On Picket Duty and Other Tales

On Picket Duty and Other Tales By Louisa May AlcottWHAT air you thinkin of Phil? My wife Dick. So was I! Aint it odd how fellers fall to thinkin of thar little women when they get a quiet spell like this? Fortunate for us that we do get it and have such gentle bosom guests to keep us brave and honest through the trials and temptations of a life like ours. October moonlight shone clearly on the solitary tree draped with gray moss scarred by lightning and warped by wind looking like a venerable warrior whose long campaign was nearly done and underneath was posted the guard of four. Behind them twinkled many camp-fires on a distant plain before them wound a road ploughed by the passage of an army strewn with the relics of a rout. On the right a sluggish river glided like a serpent stealthy sinuous and dark into a seemingly impervious jungle on the left a Southern swamp filled the air with malarial damps swarms of noisome life and discordant sounds that robbed the hour of its repose. The men were friends as well as comrades for though gathered from the four quarters of the Union and dissimilar in education character and tastes the same spirit animated all the routine of camp life threw them much together and mutual esteem soon grew into a bond of mutual good fellowship. Thorn was a Massachusetts volunteer a man who seemed too early old too early embittered by some cross for though grim of countenance rough of speech cold of manner a keen observer would have soon discovered traces of a deeper warmer nature hidden behind the repellent front he turned upon the world. A true New Englander thoughtful acute reticent and opinionated yet earnest withal intensely patriotic and often humorous despite a touch of Puritan austerity. Phil the romantic chap as he was called looked his character to the life. Slender swarthy melancholy eyed and darkly bearded with feminine features mellow voice and alternately languid or vivacious manners. A child of the South in nature as in aspect ardent impressible and proud fitfully aspiring and despairing without the native energy which moulds character and ennobles life. Months of discipline and devotion had done much for him and some deep experience was fast ripening the youth into a man.Flint the long-limbed lumberman from the wilds of Maine was a conscript who when government demanded his money or his life calculated the cost and decided that the cash would be a dead loss and the claim might be repeated whereas the conscript would get both pay and plunder out of government while taking excellent care that government got precious little out of him. A shrewd slow-spoken self-reliant specimen was Flint yet something of the fresh flavor of the backwoods lingered in him still as if Nature were loath to give him up and left the mark of her motherly hand upon him as she leaves it in a dry pale lichen on the bosom of the roughest stone. Dick hailed from Illinois and was a comely young fellow full of dash and daring rough and rowdy generous and jolly overflowing with spirits and ready for a free fight with all the world.