if I fell asleep on my post I would be shot anyway.
And if I was not killed, it was probable I would be a murderer before
morning. Hunger was gnawing at my stomach, and the horse was gnawing
at my legs, and I was gnawing at a hard tack which I had found in the
saddle-bag. Every little while I would hear a noise, and my hair would
raise my hat up, and it would seem to me as though the next minute a
volley would be fired at me, and I shrunk down between the piles of
baggage on my saddle to be protected from bullets. Suddenly the moon
came out from behind a cloud and around a turn in the road a solitary
horseman might have been seen coming towards me. I never have seen a
horse that looked as high as that horse did. He seemed at least eighteen
feet high, and the man on him was certainly twelve feet high. My heart
pounded against a tin canteen that I had strung around my shoulder, so
I could hear the beating perfectly plain. The man was approaching, and I
was trying to think whether I had been instructed to shoot and then call
for the corporal of the guard, or call for the corporal and then ask him
to halt. I knew there was a halt in my instructions, and wondered if
it would not conciliate the enemy to a certain extent if I would say
"Please Halt." The fact was, I didn t want to have any fuss. If I could
have backed my horse up into the woods, and let the man go by, it seemed
as though it would save precipitating a conflict. It is probable that
no military man was ever in so tight a place as I was that minute. The
enemy was advancing, and I wondered if, when he got near enough, I could
say "halt," in a commanding tone of voice. I knew enough, then, to feel
that to ask the stranger to halt in a trembling and husky voice would
give the whole thing away, that I was a recruit and a coward. Ye gods,
how I suffered! I wondered if I could hit a man with a bullet. Before
the war I was quite a good shot with a shotgun, shooting into flocks of
pigeons and ducks, and I thought what a good idea it would be if I could
get that approaching rebel into a flock. The idea seemed so ridiculous
that I laughed right out loud. It was not a hearty, happy laugh, but it
was a laugh all the same, and I was proud that I could laugh in the face
of danger, when I might be a corpse any minute. The man on the horse
stopped. Whether he heard me laugh it is impossible to say, but he
stopped. That relieved me a great deal. As he had stopped it was
unnecessary