I won't. I resign my position as Corporal right here, and'll take
by gun and go on post."

"What in the world are we goin' to do?" said Si desperately. "If we let
her in, she'll fill the camp full o' whisky, and she'll have to go in,
unless we kin show some reason for keepin' her out. Hold on; I've got an
idee."

He went up to the woman and said:

"You say you want to go into camp to sell your pies?"

"Yes, sir, an' I want to go in right off--no more foolin' around," she
answered tartly.

"How many pies've you got?"

She went through a laborious counting, and finally announced: "Eight
altogether."

"How much are they worth?"

"Fifty cents apiece."{178}

"Very good," announced Si taking some money from his pocket. "That comes
to $4. I'll take the lot and treat the boys. Here's your money. Now
you've got no more business in camp, jest turn around and mosey for
home. You've made a good day's business, and ought to be satisfied."

The woman scowled with disappointment. But she wisely concluded that
she h'd better be content with the compromise, remounted her horse and
disappeared down the road.

"That was a sneak out of a difficulty," Si confessed to Shorty; "but you
were as big a coward as I was."

"No, I wasn't," insisted Shorty, still watchful. "You'd no right to
order me do something that you was afraid to do yourself. That's no kind
o' officering."

{179}

CHAPTER XIII. THE JEW SPY WRITES

SHORTY HAS AN ADVENTURE WITH A LONE, LORN WIDDER LADY."

"I WONDER what has become of our Jew spy, Shorty?" said Si, as he and
Shorty sat on the bank of Duck River and watched the rebel pickets
lounging under the beeches on the other side. "We hain't heard nothin'
of him for more'n a month now."

"He's probably hung," answered Shorty. "He was entirely too smart
to live long. A man can't go on always pokin' his finger into a
rattlesnake's jaw without gittin' it nipped sooner or later."

"I'm looking fur a man called Si Klegg," they heard behind them. Looking
around they saw the tall, gaunt woman whom they had turned back from
entering the camp a few days before, under the belief that she was
trying to smuggle in whisky.

"What in the world can she want o' me?" thought Si; but he answered:

"That's my name. What'll you have?"

A flash of recognition filled at once her faded blue eyes. Without
taking her pipe from between her yellow, snaggly teeth she delivered
a volley of tobacco-juice at an unoffendin