"That game suited Bud mighty well, and havin' nobody to help him, he made me stay with him to take down the letters. We had the camp just as they left it, with plenty o' rations and coffee to drink such as we hadn't tasted for years, and every time Bud looked at the flags he burst out laughin'. Hit was somewhere near the end of July when we took the mountain, and that same afternoon Bud begun to figger the letters of his first message crooked accordin' to the cipher, and git hit ready to send on. 'Tom,' he says to me with a grin, 'I reckon we better kill off Gineral Sherman first,' and then he laughed and rolled over on the blankets. "Next mornin' he sent the message, and when the telegraft come back to know if the news was true, he sent word hit was, 'honor bright,' and signed the lieutenant's name, 'James Swann.' Hit was three weeks before the squad got back from Chattanooga way, and all the time Bud kept sendin' lies about great Confederate victories. He was keerful what he sent, too, and figgered on the dates, and kept all the messages he had sent before wrote down in order, so he wouldn't get mixed. When we got all ready to leave Bear Clift, which was the tenth station, Bud flagged an order to hold on--that relief was comin'. "Now, after we started east, we picked up a station every mornin'; and as soon as Bud got his hands on the flags, he begun to lie more than ever, closin' up the war with a dash. We had over fifty prisoners when we took the three men off from Upper Bald, and there havin' been six on every other station, we nat'rally thought we had found the last; and the cavalry went away with their prisoners to Quallatown." CHAPTER XXV CONCLUSION After the straightforward story of Tom Zachary, which explained the cunning method by which Lieutenant Coleman and his comrades had been deceived by the flag-messages, the soldiers could feel no resentment toward Tom. They were so happy in the possession of all the good news they had heard that they would have shaken hands with Bud Bryson himself, if he had been one of their rescuers. "Now I reckon," said the rosy-faced man, as he got on his feet to go down the mountain, "considerin' the way things has turned out, you-all won't keer about investin' in property in this upper kentry, and I'll give ye back your money," he continued, looking fondly at the two yellow coins. Coleman and Bromley, however, insisted that a bargain was a bargain, and that they wanted the land more than ever. They should go away, they said, the next day if Philip was able to make the journey; and Lieutenant Coleman pressed another coin upon Hooper, for which he was to bring them a supply of clothing which they could wear as far as Asheville.