boys picked her up and laid her
on the bed beside Jeff Hackberry. "She's fainted; she's dead. She's bin
sufferkated in that hole," said Jeff.

"No, yo' punkin-headed fool," she gasped. "I hain't dead, nor I hain't
fainted, nor I hain't{253} sufferkated. Yo'll find out when I git my
wind back a little, I'm so full o' mad an' spite that I'm done tuckered
clean out. I'm clean beat, so clean beat that I hain't no words to fit
the 'casion. I've got t' lay still an' think an' gether up some."

"She's comin' to, Shorty," said Si. "It'll be pleasanter outside."

"You say you have been having unusually exciting times," said Si to
Rosenbaum, as the boys again seated themselves by the fire.

"Veil, I should say so," replied Rosenbaum with emphasis. "Do you know
that General Bragg is the very worst man that ever lived?"

"All rebels are bad," said Shorty oracularly. "But I suppose that some
are much worse than others. I know that the private soldiers are awful,
and I suppose the higher you go the wuss they are. The Corporals are
cussider than the privates, the Sergeants can give the Corporals points
in devilishness, and so it goes on up until the General commanding an
army must be one of the devil's favorite imps, while Jeff Davis is Old
Horney's junior partner."

"No; it isn't that," said Rosenbaum. "I've known a good many rebel
Generals, unt some of them ain't really bad fellers, outside of their
rebelness. But old Bragg is a born devil. He has no more heart than a
rattlesnake. He actually loves cruelty. He'd rather kill men than not.
I've seen plenty of officers who were entirely too willing to shoot
men for little or nothing. General Bragg is the only man I ever saw who
would shoot men for nothing at all--just 'for example,' as he says,
unt to make the others{254} afraid unt ready to obey him. He coolly
calculates to shoot so many every month. If they've done anything to
deserve it, all right. If they hain't, he shoots them all the same, just
to 'preserve discipline.'"

Si and Shorty uttered exclamations of surprise at this cold-blooded
cruelty.

"I know it's hard to believe," said Rosenbaum, "but it's true all the
same, as anybody around his Headquarters will tell you. Jeff Davis knows
it unt approves it. He is the same kind of a man as General Bragg--no
more heart than a tiger, I have seen a good deal of the inside of the
rebel army, unt General Bragg is the coldest-blooded, cruelest man in
it or in the whole world.