im up." I said to the sergeant:

"Now, look-a-here, don't you let that savage get at me, or he will get
hurt. I don't want to have any trouble with the church, but if any
regularly ordained ministerial cannibal of a sky pilot attempts to chew
me, he will find a good deal more gristle than tender loin, and I will
italicise his nose so he will look so crossed-eyed that he can't draw
his pay."

My thus showing that I was not afraid of a non-combatant, seemed to have
the desired effect, for he spit on his hands, jumped up and cracked
his heels together, said he would wipe the Southern Confederacy with my
remains, and he went to his tent to change his clothes, and get ready
for the court-martial. The guard took me to the colonel's tent, and I
walked right in where the colonel and major and several others were, and
I said Hello, and smiled, and extended my hand to the colonel. None of
them helloed, and none of them returned my smile, and the colonel did
not shake hands with me. He said, however, that I had brought disgrace
on the regiment, and broken the heart of a noble man, the chaplain. I
told him I didn't think the chaplain's heart was very badly broke, as he
had just ottered to whip me in several languages, and threatened to eat
me. The colonel had me sit down on a trunk and keep still, while the
court-martial convened. It was not many minutes before the officers had
arrived, and organized, the adjutant read the charges and specifications
against me. Not to go into the military-form of charges and
specifications, the substance of them was that I had with malice
aforethought, procured a trick-horse from a circus, with the intention
of inducing the chaplain to trade for it, with the purpose of causing
the aforesaid chaplain to become a spectacle for laughter. When the
charges were read I was asked what I had to say, and I told the Judge
Advocate it was a condemned lie. That made him mad, and he was going
to commence whipping me where the chaplain left off, when the colonel
smoothed matters over by asking me if I didn't mean to plead "not
guilty." I said, "Certainly, not guilty. It is false. I did not secure
the horse for the purpose of sawing it off on the chaplain. I jayhawked
it, and when I found it was not the kind of a horse for a modest fellow
like me, who didn't want to make any display, I thought I would trade it
to some officer with gall, and the chaplain was the first man who struck
me for a trade, and he got it,