When Dan Beard was a boy he used to go fishing in Bank Lick, between the Confederate and Federal lines near the Ken tucky-Ohio border. In those days, if you were lucky, you could get 92-lb. catfish in Midwestern rivers. The boys called themselves Boone's Scouts; they would crawl on their hands and knees if the pickets began shooting at each other over their heads. Once Dan was fishing in Bank Lick when a beech tree suddenly exploded in the quiet afternoon, split as if hit by lightning. It had stopped a solid ball from a monstrous Columbian gun.
The...
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