"If all the rest of the men were killed wouldn't the powder-monkey get a chance to fire the gun?"
"Look here, boys," gasped Shorty, when he got a chance to answer, "I'd like to answer your questions and fill you so plumb full o' information that your hides'd crack to hold it. But I aint no complete history o' the war with heavy artillery tactics bound up in one volume. All I know is that the worst dose them forts ever give was to the fellers that had to build 'em. After you've dug and shoveled and wheeled on one of 'em for about a month you'll hate the very sight of 'em and never ask no questions about 'em. All you'll want'll be to find and kill the feller that invented them brick-red eruptions on the face o' the earth."
This was a prosaic side of the war that had not occurred to the boys.
As the train ran out into the country there were plentiful signs of war to rivet the attention of the youngsters—hospitals, with the emaciated patients strolling feebly about; corrals of mules and horses, the waste and wreckage where camps had been, and bridges which had been burned and rebuilt.
"But we haint seen no guerrillas yit," said Harry Joslyn and Gid Mackall, whose minds seemed more fascinated with that species of an enemy than any other, and they apparently voiced the minds of the rest. "When're we likely to see some guerrillas?"
"O, the guerrillas are layin' purty low now, betwixt here and Nashville," Si carelessly explained. "After we pass Nashville you kin begin to look out for 'em."
"Why," Gid Mackall complained to the rest of them, "Corpril Elliott said that we could begin to look out for guerrillas jest as soon's we crossed the Ohio—that the whole o' Kentucky was full of 'em. I believe Corpril Elliott knows more about his business than Sargint Klegg. Sargint Klegg seems careless like. I see lots o' fellers along the road in butternut clothes that seemed savage and sneaky like. They looked at us in a way that made me certain they wuz spying us, and had their guns hid away somewhere, ready to jump us whenever there wuz a good chanst."
"So did I," chorused the others.