(POLLY does so.)
God a'mighty! That Wheatfield: wall, we flatted it down flatter than any pancake what you ever cooked, Polly; and't wa'n't no maple syrup neither was runnin', slipp'ry hot and slimy black, all over it, that nightfall.
POLLY
Here's the road
to Emmetsburg.
LINK No,'t 'ain't: this here's the pike to Taneytown, where Sykes's boys come sweatin', after an all-night march, jest in the nick to save our second day. The Emmetsburg road's thar.—Whar was I, 'fore I fell cat-nappin'?
POLLY
At sunset, July second, sixty-three.
LINK
(nodding, reminiscent)
The Bloody Sundown! God, that crazy sun: she set a dozen times that afternoon, red-yeller as a punkin jack-o'-lantern, rairin' and pitchin' through the roarin' smoke till she clean busted, like the other bombs, behind the hills.
POLLY
My! Wa'n't you never scart
and wished you'd stayed t' home?
LINK Scart? Wall, I wonder! Chick, look a-thar: them little stripes and stars. I heerd a feller onct, down to the store,— a dressy mister, span-new from the city— layin' the law down: "All this stars and stripes," says he, "and red and white and blue is rubbish, mere sentimental rot, spread-eagleism!" "I wan't' know!" says I. "In sixty-three, I knowed a lad, named Link. Onct, after sundown I met him stumblin'—with two dead men's muskets for crutches—towards a bucket, full of ink—- water, they called it. When he'd drunk a spell, he tuk the rest to wash his bullet-holes.—- Wall, sir, he had a piece o' splintered stick, with red and white and blue, tore'most t' tatters, a-danglin' from it. 'Be you color sergeant?' says I. 'Not me,' says Link; 'the sergeant's dead; but when he fell, he handed me this bit o' rubbish—red and white and blue.' And Link he laughed. 'What be you laughin' for?' says I. 'Oh, nothin'. Ain't it lovely, though!'" says Link.
POLLY
What did the span-new mister say to that?