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. Aflush 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; theyhain't nigh ez good men ez we'uns, an' they'uns ain't heah. We'uns airTennesseans, 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 andpicking up a piece of cedar, which made a formidable club. "We'uns isnot a-gwine back with yo'uns nary a step. By rights, we'uns orter takeyo'uns back with we'uns. But I'm willin' to call hit off, and let yo'unsgo 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 alittle to get a better range, and fixing his bayonet. "I've set my hearton takin' you back to Co. Q, an' back to Co. Q you'll go, if Si Kleggknows himself."{38}
"And you'll go in a hurry, too," said Shorty. "It's gettin' late, andI'm always afraid to be out after dark. Mosey, now!"
The other rebels were picking up clubs similar to the Sergeant's andcasting their eyes on him for the signal to attack.
"See here," said Si desperately, cocking his gun. "Don't waste no moretime 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 amove agin me I'll surely blow your head off en you, an' jab my bayonetthrough 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 withoutwarnin'. 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 rightor 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'sgun. They glanced along the barrel, and met one eye looking directlythrough the sights, while the other was closed, in the act of takingdeliberate aim. He decided with great promptness that there were manyreasons 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. Hedropped his club, turned around, and made his way along the path overwhich Si had come. The rest followed, with Si and Shorty a few paces inthe rear.
Palpitating with pride, Si marched his prisoners up to the company,who gave him three cheers. The Captain ordered him to report with hisprisoners to the Colonel.
SI REPORTS TO THE COLONEL 38]
The Colonel praised him with words that made his blood tingle.{40}
The skirmishing off to the right had now ceased. The rebels had fallenback to the next hilltop, and the 200th Ind. was ordered to go into campwhere it stood.
PREPARING SUPPER 40]
It was a fine place for a camp. The mud of the day before was frozeninto stony hardness. The wagons had no difficulty in coming up. Therewas wood and water in abundance, and it seemed that the command "Breakranks March!" had hardly been uttered when great, bright, comfort-givingfires of fragrant cedar rails flashed up all along the line.
Si and Shorty found several cedar stumps and logs, which they rolledtogether, and made a splendid fire. They cooked themselves an amplesupper of fried pork, toasted hardtack, and strong, fragrant coffee,which they devoured with an appetite and a keen enjoyment only possibleto healthy young men who have had a day of active manuvering andmarching in the crisp, chill air of December.
Then they gathered a lot of cedar branches, and made a thick mattress ofthem 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, "Ioften wonder where you get all your ideas. For a man who wasn't raisedon the Wabash you know an awful sight. Mebbe, if you'd actually beenborn 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'ssofter and comfortabler than one of mother's feather beds. When I getout 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 onthe Wabash, I'll admit, and some fairly good soldiers. But where'llyou get any cedars there to make beds with? You'll have to go back tosleepin' 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'llnever say another word about ager and milk-sick en the Wabash, and I'lllick any other feller that does. There wasn't a speck of ager inyour gizzard when you ordered him forward, or you'd blow his SouthernConfederacy head off."
"There was more ager there than you thought, Shorty," Si admittedsoftly. "I was awfully scared, for there was six to us two, and if thatfeller 'd had the right kind of sand he'd a-jumped me at once, before Icould 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 youwould, too. You're the best pard a feller ever had."
And he reached over and took Shorty's rough hand and squeezed itaffectionately.
"I can bet on you every time, even when I don't think it's quite safe tobet on myself. And, Shorty," he continued, with his eyes kindling, "itwas worth all that we've gone through since we've been in the army, evenall that time in the rain, to have the Colonel speak as he did to usbefore the rest of the boys. I'd be willing to enlist three years moreif 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 underhim in the comfortable way that it takes months of field serviceto acquire, and gazed steadily into the bank of glowing coals. Theysuffused his face and body with their generous warmth, and helped lifthis soul toward the skies.{43}
He was much happier than he had ever been before in his life. The trialsof the day before were hardly more than a far-away dream. The fears andanxieties of the coming battle were forgotten. The ruddy embers becamea radiant vista, which Pride and Hope and Joy filled with all that hewanted to see. He saw there the dear old home on the Wabash, his fatherseated by the evening lamp reading the paper, while his mother knit onthe other side of the table. His sisters were busy with some femininetrifles, and Annabel had come in to learn the news. They would hear whathe 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 eyessuffuse 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. Therattling military "good night" had never before had any special charmsfor Si. But now he thought it an unusually sweet composition.
"I declare," he said to Shorty, "that sheepskin band of our'n isimproving. They're getting to play real well. But I ought to write a fewlines home before taps. Got any paper. Shorty?"
"Much paper you'll find in this regiment after that rain," said Shortycontemptuously, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and started tofall in for roll-call. "Every mite of paper anybody has was soaked tospitwads. 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 acouple of leaves out of the back of his treasured diary, which hadescaped the rain, and handed them to him. Si fished his stub of a pencilout of his blouse-pocket, laid the paper on the back of a tin plate, andbegan:
"Somewhere in Tennessee, December the 27th, 1862.
"Dere Annabel: We're movin' on Murphysboro, where we exp
ect 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 whatwords he should use to describe the occurrence. He wanted to tell herall that was bubbling in his heart, and yet he was afraid she wouldthink him an intolerable boaster, if he told it in just the wordsthat came to him. He was more afraid of that little country girl'sdisapproval than of all the rebels in Murfreesboro.
There were yells, the rattling of chains, and the sound of gallopinghoofs 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 hisfire, and were almost upon him. He dropped paper, pan and pencil, andjumped to one side, just in time to avoid a rush which scattered hisfire, his carefully-prepared bed, and all his be longings under 24flying, hard-pounding hoofs.
AFTER THE MULES STAMPEDED 44]
"Blast mules, anyhow," said the driver, coming up with his whip in hishand. "I didn't hev nothin' for them to eat but a cottonwood pole thatI cut down in the bottom. But they must have smelt fodder over theresomewhere, and they broke for it like the devil beatin' tanbark. Hopeyou weren't hurt, pard."
Si and Shorty fixed up their fire again, rearranged{46} their scatteredcedar 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, mashedall future usefulness out of it, and stamped his letter to Annabel intounrecognizability.
He threw the rent fragments into the fire, sighed deeply, and crawledunder the blankets with Shorty, just as three sounding taps on thebass-drum commanded silence and lights out in the camp.
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