"What kind of bark was it? do you know?" said Ellis.
"No. I was hurt so I didn't stop to look."
"Well, I'll tell you. It was the dog's bark." And Ellis and his comrades shouted with laughter, all except poor Jack Winch, who knew too well that no other kind of bark had checked his progress.
Then the turkey-stealers had their adventure to relate, and Frank had his amusing story to tell, and Tucket could brag how near he had come to being shot for one of Buckley's gobblers, and all were merry but Jack, who had brought from the field nothing but a counterfeit lameness and dishonor, and who accordingly lagged behind his comrades, sulky and dumb.
"He limps dreadfully--when any body is looking at him," said Harris.
"Nobody killed, and only one wounded," said Frank.
"The sight of old Buckley coming with his dog would be better than a surgeon, to cure that wound," said Tucket. "You'd see Winch leg it faster 'n any of us--like the old woman that had the hypo's, and hadn't walked a step for twenty years, and thought she couldn't; but one day her friends got up a ghost to scare her, and she ran a mile before they could ketch her."
Do you know how these jokes, and the laughter that followed, sounded on the ear of Jack Winch? Even the bark of the rebel mastiff was music in comparison, and his bite would have hurt him less.
"By the way," said Seth, "the old skinflint will be after us, sure as guns. Hurry! or we'll hear--'The deep-mouthed bull-dog's heavy bay resounding up the rocky way, and faint, from farther distance borne, the darned old rebel's dinner horn.' Give me that chicken, Ellis. And, boys, we must manage some way to smuggle these fowls into camp. I can carry this chicken under my coat; but how in Sam Hill you'll manage with the turkeys, I don't see."
"I know," said Frank, always full of invention. "If nobody else has a better plan, I've thought of a good one."
Several devices were suggested, but none met with general approbation. Then Frank explained his.
"Cover up the turkeys with evergreens, and we will go in with our arms full, as if we were going to make wreaths for the regiment."
This plan was agreed upon, and shortly after the adventurers might have been seen returning to camp loaded down with boughs and vines. Jack alone came in empty-handed. Frank had no turkey, and so he threw down his load outside the tent, where any one could examine it.