"So! This is good luck!" Wutzler doffed his coolie hat, slid out of his
jacket, tossed both down among the oil-jars, and stooping over the dead
man, began to untwist the scarlet turban. In the dim light his lean arms
and frail body, coated with black hair, gave him the look of a puny ape
robbing a sleeper. He wriggled into the dead man's jacket, wound the
blood-red cloth about his own temples, and caught up musket, ramrod,
powder-horn, and bag of bullets.--"Now I am all safe," he chuckled. "Now
I can go anywhere, to-night."
He shouldered arms and stood grinning as though all their troubles were
ended.
"So! I am rebel soldier. We try again; come.--Not too close behind me;
and if I speak, run back."
In this order they began once more to scout through the smoke. No one
met them, though distant shapes rushed athwart the gloom, yelping to
each other, and near by, legs of runners moved under a rolling cloud of
smoke as if their bodies were embedded and swept along in the
wrack:--all confused, hurried, and meaningless, like the uproar of
gongs, horns, conches, whistling bullets, crackers, and squibs that
sputtering, string upon string, flower upon rising flower of misty red
gold explosion, ripped all other noise to tatters.
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