Bill Baker was awake at last, and from his hiding-place had seen Capt. Carleton and Isaac disappear beneath the trees in the distance.
“They are goners,” he muttered to himself, “Won’t that snap dragon of a widow be mad, though, when she hears how they’ve got Ike. Poor Ike, I’d help him if I could, but ’taint no use interferin’ now,” and with this reflection, Bill turned his attention toward the stranger, watching him for several minutes, first to decide his politics, and second, to calculate his probable strength. The soldier was at least a head taller than Bill, who nevertheless far exceeded him in strength of muscle and power of endurance.
“I can manage him,” was Bill’s contemptuous comment, and feeling in his pocket for the strong cord Rose Mather had bound round his paper parcel of turnovers and cheese, he prepared to spring upon his foe in the rear and take him by surprise.
The cracking twigs betrayed him, and changing his tactics he walked directly in front of the astonished young man, who, with heightened color, haughtily demanded “what he was doing there,—and whether he were a friend or foe.”
“What am I doin’ here?” Bill repeated, sticking his cap a little more to one side, and half shutting one of his wicked grey eyes, “Kinder peekin’ round to see what I can find. Be I friend or foe? You must be green to ask that. Don’t you re-cog-nize my regimentals, made after the cut of Uncle Sam, siled some, to be sure, but then I’ve been at a dirty job,—been lickin’ jest such scamps as you. Now, then, corporal, seein’ I answered you civil, what are you doin’ here? You won’t answer me, hey?” he continued, as the stranger deigned him no other reply than a look of ineffable disdain. “Wall, then, if you’re so ’fraid of your tongue, s’posin’ we try a rastle, rough and tumble, you know; and the one that gits beat is t’other’s prisoner. That’s fair, as these dead folks will witness;” and Bill’s glance for the first time fell upon the bodies lying near them,—upon Charlie’s childish face, with the golden curls clustering around it.
The sight touched a tender chord in Bill, and forgetting for a moment his new acquaintance, he bent over the drummer boy, murmuring,
“Poor child, your folks or’to have been ashamed to let you come to war.”
Now was the Rebel’s time. He felt intuitively that he was no match for the thick-set, brawny Bill. Safety lay alone in flight, and with a sudden bound he fled like a deer.
“Nuff said,” dropped from Bill’s lips, and the next instant he, too, was flying through the woods in pursuit of the foe.
It proved an unequal race, and Bill’s strong arms ere long closed like a vice around the struggling soldier, who resisted manfully, until resistance was vain, and then sullenly stood still, while Bill fastened his hands behind him, with the cords unwittingly furnished by Rose Mather!