"GREAT Jehosephat, how hungry I am," suddenly ejaculated Shorty, stopping his cheering, as the thunder of the guns died away into an occasional shot after the rebels galloping back to the distant woods on the ridge from which they had emerged.
"I must make some coffee. Wonder where I put my matches?"
"Here, Pete," continued Shorty, as he broke off some splinters from the rails and started a little fire, "take my canteen and Si's and yours, and run down there and find a spring, and fill 'em, before the others make a rush. Be spry about it, for there'll be a rush there in a minute, and you won't have no chance."
The excited boy had to be spoken to a second time before he would come back to earth, much less comprehend the want of water and food. Like the rest of his companions, the terrific drama which had just been enacted had wrought him to a delirium, in which he could think of nothing but a world full of bellowing cannon, and a nightmare of careering, plunging horses, with savagely-yelling riders.
They could not realize that the battlecloud had rolled away just as suddenly as it had burst upon them, and they stood there tightly grasping their reloaded guns, and staring fixedly into the distance for the next horrid development.
"I think you'll find a spring right over there where you see that bunch o' young willers, Pete," said Si, handing him his canteen. "Break for it, before anybody else gets there and muddies the water."
But Pete still stood rigid and unhearing, clutching his gun with a desperate grip, and glaring with bulging, unmoving eyes across the plain.
"Come, wake up, Pete," said Shorty, giving him a sharp shake. "Do as I tell you, and on the jump. The fight's over."
"The fight's over?" stammered the boy. "Ain't they coming back again?"
"Not on their butternut-dyed lives they ain't," said Shorty scornfully. "They've got their dirty hides as full o' lickin' as they kin hold for one day. They'll set around for a while, and rub their hurts, and try to think out jest how it all happened."