"Sh—sh—sh—" said all three.
The faint swish of bushes as Lieutenant Boggs's ten men scuttled into the brush behind them—the distant beat of the army's feet getting fainter ahead of them, and then silence—dead, dead silence.
"Sh—sh—sh!"
With the red streaks of dawn Captain Mayhall Wells was pacing up and down in front of Flitter Bill's store, a gaping crowd about him, and the shattered remnants of the army drawn up along Roaring Fork in the rear. An hour later Flitter Bill rode calmly in.
"I stayed all night down the valley," said Flitter Bill. "Uncle Jim Richmond was sick. I hear you had some trouble last night, Captain Wells." The captain expanded his chest.
"Trouble!" he repeated, sarcastically. And then he told how a charging horde of daredevils had driven him from camp with overwhelming numbers and one piece of artillery; how he had rallied the army and fought them back, foot by foot, and put them to fearful rout; how the army had fallen back again just when the Kentuckians were running like sheep, and how he himself had stayed in the rear with Lieutenant Boggs and Lieutenant Skaggs, "to cover their retreat, suh," and how the purveyor, if he would just go up through the Gap, would doubtless find the cannon that the enemy had left behind in their flight. It was just while he was thus telling the tale for the twentieth time that two figures appeared over the brow of the hill and drew near—Hence Sturgill on horseback and Tallow Dick on foot.
"I ketched this nigger in my corn-fiel' this mornin'," said Hence, simply, and Flitter Bill glared, and without a word went for the blacksnake ox-whip that hung by the barn door.
For the twenty-first time Captain Wells started his tale again, and with every pause that he made for breath Hence cackled scorn.
"An', Hence Sturgill, ef you will jus' go up in the Gap you'll find a cannon, captured, suh, by me an' the Army of the Callahan, an'—"
