XIX. A CLOSE CALL CORPORAL KLEGG HAS AN EXCITING ADVENTURE GUARDING A FORAGE TRAIN…

XIX. A CLOSE CALL CORPORAL KLEGG HAS AN EXCITING ADVENTURE GUARDING A FORAGE TRAIN

"COMPANY Q's bin detailed to go out 'n' help guard a forage train to- morrow," said the Orderly one evening at roll-call. "You fellers wants to all be up 'n' dressed bright 'n' early, with yer cartridge-boxes full 'n' a day's rations in yer haversacks. Be sure yer guns is in good order, fer likely's not we'll have a squirmish afore we git back."

The 200th Ind. had been lying in camp for two or three days, and the ambitious heroes who composed that regiment were getting tired of loafing about. Nothing chafed the raging patriotism of the new troops like a condition, however brief, of masterly inactivity. They refused to be comforted unless they were on the warpath all the time. Their ideal of a soldier's life was to take a rebel battery every morning before breakfast, storm a line of works to give them an appetite for dinner, and spend the afternoon charging with cold steel the serried columns of the foe and wading around through seas of gore.

So Corporal Klegg and Shorty and the rest of the boys betook themselves with alacrity to the work of preparation for the duties of the morrow. Members of the other companies watched the proceedings with jealous eye. They almost turned green with envy because they were not detailed for the expedition instead of Co. Q.

"Say, Si," remarked Shorty, thoughtfully, "hadn't we better write a letter home? Who knows but we'll be as dead as mackerels to-morrer night!"

"Fiddlesticks!" said Si. "What's the use o' havin' a funeral afore there's any corpse! We've bin through one fight 'n' didn't git hurt, 'n' I've made up my mind there's no use gittin' into a stew over a thing that may hap'n 'n' may not. Time 'nuff to fret 'bout it when it comes. I recolleck one thing I learned in Sunday-school—let's see, it was 'S'ficient unto the day is the evil thereof,' or suthin' like that. Strikes me that's a good passidge o' Scripter fer a soldier to keep pasted in his hat. I ain't goin' ter hang back fer fear a billit 'll hit me, nuther. If we're going to be killed we can't help it, so let's not fret our gizzards out!" And Si crammed a handful of hardtack into his haversack.

Si's cheery view of the case was not without its effect upon Shorty. Indeed, it cannot be denied that there was a great deal of common sense in his homely, good-natured philosophy. Sooner or later every soldier who did not "peter out" came gradually to adopt Si's idea as the governing principle of his military career.

"Shouldn't wonder if you was 'bout right, after all," said Shorty, as he sliced up some bacon to have it ready for an early breakfast. "You're better'n medicine, Si, to a feller w'at gits the blues sometimes!"

The preparations were soon made, and Co. Q went to bed early. In the morning the Orderly came around and stirred the boys up an hour before reveille, as they were ordered to be ready to start at daylight. The primary object of the expedition was forage for the animals, the supply of which had run short. Besides this, each man had a secondary purpose, and that was to gather in something on his own hook that would satisfy his longing for a change from the regulation diet. This was always the unwritten part of the order to "go out foraging." Daylight was just streaking over the camp when Co. Q, equipped in light marching order, leaving knapsacks behind, moved out to where the half dozen wagons detailed from the regimental transportation were ready for the start. Each regiment in the brigade furnished a company and the same number of wagons. The impatient mules were braying and flapping their ears, as if they understood that they were to be the chief beneficiaries of the raid.

"Pile in, boys!" said the Orderly, and they clambered into the wagons. The guards were permitted to ride until there were symptoms of danger.

Then the muleteers, bestriding the big "wheelers," cracked their long whips like pistol-snots, addressed to the mules the usual words of exhortation, and the long procession drew out upon the stony pike and took a brisk trot. Considerable foraging had already been done in the vicinity, and it was expected the train would have to go out several miles in order to fully accomplish its object. The boys were in fine spirits and enjoyed their morning ride, albeit the jolting of the wagons gave them a thorough shaking up.

"I guess they forgot to put any springs in when they built these wagons!" said Shorty, as he shifted his position so that he might catch the bumps in a new place for a while.

"Jest thinkin' that way myself," replied Si; "but all the same, it beats travelin' on the hoof all holler!"

Three or four miles out from camp the train was halted while the officers in command made inquiries of a cadaverous native who was sunning himself on the fence and whose principal occupation seemed to be chewing tobacco and distributing the resultant liquid around in a promiscuous way.

"Good morning, stranger," said the officer, "have you any corn on your place?"

"Haint got a dog-goned ear left!" was the surly answer. "Some o' you- unses men wuz out here yisterdy 'n' tuk every bit I hed."

This may or may not have been true. Inquiries of this nature always developed the fact that it was a man's neighbors who had plenty of corn; he never had any himself.

"There's ole man Scroggs," he continued; "he lives a matter of two miles from hyar. I 'low ye'll git sum if ye go thar. He growed a power o' cawn this yeah; he sold a heap, but I reckon he's got a right smart left."

During this time a couple of men had been making a hasty examination of the outbuildings on the place. They reported that they could find nothing in the way of forage. If the man had any corn he had carefully concealed it. The train started on to pay a visit to old man Scroggs.

"Say, old pard," asked Si as his wagon drove past, "is there any rebs 'round here?"

"There wuz a few Confedrit critter-men ridin' 'bout hyar this mawnin';—mebby ye'll run agin 'em 'afore night."

"How many o' your boys is among em?"

"We'uns is all Union."

"Jest as long as we're 'round, I s'pose!" said Si.

A mile further on those who were in the lead, rising to the crest of a hill, saw—or thought they saw a few vagrant cavalrymen far ahead. The train was halted and dispositions were made to meet any emergency likely to arise. The men were ordered to "tumble out" of the wagons. The main body was formed in advance. A line of skirmishers was deployed in front and flankers were thrown out on either side. Thus protected, the mule drivers again cracked their whips and the procession moved cautiously forward.

"Now keep yer eyes skinned," said Si to Shorty as they trailed along through the woods and fields and over fences, on one of the flanks. "If any of them raskils comes dodgin' 'round here let's try 'n' have the first crack at 'em 'n' git the bulge on the rest o' the boys!"

Keenly alert, with muskets loaded and capped, they crept carefully along, poking their noses into every thicket and peering around every building. It was clear that there would not be anything in the nature of a surprise if the whole line was as well taken care of as the particular point guarded by Corporal Klegg and his faithful friend Shorty.

"It's some like huntin' squirrels up in the woods of Posey County," said Si, as they forced their way through a patch of brambles.

"'Pears to be rayther more excitin' than huntin' squirrels," said Shorty. "Ye know squirrels doesn't shute back at a feller as them pesky rebbles does, an' the fun 's all on one side. I reckon ef squirrels c'd shute there wouldn't be so much huntin' of 'em!"

It was really a disappointment to Si that he found no opportunity to squint along the barrel of his musket in range of a foe. If any of his misguided fellow-citizens were in the neighborhood they considered discretion the better part of valor and kept out of harm's way.

In due time the Scroggs plantation was reached. A hasty examination showed that there was an abundance of corn on the place to load the wagons, and arrangements for a sudden transfer of the property were quickly made. A third of the force established a cordon of picket-posts around the marauding party, covering all the avenues of approach, with re serves at convenient points. The remainder of the troops stacked arms and entered briskly upon the work of confiscation.

An Assault on the Well-filled Corn Crib 191

Part of the harvest had already been gathered, and the first assault

was made on a well-filled cornhouse—one of a group of dilapidated out- buildings a little way from the dwelling. "Old man" Scroggs protested with profane vehemence, reinforced by the "old woman" and the entire family of children. We say "entire family," because there could not well have been a more numerous progeny in one household anywhere outside of Utah.

The head of the family cursed and swore, and his wife and the big girls looked as if they wanted to do the same thing, as they stood wringing their hands, their eyes flashing fire while the small-fry stood around and sobbed with a vague idea that some dire calamity had befallen them.

The old Kentuckian declared that he was a "Union man," and that he would demand of the Government full revenge for this outrage. It was noticed that there were no young men around as there should be according to the economy of nature, to preserve the balance of sex in so large a family. The officer in command asked him where all his sons were.

"Wall, I kaint tell yer 'zactly whar they is," was the reply. "They ain't to hum jest now. I 'low they've got a right to g'way ef they want ter."

The officer had been informed that there were several representatives of the Scroggs family in the rebel army. The old man's avowal of loyalty was taken for what it was worth. That it was not rated at a high figure was well attested by the appearance of the plantation a few hours later.

Meanwhile the soldiers kept right along in the duty assigned them. The corn-house was surrounded by wagons, the roof was gently lifted off, and in scarcely more time than it takes to tell the story six or eight of the wagons were heaped with the contents. The mules wagged their tails and brayed in anticipation of the picnic they would have when they got back to camp.

Then the force moved some distance and attacked a large field of standing corn. The stalks had been "topped," but the ears were yet ungathered. The men started in between the rows and swept through that field like a cyclone, plucking the ears right and left. Bags, baskets and boxes were pressed into the service, and as there were not enough of these to go' round many bore the corn to the wagons by armfuls. It did not take more than two or three hours to strip every ear from the field. A visitation of overgrown Kansas grasshoppers could not have done a more thorough job.

"Fo' de Lawd, boss," said an old darky who had been roosting on the fence watching the spoilers, "I nebber seed de crap gaddered so quick since I'se bawn. You'uns all is powerful smart, da't shuah!"

But where were Corporal Klegg and his comrade. Shorty, while all this was going on?

They had been stationed as sentinels near a house, half a mile beyond, on the pike. They were cautioned to keep a sharp lookout, and for a time they obeyed their instructions to the letter. Their vigilant eyes swept the surrounding country, and no rebel could have crept up on them without getting a pair of bullets from their ready muskets. They saw no signs of an enemy, and after a while it began to grow monotonous.

"Shorty," said Si, "I don't b'lieve there's any seceshers in these parts, an' there ain't any use'n us both keepin' this thing up. You jest watch out awhile 'n' I'll skin around 'n' see what I kin find."

Shorty agreed to this, taking it as an order from his superior officer. Si threw his gun up to a "right shoulder shift" and started off, after again urging upon his companion the importance of attending strictly to business.

Si had not gone far till he saw, penned in a corner of the barnyard, a cow with a full udder, from which a frisky young calf was busily engaged in pumping nourishment. A violent feeling of envy toward that calf began immediately to rage in the 'breast of Si. He had not had a draft of fresh milk since he had left home, and he felt that a little refreshment of that kind would be particularly gratifying to his interior organism. It would strengthen him and give him new courage to stand up to the rack if they should happen to get into a fight.

"I say. Shorty," he called, "cum 'ere a minnit, quick!"

Si's conscience smote him for calling Shorty from his duty and leaving the post unguarded, but the temptation was too strong for him to resist, and he yielded to the impulse to take the chances. Shorty came on the run, with eyes wide open, thinking his comrade had discovered some rebels hanging around.

"Look there!" said Si, pointing to the maternal scene that has been alluded to. "Let's have some o' that. We'll git over the fence 'n' you jest hold the calf while I milk our canteens full. 'Twont take more'n a jiffy!"

"We ort n't to leave the post, ort we?" suggested Shorty.

"Oh, there ain't no danger," Si replied; "an' besides, you can keep lookin' out while you're hangin' on to the calf. I was alters a good milker 'n' I'll fill up these canteens in a couple o' minnits." So they climbed over and leaned their muskets against the fence. Shorty seized the calf and held it with a firm grip, in spite of its struggling and bleating. The cow seemed disposed at first to resent the interference, but Si's persuasive "So, bossy" proved effectual in calming her fears, and she stood placidly chewing her cud while Si, spurred on by a guilty conscience, milked with all his might.

Shorty Held the Calf 195

The canteens were soon filled, and, with out stopping to drink. Si and Shorty hurried back to their post of duty. All was quiet, and no harm had resulted from their brief absence.

"I told ye 'twould be all right," said Si. "Now, we'll jest empty one o' these canteens—here, take a swig—'n' we'll carry the other to camp. It'll be jest bully to have milk in our coffee agin!"

Then they betook themselves to duty with redoubled vigilance, to atone for their derelictions. After watching for an hour without seeing anything, Si said he would take another little turn around the place.

Boldly advancing to the house, which was some distance in front of their post, he was met by a girl of about 18. She was rather pretty, but to Si's ardent imagination she was like a vision of surpassing loveliness. She greeted him pleasantly—for Si was a comely youth—and, if the truth must be told, he actually forgot for the moment all about his duty. When she said she would get him a good dinner, and invited him into the house to sit while she prepared it, he just went right along.

But his conscience began to thump so loudly that after a few minutes he told her he guessed he'd have to go, but would be delighted to return in an hour and partake of her hospitality.

"May I bring Shorty—he's my pard—'long with me?" he timidly asked.

"Certainly!" she replied, with a sweet smile; and Si went away, his nerves tingling with pleasant emotions to the very tips of his fingers.

"Shorty," he said, as he came up to "I've struck it this time. Over to that house there's the purtiest gal I ever see."

"Wha-a-a-a-t!" interjected Shorty, with a look of astonishment; for he knew something about Si and Annabel—the girl he left behind him—and he was both surprised and pained at Si's treasonable enthusiasm.

Si easily divined his thoughts, for something of the same nature had already caused his own heart to palpitate in a reproving way.

"Of—c-c-course—I d-d-don't—mean th-th-that. Shorty," he stammered "but she's a nice girl, anyhow, 'n' she's gittin' up a dinner fer me 'n' you. Bet ye it'll be a nice lay-out, too!"

Shorty did not feel quite at ease in his mind about leaving the post again, but Si assured him it would be all right. The peculiar circumstances of the case had sadly warped Si's judgment.

So they went to the house and were cordially greeted by their fair young hostess, who was flying around, putting the finishing touches to the meal she had prepared for them.

"Jiminy, don't that smell good?" said Si to Shorty in an undertone, as his sensitive nostrils caught the savory odors that arose from the nicely-spread board.

The young soldiers stood their guns on the floor in a corner of the room, preliminary to an assault on the edibles.

"Ugh!" exclaimed the young woman, with a coquettish shiver, "be them awful things loaded?"

"N—no!" said Si; "they won't hurt ye if ye don't touch 'em!"

Si was learning to fib a little, and he wanted to quiet the girl's fears.

The boys were soon seated at the table, bountifully supplied with ham, chicken, eggs, bread and butter, honey, and all the accessories of a well-ordered repast. They fell to with an eagerness that was, perhaps, justified by the long time that had elapsed since they had had a "square meal." Si thought that never in his life had anything tasted so good.

While they were thus engaged, without a thought of impending danger, the girl suddenly opened the door, leading to the dining room. A wild-eyed man—who proved to be her brother—in the uniform of a rebel soldier, dashed in, and, presenting a cocked revolver, demanded their unconditional and immediate surrender.

They were in a tight place. But Si proved equal to the sudden and appalling emergency. It flashed through his mind in an instant how the girl had "played it" on him. He made up his mind that he would rather be shot than be captured under such circumstances.

Si Sprang Upon Him 199

Si sprang up, and the rebel, true to his word, fired. Si dodged, and the ball only chipped a piece from his left ear. There was not time to get and use his gun. With the quickness of a cat Si sprang upon him, and with a blow of his fist laid him sprawling upon the floor. Disarming him, he placed the revolver at his head and triumphantly exclaimed:

"Now, gol durn ye, you're my prisoner. I'd like to blow the top o' yer head off fer spilin' my dinner, but I won't do it this time. But you jist git up 'n' come 'long with me!"

With his complete mastery of the situation, Si's confidence returned, and Shorty, who had been dazed and helpless at first, recovered himself and came to his assistance.

But at this instant their ears caught the sound of horses' hoofs galloping down the pike. Si's quick perception told him that is was a dash of rebel cavalrymen, and that a few moments later escape would be impossible.

"Grab yer gun an' git!" he said to Shorty, at the same time casting one ferocious glance at the terrified girl, who stood, white and speechless, contemplating the scene.

Si and Shorty dashed out of the house and started for the reserve, at the highest speed of which their legs were capable. On clattered the horses, and a few shots from the carbines of the swift-riding horsemen whistled through the air.

Six feet at a jump, with thumping hearts and bulging eyes, the fugitives almost flew over the ground, throwing quick glances at their pursuers, and then ahead, in the hope of catching a glimpse of succor.

'shorty if We--only Git--out O' This--' 203

"Shorty, if we only git out o' this—" but Si found he hadn't any wind to spare to finish the sentence. We must leave to the reader's imagination the good resolutions as to his future conduct that were forming in Si's mind at this critical juncture. He saw the awful consequences of yielding to the influence of that alluring young woman and her seductive dinner. What he had read about Adam and the trouble Eve got him into, in pretty much the same way, flashed before him. It was a good time to resolve that he wouldn't do so any more.

Shorty, long and lank, was swifter on his feet than Si. Hardtack and bacon had not yet reduced the latter's surplus flesh to a degree that enabled him to run well. Shorty kept ahead, but would not desert his comrade, slowing up for an instant now and then to give Si, who was straining to the utmost every nerve, and puffing like a locomotive on an upgrade, a chance to keep within supporting distance.

The soldiers of the reserve taking the alarm, came out at a double-quick and were fortunately able to cover the retreat of Si and Shorty. The half dozen cavalrymen, upon the appearance of so large a force, turned their horses and galloped away.

"Hello, Si," said the Orderly of Co. Q, "yer ear's bleedin'. What hurt ye?"

"Fell down and scratched it on a brier!" said Si, as soon as he was able to speak.

That night Si and Shorty sat on a log by the campfire talking over the events of the day.

"Don't ye never blow on this thing," said Si. "It'll be a cold day for us if they'd find it out."

"There ain't no danger o' my tellin'," replied Shorty. "But, say, ain't that a nice girl out there?"

"She's a mean rebel, that's what she is! But that was a smart trick o' her'n, wasn't it?"

"Come mighty near bein' too smart fer us!" replied Shorty. "I don't want no more such close shaves in mine. You 'member the story of the spider and the fly, don't ye? Well, she was the spider 'n' we was two poor little fool flies!"

"Shorty," said Si, "I'd a mighty sight ruther be an angel an' have the daisies a-bloomin' over my grave, than to have been tuk a prisoner in that house. But that dinner was good, anyhow—what we got of it!"

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XX. "THE SWEET SABBATH" HOW THE BLESSED DAY OF REST WAS SPENT IN THE ARMY

"TOMORROW'S Sunday, ye know," said the Orderly of Company Q one Saturday night at roll-call.

This was in the nature of news to the boys. But for the announcement very few of them would have known it. The Orderly was not distinguished for his piety, and it is not likely that the approach of Sunday would have occurred to him if the Sergeant-Major had not come around with orders from the Colonel for a proper observance of the day. The Colonel himself would not have thought of it either, if the Chaplain had not reminded him of it. Everybody wondered how even the Chaplain could keep track of the days well enough to know when Sunday came—but that was chiefly what he wore shoulder-straps and drew his salary for. It was the general impression that he either carried an almanac in his pocket, or else a stick in which he cut a notch every day with his jack-knife, and in that way managed to know when a new week began.

"There'll be guard-mountin' at 9 o'clock," continued the Orderly, "regimental inspection at 10, preachin' at 11, an' dress-parade at 5 in the evenin'. All of ye wants to tumble out right promptly at revellee an' git yer breakfast, an' then clean up yer guns an' put all yer traps in apple-pie order, 'cause the Colonel's goin' to look at 'em. He's got sharp eyes, an' I reck'n he'll be mighty pertickler. If there's anything that ain't jest right he'll see it quicker'n litenin'. Ye know we hain't had any inspections yet, an' the Cap'n wants us to be the boss company. So ye've got to scratch around lively in the mornin'."

"Say," said Corporal Klegg, after the company had broken ranks, "seems to me there wa'n't no use in the Orderly tellin' us to 'scratch around,' fer we're doin' that purty much all the time, now that the graybacks is gittin' in their work on us."

Shorty smiled faintly at what he seemed to consider a rather feeble joke, even for Si.

The 200th Ind. had now been in the field for many weeks, but it had been continually cantering about the country, and the Generals had kept it particularly active on Sundays. Probably this regiment did not manifest any more than the average degree of enthusiasm and fervor in religious matters, but there were many in its ranks who, at home, had always sat under Gospel ministrations, and to tramp on Sundays, the same as other days, was, at first, a rude shock to their moral sensibilities. These were yet keen, the edges had not been worn off and blunted and battered by the hard knocks of army life. True, they could scarcely tell when Sunday came, but they knew that they kept right along every day.

"Shorty," said Si, after they had curled up under the blanket for the night, "'pears to me it'll seem sort o' nice to keep Sunday agin. At the rate we've bin goin' on we'll all be heathens by the time we git home—if we ever do. Our Chaplain haint had no chance to preachify yet. The boys of Comp'ny X, w'at knows him, says he's a staver, 'n' I b'lieve it'll make us all feel better to have him talk to us once. 'Twont do us no harm, nohow, I'd like to be home to-morrer 'n' go to church with mother, 'n' sister Marier, 'n'—er—I mean the rest of the folks. Then I'd jest eat all the afternoon. I ain't goin' ter git homesick, Shorty; but a feller can't help feelin' a little streaked once 'n' a while. Mebbe it's a good idee fer 'em to keep us on the jump, fer then we don't git no chance to think 'bout it. I don't suppose I'm the only boy 'n the regiment that 'd be glad to git a jest fer to-morrer. I sh'd want ter be back bright 'n' arly to fall in Monday mornin', fer I'm goin' to stick to the 200th through thick 'n' thin, if I don't git knocked out. Say, Shorty, how d'ye feel, any way?"

But Shorty was already fast asleep. Si spooned up to him and was soon, in his dreams, away up in Posey County.

The sound of the bugle and drum, at daylight, fell upon unwilling ears, for the soldiers felt the same indisposition to get up early Sunday morning that is everywhere One of the characteristics of modern civilization. Their beds were hard, but to their weary limbs no couch of down ever gave more welcome rest than did the rough ground on which they lay. But the wild yell of the Orderly, "Turn out for roll-call!" with the thought of the penalties for non-obedience—which some of them had abundant reason to remember—quickly brought out the laggards.

Si and Shorty were, as usual, among the first to take their places in line. They were pleasantly greeted by the Captain, who had come out on the run at the last moment, and wriggled himself into his coat as he strode along the company street. The Captain did not very often appear at morning rollcall. But one officer of the company was required to be present, and the Captain generally loaded this duty upon the Lieutenants "turn about." If he did show up, he would go back to bed and snooze for an hour while the cook was getting breakfast. If one of the men did that he would soon be promenading with a rail on his shoulder or standing on a barrel with a stick or a bayonet tied in his mouth.

"I think that's a fust rate notion to mount the guards," said Si to Shorty as they sat on a rail by the fire making coffee and frying bacon. "It'll be so much better 'n walkin' back 'n' forrard on the beats. Wonder 'f they'll give us bosses or mules to ride."

"I'd like to know what put that idee into yer head," said Shorty.

"Whydn't the Ord'ly say last night there 'd be guard-mountin' at 9 o'clock this mornin'? I s'posed that fer a man to be mounted meant straddlin' a boss or s'mother kind of an animal."

"Ain't ye never goin' to larn nuthin'," said Shorty, with a laugh. "Guard-mountin' don't mean fer the men to git on hosses. It's only the name they gives it in the Army Reggelations. Dunno why they calls it that, 'nless it's 'cause the guards has to 'mount' anybody that tries to pass 'thout the countersign. But don't ye fool yerself with thinkin' yer goin' to get to ride. We'll keep pluggin' along afoot, on guard or anywhere else, same's we have all the time."

Thus rudely was shattered another of Si Klegg's bright illusions.

The whole regiment turned out to witness the ceremony of guard-mounting. It was the first time the exigencies of the campaign had permitted the 200th Ind. to do this in regular style. The Adjutant was the most important personage, and stood so straight that he narrowly escaped falling over backward. In order to guard against making a mess of it, he had spent half the night rehearsing the various commands in his tent. Thus prepared, he managed to get through it in very fair shape.

So Straight he Leaned Backward 211

The next thing on the program for the day was the inspection. The boys had been industriously engaged in cleaning up their muskets and accouterments, and putting their scanty wardrobes in presentable condition. In arranging his knapsack for the Colonel's eye, each man carefully laid a clean shirt, if he had one, on the top. The garments that were not clean he either stowed away in the tent or put at the bottom of the knapsack. In this he was actuated by the same principle that prompts the thrifty farmer to put the biggest apples and strawberries at the top of his measure.

The clothing of the regiment was already in an advanced stage of demoralization. It was of the "shoddy" sort that a good hard wind would almost blow to pieces.

Corporal Klegg was anxious that not only his person, but all his belongings, should make as good an appearance as possible. He put on the best and cleanest garments he had, and then betook himself to fixing his knapsack so it would pass muster.

"Them duds is a bad lot," he said to Shorty, casting rueful glances at the little heap of soiled and ragged clothes. "Purty hard to make a decent show with them things."

"Wait a minute," said Shorty, "an' I'll show ye a little trick."

Taking his poncho under His arm. Shorty went to the rear of the camp, where the mules were feeding, and presently returned with a bunch of hay.

"What ye goin' to do with that?" asked Si.

"You jest do 's I tell ye, and don't ask no questions. Cram some o' this hay into yer knapsack 'n' fill 'er up 'n' then put a shirt or suthin', the best ye kin find, on top, 'n' the Colonel 'll think she's full o' clothes right from the laundry. I'm goin' to fix mine that way."

"Shorty, you're a trump!" said Si, approvingly. "That 'll be a bully scheme."

It required but a few minutes to carry out the plan. The hay was stuffed into the knapsack, and all vagrant spears were carefully tucked in.

Then a garment, folded so as to conceal its worst features, was nicely spread over the hay, the flaps were closed and buckled, and the young Hoosiers were ready for inspection.

"S'posen the Colonel sh'd take a notion to go pokin' down into them knapsacks," said Si; "don't ye think it'd be purty cold weather for us?"

"P'r'aps it mout," answered Shorty; "but we've got ter take the chances. He's got seven or eight hundred knapsacks to 'nspect, 'n' I don't b'lieve he'll stick his nose down into very many on 'em!"

At the appointed time the battalion was formed and the inspection was gone through with in good style. The Colonel and the field and staff officers, escorted by the Captain of each successive company, moved gradually between the ranks, their swords dangling around and getting mixed up with their legs. The soldiers stood facing inward like so many wooden men, with their open knapsacks lying upon the ground at their feet. The Colonel looked sharply right and left, stopped now and then to commend a soldier whose "straps" were in particularly good condition, or to "go for" another whose slouchy appearance betokened untidy habits. If a button was missing, or a shoe untied, his eye was keen to detect it, and a word of reproof was administered to the delinquent.

As the Colonel started down the line of Company Q Si watched him out of the corners of his eyes with no little anxiety. His heart thumped as he saw him occasionally stoop and fumble over the contents of a knapsack, evidently to test the truth of Longfellow's declaration that "things are not what they seem." What if the Colonel should go down into the bowels of Si's knapsack! Si fairly shuddered at the thought.

Si, being the shortest of the Corporals, was at the foot of the company, while Shorty, on account of his hight, was well up toward the head. Si almost fainted when he saw the Colonel stop in front of his "pard" and make an examination of his fatlooking knapsack. Military official dignity gave way when the removal of the single garment exposed the stuffing of hay. The officers burst into a laugh at the unexpected revelation, while the boys on either side almost exploded in their enjoyment of Shorty's discomfiture.

Si Almost Fainted when the Colonel Stopped 215

"Captain," said the Colonel, with as much sternness as he could command, "as soon as your company is dismissed detail a guard to take charge of this man. Have him take the hay out of his knapsack and fill it with stones—and see that it is filled full. Have this man put it on and march him up and down the company street till church-call, and then take him to hear the Chaplain. He needs to be preached to. Perhaps, between the knapsack-drill and the Chaplain, we can straight him out."

Corporal Klegg heard all this, and he wished the ground might open and swallow him. "These stripes is gone this time, sure!" he said to himself, as he looked at the chevrons on his arm. "But there's no use givin' yourself away, Si. Brace up, 'n' mebbe the Colonel 'll skip ye."

Si had been badly shaken up by the Colonel's episode with Shorty, but by a great effort he gathered himself together and was at his best, externally, when the Colonel reached him, though his thoughts were in a raging condition. His face was clean and rosy, and his general make-up was as good as could be expected under the circumstances.

The Colonel had always remembered Si as the soldier he had promoted to be a Corporal for his gallantry in the little skirmish a few days before. As he came up he greeted the Corporal with a smile and a nod of recognition. He was evidently pleased at his tidy appearance. He cast a glance at the voluptuous knapsack, and Si's heart seemed to sink away down into his shoes.

But the fates smiled on Si that day. The Colonel turned to the Captain and told him that Corporal Klegg was the model soldier of Company Q. Si was the happiest man in the universe at that precise moment. It was not on account of the compliment the Colonel had paid him, but because his knapsack had escaped a critical inspection of its contents.

The inspection over, Company Q marched back to its quarters and was dismissed. Poor Shorty was soon tramping to and fro, under guard, humping his back to ease the load that had been put upon it. Si was very sorry for him, and at the same time felt a glow of pleasure at the thought that it was not his own knapsack instead of Shorty's that the Colonel had examined. He could not help feeling, too, that it was a great joke on Shorty to be caught in his own trap.

Shorty Was There--with a Guard 217

Shorty took his medicine like a man, marching up and down the row of tents bravely and patiently, unheeding the gibes and jeers of his hard- hearted comrades.

The bugle sounded the call for religious services. Shorty was not in a frame of mind that fitted him for devout worship. In fact, few in the regiment had greater need of the regenerating influence. He had never been inside of a church but two or three times in his life, and he really felt that to be compelled to go and listen to the Chaplain's sermon was the hardest part of the double punishment the Colonel had inflicted upon him.

The companies were all marched to a wooded knoll just outside the camp. Shorty went by himself, save the companionship of the guard, with fixed bayonet. He had been permitted to leave his knapsack behind. He was taken to a point near the Chaplain, that he might get the full benefit of the preacher's words.

Under the spreading trees, whose foliage was brilliant with the hues of Autumn, in the mellow sunshine of that October day the men seated themselves upon the ground to hear the Gospel preached. The Chaplain, in his best uniform, stood and prayed fervently for Divine guidance and protection and blessing, while the soldiers listened, with heads reverently bowed. Then he gave out the familiar Methodist hymn,

"Am I a soldier of the cross,"

and all joined in the old tune "Balerma," their voices swelling in mighty chorus. As they sang,

"Are there no foes for me to face?"

there came to the minds of many a practical application of the words, in view of the long and fruitless chase after the rebels in which they had been engaged for nearly a month.

The Chaplain had formerly been an old-fashioned Methodist circuit-rider in Indiana. He was full of fiery zeal, and portrayed the terrors of eternal punishment so vividly that His hearers could almost feel the heat of the flame and smell the fumes of brimstone that are popularly believed to roll out unceasingly from the mouth of the bottomless pit. It ought to have had a salutary effect upon Shorty, but it is greatly to be feared that he steeled his stubborn heart against all that the Chaplain said.

It was always difficult not to feel that there was something contradictory and anomalous about religious services in the army. Grim- visaged, hideous war, and all its attendant circumstances, seemed so utterly at variance with the principles of the Bible and the teachings of Him who was meek and lowly, that few soldiers had philosophy enough to reconcile them.

The soldiers spent the afternoon in reading what few stray books and fugitive, well-worn newspapers there were in camp, mending their clothes, sleeping, and some of them, we are pained to add, in playing eucher, old sledge, and other sinful games. Dress parade closed the day that had brought welcome rest to the way-worn soldiers of the 200th Ind..

"Shorty," said Si, after they had gone to bed that night, "I sh'd be mighty sorry if I'd ha' got up that knapsack trick this mornin', 'cause you got left on it so bad."

"There's a good many things," replied Shorty, "that's all right when ye don't git ketched. It worked tip top with you, Si, 'n' I'm glad of it. But I put ye up to it, 'n' I shouldn't never got over it if the Colonel had caught ye, on account of them stripes on yer arm. He'd ha' snatched 'em baldheaded, sure's yer born. You're my pard, 'n' I'm jest as proud of 'em as you be yerself. I'm only a privit,' 'n' they can't rejuce me any lower! Besides, I 'low it sarved me right 'n' I don't keer fer the knapsack drill, so I didn't git you into a scrape."

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XXI. SI AND SHORTY WERE RAPIDLY LEARNING THE GREAT MILITARY TRUTH

THAT IN THE ARMY THE MOST LIKELY THING TO HAPPEN IS SOMETHING ENTIRELY UNLIKELY.

COL. TERRENCE P. McTARNAGHAN, as his name would indicate, had first opened his eyes where the blue heavens bend over the evergreen sod of Ireland. Naturally, therefore, he thought himself a born soldier, and this conviction had been confirmed by a year's service as Second Lieutenant of Volunteers in the Mexican War, and subsequent connection with the Indiana Militia. Being an Irishman, when he went in for anything, and especially soldiering, he went in with all his might. He had associated with Regular Army officers whenever there was an opportunity, and he looked up to them with the reverence and emulation that an amateur gives to a professional. Naturally he shared their idea that an inspection and parade was the summit of military art. Consequently, the main thing to make the 200th Ind. the regiment it should be were frequent and rigid inspections.

Fine weather, two days of idleness, and the prospect that the regiment would remain there some time watching the crossing of the Cumberland were enough and more than enough to set the Colonel going. The Adjutant published the following order:

Headquarters 200th Indiana, In the Field, on the Cumberland,

Nov. 25, 1862.

I. The Regiment will be paraded for inspection tomorrow afternoon at 4 o'clock.

II. Captains will be expected to parade the full strength of their companies.

III. A half hour before the parade. Captains will form their companies in the company streets and inspect every man.

IV. The men will be required to have their clothes neatly brushed, blouses buttoned up, clean underclothes, shoes blacked, letters and numbers polished, and arms and accouterments in best condition. They will wear white gloves.

V. The man who has his clothes, arms and accouterments in the best order will be selected for the Colonel's Orderly.

By command of

Attest: COL. TERRENCE P. McTARNAGHAN, Colonel.

B. B. LAUGHLIN, Adjutant.

When Capt. McGillicuddy marched Co. Q back to its street, he called attention to the order with a few terse admonitions as to what it meant to every one.

"Get at this as soon as you break ranks, boys," urged the Captain. "You can do a whole lot between now and tattoo. The others will, and you must not let them get ahead of you. No straw in knapsacks this time."

Company spirit was high, and it would be little short of a calamity to have Co. Q beaten in anything.

There was a rush to the Sutler for white gloves, blacking, needles, thread, paper collars, sweet oil and rotten stone for the guns.

That genial bird of prey added 50 per cent to his prices, because it was the first business he had done for some weeks; 50 per cent more for keeping open in the evening, another 50 per cent for giving credit till pay day, and still another for good will.

The Government had just offered some very tempting gold-interest bonds, of which he wanted a swad.

"'Tain't right to let them green boys have their hull $13 a month to waste in foolishness," he said. "Some good man should gather it up and make a right use of it."

Like Indiana farmer boys of his class. Si Klegg was cleanly but not neat. Thanks to his mother and sisters, his Sunday clothes were always "respectable," and he put on a few extra touches when he expected to meet Annabel. He took his first bath for the year in the Wabash a week or two after the suckers began to run, and his last just before the water got so cold as to make the fish bite freely.

Such a thing as a "dandy" was particularly distasteful to him.

"Shorty," said Si, as he watched some of the boys laboring with sandpaper, rotten stone and oil to make the gunbarrels shine like silver, "what's the cense o' bein' so partickler about the outside of a gun? The business part's inside. Making them screw heads look like beads don't make it no surer of gitting Mr. Butternut."

"Trouble about you folks on the Wabash," answered Shorty, as he twisted a screw head against some emery paper, "is that you don't pay enough attention to style. Style goes a long ways in this vain and wicked world," (and his eyes became as if meditating on worlds he had known which were not so vain and wicked), "and when I see them Kokomo persimmon knockers of Co. B hustling to put on frills, I'm going to beat 'em if I don't lay up a cent."

"Same here," said Si, falling to work on his gunbarrel. "Just as' nice people moved into Posey County as squatted in Kokomo. Gang o' hoss thieves first settled Howard County."

"Recollect that big two fister from Kokomo who said he'd knock your head off if you ever throwed that up to him again?" grinned Shorty. "You invited him to try it on, an' he said your stripes stopped him. You pulled off your blouse, and you said you had no stripes on your shirt sleeves. But I wouldn't say it again until those Co. B fellers try again to buck us out of our place in the ration line. It's too good a slam to waste."

Tattoo sounded before they had finished their guns and accouterments. These were laid aside to be completed in the full light of day.

The next morning work was resumed with industry stimulated by reports of the unusual things being done by the other companies.

"This Tennessee mud sticks closer'n a $500 mortgage to a 40-acre tract," sighed Si, as he stopped beating and brushing his blouse and pantaloons.

"Or, "'Aunt Jemima's plaster, "The more you try to pull it off the more it sticks the faster."

hummed Shorty, with what breath he had left from his violent exercise.

So well did they work that by dinner time they felt ready for inspection, careful reconnoissances of the other companies showing them to have no advantages.

Next to the Sutler's for the prescribed white gloves.

Si' had never worn anything on his hands but warm, woolen mittens knit for him by his mother, but the order said white gloves, and gloves they must have. The accommodating sutler made another stoppage in their month's pay of $1 for a pair of cheap, white cotton gloves. By this time the sutler had accumulated enough from the 200th Ind. to secure quite a handful of gold interest-bearing bonds.

"Well, what do you think of them. Si?" said Shorty, as he worked his generous hands into a pair of the largest sized gloves and held them up to view.

"If they were only painted yaller and had a label on them," said Si, "they could be issued for Cincinnati canvas covered hams."

Shorty's retort was checked by hearing the bugle sound the officers' call. The Colonel announced to them that owing to the threatening look of the skies the parade and inspection would take place in an hour.

There was feverish haste to finish undone things, but when Capt. McGillicuddy looked over his men in the company street, he declared himself proud to stack up Co. Q against any other in the regiment. Gun barrels and bayonets shone like silver, rammers rang clear, and came out without a stain to the Captain's white gloves.

The band on the parade ground struck up the rollicking

"O, ain't I glad to git out of the wilderness, Out of the wilderness-Out of the wilderness,"

and Capt. McGillicuddy marched proudly out at the head of 75 broad- shouldered, well-thewed young Indianians, fit and fine as any south of the Ohio.

The guides, holding their muskets butts up, indicated where the line was to form, the trim little Adjutant, glorious as the day in a new uniform and full breasted as a pouter-pigeon, was strutting over toward the band, and the towering red-headed Colonel, martial from his waving plume to his jangling spurs, stood before his tent in massive dignity, waiting for the color company to come up and receive the precious regimental standard.

This scene of orderly pomp and pageantry was rudely disturbed by an Aid dashing in on a sweating horse, and calling out to the statuesque commander:

"Colonel, a train is stalled in the creek about three miles from here, and is threatened with capture by Morgan's cavalry. The General presents his compliments, and directs that you take your regiment on the double- quick to the assistance of the train. You v'e not a moment lose."

"Tare and 'ounds!" swore the Colonel in the classic he used when excited, "am I niver to have a dacint inspection? Orderly, bring me me harse. Stop that band's ijiotic blatting. Get into line there, quick as love will let you, you unblessed Indiana spalpeans. Without doubling; right face! Forward, M-a-r-c-h!"

Col. McTarnaghan, still wearing his parade grandeur, was soon at the head of the column, on that long-striding horse which always set such a hot pace for the regiment; especially over such a rough, gullied road as they were now traveling.

Still, the progress was not fast enough to suit the impatient Colonel, who had an eye to the report he would have to make to the Brigadier General, who was a Regular.

"Capt. McGillicuddy," commanded he, turning in his saddle, "send forward a Corporal and five men for an advance guard."

"Corporal Klegg, take five men and go to the front," commanded the Captain.

"Now you b'yes, get ahead as fast as you can. Get a move on them durty spalpanes of tamesters. We must get back to camp before this storm strikes us. Shove out, now, as if the divil or Jahn Morgan was after yez."

It was awful double-quicking over that rocky, rutty road, but taking Shorty and four others. Si went on the keen jump to arrive hot and breathless on the banks of the creek. There he found a large bearded man wearing an officer's slouched hat sitting on a log, smoking a black pipe, and gazing calmly on the ruck of wagons piled up behind one stalled in the creek, which all the mules they could hitch to it had failed to pull out.

It was the Wagon Master, and his calmness was that of exhaustion. He had yelled and sworn himself dry, and was collecting another fund of abuse to spout at men and animals.

"Here, why don't you git a move on them wagons?" said Si hotly, for he was angered at the man's apparent indifference.

"'Tend to your own business and I'll tend to mine," said the Wagon Master, sullenly, without removing his pipe or looking at Si.

"Look here, I'm a Corporal, commanding the advance guard," said Si. "I order you!"

This seemed to open the fountains of the man's soul.

"You order me?" he yelled, "you splay-footed, knock-kneed, chuckled- headed paper-collared, whitegloved sprat from a milk-sick prairie. Corporal! I outrank all the Corporals from here to Christmas of next year."

"The gentleman seems to have something on his mind," grinned Shorty. "Mebbe his dinner didn't set well."

"Shorty?" inquired Si, "how does a Wagon Master rank? Seems to me nobody lower'n a Brigadier-General should dare talk to me that way."

"Dunno," answered Shorty, doubtfully. "Seems as if I'd heard some of them Wagon Masters rank as Kurnels. He swears like one."

"Corporal!" shouted the Wagon Master with infinite scorn. "Measly $2-a- month water toter for the camp-guard, order me!" and he went off into a rolling stream of choice "army language."

"He must certainly be a Kurnel," said Shorty.

"Here," continued the Wagon Master, "if you don't want them two shoat- brands jerked offen you, jump in and get them wagons acrost. That's what you were sent to do. Hump yourself, if you know what's good for you. I've done all I can. Now it's your turn."

Dazed and awed by the man's authoritativeness the boys ran down to the water to see what was the trouble.

They found the usual difficulty in Southern crossings. The stupid tinkerers with the road had sought to prevent it running down into the stream by laying a log at the edge of the water. This was an enormous one two feet in diameter, with a chuckhole before it, formed by the efforts of the teams to mount the log. The heavily laden ammunition wagon had its hub below the top of the log, whence no amount of mule- power could extricate it.

Si, with Indiana commonsense, saw that the only help was to push the wagon back and lay a pile of poles to make a gradual ascent. He and the rest laid their carefully polished muskets on dry leaves at the side, pulled off their white gloves, and sending two men to hunt thru the wagons for axes to cut the poles. Si and Shorty roused up the stupid teamsters to unhitch the mules and get them behind the wagon to pull it back. Alas for their carefully brushed pantaloons and well-blackened shoes, which did not last a minute in the splashing mud.

The Wagon Master had in the meanwhile laid in a fresh supply of epithets and had a fresh batch to swear at. He stood up on the bank and yelled profane injunctions at the soldiers like a Mississippi River Mate at a boat landing. They would not work fast enough for him, nor do the right thing.

The storm at last burst. November storms in Tennessee are like the charge of a pack of wolves upon a herd of buffalo. There are wild, furious rushes, alternating with calmer intervals. The rain came down for a few minutes as if it would beat the face off the earth, and the stream swelled into a muddy torrent. Si's paper collar and cuffs at once became pulpy paste, and his boiled shirt a clammy rag. In spite of this his temper rose to the boiling point as he struggled thru the sweeping rush of muddy water to get the other wagons out of the road and the ammunition wagon pulled back a little ways to allow the poles to be piled in front of it.

The dashing downpour did not check the Wagon Master's flow of profanity. He only yelled the louder to make himself heard above the roar. The rain stopped for a few minutes as suddenly as it had begun and Col. McTarnaghan came up with all his parade finery drenched and dripping like the feathers of a prize rooster in a rainy barnyard. His Irish temper was at the steaming point, and he was in search of something to vent it on.

"You blab-mouthed son of a thief," he shouted at the Wagon Master, "what are you ordering my men around for? They are sent here to order you, not you to order them. Shut that ugly potato trap of yours and get down to work, or I'll wear my saber out on you. Get down there and put your own shoulders to the wheels, you misbegotten villain. Get down there into the water, I tell you. Corporal, see that he does his juty!"

The Wagon Master slunk down the hill, where Shorty grabbed him by the collar and yanked him over to help push one of the wagons back. The other boys had meanwhile found axes, cut down and trimmed up some pine poles and were piling them into the chuckhole under Si's practical guidance. A double team was put on the ammunition wagon, and the rest of Co. Q came up wet, mad and panting. A rope was found and stretched ahead of the mules, on which the company lined itself, the Colonel took his place on the bank and gave the word, and with a mighty effort the wagon was dragged up the hill. Some other heavily loaded ammunition wagons followed. The whole regiment was now up, and the bigger part of it lined on the rope so that these wagons came up more easily, even tho the rain resumed its wicked pounding upon the clay soil.

Wading around thru the whirling water. Si had discovered, to his discomfiture, that there was a narrow, crooked reef that had to be kept to. There were deep overturning holes on either side. Into one of these Si had gone, to come again floundering and spurting muddy water from his mouth.

Shorty noted the place and took the first opportunity to crowd the Wagon Master into it.

A wagon loaded with crackers and pork missed the reef and went over hopelessly on its side, to the rage of Col. McTamaghan.

"Lave it there; lave it there, ye blithering numbskulls," he yelled, "Unhitch those mules and get 'em out. The pork and wagon we can get when the water goes down. If another wagon goes over Oi'll rejuce it every mother's son of yez, and tie yez up by the thumbs besides."

Si and Shorty waded around to unhitch the struggling mules, and then, taking poles in hand to steady themselves, took their stations in the stream where they could head the mules right.

Thru the beating storm and the growing darkness, the wagons were, one by one, laboriously worked over until, as midnight approached, only three or four remained on the other side. Chilled to the bone, and almost dropping with fatigue from hours of standing in the deep water running like a mill race. Si called Al Klapp, Sib Ball and Jesse Langley to take their poles and act as guides.

Al Klapp had it in for the sutlers. He was a worm that was ready to turn. He had seen some previous service, and had never gone to the Paymaster's table but to see the most of his $13 a month swept away by the sutler's remorseless hand. He and Jesse got the remaining army wagons over all right. The last wagon was a four-horse team belonging to a sutler.

The fire of long-watched-for vengeance gleamed in Al's eye as he made out its character in the dim light. It reached the center of the stream, when over it went in the rushing current of muddy water.

Al and Jesse busied themselves unhooking the struggling mules.

The Colonel raged. "Lave it there! Lave it there!" he yelled after exhausting his plentiful stock of Irish expletives. "But we must lave a guard with it. Capt. Sidney Hyde, your company has been doing less than any other. Detail a Sergeant and 10 men to stand guard here until tomorrow, and put them two thick-headed oudmahouns in the creek on guard with them. Make them stand double tricks.

"All right. It was worth it," said Al Klapp, as the Sergeant put him on post, with the water running in rivulets from his clothes. "It'll take a whole lot of skinning for the sutlers to get even for the dose I've given one of them."

"B'yes, yoi've done just splendid," said the Colonel, coming over to where Si and Shorty were sitting wringing the water and mud from their pantaloons and blouses. "You're hayroes, both of yez. Take a wee drap from my canteen. It'll kape yez from catching cold."

"No, thankee, Kurnel," said Si, blushing with delight, and forgetting his fatigue and discomfort, in this condescension and praise from his commanding officer. "I'm a Good Templar."

"Sinsible b'y," said the Colonel approvingly, and handing his canteen to Shorty.

"I'm mightily afraid of catching cold," said Shorty, reaching eagerly for the canteen, and modestly turning his back on the Colonel that he might not see how deep his draft.

"Should think you were," mused the Colonel, hefting the lightened vessel. "Bugler, sound the assembly and let's get back to camp."

The next day the number of rusty muskets, dilapidated accouterments and quantity of soiled clothes in the camp of the 200th Ind. was only equaled by the number of unutterably weary and disgusted boys.

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XXII. A NIGHT OF SONG HOME-SICKNESS AND ITS OUTPOURING IN MUSIC

IT WAS Sunday again, and the 200th Ind. still lingered near Nashville. For some inscrutible reason known only to the commanding officers the brigade had been for nearly a week in camp on the banks of the swift running Cumberland. They had been bright, sunshiny days, the last two of them. Much rain in the hill country had swollen the swift waters of the Cumberland and they fiercely clamored their devious way to the broad Ohio. The gentle roar as the rippling wavelets dashed against the rock bound shores sounded almost surf-life, but to Si, who had never heard the salt waves play hide-and-go-seek on the pebbly beach, the Cumberland's angry flood sang only songs of home on the Wabash. He had seen the Wabash raging in flood time and had helped to yank many a head of stock from its engulfing fury. He had seen the Ohio, too, when she ran bank full with her arched center carrying the Spring floods and hundreds of acres of good soil down to the continent-dividing Mississippi, and on out to sea. His strong arms and stout muscles had piloted many a boat-load of boys and girls through the Wabash eddies and rapids during the Spring rise, and as he stood now, looking over the vast width of this dreary waste of waters, a great wave of home-sickness swept over him.

After all, Si was only a kid of a boy, like thousands of his comrades.' True, he was past his majority a few months, but his environment from youth to his enlistment had so sheltered him that he was a boy at heart.

"The like precurse of fierce events and prologue to the omen coming on" had as yet made small impression upon him. Grim visaged war had not frightened him much up to that time. He was to get his regenerating baptism of blood at Murfreesboro a few weeks later. Just now Si Klegg was simply a boy grown big, a little over fat, fond of mother's cooking, mother's nice clean feather beds, mother's mothering, if the truth must be told. He had never in his life before been three nights from under the roof of the comfortable old house in which he was born. He had now been wearing the blue uniform of the Union a little more than three months, and had not felt mother's work-hardened hands smoothing his rebellious hair or seen her face or heard a prayer like she could make in all that three months.

"Shucks!" he said fretfully to himself as he looked back at the droning, half asleep brigade camp, and then off to the north, across the boiling yellow flood of waters that tumbled past the rocks far below him.

"A feller sure does git tired of doin' nothin'."

Lusty, young, and bred to an active life, Si, while he did not really crave hustle and bustle, was yet wedded to "keeping things moving." He had already forgotten the fierce suffering of his early marching—it seemed three years to him instead of three months back; he had forgotten the graybacks, the wet nights, the foraging expeditions, the extra guard duty and all that. There had been two days of soft Autumn sunshine in a camp that was almost ideal. Everything was cleaned up, mended up, and the men had washed and barbered themselves into almost dude-like neatness. Their heaviest duties had been lazy camp guard duty, which Shorty, growing indolent, had declared to be "dumned foolishness," and the only excitement offered came from returning foraging parties. There was no lurking enemy to fear, for the country had been cleared of guerrillas, and in very truth the ease and quietness of the days of inactivity was almost demoralizing the men.

There had been no Sunday services. The 200th Ind. was sprawled out on the ground in its several hundred attitudes of ease, and those with whom they were brigaded were just as carelessly disposed.

As Si sauntered aimlessly back to look for Shorty, the early twilight began to close in as the sun slid down behind the distant hills. Campfires began to glow as belated foragers prepared their suppers, and the gentle hum of voices came pleasantly to the ear, punctuated by laughter, often boisterous, but quite as often just the babbling, cheery laugh of carefree boys.

Si felt—well, Si was just plain homesick for mother and the girls, and one particular girl, whose front name was Annabel, and he almost felt as though he didn't care who knew it.

The air was redolent with the odor of frying meat. Mingled with this were vagrant whiffs of cooking potatoes, onions, chickens, and the fragrance of coffee steaming to blackest strength, all telling tales of skillful and successful foraging, and it all reminded Si of home and the odors in his mother's kitchen.

Si couldn't find Shorty, so he hunched down, silent and alone, beside his tent, a prey to the blue devils. It would soon be Christmas at home. He could see the great apple bins in the cellar; the pumpkins in the hay in the barn; the turkeys roosting above the woodshed; the yards of encased sausages in the attic; he could even smell the mince meat seasoning in the great stone jar; the honey in the bee cellar; the huge fruit cake in the milk pan in the pantry; since he could remember he seen and smelled all these, with 57 varieties of preserves, "jells," marmalades, and fruit-butters thrown in for good measure at Christmas time. He had even contemplated with equanimity all these 21 Christmases, the dose of "blue pills" that inevitably followed over-feeding at Mother Klegg's, and now on his 22d Christmas he might be providing a target for a rebel bullet.

Suddenly Si noticed that the dark had come; the fragrance of tobacco from hundreds of pipes was filling the air, and from away off in the distance the almost Indian Summer zephyrs were bringing soft rythmic sounds like—surely—yes, he caught it now, it was that mighty soother of tired hearts—

"Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly. While the billows near me roll. While the tempest still is high."

Si shut his eyes lest the tear drops welling suddenly up fall on his uniform, not stopping to think that in the gloom they could not be seen.

Miles away the singers seemed to be when Si caught the first sounds, but as the long, swinging notes reached out in the darkness, squad after squad, company after company, regiment after regiment took up the grand old hymn until Si himself lifted up his not untuneful voice and with the thousands of others was pleading—

"Hide me, oh, my Savior hide, 'Till the storm of life is past; Safe into the haven guide. Oh, receive my soul at last."

and the song rose and swelled out and up toward heaven, and stole away off to the horizon till the whole vast universe seemed filled with the sacred melody. As the last words and their music faded out in space. Shorty lunged down beside Si.

"Say, Pard," he began banteringly, "you've missed yer callin'. Op'ry oughter have been yer trade."

"Oh, chop off yer chin music for a minute. Shorty," broke in Si. "In the dark here it seemed most as though I was at home in the little old church with Maria and Annabel and Pap and Mother, and us all singing together, and you've busted it—ah! listen!"

From not far away a bugler had tuned up and through the fragrant night came piercingly sweet—

"I will sing you a song of that beautiful land—"

Then near at hand a strong, clear, musical tenor voice took up the second line,

"The far away home of the soul,"

and almost instantly a deep, resonant bass voice boomed in—

"Where no storms ever beat on that glittering strand While the years of eternity roll,"

and soon a hundred voices were making melody of the spheres as they sang Philip Phillips's beautiful song.

"That was Wilse Hornbeck singin' tenor," said Si, as the song ended.

"And it was Hen Withers doin' the bass stunt," returned Shorty.

"You just oughter hear him do the ornamental on a mule whacker. Why, Si, he's an artist at cussing. Hen Withers is. Sodom and Gomorrah would git jealous of him if he planted himself near 'em, he's that wicked."

"Well, he can sing all right," grunted Si.

Just then Hen Withers, in the squad some 50 feet away broke into song again—

"Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light"

It welled up from his throat like the pipe from a church organ, and as mellow as the strains from a French horn. When the refrain rolled out fully 3,000 men were singing, yelling and shouting in frenzied fervor—

"And the Star Spangled banner. In triumph shall wave, O'er the land of the free, And the home of the brave."

While Hen Withers rested on his well-earned laurels, a strong, clear voice, whose owner was probably thinking of home and the shady gloom of the walk through the grove to singing school with his sweetheart, trilled an apostrophe to the queen of light.

"Roll on, silvery moon, Guide the traveler on his way,"

but he had it pretty much to himself, for not many knew the words, and he trailed off into

"I loved a little beauty, Bell Brandon,"

then his music died out in the night.

It was now the "tenore robusto" who chimed in bells, on a new battle song that held a mile square of camp spellbound:

"Oh, wrap the flag around me, boys,

To die were far more sweet With freedom's starry emblem, boys.

To be my winding sheet. In life I loved to see it wave

And follow where it led, And now my eyes grow dim, my hands

Would clasp its last bright shred. Oh, I had thought to meet you, boys,

On many a well-worn field When to our starry emblem, boys,

The trait'rous foe should yield. But now, alas, I am denied

My dearest earthly prayer, You'll follow and you'll meet the foe,

But I shall not be there."

Wilse Hornback knew by the hush of the camp as the sound of his wonderful voice died on the far horizon that he had his laurels, too, and so he sang on while the mile square of camp went music-mad again as it sang with him—

"We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before, Shouting the battle cry of freedom. And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more. Shouting the battle cry of freedom."

Chorus:

"The Union forever! Hurrah, boys. Hurrah; Down with the traitor and up with the Star, While we rally 'round the Flag, boys, We'll rally once again, Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true and brave. Shouting the battle cry of freedom, And although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave. Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

So we're springing to the call from the East and from the West, Shouting the battle cry of freedom, And we'll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best, Shouting the battle cry of freedom."

In the almighty hush that followed the billows of sound, some sweet- voiced fellow started Annie Laurie, and then sang—

"In the prison cell I sit"

with grand chorus accompaniment. Then Wilse Hornback started and Hen Withers joined in singing the Battle Hymn—

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,"

and oh, God of Battles! how that army of voices took up the refrain—

"Glory, glory, hallelujah,"

and tossed and flung it back and forth from hill to hill and shore to shore till it seemed as though Lee and his cohorts must have heard and quailed before the fearful prophecy and arraignment.

Then the "tenore robusto" and the "basso profundo" opened a regular concert program, more or less sprinkled with magnificent chorus: singing, as it was easy or difficult for the men to recall the words. You must rummage in the closets of memory for most of them! The Old Oaken Bucket; Nellie Gray; Anna Lisle; No, Ne'er Can Thy Home be Mine; Tramp, Tramp, Tramp; We are Coming, Father Abraham; Just as I Am; By Cold Siloam's Shady Rill—how those home-loving Sunday school young boys did sing that! It seemed incongruous, but every now and then they dropped into these old hymn tunes, which many a mother had sung her baby to sleep with in those elder and better days.

The war songs are all frazzled and torn fragments of memory now, covered with dust and oblivion, but they were great songs in and for their day. No other country ever had so many.

Laughter and badinage had long since ceased. Flat on their backs, gazing up at the stars through the pine and hemlock boughs, the boys lay quietly smoking while the "tenore robusto" assisted by the "basso profundo" and hundreds of others sang "Willie, We Have Missed You," "Just Before the Battle, Mother," "Brave Boys Are They," and the "Vacant Chair."

In a little break in the singing. Hen Withers sang a wonderful song, now almost forgotten. It was new to the boys then, but the bugler had heard it, and as Hen's magnificent voice rolled forth its fervid words the bugle caught up the high note theme, and never did the stars sing together more entrancingly than did the "wicked mule whacker" and that bugle—

"Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen. Fling to the winds your needless fears. He who unfurled our beauteous banner Says it shall wave a thousand years."

On the glorious chorus a thousand voices took up the refrain in droning fashion that made one think of "The Sound of the Great Amen."

"A thousand years, my own Columbia! Tis the glad day so long foretold! 'Tis the glad mom whose early twilight Washington saw in times of old."

By the time Hen had sung all of the seven verses the whole brigade knew the refrain and roared it forth as a defiance to the Southern Confederacy, which took on physical vigor in the days that came after, when the 200th Ind. went into battle to come off victorious on many a fiercely contested field.

Then the tenor sang that doleful, woe begone, hope effacing, heart- string-cracking "Lorena." Some writer has said that it sung the heart right out of the Southern Confederacy.

"The sun's low down the sky, Lorena, The snow is on the grass again."

As Wilse Hornbeck let his splendid voice out on the mournful cadences, Si felt his very heart strings snap, and even Shorty drew his breath hard, while some of the men simply rolled over, and burying their faces in their arms, sobbed audibly.

Wilse had not counted on losing his own nerve, but found his voice breaking on the melancholy last lines, and bounding to his feet with a petulant,

"Oh, hang it!"

"Say, darkies, hab you seen de Massa"

came dancing up from the jubilating chords of that wonderful human music box, and soon the camp was reeling giddily with the jolly, rollicking,

"Or Massa ran, ha! ha!! The darkies stay, ho! ho!!"

Then, far in the distance a bugle sounded "lights out," and the songfest was at an end; as bugler after bugler took it up, one by one the campfires bAlinked out, and squad after squad sank into quiet.

"I feel a heap better somehow," remarked Si, as he crawled under his blanket.

"Dogged if I hain't had a sort of uplift, too," muttered Shorty, as he wrapped his blanket round his head. In the distance a tenor voice was singing as he kicked out his fire and got ready for bed—

"Glory, glory, hallelujah."

SI KLEGG THRU THE STONE RIVER CAMPAIGN AND IN WINTER QUARTERS AT MURFREESBORO.

By John McElroy

Book Two

Published By The National Tribune Co., Washington, D. C. Second Edition Copyright 1910

THE SIX VOLUMES SI KLEGG, Book I, Transformation From a Raw Recruit SI KLEGG, Book II, Through the Stone River Campaign SI KLEGG, Book III, Meets Mr. Rosenbaum, the Spy SI KLEGG, Book IV, On The Great Tullahoma Campaign SI KLEGG, Book V, Deacon's Adventures At Chattanooga SI KLEGG, Book VI, Enter On The Atlanta Campaign

Si Sat Down Hard 20 frontispiecee (114K)

titlepage (70K)

CONTENTS

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Preface

SI KLEGG

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XXII. TRYING TO EDUCATE ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Aid Spatters Mud on si 18

Si Sat Down Hard 20

Stop Beatin' Them Mules' 22

Frozen in the Mud 29

What Do You See, Shorty?' 33

Si Reports to the Colonel 38

Preparing Supper 40

After the Mules Stampeded 44

The Adjutant Smiled on si and Shorty 49

The Prisoners 50

A Close Shave 62

Groundhog Fled 64

Earning Thirteen Dollars a Month 57

A Frightened Teamster 70

A Lucky Fall 81

Finding a Good Thing 85

Si's Challenge 90

A Disagreeable Awakening for Shorty and Si. 94

Si Klegg Fell Without a Groan 113

Shorty Thinks si Does Not Look Like a Ghost. 118

Shorty Retaliates. 126

The House Beautiful. 133

Solid Comfort. 135

"Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" 139

Shorty Confiscates the Caboose Door. 143

Si Defended the Plunder. 148

Si Floors the Wagonmaster. 154

A Stoutly-built, Farmer-looking Man Entered the Train 164

The Free Fight. 169

Mr. Klegg Ready for Action. 172

Deacon Klegg and the Knight of The Golden Circle.

The General Interrupts the Game 184

Meeting Between si and his Father. 189

His Honor and the 'attorney' Bucked And Gagged.

Shorty Admonishes the Orderly 198

The Deacon is Shocked. 210

Trying to Conquer the Deacon's Scruples. 212

'How Much'd You Give for This?' 216

Deacon Klegg Looks over the Larder. 220

Hit My Jug a Welt With his Sword 231

'Pulled out a Fat Roll of Greenbacks. 235

I'm Gwine Ter Kill Ye, Right Here 246

Do You Hear? Git on Your Mule at Onct.'

"I'll Invite Your Attention to the Emancipation Proclamation 264 "

The Deacon Gives Abe a Lesson in Wood Chopping 269

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Preface

"Si Klegg, of the 200th Ind., and Shorty, his Partner," were born years ago in the brain of John McElroy, Editor of THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE.

These sketches are the original ones published in THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE, revised and enlarged some what by the author. How true they are to nature every veteran can abundantly testify from his own service. Really, only the name of the regiment was invented. There is no doubt that there were several men of the name of Josiah Klegg in the Union Army, and who did valiant service for the Government. They had experiences akin to, if not identical with, those narrated here, and substantially every man who faithfully and bravely carried a musket in defense of the best Government on earth had some times, if not often, experiences of which those of Si Klegg are a strong reminder.

THE PUBLISHERS. THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE RANK AND FILE OF THE GRANDEST ARMY EVER MUSTERED FOR WAR.

SI KLEOG

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I. THROUGH MUD AND MIRE DUTY'S PATH LEADS THE 200TH IND. SOUTHWARD FROM NASHVILLE

"SHORTY" said Si Klegg, the morning after Christmas, 1862, as the 200th Ind. sullenly plunged along through the mud and rain, over the roads leading southward from Nashville, "they say that this is to be a sure- enough battle and end the war."

"Your granny's night-cap they do," answered Shorty crossly, as he turned his cap around back ward to stop the icy current from chasing down his backbone. "How many thousand times 's that bin stuffed into your ears? This is the forty-thousandth mile we've marched to find that battle that was goin' to end the war. And I'll bet we'll march 40,000 more. This war ain't goin' to end till we've scuffed the top off all the roads in Kentucky and Tennessee, and wore out God's patience and all the sole- leather in the North. I believe it's the shoe-makers that's runnin' this war in the interest o' their business."

The cold, soaking rain had reduced the most of the 200th Ind. to a mood when they would have 16disputed the Ten Commandments and quarreled with their mothers.

"There's no use bein' crosser'n a saw-buck, if you are wet, Shorty," said Si, walking to the side of the road and scraping off his generous- sized brogans several pounds of stiff, red mud. "They say this new General with a Dutch name is a fighter from Wayback, an' he always licks the rebels right out of their boots. I'm sure, I hope it's so. I like huntin' ez well ez anybody, an' I'll walk ez fur ez the next man to find something to shoot. But I think walkin' over two States, backward and forward, is altogether too much huntin' for so little shootin'. Don't you?"

"Don't worry," snapped Shorty. "You'll git all the shootin' you want before your three years are up. It'll keep."

"But why keep it so long?" persisted Si. "If it can be done up in three months, an' we kin git back home, why dribble it out over three years? That ain't the way we do work back home on the Wabash."

"Confound back home on the Wabash," roared Shorty. "I don't hear nothin' else, day and night, but 'back home on the Wabash.' I've bin on the Wabash, an' I don't want to never see the measly, muddy, agery ditch agin'. Why, they have the ager so bad out there that it shakes the buttons off a man's clothes, the teeth out of his head, the horns off the cows. An' as for milk-sickness."

"Shorty!" thundered Si, "stop right there. If you wasn't my pardner I'd fight you this minute. I kin join in jawin' about the officers an' the 17Government. A great deal of your slack that I can't agree with I kin put up with, but you mustn't say nothin' against my home in the Wabash Valley. That I won't stand from no man. For fear that I may lose my temper I'm goin' away from you till you're in better humor."

With that Si strode on ahead, feeling as cross and uncomfortable internally as he was ill-at-ease externally. He hated above all things to quarrel with Shorty, but the Wabash Valley, that gardenspot of earth, that place where lived his parents, and sister, and Annabel but the subject was too sore to think about.

Presently an Aid came galloping along the middle of the road, calling upon the men to make way for him. His horse's hoofs threw the mud in every direction, and Si caught a heavy spatter directly in his face.

"Confound them snips of Aids," said he angrily, as he wiped the mud off. "Put on more airs than if they was old Gen. Scott himself. Always pretend to be in such a powerful hurry. Everybody must hustle out of their way. I think that fool jest did that on purpose."

The rain kept pouring down with tormenting persistence. Wherever Si looked were drenched, de pressed-looking men; melancholy, steaming horses; sodden, gloomy fields; yellow, rushing streams, and boundless mud that thousands of passing feet were churning into the consistency of building-mortar.

Si had seen many rainy days since he had been in the army, but this was the first real Winter rain 18he had been out in.

Jabe Belcher, the most disagreeable man in Co. Q, was just ahead of him. He stepped into a mudpuddle, slipped, threw the mud and water over Si, and his gun, which he flung in the effort to save himself, struck Si on the shoulder.

The Aid Spatters Mud on si 18

"Clumsy lunkhead!" roared Si, as ill-tempered now as anybody. "Couldn't you see that puddle and keep out of it? You'd walk right into the Cumberland River if it was in front of you. Never saw such a bat-eyed looney in my life."

"If the Captain wasn't lookin'," retorted Belcher, "I'd shut up both of them dead-mackerel eyes o' your'n, you backwoods yearlin'. I'll settle with you after we git into camp. Your stripes won't save you."

"Never mind about my stripes, old Stringhalt. I kin take them off long enough to wallop you."

Si was in such a frame of mind that his usual open-eyedness was gone. The company was wading across a creek, and Si plunged in without a thought. He stepped on a smooth stone, his feet went from under him and he sat 'down hard and waist-deep in much the coldest water that he ever remembered.

"O, Greenland's icy mountains," was all that he could think to say.

The other boys yelled:

"Come on to camp, Si. That's no place to sit down."

"Feet hurt, Si, and goin' to rest a little?"

"This your day for taking a bath, Si?"

"Thinks this is a political meetin', and he's to take the chair."

"Place Rest!"

"When I sit down, I prefer a log or a rail; but some men's different."

"See a big bass there, Si, an' try to ketch him by settin' down on him?"

"Git up, Si; git up, an' give your seat to some lady."

Si Sat Down Hard 20

Si was too angry to notice their jibes. He felt around in the icy water for his gun, and clambered out on the bank. He first poured the water out of his gun-barrel and wiped the mud off. His next thought was the three days' rations he had drawn 20 that morning. He opened his haversack, and poured out the water it had caught. With it went his sugar, coffee and salt. His hardtack was a pasty mess; his meat covered with sand and dirt. He turned the haversack inside out, and swashed it out in the stream.

Back came Capt. McGillicuddy, with water streaming from the down-turned rim of his hat, and his humor bad. He was ignorant of Si's mishap.

"Corporal Klegg, what are you doing back here? Why aren't you in your place? I've been looking all around for you. The company wagon's stalled back somewhere. That spavin-brained teamster's at his old tricks. I want you to take five men off the rear of the company, go back and find that wagon, and bring it up. Be smart about it."

"Captain," remonstrated Si, "I'm wetter'n a drowned rat!"

"Well, who in thunder ain't?" exploded the Captain. "Do I look as dry as a basket of chips? Am I walking around in a Panama and linen clothes? Did you expect to keep from getting your feet wet when you came into the army? I want none of your belly-aching or sore-toeing. You take five men and bring up that wagon in a hurry. Do you hear me?"

And the Captain splashed off through the red mud to make somebody else still more miserable.

Si picked up his wet gun from the rain-soaked sod, put it under his streaming overcoat, ordered the five drenched, dripping, dejected boys near him to follow, and plunged back into the creek, which had by this time risen above his knees. He was past the stage of anger now. He simply wished that he was dead and out of the whole business. A nice, dry grave on a sunny hillock in Posey County, with a good roof over it to keep out the rain, would be a welcome retreat.

In gloomy silence he and his squad plodded back through the eternal mud and the steady downpour, through the miry fields, through the swirling yellow floods in the brooks and branches, in search of the laggard company wagon.22

Two or three miles back they came upon it, stuck fast in a deep mud- hole. The enraged teamster was pounding the mules over the head with the butt of his blacksnake whip, not in the expectation of getting any further effort out of them he knew better than that but as a relief to his overcharged heart.

"Stop beatin' them mules over the head," shouted Si, as they came up. Not that he cared a fig about the mules, but that he wanted to "jump" somebody.

Stop Beatin' Them Mules' 22

"Go to brimstone blazes, you freckle-faced Posey County refugee," responded Groundhog, the teamster, in the same fraternal spirit. "I'm drivin' this here team." He gave the nigh-swing mule a "welt" that would have knocked down anything else than a swing mule.

"If you don't stop beatin' them mules, by thunder, I'll make you."

"Make's a good word," responded Groundhog, giving the off-swing mule a wicked "biff." "I never see anything come out of Posey County that could make me do what I didn't want to."

Si struck at him awkwardly. He was so hampered by his weight of soggy clothes that there was little force or direction to his blow. The soaked teamster returned the blow with equal clumsiness.

The other boys came up and pulled them apart.

"We ain't no time for sich blamed nonsense," they growled. "We've got to git this here wagon up to the company, an' we'll have the devil's own time doin' it. Quit skylarkin' an' git to work."

They looked around for something with which to make pries. Every rail and stick within a quarter of a mile of the road was gone. They had been used up the previous Summer, when both armies had passed over the road.

There was nothing to do but plod off through mud and rain to the top of a hill in the distance, where there was a fence still standing. A half an hour later each of the six came back with a heavy rail on his shoulder. They pried the wagon out and got it started, only to sink again in another quagmire a few hundred yards further on.

Si and the boys went back to get their rails, but found that they had been carried off by another squad that had a wagon in trouble. There was nothing to do but to make another toilsome journey to the fence for more rails.

After helping the wagon out they concluded it24 would be wiser to carry their rails with them a little way to see if they would be needed again.

They were many times that afternoon. As dark ness came on Si, who had the crowning virtue of hopefulness when he fully recognized the unutterable badness of things, tried to cheer the other boys up with assertions that they would soon get into camp, where they would find bright, warm fires with which to dry their clothes, and plenty of hot coffee to thaw them out inside.

The quick-coming darkness added enormously to the misery of their work. For hours they struggled along the bottomless road, in the midst of a ruck of played-out mules and unutterably tired, disgusted men, laboring as they were to get wagons ahead.

Finally they came up to their brigade, which had turned off the road and gone into line-of-battle in an old cotton-field, where the mud was deeper, if possible, than in the road.

"Where's the 200th Ind.?" called out Si.

"Here, Si," Shorty's voice answered.

"Where's the fires, Shorty," asked Si, with sinking heart.

"Ain't allowed none," answered his partner gloomily. "There's a rebel battery on that hill there, and they shoot every time a match is lighted. What've you got there, a rail? By George, that's lucky! We'll have something to keep us out of the mud."

They laid down the rail and sat upon it.

"Shorty," said Si, as he tried to arrange his aching bones to some comfort on the rail, "I got mad at you for cussin' the Wabash this morning. I ain't a fluid talker such as you are, an' I can't find words to say25 what I think. But I jest wisht you would begin right here and cuss everybody from Abe Lincoln down to Corporal Si Klegg, and everything from the Wabash in Injianny down to the Cumberland in Tennessee. I'd like to listen to you."

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II. SECOND DAY'S MARCH THE LONG COLUMN CRAWLS THROUGH RAIN AND COLD TO MURFREESBORO

SI KLEGG was generous with his rail, as he was with all things among his comrades. He selected the softest part, in the center, for him self and Shorty, and then invited the other boys to share its hospitalities. They crowded up close to him and Shorty on either side, and there seemed to come a little warmth and dryness from the close contact of their bodies.

Si was so mortally tired that it seemed a great relief just to sit still and rest, though the rain continued to pour down.

Shorty fished some hardtack and fried pork out of his haversack, and also gave him a handful of ground coffee. Si munched the crackers and meat, with an occasional nip at the coffee. His spirits began to rise just a trifle. He was too healthy in body and mind to be totally downcast for long.

"'Tis n't much of a supper," he said to himself, "but it beats nothin' at all miles and miles. Besides, I was mighty lucky in gettin' the biggest rail. Some that the other boys has are no good at all. They'll let 'em right down in the mud. And most o' the boys has no rails at all. I'm awfully sorry for 'em."

Then he began to wonder if they were not 27overcautious about the nearness of the enemy. He had been in the army just long enough to have contempt for the stories that were always current with a certain class about the proximity and strength of the enemy. Shorty was not of that kind; but, then, Shorty was as liable to be imposed upon as anybody.

"How do you know there's a rebel battery on the hill out there?" he finally asked Shorty.

"They belted into the Oshkosh Terrors, out there to our right, killed a mule, scared two teamsters to death, and knocked over three or four kittles of coffee. It was awful unlucky about the coffee," an swered Shorty.

"How long ago was that?"

"O, several hours ago. Just after we turned into the field, and long before you come up."

"Mebbe they've gone off now. Mebbe, if they're there yet, their ammynition's so soaked that they can't shoot. What do you say to startin' a little fire? It'd be an immense comfort. Unless we can dry out a little we'll be soaked into such mush before morning that we can't keep our shape, and they'll have to ladle us up with dippers."

"It's strictly against orders."

"You mean it was against orders several hours ago. I can't see nothin' on that hill over there. I've been watchin' for half an hour. There's nothin' movin'. Mebbe the orders has been changed, an' you haint heard about it," persisted Si. "Mebbe the Orderly that was bringing 'em 's stuck in the mud. Mebbe the rain's soaked 'em so's they can't be read. If anybody's got any dry matches I'm goin' to chance28 it."

Word was passed along the rail, and at length one of the boys was found to have some matches in a tin box which was proof against the rain.

Si got out his knife and whittled down a corner of the rail until he came to the dry part, and got off some shavings. Splinters were contributed by the others, and after several failures a small flame was started.

"Here, what in the world are you men doing there?" came in the stentorian tones of the Colonel, who it startled Si to discover was sitting a short distance behind him. "Put that light out this instant."

Even before the command could be obeyed, four great flashes burned out like lightning in the murky darkness on the hill-top. Four cannon roared, and four shells screeched toward Si and his companions, who instinctively toppled over backward into the mud. One of the shells struck in the mud a few yards in front, burst with a deafening report, and sent over them a deluge of very wet Tennessee real estate.

"The battery's out there yit, Si," said Shorty, as they gathered themselves up and carefully stamped out every spark of fire.

"It's 'tendin' strictly to business," remarked Wes Williams.

"Its ammynition don't seem to be a mite wet," added Jim Hutchinson.

"There, you see, now," said the Colonel sternly. "I'll tie up by the thumbs the next man that dares scratch a match."

"You jest kin if I do," muttered Si, scraping off some of the superabundant mud, and resuming his29 seat on the rail. "This dog's cured of suckin' eggs." He set the butt of his gun down in front of him, clasped his hands around the barrel, leaned his head on them, and went to sleep.

He was so tired that he could have slept anywhere and in any position. He was dimly conscious during the night that the rain ceased and that it turned bitter cold. He was not going to wake up for trifles like that, though. When Si went to sleep he devoted himself entirely to that and nothing else. It 30 was one thing that he never allowed any interference with.

But with the first gray streaks of dawn in the east some uneasy, meddlesome spirit in the 200th Ind. happened to be awake, and he awakened the Adjutant, who cuffed and shook the headquarters drummer until he awakened and beat the reveille. This aroused the weary Orderly- Sergeants, who started upon the task of getting up the bone-wracked, aching-muscled men. In 10 minutes there was enough discontent and bitter grumbling in the 200th Ind. to have furnished forth a new political party.

The awakening process finally reached those of Co. Q who had roosted on Si's rail all night.

Si vigorously insisted on being let alone; that he hadn't been asleep five minutes, and that, anyhow, it was not his turn to go on guard. But the Orderly-Sergeant of Co. Q was a persistent fellow, and would not be denied.

When Si finally tried to rise he found that, in addition to the protests of his stiff legs, he was pinned firmly down. Feeling around to ascertain the cause, he discovered that the tail of his overcoat and his shoes had become deeply imbedded in the mud, and frozen solidly there. Shorty was in the same fix.

Frozen in the Mud 29

"Got to shuck yourself out o' your overcoat, and leave them gunboats anchored where they are," remarked Shorty, doing as he said, and falling in for roll-call in his stocking feet.

After roll-call Si got a hatchet from one of the boys and chopped his and Shorty's shoes out. The overcoats were left for subsequent effort, for the first thing was to get some wood and water and cook breakfast.31

The morning was bitter cold and the sky overcast, but Si felt that this was a thousand times better than the cheerless rain, which seemed to soak his very life out of him.

He pounded most of the frozen mud off his shoes, picked up the camp- kettle, and started off for wood and water, broke the ice on the creek, took a good wash, and presently came back with a load of dry pine and a kettle full of water.

"My joints feel like I think an old wagon does after it's gone about a year without greasing," he remarked to Shorty, who had a good fire going; "but I think that after I get about a quart o' hot coffee, inside of me, with a few pounds o' pork and crackers, I'll be nearly as good as new again. My, how good that grub does smell! An' did you ever see such a nice fire?"

He chopped his and Shorty's overcoats out while Shorty was cooking breakfast, and when at last he sat down on one end of his rail and ate enough toasted hard bread and crisp fried side-meat to feed a small family for a week, washing it down with something near a quart of black coffee sweetened with coarse brown sugar, life began again to have some charms for him.

"You're sure that dumbed battery's gone that shot at us last night, are you, Shorty?" he said, as he drained his cup, fastened it again to the strap of his haversack, and studied the top of the hill with a critical eye.

"They say it is," said Shorty, between bites. "While you was down at the crick a man come over from the camp o' the Oshkosh Terrors, and said two o' their32 companies 'd been onto the hill, and the rebels had gone."

"I wish them Oshkosh fellers'd mind their own business," said Si, irritably, as he picked up his gun and began rubbing the mud and rust off. "They're entirely too fresh for a new regiment. That battery was none of theirs. It was ours, right in our front, an' if they'd let it alone till after breakfast we'd gone up and taken it. It was just the right size for the 200th Ind., and we wanted a chance at it. But now they've had to stick in and run it off."

"Don't worry," said Shorty, fishing out another cracker; "it hasn't gone too far. 'Taint lost. You'll have a chance at it some other time. Mebbe to-day yet."

The army began to move out very promptly, and soon the 200th Ind. was called to take its place in the long column that crawled over the hills and across the valleys toward Murfreesboro, like some gigantic blue serpent moving toward his prey.

Miles ahead of the 200th Ind.'s place in the column the rebels were offering annoying disputation of farther progress. Lines as brown as the dried leaves on the oak trees would form on the hilltops, batteries would gallop into position, and there would be sharp bangs by the cannon and a sputter of musketry-fire.

Then the long, blue serpent would wriggle out of the road into the fields, as if coiling to strike. Union batteries would rush on to hilltops and fire across valleys at the rebel cannon, and a sputter of musketry would answer that from the leaf-brown ranks on the hilltops, which would dissolve and march back33 to the next hilltop, where the thing would be gone over again. The 200th Ind. would occasionally see one of these performances as it marched over and down one of the hills.

As the afternoon was wearing away the 200th34 Ind. kept nearing the front, where this was going on. Finally, when the dull day was shading into dusk, and the brigade ahead of it was forming in the field at the foot of a hill to open a bickering fire against the dun line at the top, the 200th Ind. was taken off the road and marched away over to the left, where it was put into line in front of a dense grove of cedars.

"Capt. McGillicuddy," commanded the Colonel to the Captain of Co. Q, "advance your company as skirmishers to the edge of the cedars, and send a Corporal and five men into the thicket to see if there is anything there."

"Corporal Klegg," said the Captain, "take five men off the left of the company and go in and see what's in there."

Si was instantly fired with the importance of the duty assigned him. He sent two of his men to the left, two to the right, while he and Shorty, a little distance apart, struck for the heart of the thicket. They made their way with difficulty through the dense chaparral for some minute's, and then stopped, as they heard voices and the crashing of branches in front.

Si's heart thumped against his ribs. He looked over to his left, and saw Shorty standing there peering earnestly into the brush, with his gun cocked and ready to fire. He ran over to him and whispered:

"What do you see, Shorty?"

What Do You See, Shorty?' 33

"Nothin' yit, but I expect to every minute," replied Shorty, without turning his intent eyes. Si's gun was already cocked, and he bent his head 35forward eagerly, to get a better view. But he could see nothing, except that the tops of the bushes were shaking.

"Shall we skip back an' report?" asked Si.

"I ain't goin' till I see something," said Shorty, stoutly.

"Nor me," echoed Si, rather ashamed that he had suggested it.

"Steady, there; steady, on the right! Come for ward with that left company," called out a stern voice in front.

"Must be a full regiment in there," whispered Si, craning his neck still farther. The tramping and crashing increased.

"Steady, men, I tell you! Steady! Press on the center," commanded the unseen Colonel. "Forward! Forward!"

In spite of his perturbation, Si noticed that the sounds did not seem to be coming any nearer.

"We must get a squint at 'em," he said, desperately, to Shorty. "Let's git down an' crawl forward. There must be an openin' somewhere."

They got down on their hands and knees, so as to avoid as many as possible of the thickly-interlaced branches. Soon they came to a rift which led to an opening of some rods in circumference. Raising their heads cautiously above a moss-covered log, they saw in the opening a stalwart Sergeant with five or six men. The Sergeant was standing there with his eyes fixed on the tops of the trees, apparently thinking of the next series of commands he was to give, while the men were busy breaking limbs off the cedars.

Si and Shorty immediately grasped the situation.36

"Forward, Co. Q!" yelled Si at the top of his lungs. "Surrender, you consarned rebels, or we'll blow your heads off," he added, as he and Shorty jumped forward into the opening and leveled their guns on the squad.

"What'n thunder was you fellers makin' all that racket fur," Si asked the Sergeant as he was marching him back to the skirmish-line.

"Ouah Cunnel," explained the Sergeant, "wuz afeared you'ns 'd try to flank us through the thicket, and sent me down to make a rumpus and hold you back while he fit you in front. But whar's your company?"

"We'll come to it soon," said Si.

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III. STILL ON THE MARCH SI AND SHORTY STOP ON THE WAY LONG ENOUGH TO BAG SIX REBS

SI CALLED out to the other boys by name to come up and join him.

The rebel Sergeant mentally tallied off each name as it was called. A flush of shame and anger mounted to his face as Si concluded.

"Gol darn hit," he said, "you'uns hain't got ez many ez we'uns; they hain't nigh ez good men ez we'uns, an' they'uns ain't heah. We'uns air Tennesseans, an' you'uns hain't."

"We've got enough, an' they're good enough," said Si sententiously. "Injianny turns out better men than Tennessee ever dreamed o' doing."

"I don't believe hit a mite," said the Sergeant, stooping down and picking up a piece of cedar, which made a formidable club. "We'uns is not a-gwine back with yo'uns nary a step. By rights, we'uns orter take yo'uns back with we'uns. But I'm willin' to call hit off, and let yo'uns go ef yo'uns 'll let we'uns go. Is hit a bargain?"

"Not by 40 rows o' apple trees it ain't," said Si, stepping back a little to get a better range, and fixing his bayonet. "I've set my heart on takin' you back to Co. Q, an' back to Co. Q you'll go, if Si Klegg knows himself."38

"And you'll go in a hurry, too," said Shorty. "It's gettin' late, and I'm always afraid to be out after dark. Mosey, now!"

The other rebels were picking up clubs similar to the Sergeant's and casting their eyes on him for the signal to attack.

"See here," said Si desperately, cocking his gun. "Don't waste no more time in words. This hain't a debatin' society. You're goin' back to Co. Q or going somewhere else thunderin' quick. Sergeant, if you make a move agin me I'll surely blow your head off en you, an' jab my bayonet through the next man. My partner, Shorty, is a worse man than I am, an' I can't tell how many of you he'll kill. He's awful quick-tempered, too, towards evening, an' liable to begin shooting any minute without warnin'. It'll save several lives if you start right off on the jump, straight toward the rear, an' keep it up, with out looking to the right or left, until you reach Co. Q. You'll find the trail we made comin' in. Take it this minute."

The rebel Sergeant's eyes looked directly into the dark muzzle of Si's gun. They glanced along the barrel, and met one eye looking directly through the sights, while the other was closed, in the act of taking deliberate aim. He decided with great promptness that there were many reasons why he should prefer to be a live rebel in a Yankee prison, rather than a badly-disfigured dead one in a lonely cedar thicket. He dropped his club, turned around, and made his way along the path over which Si had come. The rest followed, with Si and Shorty a few paces in the rear.

Palpitating with pride, Si marched his prisoners up to the company, who gave him three cheers. The Captain ordered him to report with his prisoners to the Colonel.

Si Reports to the Colonel 38

The Colonel praised him with words that made his blood tingle.40

The skirmishing off to the right had now ceased. The rebels had fallen back to the next hilltop, and the 200th Ind. was ordered to go into camp where it stood.

Preparing Supper 40

It was a fine place for a camp. The mud of the day before was frozen into stony hardness. The wagons had no difficulty in coming up. There was wood and water in abundance, and it seemed that the command "Break ranks March!" had hardly been uttered when great, bright, comfort-giving fires of fragrant cedar rails flashed up all along the line.

Si and Shorty found several cedar stumps and logs, which they rolled together, and made a splendid fire. They cooked themselves an ample supper of fried pork, toasted hardtack, and strong, fragrant coffee, which they devoured with an appetite and a keen enjoyment only possible to healthy young men who have had a day of active manuvering and marching in the crisp, chill air of December.

Then they gathered a lot of cedar branches, and made a thick mattress of them near the fire, upon which to spread their blankets for the night.

This was a new suggestion by Shorty, and an amazing success.

"I declare, Shorty," said Si, as he lay down on the bed to try it, "I often wonder where you get all your ideas. For a man who wasn't raised on the Wabash you know an awful sight. Mebbe, if you'd actually been born in Posey County you'd a-knowed enough to be a Jigadier-Brindle. Then I'd a lost you for a pard. This's a great invention. Why, it's softer and comfortabler than one of mother's feather beds. When I get out of the army, I'm going to sleep on nothin' but cedar boughs."

"There, you're at it again the Wabash forever," returned Shorty, good- humoredly. "They raise the finest corn and cattle in the world on the Wabash, I'll admit, and some fairly good soldiers. But where'll you get any cedars there to make beds with? You'll have to go back to sleepin' on wheat straw and corn husks, with chicken-feather pillers. But after42 the way you stood up to that rebel Sergeant to-day I'll never say another word about ager and milk-sick en the Wabash, and I'll lick any other feller that does. There wasn't a speck of ager in your gizzard when you ordered him forward, or you'd blow his Southern Confederacy head off."

"There was more ager there than you thought, Shorty," Si admitted softly. "I was awfully scared, for there was six to us two, and if that feller 'd had the right kind of sand he'd a-jumped me at once, before I could get my gun up. The moment he began to palaver I knowed I had him. But I'd 'a' died in my tracks before I'd let him go, and I knowed you would, too. You're the best pard a feller ever had."

And he reached over and took Shorty's rough hand and squeezed it affectionately.

"I can bet on you every time, even when I don't think it's quite safe to bet on myself. And, Shorty," he continued, with his eyes kindling, "it was worth all that we've gone through since we've been in the army, even all that time in the rain, to have the Colonel speak as he did to us before the rest of the boys. I'd be willing to enlist three years more if father and mother and sisters, and and Annabel could have heard him. I tell you, war has some glorious things in it, after all."

He sat there on his bed before the fire, with his feet curled up under him in the comfortable way that it takes months of field service to acquire, and gazed steadily into the bank of glowing coals. They suffused his face and body with their generous warmth, and helped lift his soul toward the skies.43

He was much happier than he had ever been before in his life. The trials of the day before were hardly more than a far-away dream. The fears and anxieties of the coming battle were forgotten. The ruddy embers became a radiant vista, which Pride and Hope and Joy filled with all that he wanted to see. He saw there the dear old home on the Wabash, his father seated by the evening lamp reading the paper, while his mother knit on the other side of the table. His sisters were busy with some feminine trifles, and Annabel had come in to learn the news. They would hear what he had done, and of the Colonel's words of praise before the regiment, and his father's heart would glow with pride and his mother's eyes suffuse with tears. And Annabel but it passed words, passed thought, almost, what she would say and think.

Just then tattoo rang out clear and musical on the chill night air. The rattling military "good night" had never before had any special charms for Si. But now he thought it an unusually sweet composition.

"I declare," he said to Shorty, "that sheepskin band of our'n is improving. They're getting to play real well. But I ought to write a few lines home before taps. Got any paper. Shorty?"

"Much paper you'll find in this regiment after that rain," said Shorty contemptuously, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and started to fall in for roll-call. "Every mite of paper anybody has was soaked to spitwads. But mebbe the Orderly might have a sheet."

After roll-call Si went to the Orderly-Sergeant.44

Nothing in reason could then be refused Si, and the Orderly tore a couple of leaves out of the back of his treasured diary, which had escaped the rain, and handed them to him. Si fished his stub of a pencil out of his blouse-pocket, laid the paper on the back of a tin plate, and began:

"Somewhere in Tennessee, December the 27th, 1862.

"Dere Annabel: We're movin' on Murphysboro, where we expect a big fite. There's bin fitin' goin' on ever since we left Nashville, but the 200th Ind. hain't had no hand in it so far, except this after noon me and Shorty"

He stopped, stuck his pencil in his mouth, and began to study just what words he should use to describe the occurrence. He wanted to tell her all that was bubbling in his heart, and yet he was afraid she would think him an intolerable boaster, if he told it in just the words that came to him. He was more afraid of that little country girl's disapproval than of all the rebels in Murfreesboro.

There were yells, the rattling of chains, and the sound of galloping hoofs coming toward him.

"Hi, there; stop them condemned mules!" shouted the voice of a teamster.

Si jumped to his feet, for the mules were charging directly for his fire, and were almost upon him. He dropped paper, pan and pencil, and jumped to one side, just in time to avoid a rush which scattered his fire, his carefully-prepared bed, and all his be longings under 24 flying, hard-pounding hoofs.

After the Mules Stampeded 44

"Blast mules, anyhow," said the driver, coming up with his whip in his hand. "I didn't hev nothin' for them to eat but a cottonwood pole that I cut down in the bottom. But they must have smelt fodder over there somewhere, and they broke for it like the devil beatin' tanbark. Hope you weren't hurt, pard."

Si and Shorty fixed up their fire again, rearranged46 their scattered cedar boughs, and did the best they could with their torn blankets.

Si found that a mule's hoof had landed squarely on his tin plate, mashed all future usefulness out of it, and stamped his letter to Annabel into unrecognizability.

He threw the rent fragments into the fire, sighed deeply, and crawled under the blankets with Shorty, just as three sounding taps on the bass- drum commanded silence and lights out in the camp.

48

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IV. THE SUNSHINE OF LIFE SI FEELS ONCE MORE THAT LIFE IS REALLY WORTH LIVING

THERE come times in every man's life when he feels himself part of the sunshine that illumines and warms the earth:

The lover, after he has won his best girl's consent.

The candidate, after he has been elected by a big majority.

The valedictorian, after his address has been received with bursts of ringing applause.

The clerk, after he has been admitted into partnership.

The next morning the camp of the 200th Ind. seemed to Si Klegg one of the most delightful places on earth.

The sun shone brightly and cheerily through the crisp December air. The fires of cedar rails sent up a pungent, grateful fragrance. Hardtack, pork and coffee tasted better than he had ever known them.

Everybody noticed him and spoke pleasantly to him. The other boys of Co. Q called out cheerily to him from their fires. Those from other companies would stroll over to take a look at him and Shorty, and his comrades would point them out proudly as fair specimens of Co. Q, and what it was capable of doing when called upon in an emergency.

The Adjutant Smiled on si and Shorty 48

The Captain spoke very cordially to him and Shorty, the busy Adjutant stopped and greeted them smilingly, and even the grave Colonel singled them out for a pleasant "Good morning" and an inquiry as to whether they had everything they wanted. It did not seem to Si that there was anything more on earth just then for which he could ask.

The 200th Ind. having been at the head of the 49column when it halted, was to take the rear for that day's march, and so remained in camp for a while to let the rest pass on.

After getting things ready for the march Si and Shorty took a stroll through the camp to see what was to be seen. They came across their prisoners seated around a fire, under guard.

How different they looked from what they did the evening before, when the two partners encountered them in the depths of the cedar brake. Then they seemed like fierce giants, capable of terrible things, such as would make the heart quail. Now, powerless of harm, and awed by the presence of multitudes of armed men in blue filling the country in every direction that they looked, they appeared very commonplace, ignorant, rough men, long-haired, staring-eyed, and poorly-clad in coarse, butternut-dyed homespun, frayed and tattered.

"Father gits better men than them to work on the farm for $8 a month," Si remarked to Shorty, after a lengthened survey of them.

"Eight dollars a month is Congressman's wages to what they git for fightin' for the Southern Confederacy," answered Shorty. "I don't s'pose any one of 'em ever had eight real dollars in his pocket in his life. They say they're fightin' to keep us from takin' their niggers away from 'em, and yit if niggers wuz sellin' for $1 a-piece not one of 'em could buy a six-months'-old baby. Let's go up and talk to 'em."

"I don't know 'bout that," said Si, doubtfully. "Seems to me I wouldn't be particularly anxious to see men who'd taken me prisoner and talked very cross about blowin' my blamed head off."50

"O, that's all right," answered Shorty confidently. "Words spoken in the heat of debate, and so on. They won't lay them up agin us. If they do, and want any satisfaction, we can give it to 'em. I kin lick any man in that crowd with my fists, and so kin you. We'll jest invite 'em to a little argyment with nature's weepons, without no interference by the guard. Come on."

The Prisoners 50

The prisoners returned their greetings rather pleasantly. They were so dazed by the host of strange faces that Si and Shorty seemed, in a measure, like old acquaintances.

"Had plenty to eat, boys," asked Shorty, familiarly, seating himself on a log beside them and passing his pipe and tobacco to the Sergeant.

"Plenty, thankee," said the Sergeant, taking the pipe and filling it. "More'n we'uns 've had sence we left home, an' mouty good vittles, too. You Yanks sartinly live well, ef yo'uns don't do nothin' else."

"Yes," said Shorty, with a glance at his mud-stained garments, "we're bound to live high and dress well, even if we don't lay up a cent."

"You sartinly do have good cloze, too," said the Sergeant, surveying the stout blue uniforms with admiration. "Yo'uns' common soldiers 've better cloze than our officers. We'uns got hold o' some o' yo'uns' overcoats, and they wear like leather."

"There's leather in 'em," said Shorty unblushingly. "I tell you, old Abe Lincoln's a very smart man. He saw that this war was costin' a heap of money, especially for clothes. He got a bright idee that by soaking the clothes when they were new and green in the tan-vats, jest after the leather wuz taken out, they'd take up the strength o' the leather out o' the juice, and wear always. The idee worked bully, and now old Abe goes every morning to where they're makin' clothes and sees that every stitch is put to soak."

"Nobody but a Yankee'd thought o' that," said the rebel reflectively.52

"You bet," assented Shorty. "Jeff Davis'd never think of it if he lived to be as old as Methuselah. But that's only the beginnin' of Abe Lincoln's smartness."

"He's a durned sight smarter man than we'uns thought he wuz when we begun the war," admitted the Sergeant. "But we'uns 'll wollop him yit, in spite of his smartness."

"We kin tell more about that a few months later," returned Shorty. "It's never safe to count the game until the last hand's played. We hain't fairly begun to lead trumps yit. But what are you fellers fighting for, anyhow?"

"We'uns foutin' for our liberty, and t' keep yo'uns from takin' our niggers away."

The reply that came to Shorty's lips was that they seemed to be losing a great deal of liberty rather than gaining it, but he checked this by the fear that it would be construed as an ungentlemanly boast of their capture. He said, instead:

"I never knowed as any of us wanted your niggers—me particularly. I wouldn't take a wagon load of 'em, even if the freight was prepaid. But, let me ask you, Sergeant, how many niggers do you own?"

"I don't own nary one."

"Does your father own any?"

"No, he don't."

"Does your mother, or brothers, uncles, aunts, or cousins own any?" persisted Shorty.

"No, thar ain't nary one owned in the hull family."

"Seems to me," said Shorty, "you're doin' a great deal of fightin' to keep us from takin' away from53 you something that we don't want and you hain't got. That's the way it looks to a man from north o' the Ohio River. Mebbe there's something in the Tennessee air that makes him see differently. I'll admit that I've changed my mind about a good many things since we crossed the river."

"I've alluz said," spoke another of the prisoners, "that this wuz a rich man's wah and a pore man's fout."

"Well," said Shorty, philosophically, "for folks that like that sort o' fightin,' that's the sort o' fightin' they like. I'm different. I don't. When I fight it's for something that I've got an interest in."

While the discussion was going on Si had been studying the appearance of the prisoners. In spite of their being enemies his heart was touched by their comfortless condition. Not one of them had an overcoat or blanket. The Sergeant and a couple of others had over their shoulders pieces of the State House carpet, which had been cut up into lengths and sewed together for blankets. Another had what had once been a gaudy calico counterpane, with the pat tern "Rose of Sharon" wrought out in flaming colors. It was now a sadly-bedraggled substitute for a blanket. The others had webs of jeans sewed to gether.

The buttons were gone from their garments in many essential places, and replaced by strings, nails, skewers and thorns. Worst of all, almost every one of them was nearly shoeless. A sudden impulse seized Si.

"Shorty," said he, "these men are going up where the weather is very cold. I wish I was able to54 give each of them a warm suit of clothes and a blanket. I ain't though. But I tell you what I will do; I'll go down to the Quartermaster and see if he'll issue me a pair of shoes for each of 'em, and charge it to my clothin' account."

"Bully idee," ejaculated Shorty. "I'll go you halves. Mebbe if they git their understandin' into Yankee leather it'll help git some Yankee idees into their understandin'. See?"

And Shorty was so delighted with his little joke that he laughed over it all the way to the Quarter master's wagon, and then rehearsed it for that officer's entertainment.

Fortunately, the Quartermaster had a box of shoes that he could get at without much trouble, and he was in sufficiently good humor to grant Si's request.

They added a warm pair of socks to each pair of shoes, and so wrought up the A. Q. M.'s sympathies that he threw in some damaged overcoats, and other articles, which he said he could report "lost in action."

They came back loaded with stuff, which they dumped down on the ground before the prisoners, with the brief remark:

"Them's, all yours. Put 'em on."

The prisoners were overwhelmed by this generosity on the part of their foes and captors.

"I alluz thought," said the Sergeant, "that you Yankees wuz not half so bad ez I believed that yo'uns wuz. Yo'uns is white men, if yo'uns do want to take away our niggers."

"Gosh," said the man who had uttered the opinion that it was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight,55 "I'd give all my interest in every nigger in Tennessee for that ere one pa'r o' shoes. They're beauties, I tell you. I never had so good a pa'r afore in all my life."

57

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V. LINING UP FOR BATTLE THE 200TH IND. GUARDS THE WAGON TRAIN, AND DEFEATS AN ATTACK

"RAIN agin to-day," said Shorty, disgustedly, as, on the morning of Dec. 30, 1862, he crawled out of the shelter which he and Si had constructed by laying a pole in the crotches of two young cedars, and stretching their ponchos and pup-tents over it. "Doggoned if I don't believe Tennessee was left out in the flood, and they've been tryin' to make up for it ever since. I'd rather have the flood at once, and be done with it, for then I'd join the navy instead of paddlin' 'round in this dirty glue that they call mud." "Never saw such a grumbler, Shorty," said Si cheerily, as he punched the soaked embers together to start a blaze to boil their coffee by. "Last Summer the dust and dry weather didn't suit you. Do you want to do your soldierin' in heaven?"

"Hurry up with your grub, boys," said the Orderly-Sergeant, who came spattering through the muck of leaves and mud into which the camping- ground had been trampled. "The regiment's to move in 15 minutes. The 200th Ind. guards wagon-trains to-day. Yesterday Wheeler's cavalry got in among our wagons and raised thunder—burnt about a mile of 'em."

Shorty grumbled: "That means a tough day's work pryin' wagons out of the mud, and restin' ourselves between times runnin' after a lot o' skippin', cavortin' cavalry that's about as easy to ketch as a half- bushel o' fleas. Anything I hate it's rebel cavalry58 all tear-around and yell, and when you git ready to shoot they're on the other side o' the hill."

"Well," said Si, removing a slab of sizzling fat pork from the end of his rammer, laying it on his hardtack, and taking a generous bite, "we mustn't allow them to take no wagons away from the 200th Ind., slosh around as they may. We want all that grub ourselves."

"Well, hump yourselves," said the Orderly-Sergeant, as he spattered on; "fall in promptly when assembly blows. Got plenty o' cartridges?"

Two or three hours later every man in the 200th Ind., wet to the skin, and with enough mud on him to be assessable as real estate, was in a temper to have sassed his gentle old grandmother and whipped his best friend. He believed that if there was any thing under heavens meaner than Tennessee weather it was an army mule; the teamsters had even less sense and more contrariness than the mules; the army wagon was a disheartening device of the devil, and Tennessee roads had been especially contrived by Jeff Davis to break the hearts of Union soldiers.

The rain came down with a steady pelt that drove right through to the body. The wagon wheels sank into every mud-hole and made it deeper. Prying out the leading ones seemed only to make it worse for the next. The discouraged mules would settle back in the breech ings, and not pull an ounce at the most critical moments. The drivers would become blundering idiots, driveling futile profanity. In spite of all the mud the striving, pushing, pulling, prying, lifting, shouting 200th Ind. gathered up on their hands and clothes, it increased momentarily in the road.59

The train had strung out over a mile or more of rocky ledges and abysses of mire. Around each wagon was a squad who felt deeply injured by the certainty that their infernal luck had given them the heaviest wagon, the worst mules, and the most exasperating driver in the whole division.

"I couldn't 've made a doggoneder fool than Groundhog, that teamster," said Shorty, laying down his rail for a minute's rest, "if I'd 'a' had Thompson's colt before my eyes for a pattern. That feller was born addled, on Friday, in the dark of the moon."

"Them mules," dolefully corroborated Si, scraping an acre, more or less, of red Tennessee soil from his overcoat with a stick, "need to be broke again with a saw-log. Luck for old Job that the devil didn't think o' settin' him to drive mules. He'd 'a-bin a-goner in less'n an hour."

"Doggone it, here they come," said Shorty, snatching up his gun.

Si looked in the direction of Shorty's glance. Out of the cedars, a mile or more away, burst a regiment of rebel cavalry, riding straight for the front of the train.

With his tribe's keen apprehension of danger, Groundhog had jumped from his saddle, nervously unhitched his mule, and sprung into the saddle again, ready for instant fight.

"Get off and hook that mule up agin," commanded Si sternly. "Now get on your mule and go to the head of your team, take the leaders by the bridles, and stay there."

"If you ain't standing there holding your mules when we come back I'll break your worthless neck."60

The bugle sounded "Rally on the right flank," and Si and Shorty joined the others in a lumbering rush over the miry fields toward the right. Their soaked clothes hung about them like lead. They had not a spoonful of breath left when they got to where, half-a-mile away, Co. A had taken a position in the briers behind a rail fence, and had opened a long- ranged fire on the cavalry, which was manuvering as if trying to discover a way to take the company in flank. Another fence ran at right angles away to the right of Co. A's position. The cavalry started for that.

"Capt. McGillicuddy," shouted the Colonel, "take your company back to that fence as quick as you can, run along back of it, and try to keep those fellows on the other side."

Away the panting company rushed for the fence. The field was overgrown with those pests of the Southern plowman, called locally "devil's shoe strings," which stretch from furrow-ridge to furrow-ridge, and are snares to any careless walker. The excited Indianians were constantly tripped on these, and fell headlong in the mud. Down Si and Shorty went several times, to the great damage of their tempers. But in spite of all rain, mud, lack of breath and devil's shoe-strings the company got to the fence in advance of the cavalry, and opened a scattering fire as each man could get his damp gun to go off. Si and Shorty ran back a little to a hillock, from which they could get long-distance shots on where the cavalry would probably try to tear down the fence.

"It's all of 600 yards, Si," said Shorty, as he leaned against a young oak, got his breath back in long gulps, and studied the ground. "We kin make it, though, with our Springfields, if they'll give us time to cool down and git our breaths. I declare I want a whole Township of fresh air every second. That last time I fell knocked enough breath out o' me to fill a balloon."

"There, they're sendin' out a squad now to go for the fence," said Si, putting his sight up to 600 yards. "I'll line on that little persimmon tree and shoot as they pass it. I'll take the fellow on the clay bank horse, who seems to be an officer. You take the next one on the spotted bay."

"Better shoot at the hoss," said Shorty, fixing his sight. "Bigger mark; and if you git the hoss you git the man."

The squad made a rush for the fence, but as the leader crossed the line Si had drawn on the persimmon tree through his sights, his musket cracked, and the horse reared and fell over in the mud. Shorty broke the shoulder of the next horse, and the rider had to jump off.

"Bully shots, boys. Do it again," shouted the Captain of Co. Q, hurrying some men farther to the right, to concentrate a fire upon the exposed point.

Si and Shorty hastily reloaded, and fired again at the rebels, who had pressed on toward the fence, in spite of the fall of their leader. But not having an object in line to sight on, Si and Shorty did not succeed in bringing anybody down. But as they looked to see the effect, they also saw a cannon-flash from a hill away off behind the cavalry, and the same instant its rifled shot took the top off the young oak about six feet above Si's head.62

A Close Shave 62

Shorty was the first to recover his wits and tongue. "Doggoned if somebody else hain't been drawin' a bead on trees," he said, looking into Si's startled face. "Knows how to shoot, too."

"I didn't notice that measly gun come up there. Did you, Shorty?" said Si, trying to get his heart back out of his mouth, so that he could speak plainly.

"No. I didn't. But it's there all the same, and the fellers with it have blood in their eyes. Le's run over to where the other boys are. I'm a private citizen. I don't like so much public notice."

They joined the squad which was driving back the rebels who had started out to break the fence.

Presently the cavalry wheeled about and disappeared in the woods. The rear was scarcely out of sight, and the 200th Ind. was just beginning to feel a sense of relief, when there was a sputter of shots and a chorus of yells away off to the extreme left.

"Just as I expected," grumbled Shorty. "They are jumping the rear of the train now."

Leaving Co. A to watch the head of the train, the rest of the regiment bolted off on the double-quick for the rear. They did not get there a moment too soon. Not soon enough, in fact. As they came over the crest of the hill they saw Co. B, which had been with the rear, having more than it could attend to with a horde of yelling, galloping rebels, who filled the little valley. Co. B's boys were standing up manfully to their work, and popping away at the rebels from behind fences and rocks, but the latter had already gotten away from them a wagon which had been far to the rear, had cut loose the mules and run them off, and were plundering the wagon, and trying to start a fire under it.

The fusillade which the regiment opened as the men grained the crest of the hill, put a different64 complexion on the affair. The rebels recognized the force of circumstances, and speedily rode back out of range, and then out of sight. As the last of them disappeared over the hill the wearied regiment dropped down all around to rest.

Groundhog Fled 64

"We can't rest long, boys," said the sympathetic Colonel; "we've got to start these wagons along."

Presently he gave the order:

"Go back to your wagons, now, and get them out as quickly as you can."

Si and Shorty took a circuit to the left to get on some sod which had not been trampled into mortar. They heard a volley of profanity coming from a cedar brake still farther to the left, and recognized the voice of their teamster. They went thither, and found Groundhog, who had fled from the scene, after the manner of his race, at the first sound of firing, but had been too scared to fasten up his traces when he unhitched his saddle mule. These had flapped around, as he urged his steed forward, and the hooks had caught so firmly into the cedars when he plunged into the thicket that he was having a desperate time getting them loose.

"You dumbed, measly coward," said Si. "I told you I'd blow your head offen you if you didn't stay by them mules. I ought to do it."

"Don't, Si," said Shorty. "He deserves it, and we kin do it some other time. But we need him now in our business. He hain't much of a head, but it's all that he's got and he can't drive without it. Le's git the mule loose first."

They got the mule out and turned him around toward the wagons.

"Now," said Shorty, addressing Groundhog, "you white-livered son-in-law of a jackass, git back to that wagon as fast as you kin, if you don't want me to run this bayonet through you."

There was more straining and prying in the dreary rain and fathomless mud to get the wagons started.66

"Shorty," said Si, as they plodded alongside the road, with a rail on one shoulder and a gun on the other, "I really believe that this is the toughest day we've had yet. What d'you s'pose father and mother'd say if they could see us?"

Earning Thirteen Dollars a Month 57

"They'd probably say we wuz earning our $13 a month, with $100 bounty at the end o' three years.," snapped Shorty, who was in no mood for irrelevant conversation.

So the long, arduous day went. When they were not pulling, pushing, prying, and yelling, to get the wagons out of mudholes, they were rushing over the clogging, plowed fields to stand off the nagging rebel cavalry, which seemed to fill the country as full as the rain, the mud, the rocks and the sweeping cedars did. As night drew on they came up to lines of fires where the different divisions were going into line-of- battle along the banks of Stone River. The mud became deeper than ever, from the trampling of tens of thousands of men and animals, but they at least did not have the aggravating rebel cavalry to bother them. They found their division at last in an old cottonfield, and were instantly surrounded by a crowd of hungry, angry men.

"Where in blazes have you fellers bin all day?" they shouted. "You ought to've got up here hours ago. We're about starved."

"Go to thunder, you ungrateful whelps," said Si. "You kin git your own wagons up after this. I'll never help guard another wagon-train as long as I'm in the army."

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VI. BATTLE OF STONE RIVER THE 200TH IND. IS PRAISED FOR BRAVERY

THE fagged-out 200th Ind. was put in reserve to the brigade, which lay in the line-of-battle. After having got the train safely into camp, the regiment felt that it was incapable of moving another foot.

While their coffee was boiling Si and Shorty broke off a few cedar branches to lay under them, and keep out the mud. The rain still drizzled, cold, searching and depressing, but they were too utterly tired to do anything more than spread their over coats on the branches, lay their blankets and ponchos over, and crawl in between.

In the few minutes which they allowed to elapse between getting into camp and going to sleep they saw and heard something of the preparations going on around them for the mighty battle, but body and brain were too weary to properly "sense" these. They hardly cared what might happen to- morrow. Rest for to-day was everything. They were too weary to worry about anything in the future.

"It certainly looks, Shorty," said Si, as he crawled in, "like as if the circus was in town, and the big show'd come off to-morrow, without regard to the68 weather."

"Let it come and be blamed to it," snorted Shorty. "They can't git up nothin' wuss'n we've bin havin' to-day, let them try their durndest. But I tell you, Mr. Si Klegg, I want you to lay mighty still to-night. If you git to rollin' around in your usual animated style and tanglin' up the bedclothes, I'll kick you out into the rain, and make you stay there. Do you hear me?"

"You bet I'll lay quiet," said Si, as together they gave the skillful little kick only known to veteran campaigners by which they brought the blankets snugly up around their feet. "You could sooner wake up a fence- rail than me. I want to tell you, too, not to git to dreamin' of pryin' wagons out of the mud, and chasin' rebel cavalry. I won't have it."

The reveille the next morning would have promptly awakened even more tired sleepers than Si and Shorty. Even before the dull, damp drums began rolling and the fifes shrieking the air of enforced gaiety along the sinuous line of blue which stretched for miles through red, muddy cottonfields and cedar tangles wet as bath-room sponges, there came from far away on the extreme right a deepening roll of musketry, punctuated with angry cannon-shots and the faint echo of yells and answering cheers.

"That's McCook opening the battle," said the officers, answering the anxious looks of the men. "He's to hold the rebels out there, while Crittenden sweeps around on the left, captures Murfreesboro, and takes them in the rear."

Miles away to the left came the sound of musketry and cannons, as if to confirm this. But the firing there died down, while that to the right increased69 with regular, crashing volleys from muskets and artillery.

The 200th Ind. was in that exceedingly trying position for soldiers, where they can hear everything but see nothing. The cedar thicket in which they stood shut off the view in every direction. The Colonel kept officers and men standing strictly in place, ready for any contingency. Si and Shorty leaned on their muskets and anxiously watched the regimental commander as he sat rigidly in his saddle, with his fixed gaze bent in the direction of the awful tumult. The Adjutant had ridden forward a little ways to where he could get a better view. The other officers stood stiffly in their places, with the points of their drawn swords resting on the ground, and their hands clasped on the hilts, and watched the Colonel intently. Sometimes they would whisper a few words to those standing near them. The Captain of Co. Q drew geometric figures in the mud with the point of his sword.

Constantly the deafening crash came nearer, and crept around farther to the right.

Si gave a swift glance at Shorty. His partner's teeth were set, his face drawn and bloodless, his eyes fixed immovably on the Colonel.

"Awful fightin' goin' on out there, Shorty," said Si, in hushed voice. "I'm afraid they're lickin' our fellers."

"Confound it!" snorted Shorty, "why in thunder don't they move us out, and give us something to do? This is hell standin' here listenin'."

A teamster, hatless and coatless, with his hair70 standing up, came tearing through the brush, mounted on his saddle-mule.

A chorus of yells and curses greeted his appearance. It was immense relief for the men to have something to swear at.

A Frightened Teamster 70

"Run, you egg-sucking hound. "Run, you scald-headed dominie.71

"Somebody busted a cap in your neighborhood, old white-liver."

"Seen the ghost of a dead rebel, Pilgarlic?"

"Pull back your eyes, you infernal mulewhacker. A limb'll brush 'em off."

"Look at his hair standin' up stiffer'n bristles on a boar's back."

"Your mules got more sand 'n you. They're standing where you left 'em."

"Of course, you're whipped and all cut to pieces. You was that when you heard the first gun crack."

"Get out of the way, and let him run himself to death. That's all he's fit for."

"You've no business in men's clothes. Put on petticoats."

"Go it, rabbit; go it, cotton-tail you've heard a dog bark."

"Chickee chickee skip for the barn. Hawk's in the air."

"Let him alone. He's in a hurry to get back and pay his sutler's bill."

The teamster gasped out:

"You'd better all git out o' here as fast as the Lord'll let you. Johnson's Division's cut all to pieces and runnin'. There'll be a million rebels on top o' you in another minnit."

"Capt. McGillicuddy," said the Colonel sternly, but without turning his head, "either bayonet that cowardly rascal or gag him and tie him to a tree."

The Captain turned to give the order to Corp'l Klegg, but the teamster struck his mule with his whip, and went tearing on through the brush before the order could be given.72

Some severely-wounded men came slowly pushing their way through the chaparral.

"It's awful hot out there," they said. "The rebels got the start of us, and caught our battery horses off to water. They outflanked us bad, but the boys are standin' up to 'em and they're gettin' help, an 'll lick the stuffin' out of 'em yet."

The regiment gave the plucky fellows a cheer.

A riderless horse, frantic from his wounds and the terrific noise, tore through the brush, and threatened to dash over Co. Q. Si and Shorty saw the danger, and before the Captain could give an order they sprang forward, and, at considerable risk, succeeded in getting hold of the reins and partially calming the poor brute. The eagles on the saddle cloth showed that he belonged to a Colonel. He was led to the rear, and securely haltered to a young cedar. The incident served a purpose in distracting for awhile the attention of the regiment.

The noise in front and to the right swept farther away for a little while, and the men's hearts rose with a cheer.

"Now the reinforcements are getting in. Why in the world don't they send us forward?" they said.

The Colonel still sat rigidly, with his face straight to the front.

Then the noise began to roll nearer again, and the men's hearts to sink.

The wounded men coming back became a continuous procession. They spoke less confidently, and were anxious to know what was taking place on other parts of the line.

"The whole infernal Southern Confederacy's out73 there," said one boy, who was holding his shattered right hand in his left, with his thumb pressed hard on the artery, to stanch the blood, "in three lines-of- battle, stretching from daybreak to sunset. The boys have been standing them off bully, though, but I don't know how long they can keep it up. Thomas and Crittenden ought to be walking right over every thing, for there can't be anybody in front of them. They're all out there."

Two musicians came laboring through, carrying a stretcher on which was an officer with part of his face shot away. Si felt himself growing white around the mouth and sick at the stomach, but he looked the other way, and drew in a long, full breath.

The storm now seemed to be rolling toward them at railroad speed. Suddenly the woods became alive with men running back, some with their guns in their hands, many without. Some were white with fear, and silent; some were in a delirium of rage, and yelling curses. Officers, bareheaded, and wildly excited, were waving their swords, and calling regiments and companies by name to halt and rally.

The Adjutant came galloping back, his horse knocking the fugitives right and left. He shouted, to make himself heard in the din:

"The whole division is broken and going back. Our brigade is trying to hold the rebels. They need us at once."

The Colonel turned calmly in his saddle, and his voice rang out clear, distinct, and measured, as if on parade:

"Attention, 200th Indiana!"

"Load at will LOAD!"

A windrow of bright ramrods flashed and weaved in the air. A wave of sharp, metallic clicks ran from one end of the line to the other.

"Shoulder ARMS!"

"Right FACE!"

"Forward MARCH!"

What happened immediately after emerging from the cedars Si could never afterward distinctly recall. He could only vaguely remember as one does the impression of a delirium seeing, as the regiment swung from column into line, a surging sea of brown men dashing forward against a bank of blue running along a rail fence, and from which rose incessant flashes of fire and clouds of white smoke. The 200th Ind. rushed down to the fence, to the right of the others; the fierce flashes flared along its front; the white smoke curled upward from it. He did not remember any order to begin firing; did not remember when he began. He only remembered presently feeling his gun-barrel so hot that it burned his hand, but this made him go on firing more rapidly than before. He was dimly conscious of his comrades dropping around him, but this did not affect him. He also remembered catching sight of Shorty's face, and noticing that it was as black as that of a negro, but this did not seem strange.

He felt nothing, except a consuming rage to shoot into and destroy those billows of brown fiends surging incessantly toward him. Consciousness only came back to him after the billows had surged back ward into the woods, leaving the red mud of the field splotched with brown lumps which had lately been men.75

As his mind cleared his hand flinched from the hot gun-barrel, and he looked down curiously to see the rain-drops turn into steam as they struck it. His throat was afire from the terrible powder thirst. He lifted his canteen to his lips and almost drained it. He drew a long breath, and looked around to see what had happened since they left the cedars. Shorty was by his side, and unhurt. He now under stood why his face was so black. He could feel the thick incrustation of powder and sweat on his own. Several of Co. Q were groaning on the ground, and the Captain was detailing men to carry them back to where the Surgeon had established himself. Two were past all surgery, staring with soulless eyes into the lowering clouds.

"Poor Bill and Ebe," said Si, gazing sorrowfully at the bodies. "Co. Q will miss them. What good boys they—"

"Were" stuck in his throat. That those strong, active, ever-ready comrades of a few minutes before now merely "were" was unspeakable.

His thoughts were distracted by a rebel battery on the hill sending a volley of shells at the fence. Some went over, and tore gaps in the cedars beyond. One struck the corner of the fence near him, and set the rails to flying.

"I like fence-rails in their place as well as any man," said Shorty, as they dodged around; "but a fence-rail's got no business sailin' 'round in the air like a bird."

An Aid rode up to the Colonel.

"The General's compliments, Colonel. He directs me to express to you his highest compliments on the76 splendid manner in which you have defended your position. You and your men have done nobly. But we are outflanked, and it will be necessary to retire to a new position about a half-mile to the rear. You will withdraw your regiment by companies, so as to attract as little attention from the enemy as possible. As soon as they are under cover of the cedars you will move rapidly to the new position."

"Very well," said the Colonel, saluting. "You will be good enough to say to the General that my men and myself appreciate highly his praise. We are proud to receive it, and shall try to deserve it in the future. His orders shall be immediately obeyed."

"They call this a civil war," said Shorty, as an other volley of shells tore around. "Seems to me sometimes that it's too durned civil. If we're goin' to git out of here, we might save compliments for a quieter time."

One by one the companies filed back into the cedars, Co. Q being last. Just as they started the rebels on the opposite hill discovered the movement, raised a yell, and started across the field.

"Halt Front!" commanded the Captain. "Those fellows are too tumultuous and premature. We must check them up a little. Wait till they come to that little branch, then everybody pick his man and let him have it. Aim below the belt."

The frenzy of the first struggle was now gone from Si's mind; instead had come a deadly determination to make every shot tell.

"I'm goin' to fetch that mounted officer on their right," he said to Shorty and those around him.

"Very well," said Shorty. "I'll take that Captain77 near him who's wavin' his sword and yellin'. The rest o' you fellers pick out different men."

The rebel line was in the weeds which bordered the branch when the Captain gave the order to fire.

When the smoke arose the mounted officer and the yelling Captain were down.

"If somebody else didn't get them, we did," said Shorty, as they turned and rushed back into the cedars.

The rebels were only checked momentarily. They soon came swarming on, and as Co. Q crashed through the cedars the rebels were yelling close be hind. Fortunately, they could not do any effective firing, on account of the brush. But when they came to the edge of the thicket there was a long run across a furrowed, muddy cottonfield, to reach the knoll on which the brigade was re-forming. The battery was already in action there, throwing shells over the heads of Co. Q at the rebels swarming out of the cedars in pursuit.

Si and Shorty threw away overcoats, blankets, haversacks and canteens everything which would impede their running, except their guns and cartridge-boxes. Their caps were gone, and Si had lost one shoe in the mud. They all sat down on the ground for a minute and panted to get their breath.

The rebels were checked, but only temporarily. They were thronging out in countless multitudes, lining up into regiments and brigades, preparatory to a rush across the field upon the brigade. Away to the right of the brigade rebel batteries had been concentrated, which were shelling it and the ground to the rear, to prevent any assistance being sent it.78

"Captain," said the Colonel, riding up to Co. Q, "the General says that we have got to stay here and hold those fellows back until the new line can be formed along the pike. We haven't ammunition enough for another fight. You'll have to send a Corporal and a squad back to the pike to bring up some more. Pick out men that'll be sure to come back, and in a hurry."

"Corp'l Klegg," said the Captain, without an instant's hesitation, "you hear what's to be done. Take five men and go."

Si looked around to see if there was someone he could borrow a shoe from. But that was hardly a time when men were likely to lend shoes. He picked Shorty and four others. They flung down their guns and started on a run for the pike.

The batteries were sweeping the fields with shells, but they were so intent on their errand that they paid no attention to the demoniac shrieks of the hurtling pieces of iron.

They gained the other side of the field, but as they entered the welcome shelter of the woods they encountered an officer with a drawn sword, commanding a line of men.

"Stop there, you infernal, cowardly rascals," he yelled. "Pick up those guns there, and get into line, or I'll shoot you. You, Corporal, ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"We're after ammunition for the 200th Ind.," gasped Si. "We must have it right away. Where's the division ammunition train?"

"That ammunition story's played. Can't work it on me. Where's your regiment? Where's your79 caps? Where's your shoes? Where's your guns? You're rattled out of your senses. Stop here and cool off. Pick up guns there and fall into line."

"Name o' God, Lieutenant," said Shorty excitedly. "This's no time for any foolishness. Our regiment's out there on the hill without any ammunition. The rebels are gittin' ready to jump it, four or five to one. Don't fool, for heaven's sake. There's not a minute to waste. Come with us and help us git the ammunition. That's a blame sight more important than stoppin' these here runaways, who're no good when they are stopped. Come along, for God's sake."

His earnestness impressed the Lieutenant.

"Lieut. Evans," he called out, "take command of the line while I go back with these men to the ammunition-train. I can get it quicker for them than they can. Your Colonel should have sent a commissioned officer with you."

"The Colonel needs all the officers he has left with him," panted Shorty, running ahead of the rest. "Everybody back there's got all he can attend to, and we couldn't really be spared."

There was a crowd of similar men surging around the ammunition wagons, each eager to get his load and rush back. The covers of the wagons had been torn off, and a man stood in each, pitching the boxes to the clamoring details. All were excited and reckless. The pitching would be wild, or the catching bad, and occasionally a box would strike a man on the head or body and knock him down. He would scarcely stop to swear, but snatch up his precious box and rush off toward his regiment.80

"Open out here, let us in," commanded the Lieutenant, striking right and left with the flat of his sword. It was not a moment for gentle courtesies. The crowd opened up, and Si and Shorty pushed in near the wheels.

"Now give us six boxes in a hurry," commanded the Lieutenant.

Si caught the first box, Shorty the second, and before the Lieutenant was hardly done speaking the rest had theirs, and started back on the run, accompanied by the Lieutenant. The boxes were very heavy and the mud was deep, but they went faster than they had ever done, even when running from the rebels.

"I'm awfully afraid you'll have a time getting across the field there," said the Lieutenant, as they came to the edge, and he surveyed the ground in front doubtfully. "Lieut. Evans says they've moved a battery up closer, and are sweeping the field with canister."

"We don't care what they're shootn'," said Si resolutely. "We're goin' back to the regiment with these boxes, or die a-tryin'."

"Go on, then, and God help you," said the Lieutenant. "I'd go with you if I could do any good."

Si arranged his box for a desperate rush. A blast of canister swept through, cutting down shrubs, splattering the mud, and shrieking viciously.

"Let's get as far as we can before they fire again," he shouted, and plunged forward. Half-way across the field his foot caught in a devil's shoe-string, and down he went in the mud, with the heavy box driving him deeper.81

Just then another blast of canister hurtled across the field.

A Lucky Fall 81

"Golly, it was lucky, after all, that I was tripped," said Si, rising, stunned and dripping. "That load of canister was meant for me personally."

Two minutes later he flung the box down before the company, and sank panting on the ground. The others came up after. Some had teen grazed by canister, but none seriously wounded. They arrived just in the nick of time, for the regiment had expended its last cartridge in repulsing the last assault, and was now desperately fixing bayonets to meet the next with cold steel. The lids of the boxes were pried off with bayonets, and the Sergeants ran along the companies distributing the packages. The assault was met with a stream of fire, given with steady deadliness, which sent the rebels back to their covert.

An Aid dashed across the field to the brigade commander.

"The line is now formed," he said. "Retire your command to it."

That night, after the battle had ceased, Si and Shorty were seated on a rail by the Nashville pike munching rations which they had luckily found in a thrown-away haversack. They were allowed no fires, they had no blankets nor overcoats, and it was bitter cold.

"Shorty, you said last night you was sure that they couldn't git up nothin' to-day that'd be as bad as what we had yesterday," said Si. "I bel'eve that I'd rather guard wagon-trains and fight cavalry than have such another day as this."

"I think the lake of brimstone'd be a pleasant change from this," snorted Shorty.

84

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VII. AFTER THE FIRST DAY THE DISCOMFORTS OF THAT LAST NIGHT OF 1862

IT WAS so desperately cold and comfortless that Si and Shorty felt that they must do something or perish.

There were some fragments of cracker-boxes near. With these they dug a hole several inches deep, put some splinters in, and started a stealthy blaze. They were careful to sit on the side toward the rebels, the better to hide from them any sight of it. It was a very small fire, but there was more relief in it than Si had before gotten from those a thousand times larger. It kept his unshod foot from freezing, and brought the blood back to his numb hands.

"Just think, Shorty," said Si; "night before last we had a whole panel of fence on the fire, and all our blankets and overcoats, and yet you kicked. I believe this is a judgment on you for not being thankful for what you receive."

"Judgment be blowed," ejaculated Shorty. "This ain't no judgment; it's just durned luck that is, what isn't foolishness in sendin' a boy to mill. If we'd had only half as many men out there in the cedars as the rebels had we'd licked thunder out of 'em. We simply couldn't whip four or five to one. McCook didn't size up his job right."

"Well, we have something to be thankful for," said Si, determined to see the bright side of things. "Neither of us got hurt, which is a blessing."

"Don't know whether it is or not. If we are goin' to freeze to death before mornin' I'd rather've bin shot the first volley."

The misty darkness around them was filled with noise and motion. Men who had become separated from their regiments were wandering around trying to find them, in the bewildering maze of men, wagons and animals. Officers were calling aloud the names of regiments to bring together stragglers. Aids were rushing around to find Generals and Colonels to give and receive orders and instructions. Regiments and batteries were marching hither and yon to get into position and complete the formation of the line for the morrow's battle. The 200th Ind., which had fallen back in good order with its brigade, was well together, and made an island around which a restless sea of humanity flowed and eddied. Cheer less as was its bivouac in the cold mud, yet it was infinitely preferable to being lost in the inextricable confusion that reigned over those cottonfields on that sorrowful night of Dec. 31, 1862.

"I'm not goin' to freeze to death," said Si, starting up, at last. "I'm going to look around and see if I can't find something to make us more comfortable. Shorty, hold on to that hole in the ground. It's all that we've got left in the world, and if we lose that I don't know what'll become of us."

"Better stay here, and not go wanderin' off into that mob," remonstrated Shorty. "You'll git lost entirely, and never find your way back."85

"I'll not get lost," responded Si. "I've got the lay o' the ground in my mind. If I did," he continued proudly, "it'd be easy to find you agin. Everybody knows where the 200th Ind. is."

He went only a little ways, and carefully, at first.

He was rewarded by kicking against an object which upon examination proved to be a well-filled haver sack, which someone had flung away in his hurry. He carried it back, rejoicing, to Shorty.

Finding a Good Thing 85

"Finders is keepers," said Shorty, unbuckling the knapsack. "We'll just call this fair exchange for what we've throwed away in to-day's hustle. Let's open her up."

"Some new recruit's," said Si, as they examined the inside. "Looks like the one I packed from Injianny. What's this? I declare if it ain't a pair o' new shoes, and about my size; and some socks. I tell you, Shorty, I'm in luck."

He pulled the muddy socks off his shoeless foot, and drew on one of the warm, homemade affairs, and then the shoe. Both fitted well. He put on the other sock and shoe, and life at once seemed brighter.

"Shorty," said he, "I shouldn't wonder if I could find a blanket and an overcoat. You keep on holding that hole down, and I'll go out agin. I won't be gone long, for I'm dead tired. Just as soon as I find an overcoat or a blanket to put between us and the mud, I'll come back and we'll lay down. Every joint in me aches."

He started off less carefully this time. His new shoes made him feel more like walking. He was some distance from the regiment before he knew it. He found an overcoat. It had been trampled into the mud by thousands of passing feet, but still it was an overcoat, and it was not a time to be too nice about the condition of a garment. Presently he found a blanket in similar condition. He pulled on the overcoat, and threw the blanket over his 87shoulders. He felt warmer, but they were very heavy. Still, he thought he would go on a little ways farther, and perhaps he would find another overcoat and blanket, which would fix out both him and his partner.

All this time men were sweeping by him in companies, regiments and squads; batteries were moving in all directions, and mounted officers were making their way to and fro. Filling up the spaces between these were hundreds of men, single and in small groups, wandering about in search of their regiments, and inquiring of everyone who would stop to listen to them as to the whereabouts of regiments, brigades and divisions. No one could give any satisfactory information. Organizations which had formed a line two miles long in the morning had been driven back, frequently in tumult and disorder, for miles through the thickets and woods. Fragmentary organizations had been rallied from time to time. A fragment of a regiment would rally at one point with fragments of other regiments and make a stand, while other regiments would rally at widely-separated places and renew the fight, only to be pushed back again toward the Nashville Pike. Regiments and brigades that had remained nearly intact had been rapidly shifted from one point to another, as they were needed, until the mind could not follow their changes, or where nightfall had found them, or whither they had been shifted to form the new line.

At last Si succeeded in picking up another over coat and blanket out of the mud, and started to go back to the regiment.88

But where was the regiment? He had long since lost all track of its direction. He had been so intent upon studying the ground for thrown- away clothing that he had not noticed the course he had taken.

It suddenly dawned on him that he was but one drop in that great ocean of 35,000 men, surging around on the square miles lying between the Nashville Pike and Stone River. He looked about, but could see nothing to guide him. His eyes rested everywhere on dark masses of moving men. Those immediately around him were inquiring weariedly for their own regiments; they had no patience to answer inquiries as to his own. Discouraged, he determined to walk as straight ahead as possible in the direction which he had come, and see where that would bring him. He was so tired that he could scarcely drag one foot after another, but he plodded on. At length he drew out of the throng a little, and saw that he was approaching the banks of a large stream. This disheartened him, for they had not been within miles of Stone River during the day. He saw a group of men huddled around a larger fire than had been permitted near the front. This, too, was discouraging, for it showed that he had been forging toward the rear. But he went up to the group and inquired:

"Do any o' you know where the 200th Ind. is?"

The men had become wearied out answering similar questions, and were as cross as soldiers get to be under similar circumstances.

"The 200th Ind.," snapped one; "better go back to the rear-guard and inquire. The straggler-ketchers 've got 'em."89

"No," said another; "they skipped out before the rear-guard was formed, and were all drowned trying to swim the Cumberland."

"They say the Colonel went on foot," said a third, "and was the first man in the regiment to reach Nashville. Made the best long-distance run on record."

"You infernal liars," roared Si; "if I wasn't so tired I'd lick the whole caboodle of you. But I'll say this: Any man who says that the 200th Ind. run, or that our brave Colonel run, or that any man in it run, is a low-down, measly liar, and hain't a grain a' truth in him, and he daresn't take it up."

It was a comprehensive challenge, that would have met with instantaneous response at any other time, but now the men were too exhausted for such vanities as fisticuffs.

"O, go off and find your rattled, lousy Hoosiers," they shouted in chorus. "Go talk to the Provost-Marshal about 'em. He's got the most of 'em. The rest are breaking for the Wabash as fast as their legs can carry them. Don't be bothering us about that corn-cracking, agery crowd."

"Where'd you leave your regiment, you chuckle-headed straggler?"

"You were so rattled you couldn't tell which way they went."

"Where's your gun?"

"Where's your cartridge-box and haversack?"

"Where's your cap?"

"You were so scared you'd 'a' throwed away your head if it'd been loose!"

"Clear out from here, you dead-beat."90

Si's Challenge 90

Si was too sick at heart to more than resolve that he would remember each one of them, and pay them off at some more convenient time. He turned and walked back as nearly as possible in the direction in which he had come. He knew that his regiment was at the front, and he had been forging toward the rear. He knew vaguely that the front was some where near the Nashville Pike, and as he wearily wound around and through the bewildering masses, he inquired only for the Nashville Pike.

He reached the Pike, at last, just as he was sinking with fatigue. The dreary rain had set in again, and he had determined to give the thing up, and sit down, and wait for morning. He saw a feeble glimmer of light at a distance, and decided to make one more effort to reach it, and inquire for his regiment.

"Partner, have you any idee where the 200th Ind. is?" he said meekly to the man who was crouching over the fire in the hole.

"Hello, Si," said Shorty. "I had given you up long ago. Of course, you went off and got lost in that mob, as I told you you would. Next time you'll have sense enough to mind what I say."

"O, Shorty," groaned Si, "don't say nothing. I've nigh walked my legs offen me. I think I've tramped over every foot of ground betwixt here and Overall's Crick. But I've brought back two overcoats and two blankets."

"That's bully," answered Shorty, much mollified. "Say, I've got an idee. D'you see that white thing over there? That's a wagon. The mules 've been taken away, and it's been standing there for an hour. I've seen the Lieutenants and the Orderly-Sergeant sneak back there, and I know what they're up to. They're goin' to sleep in the wagon. Of course, they're officers, and got the first pick. But we kin92 lay down under it, and get out of the rain. Be sides, it looks as if the ground was drier up there than it is down here."

They slipped quietly back to the wagon, and were lucky enough to find a little hay in the feed-box, which they could lay down to spread their blankets upon. They pulled the tail-gate off and set it up on the side from which the rain was coming.

"There," said Shorty, as they crawled in. "Si, what'd you do without me? Ain't I a comfort to you every minute of your life?"

"You certainly are, Shorty," said Si, as he fell asleep.

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VIII. A GLOOMY NEW YEAR'S DAY THE TWO ARMIES LIE FROWNING AT EACH OTHER

SI WAS awakened the next morning by the rain dashing down squarely on his upturned face. He was lying on the flat of his back, sleeping the sleep of the utterly outworn, and he got the full force of the shower.

"Plague take it, Shorty," said he, kicking his snoring partner, "you're at your old tricks again scrougin' me out o' the tent while I'm asleep. Why can't you lay still, like a white man?"

"It's you, dod rot you," grumbled Shorty, half-awakening. "You're at your old tricks o' kickin' the tent down. You need a 10-acre lot to sleep in, and then you'd damage the fence-corners."

They were both awake by this time, and looked around in amazement.

"We went to sleep nice and comfortable, under a wagon last night," said Shorty, slowly recalling the circumstances. "The two Lieutenants and the Orderly had the upper berth, and we slept on the ground-floor."

"Yes," assented Si; "and someone's come along, hitched mules to our bedroom and snaked it off."

"Just the way in the condemned army," grumbled Shorty, his ill-humor asserting itself as he sat up and looked out over the rain-soaked fields. "Never kin git hold of a good thing but somebody yanks it94 away. S'pose they thought that it was too good for a private soldier, and they took it away for some Major-General to sleep under."

A Disagreeable Awakening for Shorty and Si. 94

"Well, I wonder what we're goin' to do for grub?" said Si, as his athletic appetite began to assert itself.

"Our own wagons, that we had such a time guarding, are over there in the cedars, and the rebels are filling themselves up with the stuff that we were so good to bring up for them."

"It makes me jest sizzle," said Shorty, "to think of all we went through to git them condemned wagons up where they'd be handiest for them."

Si walked down the line toward where the Regimental Headquarters were established under a persimmon tree, and presently came back, saying:

"They say there's mighty small chance of gettin' any grub to-day. Wheeler burnt three or four miles of our wagons yesterday, and's got possession of the road to Nashville. We've got to fight the battle out on empty stomachs, and drive these whelps away before we kin get a square meal."

Jan. 1, 1863, was an exceedingly solemn, unhappy New Year's Day for the Union soldiers on the banks of Stone River. Of the 44,000 who had gone into the line on the evening of Dec. 30, nearly 9,000 had been killed or wounded and about 2,000 were prisoners. The whole right wing of the army had been driven back several miles, to the Nashville Pike. Cannon, wagon-trains, tents and supplies had been captured by the rebel cavalry, which had burned miles of wagons, and the faint-hearted ones murmured that the army would have to surrender or starve.

There was not ammunition enough to fight an other battle. The rebel army had suffered as heavily in killed and wounded, but it was standing on its own ground, near its own supplies, and had in addition captured great quantities of ours.96

The mutual slaughter of the two armies had been inconceivably awful inexpressibly ghastly, shuddering, sickening. They had pounded one another to absolute exhaustion, and all that sullen, lowering, sky- weeping Winter's day they lay and glared at one another like two huge lions which had fanged and torn each other until their strength had been entirely expended, and breath and strength were gone. Each was too spent to strike another blow, but each too savagely resolute to think of retreating.

All the dogged stubbornness of his race was now at fever point in Si's veins. Those old pioneers and farmers of the Wabash from whom he sprang were not particularly handsome to look at, they were not glib talkers, nor well educated. But they had a way of thinking out rather slowly and awkwardly it might be just what they ought to do, and then doing it or dying in the effort which made it very disastrous for whoever stood in their way. Those who knew them best much preferred to be along with them rather than against them when they set their square-cornered heads upon accomplishing some object.

Si might be wet, hungry, and the morass of mud in which the army was wallowing uncomfortable and discouraging to the last degree, but there was not the slightest thought in his mind of giving up the fight as long as there was a rebel in sight. He and Shorty were not hurt yet, and until they were, the army was still in good fighting trim.

The line of the 200th Ind. was mournfully shorter than it was two days before, but there were still several hundred boys of Si's stamp gathered resolutely97 around its flag, the game little Colonel's voice rang out as sharply as ever, and the way the boys picked up their guns and got into line whenever a sputter of firing broke out anywhere must have been very discouraging to Gen. Bragg and his officers, who were anxiously watching the Union lines through their glasses for signs of demoralization and retreat.

"We licked 'em yesterday, every time they come up squarely in front o' the 200th Ind.," Si said to Shorty and those who stood around gazing anxiously on the masses of brown men on the other side of the field. "We can do it again, every time. The only way they got away with us was by sneakin' around through the cedars and takin' us in the rear. We're out in the open ground now, an' they can't get around our flanks." And he looked to the extreme right, where every knoll was crowned with a battery of frowning guns.

"They got their bellies full o' fightin' yesterday," added Shorty, studying the array judicially. "They hain't none o' the brashness they showed yesterday mornin', when they were jumpin' us in front, right, left and rear at the same minute. They're very backward about comin' forward acrost them fields for us to-day. I only wish they'd try it on."

But the forenoon wore away without the rebels showing any disposition to make an assault across the muddy fields. Si's vigilant appetite took advantage of the quiet to assert its claims imperiously.

"Shorty," said he, "there must be something to eat somewhere around here. I'm goin' to look for it."

"You'll have just about as much chance of findin' it," said Shorty dolefully, "among that mob o' 98famished Suckers as you would o' findin' a straw-stack in the infernal regions. But I'll go 'long with you. We can't lose the regiment in the day time."

"By the way, Shorty," said Si, happening to glance at the sleeves of the overcoats which he had picked up, "we both seem to be Sergeants."

"That's so," assented Shorty. "Both these are Sergeant's overcoats. We'll take our guns along, and play that we are on duty. It may help us out somewhere."

Things looked so quiet in front that the Captain gave them permission, and off they started. It seemed a hopeless quest. Everywhere men were ravenous for food. They found one squad toasting on their rammers the pieces of a luckless rabbit they had cornered in a patch of briars. Another was digging away at a hole that they alleged contained a woodchuck. A third was parching some corn found in a thrown-away feed box, and congratulating themselves upon the lucky find.

Finally they came out upon the banks of Stone River at the place to which Si had wandered during the night. Si recognized it at once, and also the voices that came from behind a little thicket of paw paws as those of the men with whom he had had the squabble.

Si motioned to Shorty to stop and keep silent, while he stepped up closer, parted the bushes a little, looked through, and listened.

Two men were standing by a fire, which was concealed from the army by the paw-paws. Four others had just come up, carrying rolled in a blanket what seemed to be a dead body. They flung it down99 by the fire, with exclamations of relief, and unrolled it. It was the carcass of a pig so recently killed that it was still bleeding.

"Hello," exclaimed the others joyfully; "where did you get that?"

"Why," exclaimed one of the others, "we were poking around down there under the bank, and we happened to spy a nigger cabin on the other side of the river, hid in among the willers, where nobody could see it. We thought there might be something over there, so we waded across. There wasn't any thing to speak of in the cabin, but we found this pig in the pen. Jim bayoneted it, and then we wrapped it up in our blanket, as if we wuz taking a boy back to the Surgeon's, and fetched it along. We couldn't 've got a hundred yards through that crowd if they'd dreamed what we had. Jerusalem, but it was heavy, though. We thought that pig weighed a thousand pounds before we got here."

"Bully boys," said the others gleefully. "We'll have enough to eat, no matter how many wagons the rebels burn. I always enjoyed a dinner of fresh pork more on New Year's Day than any other time."

Si turned and gave Shorty a wink that conveyed more to that observant individual than a long telegram would have done. He winked back approvingly, brought up his gun to a severely regulation "carry arms," and he and Si stepped briskly through the brush to the startled squad.

"Here," said Si, with official severity; "you infernal stragglers, what regiments do you belong to? Sneaking out here, are you, and stealin' hogs instead of being with your companies. Wrap that pig up100 again, pick it up, and come along with us to Headquarters."

For a minute it looked as if the men would fight. But Si had guessed rightly; they were stragglers, and had the cowardice of guilty consciences. They saw the chevrons on Si's arms, and his positive, commanding air finished them. They groaned, wrapped up the pig again, and Si mercifully made the two who had waited by the fire carry the heaviest part.

Si started them back toward the 200th Ind., and he and Shorty walked along close to them, maintaining a proper provost-guard-like severity of countenance and carriage.

The men began to try to beg off, and make advances on the basis of sharing the pork. But Si and Shorty's official integrity was incorruptible.

"Shut up and go on," they would reply to every proposition. "We ain't that kind of soldiers. Our duty's to take you to Headquarters, and to Headquarters you are going."

They threaded through the crowds for some time, and as they were at last nearing the regiment a battery of artillery went by at as near a trot as it could get out of the weary horses in that deep mire. The squad took advantage of the confusion to drop their burden and scurry out of sight in the throng.

"All right; let 'em go," grinned Si. "I wuz jest wonderin' how we'd get rid o' 'em. I'd thought o' takin' them into the regiment and then givin' them a chunk o' their pork, but then I'd get mad at the way they talked about the 200th Ind. last night, and want to stop and lick 'em. It's better as it is. We need all that pig for the boys."101

Si and Shorty picked up the bundle and carried it up to the regiment. When they unrolled it the boys gave such lusty cheers that the rebels beyond the field rushed to arms, expecting a charge, and one of our impulsive cannoneers let fly a shell at them.

Si and Shorty cut off one ham for themselves and their particular cronies, carried the other ham, with their compliments, to the Colonel, and let the rest be divided up among the regiment.

One of their chums was lucky enough to have saved a tin box of salt, and after they had toasted and devoured large slices of the fresh ham they began to feel like new men, and be anxious for some thing farther to happen.

But the gloomy, anxious day dragged its slow length along with nothing more momentous than fitful bursts of bickering, spiteful firing, breaking out from time to time on different parts of the long line, where the men's nerves got wrought up to the point where they had to do something to get the relief of action.

Away out in front of the regiment ran a little creek, skirting the hill on which the rebels were massed. In the field between the hill and the creek was one of our wagons, which had mired there and been abandoned by the driver in the stampede of the day before. It seemed out of easy rifle-shot of the rebels on the hill.

Si had been watching it for some time. At length he said:

"Shorty, I believe that wagon's loaded with hard tack."

"It's certainly a Commissary wagon," said Shorty, after studying it a little.102

"Yes, I'm sure that it's one o' them wagons we was guardin', and I recollect it was loaded with hard tack."

The mere mention of the much-abused crackers made both their mouths water.

"Seems to me I recognize the wagon, too," said Shorty.

"Shorty, it'd be a great thing if we could sneak along up the creek, behind them bushes, until we come opposite the wagon, then make, a rush acrost the field, snatch up a box o' hardtack apiece, and then run back. We'd get enough to give each o' the boys a cracker apiece. The wagon'd shelter us comin' and goin', and we wouldn't get a shot."

"It might be," said Shorty, with visions of distributing hardtack to the hungry boys warping his judgment. "The fellers right back o' the wagon couldn't shoot to any advantage, and them to the right and left are too fur off. If you say so, it's a go."

"If the boys could only have one hardtack apiece," said Si, as his last hesitation vanished, "they'd feel ever so much better, and be in so much better shape for a fight. Come on, let's try it."

The rest overheard their plan, and began to watch them with eager interest. They made a circle to the right, got into the cover of the brush of the creek, and began making their way slowly and carefully up to a point opposite the wagon. They reached this without attracting notice, parted the bushes in front of them carefully, and took a good survey of the wagon and the hill beyond.

The wagon was a great deal nearer the hill than had appeared to be the case from where the103 regiment lay, and even where they stood they were in easy range of the rebels on the hill. But the latter were utterly unsuspicious of them. They were crouching down around fires, with their guns stacked, and the cannoneers of a couple of guns were at some distance from their pieces, under a brush shelter, before which a fire smoldered in the rain.

"It's awful short range," said Si dubiously. "If they were lookin' they'd tear us and the wagon all to pieces. But our boys is a-watchin' us, and I don't want to go back without a shy at it. Them fellers seem so busy tryin' to keep warm that we may get there without their noticin' us."

"I never wanted hardtack so much in my life as I do this minute," said Shorty. "I don't care to live forever, anyway. Let's chance it."

They pulled off their overcoats, carefully tied up their shoes, shifted around so as to be completely behind the wagon, and then started on a rush through the mud.

For several hundred steps nothing happened, and they began to believe that they would reach the wagon unnoticed. Then a few shots rang out over their heads, followed a minute later by a storm of bullets that struck in the mud and against the wagon. But they reached the wagon, and sat down, exhausted, on the tongue, sidling up close to the bed to protect them from the bullets.

Si recovered his breath first, caught hold of the front board and raised himself up, saw the boxes of coveted hardtack, and was just putting his hand on one of them when a shell struck the rear end and tore the canvas cover off. Si sank back again104 beside Shorty, when another shell burst under the wagon, and filled the air with pieces of wheels, bed, cracker- boxes and hardtack.

"I don't want no hardtack; I want to find the bank o' that crick," yelled Shorty, starting back on the jump, with Si just six inches behind.

The bullets spattered in the mud all around them as they ran, but they reached the creek bank with out being struck. They were in such a hurry that they did not stop to jump, but fell headlong into the water.

"Them hardtack wuz spiled, anyway," said Shorty, as they fished themselves out, found their overcoats, and made their way back to the regiment.

They received the congratulations of their comrades on their escape, and someone fished out all the consolation that the regiment could offer a couple of brierwood pipes filled with fragrant kinnikinnick. They sat down, smoked these, and tried to forget their troubles.

The cheerless night drew on. No fires were allowed, and the men huddled together on the wet ground, to get what comfort they could from the warmth of each other's bodies.

The temper of the rebels became nastier as the day wore away, and under the cover of the dark ness they pushed out here and there and opened worrying fires on the Union line. Suddenly a battery opened up on the 200th Ind. from a bare knoll in front. The rebels had evidently calculated the range during daylight, and the shells struck around them in the most annoying way. They threw up showers of mud, scattered the groups, and kept105 everybody nervous and alarmed. The regiment stood this for some time, when an idea occurred to Si and Shorty. They went up to the Colonel and explained:

"Colonel, we've studied the ground out there purty carefully, and we know that the knoll where that battery is is in close range o' that crick where we went up this afternoon. If you'll let a few of us go out there we kin stop them cannoneers mighty soon."

"Sure of that?" said the Colonel alertly.

"Dead sure."

"Very well, then," said the Colonel promptly. "I've been thinking of the same thing. I'll take the whole regiment out. Put yourselves at the head, and lead the way."

The regiment was only too eager for the movement. It marched rapidly after Si and Shorty up the creek bed, and in a very few minutes found itself on the flank of the obnoxious battery, which was still banging away into the line which the 200th Ind. had occupied. It was scarcely 200 yards away, and the men's hearts burned with a fierce joy at the prospect of vengeance. With whispered orders the Colonel lined up the regiment carefully on the bank, and waited until the battery should fire again, to make sure of the aim. Every man cocked his gun, took good aim, and waited for the order. They could distinctly hear the orders of the battery officers directing the shelling. Three cannon were fired at once, and as their fierce lights flashed out the Colonel gave the order to fire. A terrible simoon of death from the rifles of the 200th Ind. struck down everything in and around the battery.

"That dog's cured o' suckin' aigs," said Shorty, as the Colonel ordered the regiment to about face and march back.

The 200th Ind. heard no more from that battery that night.

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IX. VICTORY AT LAST SI REAPPEARS AS FROM THE GRAVE, WITH AN APPETITE LIKE PRAIRIE FIRE

ON THEIR way back from "settling the battery," Si and Shorty each broke off a big armful of cedar branches. These they spread down on the ground when the regiment resumed its place in the line-of-battle, and lay down on them to spend the rest of the night as comfortably as possible. The fire with which they had roasted the pig, and from which they had drawn much comfort during the day, had had to be extinguished when darkness came on. But it had dried out and warmed the ground for a considerable space around, and on this they made their bed.

"We seem to play in fair luck right along, Shorty," said the hopeful Si, as they curled up on the boughs. "Most of the boys 've got to lay down in a foot of mud."

"Don't get to crowin' too loud," grumbled Shorty. "If they find out what a good thing we have, some Jigadier-Brindle'll snatch it away for himself." But Si was fast asleep before Shorty finished speaking.

Sometime before midnight the Orderly-Sergeant came around, and after vigorous kicking and shaking, succeeded in waking them.

"Get up," he said, "and draw some rations. The wagons've got in from Nashville."108

"My gracious!" said Si, as soon as he was wide enough awake to understand the Orderly-Sergeant's words, "is it possible that we're going to have plenty of hardtack and pork and coffee again? Seems to me a hundred years since we drew a full ration."

He and Shorty jumped up and ran over to where the Quartermaster-Sergeant and his assistants were dealing out a handful of crackers and a piece of pork to each man as he came up.

"Mebbe I oughtn't to say it," said Si, as he munched away, taking a bite first off the crackers in his right and then off the meat in his left, "but nothing that ever mother baked tasted quite as good as this."

"This does seem to be a specially good lot," assented Shorty. "Probably a wagon load that they intended for the officers and give us by mistake. Better eat it all up before they find it out."

The morning of Jan. 2, 1863, dawned bleak and chill, but this at least brought the great comfort that the dreary rain was at last over. The sharp air was bracing, and put new life and hope into the hearts of the Union soldiers. Many wagons had been gotten up during the night, bringing food and ammunition for all. Soon after daylight cheerful fires were blazing everywhere, and the morning air was laden with the appetizing fragrance of boiling coffee and broiling meat. The sun began to rise over Murfreesboro' and the rebel camps, giving promise of a bright, invigorating day.

"I hope this thing'll be brought to a focus to-day, and the question settled as to who shall occupy this piece of real estate," said Shorty, as he and Si109 finished a generous breakfast, filled their boxes and pockets with cartridges, and began knocking the dried mud off their clothes and rubbing the rust from their guns. "I want them gents in brown clothes to clear out and leave. It frets me to see them hangin' 'round. They're bad neighbors."

"I hope," said Si, carefully picking out the tube of his gun with a pin, "we won't put in to-day as we did yesterday layin' 'round making faces an' shakin' our fists at one another. Let's have the thing out at once."

Evidently the rebels were of the same frame of mind. They saluted the dawn with a noisy fusillade that ran along the miles of winding line. It was spiteful, crashing and persistent, but as the Union lines lay beyond good musket range and the rebels showed no disposition to advance across the fields and come to close quarters, the noise was quite out of proportion to the harm done.

The two rebel batteries on the opposite side of the river opened up a terrific fire upon one of our batteries, and the air seemed torn to shreds by the storm of howling missiles.

The 200th Ind. was too far away to have more than a spectacular interest in this tempestuous episode. They stood around their gun-stacks and watched and listened while the hours passed in ineffective noise, and wondered when the crisis of action was going to arrive.

"They seem to have lost their appetite for close acquaintance with the 200th Ind.," remarked Shorty. "They found that Jordan was a hard road to travel whenever they came across the fields at us, and are110 tryin' to scare us by makin' a racket. I think we kin stand it as long as their powder kin. But I'm gittin' hungry agin. Let's have somethin' to eat."

"Good gracious, it is noon," answered Si, looking up at the sun. "I believe I do want some dinner."

They had scarcely finished dinner-eating when the 200th Ind. was ordered to move over toward Stone River. It halted on a little rise of ground on the bank, which commanded an extensive view on both sides of the river. There was a portentous flow in the great, dark-blue sea of men. The billows, crested with shining steel, were rolling eastward toward the river.

"Something's goin' to happen; meetin's about to break up; school's goin' to let out," said Shorty eagerly. "Isn't it a grand sight."

"Gracious me!" said Si, devouring the spectacle with his eyes. "How I wish that father and mother and sister could see all this. It's worth going through a great deal to see this."

It was by far the most imposing spectacle they had yet seen. The whole Army of the Cumberland was crowded into the narrow space between the Nashville Pike and Stone River. Its compact regiments, brigades, and divisions showed none of the tearing and mangling they had endured, but stood or moved in well-dressed ranks that seemed the embodiment of mighty purpose and resistless force.

Around its grand array, a half mile away, lay the somber, portentous line of brown-clad men. Beyond them rose the steeples and roofs of the sleepy old town of Murfreesboro', with crowds of men and women occupying every point of vantage, to witness the renewal of the awful battle.111

It was now long past noon. The bright sun had long ago scattered the chill mists of the morning, and radiated warmth and light over the dun landscape. Even the somber cedars lost some of the funereal gloom they wore when the skies were lowering.

"There go two brigades across the river," said Si. "We're goin' to try to turn their right."

They saw a long line of men file down the river bank, cross, and go into line on the high ground beyond. Their appearance seemed to stir the brown mass lying on the hights a mile in front of them to action. The rebels began swarming out of their works and moving forward into the woods.

Presently a thin line of men in butternut-colored clothes ran forward to a fence in front, and began throwing it down. Behind them came three long, brown lines, extending from near the river to the woods far away to the left. Batteries galloped in the intervals to knolls, on which they unlimbered and opened fire.

It was an overpowering mass of men for the two little brigades to resist. Si's heart almost stood still as he saw the inequality of the contest.

"Why don't they send us over there to help those men?" he anxiously asked. "They can't stand up against that awful crowd."

"Just wait," said Shorty hopefully. "Old Rosy knows what he's doin'. He's got enough here for the business."

The artillery all along the line burst out in torrents of shells, but Si's eyes were glued on the two little brigades. He saw the white spurts from the skirmishers' rifles, and men drop among the rebels,112 who yet moved slowly forward, like some all-engulfing torrent. The skirmishers ran back to the main line, and along its front sped a burst of smoke as each regiment fired by volley. The foremost rebel line quivered a little, but moved steadily on.

Then a cloud of white smoke hid both Union and rebel lines, and from it came the sound as of thousands of carpenters hammering away industriously at nails.

Presently Si was agonized to see a fringe of blue break back from the bank of smoke, and run rapidly to the rear. They were followed by regiments falling back slowly, in order, and turning at the word of command to deliver volleys in the faces of their yell ing pursuers.

Si looked at his Colonel, and saw him anxiously watching the brigade commander for orders to rush across the river to the assistance of the two brigades.

Suddenly there was a whirl in front. A battery galloped up, the drivers lashing the horses, the cannoneers sitting stolidly on the limbers with their arms folded. It swept by to a knoll in front and to the right, which commanded the other side of the river. Instantly the gunners sprang to the ground, the cannon were tossed about as if they were play things, and before Si could fairly wink he saw the guns lined up on the bank, the drivers standing by the horses' heads, and the cannons belching savagely into the flanks of the horde of rebels.

Then another battery swept up alongside the first, and another, until 58 guns crowned the high banks and thundered until the earth shook as with the ague. A deluge of iron swept the fields where the mighty113 host of rebels were advancing. Tops were torn out of trees and fell with a crash, fence-rails and limbs of oak went madly flying through the air, regiments and brigades disappeared before the awful blast.

For a few minutes Si and Shorty stood appalled at the deafening crash and the shocking destruction. Then they saw the rebels reel and fly before the tornado of death.114

A great shout arose from thousands of excited men standing near. Regiments and brigades started as with one impulse to rush across the river and pursue the flying enemy. The 200th Ind. was one of these. No one heard any orders from the officers. The men caught the contagion of victory and rushed forward, sweeping with them the lately-defeated brigades, hurrying over the wreckage of the cannon-fire, over the thickly-strewn dead and wounded, and gathering in prisoners, flags and cannon.

They went on so, nearly to the breastworks behind which the rebels were seeking shelter.

Si and Shorty were among the foremost. A few hundred yards from the rebel works Si fell to the ground without a groan. Shorty saw him, and ran to him. The side of his head was covered with blood, and he was motionless.

Si Klegg Fell Without a Groan 113

"Stone dead—bullet plum through his head," said the agonized Shorty. But there was no time for mourning the fallen. The pursuit was still hot, and Shorty's duty was in front. He ran ahead until the Colonel halted the regiment. Fresh rebels were lining up in the breastworks and threatening a return charge which would be disastrous. The Colonel hastily re-formed the regiment to meet this, and slowly withdrew it in good order to resist any counter-attack. After marching a mile or more the regiment halted and went into bivouac. The rejoicing men started great fires and set about getting supper. But the saddened Shorty had no heart for rejoicing over the victory, or for supper. He drew off from the rest, sat down at the roots of an oak, wrapped the cape of his overcoat about his face, and115 abandoned himself to his bitter grief. Earth had no more joy for him. He wished he had been shot at the same time his partner was. He could think of nothing but that poor boy lying there dead and motionless on the cold ground. He felt that he could never think of anything else, and the sooner he was shot the better it would be.

The other boys respected his grief At first they tried to tempt him to eat something and drink some coffee, but Shorty would not listen to them, and they drew away, that he might be alone.

He sat thus for some hours. The loss of their sturdy Corporal saddened the whole company, and as they sat around their fires after supper they ex tolled his good traits, recounted his exploits, and easily made him out the best soldier in the regiment.

Presently the fifes and rums played tattoo, and the boys began preparations for turning in.

Shorty had become nearly frozen sitting there motionless, and he got up and went to the fire to thaw out. He had just picked up a rail to lay it on the fire in better shape, when he heard a weak voice in quiring:

"Does anybody know where the 200th Ind. is?"

Shorty dropped the rail as if he had been shot, and rushed in the direction of the voice. In an instant he came back almost carrying Si Klegg.

There was a hubbub around the fire that kept everybody from paying the least attention to "taps."

"Yes, it's really me," said Si, responding as well as he was able to the hearty handshakings. "And I ain't no ghost, neither. I've got an appetite on me like a prairie fire, and if you fellers are really glad116 to see me you'll hustle up here all the grub in the Commissary Department. I can eat every mite of it. I was hit by a spent ball and knocked senseless. But I ain't going to tell you any more till I get something to eat."

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X. THE VICTORIOUS ARMY SI AND SHORTY FINALLY SUCCEED IN GETTING OUT OF THE WET

THE BOYS were so glad to see Si back again alive that they robbed themselves of any choice morsel of food they might have saved for to- morrow's delectation.

"Here, Si," said one, "is a nice knuckle-bone o' ham, that I pulled back there at the General's when his cook returned to the tent for something. You ought t've heard the nigger cussing as I walked away, but he couldn't recognize the back o' my head, nor see under my overcoat. Me and my chum 've had supper off it, and we wuz saving the rest for breakfast, but I'll brile it for you."

"Some of them Kentucky fellers," said another, "found a sheep in the briars and killed it. I traded 'em my silk handkerchief for a hunk o' the meat. I'm going to cook a slice for you, Si."

"Si, I'll bile some coffee for you," said a third.

"I'll toast some crackers for you," added a fourth.

Shorty roused. He felt so much gladder than any of them, that he was jealous of their attentions.

"See here, you fellers," said he, "this is my partner, an' I'm able to take care of him. I'll bile all the coffee an' toast all the crackers he kin eat; though I'm much obliged to you, Jim, for your ham, and to you, Billy, for your mutton, though I'm afraid it'll taste too much of the wool for a wounded man."

"Don't mind about that," said Si; "I'm hungry enough to eat the wool on the sheep's back, even. Hand over your mutton, Billy, and thankee for it. My appetite's not delicate, I can tell you. Woolly mutton won't faze it more'n bark would a buzz-saw." Si didn't over-state the case. He ate everything119 that was cooked and offered him, until he declared that he was so full he "could touch it with his finger."

Shorty Thinks si Does Not Look Like a Ghost. 118

"I'm sure you're not a ghost, from the way you eat," said Shorty, who was beginning to recover his propensity for sarcasm. "If ghosts et like you there'd have to be a steam bakery an' a pork packery run in connection with every graveyard."

"And I'd never take no ghost to board," said Billy.

"Come, Si," said Jimmy Barlow, filling his briarwood pipe with kinnikinnick, lighting it from the fire, taking a few puffs to start it, and handing it to Si, "tell us just what happened to you. We're dyin' to hear."

"Well," said Si, settling down with the pipe into a comfortable position, "I don't know what happened. Last thing I knowed I wuz runnin' ahead on Shorty's left, loadin' my gun, an' tryin' to keep up with the Colonel's hoss. Next thing I knowed I wuz wakin' up at the foot of a black-oak. Everything was quiet around me, except the yellin' of two or three wounded men a little ways off. At first I thought a cannonball' d knocked my whole head off. Then it occurred to me that if my head was knocked off I couldn't hear nor see."

"Nor think, even," injected Shorty.

"No, nor think, even. For what'd you think with?"

"I know some fellers that seem to think with their feet, and that blamed awkwardly," mused Shorty.

"I kept on wakin' up," continued Si. "At first I thought I had no head at all, an' then it seemed to me I was all head, it hurt so awfully. I couldn't move hand nor foot. Then I thought mebbe only half my head was shot away, an' the rest was aching for all.120

"I tried shuttin' one eye an' then the other, an' found I'd at least both eyes left. I moved my head a little, an' found that the back part was still there, for a bump on the roots of the oak hurt it.

"By-and-by the numbness began to go out of my head an' arm, but I was afraid to put my hand up to my head, for I was afraid to find out how much was gone. Nearly the whole of the left side must be gone, an' all my schoolin' scattered over the ground. I lay there thinkin' it all over how awful I'd look when you fellers came to find me and bury me, an' how you wouldn't dare tell the folks at home about it.

"Finally, I got plum desperate. I didn't seem to be dyin', but to be gettin' better every minute. I determined to find out just however much of my head was really gone. I put up my hand, timid-like, an' felt my forehead. It was all there. I passed my hand back over my hair an' the whole back of my head was there. I felt around carefully, an' there was the whole side of my head, only a little wet where I'd got a spent ball. Then I got mad an' I jumped up. Think of my makin' all that fuss over a little peck that might have been made by a brick-bat. I started out to hunt you fellers, an' here I am."

"Yes, but you wouldn't 've bin here," philosophized Shorty, examining the wound, "if the feller that fired that shot'd given his gun a little hunch. If that bullet'd went a half-inch deeper, you'd be up among the stars a bow-legged Wabash angel."

"Well, we've licked the stuffin' out of 'em at last, haven't we?" asked Si.

"Well, I should say we had," replied Shorty with an impressive whistle. "I thought the artillery would121 tear the foundations out of the whole State of Tennessee, the way it let into them. There won't ba more crashin' an' bangin' when the world breaks up. I'd a-bin willin' to serve 100 years just to see that sight. Lord, what a chance the cannoneers had. First time I ever wanted to be in the artillery. The way they slung whole blacksmith shops over into them woods, an' smashed down trees, and wiped out whole brigades at a clip, filled my soul with joy."

"We must go over there in the mornin' an' take a look at the place," said Si drowsily. "It will be good to remember alongside o' the way they slapped it to us the first day."

Si and Shorty woke up the next morning to find the chill rain pouring down as if the country had been suffering from a year's drouth, and the rain was going to make up for it in one forenoon.

"Lord have mercy," said the disgusted Shorty, as he fell into line for roll-call. "Another seepin', soppin', sloshin', spatterin' day. Only had 14 of 'em this week so far. Should think the geese 'd carry umbrellas, an' the cows wear overshoes in this, land of eternal drizzle. If I ever get home they'll have to run me through a brick-kiln to dry me out."

In spite of the down-pour the army was forming up rapidly to resume the advance upon Murfreesboro', and over the ground on the left, that had proved so disastrous to the rebels the day before.

While the 200th Ind. was getting ready to fall in, the sick-call sounded, and the Orderly-Sergeant remarked to Si:

"Fall into this squad, Corporal Klegg."

"What for?" asked Si, looking askance at the squad.122

"To go to the Surgeon's tent," answered the Orderly-Sergeant. "This is the sick squad."

"That's what I thought," answered Si; "an' that's the reason I ain't goin' to join it."

"But your head's bigger'n a bushel, Si," remonstrated the Sergeant. "Better let the doctor see it."

"I don't want none of his bluemass or quinine," persisted Si. "That's all he ever gives for anything. The swellin' 'll come out o' my head in time, same as it does out o' other people's."

"Corporal, I'll excuse you from duty to-day," said the Captain kindly. "I really think you ought to go to the Surgeon."

"If you don't mind, Captain," said Si, saluting, "I'll stay with the boys. I want to see this thing to the end. My head won't hurt me half so bad as if I was back gruntin' 'round in the hospital."

"Probably you are right," said the Captain. "Come along, then."

Willing and brave as the men were, the movements were tiresomely slow and laggard. The week of marching and lying unsheltered in the rain, of terrific fighting, and of awful anxiety had brought about mental and physical exhaustion. The men were utterly worn out in body and mind. This is usually the case in every great battle. Both sides struggle with all their mental and physical powers, until both are worn out. The one that can make just a little more effort than the other wins the victory. This was emphatically so in the battle of Stone River. The rebels had exhausted themselves, even, more in their assaults than the Union men had in repelling them.

When, therefore, the long line of blue labored123 slowly through the mud and the drenching rain up the gentle slopes on the farther side of Stone River, the rebels sullenly gave ground before them. At last a point was reached which commanded a view of Murfreesboro' and the rebel position. The rebels were seen to be in retreat, and the exhausted Army of the Cumberland was mighty glad to have them go.

As soon as it was certain that the enemy was really abandoning the bitterly-contested field, an inexpressible weariness overwhelmed everybody. The 200th Ind. could scarcely drag one foot after another as it moved back to find a suitable camping-ground.

Si and Shorty crawled into a cedar thicket, broke down some brush for a bed, laid a pole in two crotches, leaned some brush against it to make a par tial shelter, built a fire, and sat down.

"I declare, I never knew what being tuckered out was before," said Si. "And it's come to me all of a sudden. This morning I felt as if I could do great things, but the minute I found that them rebels was really going, my legs begun to sink under me."

"Same way with me," accorded Shorty. "Don't believe I've got strength enough left to pull a settin' hen offen her nest. But we can't be drowned out this way. We must fix up some better shelter."

"The Colonel says there's a wagon-load o' rations on the way here," said Si, sinking wearily down on the ground by the fire, and putting out his hands over the feeble blaze. "Let's wait till we git something to eat. Mebbe we'll feel more like work after we've eaten something."

"Si Klegg," said Shorty sternly, but settling down himself on the other side of the fire, "I never knowed124 you to flop down before. You've always bin, if any thing, forwarder than me. I was in hopes now that you'd take me by the back o' the neck and try to shake some o' this laziness out o' me."

"Wait till the rations come," repeated Si listlessly. "Mebbe we'll fell livelier then. The shelter we've fixed up'll keep out the coarsest o' the rain, anyway. Most o' the boys ain't got none."

When the rations arrived, Si and Shorty had energy enough to draw, cook and devour an immense supper. Then they felt more tired than ever. Shorty had managed to tear off a big piece of the wagon cover while he was showing much zeal in getting the rations distributed quickly. He got the company's share in this, and helped carry it to the company, but never for a minute relaxed his hold on the coveted canvas. Then he took it back to his fire. Si and he spent what energy they had left in making a tolerable tent of it, by stretching it over their shelter. They tied it down carefully, to keep anybody else from stealing it off them, and Shorty took the additional precaution of fastening a strip of it around his neck. Then they crawled in, and before night come on they were sleeping apparently as soundly as the Seven of Ephesus.

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