The youth smiled when he saw Dick's glance of surprise.
“I know I look odd among you,” he said, “and you take me for one of the Nebraska hunters. So I am, but I'm a Kentuckian, too, and I've a right to a place with you fellows. My name is Frank Pennington. I was born about forty miles north of Pendleton, but when I was six months old my parents went out on the plains, where I've hunted buffalo, and where I've fought Indians, too. But I'm a Kentuckian by right of birth just as you are, and I asked to be assigned to the regiment raised in the region from which we came.”
“And mighty welcome you are, too,” said Dick, offering his hand. “You belong with us, and we'll stick together on this campaign.”
The two youths, one officer and one private, became fast friends in a moment. Events move swiftly in war. Both now felt the great engines throbbing faster beneath them, and the flotilla, well into the mouth of the Ohio, was leaving the Mississippi behind them. But the Ohio here for a distance is apparently the mightier stream, and they gazed with interest and a certain awe at the vast yellow sheet enclosed by shores, somber in the gray garb of winter. It was the beginning of February, and cold winds swept down from the Illinois prairies. Cairo had been left behind and there was no sign of human habitation. Some wild fowl, careless of winter, flew over the stream, dipped toward the water, and then flew away again.
As far as the eye was concerned the wilderness circled about them and enclosed them. The air was cold and flakes of snow dropped upon the decks and the river, but were gone in an instant. The skies were an unbroken sheet of gray. The scene so lonely and desolate contained a majesty that impressed them all, heightened for these youths by the knowledge that many of them were going on a campaign from which they would never return.
“Looks as wild as the great plains on which I've hunted with my father,” said Pennington.
“But we hunt bigger game than buffalo,” said Dick.
“Game that is likely to turn and hunt us.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where we're going?”