Sarny by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page B

dodge ruts which took no work when we could see.
    By dark we were in different country. More hills and not so many plantations. Some swamps between the hills, and water now and again—ponds and such. I had never fished but Delie she told me about it and I thought there might be fish in some of the ponds and wished I had some line and hook since we were running low on meat.
    We made corn bread that night when we stopped, and had it with ham. Tyler Two he wanted more but I didn’t see where more food was coming so I made everybody eat short. Figured we still had seven or eight days to New Orleans and didn’t know what would happen when we got there. Maybe there wasn’t food there either.
    Didn’t matter because the next day we were in a battle and the day after that we met Miss Laura and everything changed again.
    No warning when it came.
    It was just before soft evening. Sun still high and hot and the mud turned to dust. Soldiers moving along in the heat too tired to swear,horses wet with sweat, and it was Lucy’s turn on the wheelbarrow when I looked up on a ridge maybe five stone throws away and there’s a line of raggedy men. One second they weren’t there, then they were, spread across wider than two hands held out.
    For a blink nobody else saw them. All the men in dust and some looking down and then the men on the hill raised their rifles and I heard somebody swear and yell, “Rebs!”
    And they shot.
    Like bees all around us. Bullets whistling by like bees, little hissing sound. We would have been hit sure ’cept a team of horses stood between us and the men on the hill. I heard the bullets hitting the horses and they grunted and went down and I grabbed Lucy and Tyler Two and pulled them back off the road and down into a small ditch no higher than a rabbit.
    Everything went to pieces. The men on the hill reloaded and fired again and again and men fell around us, some dead and some about to be dead and some screaming and more horses were hit and they screamed ’most as bad as the wounded men. Bullets were as thick as flies and you could hear them hitting things over and over. Horses, men. Dead men were hit just laying on the road and I was sure we’d die.
    Even if we weren’t shot flat out those on the hill were gray fighters and we were with the blue. Did they come on down and find us I didn’t think they would be gentle.
    But the blues weren’t about to let that happen. Took them some minutes but pretty soon they had pulled two of the big guns around and loaded and fired up at the ragged line. I never heard such a sound—so loud it seemed to come from inside my head. God sound. Big wagon guns blew so hard when they fired they were flung back on their wheels and the men would roll them up and load them and fire again and again until the men on the hill couldn’t stand it and ran below the top of the hill line and were gone.
    Terrible then. Horrible. Horses shot to pieces but still alive kicking and trying to get up until men came around and shot them and wounded men pulling themselves off the road into the ditch.
    “God,” Lucy said. We were still laying down not sure it was done and she said it over and over again, holding her hands over her ears. “God, God, God …” I thought at first she was swearing but she wasn’t. Was praying and I prayed myself, holding little Tyler Two under me and praying.
    Didn’t see no ambulances coming and knew now we had to help. Nobody else did.Soldiers who weren’t wounded just walked away from those who were. Cut dead horses out of harness, doubled up wagon guns on horses that could still pull and off they went.
    “Help them,” I told Lucy. “Help them that’s been hit.”
    “What do I do?”
    I stared at her. “Why, you ease them, just ease them. Give them a smile and try to find a rag to bandage the wound …”
    Easy say hard do, as Lucy liked to say. For bandages we didn’t have anything but our blankets and the shirts off the men who were wounded.