FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156  
157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   >>   >|  
r longer than it will take us to reach the ground and drive them off.' "Can we at the front be whipped while our friends at home keep up such heart as that?" cried the excited captain, pulling off his cap and flourishing it over his head with one hand, while he shook the paper at his men with the other. "Three cheers for brave old Missouri, and confusion to everybody who wants to keep her down." "Everybody except Tom Percival," thought Rodney, as he threw up his cap and joined in to help increase the almost deafening noise that arose when the officer ceased speaking. "Whatever happens to anybody else I want Tom to come out all right." After this short delay the squad rode on again, and along every mile of the road they traversed they found people to cheer them and hurrah for the great victory at Bull Run. There were no signs of Union men anywhere along the route, but the blackened ruins they passed now and then pointed out the sites of the dwellings in which some of them had formerly lived. Those ruins had been left there by some of Price's men scouting parties like the one with which he was now riding. Rodney had always thought he should like to be a scout, but if that was the sort of work scouts were expected to do, he decided that he would rather be a regular soldier. He wouldn't mind facing men who had weapons in their hands, because that was what soldiers enlisted for; but the idea of turning women and children out into the weather, by burning their houses over their heads, was repugnant to him. There was one piece of news he and the captain did not get, although they asked everybody for it. No one could tell them for certain that the victorious Confederates had gone into Washington and dictated terms of peace to the Lincoln government. There were plenty who were sure it had been done, but they had received no positive information of it. The only news they heard on which they could place reliance was that Price had withdrawn from Neosho, and effected a junction with Jackson and Rains at Carthage. That was a point in the captain's favor, for instead of being obliged to make a wide detour to the east and south of Springfield, he turned squarely to the west toward Carthage, and saved more than a hundred miles of travel, as well as the risk of being captured by a scouting party of Yankee cavalry. The squad reached Carthage without seeing any signs of Siegel's troopers, who were supposed to be raiding through th
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156  
157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

captain

 

Carthage

 

thought

 

Rodney

 

scouting

 

Siegel

 

repugnant

 

houses

 

reached

 

victorious


Confederates

 

burning

 

troopers

 

weapons

 

facing

 

longer

 

regular

 

soldier

 

wouldn

 

turning


children

 
supposed
 

soldiers

 

raiding

 

enlisted

 

weather

 
Washington
 
obliged
 
captured
 
detour

squarely

 

travel

 

Springfield

 

turned

 

Jackson

 
junction
 
cavalry
 

Yankee

 

received

 

plenty


government

 

dictated

 

Lincoln

 

positive

 
withdrawn
 

Neosho

 

effected

 
reliance
 

information

 

hundred