Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1885 — How the Boys Beat a Sutler. [ARTICLE]

How the Boys Beat a Sutler.

In 1862, at Helena, Ark., we were troubled a great deal with sharks in shape of human beings, who followed the army with goods for which they charged .the soldiers exorbitant prices —a sly way they had of robbing us. They were a sort of necessary evil, but the boys soon tumbled to their little game, and were generally prepared for any emergency, or rather flank movement whereby the sharks proposed to get the best of them. Late one afternoon a steamboat landed at the wharf at Helena, with a load of goods belonging to one of the aforementioned sharks. On account of the lateness of the hour when the goods were unloaded, they had to be left on the wharf all night; but Mr. Shark got a guard, of course—such men could generally get guard-', you know; but occasionally some of the boys would pass by those goods, look the ground over and slyly wink at each other, and there was an all-fired amount of expression in those winks, which meant business from the word go. About nine o’clock that night most of the soldiers in the brigade had assembled in the vicinity of the wharf—drawn there by a magnetic impulse hard to explain on paper—and by a sudden freak peculiar to soldiers bent on mischief, the crowd ran over those goods and guards, and when the crowd dispersed, lo and behold! the goods had disappeared, and the shark was left sitting on the wharf gazing at the vacant space and weeping and wishing he had stayed in Cincinnati. The boys had great times the next day to get boots to fit, as most of them got all rights or all lefts, and many of the watermelons were green; and they experienced great difficulty in keeping the chickens quiet under their beds while the officers were searching for the shark’s property. They were also afraid that the searching party would break tue bottles they had hid, while carelessly digging around in the quarters; but the shark did not make a fortune out of that speculation.— Riverside Enterprise.