The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee's Great StandAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee's Great Stand
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
"Waked up, hev ye?" he exclaimed. "Wa'al it's about time. I've looked
back from time to time an' I wuzn't at all shore whether you two
gen'rals wuz alive or dead. Sometimes when the wagon slanted a lot you
would roll over each other, but it didn't seem to make no diffunce.
Pow'ful good sleepers you are."
"Yes," said Harry. "We're two of the original Seven Sleepers."
"I don't doubt that you are two, but they wuz more'n seven."
"How do you know?"
"'Cause at least seven thousand in this train have been sleepin' as
hard as you wuz. I guess you mean the 'rig'nal Seventy Thousand
Sleepers."
Harry's spirits had returned after his long sleep. He was a lad again.
The weight of Gettysburg no longer rested upon him. The Army of
Northern Virginia had merely made a single failure. It would strike
again and again, as hard as ever.
"It's true that we've been slumbering," he said, "but we're as wide
awake now as ever, Mr. Driver."
"My name ain't Driver," said the man.
"Then what is it?"
"Jones, Dick Jones, which I hold to be a right proper name."
"Not romantic, but short, simple and satisfying."
"I reckon so. Leastways, I've never wanted to change it. I'm from
No'th Calliny, an' I've been followin' Bobby Lee a pow'ful long
distance from home. Fine country up here in Pennsylvany, but I'd
ruther be back in them No'th Calliny mountains. You two young gen'rals
may think it's an easy an' safe job drivin' a wagon loaded with
ammunition. But s'pose you have to drive it right under fire, as you
most often have to do, an' then if a shell or somethin' like it hits
your wagon the whole thing goes off kerplunk, an' whar are you?"
"It's a sudden an' easy death," said Dalton, philosophically.
"Too sudden an' too easy. I don't mind tellin' you that seein' men
killed an' wounded is a spo't that's beginnin' to pall on me. Reckon
I've had enough of it to last me for the next thousand years. I've
forgot, if I ever knowed, what this war wuz started about. Say, young
fellers, I've got a wife back thar, a high-steppin', fine-lookin' gal
not more'n twenty years old--I'm just twenty-five myself, an' we've got
a year-old baby the cutest that wuz ever born. Now, when I wuz lookin'
at that charge of Pickett's men, an' the whole world wuz blazin' with
fire, an' all the skies wuz rainin' steel and lead, an' whar grass
growed before, nothin' but bayonets wuz growin' then, do you know what
I seed sometimes?"
"What was it?" asked Harry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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