Summary

Unlike the previous chapters, this chapter begins with a flashback to Captain Kidd’s military career. When he was sixteen, Jefferson Kyle Kid was a private in the Georgia militia in the War of 1812, and fought under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. On March 27, 1814, he and the “Georgia boys” (20) were fighting Muskogee Creek Indians, whom they referred to as the “Red Sticks.” During the fight, a superior officer alerts “Jeff” Kidd to the fact that Captain Thompson is lying wounded on the battlefield. Kidd crawls out of his hiding place to retrieve the Captain. Just as he is reaching for Thompson’s arm, the narrator describes how suddenly the “sand erupted around him” in “ting explosive charges” (21). Kidd manages to drag Thompson, over a “broken mirror and a calendar and some spoons” (21), back to the camp. However, the captain...