“I have not; I only go into them from necessity. But our fight with the guerillas was a splendid piece of strategy. I will tell you about it.”
Somers told him, and the engineer was satisfied, though he declared that he was too much of a coward to have any relish for hand-to-hand encounters.
“Well, Captain Barkwood, how is the general?” asked Somers, when the relative merits of brain and muscle had been duly discussed.
“The general! He is a diamond among precious stones,” replied Barkwood, with enthusiasm. “If he gets a chance he will knock the backbone out of the rebel army in this quarter. By the way, Somers, I remember the general when he was in Mexico.”
“Were you there?”
“I was.”
“You don’t look old enough.”
“I’m forty. I remember him at Chapultepec.”
“I was there,” added De Banyan; “but I was a private.”
“He fought like a tiger there, as he did everywhere, and went up like a rocket from second lieutenant to lieutenant colonel. He is what I call a positive man; he does his own thinking, which, unfortunately for him, perhaps, in some instances, does not agree with the thinking of others. He was with Pillow, Rains, and Ripley, who are all rebels now.”