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The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Book, page 71 / 181



But the other hobbled industriously after him.
There was an air of apology in his manner, but
he evidently thought that he needed only to talk
for a time, and the youth would perceive that he
was a good fellow.

"Was pretty good fight, wa'n't it?" he began
in a small voice, and then he achieved the forti-
tude to continue. "Dern me if I ever see fellers
fight so. Laws, how they did fight! I knowed
th' boys 'd like when they onct got square at it.
Th' boys ain't had no fair chanct up t' now, but
this time they showed what they was. I knowed
it 'd turn out this way. Yeh can't lick them boys.
No, sir! They're fighters, they be."

He breathed a deep breath of humble ad-
miration. He had looked at the youth for en-
couragement several times. He received none,
but gradually he seemed to get absorbed in his
subject.

"I was talkin' 'cross pickets with a boy from
Georgie, onct, an' that boy, he ses, 'Your fellers
'll all run like hell when they onct hearn a gun,'
he ses. 'Mebbe they will,' I ses, 'but I don't
b'lieve none of it,' I ses; 'an' b'jiminey,' I ses back
t' 'um, 'mebbe your fellers 'll all run like hell
when they onct hearn a gun,' I ses. He larfed.
Well, they didn't run t' day, did they, hey? No,
sir! They fit, an' fit, an' fit."

His homely face was suffused with a light of
love for the army which was to him all things
beautiful and powerful.

After a time he turned to the youth. "Where
yeh hit, ol' boy?" he asked in a brotherly tone.


 
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