable position, "I don't know what happened. Last thing I knowed I wuz runnin' ahead on Shorty's left, loadin' my gun, an' tryin' to keep up with the Colonel's hoss. Next thing I knowed I wuz wakin' up at the foot of a black-oak. Everything was quiet around me, except the yellin' of two or three wounded men a little ways off. At first I thought a cannonball' d knocked my whole head off. Then it occurred to me that if my head was knocked off I couldn't hear nor see."
"Nor think, even," injected Shorty.
"No, nor think, even. For what'd you think with?"
"I know some fellers that seem to think with their feet, and that blamed awkwardly," mused Shorty.
"I kept on wakin' up," continued Si. "At first I thought I had no head at all, an' then it seemed to me I was all head, it hurt so awfully. I couldn't move hand nor foot. Then I thought mebbe only half my head was shot away, an' the rest was aching for all.