[The Red Acorn by John McElroy]@TWC D-Link bookThe Red Acorn CHAPTER XIX 62/74
You can't do any good, and why expose yourself for nothing? I've a mind to use my authority and send you to the hospital under guard." "You try it if you dare, after my saving your life yesterday," said Abe. "I can see well enough yet to shoot toward the Rebels, and that's all that's necessary." "I enlisted for the war," said Kent, "and I'm going to stay till peace is declared.
I went into this fight to see it through, and I'm going to stay until we whip them if there's a piece of me left that can wiggle. Bragg's got to acknowledge that I'm the best man before I'll ever let up on him." Rachel longed to leap out of the wagon, and do the bread-making for these clumsy fellows, but pride would not consent. The dough was browning slowly on the hot stones, but not yet nearly done, when the spiteful spirits of firing out in front suddenly burst into a roar, with a crash of artillery.
A bugle sounded near. "Fall in, boys," shouted Harry, springing to his feet, and tearing off the flakes of dough, which he hastily divided with his comrades.
"Right dress.
Right face, forward, file right--march!" "If there is anything that I despise, it's disturbing a gentleman at his meals," said Kent, giving the fire a spiteful kick, as he tucked the bread under his lame arm, took his musket in his other hand, and started off in the rear of the regiment, accompanied by the purblind Abe. Rachel's heart sank, as she saw them move off, but it rose again when the firing died down as suddenly as it had flamed up. Soon Dr.Denslow took the wagon off to a cabin on a high bank of Stone River, which he was using as a hospital. She called some question to him, as he turned away to direct the preparation of the flour into food for his patients, when some one cried out from the interior of the cabin: "Rachel Bond! Is that you? Come in heah, honey." She entered, and found Aunt Debby lying on the rude bed of the former inhabitants of the cabin. "O my love--my darling--my honey, is that you ?" said the elderly woman, with streaming eyes, reaching out her thin arms to take Rachel to her heart.
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