“Hey, Ohio, is that you? Come here!”
A tall youth emerged from the dusk and looked at them inquiringly.
“Ohio,” said Pennington, “don’t you remember your friends?”
The long, lean lad looked again, and then he was enthusiastically shaking hands with each in turn.
“Remember you!” he exclaimed. “Of course I do. If it hadn’t been so dark I’d have seen you and called to you first. I’m glad you’re alive. It’s a lot to live in these times. I tried to find out about you fellows but couldn’t. We came in a detachment ahead of you. But if you’ll invite me, I’ll stay awhile with you and talk.”
They offered him a blanket and he stretched out upon it, turning his eyes up to the sky, in which the stars were now coming.
“What are you thinking about, Ohio?” asked Dick.
“I’m thinking how fast I’m growing old. Two years and a half in the war, but it’s twenty-five years in fact. I hadn’t finished school when I left home and here I am, a veteran of more battles than any soldiers have fought since the days of old Bonaparte. If I happen to live through this war, which I mean to do, I wonder how I’ll ever settle down at home again. Father will say to me: ‘Get the plough and break up the five-acre field for corn,’ and me, maybe a veteran of a dozen pitched battles in every one of which anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand men have been engaged, not to mention fifty or a hundred smaller battles and four or five hundred skirmishes.
“When the flies begin to buzz around me I’ll think they make a mighty poor noise compared with the roar of three or four hundred big cannon and a hundred thousand rifles that I’ve listened to so often. If a yellow jacket should sting me, I’d say what a little thing it is, compared with the piece of shrapnel that hit me at some battle not yet fought. Maybe I’d find things so quiet I just couldn’t stand it. Wars are mighty unsettling.”
“I’m thinking,” said Dick, “that before this war is over all of us will get enough of it to last a lifetime. We’ve got the edge on ’em now, since Vicksburg and Gettysburg, but the Graybacks are not yet beaten by a long shot. We’ve heard how Lee drew off from Gettysburg carrying all his guns and supplies, and even with Gettysburg we haven’t been doing so well in the East as we have in the West. You know that, Ohio?”
“Of course, I do. But I think the Johnnies have made their high-water mark. Great work our army did down there at Vicksburg, and we’ll have the chance to do just as well against Bragg. We’ll defeat him, of course. Now, Mason, notice that light flickering on the mountain up there!”
He pointed to the crest of a ridge two or three miles away, where Dick saw a point of flame appearing and reappearing, and answered by another point farther down, which flickered in the same manner.
“Signals of some kind, I suppose,” replied Dick, “but I don’t know who makes them or what they mean.”
“I don’t know what they mean, either,” said Ohio; “but I can guess pretty well who’s making them. That’s Slade.”
“Slade!” said Dick.
“Yes, you seem to have heard of him?”
“So I have, and I’ve seen him, also. I heard, too, that he was up here making things unhappy for our side. He was in Vicksburg, although you may not have heard of him there, but he got out before the surrender. A cunning fellow. A sort of land pirate.”
“He’s all of that. Since we’ve been coming through the mountains he and his band have picked off a lot of our men. Those signals must mean that they’re preparing for another raid. I shouldn’t like to be a half-mile from our lines to-night.”
“Why can’t we smoke him out, Ohio?”
“Because when we’re half way up the slope he and his men are gone on the other side. Besides, they can rake us with bullets from ambush, while we’re climbing up the ridge. And when we get there, they’re gone. It’s these mountains that give the irregulars their chance. See, two lights are winking at each other now!”