We Heard No
Galloping Aides, No Clanking Spurs, Only The Click Of The Clipped
Billiard Balls As The American Scouts
(Who were killed thirty-six
hours later) knocked them about the torn billiard-cloth, the drip,
drip of the kerosene
From a blazing, sweating lamp, which struck the
dirty table-cloth, with the regular ticking of a hall clock, and the
complaint of the piano from the hotel parlor, where the correspondent
of a Boston paper was picking out "Hello, My Baby," laboriously with
one finger. War is not so terribly dramatic or exciting - at the
time; and the real trials of war - at the time, and not as one later
remembers them - consist largely in looting fodder for your ponies and
in bribing the station-master to put on an open truck in which to
carry them.
We were wakened about two o'clock in the morning by a loud knocking
on a door and the distracted voice of the local justice of the peace
calling upon the landlord to rouse himself and fly. The English, so
the voice informed the various guests, as door after door was thrown
open upon the court-yard, were at Ventersburg Station, only two hours
away. The justice of the peace wanted to buy or to borrow a horse,
and wanted it very badly, but a sleepy-eyed and sceptical audience
told him unfeelingly that he was either drunk or dreaming, and only
the landlady, now apparently refreshed after her labors, was keenly,
even hysterically, intent on instant flight.
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