"Well, the darned fool rushes right into 'em, don't he? He ain't got no sense. Nobody ought to git out where he can be shot at when there ain't no need. Take that blamed fool trick o' his'n there at Tarlac. When he went back all alone after the papers that Cap Groce dropped. I'll bet he was shot at two hundred times."
"Well, he didn't get hit, did he? If he gets hit good 'n' proper once he won't be so keen about showin' off," growled one of the men.
"Depends on where he's hit. Then, there was that time when he dumb the hill back yonder and turned the fire o' the gugus so's we could get up into the pass. He makes me think o' Lawton. There's the boy for me. If we had a few more generals like Lawton we'd put a crimp in these niggers so quick it would look like a spasm." Having delivered himself of this safe prophecy, Mr. Rogers glared about him for opposition. None forthcoming, he proceeded, with a satisfied snort, to refill his pipe.
"Lawton's makin' history, and don't you forget it," observed Luke Hardy.
"He's from Indiana," piped up a homesick ploughboy from the Hoosier State.
"Then, it'll be a historical novel," said the gaunt young recruit from Grand Rapids. He was a cynic who had tried newspaper work, and who still maintained that the generals did not have as much intelligence as the privates.
"I'll never forget Bansemer when he first enlisted," reflected Joe Adams. "He wanted to go out for a cold plunge and a morning stroll, and then asked the sergeant where he could get a good riding horse. He's not so keen about strolls these days."
"He don't turn up his nose at things like he used to, either."
"I don't see why the devil he keeps so clean," grumbled Adams. "I can't."
"I'll bet one thing," mused Rogers. "He'll be a captain or something before this scrap is over."
"He'll be a corpse, that's what he'll be."
"It's my opinion he'd just as lief be shot as not," said Relander. "The only trouble is that these measly niggers can't hit anything they shoot at. If the darned fools would only try to miss him, they'd get him sure. The devil and Tom Walker--what's that?"