And the questions they asked. Si had in a manner repelled them by his curt treatment of Harry Joslyn, and his preoccupied air as he went back and forth getting his orders and making preparations for starting. But Shorty was in an affable mood, and by pleasantly answering a few of their inquiries brought the whole fire of their questioning upon him. "Are any o' them men you see over there guerrillas?" they asked. "Mebbe," Shorty answered. "Kentucky's full of 'em. Mebbe they're peaceable citizens, though." "How kin you tell the guerrillas from the citizens?" "By the way they shoot at you. The peaceable citizens don't shoot--at least, in day time and out in the open. They lay for you with sole-leather pies, and chuck-a-luck boards and 40-rod whisky, and aid. and abet the Southern Confedrisy that way. They get away with more Union soldiers than the guerrillas do. But you can never tell what an able-bodied man in Kentucky'll do. He may lay for you all day with wildcat whisky, at $5 a canteenful, to git money to buy ammunition to shoot at you at night. He's surer o' gittin' you with a canteen o' never-miss whisky, but there's more healthy excitement about shootin' at you from behind a bank. And his pies is deadlier'n his apple-jack. A man kin git over an apple-jack drunk, but Kentucky pies 's wuss'n nux vomica on fish." "Mustn't we eat none o' their pies?" asked the boys, with longing remembrance of the fragrant products of their mothers' ovens. "Nary a pie. If I ketch a boy eatin' a pie after we cross the river I'll buck-and-gag him. Stick to plain hardtack and pork. You'll git to like it better'n cake by and by. I eat it right along in preference to the finest cake ever baked." Shorty did not think it necessary to mention that this preference was somewhat compulsory. "Why don't you hunt down the guerrillas and kill 'em off and be done with 'em?"