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"Eleven, pert' near twelve," the boy said.
"Well, we're mighty pleased to meet you, Tige McGuffy," Willie said.
"This mush with bacon is a treat. I ain't never quite had it prepared like that," Tige said. "How come you was puking out in the trees?"
"Don't rightly know, Tige," Willie said, and for the first time that day he laughed.
Out on the edge of the firelight the musicians sang,
"White doves come at morning
Where my soldier sleeps in the ground.
I placed my ring in his coffin,
The trees o'er his grave have all turned brown."
Jim stood up and flung a pine cone at them.
"Put a stop to that kind of song!" he yelled.
As the campfires died in the clearing, Jim and Willie took their blankets out in the trees and drank the half-pint of whiskey Jim had bought off a Tennessee rifleman.
Jim made a pillow by wrapping his shoes in his haversack, then lay back in his blankets, gazing up at the sky.
"A touch of the giant-killer sure makes a fellow's prospects seem brighter, doesn't it?" he said.
Willie drew his blanket up to his shoulders and propped his head on his arm.
"Wonder how a little fellow like Tige ends up here," he said.
"He'll get through it. We'll all be fine. Those Yankees better be afraid of us, that's all I can say," Jim said.
"Think so?" Willie said.
Jim drank the last ounce in the whiskey bottle. "Absolutely," he replied."Good night, Willie."
"Good night, Jim."
They went to sleep, their bodies warm with alcohol, with dogwood and redbud trees in bloom at their heads and feet, the black sky now dotted with stars.
Chapter Seven
THEY woke the next morning to sunlight that was like glass needles through the trees and the sounds of men and horses running, wagons banging over the ruts out on the Corinth Road, tin pots spilling out of the back of a mobile field kitchen.
T
hey heard a single rifle shot in the distance, then a spatter of small-arms fire that was like strings of Chinese firecrackers exploding. They jumped from their blankets and ran back to the clearing where they had cooked their food and stacked their Enfields the previous night. The air was cinnamon-colored with dust and leaves that had been powdered by running feet. Their Enfields and haversacks lay abandoned on the ground.
The men from the 6th Mississippi were already moving northward through the trees, their bayonets fixed. Tige McGuffy was strapping his drum around his neck, his hands shaking.
"What happened to the 18th Lou'sana?" Jim said.
"Them Frenchies you come in with?" Tige said.
"Yes, where did they go?" Willie asked, his heart tripping.
"West, toward Owl Creek. A kunnel on horseback come in before dawn and moved them out. Where'd y'all go to?" Tige replied.
