A squad of soldiers came by, paused and asked if they might get water. When they came back from the spring she stopped them with her eyes.
“Did the mine do much harm?”
“No, ’m, mighty little, considering. It hurt a dozen men and gave us some digging and mending to do to-night. Good for us, I reckon! We all are so awful lazy—serving only twenty out of twenty-four hours!”
“Yes,” said Désirée. “I’ve observed how lazy you are. There never were soldiers who did better than you are doing.—Is there any news?”
“They’ve got their sap rollers within a hundred feet of us. I’ve got an idea that I’m going to give the captain. If you’d soak wads of cotton in turpentine, and wrap them in pieces of match and fire them from an old large-bore gun into them rollers, you might burn the darned things up!”
“Two of the men who went after caps got in at dawn this morning.”
“Two—?”
“Yes, ’m. Captain Saunders and Walker. They brought two hundred thousand caps between them. They had a lively time getting out, and a livelier getting in.”
“The others—?”
“They haven’t been heard from. It wasn’t an easy job! I reckon if we get two back—and that many caps—it’s as good as we could expect.”