Sergeant Hickman was extremely wroth with some of the offenders.
“Greenhorns!” he exclaimed; “darnationed greenhorns! let ’em go on at it. May a allaygatur eet me, if they don’t behave diff’rent by-’m-by. I’ll stake my critter agin any hoss in the crowd, that some o’ them ere fellars’ll get sculped afore sundown; durned if they don’t.”
No one offered to take the old hunter’s bet, and fortunately for them, as his words proved prophetic.
A young planter, fancying himself as safe as if riding through his own sugar-canes, had galloped off from the line of march. A deer, seen browsing in the savanna, offered an attraction too strong to be resisted.
He had not been gone five minutes—had scarcely passed out of sight of his comrades—when two shots were heard in quick succession; and the next moment, his riderless horse came galloping back to the troop.
The line was halted, and faced in the direction whence the shots had been heard. An advance party moved forward to the ground. No enemy was discovered, nor the traces of any, except those exhibited in the dead body of the young planter, that lay perforated with a brace of bullets just as it had fallen out of the saddle.
It was a lesson—though an unpleasant one to his comrades—and after this, there were no more attempts at deer-stalking. The man was buried on the spot where he lay, and with the troop more regularly and compactly formed—now an easier duty for its officers—we continued the march unmolested, and before sunset were within the stockade of the fort.