“You Tennesseeans need a bath anyhow,” replied the man, chuckling.
“We’d never choose a Mississippi stream for it,” said Dick in the same vein, and passed on leaving the rifleman in high good humor. How wonderfully these Southerners were like the Northerners! He noticed presently a half-dozen other sharpshooters in the Confederate butternut, prowling among the bushes, and through an opening he saw his own people to the west, but too far away to be reached by anything but artillery. The slow, deep music of the Northern guns came steadily to his ear, but their fire was always turned toward Vicksburg.
Dick knew that his position was extremely critical. Perhaps it was growing more so all the while, but he was never cooler. A quiet lad, he always rose wonderfully to an emergency. He was quite sure that he was among Mississippi troops, and they could not possibly know all the soldiers from the other states gathered for the defense of Vicksburg. He did not differ from those around him in any respect, except that he did not carry a rifle.
He paused and looked back thoughtfully at the distant Union troops.
“Can you tell me how they’re posted?” he said to a tall, thin middle-aged man who had a chew of tobacco in his cheek. “I carry dispatches to General Pemberton, and the more information I can give him the better.”
“Yes, I kin tell you,” replied the man, somewhat flattered. “They’re posted everywhere. What, with their army and them boats of theirs in the river, they’ve got a high fence around us, all staked and ridered.”
“It doesn’t take any more work to tear a fence down than it does to build it up.”
“I reckon you’re right thar, stranger. But was you at Champion Hill?”
“No, I missed that.”
“Then it was a good thing for you that you did. I didn’t set much store by the Yanks when this war began. One good Southerner could whip five of ’em any time, our rip-roarin’, fire-eatin’ speech-makers said. I knowed then, too, that they was right, but I was up thar in Kentucky a while, an’ after Donelson I reckoned that four was about as many as I wanted to tackle all to oncet. Then thar was Shiloh, an’ I kinder had a thought that if three of ’em jumped on me at one time I’d hev my hands purty full to lick ’em. Then come Corinth, an,’ reasonin’ with myself, I said I wouldn’t take on more’n two Yanks at the same time. An’ now, since I’ve been at Champion Hill, I know that the Yank is a pow’ful good fighter, an’ I reckon one to one jest about suits me, an’ even then I’d like to have a leetle advantage in the draw.”
“I feel that way about it, too. The Yankees are going to make a heap of trouble for us here. But I must be going. What’s the best path into Vicksburg?”
“See that little openin’ in the bushes. Follow it. Jest over the hill you’ll run into a passel of our fellers, but pay no ‘tention to ’em. If they ask you who you are an’ whar you’re boun’ tell ’em to go straight to blazes, while you go to Vicksburg.”
“Thank you,” said Dick, “I like to meet an obliging and polite man like you. It helps even in war.”
“Don’t mention it. When I wuz a little shaver my ma told me always to mind my manners, an’ when I didn’t she whaled the life out of me. An’, do you know, stranger, she’s just a leetle, withered old woman, but if she could ‘pear here right now I’d be willin’ to set down right in these bushes an’ say, ‘Ma, take up that stick over thar an’ beat me across the shoulders an’ back with it as hard as you kin.’ I’d feel good all over.”
“I believe you,” said Dick, who thought of his own mother.
He followed the indicated path until he was out of sight of everybody, and then he plunged into the bushes and marsh toward the river. When he was well hidden he stopped and considered.