"If I'm knocked," said Red, "I 'ereby wills and bequeaths to you, Blackguard, h'all my just debts. Share up them cartridges and don't be a 'og."
To cheer up my Brat in hospital at Fort French I had sent him by the last mail out a nice dirge set to our old Spanish tune of Alcala. So I began to sing that while I loaded, pumped and fired:
"Carry Brat reverently, gently, slow,
Pace by the trunnions with patient tread
Over the drifts of the rolling snow
With arms reversed, for the dead."
"Cheerful, eh?" was Red's pungent comment.
"Little we thought of him while we shared
All that was worst in the long campaign,
Little he guessed that we really cared:
But drums roll now, for the slain.
"Spreading the flag o'er his last long sleep,
Leading the charger he may not ride;
Though for the living the ways are steep
The road for the dead rolls wide.
"Bravely he suffer'd, and manly fought,
Great with Death's majesty, rides he there,
Royal the honors he dearly bought,
The peace which we may not share."
"Oh, shut it," Red wailed.
I fired once more at a pearl of smoke under the diamond trees, while I heard the death-scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of orders and then the bugle crying, "Cease firing! Retire!"
The rebels were charging. The horses led up to our line were bucking, fighting, breaking loose, falling as the teamsters backed them to the sleighs. Anti went down dead as I mounted. I saw a teamster crumple up, the chap whose load of coal I had burned to make him speak, Chatter McNabb!