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Si Klegg, Book 2

by John McElroy · English · Gutenberg #31772 · 336,649 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Si Klegg, Book 2

Author: John McElroy


        
Release date: March 25, 2010 [eBook #31772]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31772

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SI KLEGG, BOOK 2 ***




Produced by David Widger





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


Contents:

PREFACE

SI KLEGG
CHAPTER I.      THROUGH MUD AND MIRE
CHAPTER II.     SECOND DAY'S MARCH
CHAPTER III.    STILL ON THE MARCH
CHAPTER IV.     THE SUNSHINE OF LIFE
CHAPTER V.      LINING UP FOR BATTLE
CHAPTER VI.     BATTLE OF STONE RIVER
CHAPTER VII.    AFTER THE FIRST DAY
CHAPTER VIII.   A GLOOMY NEW YEAR'S DAY
CHAPTER IX.     VICTORY AT LAST
CHAPTER X.      THE VICTORIOUS ARMY
CHAPTER XI.     WINTER QUARTERS
CHAPTER XII.    ADDING TO THEIR COMFORT
CHAPTER XIII.   "HOOSIER'S REST"
CHAPTER XIV.    DEACON KLEGG'S SURPRISE
CHAPTER XV.     DEACON KLEGG'S ARRIVAL IS MISTAKEN
CHAPTER XVI.    IN A NEW WORLD
CHAPTER XVII.   THE DEACON'S INITIATION
CHAPTER XVIII.  THE DEACON IS SHOCKED
CHAPTER XIX.    THE DEACON IS TROUBLED
CHAPTER XX.     THE DEACON BUTTS IN
CHAPTER XXI.    THE PERPLEXED DEACON
CHAPTER XXII.   TRYING TO EDUCATE ABRAHAM LINCOLN




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



CHAPTER 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 {16}disputed 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
{17}Government. 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 {18}he 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.

[Illustration: 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."

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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 it{24} 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 say{25} 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."



CHAPTER 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 {27}overcautious 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 chance{28} 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 his{29} 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.

[Illustration: 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' their{32} 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 back{33} 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 200th{34} 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?"

[Illustration: 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 {35}forward 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.



CHAPTER 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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 after{42} 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.

[Illustration: 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, rearranged{46} 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}



CHAPTER 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.

[Illustration: THE ADJUTANT SMILED ON SI AND SHORTY 49]

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 {49}column 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."

[Illustration: 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 from{53} 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 to{54} 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}



CHAPTER 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 cavalry{58} 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}

[Illustration: 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 different{64} 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.

[Illustration: 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?"

[Illustration: 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."



CHAPTER 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 the{68} 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
increased{69} 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 hair{70} 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.

[Illustration: 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 out{73} 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 the{76} 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 Captain{77} 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 your{79} 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.


[Illustration: 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}



CHAPTER 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.

[Illustration: 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 {87}shoulders. 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}

[Illustration: 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 kin{92} 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.



CHAPTER 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 it{94}
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."

[Illustration: 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
resolutely{97} 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' {98}famished 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 down{99} 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 up{100} 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 the{103} 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 again{104} 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 kept{105} 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.



CHAPTER 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 Si{109} 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 are{110} 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 mighty{113} 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.

[Illustration: 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, and{115} 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
glad{116} 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."

{118}



CHAPTER 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
everything{119} that was cooked and offered him, until he declared that
he was so full he "could touch it with his finger."

[Illustration: 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 would{121} 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 labored{123} 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 knowed{124} 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.

{126}



CHAPTER XI. WINTER QUARTERS

THEY BUILT THEM A HOUSE AND GOT IN OUT OF THE RAIN.

THE NEXT day Sunday after the battle dawned as clear, bright and
sparkling as only a Winter's day can dawn in Tennessee, after a
fortnight of doleful deluges. Tennessee Winter weather is like the
famous little girl with the curl right down in the middle of her
forehead, who,

     "When she was good, she was very, very good,
     And when she was bad, she was horrid."

After weeks of heart-saddening down-pour that threatened to drench life
and hope out of every breathing thing, it will suddenly beam out in a
day so crisp and bright that all Nature will wear a gladsome smile and
life become jocund.

When the reveille and the Orderly-Sergeant's brogans aroused Si and
Shorty the latter's first thought was for the strip of canvas which he
had secured with so much trouble from the wagon-cover, and intended to
cherish for future emergencies. He felt his neck and found the strip
that he had tied there, but that was all that there was of it. A sharp
knife had cut away the rest so deftly that he had not felt its loss.

Shorty's boiler got very hot at once, and he began blowing off steam.
Somehow he had taken an especial fancy to that piece of canvas, and his
wrath was hot against the man who had stolen it.

[Illustration: SHORTY RETALIATES. 126]

"Condemn that onery thief," he yelled. "He ought to be drummed out o'
camp, with his head shaved. A man that'll steal ought to be hunted down
and{127} kicked out o' the army. He's not fit to associate with decent
men."

"Why, Shorty," said Si, amused at his partner's heat, "you stole that
yourself."

"I didn't nothin' o' the kind," snorted Shorty, "and don't want you
sayin' so, Mr. Klegg, if you don't want to git into trouble. I took it
from a teamster. You ought to know it's never stealin' to take anything
from a teamster. I'll bet it was some of that Toledo regiment that stole
it. Them Maumee River Muskrats are the durndest thieves in the brigade.
They'd steal the salt out o' your hardtack if you didn't watch 'em not
because they wanted the salt, but just because they can't help stealin'.
They ought to be fired out o' the brigade. I'm going over to their camp
to look for it, and if I find it I'll wipe the ground up with the feller
that took it. 'Taint so much the value of the thing as the principle. I
hate a thief above all things."

Si tried to calm Shorty and dissuade him from going, but his partner
was determined, and Si let him go, but kept an eye and ear open for
developments.

In a few minutes Shorty returned, with jubilation in his face, the
canvas in one hand and a nice frying-pan and a canteen of molasses in
the other.

"Just as I told you," he said triumphantly. "It was some o' them Maumee
River Muskrats. I found them asleep in a bunch o' cedars, with our nice
tent stretched over their thievin' carcasses. They'd been out on guard
or scoutin', and come in after we'd gone to sleep. They were still
snorin' away when I yanked the tent off, an' picked up their fryin'-pan
an' canteen o' molasses to remember 'em by."{128}

"I thought you hated a thief," Si started to say; but real comrades soon
learn, like husband and wife, that it is not necessary to say everything
that rises to their lips. Besides, the frying-pan was a beauty, and just
what they wanted.

It became generally understood during the day that the Army of the
Cumberland would remain around Murfreesboro' indefinitely probably until
Spring to rest, refit and prepare for another campaign. Instructions
were given to regimental commanders to select good camping ground and
have their men erect comfortable Winter quarters.

The 200th Ind. moved into an oak grove, on a gentle slope toward the
south, and set about making itself thoroughly at home.

Si and Shorty were prompt to improve the opportunity to house themselves
comfortably.

Si had now been long enough in the army to regard everything that was
not held down by a man with a gun and bayonet as legitimate capture. He
passed where one of the Pioneer Corps had laid down his ax for a minute
to help on some other work. That minute was spent by Si in walking away
with the ax hidden under his long overcoat. Those long overcoats, like
charity, covered a multitude of sins.

The ax was not sharp no army ax ever was, but Si's and Shorty's muscles
were vigorous enough to make up for its dullness. In a little while they
had cut down and trimmed enough oak saplings to make a pen about the
size of the corn-crib at Si's home. While one would whack away with the
ax the other would carry the poles and build up the pen. By{129} evening
they had got this higher than their heads, and had to stop work from
sheer exhaustion.

"I'll declare," said Si, as they sat down to eat supper and survey their
work, "if father'd ever made me do half as much work in one day as I
have done to-day I should have died with tiredness and then run away
from home. It does seem to me that every day we try a new way o' killing
ourselves."

"Well," said Shorty, arresting a liberal chunk of fried pork on the way
to his capacious grinders to cast an admiring glance on the structure,
"it's worth it all. It'll just be the finest shebang in Tennessee when
we git it finished. I'm only afraid we'll make it so fine that Gen.
Rosecrans or the Governor of Tennessee 'll come down and take it away
for him self. That'd just be our luck."

"Great Scott!" said Si, looking at it with a groan; "how much work there
is to do yet. What are we goin' to do for a roof? Then, we must cut out
a place for a door. We'll have to chink between all the logs with mud
and chunks; and we ought to have a fireplace."

"I've bin thinkin' of all them things, and I've thunk 'em out," said
Shorty cheerfully. "I've bin thinkin' while you've bin workin'. Do
you know, I believe I was born for an architect, an' I'll go into the
architect business after the war! I've got a head plumb full of the
natural stuff for the business. It growed right there. All I need is
some more know-how an' makin' plans on paper."

"O, you've got a great big head, Shorty," said Si, admiringly, "and
whatever you start to do you do splendid. Nobody knows that better'n me.
But what's your idee about the roof?"{130}

"Why, do you see that there freight-car over there by the bridge"
(pointing to where a car was off the track, near Stone River), "I've
bin watchin' that ever since we begun buildin', for fear somebody else'd
drop on to it. The roof of that car is tin. We'll jest slip down there
with an ax after dark, an' cut off enough to make a splendid roof. I
always wanted a tin-roofed house. Old Jack Wilson, who lives near us,
had a tin roof on his barn, an' it made his daughters so proud they
wouldn't go home with me from meetin'. You kin write home that we have a
new house with a tin roof, an' it'll help your sisters to marry better."

"Shorty, that head o' your'n gits bigger every time I look at it."

Si and Shorty had the extreme quality of being able to forget fatigue
when there was something to be accomplished. As darkness settled
down they picked up the ax and proceeded across the fields to the
freight-car.

"There's someone in there," said Si, as they came close to it. They
reconnoitered it carefully. Five or six men, without arms, were
comfortably ensconed inside and playing cards by the light of a fire of
pitch-pine, which they had built upon some dirt placed in the middle of
the car.

"They're blamed skulkers," said Shorty, after a minute's survey of the
interior. "Don't you see they hain't got their guns with 'em? We won't
mind 'em."

They climbed to the top of the car, measured off about half of it, and
began cutting through the tin with the ax. The noise alarmed the men
inside. They jumped out on the ground, and called up:{131}

"Here, what're you fellers doin' up there? This is our car. Let it
alone."

"Go to the devil," said Shorty, making another slash at the roof with
the ax.

"This is our car, I tell you," reiterated the men. "You let it alone, or
we'll make you." Some of the men looked around for something to throw at
them.

Si walked to the end of the car, tore off the brake-wheel, and came
back.

"You fellers down there shut up and go back in side to your cards, if
you know what's good for you," he said. "You're nothing but a lot of
durned skulkers. We are here under orders. We don't want nothin' but a
piece o' the tin roof. You kin have the rest. If any of you attempts
to throw anything I'll mash him into the ground with this wheel. Do you
hear me? Go back inside, or we'll arrest the whole lot of you and take
you back to your regiments."

Si's authoritative tone, and the red stripes on his arm, were too much
for the guilty consciences of the skulkers, and they went back
inside the car. The tearing off the roof proceeded without further
interruption, but with considerable mangling of their hands by the edges
of the tin.

After they had gotten it off, they proceeded to roll it up and started
back for their "house." It was a fearful load, and one that they would
not have attempted to carry in ordinary times. But their blood was up;
they were determined to outshine everybody else with their tin roof, and
they toiled on over the mud and rough ground, although every{132} little
while one of them would make a misstep and both would fall, and the
heavy weight would seem to mash them into the ground.

"I don't wonder old Jake Wilson was proud of his tin roof," gasped Si,
as he pulled himself out of a mudhole and rolled the tin off him and
Shorty. "If I'd a tin roof on my barn durned if my daughter should walk
home with a man that didn't own a whole section of bottom land and drove
o' mules to boot."

It was fully midnight before they reached their pen and laid their
burden down. They were too tired to do anything more than lay their
blankets down on a pile of cedar boughs and go to sleep.

The next morning they unrolled their booty and gloated over it. It
would make a perfect roof, and they felt it repaid all their toils. Upon
measurement they found it much larger each way than their log pen.

"Just right," said Shorty gleefully. "It'll stick out two feet all
around. It's the aristocratic, fashion able thing now-a-days to
have wide cornishes. Remember them swell houses we wuz lookin' at in
Louisville? We're right in style with them."

The rest of Co. Q gathered around to inspect it and envy them.

"I suppose you left some," said Jack Wilkinson. "I'll go down there and
get the rest."

"Much you won't," said Si, looking toward the car; "there ain't no
rest."

They all looked that way. Early as it was the car had totally
disappeared, down to the wheels, which some men were rolling away.{133}

"That must be some o' them Maumee River Muskrats," said Shorty, looking
at the latter. "They'll steal anything they kin git away with, just for
the sake of stealin'. What on earth kin they do with them wheels?"

"They may knock 'em off the axles an' make hearths for their fireplaces,
and use the axles for posts," suggested Si.

"Here, you fellers," said Shorty, "give us a lift. Let's have a
house-raisin'. Help us put the roof on."

They fell to with a will, even the Captain assisting, and, after a good
deal of trouble and more cut hands, succeeded in getting the piece of
tin on top of the pen and bent down across the ridge-pole. Si and Shorty
proceeded to secure it in place by putting other poles across it and
fastening them down with ropes and strips of bark to the lower logs.

"Your broad cornice is aristocratic, as you say," said the Captain, "but
I'm afraid it'll catch the wind, and tip your house over in some big
storm."

[Illustration: THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL. 133]

"That's so," admitted Shorty; "but a feller that puts on airs always has
to take some chances. I don't want people to think that we are mean and
stingy about a little tin, so I guess we'll keep her just as she is."

The next day they borrowed a saw from the Pioneers, cut out a hole for
the door, and another for the fireplace. They made a frame for the door
out of pieces of cracker-boxes, and hung up their bit of canvas for a
door. They filled up the spaces be tween the logs with pieces of wood,
and then daubed clay on until they had the walls tight. They gathered up
stones and built a commodious fireplace, daubing it all over with clay,
until it was wind and water tight.

"What are we goin' to do for a chimney, Si?" said{135} Shorty, as their
fireplace became about breast-high. "Build one o' sticks, like these
rebels around here? That'll be an awful lot o' work."

[Illustration: SOLID COMFORT. 135]

"I've had an idee," said Si. "I ain't goin' to let{136} you do all the
thinkin', even if you are a born architect. When I was helpin' draw
rations yesterday, I looked at the pork barrels, and got an idee
that one of them'd make a good chimney. I spoke to Bill Suggs, the
Commissary-Sergeant, about it, and he agreed to save me a barrel when
it was empty, which it must be about now. I'll go down and see him about
it."

Si presently came back rolling the empty barrel. They knocked the bottom
out, carefully plastered it over inside with clay, and set it up on
their fireplace, and made the joints with more clay. It made a splendid
chimney. They washed the clay off their hands, built a cheerful fire
inside, cooked a bountiful supper, and ate it in the light and comfort
of their own fireside. It was now Saturday night. They had had a week of
severer toil than they had ever dreamed of performing at home, but its
reward was ample.

"Ah," said Shorty, as he sat on a chunk of wood, pipe in mouth, and
absorbed the warmth, "this is something like home and home comforts.
It's more like white livin' than I've had since I've bin in the army.
Let's act like men and Christians tomorrow, by not doin' a lick o' work
o' any kind. Let's lay abed late, and then wash up all over, and go to
hear the Chaplain preach."

"Agreed," said Si, as he spread out their blankets for the night.

It had been threatening weather all day, and now the rain came down with
a rush.

"Ain't that music, now," said Shorty, listening to the patter on the
roof. "Nothin' sounds so sweet as{137} rain upon a tin roof. Let it
rain cats and dogs, if it wants to. The harder the better. Si, there's
nothin' so healthy to sleep under as a tin roof. I'll never have
anything but a tin roof on my house when I git home. And we've got the
only tin roof in the regiment. Think o' that." But Si was too sleepy to
think.



CHAPTER XII. ADDING TO THEIR COMFORT

MAKING ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS TO THEIR "HOME."

SI AND Shorty kept Sunday as planned. They really did not know how tired
they were until they formed the resolution to give the day to absolute
restfulness. Then every joint and muscle ached from the arduous toil of
the past week, added to the strains and hardships of a week of battle.

"Used to seem to me," said Shorty, "that when Sunday come after the
first week's plowin' in Spring that I had a bile in every limb. Now I
appear to have one in every j'int, and in my brains as well. I didn't
ever suppose that I could be so tired, and yit be able to set up and
take nourishment."

"Same here," said Si. "Feel as if I ought to be wrapped in cotton
battin' an' sweet oil, an' laid away for awhile."

The only thing about them which did not show deadly lassitude was
their appetites. Fortunately, the Commissary took a liberal view of the
Regulations as to rations, issuing enough to make up for those they had
not drawn during the times when his department was not in working order.
They ate all these and wanted more.

[Illustration: "AM I A SOLDIER OF THE CROSS?" 139]

The Quartermaster had also succeeded in re-establishing relations. They
drew from him new{139} under-clothing to replace that which they had
lost, took a thorough wash the first good one they had had since
Christmas morning, beat and brushed much of the accumulated mud
representing every variety of{140} soil between Murfreesboro' and
Nashville out of their clothes, cleaned and greased their heavy brogans,
and went with their comrades to divine service, feeling that they had
made every provision required for a proper observance of the holy day.

Si had a really fine baritone voice, and led the meeting in singing

     "Am I a soldier of the cross?"

After church Shorty said:

"Si, when you were singing so loud about being a soldier of the cross
and a follower of the Lamb I wanted to git right up and tell you that
you'd have to git a transfer from the 200th Ind. We've lots of cross
soldiers, especially on mud marches, but we don't want any soldiers in
this regiment except for the Constitution of the United States and
the laws made in pursuance thereof, against all enemies and opposers
whatsoever, either foreign or domestic. An' as for follerin' the lamb,
you know as well as I do the orders agin foragin'."

"O, dry up, Shorty. I don't believe going to church done you a mite o'
good. I tell you it done me lots."

"There you're mistaken," answered Shorty. "It just done me lots o' good.
Kind o' restored communications with home and respectable folks once
more, an' made me think I still belonged to what the jographies call
civilized and partially-civilized people, something that we seem in
great danger o' forgettin', the way we've bin goin' on."

The good Chaplain's fervent appeals to devote the{141} day to earnest
consideration of their soul's welfare could not keep them from spending
the hours in planning and discussing further improvements on the house.

"We must have a real door," said Shorty, looking critically at the
strip of canvas that did duty for that important adjunct. "Muslin looks
shiftless, an', besides, I think it's unhealthy. Lets in drafts, an'
will give us colds."

"Too bad about our ketchin' cold," said Si sardonically. "Most o' the
time lately we've bin sleepin' out with nothin' around us but the State
line of Tennessee."

"Don't be too flip, young man," said Shorty severely. "You have not had
a home with its blessin's long enough to appreciate it. I say we must
have a real door an' a winder that'll let in light, an' a bedstead, an'
a floor o' planks."

"We ought to have 'em, certainly," agreed Si. "But must have 'em is
quite another thing. How are we goin' to git 'em? There's 40,000 men
around here, snatchin' at every piece o' plank as big as your hand."

"Well," retorted Shorty, "we're goin' to have a real door, a winder,
and a plank floor, all the same. They're to be had somewhere in this
country, an' they'll have to run mighty hard to git away from us."

The next morning the Orderly-Sergeant said:

"Corp'l Klegg, you'll take five men, go down to the railroad, and report
to the Commissary to load the wagon with rations."

Si took Shorty and four others and started off on{142} this errand. He
was soon so busy rolling heavy pork barrels from the car into the wagon
that he failed to notice that Shorty was not with him. Finally they got
the wagon loaded and started, with them walking alongside, puffing and
sweating from their vigorous labor.

They were not 100 yards away from the train, when the Conductor came
storming up:

"See here, Lieutenant," he said to the Commissary, "some o' them men o'
yours sneaked around and stole the hind door off my caboose while you
was loading up."

"I don't believe a word of it," said the Commissary, firing up at once.
"Mine ain't that kind of men. I'd have you know they don't steal. What
reason have you for saying so?"

"The door was on the car when I came out to meet you, and now it's gone,
and there's been no body near the caboose but your men."

"I know my men were working hard all the time right under my eyes," said
the Lieutenant, growing angrier every minute. "They're not the men to
steal anything, and if they were they didn't have any chance. They were
too busy. You can satisfy yourself that they didn't. You see none of
them have the door with them, and you can search the wagon. Get right in
there and look for it."

The Conductor climbed into the wagon and looked carefully through.

"No, it's not there," he said ruefully.

Then the Commissary's wrath flamed out. "There, confound you, you are
at it again, you infernal civilian, slandering and abusing men who are
fighting{143} for their country. Charging them with stealing your old
caboose door. Think of your disgraceful impudence, villifying men
who are shedding their blood for their country by such shameless
charges.{144}

[Illustration: SHORTY CONFISCATES THE CABOOSE DOOR. 143]

"What'd they want with your old car door? Get away from here, before I
lose my temper and do you damage."

The Conductor walked away muttering:

"Blasted thieving whelps o' soldiers, what'll they steal next? Lost all
my train tools at Lavergne, swiped the bedding at Smyrna, got away with
our clothes and dishes at Antioch, stole stove and lanterns at Overall's
Crick, and now they've begun on the cars. I'll be lucky to have enough
wheels left on the engine to run her back to Nashville."

The Commissary continued to fume about the disgraceful charges brought
against his men until they reached camp. The wagon was unloaded and the
squad dismissed.

As Si came up to the "house" he saw Shorty busily engaged in hanging the
caboose door by means of hinges which he had improvised from some boot
tops.

"Why, Shorty," gasped Si, "how did you git away with it?"

"Easy enough," answered his partner. "I saw you fellers gittin' very
busy over them pork barrels, an' all the train hands helpin' you. I
meandered back to the caboose, gently lifted the back door offen its
hinges, slipped down into the weeds in the ditch, an' kept under cover
o' them till I was out o' sight. Say, isn't it just a bully door?"

That afternoon Si and Shorty walked over to where a detail of men were
at work building a bridge across Stone River, under the direction of a
Lieutenant of Pioneers. They had an idea that an opportunity might occur
there to pick up something that would add to their home comforts. The
Lieutenant was bustling about, hurrying the completion of the work
before night. As the detail was made up of squads from various
regiments, he was not acquainted with the men, and had much difficulty
assigning them to the work that would suit them best. He came up to Si,
who still wore the artillery Sergeant's overcoat he had picked up during
the battle, and said sharply:

"Here, Sergeant, don't stand around doing nothing. Set the men a good
example by pitching in lively. There's plenty to do for everybody. If
you can't find anything else, help dig down that bank, and roll those
big stones into the fill. Hold on; I've thought of something else. I
want a reliable man to send over for some lumber. Put one of your men
on that wagon there, and go with him, and take this letter to Capt.
Billings, over at the saw-mill. It's a requisition for a load of lumber.
Avoid the camps as much as possible on your way back, or they'll steal
every inch of it away from you."

"Very good, sir," said Si, saluting. "Shorty, jump on the wagon there,
and gather up the lines."

Shorty very obediently took his place on the seat of the two-horse wagon
employed by the Pioneers for their jobs.

"Hurry up," enjoined the Lieutenant; "we need those boards at once."

"Very good, sir," said Si, saluting.

"This is what I call a puddin'," said Shorty, oracularly, as they drove
away. "The Lord always kin be trusted to help the deservin', if the
deservin' only keep their eyes peeled for His p'inters. This{146} comes
from not workin' yesterday and goin' to church."

They drove down to the sawmill, delivered their requisition, and had
their wagon loaded with newly-sawn plank. The Captain had the planks
carefully counted, the number and feet entered upon the record, and
set forth upon the return which he gave to Si to be delivered to the
Lieutenant of Pioneers.

"Too dod-gasted much bookkeepin' in this army," remarked Si, rather
disconsolately, and he put the paper in his blouse pocket, and they
drove away. "Wastes entirely too much valuable time. What'd he count
them boards for? Looked like he suspicioned us. How are we going to git
away with any o' them?"

"I wouldn't have that man's suspicious mind for anything," answered
Shorty. "He don't trust no body. All the same, we're goin' to have
enough boards for our floor."

"How are we goin' to manage it?" asked Si.

"Lots o' ways. There's no need o' your carryin' that paper back to the
Lootenant. I might pick up several hundred feet and sneak away without
your knowin' it. Say," as a bright idea struck him, "what's the use o'
goin' back to the Lootenant at all? Neither of us belongs to his detail.
He don't know us from a side o' sole-leather. What's the matter with
drivin' the wagon right up to camp, and swipin' the whole business,
horses, wagon and all?"

"I hain't been in the army as long as you have, Shorty," said Si
doubtfully. "I've made some progress in petty larceny, as you know, but
I ain't yit quite up to stealin' a span o' horses and a wagon.{147}
Mebbe I'll come to it in time, but I ain't quite ready for it now."

"That comes from goin' to church yesterday, and hearin' the Chaplain
read the Ten Commandments," said Shorty wrathfully. "I don't believe
they ought to allow the Chaplains to read them things. They ain't
suited to army life, and there ought to be a general order that they're
prejudicial to good order and military discipline. Where'd the army
be if they obeyed that one about not covetin' a horse or other movable
property? I tell you what we'll do, since you're so milky on the thing:
We'll drive up in front of our house, unload enough boards for our
floor, you git out your gun and bayonet and stand guard over 'em, and
I'll drive the wagon down near the bridge, and jump off and leave it."

"All right," said Si; "that'll do splendidly, if you think you kin dodge
the Lootenant."

"O, he be darned," said Shorty scornfully. "I could git away from him if
I wasn't 10 years old."

They carried out the plan. They drove up in front of their residence,
and threw off a liberal quantity of the boards. The other boys raised
a yell, and made a break for them. But Si ran inside, got his gun, and
established himself on guard.

"Don't you budge an inch from there till I git back," shouted Shorty, as
he drove away. "Don't let one of Co. Q lay a finger on them. They're
the durndest thieves outside the Jeffersonville Penitentiary. You can't
trust one o' them farther than you could sling a bull by the tail. I'll
be back soon."

Shorty drove gaily down until he got close to the bridge. The Lieutenant
had been impatiently{148} expecting him, and as soon as the wagon came
up it was surrounded by a crowd of men to unload it. The Lieutenant
looked over the load.

[Illustration: SI DEFENDED THE PLUNDER. 148]

"I wonder if he sent enough. Let me see your return," he said, looking
up at the seat, where he expected to find the Sergeant he had put
in charge. But the seat was empty. Shorty had jumped down, prudently
mingled with the crowd, avoided the Lieutenant's eye with much more
than his usual diffidence, and was modestly making his way back to
camp behind a thicket of hazel bushes. When he got to the house he was
delighted to find Si still master of the situation, with all the
boards present and accounted for. They quickly transferred them to the
interior, and found that they had enough for a nice floor, besides a
couple of extra ones, to cut up into a table and stools.

"You done good work in keepin' the other boys offen 'em, Si," said he.
"I was afraid you wouldn't. The only thing I've got agin Co. Q is that
the boys will steal. Otherwise they're the nicest kind o' boys."

A couple of days later they got a pass to go down to Murfreesboro' and
look the sleepy old town over. They were particularly interested in the
quaint old courthouse, which had once been the capitol of Tennessee.
They happened into one of the offices, which was entirely deserted. On
the wall hung a steel engraving of Jeff Davis in a large oak frame.

"That blamed old rebel picture oughtn't to be hangin' there, Si,"
observed Shorty.

"Indeed it oughtn't. Jeff ought to be hung to a sour-apple tree, and
that glass'd make a nice winder for our house."

"Indeed it would," Shorty started to answer, but time was too precious
to waste in speech. In an instant he had shoved an old desk up to the
wall, mounted it, and handed the picture down to Si. They wrapped it up
in their overcoats, and started back for camp. They had seen enough of
Murfreesboro' for that day.



CHAPTER XIII. "HOOSIER'S REST"

SI AND SHORTY CHRISTEN THEIR PLACE AND GIVE A HOUSE-WARMING.

WITH a tin roof, a real door, a glazed window and a plank floor, Si and
Shorty's house was by far the most aristocratic in the cantonment of
the 200th Ind., if not the entire Winter quarters of the Army of the
Cumberland. A marble mansion, with all the modern improvements, could
not more proudly overshadow all its neighbors than it did.

Even the Colonel's was no comparison to it. A tent-fly had been made to
do duty for a roof at the Colonel's. It could not be stretched evenly
and tight. It would persistently sag down in spots, and each of these
spots became a reservoir from which would descend an icy stream. A
blanket had to serve as a door, and the best substitute for window glass
were Commissary blanks greased with fat from headquarters' frying-pan.
The floor, instead of being of clean, new plank, as Si's and Shorty's,
was made of the warped and weather-beaten boards of a stable, which had
been torn down by a fatigue detail.

Si and Shorty took as much pride and pleasure in their architecture as
any nabob over his million-dollar villa. They were constantly on the
alert for anything that would add to the comfort and luxury{151}
of their home. In their wanderings they chanced to come across an
old-fashioned bedstead in an out house. It was of the kind in which the
rails screw together, and the bed is held up by a strong cord crossing
and recrossing from one rail to another. This looked like real luxury,
and they at once appropriated it without any consultation with the
owner, whoever he may have been.

"It'd be a waste o' time, anyhow," remarked Shorty. "He's a rebel, and
probably over there in Bragg's army."

They made a tick out of the piece of wagon-cover, filled it with beech
leaves, and had a bed which surpassed their most extravagant ideas of
comfort in the army.

"Shorty," said Si, as they snugged themselves in the first night, "this
seems almost too much. Do you ever remember settin' the whole night on a
rail, with nothin' over us but clouds leakin' ice-water?"

"Shut up," said Shorty, giving him a kick under the blankets. "Do you
want me to have a night mare?"

They got a number of flat stones, and laid down a little pavement in
front of their door, and drove an old bayonet into the logs to serve as
a scraper. They rigorously insisted on every visitor using this before
entering.

"For common Wabash-bottom fly-up-the-cricks and private soljers, you're
puttin' on entirely too many frills," said Sol Murphy, the Wagonmaster,
angrily, as it was firmly insisted upon that he stay outside until he
carefully cleaned his shoes on the bayonet. "A man that's afraid o'
mud hain't no{152} business in the army. He orter stay at home an' wear
Congress gaiters an' pantalets. You're puttin' on too many scollops, I
tell you. You knowed all 'bout mud in the Wabash bottoms. You had 'nuff
of it there, the Lord knows."

"Yes, we had," replied Shorty; "but we was too well raised to track it
into anybody's parlor."

"Parlor," echoed Sol, with a horse-laugh. "Lord, how fine we are, just
becaze one o' us happens to be a measly little Corporal. In some armies
the Wagonmasters have Corporals to wait on 'em an' black their boots.
Now, I'll tell yo' what I've come for. I've lost my scoop-shovel,
an' I've bin told that you fellers stole it, an' are usin' it to bake
hoe-cakes on. I've come up here to see if you've got it, an' I'm goin'
right in there to see for myself, mud or no mud."

"We hain't got your blamed old scoop-shovel; you can't git it; you
ain't goin' in there until you clean your feet, an' not then onless we
conclude to allow you," Shorty replied.

"I'm goin' in there, or break some Wabash loon's neck," said the
Wagonmaster wrathfully.

"I always did like to get a chance to lick a mule-whacker," said Si,
pulling off his overcoat. "And the bigger and the more consequential he
is, the better. I've never licked a Wagonmaster yit, an' I'm just achin'
for a chance."

The Wagonmaster was the bully of the regiment, as Wagonmasters generally
are. When Si came into the regiment, a green cub, just getting his
growth, and afraid of everybody who assumed a little authority and had
more knowledge of the world than he, the Wagonmaster had been very{153}
overbearing, and at times abusive. That is the way of Wagonmasters and
their ilk. The remembrance of this rankled in Si's mind.

On the other hand, the Wagonmaster failed to comprehend the change that
a few months of such service as the 200th Ind.'s wrought in verdant,
bashful boys like Si. He thought he could cow him as easily as he did
when Si had timidly ventured to ask His Greatness a modest question
or two as they were crossing the Ohio River. Wagonmasters were always
making just that kind of mistakes.

The other boys ran up to see the fun. The Wagonmaster made a rush for
Si with doubled fists, but Si quickly stepped to one side, and gave the
hulking fellow a tap on the butt of his ear that laid him over in
the mud. The other boys yelled with delight. Next to a Sutler, or a
conceited, fresh young Aid, the soldiers always delighted to see a
Wagonmaster get into trouble.

[Illustration: SI FLOORS THE WAGONMASTER. 154]

The Wagonmaster sprang up, ready for another round; but the boys raised
the cry that the Officer of the Day was coming, and both Si and the
Wagonmaster remembered that they had business in other parts of the
camp.

The next day Shorty said: "It's all right, Si; we could've kept that
scoop-shovel as long as we wanted to, but I thought that for many
reasons it'd better be got out of the regiment, so I've traded it to
them Maumee Muskrats for a Dutch oven they'd borrowed from their Major."

"Bully," answered Si. "I'd much rather have the Dutch oven, anyway."

Si produced a piece of board, which had been{154} painted white, and
evidently done duty as part of the door of a house in Murfreesboro',
looked at it critically, and then selected a piece of charcoal from the
fire, and sat down with an air of studious purpose. "What are you up to
now, Si?" asked Shorty curiously.

"Why," explained Si, "I've noticed, whenever we've bin in any big place,
that all the fine houses have signs or numbers, or something else onto
'em, to name 'em. I've bin thinkin' o' something for{155} our house. How
does 'Hoosier's Rest' strike you for a name?"

"Splendid," said Shorty. "Couldn't be better."

"And," continued Si, "I've got this board to make a sign to nail up over
the door. Do you know how to spell Hoosier, Shorty?"

"Blest if I do," answered Shorty. "It wasn't in our book. At least, we
never got to it, if it was. You see our spellin'-school broke up just
as we got to 'incompatible.' The teacher got too fond o' Nancy Billings,
that I was castin' sheep's eyes at myself. He got to givin' her easy
words, to keep her at the head o' the class, and pickin' hard ones for
me, to send me to the foot, where I'd be fur away from her. I wouldn't
stand it always, so me an' him had it out one night before all the
scholars; I got away with him, and he left the country, and busted up
the school."

"Hoosier," repeated Si to himself. "I never saw it spelled. But there
must be some way to spell it. Let me see: 'W-h-o spells who.'"

"That's so," assented Shorty.

"I-s spells 'is,'" continued Si. "Who-is that's right so far. H-e-r-e
spells 'here.' 'Who-is-here?' That seems almost right, don't it,
Shorty?"

"It certainly does," replied Shorty, scratching his head to accelerate
his mental action. "Or it might be, Si, w-h-o, who; i-s, is; and y-e-r,
yer. You know some ignorant folks say yer for you. And they say the name
came from the people who first settled in Injianny sayin' 'Who's yer?'
to any new comer."

"I believe you're right, Shorty," said Si, bending{156} over the board
with the charcoal to begin the work. "We'll make it that way, anyway."

The next day passers-by saw a white board nailed up over the door, which
contained a charcoal sketch of a soldier seated on a chunk of wood,
with a pipe in his mouth, taking as much ease as Si could throw into the
outlines of his face and body, and with it was this legend:

"WHO IS YER'S REST."

The next idea that came into the partners' minds was that the
requirements of society demanded that they give a housewarming in their
sumptuous abode. They at once set about making it a memorable social
event.

While out with a wagon after forage they found an Indiana man who had
settled in that country. He had a good orchard. They bought from him a
barrel of pretty hard cider and several bushels of apples. His wife knew
how to make fried dough nuts of real Indiana digestibility. They would
be luxuries for the boys, and a half-bushel were contracted for. The
farmer was to bring them all in his wagon, and Si and Shorty were to
meet him at the pickets and guard the treasures to their abode.

They bought a little bale of fragrant Kinnikinnick tobacco from the
sutler, made a sufficiency of corncob pipes, swept off the ground in
front of their house, which, as there had been no rain for several days,
was in good condition, with brooms of brush, that it might serve for a
dancing-floor, gathered in a stock of pitch-pine knots for their
fire, spoke{157} to Bunty Jim to bring his fiddle along, and to Uncle
Sassafras, the Colonel's cook, to come down with his banjo, and their
preparations were completed.

It was a crisp, delightful Winter evening, with the moon at full, the
fire burning brightly, and every body in the best of spirits. The
awful week of marching, enduring and suffering; of terrific fighting,
limitless bloodshed; of wounds and death to one{158} out of every four
men in the ranks; of nerve-racking anxieties to all might as well have
been centuries ago for any sign that appeared on the bright, animated
faces of the young men who gathered in front of the cabin. They smoked,
danced old-fashioned country dances to the music of the fiddle and the
banjo, and sang songs which lamented the death of "Lily Dale," mourned
that "My Nelly was sleeping in the Hazel Dell," adjured the "Silver
Moon" to "roll on," and so on through the whole repertoire of the
sentimental ballads of that day.

Then they were invited into the house to inspect its complete, luxurious
appointments, and feast themselves to bursting on apples, hard cider,
and doughnuts that would have tried any stomach but a young soldier's.

Billy Gurney, who had been back to Nashville as one of the guard to a
train-load of wounded, was induced to favor the company with the newest
song, which had just reached that city. He cleared his throat with
another tincupful of cider, and started off with:

     "When this cruel war is over."

Rapturous applause followed the first verse, and Billy started in to
teach them the chorus, so they could all join.

A loud explosion came from the fireplace, a campkettle full of cider
that was being mulled by the fire was spattered over the company,
scalding some of them severely; stones from the fireplace and bullets
flew about the room. They all rushed out.{159} Footsteps could be heard
running in the distance. They looked in that direction, and recognized
Sol Murphy's broad back and bushy head.

"That blamed Wagonmaster dropped a nosebag with a lot o' cartridges in
it down the chimbly," said Shorty, who had made an inspection of the
fireplace. "Mad because he wasn't invited. You bet, I'll salivate him
well for that little trick."



CHAPTER XIV. DEACON KLEGG'S SURPRISE

DECIDES TO VISIT MURFREESBORO' AND MEETS WITH ADVENTURES.

"MOTHER," said Mr. Josiah Klegg, Sr., suddenly laying down the County
paper, and beginning to polish his spectacles with his red bandanna, "do
you know what I've the greatest mind in the world to do?"

It was an evening in February, 1863, and the family had been sitting
for some hours after supper around the bright fire, engaged in various
occupations.

"No, father," said Mrs. Klegg, looking up from her knitting with such
interest that she dropped several stitches. The girls stopped their
sewing, and turned expectant eyes on their father. When Mr. Josiah
Klegg, sr., announced that he had a great mind to do anything, that
thing stood in imminent danger of being done. He was not given to
ordinary schemes, still less to idle speech. He thought slowly and
doggedly, but when he had arrived at a conclusion there were 200 pounds
of solid, stubborn unchangeable Indiana farmer behind the conclusion.

"What is it, father?" asked Mrs. Klegg, making an automatic effort to
gather up her lost stitches.

"I've a good mind to go down to Murfreesboro' and{161} see Si,"
responded the father.

"Why, father!" gasped the three "wimmen folks."

"Go down there among them gorillas?" ejaculated Mrs. Klegg.

"And John Morgan raiders," echoed Maria.

"And Secesh soljers, butternut brigands, rebel rascals," added Tilda.

"Well," answered Mr. Klegg, deliberately, "they've been peggin' away
at Si for a good many months now, and they haven't killed him by a jug
full. Guess I kin stand 'em for a few days. The papers say that the
army's settled down at Murfreesboro' for the Winter, and that the
railroad's runnin' all right from Looyiville clean there. I kin do
nothin' 'round the farm for the next three or four weeks, till Spring
opens, except the chores about the house, which Jimmie Watkins kin tend
to as well as I kin. I've got all my fences in good shape, and split all
the rails I need. There's wood enough cut to last the Winter out. I've
hauled all the wheat to town I'm goin' to till prices go higher. I
finished gittin' out my clover seed yesterday, and now there's nothin'
left for a month but to do boy's work 'round the house, or talk politics
down at the store. I'd rather go down and see Si."

"Why, father," remonstrated Mrs. Klegg, "how kin you ever git along in
them camps, and live the way them soljers do?"

"You forgit," said her husband, with a touch of dignity, "that I druv
team for a whole week in the Black Hawk war. I wanted to enlist, but I
was too young. Then I turned out and drilled with the militia as long as
there was any musters. I know a good{162} deal more about war than you
think."

"How do you s'pose you'll ever find Si in all that ruck o' men?" said
Mrs. Klegg doubtfully.

"O, they all know Si by this time," returned the father confidently.
"Besides, he's an officer now. I'll go right to Gen. Rosecrans's
Headquarters. He's probably right near him, where he kin have him at any
time. But don't write to Si that I'm comin'. I want to surprise him."

As soon as it was seen that the father was determined to go, mother and
daughters entered upon the scheme with the greatest enthusiasm.

Each began to think of some useful thing that they could send to Si to
add to his comfort. Mrs. Klegg had already knit a couple of pairs of
lambs'-wool socks, and was at work on a third. Maria had knit a pair
of mittens, gay with the National colors and representing the flag. The
blue field with the white stars around the wrists, while the red and
white stripes ran down the fingers. When they were put on the effect was
picturesque, not to say startling.

"When Si holds up his hands," remarked Matilda, "they'll look like
big hollyhock blossoms, and the men'll wonder where he got posies in
Winter."

Matilda contributed a red flannel shirt, upon which she had been engaged
since the beginning of Winter reminded her that such a present would be
very acceptable to Si. She had done a lot of her finest stitching upon
it. Si's initials were wrought in white thread on the cuffs, and on the
bosom was a maze of white lines representing hearts, anchors, roses and
flags of the Union. In the center of these, in letters of bold outline
but rugged execution, was the legend: "Josiah Klegg. His shirt. From
Tildy."{163}

     "Round is the ring,
     That has no end;
     So is my luv for you,
     My dearest friend."

"I know it ain't quite right to speak of Si as a friend," she explained,
when she spread the shirt out for the family's examination and
admiration; "but I couldn't think of nothin' to rhyme with brother."

"I could," said Maria, in her superior way. "I'd said somethin' like
this:

     "The ring's no end
     From which to t'other;
     So is the love I send
     My onliest brother."

"Maria, you always was so much smarter'n me in writin' poetry," admitted
Matilda. "It would've bin ever so much nicer. But it's too late now to
do it over agin."

Annabel was sorely puzzled what to send. She wanted something that
would be indicative of her feelings toward Si, and yet maiden modesty
restrained with the fear of sending something that might be too
significant. She spent a sleepless night thinking it over, and finally
decided to send a new ambrotype of herself, with a lock of her hair. It
is needless to say that this kept Si warmer than a whole bale of flannel
shirts would have done.

A thousand things occurred to the family that Si would enjoy, from a
couple of feather pillows to a{164} crock of "head cheese," of which Si
used to be immensely fond. The old hair trunk was brought down from the
garret, and its dimensions studied. But the next evening Jim Wilkins, of
Co. Q, who was home patching up a leg which had caught a bullet at Stone
River, came in, and his advice was asked.

"No, sir-ree," said he, emphatically. "Don't you never take no trunk nor
no box. Don't you take nothin' that you can't hang on to, and keep your
eye on every minute. I think the Army o' the Cumberland is the most
honestest army in the whole world. I'd knock any man down in a minute
that hinted there was a single thief in it. All the same, the only sure
way to keep anything you want is to never let go of it for a second.
You'd better only take a carpetsack, and look mighty sharp after that,
the nearer you git to the army. Keep one eye on it all the time
after you cross the Ohio River, and both eyes on it when you git to
Murfreesboro'."

[Illustration: A STOUTLY-BUILT, FARMER-LOOKING MAN ENTERED THE TRAIN
164]

A week later a strongly-built, farmer-looking man entered the Nashville
train at Louisville and looked anxiously around among the crowd of
soldiers with which it was filled. His full, resolute face was destitute
of whiskers, except a clump of sandy hair on his chin. He wore a coarse
but warm overcoat, a black slouch hat, around his neck was a voluminous
yarn comforter, and mittens of the same generous proportions were on his
hands, one of which held a bulging blue umbrella and the other a large
striped carpetsack.

He found a vacant seat beside a rough-looking soldier, who had evidently
been drinking, placed his precious carpetsack between his heavy,
well-oiled boots, stuck his umbrella beside it, unwound his comforter,
laid it back on his shoulders, took off his mittens, unbuttoned his
overcoat, and took from his pocket a long plug of navy tobacco, from
which he cut off a liberal chew, and then courteously tendered the plug
and knife to his neighbor, with the ramark:{166}

"Have a chaw, stranger."

The soldier took the plug, cut it in two, put the bigger part in his own
pocket, sliced off a liberal portion off the other for his own mouth,
and then rather reluctantly handed the remainder, with the knife, back
to Mr. Klegg, without so much as a "thankee."

"Manners seem a little different in the army from what they are in
Injianny," thought Mr. Klegg; "but mebbe the soldier's not had a chance
to git any terbaker for a long time."

He chewed meditatively for some minutes, and then made another friendly
advance toward his seat-partner.

"S'pose we'll start purty soon, won't we, stranger?"

"The devil you do," responded the other surlily, and sending over
a strong whisky breath. "Don't know much about this blamed old
start-when-it-pleases and stop-when-you-don't-want-to railroad.
We'll start when some young sardine with shoulder-straps finishes his
breakfast, and stop when John Morgan tears up the track. If you didn't
feed your hog's any better'n this train runs, old Hayseed, they'd starve
to death in a month."

"He ain't jest what you'd call perlite," thought Mr. Klegg, as he
meditatively chewed for a little while longer. "But mebbe that's the way
in the army. Probably Si's got jest that way, too."

He chewed meditatively for a few minutes longer. The air was getting
very redolent of the fumes from his neighbor's breath. "I hope Si ain't
got to drinking like that," he sighed, as a particularly strong{167}
whiff reached him. "If he has, I won't rest a minute till I've yanked
him up before Gen. Rosecrans and made him take the pledge. Gen.
Rosecrans can't afford to have officers around him who drink. 'Tain't
right to trust men's lives to 'em."

"Say, ole Sorrel-top," said the soldier, turning to ward him, "give us
another bite o' that terbaker o' yours, will you?"

Mr. Klegg did not like the tone nor the manner, but he produced his
tobacco, and began prudently clipping off a fair-sized chew for his
companion him self.

"O, the devil, that ain't no chaw," said the other, pulling the tobacco
and knife from his hand. "Don't be stingy with your terbaker, old
Hawbuck. You kin git plenty more."

He sliced a strip off clear across the plug, and stuffed it into his
mouth.

"You don't chaw terbaker. You jest eat it," remonstrated the
long-suffering Mr. Klegg.

"Here, I'll take some o' that, too," said another soldier on the seat in
front, snatching at the knife and tobacco.

"No you won't, you sardine," angrily responded the first soldier. "This
gentleman's a friend o' mine. I won't see him robbed."

The reply was a blow, and the two were soon mixed up in a savage fight.
Mr. Klegg was alarmed, lest one of them should be hurt with the heavy,
sharp knife, and he mixed in to get it in his hand. In the scuffle his
hat, mittens and comforter were thrown to the floor and trampled in the
tobacco juice. The provost-guard rushed in, a stalwart Sergeant{168}
separated the combatants, jammed the first soldier down in the seat
until the timbers cracked, banged the other one's head against the side
of the car, and remarked:

"Confound you, don't either o' you raise a hand or open your mouths, or
I'll break both your necks. Old man, you keep mighty quiet, too. Hain't
you got no sense, to mix up in such a row? You're old enough to
know better. I'll snatch you off this train if you make any more
disturbance."

Mr. Klegg's blood was up. He wanted to thrash the whole crowd, including
the Sergeant, and felt equal to it. But the cry was raised that the
train was going. The Sergeant hastened off, with a parting admonition to
him to keep still if he knew what was good for him.

"I'm afeared the army's a mighty rough place," thought Mr. Klegg, as he
gathered up his soiled belongings and tried to straighten them out. "I
wonder if it'll git wuss the nearer we git to the front?"

The train pulled out of Louisville, and he became interested in the
great banks of red earth, crowned with surly, black-mouthed cannon,
where the forts were, the rows of white tents in the camps, the
innumerable droves of horses and mules in the corrals, and the long
trains of army wagons.

"I'm goin' to stock up with some horses when I git back," he said to
himself. "The Government seems to need a powerful sight o' them, and
prices is goin' up faster'n wheat."

Things had now been tolerably quiet in the car for over half an hour,
entirely too long for a party of soldiers returning to the front.
Monotonous peace{169} was obnoxious to them. A two-fisted young fellow
up toward the front rose up, drained the last drops from a pint flask,
dashed the bottle on the floor, and yelled:

"Here's for a quiet life, and peace and good will.{170} I belong to John
F. Miller's Brigade, the best brigade in the Army of the Cumberland, and
the only one that captured any guns at Stone River. I can lick any man
in McCook's Corps."

The answering yell that went up seemed to indicate that nearly all in
the car belonged to McCook's Corps. There was a general peeling off of
overcoats, and a rush forward of answerers to his bold challenge. A few
yelled,

     "Hooray for Miller's Brigade!"

     "Hooray for Crittenden's Corps!"

     "Hooray for Pap Thomas!"

and started in to help out the Miller man. Mr. Klegg rose to his feet
in dismay. Before he could think the soldier beside him picked up his
carpetsack and flung it at the Miller's Brigade man. Mr. Klegg groaned
as he thought of the consequences to a jar of honey and a crock of
butter, which Mrs. Klegg had put in for Si's delectation.

[Illustration: THE FREE FIGHT. 169]

The combatants came together with the hearty zeal of men who had been
looking for a fight for a straight month. The soldier beside Mr. Klegg
snatched up the umbrella and began laying about him. The crash was
fearful. The backs of the seats were wrenched off, the carpetsack
trodden under foot, the windows broken out, and finally Mr. Klegg found
himself on the floor of the car under a mass of struggling, fighting,
striking and kicking men.

The train came to a halt at a station. The guards on the platform rushed
in, and by dint of a vigorous use of gun-butts and other persuasives,
and more strong language than Mr. Klegg had ever heard before in all his
life, succeeded in quieting the{171} disturbance and making the men take
their seats. Mr. Klegg recovered his carpetsack, his comforter, mittens,
hat and umbrella, and sat down again. He turned around and glared at the
soldier by his side.

"If it warn't for startin' another fight," he said to himself, "I'd
punch his infernal head."

But the soldier had gone to sleep; he lolled his head over in Mr.
Klegg's lap and snored loudly.

For two or three hours afterward the train rattled along without
particular incident. Mr. Klegg recovered his composure, and got very
much interested in the country through which they were passing, and its
farming possibilities. These did not strike him favorably, and he was
more than ever convinced that the Wabash Valley was the garden spot of
the world. Finally, the train stopped and backed on to a switch to allow
another to pass.

An enterprising man had put up a shanty near the track, with a long
shelf in front, upon which were displayed sandwiches, pies, boiled eggs,
and other eatables. The men all rushed out of the car. Mr. Klegg had
begun to feel hungry himself, and joined them.

"How much for that pie?" he asked, pointing to one.

"Half-a-dollar," answered the keeper. "Fifty cents for pies, 25 cents
for sandwiches, 10 cents for a cup of coffee."

"Too blamed much," shouted a chorus of voices. "An infernal pirate come
down here to skin the soldiers. Let's clean him out."

Before Mr. Klegg fairly understood the words everything was snatched up.
Those who did not get{172} hold of any of the viands began on the shed.
It was torn to pieces, the stove kicked over, the coffee spilled on the
ground, and the eating-house keeper and his assistants scuttled away out
of danger. The whistle sounded, they all rushed back into the cars, and
Mr. Klegg had to stay his hunger with another chew of tobacco.

Again there was tolerable peace for several hours, broken at last by the
sudden stoppage of the train out in the country, the sound of shots, and
the yell of "Guerrillas! Guerrillas!"

Everybody bolted out of the cars. Those who had guns buckled on their
cartridge-boxes, and formed in line, ready for orders. A squad of rebel
cavalry had been trying to tear up the track, but were surprised by the
unexpected appearance of the train. They had fallen back to the top of
the hill, to see how many were aboard, and whether it looked profitable
to make an attack. They were keeping up a desultory fire at long range.

Mr Klegg had seen a gun standing in the corner as he ran out. He picked
it up and joined one of the squads. He was no coward, and if there had
to be fighting, he was willing to do his share.

[Illustration: MR. KLEGG READY FOR ACTION. 172]

"Bully for you, old Hayseed," said the man who had wanted to whip any
man in the right wing of the army. "You're made of the right stuff,
after all."

Others around him nodded approval, and Mr. Klegg was conscious that the
social atmosphere was more pleasant for him.

The guerrillas finally decided to give the job up, and rode away,
after yelling some 'very uncomplimentary things about Yankee soldiers
generally.

When Mr. Klegg returned to his seat he found his carpetsack, umbrella,
mittens, and comforter gone. Likewise the man who had been riding with
him. He waxed very wroth, and lifted up his voice to let them know it.
Several around began to guy him, but suddenly the man from Miller's
Brigade forced his way{174} through the crowd and asked:

"What's the matter, 'Squire?"

Mr. Klegg explained.

"Well, you've got to have every one of them things back again, if I've
to lick every man on the train. I'll not see an old man and as good a
man as you are mistreated where I am. I've got a father my self."

This time he was in the large majority. All of McCook's men were with
him. A general hunt was instituted through the train, and one by one his
possessions were recovered and brought back to him.

"Thankee, gentlemen; thankee very kindly. Will any o' you gentlemen have
a chaw of terbaker? It's all I have to offer you, but it's good."

When the train pulled into Nashville that night a very tired old farmer
got off and inquired:

"How much farther is it to Murfreesboro'?"

"About 25 miles," someone answered.

"I'm awful glad to hear it. If it was 30 miles I don't believe I could
stand it."



CHAPTER XV. DEACON KLEGG'S ARRIVAL IS MISTAKEN

FOR A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE.

"THINGS don't look so tumultuous-like on this train," said Mr. Klegg,
with a sigh of satisfaction, as he seated himself in the car for
Murfreesboro' and deposited his valuables by his side. "I know that boys
will be boys, and I like to see them have fun just as well as any other
man, but I must say that they made things on that other train a little
too lively for a middle-aged Deacon of the Baptist Church."

A broad-shouldered Provost-Sergeant walked through the car, with an air
of authority, and gave orders to several who were seated in it.

"Must be the Constable, or Sheriff, or Town Marshal," mused Mr. Klegg.
"I hope he'll stay on the train till we reach Murfreesboro', and keep
order."

Mr. Klegg was right. The irregularities and disorders of the "rear"
ended at Nashville. There the strict discipline of the "front"
began under the iron sway of the Provost-Marshal, whose guards were
everywhere, particularly at the depots and on the cars. The occupants of
the car were as orderly as the boys at a country school when the master
is on his throne, with his eyes about him.

It was a bright day, and the country roundabout{176} of surpassing
interest to the Indiana farmer. He saw the domed, stately capitol of
Tennessee crowning the highest hill, and lording a glorious landscape of
hill and valley, through which the Cumberland River flowed in majestic
sweeps, like a broad girdle of sparkling silver. Then came the frowning
forts, with beetling banks of blood-red clay, with terror-striking black
guns, with rugged palisades, and a porcupine bristle of abatis. Sentries
with gleaming muskets paced their high parapets. Every mile, as far as
he could see, was full of objects of engrossing interest.

He became so absorbed in the feast of his eyes that he did not observe
that a middle-aged, clean shaven man in a suit of dusty black had sat
down beside him, and was studying him with attention.

"How do you do, my friend?" said he at length, putting out his hand.

Mr. Klegg turned with a start, and instinctively put out his hand.

"Howdy," he said, with a tone of little encouragement, for he would
much rather have continued watching the country than indulge in
purposeless conversation. The stranger grasped his hand warmly, and
pressed his thumb upon the first joint of Mr. Klegg's, and caught his
little finger in a peculiar way. Deacon Klegg had been initiated into
the Odd Fellows, and he dimly recognized this as a "grip," but he
could not associate it for the moment with any of the degrees of the
brotherhood of the Three Links.

"Were you out late last night," said the stranger in a low,
deeply-impressive tone.{177}

"Not pertickerlerly," answered Deacon Klegg, turning to catch a view
of the stockade at La Vergne, where the 1st Mich. Eng. had made such
a gallant defense. "I'd a mighty bothersome day, and was purty well
tuckered out. I found a good place to sleep, and I turned in rather
airly. Say," continued he, pointing to the wreckage of battle, "the boys
seem to have poked it to 'em purty lively out there."

"It was a very sharp fight," returned the other; "but for once our friend
Wheeler made a mistake, and lost heavily. Down the road farther you'll
see evidences of his more successful work in some miles of burnt
wagons."

"Bad man, that Gen. Wheeler," said the Deacon, looking steadfastly out
of the window.

The stranger looked a little disappointed, but he rallied, and presently
gave the second grand hailing sign of the Knights of the Golden Circle,
in the same low, impressive tone:

"Did you see a star last night?"

"Can't say that I did," responded Mr. Klegg rather indifferently. "There
was lots of gas-lamps burning, and I was rather taken with them, so
that I didn't notice the moon or stars. Besides, as I told you before, I
turned in purty airly, for I was tired with my ride from Looyville, and
I wanted to git in good shape for the trip to-day."

A cloud of annoyance came upon the stranger's face, and he did not speak
again for a minute or two. Then he said:

"You are from Indiana, are you not?"

"Yes," said Mr. Klegg.

"From Posey County?"{178}

"Yes."

"I knew so. I've been looking for you for several days."

"Looking for me?" said Deacon Klegg, turning around in amazement. "How
come you to be lookin' for me? What business have you got with me? How'd
you know I was a-comin'? Nobody knowed it outside o' Mariar, my wife,
and my family."{179}

[Illustration: DEACON KLEGG AND THE KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE.]

"Come, come, now," said the other impatiently. "Don't try to play off on
me. You needn't be afraid. I'm all right. I'm Deputy Grand Organizer
for the Knights for Southern Indiana and the jurisdiction of Louisville
generally. You ought to remember me. I recollect you perfectly. I
organized the Lodges in Poseyville, and all through your County. I
planted the seed there for a big crop of Butternuts that'll help hurl
the tyrant Lincoln from his bloody throne, and give the country back
into the hands of the white man. I got word that you were coming down
with important information from your section for Gen. Bragg and John
Morgan, and I've been on the lookout for you."

An understanding of what the man was, and what he was driving at, began
to slowly filter into Deacon Klegg's mind, and his temper to rise.

"Confound you, you pizen Copperhead," he said wrathfully. "What do you
take me for? Do you take me for a miserable, traitorous Knight o' the
Golden Circle? I'm a member o' the church, or I'd punch your pizen head.
I'm a loyal man, and I've got a son fightin' for the Union."

"H-u-s-h," said the unconvinced man, laying his hand on the Deacon's
arm. "Don't talk so loud. They're watching us."

Klegg shook his hand off angrily, but the warning came too late.
The Provost-Sergeant had been watching them, at the instigation of a
sharp-eyed, cler

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