“‘I’ve got one chance left an’ trembles as I plays it; I lifts up my right boot.  I win; about a quart of blood runs out.  Talk of reprievin’ folks who’s sentenced to death!  Gents, their emotions is only imitations of what I feels when I finds that the Yanks done got me an’ nary doubt.  It’s all right—­a rifle bullet through my ankle!

“’That night I’m mowed away, with twenty other wounded folks, in a little cabin off to one side, an’ thar’s a couple of doctors sizin’ up my laig.

“’"Joe,” says one, that a-way, “we’ve got to cut it off.”

“’But I votes “no” emphatic; I’m too young to talk about goin shy a laig.  With that they ties it up as well as ever they can, warnin’ me meanwhile that I’ve got about one chance in a score to beat the game.  Then they imparts a piece of news that’s a mighty sight worse than my laig.

“’"Joe,” says this doctor, when he’s got me bandaged, “our army’s got to rustle out of yere a whole lot.  She’s on the retreat right now.  Them Yanks outheld us an’ out-played us an’ we’ve got to go stampedin’.  The worst is, thar’s no way to take you along, an’ we’ll have to leave you behind.”

“’"Then the Yanks will corral me?” I asks.

“‘"Shore,” he replies, “but thar’s nothin’ else for it.”

“‘It’s then it comes on me about that gunboat an’ the promises old Butler makes himse’f about hangin’ me when caught.  Which these yere reflections infooses new life into me.  I makes the doctor who’s talkin’ go rummagin’ about ontil he rounds up a old nigger daddy, a mule an’ a two-wheel sugar kyart.  It’s rainin’ by now so’s you-all could stand an’ wash your face an’ hands in it.  As that medical sharp loads me in, he gives me a bottle of this yere morphine, an’ between jolts an’ groans I feeds on said drug until mornin.’

“‘That old black daddy is dead game.  He drives me all night an’ all day an’ all night ag’n, an’ I’m in Shreveport; my ankle’s about the size of a bale of cotton.  Thar’s one ray through it all, however; I misses meetin’ old man Butler an’ I looks on that as a triumph which shore borders on relief.’

“‘An’ I reckons now,’ says Dan Boggs, ’you severs your relations with the war?’

“‘No,’ goes on the Major; ’I keeps up my voylence to the close.  When I grows robust enough to ride ag’in I’m in Texas.  Thar’s a expedition fittin’ out to invade an’ subdoo Noo Mexico, an’ I j’ines dogs with it as chief of the big guns.  Thar’s thirty-eight hundred bold and buoyant sperits rides outen Austin on these military experiments we plans, an’ as evincin’ the luck we has, I need only to p’int out that nine months later we returns with a scant eight hundred.  Three thousand of ’em killed, wounded an’ missin’ shows that efforts to list the trip onder the head of “picnics” would be irony.