“Where’s your game, grandpa?” asked the young soldier. “We have been sitting up waiting for you and your rabbit.”
“There are two kinds of game,” replied the old man, warming his hands before the fire; “one sort you bring home, the other kind you send home.”
“What! did you shoot a Yankee? One of the boys thought he heard the crack of a rifle.”
“’Twas old Betsey,” replied he, patting her cheek, as it were. “We whacked one of ’em. He won’t set fire to any more houses, I reckon.”
After this, old Jim, thoroughly acquainted with the country for miles around, became a regular scout; and going and coming at all hours of the night and day, he was soon well-known along the line of our outposts. And whenever he had important information to give, he went straight to headquarters; but whenever, after a moonlight night, he stopped at the picket-post, sat down on a log and toyed with his rifle, seeming to have nothing to say, the boys knew that he was waiting for a certain question: “Yes, old Betsey and me whacked one of ’em last night.” And then he would set out for headquarters, and the soldiers, passing the news, and adopting old Jim’s word, would say, “Old Bush whacked another of the rascals last night.” And these two words, so often brought in contact, at last cohered. Bushwhacker did not, therefore, originally, at least, mean a man who whacked from behind a thicket, but one who whacked after the fashion of old Jim Bush.
35.
And I am a Bushwhacker who whacketh after that fashion. So much so, that it seems to me that my parents made a sort of prophetic pun when they named me John Bouche. The difference between me and old Jim is simply this: that he expressed his sentiments with a carnal rifle, I mine with a spiritual one. He hung upon the skirts of the Northern hosts; I go stalking stragglers from the Noble Army of Lies. Every sham the sturdy Whacker molecules of me impel my soul to hate. Yet my Huguenot blood shrinks from martyrdom. Did not they leave France to avoid it? I never attack the main body. But let a feeble, emaciated, and worn-out little lie, or a blustering, braggart fraud, or a conceited, coxcombical sham, stray to the right or left, or get belated on the march! I pounce upon him like an owl upon a field-mouse. It is my nature to. And so the reader must not be surprised, as we journey along together, through scene after scene of my story, to find herself suddenly left alone at the most unexpected times and places. I’ll come back, after a while, bringing a scalp; after which we will jog along together, for a chapter or so, again.
And a jolly, rousing, mad time we shall have of it, then. For it is on such occasions that I put my mustang through his comical paces,—my coal-black mustang, with his great, shaggy mane, and bushy, flowing tail, that sweeps the ground. For though, as every schoolboy knows, a Poet or other Gifted Person is properly mounted only on a Pegasus, I have been unable to get me one of those winged, high-bounding steeds.
36.
And now, fair lady, the manager makes his bow and exit. You will soon be in better company.