XIII. THE FIRST DAY OF THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN…

XIII. THE FIRST DAY OF THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN

AS usual, it seemed to the boys of the 200th Ind. that they had only lain down when the bugle blew the reveille on the morning of May 3, 1864.

The vigilant Orderly-Sergeant was at once on his feet, rousing the other "non-coms" to get the men up.

Si and Shorty rose promptly, and, experienced campaigners as they were, were in a moment ready to march anywhere or do anything as long as their rations and their cartridges held out.

The supply of rations and cartridges were the only limitations Sherman's veterans knew. Their courage, their willingness, their ability to go any distance, fight and whip anything that breathed had no limitations. They had the supremest confidence in themselves and their leaders, and no more doubt of their final success than they had that the sun would rise in the morning.

Vigorous, self-reliant manhood never reached a higher plane than in the rank and file of Sherman's army in the Spring of 1864.

Si and Shorty had only partially undressed when they lay down. Their shoes, hats and blouses were with their haversacks under their heads. Instinctively, as their eyes opened, they reached for them and put them on.

That was a little trick only learned by hard service.

The partners started in to rouse their boys. As soon as these were fairly awake they became greatly excited. They had gone to sleep bubbling over with the momentousness of the coming day, and now that day had opened.

There was a frantic scrambling for clothing, which it was impossible for them to find in the pitchy darkness. There were exclamations of boyish ill-temper at their failure. They thought the enemy were right upon them, and every instant was vital. Monty Scruggs and Alf Russell could not wait to dress, but rushed for their guns the first thing, and buckled on their cartridge-boxes.

"Gid Mackall, you've got on my shoes," screamed Harry Josyln. "I can't find 'em nowhere, and I laid 'em right beside me. Take 'em off this minute."

"Hain't got your shoes on; can't find but one o' my own," snorted Gid in reply. "You helter-skelter little fly-up-the-crick, you never know where your own things are, and you lose everybody else's."

"There's my shoe," exclaimed Harry, as he stumbled over one.

"No; that's mine. Let it alone—give it to me," yelled Gid, and in an instant the two were locked together in one of their usual fights.

Si snatched them apart, cuffed them, and lighted a bit of candle, which he kept for emergencies, to help them and the rest find their things. He improved the occasion to lecture them as to the way they should do in the future.

After awakening him, Shorty had calmed down the excited little Pete, found his shoes and other clothes for him, and seen that he put them on properly.

"Have everything all right at startin', Pete," said he, "and you'll be all right for the day. You'll have plenty o' time. The rebels'll wait for us."

"Aint them them, right out there?" asked Pete nervously, pointing to the banks of blackness out in front.

"No; them's the same old cedar thickets they wuz when you went to bed. They hain't changed a mite durin' the night, except that they've got some dew on 'em. You must git over seein' bouggers wherever it's dark. We'll build a fire and cook some breakfast, and git a good ready for startin'. You must eat all you kin, for you'll need all you kin hold before the day's over."

Si was employed the same way in quieting down the rest, seeing that every one was properly clothed and had all his equipments, and then he gathered them around a little fire to boil their coffee and broil a piece of fresh beef for their breakfast. He had the hardest work getting them to pay attention to this, and eat all they could. They were so wrought up over the idea that the battle would begin at any minute that the sound of a distant bugle or any noise near would bring them up standing, to the utter disregard of their meal.

"Take it cool, boys, and eat all you kin," he admonished them. "It's generally a long time between meals sich times as these, and the more you eat now the longer you kin go without."

But the boys could not calm themselves.

"There, ain't that rebel cavalry galloping and yelling?" one exclaimed; and they all sprang to their feet and stared into the darkness.

"No," said Shorty, with as much scorn as he could express with his mouthful of the last issue of soft bread that he was to get. "Set down. That's only the Double Canister Battery goin' to water. Their Dutch bugler can't speak good English, his bugle only come to this country at the beginning o' the war, and he's got a bad cold in his head besides. Nobody kin understand his calls but the battery boys, and they won't have no other. They swear they've the best bugler in the army."'

"Set down! Set down, I tell you," Si repeated sternly, "and swaller all the grub you kin hold. That's your first business, and it's just as much your business as it is to shoot when you're ordered to. You've got to lay in enough now to run you all day. And all that you've got to listen for is our own bugle soundin' 'Fall in!' Don't mind no other noise."

They tried to obey, but an instant later all leaped to their feet, as a volley of mule screechers mixed with human oaths and imprecations came up from a neighboring ravine.

"There! There's the rebels, sure enough," they ejaculated, dropping their coffee and meat and rushing for their guns.

"Come back and set down, and finish your breakfast," shouted Si. "That ain't no rebels. That's only the usual family row over the breakfast table between the mules and the teamsters."

"Mules is kickin' because the teamsters don't wash their hands and put on white aprons when they come to wait on 'em," suggested Shorty.

The boys looked at him in amazement, that he should jest at such a momentous time.

"There's the 'assembly' now," said Si, as the first streak of dawn on the mountain-top was greeted by the bugler at the 200th Ind.'s Headquarters, filling the chill air with stirring notes.

"Put on your things. Don't be in a hurry. Put on everything just right, so's it won't fret or chafe you during the march. You'll save time by takin' time now."

He inspected the boys carefully as it grew lighter, showed them how to adjust their blanket-rolls and canteens and heavy haversacks so as to carry to the best advantage, examined their guns, and saw that each had his full allowance of cartridges.

"Here comes meat for the rebel cavalry," shouted one of the older members of the company, as Si brought his squad up to take its place on the left of Co. Q.

"I wouldn't say much about rebel cavalry, if I was you, Wolf Greenleaf," Si admonished the joker. "Who was it down in Kentucky that was afraid to shoot at a rebel cavalryman, for fear it would make him mad, and he might do something?"

The laugh, that followed this old-time "grind" on one of the teasers of new recruits silenced him, and encouraged the boys.

As the light broadened, and revealed the familiar hills and woods, unpeopled by masses of enemies, the shivery "2 o'clock-in-the-morning- feeling" vanished from the boys' hearts, and was succeeded by eagerness to see the redoubtable rebels, of whom so much had been said.

The companies formed up into the regiment on the parade ground, the Colonel mounted his horse, took his position on the right flank, and gave the momentous order:

"Attention, battalion—Right face—Forward—file left—March!"

The first wave rolled forward in the mighty avalanche of men, which was not to be stayed until, four months later, Sherman telegraphed North the glad message:

"Atlanta is ours, and fairly won."

As they wound around and over the hills in front, they saw the "reserves," the "grand guard," and finally the pickets with their reserves drawn in, packed up ready for marching, and waiting for their regiments to come up, when they would fall-in.

"There's a h—l's mint of deviling, tormenting rebel cavalry out there beyond the hills," they called out to the regiment. "Drop onto 'em, and mash 'em. We'll be out there to help, if you need it."

"The 200th Injianny don't need no help to mash all the rebel cavalry this side o' the brimstone lakes," Si answered proudly. "Much obliged to you, all the same."

"Capt. McGillicuddy," commanded the Colonel, as they advanced beyond where the picket-line had been, "deploy your company on both sides of the road, and take the advance. Keep a couple hundred yards ahead of the regiment."

"Hooray," said Si, "we're in the lead again, and we'll keep it till the end o' the chapter. Co. Q, to the front and center."

They advanced noiselessly over the crest of a ridge, and the squad, which gained a little on the rest, saw a rebel videt sitting on his horse in the road some 200 or 300 yards away. The guns of the nervous boys were up instantly, but Si restrained them with a motion of his hand.

"What's the matter with him?" he asked Shorty, indicating the rebel.

"Him and his hors's wore out and asleep," answered Shorty, after a minute's study. "Look at his head and his hoss's."

"Kin we sneak up on him and git him?" asked Si.

"Scarcely," answered Shorty. "Look over there."

A squad of rebels were riding swiftly up the road toward the videt.

"Shan't I shoot him?" asked the nervous little Pete, lifting his gun to his face.

"No, no; give him a show for his life," answered Shorty, laying his hand on Pete's gun.

"It'd be murder to shoot him now. Gi' me your gun, Pete. Run down the road there apiece, and hit him or his horse with a stone and wake him up."

The boys, to whom a rebel was a savage wolf, to be killed any way that he could be caught, looked wonderingly at Si, who responded by a nod of approval.

"Won't he chop me with his sword?" asked Pete, still full of the terrors of that weapon.

"We'll look out for that. Go ahead, quick, Pete," said Si.

Poor little Pete, looking as if he was being sent to lead a forlorn hope, rushed frantically forward, picking up a stone as he ran, and hurled it with a true aim squarely against the rebel's breast, who woke with a start, clutched his carbine, and stared around, while little Pete dashed into the brush to avoid his dreaded saber.

"Look out for yourself, reb. We're a-coming," shouted Si.

The rebel whirled his horse about, fired his carbine into the air, and sped back to his friends, while the squad rushed forward and took position behind trees. The rebels came plunging on.

"Fire!" shouted Si.

The guns of the squad crashed almost together. The bullets seemed to strike near, but without taking effect on any one of the rebels, who seemed to catch sight of the rest of Co. Q coming over the crest. They whirled their horses around, and started back on a sharp trot, while the boys were reloading.

"Go ahead. Sergeant," shouted Capt. McGillicuddy, from the rear. "Follow them up. We're right behind you. Push them back on their reserves."

"All right, Cap. Back they go," shouted Si, leading forward his squad in a heavy-footed run down the road. They soon came to an opening of somewhat level ground, made by the clearing around a cabin.

The rebel squad halted beyond the cornfields, turned about, and opened fire.

"Holy smoke, look there," gasped Monty Scruggs, as a company of rebel cavalry came tearing over the hill in front, to the assistance of their comrades.

"Them ain't many for cavalry," said Shorty, as he and Si deployed the boys behind fence-corners, and instructed them to shoot carefully and low.

"Sargint, see there, and there," shouted Alf Russell, as other companies of rebels came galloping through over the crest, while the first arrivals began throwing down the fences, preparatory to a charge.

"Yes, there's about a rijimint," Si answered coolly. "We'll need the most o' Co. Q to 'tend to them. Here they come."

"Sergeant, what's all this disturbance you're kicking up in camp?" said Capt. McGillicuddy playfully, as he deployed Co. Q. "Can't you take a quiet walk out into the country, without stirring up the whole neighborhood?"

"They seem to've bin at home and expectin' us, Capt," grinned Si, as he pointed to the augmenting swarm of horsemen.

"There does seem to be a tolerably full house," answered the Captain with a shrug. "Well, the more the merrier. Boys, shoot down those fellows who're tearing down the fences. That'll stop any rush on us, and we'll develop their force."

"It's developing itself purty fast, seems to me. There comes another rijimint," remarked Si.

The firing grew pretty noisy.

Si was delighted to see how naturally his boys took to their work. After the first flurry of excitement at confronting the yelling, galloping horde, they crouched down behind their fence-corners, and loaded and fired as deliberately as the older men.

"What sort of a breach of the peace is this you are committing, Capt. McGillicuddy?" asked Col. McBiddle, coming up at the head of the 200th Ind. "And do you want some accomplices?"

"I believe if you'll give me another company I can make a rush across there and scatter those fellows," answered the Captain.

"All right. Take Co. A. Push them as far as you can, for the orders are to develop their strength at once. I'll follow close behind and help you develop, if you need me."

An instant later the two companies rushed across the field, making a bewildering transformation in the rebels' minds from charging to being charged. The rebels were caught before they could complete their formation. There was a brief tumult of rushes and shots and yells, and they were pushed back through the woods, with some losses In killed and wounded and stampeded horses.

Si had led his squad straight across the field, against a group engaged in pulling down the fence. They were caught without their arms, and two were run down and captured. Palpitating with success, the boys rushed over to where the regiment was gathering itself together at the edge of the woods on the brow of the ridge.

"Why don't they go ahead? What're they stoppin' for? The whole rijimint's up," Si asked, with a premonition of something wrong.

"Well, I should say there was something to stop for," answered Shorty, as they arrived where they could see, and found the whole country in front swarming with rebel cavalry as far as their eyes could reach.

"Great Scott," muttered Si, with troubled face, for the sight was appalling. "Is the whole Confederacy out there on hossback?"

"O, my, do we have to fight all them?" whimpered little Pete, scared as much by the look on Shorty's face as at the array.

"Shut up, Pete," said Shorty petulantly, as a shell from a rebel battery shrieked through the woods with a frightful noise. "Git behind this stump here, and lay your gun across it. I'll stand beside you. Don't shoot till you've a bead on a man. Keep quiet and listen to orders."

A rebel brigade was rapidly preparing to charge. It stretched out far beyond the flanks of the regiment.

"Steady, men! Keep cool!" rang out the clear, calm voice of the Colonel. "Don't fire till they come to that little run in the field, and then blow out the center of that gang."

The brigade swept forward with a terrific yell. Si walked behind his squad, and saw that every muzzle was depressed to the proper level.

The brigade came on grandly, until they reached the rivulet, and then a scorching blast broke out from the muzzles of the 200th Ind., which made them reel and halt.

Yells of "Close up, Alabamians!" "This way, Tennesseeans!" "Form on your colors, Georgians!" came from the rebels as the boys reloaded. Then all sounds were drowned in the rattling musketry, as the rebels began a hot fire from their saddles, in answer to the Union musketry.

"Captain, they are moving out a brigade on either flank to take us in the rear," said Col. McBiddle calmly to Capt. McGillicuddy. "We'll have to fall back to the brigade. Pass the word along to retire slowly, firing as we go. The brigade must be near. You had better move your company over toward the right, to meet any attack that may come from that direction. I'll send Co. A toward the other flank."

It was a perilous movement to make in front of such overwhelming force. But the smoke curtained the manuver and the rebels only discovered it by the diminution of the fire in their front. Then they and the flanking brigades came on with ringing yells, and it seemed that the regiment was to be swept off the face of the earth. The 200th Ind. was not to be scared by yells, however, and sent such a galling fire from front and flanks, that the rebel advance lost its rushing impetus. The regiment was reaching the edge of the woods. The clear fields would give the rebel cavalry its chance.

The whole command advanced, the moment the rebels began to break under the fire, across the fields and through the woods to the crest where the 200th Ind. had first tried to stop the swarming rebel horsemen. From there they could see the broad plain rapidly vacated by their enemies, hurrying away from the pursuing shells.

The Colonel's clear, penetrating tones rang above the tumult:

"Attention, 200th Ind.! Every man for himself across the fields. Rally on the fence beyond."

Shorty, whose face had been scratched by a bullet, took little Pete by the hand. "Now, run for it, my boy, as you never run before in your life. Hold on to your gun."

There was a wild rush, through a torrent of bullets, across the cleared space, and as he jumped the fence, Si was rejoiced to see his squad all following him, with Shorty dragging little Pete in the rear.

They had scarcely struck the ground beyond, when it shook with the crash of artillery on the knoll above, and six charges of double canister tore wickedly into the surging mass of rebel cavalry.

"The Double Canister Battery got up jest in the nick o' time," gasped Shorty, as he shoved little Pete down behind a big log. "It generally does, though."

"I'm glad the brigade wasn't a mile off," puffed Si, listening with satisfaction to the long line of rifles singing tenor to the heavy bass of the cannon.

"Capt. McGillicuddy," said the Colonel, "I ordered you to develop the enemy's strength. Has it occurred to you that you somewhat overdid the thing?"

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XIV. THE EVENING AFTER THE BATTLE

"GREAT Jehosephat, how hungry I am," suddenly ejaculated Shorty, stopping his cheering, as the thunder of the guns died away into an occasional shot after the rebels galloping back to the distant woods on the ridge from which they had emerged.

"I must make some coffee. Wonder where I put my matches?"

"Here, Pete," continued Shorty, as he broke off some splinters from the rails and started a little fire, "take my canteen and Si's and yours, and run down there and find a spring, and fill 'em, before the others make a rush. Be spry about it, for there'll be a rush there in a minute, and you won't have no chance."

The excited boy had to be spoken to a second time before he would come back to earth, much less comprehend the want of water and food. Like the rest of his companions, the terrific drama which had just been enacted had wrought him to a delirium, in which he could think of nothing but a world full of bellowing cannon, and a nightmare of careering, plunging horses, with savagely-yelling riders.

They could not realize that the battlecloud had rolled away just as suddenly as it had burst upon them, and they stood there tightly grasping their reloaded guns, and staring fixedly into the distance for the next horrid development.

"I think you'll find a spring right over there where you see that bunch o' young willers, Pete," said Si, handing him his canteen. "Break for it, before anybody else gets there and muddies the water."

But Pete still stood rigid and unhearing, clutching his gun with a desperate grip, and glaring with bulging, unmoving eyes across the plain.

"Come, wake up, Pete," said Shorty, giving him a sharp shake. "Do as I tell you, and on the jump. The fight's over."

"The fight's over?" stammered the boy. "Ain't they coming back again?"

"Not on their butternut-dyed lives they ain't," said Shorty scornfully. "They've got their dirty hides as full o' lickin' as they kin hold for one day. They'll set around for a while, and rub their hurts, and try to think out jest how it all happened."

"Skip out, Pete," Si reminded the boy. "The rest o' you boys stack your guns and foller Pete."

"Hadn't we batter take our guns along?" suggested Monty, holding on to his with grim fearfulness.

"No. Stack 'em; stack 'em, I tell you," said Si impatiently. "And be quick about it. They'll all git ahead o' you. Don't you see the rest stackin' arms?"

The boys obeyed as if dazed, and started to follow little Pete's lead toward the clump of willows.

The boy, full of the old nick, found an Orderly's horse nipping the grass close by the path to the spring and, boy like, jumped on its back. The clatter of the canteens frightened the horse, and he broke into a dead run.

Little Pete's Horse Bolts. 169

"Do ye s'pose the fight's really over?" whispered Pete to Alf Russell, who was just behind him. "Don't you think the rebels just let go to get a fresh hold?"

"Seems so to me," answered Alf. "Seems to me there was just millions of 'em, and we only got away with a little passel, in spite of all that shootin'. Why, when we come out on the ridge the valley down there seemed fuller of 'em than it was at first."

"We oughtn't to get too far away from our guns," said Monty Scruggs. "Them woods right over there may be full o' rebels watching to jump us when we get far enough away."

"I don't like the looks of that hill to the left," said Gid Mackall, nervously. "An awful lot o' them went behind it, and I didn't see any come out."

"There, them bushes over there are shaking—they're coming out again," said Harry Joslyn, turning to run back for his gun.

"No, not there," nervously interjected Humphrey's, turning with him; "ain't there something stirring down there by the crick?"

"No, no," said Sandy Baker, desperately. "It's just that blame fool Pete. Come on! Come on! We've got to. We were ordered to. Le's make a rush for it, like the men in the Indian stories done when they was sent for water."

They acted on the suggestion with such vim that when Pete's horse tripped at the edge of the little run, and sent Pete over its head with a splash into the mud and water, the rest tumbled and piled on top of him.

The men on the hill, who had noticed it, set up a yell of laughter, which scared the boys worse than ever, for they thought it meant the rebels were on them again.

"Now, what new conniption's struck them dumbed little colts?" said Si, irritably, as he strode down to them, pulled them out, and set them on their feet, with a shaking and some strong words.

"Is the rebels coming again?" gasped Pete, rubbing the mud and water out of his eyes.

"No, you little fool," said Si. "The rebels ain't comin'. They're goin' as fast as their horses kin carry 'em. They've got through comin' for today.

"There ain't one of 'em within cannon-shot, and won't be till we go out and hunt 'em up again. You've come near spilin' the spring with your tormented foolishness. What on earth possessed you to climb that boss? You need half killin', you do. Go up higher there and fill your canteens from where the water's clear. Be slow and careful, and don't rile the water. Say, I see some nice sassafras over there. I always drink sassafras tea this time o' year. It cleans the blood. I'm goin' over and see if I can't git a good root while you're fillin' your canteens."

Si walked out some distance in front of them, pulling as he walked some of the tender, fragrant, spicy young leaves of the sassafras, and chewing them with gusto. Arriving at the top of a rise he selected a young shrub, pulled it up, carefully loosed its root from the mulchy soil, and cut it off with his knife. His careless deliberation calmed the overwrought nerves of the boys, and when he returned they had their canteens filled, and walked back composedly to the fires, when they suddenly remembered that they were as hungry as Si and Shorty, and fell to work cooking their suppers.

"Is that the way with the rebel cavalry?" asked Monty Scruggs, with his mouthful of crackers and meat. "Do they come like a hurricane, and disappear again like an April shower?"

"That's about it," answered Shorty disdainfully. "That's the way with all cavalry, dad-burn 'em. They're like a passel o' fice pups. They're all yelp and bark, and howl and showin' o' teeth. They're jest goin' to tear you to pieces. But when you pick up a stone or a club, or git ready to give 'em a good kick they're gone, the devil knows where. They're only an aggravation. You never kin do nothin' with 'em, and they kin do nothin' with you. I never kin understand why God Almighty wasted his time in makin' cavalry of any kind, Yank or rebel. All our own cavalry's good for is to steal whisky and chickens from honest soldiers of the infantry. The infantry's the only thing. It's like the big dog that comes up without any special remarks, and sets his teeth in the other dog. The thing only ends when one dog or the other is badly whipped and somethin's bin accomplished."

"Will we have to fight them cavalry again tomorrow jest the same way?" asked little Pete, still somewhat nervously.

"Lord only knows," answered Shorty indifferently, feeling around for his pipe. "A feller never knows when he's goin' to have to fight rebel cavalry any more'n he knows when he's goin' to have the toothache. The thing just happens, and that's all there is of it."

Si and Shorty, having finished their suppers, lighted their pipes, and strolled up through the regiment to talk over with the others the events of the day and the probabilities of the morrow.

Left alone, the tongues of the excited boys became loosened, and ran like the vibrations of a cicada's rattle.

"Wasn't it just wonderful?" said Monty Scruggs. "It looked as if a million circuses had suddenly let out over there.

"'The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold, And their cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold.'

"Only there didn't seem much purple and gold about them. Seemed mostly brown rags and slouch hats and long swords. Gracious, did you ever see anything as long and wicked as them swords! Seemed that every one was pointing directly at me, and they'd reach me the very next jump."

"Of course, you thought they were all looking at you," said Alf Russell. "That's your idea, always, wherever you are. You think you're spouting on the platform, and the center of attraction. But I knew that they were all looking at me, as folks generally do."

"More self-conceit," sneered Harry Joslyn. "Just because you're so good looking, Alf. I knew that they weren't bothering about any boy orator, who does most of his shooting with his mouth, nor any young pill- peddler, who sings in the choir, and goes home with the prettiest girl. They were making a dead set on the best shot in the crowd, the young feller who'd come into the war for business, and told his folks at home before he started that he was going to shoot Jeff Davis with his own hand before he got back. That was me, I saw the Colonel of one o' the regiments point his sword straight at me as they came across the run, and tell his men to be sure and get me of all others."

"Why didn't you shoot him, if you're such a deadshot?" asked Gid Mackall.

"Why, I was just loading my gun, when I saw him, and as I went to put on the cap you were shaking so that it jarred the cap out of my hand, and before I could get another, the smoke became so thick I couldn't see anything."

"I shaking?" said Gib, with deep anger. "Now, Harry Josyn—"

"Come, boys; don't have a scrap, now," pleaded the serious-minded Alf. "Just think how many dead men are lying around. It looks like raising a disturbance at a funeral."

"That's so," said Jake Humphreys. "I don't think any of us is in shape to throw up anything to another about shaking. I own up that I was never so scared in all my life, and I feel now as if I ought to get down on my knees before everybody, and thank God Almighty that my life was spared. I ain't ashamed to say so."

"Bully for you, Jake," said Monty Scruggs, heartily. "We all feel that way, but hain't the nerve to say so. I wish the Chaplain would come around and open a meeting of thanksgiving and prayer."

"I tell you what's the next best thing," suggested Jake Humphreys. "Let Alf Russell sing one of those good old hymns they used to sing in the meetings back at home."

"Home!" How many thousands of miles away—how many years of time away—seemed to those flushed, overwrought boys, bivouacking on the deadstrewn battlefield, the pleasant cornfields, the blooming orchards, the drowsy hum of bees, the dear homes, sheltering fathers, mothers, and sisters; the plain white churches, with their faithful, grayhaired pastors, of the fertile plains of Indiana.

Alf Russell lifted up his clear, far-reaching boyish tenor, that they had heard a thousand times at devout gatherings, at joyful weddings, at sorrowing funerals, in that grandest and sweetest of hymns:

"All hail the power of Jesus' name; Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal-diadem. And crown Him Lord of All."

As far as his voice could reach, the rough soldiers, officers and men, stopped to listen to him—listened to him with emotions far too deep for the cheers that usually fly to the lips of soldiers at anything that stirs them. The higher officers quit talking of the plans of the morrow; the minor ones stopped, pen in hand, over their reports and requisitions; the busy Surgeons stayed their keen knives; the fussy Orderly-Sergeants quit bothering about rations and details; the men paused, looked up from their cards and cooking until the hymn was sung through.

The voice was so pure, so fresh, so redolent of all that had graced and sweetened their far-off past, that it brought to each swarming emotions for which there was no tongue.

"Bully for you, Alf; you're a sweet singer in Israel," said Si, brushing away a suspicion of a tear. "Spread out your blankets, boys, and lay down. Git all the sleep you kin, for there's lots o' work for us tomorrow. There goes tattoo!"

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XV. THE FIGHTING AROUND BUZZARD ROOST AND CAPTURE OF THE REBEL STRONGHOLD

FOR the next few days there was a puzzling maze of movements, which must have completely mystified the rebel Generals—as was intended—for it certainly passed the comprehension of our own keen-eyed and shrewdly- guessing rank-and-file and lower oflficers.

Regiments, brigades and divisions marched hither-and-yon, wound around and over the hills and mountains, started out at a great rate in the morning, marched some distance, halted apparently halfway, and then perhaps went back. Skirmishing, that sometimes rose to the proportions of a real battle, broke out at unexpected times and places, and as unexpectedly ended. Batteries galloped into position, without much apparent warning or reason, viciously shelled some distant point, and then, as the infantry were girding up themselves for something real to follow all the noise, stopped as abruptly as they had begun, and nothing followed.

This went on so long, and apparently so purposelessly, that even the constant Si and Shorty were shaken a little by it.

"It can't be," said Shorty to Si, one evening after they had gone into bivouac, and the two had drawn away from the boys a little, to talk over things by themselves, "that old Sherman's got one o' his crazy fits again, can it? They say that sometimes he gits crazier 'n a March hare, and nobody kin tell just when the fit'll come on him. I never did see so much criss cross work as we've bin doin' for the last few days. I can't make head nor tail of it, and can't find anybody else that kin."

"I can't make it out no more than you kin," assented Si. "And I've thought o' that crazy idee, too. You know them boys over there in Rousseau's old division was under Sherman once before, when he was in command at Louisville, and they say that he got crazier'n a locoed steer—actually looney, so's they had to relieve him and send him back home to git cured. They'd be really scared about things, but their officers heard old Pap Thomas say that things wuz goin' along all right, and that satisfied 'em. I ain't goin' to worry so long's old Thomas is in command o' the Army o' the Cumberland, and we're in it. He'll take care that things come out straight."

"You bet," heartily agreed Shorty. "The Army o' the Cumberland'll be all right as long as he's on deck, and he kin take care o' the other armies, too, if they git into trouble. I struck some o' the Army o' the Tennessee when I went back with them prisoners today, and got talkin' with 'em. I asked 'em if Sherman wasn't subject to crazy fits, and they said yes, he had 'em, but when he did he made the rebels a mighty sight crazier'n he was. They went on to say that we'd git used to Sherman after awhile, and he'd show us some kinks in soljerin' that we never dreamed of."

"Sich plaguey conceit," muttered Si.

"I should say so. But I never seen anybody so stuck on theirselves as them Army o' the Tennessee fellers. Just because they took Vicksburg—"

"With all the navy to help 'em," interjected Si.

"Yes, with more gunboats than we have army wagons. They think they know more about soljerin than anybody else in the world, and ackchelly want to give us p'ints as to how to git away with the rebels."

"The idee," said Si scornfully. "Talkin' that way to the best soljers in the world—the Army o' the Cumberland. I hate conceit, above all things. I'm glad I hain't none of it in me. 'Tain't that we say it, but everybody knows it that the Army o' the Cumberland's the best army in the world, and the 200th Injianny—"

"I told 'em that the Army o' the Cumberland was the best army, because it had the 200th Injianny in it, and, would you believe me, they said they'd never even heard o' the 200th Injianny?"

"Sich ignorance," groaned Si. "Can't they read? Don't they git the papers?"

"There'd bin a fight right, there, if it hadn't bin for the officers. I wanted awfully to take a fall out of a big Sergeant who said that Thomas might be a good enough man for Chairman of a convention o' farmers, but when he went to war he wanted to have sich leaders as Sherman, McPherson, and Logan, and Osterhaus. But he'll keep. We agreed to see each other later, when we'll have a private discussion, and if he has any head left on him he'll freely acknowledge that nobody in the Army o' the Tennessee is fit to be named in the same day with Pap Thomas."

"Better turn him over to me, Shorty," said Si, meditatively. "I think I'm in better shape for an argument just now than you are. You've bin doing a good deal in the last few days, and I'm afraid you're a little run down."

"No; he's my meat. I found him, and I'll take care o' him. But there's just one thing that reconciles me to this business. In spite o' all this sashayin' and monkeying we seem to be continually edgin' up closter to them big cliffs where the rebels are, and something's got to bust purty soon. It's jist like it was at Tullyhomy, but old Rosecrans ain't runnin' things now."

"But Thomas is in the center, as he was then, and we're with him," said Si hopefully. "There's tattoo, Le's crawl in."

The other boys had been affected according to their various temperaments by the intricate and bewildering events of the past few days. The first day or two they were all on the tenter-hooks of expectation and anxiety. Every bugle-call seemed to be a notice for them to rush into the great battle. Every time they saw a regiment moving, they expected to follow and fall into line with it. They wondered why they were not sent in after every skirmish-line they saw advancing. When a rebel battery opened out in the distance they girded themselves in expectation of an order to charge it. But Si and Shorty kept admonishing them that it would be time enough for them to get excited when the 200th Ind. was called on by name for something; that they were not expected to fight the whole campaign, but only to do a limited part of it, and they had better take things easy, and save themselves for their share when it should come to them.

It was astonishing how soon they recognized this, and settled down to more or less indifference to things that did not directly concern their own regiment. They were just at the age to be imitative, and the example of the veterans around them had a strongly-repressive effect.

So, after the second or third day of the turmoil of the opening campaign, they ceased to bother themselves openly, at least, as to why their regiment did not move when others did, as to why they did not go to the help of others that were fighting, and as to when they were to be summoned to make a desperate assault upon the frowning palisades of rock which were literally alive with rebels and belching cannon.

When the regiment was lying still they occupied and amused themselves, as did the others, according to their several bents. The medical-minded Alf Russell watched the movements and deportment of the Surgeons at every opportunity, and was especially interested in everything that he could catch a glimpse of, from feeling a man's pulse to extracting a bullet. The lathy Gid Mackall, whose appetite did not need the sharpening it got from the free mountain air, put in much of his time cooking, all possible variations of his rations with anything else that he could get hold of, and devouring the product with eagerness. In spite of Si's strict prohibition against card-playing, the sleepy headed Jim Humphreys was rapidly, but secretly, mastering all the tricks and mysteries of camp gambling, and becoming an object of anxiety to the older gamesters whenever he pitted himself against them. Sandy Baker, whose tastes ran to mechanics, "tinkered" constantly with his rifle and equipments, studying the nature and inner workings of every part, and considering possible improvements. Sprightly Harry Joslyn was fascinated with the details of soldiering, and devoted himself to becoming perfect in the manual of arms and the facings. Little Pete Skidmore was keenly alive to all that was going on, and wanted to know everything. When he could trust himself not to get lost from his regiment, he would scurry over to the nearest one, to find out who they were, where they had come from, what they had been doing, and whither they were likely to go. But Monty Scruggs was constantly in the public eye, as he loved to be. His passion for declamation pleased officers and men. He really declaimed very well, and it was a reminder to them of home and the long-ago school days to hear him "spout" the oldtime Friday afternoon favorites.

Therefore he was always called upon whenever there was nothing else to engage the men's attention, and his self-confidence and vanity grew rapidly upon the liberal applause bestowed on him. He was a capital mimic, too, and daring as well, and it was not long before he began to "take off" those around him, which his comrades enjoyed even more than his declamations.

The llth of May, 1864, saw all the clouds of battle which had been whirling for days in such apparently diverse directions, gathering about the deep gorge in Rocky Face Ridge through which the railroad passed. "Buzzard Roost," as this was named, was the impregnable citadel behind which the rebel army had taken refuge after its rout at Mission Ridge the previous November, and the rebel engineers had since exhausted every effort to make it still more unassailable. The lofty mountain rose precipitously for hundreds of feet on either side the narrow gorge, and the last hundred feet was a sheer wall of perpendicular rock. The creek which ran through the gorge had been dammed, so that its waters formed a broad, deep moat before the mouth of the gorge. The top of the ridge swarmed with men, and to the rear of the gorge guns were massed in emplacements to sweep every foot of the passage.

It seemed madness to even think of forcing such a pass. A thousand men in the shelters of that fastness could beat back myriads, and it was known that Joe Johnston had at least 50,000 behind the Ridge. Yet Sherman was converging great rivers of men from the north, the northwest and west down upon that narrow gap, as if he meant to move the eternal rocks by a freshet of human force.

The rebels thrown out in advance of the gorge, on outlying hills, rocks and cliffs, were swept backward and into the gap by the resistless wave of blue rolling forward, fiery and thundering, gathering force and vehemence as it converged into a shortening semi-circle about the rugged stronghold.

The 200th Ind. moved forward and took its place in the line on a hill commanding a view of the entrance to the gorge, and there waited its orders for the general advance, which seemed imminent any instant.

For miles to the right and left the woods were crackling with musketry, interspersed with the booming of fieldpieces.

The regiment had stacked arms and broken ranks.

For an hour or two the men had studied with intense eagerness the bristling fortifications of the gap and the swarming foemen at the foot of and on the summit of the high walls of rock. They had listened anxiously to the firing to the right and left, and tried to make out what success their comrades on other parts of the long crescent were having. They had watched the faces of the officers to read there how the battle was going.

But one after another found this tiresome after awhile and set himself to his usual camp employments and diversions. Some got out needles and thread, and began repairing their clothes. Some gathered in groups and smoked and talked. Many produced the eternal cards, folded up a blanket for a table, and resumed their endless sevenup and euchre or poker for buttons and grains of corn. Jim Humphreys found his way into one of these games, which was played behind a clump of bushes, and the buttons represented dimes. He was accumulating fractional currency. Gid Mackall embraced the opportunity to cook for himself a savory stew with some onions distributed by the Sanitary Commission. Sandy Baker went over his gun, saw that every screw was properly tight, and dropped the tiniest amount of oil on the trigger and the hammer, to ease their working. Pete Skidmore wandered down to the flank of the next regiment to find out if anything new had occurred. Harry Joslyn got himself into the exact "position of a soldier," with his heels together, his toes pointed at an angle of 45 degrees, and went through the manual of the piece endlessly. Si and the Orderly-Sergeant communed together about the rations for the company, and the various troubles there was always on the Orderly's mind about the company's management. Shorty got off by himself, produced from his breast his mementoes of Maria, and read over her last letter for the thousandth time, though he knew every word in it. But he seemed to get a new and deeper meaning every time he read it.

Groups of officers would come up to a little rise in front, study the distant ridge with their glasses for awhile, and then ride away.

A couple of natty young Aids followed their superiors' example, rode up, dismounted, and studied the enemy's position with great dignity and earnestness, that it might have full effect upon the brigade behind them.

Monty Scruggs saw his opportunity. He bound some tin cans together to represent field glasses, mounted a stump, and began intently studying Buzzard Roost.

This attracted the attention of the others.

"What do you see, Monty?" they shouted.

"See?" answered he. "Just lots and gobs. I see old Joe Johnston over there, with Pat Cleburne, and Hood and Bragg, and Joe Wheeler. They're all together, and pulling off their coats, and rolling up their sleeves, and shaking their fists at the 200th Ind., and daring it to come on."

Capture of Rebel Stronghold. 185

"Tell 'em not to sweat. Just hold their horses. We'll be over presently," shouted the others, with yells of laughter. "What else do you see?"

The young Aids turned around and glanced angrily at Monty and the laughing crowd.

"I see old Jeff Davis there, with his Cabinet of traitors. He's writing a fresh proclamation to his people, with his blind eye, and has got his good one fixed on the 200th Ind., which he's telling Joe Johnston is bound to give him more trouble than all the rest o' the army."

"Good! Good!" yelled the rest. "So we will. Old Jeff's right for once. What else do you see?"

"Stop that, my man," said one of the Aids savagely. "You're disturbing us."

"Go ahead, and don't mind 'em," shouted the others. "They're only Second Lieutenants any way. Tell us what you see."

"I see way by Richmond, old Unconditional Surrender Grant's got Bob Lee by the throat, and's just wipin' up the State of Virginny with him. Lee's eyes is bulging out like gooseberries on a limb, and his tongue's hanging down like a dog's on a hot day—"

"Get down off that stump at once, and go back to your place," said the Aid authoritatively.

"Don't mind him. He's only a staff officer. He can't order you. Go ahead," shouted the rest.

"I see a couple o' young Second Lieutenants," started Monty, but the Aid sprang at him, and in an instant there was a rush of the other boys to defend him. Capt. McGillicuddy, who was usually conveniently deaf and blind to the boys' skylarking, looked up from the paper he was reading, hurried to the scene, quieted the disturbance, ordered Monty to get down and go back, and spoke sharply to the Aid about paying any attention to the men's harmless capers.

The bugle blew "Attention," and everybody sprang to his place, and waited eagerly for the next command.

"Men," said the Colonel, in his gentle, sweet voice, which, however, was distinctly audible to the farthest flank of the regiment, "we are ordered to help our comrades by attacking the mountain over there. You see what is before you, and that it will be terrible work, but I know that you will do all that you can do for the honor of dear old Indiana."

An enthusiastic cheer answered him.

"Battalion—Take—Arms!" commanded the Colonel. "Right face—Forward—File left—March!"

The regiment filed down through the woods on the hillside, and as it came into the opening at the bottom was greeted by a volley from a battery on Rocky Face Ridge. The shells screamed viciously over the heads of the men, and cut through the tops of the trees with a deafening crash.

"Wastin' good cast-iron on the landscape, as usual," laughed Shorty, to encourage the boys. "I always wonder how the rebels pick out the fellers they make cannoneers of. When they git hold of a feller who can't shoot so's to hit anything less'n a Township set up edgewise, they put him in the artillery."

"Mebbe they'll come closter next time," said little Pete with a shiver, as he trotted a little nearer Shorty.

"Naah, they'll never come no closter," said Shorty, contemptuously. "They couldn't hit even the side o' the mountain if it wasn't in their way and no place else for the ball to go."

Just then a shell screamed so close above Shorty that he involuntarily ducked his head.

"What makes you juke, if they can't hit nothing?" inquired little Pete, and the rest of them had regained composure enough to laugh.

"O," said Shorty composedly, "that feller wasn't shootin' at me. He was shootin' at the 1st Oshkosh, which is a quarter of a mile behind. If he'd hit me it'd 'a bin an accident, and I don't want no accidents to happen just now."

Approaching the cleared space in the center of the valley, the regiment went into line in the brush and pushed through to the edge of the woods. The moment that it appeared in the fringe of brushwood a sharp volley came from the line of rebels in the brush along the opposite side of the clearing. Evidently they were not expecting an advance at that moment, for their firing was wild, and wounded but a few men.

"Hold your fire till we are across," shouted the Colonel. "Forward—Guide center—Double-quick—March!"

With a yell the regiment swept across the clearing into the brush beyond. A furious, noisy scrambling ensued in the thickets. Neither side could see 10 yards ahead, and the firing, though fierce and rapid, was not very effective. Men shot at sounds, or motions of the bushes, and the bullets, glancing on the limbs, whistled in all directions. But the 200th Ind. pressed furiously forward, and though the rebels resisted stubbornly they were gradually pressed back up the hill. Occasionally one was killed, many were wounded, and squads were caught in clumps of brush and compelled to surrender. Si and Shorty kept their boys in hand, on the left of Co. Q, restrained them from firing until they saw something to shoot at, and saw that they did not advance until their guns were loaded. They heard a crashing volley delivered on their right front, and springing swiftly in that direction, came to a little break, across which they saw a squad of 15 or 16 rebels under the command of a Captain, with their guns still smoking, and peering into the woods to see the result of their fire. Si rushed at the Captain, with leveled gun, and ordered him to surrender.

"Are you an officer?" said the startled Captain as soon as he could gain words. "I'm a Captain. I'll not surrender to any one under my rank."

"I'm Captain enough for you," answered Si, thrusting the muzzle of his gun close to his face. "Surrender this minute, or off goes your head."

The Captain dropped his sword, and his men yielded.

The prisoners were conducted to the rear, and when Si returned with his squad to the regiment he found it had forced its way to the foot of the high wall of rock that rose straight up from the slope.

The rebels on the crest, 100 feet above, had been trying to assist their comrades below, by firing with their muskets, and occasionally sending a shell, where they could get their howitzers sufficiently depressed. Now they had bethought themselves to roll rocks and heavy stones off the crest, which fell with a crash on the treetops below.

The 200th Ind. was raging along the foot of the wall, trying to find a cleft in it by which they could climb to the top and get at their foes. Standing a few yards in the rear, under a gigantic white-oak, whose thick branches promised protection from the crashing bowlders, the Colonel was sending parties to explore every place that seemed hopeful, and report to him. When Si came up with his squad he was directed to go to the extreme left, and see what he could find.

He did so, and came to a little open space made by the washings which poured over the crest of the rock when the rain descended in torrents. There was a cleft there, but it was 40 feet above them, and surrounded by rebels, who yelled at the sight of his squad, and sent down a volley of bowlders. Si and his squad promptly dodged these by getting behind trunks of trees. They fired at the rebels on the crest, who as promptly lay down and sheltered themselves.

The firing and stone-throwing lasted an hour or more, and then seemed to die down from sheer exhaustion.

As the stones begun to come down more fitfully, and at longer intervals. Shorty shouted to those on top:

"Say, you fellers up there, ain't you gittin' tired o' that work? You ain't hurtin' nobody with them dornicks. We kin dodge 'em easy, and you're just strainin' yourselves for nothin'. Let up for awhile, till we both rest and git a fresh hold. We'll amuse you if you will."

"What'll you do?" asked one of the rebels, peering over the crest.

"Lots o' things. I'll turn one o' my famous doubleback-action flip- flaps, which people have come miles to see, when I was traveling with Dan Rice. Or we'll sing you a song. We've here the World Renowned Ballad-Singer of Bean Blossom Crick. Or we'll make you a speech. We have here the Justly-Famous Boy Orator of Pogue's Run."

Everything had become quite still all around during this dialog.

"Give us a song," said the rebel, and his comrades' heads began showing over the edge of the rock.

"Now, no rock-throwing and no shootin' while he's singing'," said Shorty. "Give the boy a chance to git back to his tree after he's done."

"All right. We'll play fair. But no politics," came back from the rock.

"Go out there, Alf, on the gravel, and sing to 'em," said Shorty.

Alf Russell hesitated a moment, and then climbed up on the pile of washings and after clearing his throat, sang "When This Cruel War is Over" in his best style, and was applauded from the top of the rock and below.

"Now, give us your speech. But no politics," the rebels shouted.

Monty Scruggs stepped up on the mound and recited "Bingen on the Rhine" in his best school-exhibition style. The delight of the rebels was boundless.

"Hip-hip—Hooray! Good! Good!" they shouted. "Give us another."

Monty scratched his head to think of something appropriate, and then occurred to him Webster's great speech in defense of the Union, which was then a favorite in the schools.

"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, with fraternal blood. Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

The rebels listened with growing impatience to the words, and as Monty concluded with his best flourish they yelled angrily:

"Heah, we told you no politics. Git back thar, now, quick, or we'll bust your haid with this heah rock."

Shorty and Si raised their guns to shoot the man with the bowlder, and Monty skipped back to the shelter of his tree, saying with a grin:

"I was bound to give 'em a little straight goods before I quit, and they got it. Old Dan Webster's very words."

"The orders is to stay right here for the night," said the Orderly- Sergeant, coming up through the brush to Si, "and be ready for anything that comes. I don't know what old Sherman means—whether he is going to send over some balloons to lift us to the top of the rocks, or set us to tunneling through. I suppose it ain't my business to know. I've got enough to do running this company. But something's got to bust inside the next 24 hours, and when it does there'll be the dumbedest smash this country ever saw. Stay where you are till further orders, and make yourselves as comfortable as possible."

The rebels on the rocks having quieted down, the boys stowed themselves around the roots of the trees, made little fires under the shelter of the rocks, cooked their suppers, smoked their pipes, and finally rolled themselves in their blankets and went to sleep.

Little Pete "snugged" in with Shorty, but when that gentleman was awakened by Si a little after daylight, Pete was gone.

Shorty fumed around at this while he was cooking his breakfast, for he wanted Pete to be there and eat heartily, in preparation for the arduous struggles of the momentous day which was breaking for them.

But little Pete continued to be absent. No one had seen him, no one had heard his voice, no one know anything about him. Shorty became greatly worried, and the others shared his feelings, and began beating up the woods around in search of some place that he might have fallen into.

With the daybreak the firing away to the left, where a lodgment had been made on Rocky Face Ridge, beyond the gap, broke out afresh, and rolled down toward the gap. The squad listened intently to it as it came nearer, for they felt that it meant the beginning of the day's bloody business. The crests above them remained silent.

Suddenly they heard little Pete's voice calling:

"Sergeant Klegg! Corporal Elliott!"

They looked in every direction, but could see no Pete.

"Sergeant Klegg! Corporal Elliott! Look up here. I'm up here on the rocks."

They turned their eyes to the crest, and there saw Pete waving his hat to them.

"Come up here," he called. "There ain't no rebels up here. They've all gone off down into the valley."

From their tense hearts the boys sent up a cheer, which drew all attention to them. The news quickly spread along the line, and was received with cheers.

"Go down that way about 100 yards," Pete called down, "and you'll find a tall pine blowed down agin the cliff. You kin climb that, and git up to where its top lays right agin a bunch of bushes. Shorty rolled on my leg this morning, and waked me up before daylight. I then thought I'd git up and take a look, and see how things appeared before they got to shooting. I found the pine tree, and dumb it mighty quiet, intending to sneak up close to the rebels. But I couldn't find none. They was all gone."

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XVI. THE 200TH IND. ASSAULTS THE REBEL WORKS AT DAYBREAK

THERE were the same perplexing sounds of battle in many places and directions when the 200th Ind. went into line as there had been around Buzzard Roost.

Joe Johnston was fiercely contesting every hilltop and narrow gorge to gain time to adjust his army to the unexpected movement through Snake Creek Gap, and save the stores he had accumulated behind the heavy fortifications around Dalton.

Though they had felt themselves completely worn out by the work with the train, the prospect of a fight put new life into the 200th Ind., and they leaned on their guns and listened to the crackling of musketry and booming of artillery far away to their left, to their right, and apparently in their rear. Sometimes the sounds would come so near that the wave of battle would seem to be surely rolling down on them. Then they would clutch their guns more firmly, and their hands instinctively seek their cartridge-boxes. Then the firing would as inexplicably die down and stop, when they would again sink on the ground with fatigue.

So the late afternoon wore on. It grew very quiet all around. Even the dull booming of the cannon far up the valley where Howard and Schofield were advancing on the heavy works immediately in front of Dalton, died down into sullen fitfulness.

The silence of the woods and the mountains as night drew on became more oppressive than the crashing sounds, the feverish movements, and the strained expectancy of the day had been.

The whip-poor-wills began to fill the evening air with their mournful calls, which accentuated and intensified the weird loneliness of the scene, where but a little while before there had been no thought but of deadly hatred and bitter strife.

"I never heard the whip-poor-wills whip so gloomily," remarked the sentimental Alf Russell, after the regiment had stacked arms, and the men were resting, exhausted and out of temper, on the ground. "Seems to me it sounds altogether different from the way they do at home; got something savage in it."

"Probably they're yelling their satisfaction over the number of men they've seen killed and wounded today," ventured Monty Scruggs. "Does 'em good to see men shooting at one another instead of birds."

"Dumbed little brutes," grumbled Shorty, nursing his hurt foot, "if they'd bin wrastlin' all day with a mule train they'd be too tired to go yellin' around like that. I always did hate a whip-poor-will, anyway. They hain't got sense enough to do anything but yell, jest like a pasel o' rebel cavalry."

"Great Scott! I wisht I knowed whether we're goin' to stay here tonight," said Si, handling his blanket roll with a look of anticipation.

"No," said the Orderly, coming down from the right of the regiment. "We're to move forward about a mile, and establish a line for the rest of the brigade to form on. We're to go quietly, without noise or commands, and then bivouac without fires. Get your guns and fall in quietly."

As ill-tempered as tired, the boys roused up from the ground, and began taking their guns from the stacks. Harry Joslin snatched his out first, and the stack, falling over, the bayonet points struck Gid Mackall's face. The angry Gid responded with a blow landed on the side of Harry's head. In an instant the two clinched, and the others, who were in no better humor, began striking at one another in blind temper. Si and Shorty snatched the two principals apart with a good deal of violence and much show of their own tempers.

"You long legged sand hill crane," said Si, shaking Gid. "Will you always be kickin' up a rumpus? I'll break your neck if you don't act better."

"You senseless little bantam," said Shorty, with his grip on Harry's throat; "will you always be raising a ruction? Will I have to wring your neck to learn you to behave?"

"Let him alone, Shorty," said Si irritably. "He ain't to blame. This gangling fly-up the crick started it." And he gave Gid another shake.

"You let him alone. Si," said Shorty crossly. "I know better. This whelp started it, as he always does. I'll throw him down and tramp on him."

"You won't do nothin' o' the kind. Shorty. Don't you contradict me. Let him go, I tell you."

"You take your hands off that boy, or I'll make you, Si Klegg," said Shorty hotly. "I won't see you imposin' on somebody's that's smaller'n you."

The spectacle of the two partners quarreling startled them all. They stopped and looked aghast.

"Here, what's all this disorder here," said the Orderly, coming up, impetuously, and as cross as any one. "Why don't you get into line as ordered? Sergeant Klegg, you're always making trouble for me."

"I ain't doin' nothing o' the kind. What's the sense o' your sayin' sich a thing?" Si retorted. "You know it ain't true."

"Si Klegg, be careful how you call me a liar," answered the Orderly. "I'll—"

"What in the world does all this mean?" said Capt. McGillicuddy angrily, as he stepped back to them. "What are you wasting time squabbling before the men for? Fall into your places at once, and don't let me hear another word from any of you. Don't you see the regiment is moving?"

"We'll finish this later," the Orderly whispered to Si, as he went to his place on the right.

"I'll settle with you, Shorty, when I have more time," Si remarked as he took his place.

"The sooner the better," grunted Shorty. "You can't run over me, if you are a Sergeant."

The wearied men went stumbling along the rough road for what seemed the longest mile ever known. It had grown very dark. At last a form separated itself from the bank of blackness on the left, and a voice said in a penetrating whisper:

"Is this the 200th Ind?"

"Yes," answered the Colonel.

"I'm Lieut. Snowden, of the General's staff," said the whisper.

"Yes; I recognize your voice," answered the Colonel.

"I was sent here," continued the Whisper, "to post you when you came up. You will make this your right, and form out there to the left. Do it without the slightest noise. There is a strong force of rebels out there in front. They have a line of works with abatis in front, and a fort on the hill there to the right, as you can see by looking up against the sky. You will not allow any fires to be made or lights to be shown. The other regiments will come up and form on your right and left, and you will be ready to attack and carry the line immediately in front of you the moment that it is light enough to see to move. The signal will be given by the headquarters bugle."

"Very good," replied the Colonel. "Tell the General that we'll be ready, and he'll find us inside the rebel line five minutes after the bugle sounds."

"In the meanwhile," continue the Aid, "you will keep a sharp lookout. You may be attacked, and if you see signs of evacuation you are to attack, and the other regiments will support you. The General will come up later and give you further instructions. Good night."

The men nearest the Colonel heard plainly all that was said, and it was soon known throughout the regiment. The men seemed to forget their fatigue as they moved alertly but warily into line to the left, and studied intently the sky-line of the rising ground in front.

The whip-poor-wills were still calling, but at the flanks and rear of the regiment. None of them called in front.

"It's full o' rebels over there; that's the reason," said Si to himself, as he noted this. "Yes, they're all at home, and goin' to shoot," he added in a loud whisper. "Lay down, everybody."

He was none too soon. The tramping through the bushes, and the various noises that bodies of men will make when in motion, had reached the ears of the alert rebels. A dazzling series of flashes ran along the sky- line, and a flight of bullets sang wickedly over the heads of the 200th Ind., striking in the bushes and trees far behind them.

"Don't anybody yell! Don't anybody shoot!" called the Colonel in a loud whisper, and it was repeated by the line oflficers. "It will reveal our position. Lie down and keep perfectly quiet. They're overshooting us."

The rebel battery in the fort waked up, and, more to show its good will than anything else, began shelling the surrounding landscape.

One of our batteries, a mile or so to the rear, which had not had an opportunity to fire during the day, could not resist this challenge, and began throwing shells at the fort with so fair an aim as to draw the attention of the rebel battery to it.

The lurid flashes of the muskets, cannon, and shells revealed a belt of jagged abatis several rods wide covering the entire front of the fort and breastworks.

"Great Scott!" muttered Si to himself, for he was not on speaking terms with Shorty, and would not alarm the boys; "there's a porcupine nest to git through. How in the Nation are we ever goin' to do it?"

"Unroll your blankets and lie down on them," came down the line from the Colonel. "Lay your guns beside you. Don't attempt to stack them. You may attract the attention of the rebels. Everybody keep his place, and be ready to form and move at once."

"Stop firing. What are you shooting at?" said a voice of authority in the rebel works. "Who gave the order to fire?"

"The men began it themselves," said a second voice. "They heard Yankees moving over there, and commenced shooting at them."

"How do you know there are any Yankees out there? I don't believe they have advanced beyond the crest of the hill. I think they are all going down toward Resaca. Haven't you any pickets out there?"

"No. We only moved in here this afternoon, and did not know how long we were going to stay. I was ordered to stay here till further orders, to protect the road beyond."

"Well, we haven't any ammunition to waste firing at uncertainties. There's enough Yankees in sight all the time for all the bullets we have, without wasting any on imaginary ones. It'll be time enough for you to begin shooting when you see them coming to the edge of the abatis there. Before they get through that you'll have time enough to shoot away all the ammunition you have."

"I'm going to see whether there are any Yankees there," said the second voice in the rebel works.

"Jim, you and Joe go down to the edge of the abatis and see what you can see."

The wearied boys had nearly all fallen asleep on their blankets. Even the noisy artillery duel had not kept Jim Humphreys awake, and Monty Scruggs and Alf Russell followed his example soon after the firing ceased. Then Harry Joslyn and Gid Mackall, spreading their blankets apart for the first time since they had been in the service, sought rest from their fatigue and forgetfulness of their mutual anger. Si and Shorty kept sternly apart. Shorty occupied himself in fixing the blankets comfortably for a nest for little Pete Skidmore, while Si, brooding over the way that Shorty "had flared up about nothin' at all," and the Orderly-Sergeant's and Capt. McGillicuddy's unjust heat to him, had kept his eyes fixed on the skyline beyond, and had listened to the conversation of the rebel officers. It occurred to him that by watching the two rebels come down he might get an idea of a passage through the abatis, which would be useful in the morning. He strained his eyes to catch sight of their movements.

He saw two projections against the sky-line, which he knew were the men crossing the works. They separated, and he could make out two black blotches above the level of darkness and moving down the slope. One came almost directly toward him, the other going to the left. It occurred to him to capture one of the men. He would have suggested to Shorty to get the other, but he could not bring himself to speak to his partner. Keeping his eyes fixed on the man directly in front, he slowly wriggled forward without rising. The man was evidently coming cautiously, halting every few steps, and looking and listening.

Perfect quiet reigned in the regiment. The men were mostly asleep. Those who were awake were intently watching the hill for some sign of the enemy, or as silently foreboding the happenings of the morrow.

Without making the least noise, Si reached the edge of the abatis. There a young tulip tree had been left standing, and its plentiful branches and large leaves made a thick mass of darkness. He rose upright behind, but his foot came down on a dead stick, which broke with a sharp crack. All the blood rushed to his heart. But at the same instant his head had disturbed a whip-poor-will who had taken refuge there from the noise. She flew away with a tumult of plaintive "whips." The rebel in front halted for a long time. Then he apparently concluded that an owl was after the whip-poor-will, and, reassured, came forward.

As he had crawled along. Si had felt with his hands that he was on a tolerably beaten path, which ran by the sapling he was now standing behind. He was sure that this led through the abatis, and the rebel was coming down it. The rebel came on so near that Si could hear his breathing, and Si feared he could hear his. The rebel was carrying his gun at a trail in his right hand, and putting all his powers into his eyes and ears to detect signs of the presence of Yankees. He hesitated for a little while before the sapling, and then stepped past it.

As he did so Si shot out his right arm and caught him around the neck with so quick and tight a hug that the rebel could not open his mouth to yell. Si raised his arm so as to press the rebel's jaws together, and with his left hand reached for his gun. The rebel swayed and struggled, but the slender Southerner was no match for the broad-shouldered Indiana boy, whose muscles had been knit by hard work.

The struggle was only momentary until Si secured the gun, and the rebel's muscles relaxed from the stoppage of his breath.

"If you say a word, or try to, you're a dead man," Si whispered, as he dropped the gun, and substituted his left hand at the man's throat for his right arm. Taking silence for acquiescence, Si picked up his own gun and started with his prisoner for the Colonel. He walked upright boldly now, for the watchers on the rebel works could not see that there was more than one man in the path.

The Colonel ordered Si to bring his prisoner back into a gully some distance behind the line, where he could be interrogated without the sound reaching the men in the works.

"Where do you belong?" asked the Colonel.

"To Kunnel Wheatstone's Jawjy rijimint."

"How many men have you got over there in the works."

"Well, a right smart passul."

"What do you mean by a right smart parcel?"

"Well, a good big heap."

"What, a thousand?"

"Yes, I reckon so."

"Ten thousand?"

"I 'spects so."

"Twenty thousand."

"Mouty likely."

"You don't seem to have a clear idea of numbers. How many regiments have you got over there?"

"Well, thar's Kunnel Wheatstone's Jawjy rijimint—that's mine; then thar's Kunnel Tarrant's South Carliny rijimint, and then thar's Kunnel Bird's Tennessee rijimint, and I don't mind how many others. They've bin comin' and goin' all day, and I hain't paid no attention to 'em. I only know that thar's enough to give yo'uns a wallopin' if yo'uns only come on."

"Sergeant," said the Colonel, "you did a splendid thing in capturing this man and bringing him to me, but I fear I shall not get as much information out of him as I'd like to. I don't presume anybody really knows just how many men are over there. We've got to jump the works and take the chances on what we find."

"We're ready the minute you give the word. Colonel," said Si, saluting.

"Colonel," said Shorty's voice out of the darkness, "I've brung you one o' the rebel scouts that was piroutin' out there. I don't know as you kin make much out o' him, though, for the welt I fetched him with my gun bar'l seems to've throwed his thinkery out o' gear, and he can't talk straight."

"And so you got the other one," Si started to say to his partner, but then he remembered Shorty's "flarin' up," and held his tongue.

"I don't imagine that his 'thinkery,' as you call it, was of much account when it was in order, if it was no better than this other man's," said the Colonel, with a smile. "Perhaps, if he could think better he wouldn't be in the rebel army. Sergeant (to the Provost- Sergeant), take charge of these two men. Give them something to eat, and send them to Division Headquarters."

Si and Shorty carefully avoided one another on their way back to the company, and declined to discuss their exploits with either the Orderly- Sergeant or Capt. McGillicuddy.

"Go out and git you a rebel for yourself, if you want to know about 'em," Shorty had snapped at the Orderly. "There's plenty more up there on the hill. It's full of 'em."

As everything now seemed quiet in front, the two partners sat down with their back against trees to catch a little sleep before the momentous movement in the morning.

It seemed to Si that he had hardly closed his eyes when the Orderly shook him and whispered an order to help arouse the men and get them into line.

"Don't make the least noise," whispered the Orderly. "I hear the rebels moving around, but we want to jump 'em before they know we're up. The further we can get through that abatis before they discover us, the fewer we'll have killed. It's going to be mighty tough work at best, and I wish that we were going over the works now."

It was the chill gray of the morning, when every man's spirits and courage are at ebb-tide. For an instant, Si felt his heart sink at the thought of the awful ordeal that confronted them. There came across his mind a swift vision of the peaceful home back in Indiana, with the pleasant fields lying about, over which he used to go on sweet Spring mornings like this and note the flowers that had bloomed over night, and the growth the wheat had made. How sickening to be now starting to open up a hell of pain, wounds, and death. Then his natural courage and will reasserted themselves, and he began rousing the boys, but with a tenderness born of the thought that their hearts would be as low as his in that bleak hour.

Jim Humphreys waked up stolidly, and without a word began preparing to fall in. Alf Russell's and Monty Scruggs's faces turned ashy after they had fairly awakened, and they picked up their guns with nerveless fingers.

Harry Joslyn took the position of a soldier, with his gun at an order, his lips tightly closed, and his eyes fixed on the rebel position, as the spreading light developed it. Sandy Baker fidgeted about at one time tinkering with his gun and equipments, and then stopping half-way in the task he had started and falling into a fit of musing. Little Pete Skidmore wandered about, looking into Si's and Shorty's grave faces, and then into others equally solemn, and finding no comfort in any. It was the first time that he heard no joke or quip flash along the forming line to bring cheers or laughter.

"Come, boys," said Si, kindly, "eat your breakfasts. You can't make no coffee nor fry no meat, but you'd better fill up on cold grub. You'll need all you can eat."

The mention of something to eat seemed to remind Gid Mackall of his usual appetite. He pulled a cracker out of his haversack and bit it, but it seemed distasteful, and he spat the piece out.

"The orders are," said the Orderly-Sergeant in a low tone, as he passed down in front of the company, "to strip off your bankets, canteens, and haversacks, and pile them. They'll be in the road in the rush, and catch in going through the abatis."

"Orderly," said Shorty in his most conciliatory way, "if you want to do me a favor make Pete Skidmore one of the detail."

"I ain't asking suggestions from you," said the Orderly, still surly. "But I shall detail Baker and Skidmore for the duty."

The boys flung their things off with something like desperation in their looks.

It was now daylight, but a dense fog prevented seeing more than a few feet.

"We can't wait any longer," said the Colonel. "Pass the word down the line to move forward. Make no noise till the enemy opens fire. Then everybody push forward as rapidly as possible for the works."

"The first fire will probably go over our heads and do little damage," said Capt. McGillicuddy, stepping down to the center, so that his whisper could be heard by all. "It's always so when men fire downhill. Then, you all want to be careful and fire low, so as to hit as many as possible, and rattle them in their future firing. The more of them we can hit the less of us will be hit afterward. Forward—Guide right!"

It seemed as if the crashing of their marching feet was so loud that the rebels on the hill could not fail to hear it, and they held their breaths in painful expectancy of the volley. But they had gotten a rod or more into the entangling brush of the abatis, and were stumbling and crashing amid the baffling branches, before they heard the voice of the previous night command:

"Ready—Aim—aim low—Fire!"

The rebel muskets crashed together in a terrific volley, which generally passed over the heads of the 200th Ind., though a few men fell into the brush with wounds.

Si had gone up the path that he had found the night before, and therefore had no struggle with the fallen trees to shake his nerves and disturb his aim. He had calculated upon this. He brought his musket down deliberately and took good aim at the point whence the voice of command had come. As his gun cracked he heard voices cry:

"The Kunnel's shot. Look out for the Kunnel thar."

Another voice immediately spoke up in command: "Steady, men! Keep cool! Fire low, and give it to the blue-bellied scoundrels!"

Then broke out a mad rage of death and destruction, in which both sides seemed in the fiercest insanity of murder. The 200th Ind., encouraged by the shouts of their officers, pressed forward through the baffling tree- tops, stumbling, falling, rising again, firing as fast as they could load their guns, and yelling like demons. They were frantic to get through the obstructions and come to hand-to-hand struggle with the fiends who were yelling and firing from the top of the breastworks.

The rebel battery in the fort began hurling a tornado of shells as near as they could bring their guns to bear on the yelling. This aroused its enemy battery of the night before, and it opened up viciously. The regiments to the right and left of the 200th Ind. moved forward at the sound of the firing, and added to the dinning turbulence.

Si had kept to the path, firing coolly and with deadly aim as he kept pace with the line, which was fiercely forging through the brush. There had gathered behind him Jim Humphreys, Harry Joslyn, and Gid Mackall. The rest had gathered over toward Shorty, who was raging through the abatis, tearing aside the branches which impeded the others, yelling, swearing most horribly, and firing as a loaded gun would be handed him. He happened to look around to see who was handing him guns, and saw that it was Pete Skidmore and Sandy Baker.

"I thought you little brats was ordered to stay behind with the things," he gasped.

"I know we was," whimpered little Pete as he capped a gun and handed it to Shorty; "but we couldn't stay when we heard the yelling and shooting. We was so scared that we was afraid to stay there, so we hunted you up, and—"

"Come on, boys," yelled Shorty to the others. "Go ahead. We're almost through, and then we'll salivate them whelps of damnation."

A bullet came so nigh Si's face that it seemed to burn him, and then he heard it strike. Jim Humphreys fell without a groan—a bullet through his brain.

"Don't mind that. Forward, boys," shouted Si. "Here's the end of the abatis."

Gid Mackall fell, and Harry Joslyn turned to help him.

"Don't mind him. Come on," Si called over his shoulder, as he rushed in the clear place, just at the edge of the shallow ditch in front of the works. "Everybody this way."

The Charge Thru the Abatis. 211

All that was left of the regiment was now through the abatis. The fog suddenly lifted, and showed the combatants face to face, with only the ditch and the bank of earth between them. The sight was so startling that both sides paused for an instant.

"Forward, 200th Ind.! Rally on your colors!" rang out the clear, sweet, penetrating voice of the Colonel, as he snatched the colors from the hand of the third man who had borne them since the regiment moved forward, and sprang up the side of the works.

Of the pandemonium that reigned inside the rebel works for the next few minutes Si only recollected seeing the Orderly-Sergeant, bareheaded, and with bayonet fixed, leap down from the bank and transfix a man who tried to snatch the flag from the Colonel's hand. Si arrived just in time to shoot the rebel officer who was striking at the Orderly with his sword, while Shorty came up, knocking down a winrow of men with his gun swung by the butt as a club, to rescue Si from three rebels who were trying to bayonet him.

All at once the entire rebel line broke and ran down the hill in a wave of dingy brown, while another wave of blue rolled over the works to the right and left of the 200th Ind.

"I hope you ain't hurt, Orderly," said Si, dropping the butt of his musket on the ground, and wiping his flushed face. "I thought that officer was goin' to git you, sure."

"He would, if it hadn't been for you, Si. He got in one slash on me, but it ain't much, I think. But Shorty helped you out of a tight box."

"Yes; Shorty generally does that," said Si, with a beaming look on his partner. "He's the best soldier in the regiment, and kin always be trusted to git in on time anywhere."

"Well, I'm afraid it 'll be a short roll I'll have to call this evening," said the Orderly, with a sorrowful expression. "I suppose we'd better go back through that brush and look up the boys that were dropped."

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XVII. GATHERING UP THE BOYS AFTER THE BATTLE

"HOORAY for Injianny. Injianny gits there every time," roared Si, joining the yelling, exultant throng crowding around the Colonel. "The old 200th wuz the first to cross the works, and miles ahead o' any other rejimint."

"Bully for the Wild Wanderers of the Wabash," Shorty joined in. "They're the boss regiment in the army o' the Cumberland, and the Army o' the Cumberland's the boss army on earth. Hooray for US Co. Le's have a speech. Where's Monty Scruggs?"

"Yes, Where's Monty?" echoed Si, with a little chill at his heart, for he had not remembered seeing the boy since they emerged from the abatis, just before the final rush.

"Well, le's have a song, then," said Shorty, as Si was looking around. "Where's Alf Russell?"

"Yes, Where's Alf Russell?" echoed Si, with a new pang clutching at his heart, for he then recalled that he had not seen Alf since he had helped him up the embankment, immediately after which Si's thoughts, had been engrossed by the struggle for the flag. "Did any of you boys see either Alf or Monty?" he asked nervously.

"And has anybody seen Pete Skidmore?" chimed in Shorty, his voice suddenly changing from a tone of exultation to one of deepest concern. "Why don't some o' you speak? Are you all dumb?"

Somehow everybody instinctively stopped cheering, and an awed hush followed.

"All of Co. Q step this way," called out the Orderly-Sergeant. All of the usual "rasp" had left the strong, rough voice. There was a mournful tremor in it. "Fall in, Co. Q, over there by this pile of picks and shovels."

Scarcely 20 of the 80 stalwart youths who had lined up at the foot of the rugged palisades of Rocky Face two evenings before grouped themselves together in response to the Orderly's call.

Capt. McGillicuddy, the Orderly, Si, and Shorty strained their eyes to see more of the company disengaging themselves from the throng around the Colonel.

The Orderlies of the other companies called to their men to fall in at different places.

The Colonel looked at the muster with sad eyes.

"Didn't nobody see nothin' o' little Skidmore?" savagely repeated Shorty, walking back to the works and scanning the country round. "Was you all so blamed anxious lookin' out for yourselves that you didn't pay no attention to that little boy? Nice gang, you are."

"Orderly, take the company back into the abatis, and look for the boys," ordered Capt. McGillicuddy.

"'Tention, company!" commanded the Orderly. "Stack arms! Right face—Break ranks—March!"

"Hello, boys," said Monty Scruggs's voice, weak but unmistakably his, as the company recrossed the works.

"Great heavens! he's bin shot through the bowels?" thought Si, turning toward him with sickening apprehension of this most dreaded of wounds. Then, aloud, with forced cheerfulness—"I hope you ain't hurt bad, Monty."

"I was hurt bad enough, the Lord knows," answered the boy with a wan smile. "I hain't been hurt so bad since I stubbed by sore toe last Summer. But I'm getting over it pretty fast. Just as I started up the bank a rebel threw a stone as big as my fist at me, and it took me square where I live. I thought at first that whole battery over there in the fort had shot at me all at once. Goodness, but it hurt! My, but that fellow could throw a stone! Seemed to me that it went clear into me, and bent my back-bone. I've been feeling to see if it wasn't bent. But we got the works all right, didn't we?"

"You bet we did," Si answered exultantly. "Licked the stuffin' out of 'em. Awful glad you're no worse hurt, Monty. Make your way inside there, and you'll find the Surgeon. He'll bring you around all right. We're goin' to look for the other boys."

"Alf Russell caught a bullet," said Monty Scruggs. "I heard him yell, and turned to look at him, when that rebel's bowlder gave me something else to think about, so I don't know where he is."

"Gid Mackall's lying over there, somewhere," said Larry Joslyn, who was all anxiety in regard to his old partner and antagonist. "Let me go and find him."

"Go ahead," said Si, helping Monty to his feet. "I'll be right with you."

While Si was going back the way he had come Shorty was tearing through the tangled brush, turning over the tree-tops by main strength, searching for Pete Skidmore. The rest of the company were seeking out the fallen ones hither and thither, and calling to one another, as they made discoveries, but Shorty only looked for Pete Skidmore. Si and Harry presently came to Gid Mackall's body, lying motionless in a pool of blood that dyed crimson the brown leaves thickly covering the ground. His cap had fallen off, and his head had crushed down into a bunch of slender oak twigs; his eyes were closed, and his callow face white as paper.

"O, he's dead! He's stone dead," wailed Harry Joslyn. "And just think how I quarreled and fought with him this morning."

"Mebbe not," said Si, to whom such sights were more familiar, "That bullet hole in his blouse is too low down and too fur out to've hit either his heart or his lungs, seems to me. Mebbe he's only fainted from loss o' blood. Ketch hold o' his feet. I'll take his head, and we'll carry him back to the Surgeon. Likely he kin bring him to."

The rough motion roused Gid, and as they clambered back over the works, Harry was thrilled to see him open his eyes a little ways.

"Apparently," said the busy Surgeon, stopping for a minute, with knife and bullet-forceps in his bloodstained hands, to give a brief glance and two or three swift touches to Gid, "the ball has struck his side and broke a rib or two. He's swooned from loss of blood. The blood's stopped flowing now, and he'll come around all right. Lay him over there in the shade of those trees. Put something under his head, and make him as comfortable as possible. I'll attend to him as soon as I can get through with these men who are much worse off than he is."

And the over-worked Surgeon hurried away to where loud groans were imperatively calling for his helpful ministrations.

Si and Harry broke down a thick layer of cedar branches to make a comfortable bed for Gid, placed a chunk under his head, and hurried away again to search for Alf Russell. They went over carefully that part of the works they had crossed, and the abatis in front, but could find no trace of him. They feared that after he had been shot he had crawled back under the shelter of some tree-tops, to protect him from the flying bullets, and died there. They turned over and pulled apart the branches for a wide space, but did not succeed in finding him, or any trace. But they found Bob Willis, stark in death, lying prone in the top of a young hickory, into which he had crashed, when the fatal bullet found him pressing courageously forward. Him they carried pitifully forward, and added to the lengthening row of the regiment's dead, which was being gathered up.

Then they went reluctantly back—shuddering with the certainty of what they should find, to bring in Jim Humphreys's body.

Harry Joslyn was so agitated by the sight of Humphreys's mangled head and staring eyes that Si made him turn his back, place himself between the feet, one of which he took in each hand, and go before in carrying the body back. Si stripped the blouse up so as to cover the head, and took the shoulders between his hands, and so another body was added to the row of the regimental dead.

Si himself was so sick at heart that he had little inclination to continue the search farther than to look over the wounded, as they were brought in, in hopes of finding some of his squad there.

"There are three of us yet missing," he said. "Mebbe they've got mixed up with the Kankakee boys on our left, and'll come in all right after awhile. Mebbe they're out with Shorty somewhere. I'll wait till he comes in. Harry, I expect me and you'd better dig poor Jim's grave. There's no tellin' how long we'll stay here. Jim 'd rather we put him under than strangers what don't know and care for him. It's all we kin do for the poor feller; I'll git a pick and you take a shovel. We'll make the grave right here, where the Colonel lit when he jumped over the works with the flag. That'll tickle Jim, if he's lookin' down from the clouds. Too bad, he couldn't have lived long enough to see us go over the embankment, with the Colonel in the lead, wavin' the flag."

"The best thing," said Harry, forgetting his sorrow in the exciting memories of the fight, "was to see the Orderly sock his bayonet up to the shank in the rebel, and you blow off that officer's head—"

"Hush, Harry. Never speak o' that," Si admonished him.

"And see you," continued Harry, "stand off all three of them rebels, who was tryin' to bayonet you, until Corp'l Elliott came raring down, swinging his gun like a flail. Great Scott! didn't he lay 'em out, though! I saw it all, as I was loading my gun in nine times to shoot one of the rebels attacking you, I'd just got the cap on, when Corp'l Elliott loped in."

"Orderly," said Si a little later, "we've got Jim Humphreys's grave dug. Will you take the things out of his pockets to send to his folks? and then we'll bury him."

"Better wait till the Captain comes back and gives the orders," said the Orderly. "I don't want to touch his pockets without the Captain's orders. Then, we ought to have his blanket to bury him in. You go ahead and dig Bob Willis's grave, and I'll take a detail back and bring up the blankets and things."

Shorty had pushed his unavailing search for little Pete far past the point where he remembered to have seen the boy, in the midst of the fighting. He had torn his hands and worn out his strength in tearing aside the brush to expose every possible place that the dying boy or his dead body might be concealed. He had reached the further side of the obstruction, and sat down on a stump, in despair of heart and exhaustion of body.

Those with him, more intent on getting something to eat, had pushed on back to where their haversacks and canteens and blankets had been left.

Presently Shorty heard a call across the little valley:

"Cor—po—ral Ell—iott. Cor—po—ral Ell—iott!"

"Well, what is it?" Shorty called back, crustily.

"Lit—tle—Pete—and—Sandy—Ba—ker—is—o—ver—here," came back upon the bright Spring air.

Shorty sprang up electrified, and tore across the intervening space at the double-quick. He found Pete and Sandy Baker standing soberly on guard over the line of the company's blankets and belongings.

"Great Jehosephat, you little brats, how did you git here?" he exclaimed, snatching little Pete up and hugging him.

"Why shouldn't we be here?" asked Pete, as soon as he could get breath. "Didn't the Captain order us to stay here? Me and Sandy follered you fellers until you jumped inside the works, and the rebels was a runnin'. We stood on top o' the bank and shot at the rebels as fast as we could load our guns. We kept shootin' at 'em till they got clean down to the road. Then we saw the Captain lookin' over our way, and we thought he was comin' over there to skin us alive for leaving the things, and we ducked down behind the bank and run back here as fast as we could fetch it. You ain't goin' to tell the Captain on us, and have us tied up by the thumbs, are you, Corporal? Everything's safe. Nothing's gone. You won't tell, will you?"

"O, you worthless little scamp," said Shorty, with tears of joy in his eyes. "You ain't worth the powder that'd blow you up. I could pound you for the worry you've given me in the last hour. But you ain't hurt a bit, are you?"

"Nope," answered Pete. "But we both got awfully scratched runnin' through that brush. Say, wasn't the way the boys jumped the works and waded into them sardines just grand?"

The Orderly-Sergeant and his detail came back for the things, and Shorty and the boys, picking up those belonging to the squad, made their way to the company.

By the time they got back everybody's emotions had subsided sufficiently to allow him to remember that he was terribly hungry, and that the next business in order should be the cooking of the first warm meal they had had for more than a day. Fires were soon blazing in every direction, and the air was fragrant with the smell of hot coffee and cooking meat. Even Monty Scruggs felt that the kink had gone out of his backbone, and the disturbance in his dietetic department had sufficiently subsided to allow him to enjoy a cup of coffee and piece of toasted meat on a hardtack. The Surgeon had reached Gid Mackall, and had put him in comfortable shape.

The bodies of Bob Willis and Jim Humphreys were wrapped in their blankets, and mournfully consigned to the earth. A cedar bush was stuck in the head of each grave, and Si, finding a piece of smooth board and a chunk of soft charcoal from a fire, sat down on the bank, and begun laboriously composing the following inscription:

JAMES HUMFRI CO. Q.

200th injianny VolunTer Infantry KiLD may, 15th 1864 He dide For His country The lord luvs a

Braiv man

"That's all right. Si," said Shorty coming up with his mouthful of hardtack and meat, and inspecting Si's work with critical approval. "You kin lay away over me and all the rest when it comes to writin' and composin'. And you know how to spell, too. I wish I had your education. But I never had a chance to go to school."

"Then you think it'll do, Shorty," said Si, much flattered by his partner's approval.

"Yes, it's just bully. But I think you ought to say something about Jim's good character. That's usual on tombstones. You might say of him that he had in him the makin' of the finest poker player in the Army of the Cumberland. I never see a sleepyheaded boy pick up the fine pints o' the game like he did, and he had nerve, too, along with his science."

"No, it wouldn't do at all to put anything o' that kind on," answered Si, going to the grave, and driving the board down with a pick. "Mustn't let Jim's folks know for the world that he gambled. It'd be the last straw on his poor old mother, who's a strict Baptist. She may stand hearing that he's killed, but never could that he played cards. What in the world's become of Alf Russell, do you s'pose?"

"Who in Jeff Davis's dominions is that comin' up?" said Shorty, scanning an approaching figure. "Looks as if he'd had his head busted and then tied up agin with strings."

The figure certainly looked like Alf Russell and wore Alf Russell's clothes, but the head was unrecognizable. A broad white bandage encircled the face, going from the top of the forehead around under the chin, and there were several folds of it. Then it ran around the head transversely, covering the nose and the cheeks, and only allowing the mouth and the eyes to show.

"Hello, boys," said a weak voice, which was unmistakably Alf Russell's.

"Hello, Alf," said Si delightedly. "I'm so glad to see you. I've bin huntin' everywhere for you. What's happened to you? Badly hurt?"

"Nothing, only the left side o' my head tore out," said Alf feebly. "Something struck me, probably a bomb-shell, just as I was going up the bank after you. I went down to our Surgeon, but he was too busy to attend to me. I then found the brigade hospital, but the Surgeons there were too busy, too. They gave me a roll of bandages, and told me to fix it up myself. I did it with the help of one of the men who was waiting to have his leg dressed. I fancy I did quite a neat piece of bandaging, as well as the Surgeons themselves could've done it. Don't you think so?"

"Great Scott!" gasped Si, "you couldn't be walkin' around with the side of your head knocked out. I'm astonished at you."

"So'm I," returned Alf placidly. "I'm surprised that I'm doing as well as I am. But I gave myself good attendance, and that's a great thing. I'm awful hungry. Got anything to eat? Where's my haversack?"

"Here it is," said Si, readily. "And here's a cup o' hot coffee. I'll brile you a piece o' meat. But really, I don't think you ought to eat anything before the Surgeon sees you. Mebbe it won't be good for you."

"I'll chance it," said Alf desperately, reaching for the cup of coffee. "I'm sure it'll be better for me to eat something."

"Le's go down and see the Surgeon," insisted Si.

"No," protested Alf, "it ain't hurting me much now, and he's awful busy with other men, so we hadn't better interrupt him."

"The Surgeon ought to see you at once, Alf," interjected Shorty. "Here comes one of 'em now. Doctor, will you please look at this boy."

"Certainly," said the Surgeon, stopping on his way. "I guess I can spare a minute. Take off that bandage, my boy."

"Don't mind me. Doctor," said Alf. "'Taint hurting me now, at all, scarcely. I did it up very carefully."

"Take off the bandage at once, I tell you," said the Surgeon imperatively. "I haven't any time to waste. Let me see your wound."

Alf set down his cup of coffee, and began laboriously unwinding the long bandage, while the rest stood around in anxious expectation. Yards of folds came off from around his forehead and chin, and then he reached that around his nose and the back of his head. Still the ghastly edges of the terrible wound did not develop. Finally the blood-soaked last layer came off, and revealed where a bullet had made a shallow but ugly- looking furrow across the cheek and made a nick in the ear.

"Alf, that rebel come dumbed nigh missin' you," said the greatly relieved Si.

"If you should happen to ketch cold in that it wouldn't git well for a week," added Shorty.

"Give me that bandage," said the Surgeon just before he hurried away. "Take this sticking-plaster and draw the lips of the wound together, and if you keep the dirt out it may heal without a scar."

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XVIII. AN ARTILLERY DUEL AND A "DEMONSTRATION" ON THE ENEMY'S POSITION

"RUSSELL, that ain't going to heal without a A scar," Alf Russell consoled himself, as he studied his hurt with a little round pocket looking-glass, a screen of bushes concealing him from his unappreciative comrades. "It's more than Monty Scruggs nor Harry Joslyn nor Sandy Baker'll have to show for the fight. It's even more than Gid Mackall has, even though he is knocked out. I ought to be sent to the hospital, too. It'll be something to write home to father and mother, and they'll put it in the paper and the folks'll talk about it. Gracious, there's a bugle blowing again. Wonder what that means?"

"That's the Headquarters bugle," said Si, pricking up his ears. "That's 'Attention.' Git your traps together, boys. 'Assembly' 'll come next."

"Good gracious!" gasped Alf Russell, coming out from behind the bushes, "they don't expect us to do any more fighting today, do they?"

"Very likely," said Shorty, helping Pete Skidmore on with his blanket- roll. "The job ain't done till it is done, and there's lots o' rebels over there yit who need lickin'. Now's the best time to finish it. This ain't nothin' to Stone River and Chickamaugy. Got your canteen full, Pete? Better fill it before we start. Take mine, too. Don't go any further'n that first spring there, for I don't want to take no chances on losin' you again."

The cannonading in the distance grew fiercer, and regiments could be seen rushing up at the doublequick. Long, shrill rebel yells came from the hilltops, and were answered by volleys and deep-toned cheers.

Another bugle-call rang out from Brigade Headquarters.

"Fall in, Co. Q," sharply commanded the Orderly-Sergeant.

With a shiver of apprehension, with a nervous memory of the bitter hours just past, with the sight before their eyes of the scarcely-cold dead, the remainder of the company fell in with sadly-shrunken ranks.

"Orderly, we need some more cartridges," suggested Shorty.

"I've been thinking of that," replied the Orderly, "and wondering where to go for them."

"I saw some boxes of Enfields up there toward the battery," said Si. "The rebels left 'em. They'll fit our guns, and them English cartridges is just as good as ours."

"Pike over and get them, quick, before the other fellows drop on to 'em," said the Orderly.

"Gracious! going to shoot the rebels with their own bullets," remarked Monty, who had nearly recovered, and came up pluckily to take his place in the ranks. "Isn't that great medicine! How I should like to pop one into that fellow that belted me with that bowlder."

"Hello, Monty," called Shorty jovially to drive out the sad thoughts. "Got that kink out o' your backbone? Bully boy. You've got the right kind of nerve. You'll be a man before your mother yet."

"Yes, and I'm here, too, and don't you forget it," said Alf Russell, not to be outdone by Monty nor unnoticed. "By rights, I ought to be in the hospital."

"By rights, I ought to be a Jigadier-Brindle," retorted Shorty, "but I never could git Abe Lincoln to take that view of it. Here, fill up your cartridgebox. You'll need lots of 'em, if you're only goin' to shoot to crease your rebels, as that feller did you."

It was not brilliant pleasantry, but it served. It set them to thinking of something else. They hastily filled their cartridge-boxes, adjusted their blankets, and when the bugle sounded forward they started with something of their original nerve.

The regiment moved off at the head of the brigade, and after a march of a mile or so came out upon a hill from which they could see one of our batteries having an unequal fight with several of the rebel batteries in a fort far to its front. Our cannoneers were standing up bravely to their work, but the rebel shells were bursting about them in a wild storm of crashing, deafening explosions, and hurtling, shrieking masses of iron. The sharp crack of their own rifles was at times drowned by the ear-splitting din of the bursting shells.

"Goodness!" murmured Monty Scruggs, with colorless lips, as the regiment came into line and moved forward to the battery's line of caissons at the bottom of the hill. "I'm so glad I didn't enlist in the artillery. I don't see how anybody up there can live a minute."

"Yes, it looks like as if those artillery boys are earnin' their $13 a month about every second of their lives," remarked Shorty. "There ought to be some other batteries loafin' around somewhere that could join in."

The boys leaned on their muskets and watched the awful spectacle with dazed eyes. It seemed far more terrible even than the ordeal through which they had just been.

The battery was one of the oldest and best in the army, and its "fire discipline" was superb.

The Captain stood on a little elevation to the rear and somewhat apart, intently studying the rebel line through his field-glasses. After a few words of direction as to the pointing of the guns, and the command, "Begin firing," he had given no orders, scarcely spoken. He could not have been heard in that terrible turmoil. He had simply brought his terrible engine of destruction—the engine upon which he and his men had lavished years of laborious drilling and training—into position, and set it going.

What the result would be fate alone would determine. That was a matter that neither he nor his men regarded. If it destroyed or crippled its opponents it was simply doing the work for which it had been created. If its opponents destroyed it, that was a contingency to be accepted. It was there to endure that fate if so ordered.

Behind the wings of the battery stood the Lieutenants, leaning on their sabers, and gazing with fixed, unmoving eyes on the thunderous wrack and ruin.

They said nothing. There was no reason for saying anything. Everything was working systematically and correctly. Every man was doing his best, and in the best way. Nobody needed reminder, reprimand, direction or encouragement.

Similarly, the Sergeants stood behind their sections, except that one after another they stepped forward to the guns to take the places of men who had fallen and could not be replaced. At the guns the men were working with the swiftness of light flashes, and the unerring certainty of machines. To the watchers at the base of the slope they seemed to weave back and forth like some gigantic, demoniac loom, as they sprang at their guns, loaded them, "broke away" as they fired, leaped back again, caught the gun in its recoil, hurled it forward, again reloaded, "broke away" and fired, all quicker than thought. A shell took off a sponger's head, but the sponge-staff was caught by another before it fell, and the gun fired again without a pause. A shrapnel swept away every man about one gun. The Lieutenant looked inquiringly at the Sergeant, and in an instant another squad seemed to spring up from the ground to continue the firing without missing a note in the battery's rhythm.

The groups about each gun thinned out, as the shrieking fragments of shell mowed down man after man, but the rapidity of the fire did not slacken in the least. One of the Lieutenants turned and motioned with his saber to the riders seated on their horses in the line of limbers under the cover of the slope. One rider sprang from each team and ran up to take the place of men who had fallen.

The next minute the Lieutenant turned and motioned again, and another rider sprang from each team and ran up the hill. But one man was now left to manage the six horses attached to each limber. He soon left, too, in obedience to the Lieutenant's signal, and a faint, bleeding man came back and climbed into his place.

A shrapnel shell burst almost under the left gun and lifted it up in the air. When the smoke opened a little not a man could be seen about the cannon. A yell of exultation floated over from the rebel line.

The Lieutenant unbuckled his saber, dropped it to the ground, and ran forward to the cannon. Two or three men rose slowly from the ground, upon which they had been prostrated, and joined the Lieutenant in running the gun back to its place, and reloading it.

Hooray for the Old Battery. 231

"Hooray for the old battery! Bully boys! Made o' right stuff," shouted Shorty enthusiastically. "Never ketch me saying nothin' agin' the artillery agin. Men who act like that when they're standin' right in the middle o' hell with the lid off are 18karat fine."

"Captain," suggested Si, who was fidgeting under the excitement of a scene in which he was taking no part, "wouldn't it be well for some of us to go up there and help the battery boys out? I could sponge and ram."

"No," answered the Captain; "help has been sent for for them, and there it comes."

He pointed back over the hill to where two batteries were coming from different directions on a dead run. It was a magnificent sight. One battery was following the road, and the other cutting across the open space in a hot race to get ahead and be in action first.

The Captains were galloping ahead to point out the way. The Sergeants were alongside, seconding the whips of the drivers with strokes of the flats of their sabers on the animals' hanches. The six horses to each gun were galloping like mad, snatching the heavy piece over gullies, bumps, logs, and rocks as if it were a straw. The gunners had abandoned their usual calm pose with folded arms on the limber chests, and were maintaining their seats only by a desperate clutch on the side-irons.

The boys turned even from the storm in front to watch the thrilling spectacle.

The two Captains were fairly abreast as they led their batteries up the long slope, crushing the brush, sending sticks and stones flying from the heavy, flying wheels. Both reached the crest at the same time, and the teams, wheeling around at a gallop, flung the muzzles of the cannon toward the enemy. Without waiting for them to stop the nimble cannoneers sprang to ground, unlimbered the guns, rolled them into position, sent loads down their black throats, and before it was fairly realized that they had reached the crest hurled a storm of shells across the valley at the rebel batteries.

"Hooray! Hooray! They're gittin' some o' their own medicine now," yelled the excited regiment. "Sock it to 'em. How do you like that, you ill- begotten imps of rebels?"

The rebel cannoneers seemed to lose heart at once under the storm of fire that beat upon them. The volume of their fire diminished at once, and then became fitful and irregular. Two of their limbers were blown up in succession, with thunderous noise, and this further discouraged them.

Obeying a common impulse, the 200th Ind., regardless of the dropping shells, had left its position, and pressed forward toward the crest, where it could see what was going on.

The Colonel permitted this, for he anticipated that a charge on the rebel works would follow the beating down of the artillery fire, and he wanted his regiment to be where it would get a good start in the race to capture a rebel battery. He simply cautioned the Captains to keep their men in hand and ready. As Capt. McGillicuddy called Co. Q closer together, it occurred to Shorty that in the interest he had taken in the artillery duel he had not looked after Pete Skidmore for some time, and he began casting his eyes around for that youth. He was nowhere to be seen, and, of course, no one knew anything about him.

"Why don't you get a rope. Shorty, and tie the blamed kid to you, and not be pestering yourself and everybody else about him all the time?" asked the Orderly-Sergeant irritably, for he was deeply intent upon the prospective charge, and did not want to be bothered. "He's more worry than he's worth."

"Shut up!" roared Shorty. "If you wasn't Orderly-Sergeant I'd punch your head. I won't have nobody sayin' that about little Pete. He's the best boy that ever lived. If I could only git hold of him I'd shake the plaguey life out o' him. Drat him!"

Shorty anxiously scanned the field in every direction, but without his eyes being gladdened by the sight of the boy.

The wounded being carried back from the batteries impressed him sadly with the thought that Pete might have been struck by a piece of shell.

"Him and Sandy Baker are both gone," said the Orderly, looking over the company. "I'll buck-and-gag both of 'em when I catch 'em, to learn 'em to stay in ranks."

"Indeed you won't," said Shorty, under his breath.

The rebel fire had completely died down, and our own ceased, to allow the guns to cool for a few minutes, in preparation for an energetic reopening when the anticipated charge should be ordered.

To be in readiness for this, the Colonel drew the regiment forward through the batteries, to lie down on the slope in front, that he might have a start on the other Colonels. As they passed through the batteries a little imp, about the size of Pete Skidmore, but with face as black as charcoal, pulled off the leather bag in which cartridges are carried from the limber to the gun, and handed it to one of the cannoneers, who said:

"Well, good-by, if you must be going. You done well. You ought to belong to the artillery. You're too good for a dough-boy. I'm going to ask the Captain to have you detailed to us."

A similar scene was taking place at the next gun, with a little blackamoor about the size of Sandy Baker.

The boys picked up their guns and belts from the ground, and fell in with Co. Q.

"Hello, Corporal," said Pete, with a capacious grin rifting the powder grime on his face. "We've just bin having lots o' fun."

"Pete, you aggravatin' little brat," said Shorty, giving him a cuff that started the boy's tears to making little white streaks through the black, "where in the world have you bin, and what've you bin doin'?"

"Why," whimpered Pete, "me and Sandy crept forward to a rock where we thought we could see better, and then we thought we could see better from another, and we kept a-goin' until we got clear up to where the limbers was, afore we knowed it. Just then a couple o' them powder- monkeys, as you call 'em, come runnin' back for cartridges, but they was both hit, and was all bloody, and both of 'em fell down and couldn't go no further, when they got the cartridges, though they wanted to. Me and Sandy thought it was too bad that the men up there at the guns shouldn't have no cartridges, when they was fighting so hard, so we picked up the boys' bags and run up to the cannon with 'em. The men there was so glad to git 'em, and told us to lay down our guns and run back for some more. They kept us goin' till the rebels was knocked out, and we thought we was doin' right and helpin', and they told us we was, and now you slap me. Boo-hoo-hoo!"

"Don't cry, Pete. I done wrong," said Shorty, melting instantly, and putting his arm around the boy. "You done right, and you're a brave, good little boy. Only you must not go away from the company without lettin' me know."

"Good God," groaned the Colonel, as he halted the regiment down the slope, and studied the opposite side with his glass. "There's another abatis, and it looks worse than the one in which we have just left half the regiment. But we'll go through if there's only one man left to carry the flag over the works. I don't suppose that we are any better than those who have already died, or got any better right to live."

"This is the dumbedest country for cuttin' down trees the wrong way," Si sadly remarked, as he surveyed the abatis. "It's meaner'n midnight murder. I'd like to git hold o' the pizen whelp what invented it."

"The devil invented abatis, just after he invented hell, and as an improvement on it, and just before he invented secession," Shorty judged hotly. "When we git through them abatis there I'm goin' to kill everything I find, just to learn 'em to stop sich heathenish work. It's sneakin' murder, not war."

"When we get through," murmured Alf Russell dolefully. "How many of us will ever get through?"

"Who'll be the Jim Humphreys and Gid Mackals this time?" said Monty Scruggs, looking at the tangled mass of tree-tops.

"Can you see any path through this abatis, Sergeant?" nervously asked Harry Joslyn.

"No, Harry," said Si, kindly and encouragingly. "But we'll find some way to git through. There's probably a path that we kin strike. Stay close by me, and we'll try our best."

"Well, I for one am goin' through, and I'm goin' to take Pete and Sandy with me," said Shorty, in a loud, confident tone, to brace up the others. "I've always gone through every one o' them things I've struck yit, and this ain't no worse'n the others. But we ought to jump 'em at once, while they're shiverin' over the shelling' we give 'em. They must be shakin' up there yit like a dog on a January mornin'. Why don't we start, I wonder?"

The batteries behind them began throwing shells slowly and deliberately, as if testing their range, before beginning a general cannonade. All along the crest, to their right and to their left, could be seen regiments moving up and going into line of battle.

"It's goin' to be a big smash this time, sure," said Si. "And the 200th Injianny's got a front seat at the performance. We'll show them how to do it, and we're just the ones that kin. Brace up, boys. The eyes of the whole army's on us. They expect big things from us."

"Here she goes, I guess," he continued, as a bugle sounded at headquarters. "Everybody git ready to jump at the word, and not stop goin' till we're inside the works."

The lines stiffened, every one drew a long breath, gripped his gun, and braced himself for the fiery ordeal. There was an anxious wait, and then the Adjutant came walking quietly down the line, with his horse's bridle over his arm.

"It seems," he explained to Capt. McGillicuddy, loud enough for the company to hear, "that we are not to make an assault, after all. There's enough rebels over there in the works to eat us up without salt. We are ordered to only make a demonstration, and hold them, while the rest work down on their flanks toward Calhoun, which is six miles below, and get in their rear. You can let your men rest in place till further orders."

"Take the company Orderly," said the Captain, walking off with the Adjutant.

"'Tention! Stack arms; Place rest!" commanded the Orderly.

The revulsion of feeling among the keenly-wrought-up men was almost painful.

"Demonstration be blamed," said Si, sinking upon a convenient rock. "I always did hate foolin'. Gracious, how tired I am."

"Only a demonstration—only powow, noise, show and bluff," sneered Shorty, flinging his gun against the stack. "Why didn't they tell us this an hour ago, and save me all this wear and tear that's makin' me old before my time? When I git ready for a fight I want it to come off, without any postponement on account of weather. Come, Pete, go wash your face and hands, and then we'll spread our blankets and lay down. I'm tireder'n a mule after crossin' Rocky Face Ridge. I don't want to take another step, nor even think, till I git a good sleep."

"We don't have to go over that brush, then?" said Alf Russell, with an expression of deep relief. "I'm so glad. Great Jerusalem, how my wound begins to ache again. You fellows oughtn't to laugh at my wound. You don't know how it hurts to have all those delicate nerves torn up."

So it was with every one. The moment the excitement of the impending fight passed away, every one was sinking with fatigue, and all his other troubles came back. Monty Scruggs suddenly remembered how badly he had been hurt, and started to drag himself off in search of the Surgeon, while Harry Joslyn and Sandy Baker, chumming together for the first time, snuggled together in their blankets, and sought that relief from the excitement and fatigues of the day which kindly Nature never refuses to healthy young bodies.

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XIX. SI AND SHORTY ARE PUT UNDER ARREST

THE next morning the rebels were found to be gone from the position in front of the 200th Ind;, and after breakfast the regiment marched leisurely by a road around the dreaded abatis, to the ground which had been scarred and mangled by our terrible artillery fire.

It was an appalling scene that the eyes of the boys rested upon. Every horrid form of mutilation and death which could be inflicted by the jagged shards and fiendish shells, or the even more demon-like shrapnel- balls, was visible.

Everything was torn, rent, and ragged, as if soma mighty giant, insane to destroy, had spent his fury there. Nothing had escaped the iron flail of devastation. Trees shattered or cut entirely down; limberchests and cannon-wheels merely bunches of blackened splinters; frightfully mangled horses, dead, or yet living in agony that filled their great plaintive eyes; lying in ghastly pools of blood, which filmed and clotted under the bright rays of the May morning sun.

"Looks like Judgment morn or the fall of Babylon," muttered the religious-minded Alf Russell, the first to break their awed silence.

Awful Destruction. 242

"Or the destruction of Sennacherib," suggested Monty Scruggs—

"For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed."

"I should say he had a mighty strong breath, Monty," Shorty interrupted. He liked to break in on Monty's heroics. "Excuse me from havin' a 12pounder breathin' around me."

"And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still," continued Monty.

"I'll bet there wasn't much sleepin' around here while that shell'n' was goin' on," broke in Shorty again. "Except the sleep that has the sod for a coverlet and Gabriel's trumpet for a breakfast bell."

Monty continued impressively:

"And there lay the steed, with his nostrils all wide, But through them there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf."

"Poor horses," murmured Shorty. "I always feel mighty sorry for them. They hadn't nothin' to do with gittin' up this rebellion. We must go around and kill such as is alive, and put them out o' their misery."

Monty resumed:

"And there lay the rider, distorted and pale. With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone. The lances uplifted, the trumpets unblown."

"Serves 'em right, the yaller-bellied, clay-eatin' yowlers," said Shorty savagely, looking over the mangled corpses. "Pays 'em up for their murderin' abatis. We got it in this time worse on them than they did on us, though it'd take as much of this as'd make up several Counties to pay up for any one o' the good boys we lost yesterday. I hope they are all where they kin look down and see how we got it on the secesh hell- hounds. We'll do 'em up worse yit before we're through with 'em."

"Our batteries are improvin' wonderfully," commented the more practical Si, studying the field. "They seem to've socked every shell in just where it'd do the most good. No shootin' at the State o' Georgy generally and trustin' to luck to hit a rebel. Every shell seems to've landed just where it was needed, and then 'tended to its business and busted. You don't see no signs of any strikin' a quarter of a mile away, nor a whole one layin' around anywhere. That's good gunnin', and I'm glad our old six-hoss thrashin'-machine done the biggest share of it. Our brigade has the best battery in the whole army."

"The regiment will go on," reported Orderly-Sergeant, "but Co. Q will stay behind to bury the dead, gather up the arms and things, and then bring up the brigade ammunition train."

"Stay behind to bury the dead," grumbled Shorty. "Nice business that! Sextons to the Southern Confederacy. Hain't they got any niggers around here that they kin set at the work?"

Nor did Si like the job. "The artillery made the muss, and now the infantry's got to stay and clean up after it. That don't seem right."

"Well, orders is orders, and got to be obeyed," said the Orderly- Sergeant, cutting short the discussion with the usual formulary of his class. An Orderly-Sergeant is robbed of one of the cherished privileges of the other enlisted men. He can not criticise or grumble, but must stop the others from doing so beyond a certain point, and his refuge must be the prompt assumption that the orders are all right, and must be executed cheerfully. And he has not the satisfaction of the officers above him in knowing the why and wherefore of the orders, and perhaps advising as to them. He is "betwixt and between," as they say out West.

"The quicker we get at it," continued the Orderly, "the sooner it'll be over. Serg't Klegg, take eight or 10 men and hunt around for some picks and shovels. I think that deep trench over there behind the works 'll do for a grave. You can shovel the bank right down on them and save hard work. Serg't Wilson, you take eight or 10 men and gather up these pieces o' men and lay them in there. Corp'l Jones, you take another man or two and go around and kill those horses. Be careful how you shoot now. Don't hurt anybody with glancing bullets. Corp'l Elliott, you take the rest and go round and gather the guns and other things, and pile them up there by that tree to turn over to the ordnance officer. Hustle, now, all of you."

"They didn't think they were digging their own graves," philosophized Monty Scruggs, as he stood shovel in hand watching the remains being gathered into the trench.

"He digged a ditch, he digged it deep; He digged it for his brother, But for his great sin he fell in The ditch he'd digged for t'other."

"Good, good, Monty," said Si. "That's the best thing I've heard you spout yit. Give us some more of it."

"There isn't any more of it. The only thing I can think of is:

"The rebel Solomon Grundy; Born in Georgia on Monday; Become a rebel on Tuesday; Run off from Buzzard's Roost on Wednesday; Got licked at Dalton on Thursday; Worse whipped at Resaca on Friday; Blown up by a shell on Saturday; Died and buried on Sunday; And this was the end of Solomon Grundy."

Alf Russell's interest in anatomy had led him to join Serg't Wilson's party in gathering up the ghastly fragments of bodies, but the sights were too much for his nerves, and as he perceived that he was growing sick at the stomach he went over to Shorty's squad.

It was astonishing what things they found, besides guns and equipments. Evidently, the rebels had left quite hurriedly, and many personal belongings were either forgotten or could not be found in the darkness. Samples of about everything that soldiers carry, and a good many that they are not supposed to, were found lying around. There were cooking utensils, some on the fire, with corn-pone and meat in them; some where the imperative orders to march found their owners with their breakfasts half-devoured; there were hats clumsily fashioned of wisps of long- leaved pine sewed together; there were caps which had been jaunty red- and-blue "Zouaves" when their owners had mustered around Nashville in 1861, but had been faded and tarnished and frayed by the mud and rain at Donelson, Shiloh and Stone River, and by the dust and grime of Perryville and Chickamauga, until they had as little semblance to their former perkiness as the grim-visaged war had to the picnic of capturing ungarrisoned forts and lolling in pleasant Summer camps on the banks of the Cumberland. There were coats of many patterns and stages of dilapidation, telling the same story of former finery, draggled through the injurious grime of a thousand camps and marches. There were patched and threadbare blankets, tramped-out boots and shoes, an occasional book, many decks of cards, and so on.

Shorty came across a new cedar canteen with bright brass hoops. He slung it over his shoulder, with the thought that it would be a nice thing to send back to Maria, as a souvenir of the battle. She might hang it up in her room, or make a pin-cushion or a work-basket out of it.

Presently he came to a box of shells, which he picked up and carried back to the tree. It was quite heavy, and when he set it down again he felt thirsty. The canteen occurred to him. It was full. He raised it to his lips and took a long swig.

"Great Jehosephat," he gasped, his eyes starting out with astonishment. "That ain't water. It's prime old applejack, smoother'n butter, and smellin' sweeter'n a rose. Best I ever tasted."

Shorty had been strictly abstinent since his return from Indiana, The rigid views of the Klegg family as to liquor-drinking had sunk into his heart, and somehow whenever temptation came his way the clear, far- seeing eyes of Maria would intervene with such a reproachful glance that the thought of yielding became repugnant.

But the smooth, creamy applejack had slipped past his lips so unexpectedly that it possessed him, before principle could raise an objection. Shorty was the kind of a man to whom the first drink is the greatest danger. After he had one almost anything was likely to happen.

Still, though his blood was already warming with the exhilarating thrill, there were some twinges of conscience.

"Now, I mustn't take no more o' that," he said to himself. "That one drink was good and all right enough, because I really thought I was goin' to take a drink of water when I put the canteen to my lips. I could swear that to Maria on a stack o' Bibles high as her dear head. God bless her!"

He began bustling about with more activity, and giving his orders in a louder voice. He saw Pete Skidmore pick up what had been once a militia officer's gaudy coat, and examine it curiously. He shouted at him:

"Here, drop that, drop that, you little brat. What 'd I tell you? That you mustn't fetch a rag of anything you see in here, except with the point o' your bayonet and with your bayonet on your gun. Drop it, I tell you."

"Why, what's the matter with that old coat?" asked Pete in an injured tone, astonished at Shorty's vehemence.

"Everything's the matter with it, and every stitch o' cloth you find. They're swarmin' with rebel bugs. I've trouble enough to keep the Yankee graybacks off you. If you git the rebel kind on you angwintum won't save you."

Pete dropped the coat in affright.

"And you, Sandy Baker," continued Shorty in a yell, "don't you walk through them piles o' brush and leaves, where the rebels has bin sleepin'. You'll git covered with rebel bugs, too, and we'll never git 'em out o' the company. How often 've I got to tell you that?"

Yelling so much made him dry, and the canteen hung so invitingly near his hand.

"I don't think another pull at that old applejack 'll hurt me a mite. I really didn't git a square drink the first time, because I was choked off by astonishment at findin' it wasn't water. I'll just take enough of a swig to finish up that drink."

"Jerusalem crickets," he exclaimed, wiping his mouth, "but that's good stuff. Wonder if bein' in cedar makes it taste so bang-up? If I though so I'd never drink out o' anything but cedar as long's I lived. Guess I'll keep this canteen to carry water in. I kin send Maria—"

He stopped. He was not so far gone as to forget that any thought of Maria was very inappropriate to his present condition. He started to blustering at the boys who were carrying in guns:

"Here, how often have I got to caution you galoots about bein' careful with them guns? Don't let the muzzles pint at yourselves, nor anybody else. They're all likely to be loaded, and go off any minute, and blow some o' your cussed heads offen you. Don't slam 'em down that way. Be careful with 'em, I tell you. I'll come over there and larrup some o' you, if you don't mind me."

"What's excitin' Shorty so, to make him yell that way? wondered Si, stopping in his shoveling down the embankment upon the rebel dead, and wiping his hot face.

"O, he's trying to keep them fresh young kids from blowin' themselves into Kingdom Come with the rebel guns," answered one of the veterans indifferently, and they resumed their shoveling.

Shorty started over to where some of the boys were trying to extricate a rebel limber abandoned in a ravine. He spied a pair of fine field glasses lying on the ground, and picked them up with an exclamation of delight.

"Great Jehosephat," he said, turning them over for careful inspection. "Ain't this a puddin'? Just the thing to give the Cap. He got his smashed with a bullet comin' through the abatis, and's bin mournin' about 'em ever since. These is better'n his was, and he'll be ticked to death to git 'em."

He put them to his eyes and scanned the landscape.

"Ain't they just daisies, though. Bring that teamster over there so close that I kin hear him cussin' his mules. Cap'll have a better pair o' glasses than the Colonel or the General has. He deserves 'em, too. Capt. McGillicuddy's good all the way through, from skin to bone, and as brave as they make 'em. He'll be tickleder than a boy with a new pair o' red-topped boots. He'll invite me to take a drink with him, but he won't have nothin' so good as this old apple-jack. I guess I'll give the rest to him, too, for his friends at headquarters. They don't often smack their lips over stuff like that. But I'll treat myself once more, just as Capt. McGillicuddy'd do."

The last drink was a settler. He was then in a frame of mind for anything—to tear down a mountain, or lift a hill, or to fight anybody, with or without cause. He looked over at the boys struggling with the limber, and yelled, as he laid his coat, hat, canteen, and cartridge-box down on the stump upon which he had been sitting, and placed the field- glass upon them:

"Hoopee! Yank her out o' there, boys. Yank h'er out, and don't be all day about it, either. Let me git at her and I'll fetch her out. Stand by, you kids, and see your uncle Eph snatch her."

He bolted in to the ravine, swung the limber-tongue about, and with aid of the rest, stirred to united effort by much profane vociferation on his part, disengaged the limber and trundled it up the bank.

The tall, very stiff young Aid, with whom Si and Shorty had had the previous affair, came stalking on to the ground, viewing everything with his usual cold, superior, critical gaze.

"You are doing well, my man," he remarked to Shorty, "but too much noise. A non-commissioned officer must not swear at his men. It's strictly against regulations."

"Go to blazes," said Shorty, scarcely under his breath. The Aid picked up the field-glasses, looked at them a minute, scanned the field with them, and then looked around for the case, as if to appropriate them himself.

"Here, drop them," said Shorty roughly. "Them's mine."

"How did they come to be yours, sir?" said the Aid sternly. "Picked them up, didn't you?"

"None o' your business how I got 'em. They're mine, I tell you. Give 'em to me."

"You picked them up on the battlefield, sir. They are military equipments which you must turn over to the proper officer. I'll take charge of them myself."

"You'll do nothin' o' the kind," roared Shorty, striding up to him. "Give me them glasses."

"I shall do nothing of the kind," said the Aid sternly. "Don't you dare approach me in that w-ay. Go back to your duties at once. I shall punish you for disrespect to me and threatening an officer. Fall back, sir, I tell you."

Shorty made a grab for the glasses, which the Aid tried to evade, but Shorty fixed his firm clutch upon them. The Aid held on tightly, but Shorty wrenched them from his grasp.

"You bob-tailed brevet West Pointer," said Shorty savagely, raising his fist, "I've a notion to break you in two for tryin' to beat me out o' what's mine. Git out o' here, or I'll—"

"Shorty! Shorty! Stop that!" shouted Si, rushing over to his partner, and catching his back-drawn fist. He had been suspicious as to the cause of his partner's noisiness, and ran up as soon as the disturbance began. "Stop it, I say. Are you crazy?"

Poor little Pete, badly excited as to what was happening to his best friend, was nervously fumbling his gun and eyeing the Aid.

"Si Klegg, go off and mind your own business, and let me attend to mine," yelled Shorty, struggling to free himself from his partner's iron grasp. "Am I goin' to be run over by every pin-feather snipe from West Point? I'll break him in two."

"Sergeant," commanded the Aid, reaching to take the field-glasses from Shorty's hand; "buck and gag that man at once. Knock him down if he resists. Knock him down, I say."

"You tend to your own business and I'll tend to mine. Go away from here, and don't say anything to make him madder, you wasp-waisted errand boy," said Si savagely, as he thrust himself in between the Aid and Shorty. "I've got enough to do to take care of him. Go off, if you don't want him to mash you."

Little Pete had an idea. He wriggled in between, snatched the glasses, and made off with them.

The Brigade Provost-Marshal rode up and sternly demanded what the disturbance was about. Shorty began a hot harrangue against young staff officers generally, and this particular offender, but Si got his arm across his mouth and muffled his speech. The Provost listened to the Aid's bitter indictment against both Si and Shorty.

"Put both those men under arrest," he said to the Orderly-Sergeant, "and make a list of the witnesses. I'll court-martial them at the first halting place."

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XX. SHORTY IS ARRAIGNED BEFORE THE COURT-MARTIAL

TO REST, refit after the sharp fighting and marching, and to wait for the slightly wounded and other convalescents to come up, the brigade went into camp on the banks of the Oostenaula River, near Calhoun, Ga., and about 20 miles south of Dalton, which had been the objective at the opening of the campaign.

And while the men were washing and mending their clothes, it was decided to put the discipline of the brigade, which had suffered similarly by the rough campaign, through a somewhat like process of furnishing and renovation.

A court-martial was ordered, "to try such cases as may be brought before it."

The court convened with all the form and ceremony prescribed by the Army Regulations for tribunals which pass judgment upon the pay, honor and lives of officers and men.

The officers detailed for the court sent back to the baggage wagons, and got their wrinkled dress-suits out of the valises, they buttoned these to their throats, donned their swords, sashes and white gloves, and gathered stiffly and solemnly about a long, rough table, which had been put up under the spreading limbs of giant oaks. Guards pacing at a little distance kept all the curious and inquisitive out of earshot. The camp gossips, full of interest as to the fate of those who were to be tried, could see an aggravating pantomime acted out, but hear no word.

A squad of offenders of various degrees of turpitude ranging from absence without leave to sleeping on post, were huddled together under the Provost Guard, while Si and Shorty, being non-commissioned officers, were allowed to remain with their company, to be produced by Capt. McGillicuddy when wanted. They kept themselves rigidly apart from the rest of the company, repelling the freely-offered sympathy of their comrades. Si was most deeply concerned about Shorty, who was so desperate over his fall from grace, that he regretted that he had not killed the young Aid, while he was at him, so as to have relieved his comrades of him, and made his own condemnation and execution sure.

"Old Maj. Truax, of the 1st Oshkosh, is President of the court," said the Orderly-Sergeant, as the company was anxiously canvassing the boys' chances.

"Gosh, that settles it," groaned Jerry Wilkinson; "that old bull o' the woods 'd rather shoot a man than not. He's always lookin' around for some excuse for sculping a man, and the less he has the savager he is."

"I don't believe it," said the Orderly, "I've watched old Truax, when he's been roaring around, and I always found that he was after somebody that deserved it. Men of that kind are pretty certain to be very soft on good soldiers, like Si and Shorty, and I think he's all right. The boys of the 1st Oshkosh all swear by him, and you can trust a man's own regiment to know him surer than anybody else. And then there's Capts. Suter and Harris, of the Maumee Muskrats."

"Terrible strict," muttered Jerry despairingly.

"Lieuts. Newton and Bonesteel, of the Kankakees," continued the Orderly.

"Good men—promoted from the ranks, and remember that they once carried a gun themselves."

"Lieut. McJimsey, of the staff."

"A wasp-waisted West Pointer, raw from school; thinks he's learned all there's to know about war out of a book on triggernometry. Has no more feelin' for a private soljer than I have for a mule. Calls 'em 'my men,' roared Jerry.

"And as he's only a Second Lieutenant he'll have the first vote," sighed the Orderly. "And Lieut. Bowersox is to be the Judge-Advocate. He'll have to do the prosecuting. I know he hates the job. He thinks the world and all of Si and Shorty, but he's the kind of a man to do his duty without fear, favor or affection. And all of us 'll have to testify. Dumb Shorty's fool soul! Why didn't he get up his ruction somewhere where the boys couldn't see him, and know nothing about it! I've no patience with him or Si."

Lieut. Steigermeyer, the complainant, stalked by in solemn dignity.

"Can't I shoot that dod-blasted Aid, and save Shorty, and take it all on myself?" blubbered little Pete, who had been in tears ever since he had seen the grave assemblage of officers in full dress.

Shorty Before the Court-martial. 257

"Shut up, you little fool," said the Orderly savagely. In the selfishness of his sorrow it made him angry to see anybody else show more grief than his.

The Orderly, in stating Lieut. Bowersox's position, forgot, or was not aware of the fact, that while the Judge-Advocate represents the Government at a trial as the Prosecuting Attorney, he is also the counsel for the defense; a dual role which has important and frequently unexpected results.

After the members were duly seated according to rank, with Maj. Truax at the head of the table, Lieut. Bowersox read the order for holding the court, and called the names of the members. He then said:

"Gentlemen, the first case I shall present to your notice is one of exceeding gravity, affecting a member of my own regiment. As it is the most important case that you shall have to consider, I thought it best that it should be disposed of first. Sergeant, bring in Corp'l William L. Elliott, Co. Q, 200th Ind. Volunteer Infantry."

Shorty entered the court with an air of extreme depression in face and manner, instead of the usual confident self-assertion which seemed to flow from every look and motion. He stood with eyes fixed upon the ground.

"Prisoner," said Lieut. Bowersox, "this court has met to try you. Look around upon the members, and see if there is any one to whom you have objection. If so, state it."

Shorty glanced listlessly from the head of the table toward the foot. There his eye rested on the Second Lieutenant for a minute, and then he muttered to himself, "No, he's no worse than the rest ought to be on me," and shook his head in answer to the Judge-Advocate's formal question.

"You will each of you rise, hold up your right hand and be sworn," said the Judge-Advocate, and they each pronounced after him the prolix and ponderous oath prescribed by the regulations:

"You, Maj. Benjamin Truax, do swear that you will well and truly try and determine, according to evidence, the matter now before you, between the United States of America and the prisoner to be tried, and that you will duly administer justice, according to the provisions of an act establishing rules and articles for the government of the armies of the United States, without partiality, favor or affection; and if any doubt shall arise, not explained by said articles, according to your understanding and the custom of war in such cases. And you do further swear, that you will not divulge the sentence of the court, until it shall be published by proper authority; neither will you disclose or discover the vote or opinion of any particular member of the court- martial, unless required to give evidence thereof, as a witness, by a court of justice in due course of law. So help you God."

The President then took the book and administered the same oath to the Judge-Advocate.

"I shall now read the charges and specifications," said the Judge- Advocate, "which are as follows, and he read with sonorous impressiveness:

CHARGE:—Insulting, Threatening, and Striking Superior Officer.

Specification I.—That Corp'l William L. Elliott, Co. Q, 200th Ind. Vol. Inf., did strike and perform other physical violence upon Second Lieut. Adolph Steigermeyer, of the Second Corps, U. S. Engr's, who was his superior officer, and in the performance of his duty, in violation of the 9th Article of War, and contrary to the discipline of the Armies of the United States. This on the march of the army from Dalton, Ga., to Calhoun, Ga., and on the 16th day of May, 1864.

Specification II.—That said Corp'l William I.. Elliott, Co. Q, 200th Ind. Vol. Inf., did threaten physical violence to the said Second Lieut, Adolph Steigermeyer, Second Corps, U. S. Engr's, his superior officer, and who was in the performance of his duty, contrary to the 9th Article of War, and the discipline of the Armies of the United States. This on the march of the army from Dalton, Ga., to Calhoun, Ga., and on the 16th day of May, 1864.

Specification III.—That said Corp'l William L. Elliott, Co. Q, 200th Ind. Vol. Inf., did insult with many opprobrious words, the said Adolph Steigermeyer, Second Corps, U. S. Engr's, his superior officer, in the presence of many enlisted men, in violation of the 6th Article of War and of the discipline of the Armies of the United States. This on the march of the army from Dalton, Ga., to Calhoun, Ga., and on the 16th day of May, 1864.

CHARGE:—Drunkenness on duty.

Specification I.—That said Corp'l William L. Elliott, Co. Q, 200th Ind. Vol. Inf., being then on duty, and in command of a squad of men, was openly and noisily intoxicated and drunk, and incapable of performing said duty, in violation of the 45th Article of war, and the discipline of the Armies of the United States. This on the march of the army from Dalton, Ga., to Calhoun, Ga., and on the 16th day of May, 1864.

CHARGE 3.—Misappropriating Public Property.

Specification I.—That said Corp'l William L. Elliott, being charged with the duty of gathering up and accounting for the property captured from and abandoned by the enemy, did appropriate to himself, attempt to conceal, and refuse to deliver to his superior officer a portion thereof, to wit, one pair of field glasses, in violation of the 58th Article of War, and contrary to the discipline of the Armies of the United States. This on the march of the enemy from Dalton, Ga., to Calhoun, Ga., and on the 16th day of May, 1864.

"O, goodness gracious!" murmured little Pete Skidmore, almost fainting with terror, in the covert of oak leaves, just above the court's head, whither he had noiselessly climbed, to overhear everything. "He's a- goner, sure! They'll shoot him, sure as guns. Saltpeter won't save him. He's broke every Article o' War in the whole book. My, what will I do?"

He slipped down and communicated his information to the anxiously- expectant comrades of Co. Q.

"It mayn't be as bad as we expect," the Orderly-Sergeant tried to console them. "The bite of most of them regulations and charges and specifications ain't never near as bad as their bark. If they were, a good many of us would have been shot long ago. My experience in the army's been that the regulations are like the switches the teachers used to have in school—a willow for the good scholars, and a stout hickory for the bad ones. Still, I'm afraid that Shorty won't get off with less than hard labor for life on the fortifications."

"Prisoner, you have heard the charges and specifications," said Lieut. Bowersox, in a stern voice. "How do you plead to them?"

"O, I'm guilty—guilty o' the whole lot," said Shorty dejectedly.

"Inasmuch," said Lieut. Bowersox, with an entire change of tone, "as it is my duty to represent the prisoner's interests as counsel, I shall disregard his plea, and enter one of not guilty."

Shorty started to gasp. "But I done all that—"

"Silence," thundered Lieut. Bowersox, "you are only to speak, sir, when I or some other member of the court ask you a question."

"But has the Judge-Advocate the right to disregard the plain plea?" Lieut. McJimsey started to inquire, when the President interrupted with,

"Lieutenant, we can have no discussion of the court's practices in the presence of the prisoner. If you want to enter upon that we shall have to clear the court. Do you desire that?"

There was something in the bluff old Major's tone that made the Lieutenant think this inadvisable, and he signified the negative.

"Call your first witness, then, Judge-Advocate," said Maj. Truax, with a wave of his hand.

Lieut. Steigermeyer, in full-dress, even to epaulets, rigidly erect and sternly important as to look, testified that he was a Second Lieutenant in the Regular Army, but had the staff rank of Captain and Inspector- General, and after going out of his way to allude to the laxness of discipline he found prevailing in the Western armies, testified that on the day mentioned, while in pursuance of his duty, he was going over the battlefield, he came upon the prisoner, whose drunken yelling attracted his attention; that he had admonished him, and received insults in reply.

"My way is to knock a man down, when he gives me any back talk," remarked the Major, sotto voce, taking a fresh chew of tobacco. "That's better than court-martialing to promote discipline."

"Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—"

"Pardon me, Lieutenant—I should perhaps say Captain"—interrupted Lieut. Bowersox, with much sweetness of manner, "but the most of us are familiar with your views as to the inferiority of the discipline of the Western Armies to that of the Army of the Potomac and European armies, so that we need not take up the' time of the court with its reiteration. What farther happened?"

"Nothing. The Provost Guard came up at that moment, and I directed a Sergeant to place the two principal offenders in custody, and secure the names of the witnesses."

"Is that all, Captain?"

"Yes, except that in closing my testimony I feel that it is my duty to impress upon the court that so flagrant a case as this should be made the opportunity for an example in the interests of discipline in the whole army. I have known this prisoner for some time, and watched him. This is not the first time that he and the Sergeant have insulted me. They are leaders in that class of uneducated fellows who have entirely too little respect for officers and gentlemen. They should be taught a lesson. This is necessary for the dignity and effectiveness of gentlemen who bear commissions, and—"

"I will ask the witness if this lecture on military ethics is a part of his testimony?" asked the Major:

"I think it is needed," answered the Lieutenant tartly.

"Let me see, Steigermeyer," said the Major, adjusting another chew of tobacco to his mouth, and balancing the knife with which he had cut it off, judicially in his fingers, a favorite position of his when, as a lawyer, he was putting a witness through a cross-examination. "How long have you been with this army? Came West with the Eleventh Corps, didn't you?"

"No; I was left behind on duty. I didn't come for several weeks after."

"So I thought. You weren't with us at Stone River, or Chickamauga, or Mission Ridge. You'd know more if you had been. Your mental horizon would have been enlarged, so to speak. Aren't you from Milwaukee?"

"I was born and brought up there, until I went to West Point," answered the Lieutenant, rather uneasily.

"So I thought. The only man of your name that I ever heard of kept a saloon in Milwaukee—a great place for politicians to hang around. I used to go there myself when I was in politics. He was a sort of a ward boss. Was he your father?"

"Yes, sir," said the Lieutenant, with reddening face; "but I don't know what this has to do with the case that I have presented to your attention."

"It has a great deal to do with this lecture with which you have favored us," answered the Major dryly. "But we'll not discuss that in open court. Are you through with the witness, Judge-Advocate? If so, call the next."

"I'll just ask the Captain a few questions for the defense," said Lieut. Bowersox. "How did you know that the prisoner was drunk?"

"How did I know it? How does any man know that another is drunk? He was boisterous, excited and yelling—that kind of a drunk."

"But that does not prove that he was drunk. That may be his way of doing his work. Did you see him drink?"

"No."

"Did you ever see him before?"

"Yes."

"How was he acting then?"

"I shall have to say that he was boisterous and yelling then, but not so wildly excited."

"Then it was only a difference in degree, not kind. Was he not accomplishing what he was ordered to do?"

"Yes, he certainly did bring that limber out of the gulch."

"Then it is only a matter of opinion that he was drunk. You have nothing to guide you except your judgment that the man was drunk, who was still doing his duty pretty effectively."

"But there could be no mistake. I know that the man was raging drunk."

"As I said before, that is a matter of opinion and judgment which I will discuss with the court later. Did the prisoner actually strike you?"

"I cannot say that he actually did, farther than snatch out of my hand the field-glasses."

"He didn't do it! You're lyin'! I yanked the glasses out of your hand. 'Twas me," shouted little Pete, from the oak leaves.

The members all looked up in astonishment.

"Sergeant," said the Major to the Sergeant of the Provost Guard, "fetch that little rascal down and buck-an-gag him, until I can decide what further punishment he deserves for eavesdropping, and interrupting the court."

"I don't care if you kill me," whimpered little Pete, as they tied his hands together, "if you'll only let Corp'l Elliott off. He wasn't to blame. It was me.

"You can go," said Lieut. Bowersox to the Lieutenant. "Sergeant, bring in Orderly-Sergeant Jacob Whitelaw."

In response to the Judge-Advocate's direct questionings the Orderly- Sergeant had to sorrowfully admit that he thought that Shorty was drunk, very drunk, and exceedingly noisy. But when Lieut. Bowersox changed to the defense, the Orderly-Sergeant testified with great alacrity that he had not seen Shorty take a drink, that he did not know where he could have got whisky; did not know where in all that part of Georgia there was a drop of liquor outside of the Surgeon's stores and the officers' canteens; that he wished he did know, for he'd like to have a drink himself; and that Shorty, when he was putting forth his greatest strength, was generally very vociferous and not at all careful of what he said. This was one of the peculiarities of the man, that he was overlooked on account of his great effectiveness on the men when in that state.

The other members of the company testified in the same way, giving their belief even more emphatically against any liquor being found anywhere in that neighborhood, and the unlikelihood of Shorty's being able to obtain any. The other members of the court had "caught on" very quickly to the tactics of the President and Judge-Advocate. All except Lieut. McJimsey, whose prepossessions were decidedly and manifestly in favor of the attitude of his brother staff officer. He grew stiffer and more dogged as the case proceeded, and frequently asked embarrassing questions. The Judge-Advocate announced that "the case was closed, and the court would be cleared for deliberation.

"Before you open, Judge-Advocate," said Maj. Truax significantly, "I want to say something, not as a member of this court, but something between gentlemen, and I want to say it before we begin our deliberations, in order that it shall not be considered as part of them, or influencing them. The lecture by that self-sufficient fellow on our duties makes me tired. I remember his father—he sold the meanest whisky to be found in Milwaukee. I want to say right here that no man who sells lager beer can sell whisky fit for gentlemen to drink. Beer corrupts his taste, mind and judgment. Old Steigermeyer had a good deal of political influence of a certain kind, and he bulldozed the Representative from his District into giving his son an appointment to West Point. Now this young upstart comes around and absolutely lectures us who have always been gentlemen, and our fathers before us, on gentlemanliness. It was hard for me to keep from saying something right before him about the quality of whisky his father used to sell. I can stand a good deal, but the idea of a ginmill keeper's son lording it over others and over enlisted men who came of much better stock than he does sticks in my craw. Now, whenever I find one of these whose father got his appointment as Steigermeyer's father did (and the old Major's eye wandered down to where Lieut. McJimsey's air of sternness had given way to visible unrest) I'm tempted to say unpleasant things. Now, Judge-Advocate, proceed."

"The evidence in this case," said Lieut. Bowersox, with the severity proper to a vindicator of justice, "shows that it was a very flagrant breach of the essentials of discipline, and deserves stern treatment. A man wearing the chevrons of a Corporal, has, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, behaved in the most unseemly manner, showed gross disobedience to his superior officer, reviled him with opprobrious epithets, threatened to strike him, and actually did strike him. On the other hand (and the Lieutenant's tone changed to that of counsel for the defense), we all of us know that the prisoner is an excellent soldier of long service, that his influence has always been for the best, and that he was promoted to Corporal as an exceptional compliment for his part in capturing a rebel flag at Chickamauga, where he was wounded and left for dead on the field. It is for you, gentlemen, to take all these facts into consideration, and determine how men of this stamp should be dealt with for the best interests of the service. The evidence against him is in many respects conflicting, and rests upon mere judgment, in which the best of us are liable to err. I will not detain you farther, gentlemen."

"You say this prisoner was promoted for capturing a rebel flag at Chickamauga?" asked Maj. Truax, who was perfectly aware of the fact, but wanted to emphasize it upon the others.

"Yes," said Lieut. Bowersox, only too glad of the opportunity. "I saw it all. Gallant a thing as was ever done. Simply magnificent. Thrills me to think about it. I tell you that fellow's a soldier all the way through.

"That was before this Stiegermeyer fellow and a lot of other fellows (and again his eyes wandered carelessly down toward Lieut. McJimsey) had even joined us. I remember him also bringing up ammunition to his regiment at Stone River. He is one of those fellows that you can send to the rear, and always be sure that he'll come back as fast as his feet can carry him. I don't want to influence any member of this court, but the evidence that we have heard don't go an inch toward convincing me that he was drunk, or struck at his superior officer. There was some mistake, always liable to excited men. Lieut. McJimsey, you are the junior officer present. It is your right to speak and vote first. Let us hear from you."

The Lieutenant seemed to have recovered his sternness, and his expression showed a determination to wreak exemplary punishment on the man who had so grievously offended one of his class.

"It is clear to me," he began in a hard, set tone, "that an example should be made. These low, brutal fellows—"

"When I lived in Chicago," broke in the Major, in a conversational tone, apparently forgetful that he had called upon the Lieutenant to speak, but fixing a very piercing blue eye upon him, "I used to mix up a good deal with the boys who hung around a saloon kept by a ward politician, an unscrupulous, noisy, driving fellow named—But excuse me. Lieutenant, I forgot for the moment that I had called upon you to speak."

The Lieutenant's face had undergone a remarkable change, and as he sank back in his seat, he said in a forced voice:

"In consideration solely of the previous excellent character of the prisoner, I vote not guilty on all the charges and specifications, but with a distinct warning to the man as to the future."

"So do I!" "So do I!" said the rest, one after another, so quickly that it was almost a chorus.

"Judge-Advocate," said Maj. Truax, "when the General approves this finding, and you communicate it to prisoner, whisper in his ear that if he ever strains us this way again I'll take it upon myself to break his fool neck. Let him look a little out."

"The next case I have is that of Serg't Josiah Klegg, implicated in the same affair," said Lieut. Bowersox.

"Since we have acquitted the principal, it would be foolish to try the accessory," said Maj. Truax. "Say the same thing to him. Now, let's get down to business. Bring in that man that skulked when the boys were going for that abatis. I want to make an example of him, for the good of the service."

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