Kitabı oku: «The Red Acorn», sayfa 12
His immediate reply with both barrels of his shotgun showed that he did not mistake this for any natural phenomenon. The sound of the shots brought the rest up at a gallop, and a rapid fire was opened on the end of the rock.
But the instant Fortner fired he sprang back behind the rock, and then ran under its cover a little distance up the mountain side to a dense laurel thicket, in which he laid down behind a log and reloaded his rifle. He listened. The firing had ceased, and a half-dozen dismounted men were carefully approaching the spot whence he had sent the fatal shot. He heard the Captain order a man to ride back and bring up the wagon, that the body of the dead man might be put in it. As the wagon was heard rumbling up, the dismounted men reported to the Captain that the bushwhacker had made good his escape and was no longer behind the rock.
“Well, he hasn’t gone very far,” said the Captain with a savage oath. “He can’t have got any distance away, and I’ll have him, dead or alive, before I leave this spot. The whole gang of Lincolnite hellhounds are treed right up there, and not one of them shall get away alive.” He put a bone whistle to his lips, and sounded a shrill signal. A horseman trotted up from the rear in response to the call, leading a hound with a leash. “Take the dog up to that rock, there, Bill,” said the Captain, “and set him on that devil’s trail. Five more of you dismount, and deploy there on the other side of the road. All of you move forward cautiously, watching the dog, and make sure you ‘save’ teh whelp when he is run out.”
The men left their saddles and moved forward with manifest reluctance. They had the highly emotional nature usual in the poor white of the South, and this was deeply depressed by the weird loneliness that brooded over everything, and the bloodshed they had witnessed. Their thirst for vengeance was being tempered rapidly by a growing superstitious fear. There was something supernatural in these mysterious killings. Each man, therefore, only moved forward as he felt the Captain’s eye on him, or his comrades advanced.
The dog, after some false starts, got the scent, and started to follow Fortner’s footsteps.
“He’s done tuck the trail, Cap’n,” called back one of the men.
“All right,” answered the officer, “don’t take your eyes off of him for a second till he trees the game.”
But the logs and rocks and the impenetrable darkness in the shadows made it impossible to follow the movements of the hound every moment. Only Fortner was able to do this. He could see the great greenish-yellow eyes burn in the pitchy-depths and steadily draw nearer him. They entered the laurel thicket, and the beast growled as he felt the nearness of his prey.
“Wolf must be gitten close ter him,” said one of the men.
Fortner laid his rifle across the log, and drew from his belt a long keen knife. He stirred slightly in doing this, and in turning to confront the dog. The hound sprang forward with a growl that was abruptly ended, for Fortner’s left hand shot out like an arrow, and caught the loose folds of skin on the brute’s neck, and the next instant his right, armed with the knife, descended and laid the animal’s shoulder and neck open with a deep cut. But the darkness made Fortner mistake his distance. He neither caught the dog securely, nor sent the knife to his heart, as he intended, and the hound tearing away, ran out into the moonlight, bleeding and yelping. Before he reached his human allies Fortner had silently sped back a hundred yards, to a more secure shelter, so that the volley which was poured into he thicket only endangered the lives of the chipmunks denizened there. The mounted men rode forward and joined those on foot, in raking the copse with charges of buckshot.
Away above Fortner and Harry rose yells and the clatter of galloping horses. Before they could imagine what this meant a little cavalcade swept by at a mad gallop, yelling at the tops of their voices, and charging directly at the Rebels below. In front were Aunt Debby, Bolton and Edwards, riding abreast, and behind them three men in homespun.
The Rebels seemed totally unnerved by this startling apparition. The dismounted ones flung themselves on their horses and all fled away at a gallop, without attempting to make a stand and without taking thought of their wagon. As they scurried along the opposite mountain-side Fortner and Harry fired at them, but without being able to tell whether their shots took effect.
The pursuit was carried but a little distance. The wagon was secured and taken up the mountain. A little after midnight the summit was passed, and Fortner led the way into an opening to the right, which eventually brought up at a little level spot in front of a large cave. The horses where unhitched and unsaddled, a fire built, cedar boughs gathered to make a bed on the rocky floor of the cave, and they threw themselves down upon this to sleep the sleep of utter weariness.
In the meantime Harry had learned that the new comers were cousins of Fortner’s, who, being out on a private scouting expedition, had been encountered by Aunt Debby and the others, near the summit of the mountain, and had started back with them to the assistance of Fortner. The sound of firing had so excited them that the suggestion of a charge by Kent Edwards was eagerly acceded to.
“It must be near three o’clock,” said Kent, looking up at the stars, as he came back stealthily from laying the saddle blanket, which was the only covering he and Abe had, upon the sleeping form of Aunt Debby, “and my downy couch still waits for me. My life-long habits of staid respectability have been greatly shaken recently.”
Abe groaned derisively.
An inspection, the next morning of the wagon’s load, showed it to be mainly made up of hams, shoulders and sides, plundered from the smokehouses visited. With these were a number of guns, including several fine rifles, and all the ammunition that could be found along the route.
A breakfast was made of slices of ham broiled on the ends of sticks, and then a consultation was held as to the plans for the day’s operations.
The result of this was a decision that Aunt Debby and one of the newcomers should go back and inform the neighborhood of what had taken place, gather a party to remove the dead from the creek and bury them, to keep the water from being poisoned, and recover what property might be found with the first wagon. Kent Edwards, Abe Bolton, and two of the new comers would scout down toward London, to ascertain the truth of the rumor that Zollicoffer had evacuated the place, and retired to Laurel Bridge, nine miles south of it. Fortner and Harry Glen would take the wagon to Wildcat Gap, report what had been done, and explain to their commander the absence of the enlisted men.
“Shade of King Solomon,” said Kent to Abe, after their party had ridden for two or three hours through the mountains toward London. “I wonder if there is any other kind of worldly knowledge that I know as little about as I did of scouting when we started out? My eyes have been opened to my own ignorance. I used to have the conceit that we two could play a fair hand at any game of war they could get up for our entertainment. But these Kentuckians give me points every hundred yards that I never so much as dreamed of. Theirs is the wisdom of serpents when compared with our dove-like innocence.”
“I like dove-like innocence,” interrupted Abe.
“But did you ever see anybody that could go through the country as these fellows can? It’s just marvelous. They know every short cut to every point, and they know just where to go every time to see way ahead without being seen themselves. It would puzzle the sharpest Rebel bushwhacker to get the drop on them.”
“I don’t know as I want to learn their way of doing,” said Abe crustily. “It looks like sneaking, on a big scale, that’s all. And I’m ashamed of this laying round behind a log or a rock to pop a man over. It ain’t my style at all. I believe in open and above-board fighting, give and take, and may the best man win.”
“So do I, though I suppose all’s fair in war. But when we scout we give them the same chance to knock us over that they give us when they scout. I’ll admit it looks very much like murder to shoot men down that way, for it does not help either side along a particle. But these Kentuckians have a great many private injuries to avenge, and they can’t do it any other way.”
All the people of the region were intensely Union, so it was not difficult to get exact information of the movements of the Rebels, and as the scouts drew near London they became assured that not only all of Zollicoffer’s infantry, but his small parties of cavalry had retreated beyond the town. Our scouts therefore, putting Edwards and Bolton to the front, that their blue uniforms might tell the character of the party, spurred into a gallop, and dashed into London, to be received with boundless enthusiasm.
“Somebody ought to ride back to Wildcat immediately,” said Kent, after they had enjoyed their reception a little while, “and report this to the General.”
All assented to this position.
“It is really the duty of myself and comrade here to do it,” said Kent, shifting uneasily in his chair, to find a comfortable place to sit upon; “but as we have been for two days riding the hardest-backed horses over roads that were simply awful, and as previous to that time we had not taken any equestrian exercise for several years, there are some fundamental reasons—that is, reasons lying at the very base of things, (he shifted again)—why we should not be called upon to do another mile of horseback riding until Time has had an opportunity to exercise his soothing and healing influence, so to speak. Abe, I believe I have stated the case with my usual happy combination of grace and delicacy?”
“You have, as usual, flushed a tail-race of big words.”
“In short,” Kent went on (“Ah, thank you. That is delicious. The best I ever drank. Your mountain stills make the finest apple jack in the world. There must be something in the water—that you don’t put in. It’s as smooth as new-made butter. Well, here’s to the anner of Beauty and Glory.) In short, as I was saying when you hospitably interrupted me, we are willing to do anything for the cause, but unless there is some other way of riding, the most painful effort I could make for our beloved country would be to mount that horse again, and ride another hundred yards. To be messenger of this good news would be bliss; what prevents it is a blister.”
The crowd laughed boisterously.
“Mister,” said one of the Kentuckians who accompanied them, with that peculiar drawling inflection of the word that it were hopeless to attempt to represent in print, “ef ye want ter send some one in yer places me an’ Si heah will be powerful glad ter go. Jes’ git a note ter the Jineral at Wildcat ready while we saddle fresh beasts, an’ we’ll hev hit in his hands afore midnight.”
The proposition was immediately accepted, and in a little while the Kentuckians were speeding their way back to Gen. Schoepf, with a letter giving the news, and signed: “Kent Edwards, Chief of Scouts.”
That evening a party of young men who had followed the Rebel retreat some distance, brought in a wagon which had been concealed in an out-of-the-way place, and left there. It was loaded mainly with things taken from the houses, and was evidently the private collection of some freebooting subordinate, who did not intend that the Southern Confederacy should be enriched by the property. Hence, probably, the hesitation about taking it along with the main train. It was handed over to Kent as the representative of the United States, who was alone authorized to take charge of it. Assisted by Abe he started to make an inventory of the contents. A portly jug of apple jack was kept at hand, that there might not be any suffering from undue thirst during the course of the operation, which, as Kent providently remarked, was liable to make a man as dry as an Arizona plain.
The danger of such aridity seemed to grow more imminent continually, judged by the frequency of their application to the jug. It soon became more urgent than the completion of the inventory. Frequent visits of loyal Kentuckians with other jugs and bottles, to drink to the renewed supremacy of the Banner of Beauty and Glory, did not diminish Kent’s and Abe’s apprehensions of ultimate thirst. Their clay seemed like some other kinds, which have their absorptive powers strengthened by the more they take up. They belonged to a not-unusual class of men whom it takes about as long to get thoroughly drunk as it does to heat up an iron-furnace, but the condition that they achieve then makes the intoxication of other and ordinary men seem a very mild and tame exhilaration.
By noon the next day this process was nearing its completion. A messenger galloped into town with the information that the Union forces were coming, and would arrive in the course of an hour or two.
“Shash so?” said Kent, straightening himself up with a crushing dignity that always formed a sure gauge of the extent to which inebriation had progressed. “Shash so? Troops ‘she United States ‘bout to enter shis lovely metropolis wish all pomp and shircumshtance ‘reassherted ‘thority. ‘Shtonishin’ event; wonderful ‘casion. Never happened ‘fore; probably never’ll happen again. Ought to be ‘propriately celebrated, Abe!”
That gentleman made a strong effort to control joints which seemed unmanageable, and succeeded in assuming a tolerable erectness, while he blinked at his companion with stolid gravity.
“Abe, shis ish great ‘casion. Greatest in she annalsh of she country. We’re only represhentatives Government in she town. Burden whole shing fallsh on us. Understand? We musht do everyshing. Understand? Country ‘spects every man to do his duty. Undershtand?”
Abe sank down on a bench, leaned his head against the wall, and looked at his companion with one eye closed wearily.
“Yesshir,” Kent resumed, summoning up a new supply of oratorical energy, and an official gravity beneath which his legs trembled. “Name shis town’s London. Shame name’s big town ‘cross ocean. Lots history c’nected wish name. Shtacks an’ cords of it. Old times when King went out t’meet him, wish shtyle pile on bigger’n a haystack. Fact. Clothes finer’n a peacock. Tendered him keys, freed’m city. All shat short shing. Ver’ impreshive shpectacle. Everybody felt better’n for improvin’ sight. Undershtand? We’ll be Lord Mayor and train for shis London. We can rig out right here. Our trouseau’s here in shis hair trunk.”
“Shall we get anyshing t’ drink?” inquired Abe making a temporary collection of his wits with a violent effort.
“Abe!” the freezing severity of Kent’s tone and manner would have been hopelessly fatal to early vegetables. “Abe you’ve many good qualities—more of ‘em shan any man I know, but a degrading passion fur shtrong drink is ruinin’ you. I’m your besht fren, an’ shay it wish tearsh in m’ eyes. Lemme beg o’ you t’ reform ere it ish too late. Beware of it, my fren, beware of it. It shtingeth like a serpent, an’ biteth like a multiplier—I mean an adder. You haven’t got my shuperb self-control, an’ so yer only shafety lies in total abstinence. Cheese it, my fren, cheese it on she sheductive but fatal lush.”
“Are we goin’ out t’ meet she boysh?” inquired Abe.
“Shertainly we are. Yesshir. An’ we’re goin’ out ash I proposed. Yer a shplendid feller, Abe,” continued Kent, with lofty patronage. “A shplendid feller, an’ do great credit t’ yer ‘portunities. But y’ haven’t had my ‘dvantages of mingling constantly in p’lite s’ciety, y’know. Rough diamond, I know, ‘nall that short o’ shing, but lack polish an’ easy grace. So I’ll be th’ Lord Mayor, an’ y’ll be th’ train. Undershtand?”
He lurched forward, and came near falling over the chair, but recovering he stiffened up and gazed on that useful article of furniture with a sternness that implied his belief that it was a rascally blackleg trying to insinuate itself into the circle of refinement and chaste elegance of which he was the particular ornament.
“Come,” he resumed, “le’s bedizen ourselves; le’s assume th’ shplendor ‘propriate t’ th’ ‘casion.”
When the troops marched in in the afternoon, the encountered at the head of the crowd that met them at the crossing of the creek just ouside of town, a man who seemed filled with deep emotion, and clothed with strange fancies. He wore a tall silk hat of antique patter, carefully brushed, which he protected from the rays of the sun with a huge blue cotton umbrella. A blue broadcloth coat, with gilt buttons, sat jauntily over a black satin vest, and nankeen trousers. A pair of gold spectacles reposed in magisterial dignity about half way down his nose, and a large silver-headed cane in the left hand balanced the umbrella in the right. By the side of the man with rare vestments stood another figure of even more limpness of general bearing, whose garb consisted of a soldier’s uniform pantaloons and woolen shirt—none too clean—set off by a black dress-coat, and white linen vest.
As the head of the column came up he in the blue broadcloth pulled off his hat and spectacles, and addressed himself to speech:
“Allow me, shir, to welcome you with hoshpitable hands to a bloody—no, let me tender you, shir, the liberties of our city, and reshoice shat she old banner which has braved she battle, hash–”
The column had stopped, and the Captain commanding the advance was listening patiently to what he supposed was the address of an enthusiastic, but eccentric old Kentuckian, when one of the sharp-eyed ones in the company shouted out:
“I declare, it’s Kent Edwards and Abe Bolton.”
The yell of laughter and applause at the ludicrous masquerade shook the hills. The Colonel rode up to see what occasioned it. He recognized his two men, and his face darkened with anger.
“You infernal rascals,” he shouted, “you have been off plundering houses, have you, in place of being with your company. I’ll stop this sort of thing mighty sudden. This regiment shall not degrade itself by plundering and robbing, if I have to shoot every man in it. Captain, arrest those men, and keep thim in close confinement until I can have them tried and properly punished.”
Chapter XVII. Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain
This is the very ecstacy of love,
Whose violent property foredoes itself.
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As often as any passion under Heaven
That does afflict our natures.
—Hamlet
Endurance is made possible by reason of the element of divisibility. Metaphysical mathematicians imagine that there is possibly a “fourth dimension,” by the existence of which many hitherto inexplicable phenomena may be explained. They think that probably this fourth dimension is SUCCESSION OF TIME.
So endurance of unendurable things is explainable on the ground that but a small portion of them has to be endured in any given space of time.
It is the old fable of the clock, whose pendulum and wheels stopped one day, appalled by the discovery that they would have to move and tick over three million times a year for many wearisome years, but resumed work again when reminded that they would only have to tick ONCE each second.
So it was with Rachel Bond.
The unendurable whole of a month’s or a week’s experience was endurable when divided in detail and spread over the hours and days.
She was a woman—young and high-natured.
Being a woman she had a martyr-joy in affliction that comes in the guise of duty. Young, she enjoyed the usefulness and importance attached to her work in the hospital. High-natured, she felt a keen satisfaction in triumphing over daily difficulties and obstacles, even though these were mainly her own feelings.
Though months had gone by it seemed as if no amount of habituation could dull the edge of the sickening disgust which continually assailed her sense and womanly instincts. The smells were as nauseating, the sights as repulsive, the sounds of misery as saddening as the day when she first set foot inside the hospital.
From throbbing heart to dainty finger-tip, every fiber in her maidenly body was in active rebellion while she ministered to the rough and coarse men who formed the bulk of the patients, and whose afflictions she could not help knowing were too frequently the direct result of their own sins and willful disobedience of Nature’s laws.
One day, when flushed and wearied with the peevish exactions of a hulking fellow whose indisposition was trifling, she said to Dr. Denslow:
“It is distressing to find out how much unmanliness there is in apparently manly men.”
“Yes,” answered the doctor, with his customary calm philosophy; “and it is equally gratifying to find out how much real manliness there is in some apparently unmanly men. You have been having an experience with some brawny subject?”
“Yes. If the fellow’s spirit were equal to his bone and brawn, he would o’ertop, Julius Caesar. Instead, he whimpers like a school-girl.”
“That’s about the way it usually goes. It may be that my views are colored by my lacking three or four inches of six feet, but I am sometimes strongly inclined to believe that every man—big or little—is given about the same amount of will or vital power, and the bigger and more lumbering the body he has to move with it, the less he accomplishes, and the sooner it is exhausted. You have found, I have no doubt, that as a rule the broad-chested, muscular six-footers, whose lives have ever passed at hard work in the open air, groan and sigh incessantly under the burden of minor afflictions, worry every one with their querulousness, moan for their wives, mothers, or sweethearts, and the comforts of the homes they have left, and finally fret and grieve themselves into the grave, while slender, soft-muscled boys bear real distress without a murmur, and survive sickness and wounds that by all rules ought to prove fatal.”
“There is certainly a good deal in that; but what irritates me now is a display of querulous tyranny.”
“Well, you know what Dr. Johnson says: ‘That a sick man is a scoundrel.’ There is a basis of truth in that apparent cruelty. It is true that ‘scoundrel’ is rather a harsh term to apply to a man whose moral obliquities have not received the official stamp in open court by a jury of his peers. The man whose imprudences and self-indulgences have made his liver slothful, his stomach rebellious, and wrecked his constitution in other ways, may—probably does—become an exasperating little tyrant, full of all manner of petty selfishness, which saps the comfort of others, as acid vapors corrode metals, but does that make him a ‘scoundrel?’ Opinions vary. His much enduring feminine relatives would probably resent such a query with tearful indignation, while unprejudiced outsiders would probably reply calmly in the affirmative.”
“What is the medical man’s view?” asked Rachel, much amused by this cool scrutiny of what people are too often inclined to regard as among the “inscrutable providences.”
“I don’t speak in anything for the profession at large, but my own private judgement is that any man is a scoundrel who robs others of anything that is of value to them, and he is none the less so when he makes his aches and pains, mostly incurred by his gluttony, passions or laziness, the means of plundering others of the comforts and pleasures which are their due.”
Going into the wards one morning, Rachel found that Lieutenant Jacob Alspaugh had been brought in, suffering from what the Surgeon pronounced to be “febrile symptoms of a mild type, from which he will no doubt recover in a few days, with rest, quiet and proper food.”
It is possibly worth while to note the coincidence that these symptoms developed with unexpected suddenness in the midst of earnest preparations by the Army of the Cumberland, for a terrible grapple at Perryville with the Rebel Army of the Tennessee.
Alspaugh recognized Rachel at once, much to her embarrassment, for her pride winced at playing the role of nurse before an acquaintance, especially when that acquaintance was her father’s hired-man, whom she knew too well to esteem highly.
“O, Miss Rachel,” he groaned, as she came to his cot in response to his earnest call, “I’m so glad to see you, for I’m the sickest man that ever came into this hospital. Nothin’ but the best o’ care ‘ll carry me through, and I know you’ll give it to me for the sake of old times,” and Jacob’s face expressed to his comrades the idea that there had been a time when his relations with her had been exceedingly tender.
Rachel’s face flushed at the impudent assumption, but she overcame the temptation to make a snubbing answer, and replied quietly:
“No, Jacob, you are not so sick as you think you are.” (“She calls him ‘Jacob,’” audibly commented some of those near, as if this was a confirmation of Jakes insinuation.) “The Surgeons say,” she continued, “that your symptoms are not at all bad, and that you’ll be up again in a few days.”
“O, them Doctors always talk that way. They’re the flintiest-hearted set I ever see in all my born days. They’re always pretending that they don’t believe there is nothin’ the matter with a feller. I really believe they’d a little liefer a man’d die than not. They don’t seem to take no sort of interest in savin’ the soldiers that the country needs so badly.”
Rachel felt as if it would sweeten much hard service if she could tell Alspaugh outright her opinion that he was acting very calfishly; but other counsels prevailed, and she said encouragingly:
“You are only discouraged, Jacob—that’s all. A few days rest here will restore both your health and your spirits.”
“No, I’m not discouraged. I’m not the kind to git down in the mouth—you know me well enough for that. I’m sick, sick I tell you—sicker’n any other man in this hospital, an’ nothin’ but the best o’ nursin’ ‘ll save my life for the country. O, how I wish I was at home with my mother; she’d take care o’ me.”
Rachel could not repress a smile at the rememberance of Jake’s termagant mother had her dirty, comfortless cottage, an how her intemperance in administering such castisement as conveyed most grief to a boy’s nature first drove Jake to seek refuge with her father.
“No doubt it would be very comfortable,” she answered, “if you could get home to your mother; but there’s no need of it, because you’ll be well before you could possibly reach there.”
“No, I’ll never be well,” persisted Jake, “unless I have the best o’ care; but I feel much better now, since I find you here, for I’m sure you’ll take as much interest in me as a sister would.”
She shuddered a little at the prospect of even temporary sisterly relations to the fellow, but replied guardedly:
“Of course I’ll do what I can for you, Jacob,” and started to move away, but he caught her dress and whimpered:
“O, don’t go, Miss Rachel; do go and leave me all alone. Stay any way till I’m fixed somehow comfortable.”
“I half believe the booby will have hysterics,” thought Rachel, with curling lip. “Is this the man they praised so for his heroism? Does all his manhood depend upon his health? Now he hasn’t the spirit of a sick kitten.” Dreading a scene, however, she took her seat at the head of the cot, and gave some directions for its arrangement.
Jake’s symptoms grew worse rapidly, for he bent all his crafty energies to that end. Refuge in the hospital from the unpleasant contingencies attending duty in the field was a good thing, and it became superexcellent when his condition made him the object of the care and sympathy of so fine a young lady as Miss Rachel Bond. This he felt was something like compensation for all that he had endured for the country, and he would get as much of it as possible. His mind busied itself in recalling and imitating the signs of suffering he had seen in others.
He breathed stretorously, groaned and sighed immoderately, and even had little fits of well-feigned delirium, in which he babbled of home and friends and the war, and such other things as had come within the limited scope of his mental horizon.
“Don’t leave me, Miss Rachel—don’t leave me,” he said, in one of these simulated paroxysms, clutching at the same time, with a movement singularly well directed for a delirious man, one of her delicate hands in his great, coarse, and not-over-clean fingers. Had it been the hand of a dying man, or of one in a raging fever, that imprisoned hers, Rachel would not have felt the repulsion that she did at a touch which betrayed to her only too well that the toucher’s illness was counterfeited. She could hardly restrain the impulse to dash away the loathsome hand, as she would a toad that had fallen upon her, but she swiftly remembered, as she had in hundreds of other instances since she had been in the hospital, that she was no longer in her own parlor, but in a public place, with scores of eyes noting every movement, and that such an act of just disdain would probably be misunderstood, and possibly be ruinous to a belief in her genuine sympathy with the misfortunes of the sick which she had labored so heroically to build up.
She strove to release her fingers quietly, but at this Alspaugh’s paroxysm became intense. He clung the tighter to her, and kneaded her fingers in a way that was almost maddening. Never in all her life had a man presumed to take such a familiarity with her. But her woman’s wit did not desert her. With her disengaged hand she felt for and took out a large pin that fastened a bit of lace to her throat, with the desperate intent to give her tormentor a sly stab that would change the current of his thoughts.
But at the moment of carrying this into effect something caused her to look up, and she saw Dr. Denslow standing before her, with an amused look in his kindly, hazel eyes.
She desisted from her purpose and restored the pin to its place in obedience to a sign from him, which told her that he thoroughly understood the case, and had a more effective way of dealing with it than the thrust of a pin point.
