“Your business? What are you?”
“Gentleman.”
“Good heavens! you are a queer one! We shall see. Are you hurt! No! Great Caesar! you are an awful sight!”
“I was tied to that fellow you disposed of, and with your permission I will get my snapsack yonder.”
“Good; get it. Go with him, corporal, and keep an eye on him.”
In a half-hour the dead were stripped and pitched aside, the wounded cared for in haste, and the horses caught.
“Can you ride?” said my captor. “By George, you must!”
“Yes, I can ride.”
“Then up with you. Give him a leg.”
I wanted none, and was up in a moment on the bare back of a big farm mare; their errand had been, I learned, the purchase of horses. The captain bade me ride with him, and, turning north, we rode away, while the big brute under me jolted my sore bones.