THE DRASNOE PIPE-LINE
By Arthur Stanwood Pier
On a windy and sullen morning in May, 1864, a caravan of fifty wagons, each piled high with barrels, crawled down the muddy road from the Drasnoe oil-field. Beside the leading team of the procession walked a one-armed man and a fifteen-year-old boy. The faces of the two were not cheerful. That of the man was sad; the boy’s was anxious.
Behind trooped the other teamsters, shouting, cracking their long blacksnake whips, swearing at the horses, the mud, the threatening sky. They were always boisterous and blasphemous during the long daily haul.
The one-armed man and the boy walked together silently by preference.
“Do you suppose General Grant is done fighting by this time?” the boy asked, at last.
His companion smiled sadly.
“I guess he won’t be done fighting for a good many months yet. But I shouldn’t wonder if he was out of the Wilderness by now.”
“It must be a big battle,” said the boy. “Most as big as Gettysburg, don’t you think, John?”