“We hurd you was ginnin’ a treat, Gin’ral,” shouted a long-haired, buckskin-clad fellow in the line, “and we ’lowed we’d gin you a s’prize party.”
There was a roar at this hint and another yell from the crowd, and in the midst of it a negro came up with two buckets full of whiskey, and tin dippers, which General Jackson had ordered from the smokehouse near the kitchen.
“Attention, there, men! Ground f’lock and get into line!” said their captain.
The line surged back; the butts of the rifles rested on the ground.
“Pass that whiskey down the line, there,” said General Jackson to his servants, and as the blacks started, one at each flank, there was a deep silence. They drank from the tin dippers as indifferently as if it were water. Jackson and Trevellian drank last, touching their dippers “to health and a good fight,” as the General said, at which there was a cry from the line from a swarthy sergeant:
“And a quick one—b’ar or British! Lead us ag’in’ everything!”
It was indeed the sentiment. Arms were now stacked and they broke into groups, thronging around their commanders as they talked to them, man to man and face to face.
There was nothing concealed. It was a big family of yeomanry, brave and bent on ridding their country of any foe their leaders pitted them against. And General Jackson was their father. Around him they gathered, proud, trustful, with all the confidence of big children and all the daring, strong love of big men. And their hearts were hot and vengeful—for they were children in their tenderer natures and saw things with the eyes of children.
And the things they had seen had stirred them to their fierce, quick fighting depths. Cut off from the rest of the world, wedged in between the mountains, which barred them from the east, and the savages on the south and west, their government had neglected them, left them to fight their own battles against savage foe and savage nature.