"I talk mi pen in hand to inform you that our walkin'-papers has at last come, and we start termorrer mornin' for Buzzard Roost to settle jest whose to rool that roost. Our ideas and Mister Jo Johnston's differ on that subjeck. When we git through with him hele no more, though he probably won't be so purty as he is now." [Illustration: LITTLE PETE'S AWFUL REBELS. 149] He stopped to rest after this prodigious literary effort, and wipe the beaded sweat from his brow. He saw little Pete Skidmore looking at him with troubled face. "What're you doin' up, Pete? Lay down and go to sleep." "Say, Corpril, the Orderly said we wuz goin' to fight a whole passel of rebel cavalry, didn't he?" "Um-hum!" assented Shorty, cudgeling his brain as to what he should next write. "Them's them awful kind o' rebels, ain't they--the John Morgan kind--that ride big horses that snort fire, and they have long swords, with which they chop men's heads off?" "A lot o' yellin', gallopin' riff-raff," said Shorty, with the usual contempt of an infantryman for cavalry. "Ain't worth the fodder their bosses eat." "Ain't they terribler than any other kind o' rebels?" asked Pete, anxiously. "Naah," said Shorty, sharply. "Go to sleep, Pete, and don't bother me with no more questions. I'm writin' a letter." He proceeded with his literary effort: "I was gladder than I kin tell you to git yore letter. You do write the best letters of any woman in the whole world." He looked up, and there was little Pete's face before him. "What do you do when one o' them wild rebels comes cavorting and tearing toward you, on a big hoss, with a long sword, and yelling like a catamount?" he asked. "Paste him with a bullet and settle him," said Shorty testily, for he wanted to go on with his letter. "But s'pose he comes on you when your gun ain't loaded, and his sword is, or you've missed him, as I did that hog?" "Put on your bayonet and prod his hoss in the breast, and then give him 18 inches o' cold steel. That'll settle him. Go and lay down, Pete, I tell you. Don't disturb me. Don't you see I'm writing?" Shorty went on with his letter. "How I wish you wood rite offener. Ide like to get a letter from you every--" "Say, Corpril," broke in little Pete, "they say that them rebel cavalry kin reach much further with their swords when they're up on a hoss than you kin with your gun and bayonit, especially when you're a little feller like me, and they're quicker'n wildcats, and there's just millions of 'em, and--"