ut I votes "no" emphatic; I'm too young to talk about goin shy a
laig. With that they ties it up as well as ever they can, warnin' me
meanwhile that I've got about one chance in a score to beat the game.
Then they imparts a piece of news that's a mighty sight worse than my
laig.

"'"Joe," says this doctor, when he's got me bandaged, "our army's got
to rustle out of yere a whole lot. She's on the retreat right now.
Them Yanks outheld us an' out-played us an' we've got to go stampedin'.
The worst is, thar's no way to take you along, an' we'll have to leave
you behind."

"'"Then the Yanks will corral me?" I asks.

"'"Shore," he replies, "but thar's nothin' else for it."

"'It's then it comes on me about that gunboat an' the promises old
Butler makes himse'f about hangin' me when caught. Which these yere
reflections infooses new life into me. I makes the doctor who's
talkin' go rummagin' about ontil he rounds up a old nigger daddy, a
mule an' a two-wheel sugar kyart. It's rainin' by now so's you-all
could stand an' wash your face an' hands in it. As that medical sharp
loads me in, he gives me a bottle of this yere morphine, an' between
jolts an' groans I feeds on said drug until mornin.'

"'That old black daddy is dead game. He drives me all night an' all
day an' all night ag'n, an' I'm in Shreveport; my ankle's about the
size of a bale of cotton. Thar's one ray through it all, however; I
misses meetin' old man Butler an' I looks on that as a triumph which
shore borders on relief.'

"'An' I reckons now,' says Dan Boggs, 'you severs your relations with
the war?'

"'No,' goes on the Major; 'I keeps up my voylence to the close. When I
grows robust enough to ride ag'in I'm in Texas. Thar's a expedition
fittin' out to invade an' subdoo Noo Mexico, an' I j'ines dogs with it
as chief of the big guns. Thar's thirty-eight hundred bold and buoyant
sperits rides outen Austin on these military experiments we plans, an'
as evincin' the luck we has, I need only to p'int out that nine months
later we returns with a scant eight hundred. Three thousand of 'em
killed, wounded an' missin' shows that efforts to list the trip onder
the head of "picnics" would be irony.

"'Comin', as we-all does, from one thousand miles away, thar ain't one
of us who saveys, practical, as much about the sand-blown desert
regions we invades as we does of what goes on in the moon. That
Gen'ral Canby, who later gets downed by the Modocs, is o