"Not in the least," said the corporal.
Then the colonel asked me to tell my story, which I did. The corporal said it was a lie, but the other man, whom I did not hit, said I was right.
"Can you disrobe, before these soldiers, without getting off your horse?" asked the colonel, looking at me.
I told him I could and he told me to proceed. I pulled the hat and hair off first and appeared with my red hair clipped short. I then I threw the dress over my head, and appeared in my cavalry pants, all dressed, except my jacket and cap, which the colonel handed me, having brought it from the house where I put on the dress. I put on the jacket, wiped the powder off my face, and the corporal said:
"It"s that condemned raw recruit."
All the boys took in the transformation scene, and then the colonel told them that he wanted this to be a lesson to all of them, to let all women who came to the picket posts, or anywhere, who had pa.s.ses, alone, and not think because one woman had been caught smuggling, that all women were smugglers. In fact he wanted every soldier to mind his own business. Then he dismissed us, and we went to our quarters. On the way, the one-eyed corporal touched me on the arm, and he said:
"Old man, you played it fine on me, but I will get even with you yet."
CHAPTER XIV.
Military Attire--My Suit of Government Clothes--The Memory of Them Saddens Me Still--The Dreadful March--The Adjutant Appoints Me to Make Out a Monthly Report--The Report Is an Astonishing One.
About this time I received the greatest shock of the whole war. I had prided myself upon my uniform that I brought from home, which was made by a tailor, and fit me first rate. It was of as good cloth and as well made as the uniforms of any of the officers, and I was not ashamed to go out with a party of officers on a little evening tear, because there was nothing about my uniform to distinguish me from an officer, except the shoulder-straps, and many officers did not wear shoulder-straps at all, except on dress parade or inspection. I took great pleasure in riding around town, wherever the regiment was located, looking wise, and posing as an officer. But the time came when my uniform, which came with me as a recruit, became seedy, and badly worn, and it was necessary to discard it, and draw some clothing of the quartermaster. That is a trying time for a recruit. One day it was announced that the quartermaster sergeant had received a quant.i.ty of clothing, and the men were ordered to go and draw coats, pants, hats, shoes, overcoats, and underclothing, as winter was coming on, and the regiment was liable to move at any time.
Something happened that I was unable to be present the first forenoon that clothing was issued, and, when I did call upon the quartermaster-sergeant, there was only two or three suits left, and they had been tumbled over till they looked bad. I can remember now how my heart sank within me, as I picked up a pair of pants that was left. They were evidently cut out with a buzz-saw, and were made for a man that weighed three hundred. I held them up in installments, and looked at them. Holding them by the top, as high as I could, and the bottom of the legs of the pants laid on the ground. The sergeant charged the pants to my account, and then handed me a jacket, a small one, evidently made for a hump-backed dwarf. The jacket was covered with yellow braid. O, so yellow, that it made me sick. The jacket was charged to me, also. Then he handed me some undershirts and drawers, so coa.r.s.e and rough that it seemed to me they must have been made of rope, and lined with sand-paper. Then came an overcoat, big enough for an equestrian statue of George Washington, with a cape on it as big as a wall tent. The hat I drew was a stiff, cheap, shoddy hat, as high as a tin camp kettle, which was to take the place of my n.o.bby, soft felt hat that I had paid five dollars of my bounty money for. The hat was four sizes too large for me.
Then I took the last pair of army shoes there was, and they weighed as much as a pair of anvils, and had raw-hide strings to fasten them with.
Has any old soldier of the army ever forgotten the clothing that he drew from the quartermaster? These inverted pots for hats, the same size all the way up, and the shoes that seemed to be made of sole leather, and which sc.r.a.ped the skin off the ankles. O, if this government ever does go to Gehenna, as some people contend it will, sometime, it will be as a penalty for issuing such ill-fitting shoddy clothing to its brave soldiers, who never did the government any harm. I carried the lot of clothing to my tent, feeling sick and faint. The idea of wearing them among folks was almost more than I could bear to think of. I laid them on my bunk, and looked at them, and "died right there." That hat was of a style older than Methuselah. O, I could have stood it, all but the hat, and pants, and shoes, but they killed me. While I was looking at the lay-out, and trying to make myself believe that my old clothes that I brought with me were good enough to last till the war was over, though the seat of the pants, and the knees, and the sleeves of the coat were nearly gone, an orderly came through the company and said the regiment would have a dismounted dress parade at sundown, and every man must wear his new clothes. Ye G.o.ds! that was too much! If I could have had a week or ten days to get used to those new clothes, one article at a time, I could have stood it, but to be compelled to put the pants, and jacket, shoes and hat on all at once, was horrible to think of, and if I had not known that a deserter was always caught, and punished, I would have deserted. But the clothes must be put on, and I must go out into the world a spectacle to behold. Believing that it is better to face the worst, and have it over, I put on the pants first. If I could ever meet the army contractor who furnished those pants to a government almost in the throes of dissolution, I would kill him as I would an enemy of the human race. There was room enough in those pants for a man and a horse.
Yes, and a bale of hay. There were no suspenders furnished to the men, and how to keep the pants from falling from grace was a question, but I got a piece of tent rope, cut a hole in the waist band, and run the rope around inside, and tied it around my waist, puckering the top of the pants at proper intervals.
When I think of those pants now, after twenty-two years, I wonder that I was not irretrievably lost in them. I would have been lost if I had not stuck out of the top. But when I looked at the bottoms of the pants I found at least a foot too much. If I had tied the rope around under my arms, or b.u.t.toned them to my collar b.u.t.ton, they would have been too long at the bottom. I finally rolled them up at the bottom, and they rolled clear up above my knees. But how they did bag around my body.
There was cloth enough to spare to have made a whole uniform for the largest man in the regiment. At that time I was a slim fellow, that weighed less than 125 pounds, and there is no doubt I got the largest pair of pants that was issued in the whole Union army. I only had a-small round mirror in my tent, so I could not see how awfully I looked, only in installments, but to a sensitive young man who had always dressed well, any one can see how a pair of such pants would harrow up his soul. If the pants were too large, you ought to have seen the jacket. The contractor who made the clothes evidently took the measure of a monkey to make that jacket. It was so small that I could hardly get it on. The sleeves were so tight that the vaccination marks on my arm must have shown plainly. The sleeves were too short, and my hands and half of my forearm riding outside. The body was so tight that I had to use a monkey-wrench to b.u.t.ton it, and then I couldn"t breathe without unb.u.t.toning one b.u.t.ton. It was so tight that my ribs showed so plain they could be counted.
I stuffed some pieces of grain sack in the shoes, and got them on, and tied them, put on that awful hat, the bugle sounded to fall in, and I fell out of my tent towards the place of a.s.sembly, with my carbine. If we had been going out mounted, I could have managed to hide some of the pants around the saddle, if I could have got my shoe over the horse"s back, but to walk out among men, stubbing my shoes against each other, and interfering and knocking my ankles off, was pretty hard. The company was about formed when I fell out of my tent, and when the men saw me they snickered right out. I have heard a great many noises in my time that took the life out of me.
The first sh.e.l.l that I heard whistle through the air, and shriek, and explode, caused my hair to raise, and I was cold all up and down my spine. The first flock of minnie bullets that sang about my vicinity caused my flesh to creep and my heart"s blood to stand still. Once I was near a saw mill when the boiler exploded, and as the pieces of boiler began to rain around me, I felt how weak and insignificant a small, red-headed, freckled-faced man is. Once I heard a girl say "no," when I had asked her a civil question, and I was so pale and weak that I could hardly reply that I didn"t care a continental whether she married me or not, but I never felt quite so weak, and powerless, and ashamed, and desperate as I did when I came out, falling over myself and the men of my company snickered at my appearance. The captain held his hand over his face and laughed. I fell in at the left of my company, and the captain went to the right and looked down the line, and seeing my pants out in front about a foot, he ordered me to stand back. I stood back, and he looked at the rear of the line, and I stuck out worse behind, and he made me move up. Finally he came down to where I was and told me to throw out my chest. I tried to throw it out, and busted a b.u.t.ton off, but the pressure was too great, and my chest went back. Finally the captain told me I could go to the right of the company and act as orderly sergeant on dress parade. He said as our company was on the right of the regiment, they could dress on my pants, and I wouldn"t be noticed.
What I ought to have done, was to have committed suicide right there, but I went to the right, trying to look innocent, and we moved off to the field for dress parade. Everything went on well enough, except that in coming to a "carry arms," with my carbine, from a present, the muzzle of the carbine knocked off my stiff hat, and the stock of the carbine went into the pocket of my pants and run clear down my leg, before I could rescue it. A file closer behind me picked up my hat and put it on me, with the yellow cord ta.s.sels in front, and before I could fix it, the order came, "First sergeants to the front and center, march." Those who are familiar with military matters, know that at dress parade the first sergeants march a few paces to the front, then turn and march to the center of the regiment, turn and face the adjutant, and each salutes that officer in turn, and reports, "Co. ----, all present or accounted for." That was the hardest march I ever had in all of my army experience. I knew that every eye of every soldier in the six companies at the right of the regiment, would be on my pants, and the officers would laugh at me, and the several hundred ladies and gentlemen from town, who were back of the colonel, witnessing the dress parade, would laugh, too. A man can face death, in the discharge of his duty, better than he can face the laughter of a thousand people. I seemed to be the only soldier in the whole regiment who had not got a pretty good fit in drawing his new clothes, but I was a spectacle. As I marched to the front, with the other eleven first sergeants, and stood still for them to dress on me, I felt as though the piece of tent rope with which I had fastened my large pants up, was becoming untied, and I began to perspire. What would become of me if that rope _should_ become untied?
If that rope gave way, it seemed to me it would break up the whole army, stampede the visitors, and cause me to be court-martialed for conduct unbecoming any white man. I made up my mind if the worst came, I would drop my carbine and grab the pants with both hands, and save the day. At the command, right and left face, I turned to the left, and I could feel the pants begin to droop, as it were, so I took hold of the top of them with my left hand, and at the command, march, I started for the center.
I had got almost past my own company, and there had been no general laugh, but when I pa.s.sed an Irishman, named Mulcahy, I heard him whisper out loud to the man next to him, "Howly Jasus, luk at the pants." Then there was a snicker all through the company, which was taken up by the next, and by the time I got to the center, and "front faced," a half of the regiment were laughing, and the officers were scolding the men and whispering to them to shut up. Just then I felt that the one hand that was trying to hold the pants up, was never going to do the work in the world, so I dropped my carbine behind me, said, "Co. E, all present or accounted for," and stood there like a stoughton bottle, holding the waist-band of those pants with both hands, as pale as a ghost. I could see that the adjutant and the colonel and two majors, were laughing, and many of the visitors were trying to keep from laughing. I think I lived seventy years in five minutes, while the other eleven orderlies were reporting, and when the order came to return to our posts, I whispered to the next orderly to me, and told him if he would pick up my carbine and bring it along, I would die for him, and he picked it up. The dress parade was soon finished, but instead of marching the companies back to their quarters, they were ordered to break ranks on the parade ground, and for an hour I was surrounded with officers and men, who laughed at me till I thought I would die.
The colonel and adjutant finally told me that it was a put up job on me, to make a little fun for the boys. They said I had often had fun at the expense of the other boys, and they wanted to see if I could stand a joke on myself, and they admitted that I had done it well. If I had known it was a joke, I could have lived through it better. The adjutant said he had got a little work for me that evening, and the next morning I could take my clothes down town to the post quartermaster, and exchange them for a suit that would fit me. I went to his tent, and he showed me a lot of company reports, and wanted me to make out a consolidated monthly report, for the a.s.sistant adjutant general of the brigade. I had done some work for him before, and he left a blank signed by himself and colonel, and told me to make out a report and send it to the brigade headquarters, as he was going down town with a party of officers. I made up my mind that I would get even with the adjutant and the colonel, so I took a pen and filled out the blank. My idea was to put all the figures in the wrong column, which I did, and send it to the brigade headquarters. The next morning I went down town with the quartermaster, and got a suit of clothes to fit me, and on the way back to camp I pa.s.sed brigade headquarters, when I saw our adjutant looking quite dejected. He called to me and said he had been summoned to brigade headquarters to explain some inaccuracies in the monthly report sent in the night before, and he wanted me to stay and see what was the trouble, but I acted as though if there was a mistake, it was an error of the head rather than of the feet. Pretty soon the old brigade adjutant, who was a strict diciplinarian, and a man who never heard of a joke, came in from the general"s tent, with his brow corrugated. They had evidently been brooding over the report.
"I beg your pardon, adjutant," said he, with a preoccupied look, "but in your report I observe that your regiment contains forty-three enlisted men, and nine hundred and twenty-six company cooks. This seems to me improbable, and the general cannot seem to understand it."
The adjutant turned red in the face, and was about to stammer out something, when the adjutant general continued:
"Again, we observe that your quartermaster has on hand nine hundred bales of condition powders, which is placed in your report as rations for the men, that you only have eleven horses in your regiment fit for duty, that you have the same number of men, while the commissioned officers foot up at nine hundred and twenty-six. Of your sick men there seems to be plenty, some eight hundred, which would indicate an epidemic, of which these headquarters had not been informed previously.
In the column headed "officers detailed on other duty" I find four "six-mule teams," and one "spike team of five mules." In the column "officers absent without leave" I find the entry "all gone off on a drunk." This, sir, is the most incongruous report that has ever been received at these head-quarters, from a reputably sober officer. Can this affair be satisfactorily explained, at once, or would you prefer to explain it to a court-martial?"
"Captain," said the adjutant in distress, and perspiring freely, "my clerk has made a mistake, and placed a piece of waste paper that has been scribbled on, in the envelope, instead of the regular report. Let me take it, and I will send the proper report to you in ten minutes."
The adjutant general handed over my report, after asking how it happened that the signature of the colonel and adjutant was on the ridiculous report, and the adjutant and the red-headed recruit went out, mounted and rode away. On the way the adjutant said, "I ought to kill you on the spot. But I wont. You have only retaliated on us for playing them pants on you. I hate a man that can"t take a joke."
Then we made out a new report, and I took it to headquarters, and all was well. But the adjutant was not as kitteny with his jokes on the other fellows for many moons.
CHAPTER XV.
My Experience as a Sick Man--Jim Thinks I Have Yellow Fever-- What I Suffered--A Rebel Angel--I am Sent to the Hospital.
Up to this time I had never been sick a day in my life, that is, sick enough to ache and groan and grunt, and lay in bed. At home I had occasionally had a cold, and I was put to bed at night, after drinking a quart of ginger tea, and covered up with blankets in a warm room, and I was fussed over by loving hands until I got to sleep, and in the morning I would wake up as fresh as a daisy, with my cold all gone. Once or twice at home I had a bilious attack that lasted me almost twenty-four hours; but the old family doctor fired blue pills down me, and I came under the wire an easy winner. I did have the mumps and the measles, of course before enlisting, but the loving care I was given brought me out all right, and I looked upon those little sicknesses as a sort of luxury. The people at home would do everything to make sick experiences far from bitter memories. It was getting along towards Christmas of my first year in the army, and though it was the Sunny South we were in, I noticed that it was pretty all-fired cold. The night rides were full of fog and malaria; and one morning I came in from an all-night ride through the woods and swamps, feeling pretty blue. The mud around my tent was frozen, and there was a little snow around in spots. As I laid down in my bunk to take a snooze before breakfast, I noticed how awfully thin an army blanket was. It was good enough for summer, but when winter came the blanket seemed to have lost its cunning. I was again doing duty as a private soldier, having learned that my promotion to the position of corporal was only temporary. I had been what is called a "lance corpora," or a brevet corporal. It seemed hard, after tasting of the sweets of official position, to be returned to the ranks, but I had to take the bitter with the sweet, and a soldier must not kick. I had never laid down to sleep before without dropping off into the land of dreams right away, but now, though I was tired enough, my eyes were wide open and I felt strange. At times I would be so hot that I would throw the blanket off, and then I would be so cold that it seemed as though I would freeze. I had taken a severe cold which had settled everywhere, and there was not a bone in my body but what ached; my lungs seemed of no use; I could not take a long breath without a hacking cough, and I felt as though I should die. It was then that I thought of the warm little room at home and the ginger tea, and the soaking of my feet in mustard water and wrapping my body in a soft flannel blanket, and the kindly faces of my parents, my sister, my wife--everybody that had been kind to me. I would close my eyes and imagine I could see them all, and open my eyes and see my cold little tent and shiver as I thought of being sick away from home. I laid for an hour wishing I was home again; and while alone there I made up my mind I would write home and warn all the boys I knew against enlisting. The thought that I should die there alone was too much, and I was about to yell for help when my tent mate, who had been on a scout, came in. He was a big green Yankee, who had a heart in him as big as a water pail, but he wasn"t much, of a nurse.
He came in nearly frozen, threw his saddle down in a corner, took out a hard tack and began to chew it, occasionally taking a drink of water out of a canteen. That was his breakfast.
"Well, I"ve got just about enough of war," said he, as he picked his teeth with a splinter off his bunk, and filled his pipe and lit it.
"They can"t wind up this business any too soon to suit the old man. War in the summer is a picnic, but in winter it is wearin on the soldier."
Heretofore I had enjoyed tobacco smoke very much, both from my own pipe and Jim"s, but when he blew out the first whiff of smoke it went to my head and stomach and all up and down me, and I yelled, in a hoa.r.s.e, pneumonia sort of voice:
"Jim, for G.o.d"s sake don"t smoke. I am at death"s door, and I don"t want to smell of tobacco smoke when St. Peter opens the gate."
"What, pard, you ain"t sick," said Jim, putting his pipe outside of the tent, and coming to me and putting his great big hand on my forehead, as tender as a woman.
"Great heavens! you have got the yellow fever. You won"t live an hour."
That was where Jim failed as a nurse. He made things out worse than they were. He, poor old fellow, thought it was sympathy, and if I had let him go on he would have had me dead before night. I told him I was all right. All I had was a severe cold, on my lungs, and pneumonia, and rheumatism, and chills and fever, and a few such things, but I would be all right in a day or two. I wanted to encourage Jim to think I was not very bad off, but he wouldn"t have it. He insisted that I had typhoid fever, and glanders, and cholera. He went right out of the tent and called in the first man he met, who proved to be the horse doctor. The horse doctor was a friend of mine, and a mighty good fellow, but I had never meditated having him called in to doctor me. However, he felt of my fore leg, looked at my eyes, rubbed the hair the wrong way on my head, and told Jim to bleed me in the mouth, and blanket me, and give me a bran mash, and rub some mustang liniment on my chest and back.
I didn"t want to hurt the horse doctor"s feelings by going back on his directions, but I told him I only wanted to soak my feet in mustard water, and take some ginger tea. He said all right, if I knew more about it than he did, and that he said he would skirmish around for some ginger, while Jim raised the mustard, and they both went out and left me alone. It seemed an age before anybody come, and I thought of home all the time, and of the folks who would know just what to do if I was there. Pretty soon Jim came in with a camp kettle half full of hot water, and a bottle of French mixed mustard which he had bought of the sutler. I told him I wanted plain ground mustard, but he said there wasn"t any to be found, and French mustard was the best he could do. We tried to dissolve it in the water, but it wouldn"t work, and finally Jim suggested that he take a mustard spoon and plaster the French mustard all over my feet, and then put them to soak that way. He said that prepared mustard was the finest kind for pigs feet and sausage, and he didn"t know why it was not all right to soak feet in. So he plastered it on and I proceeded to soak my feet. I presume it was the most unsuccessful case of soaking feet on record. The old camp kettle was greasy, and when the hot water and French mustard began to get in their work on the kettle, the odor was sickening, and I do not think I was improved at all in my condition. I told Jim I guessed I would lay down and wait for the ginger tea. Pretty soon the horse doctor came in with a tin cup full of hot ginger tea. I took one swallow of it and I thought I had swallowed a blacksmith"s forge, with a coal fire in it. I gasped and tried to yell murder. The horse doctor explained that he couldn"t get any ginger, so he had taken cayenne pepper, which, he added, could knock the socks off of ginger any day in the week. I felt like murdering the horse doctor, and I felt a little hard at Jim for playing French mustard on me, but when I come to reflect, I could see that they had done the best they could, and I thanked them, and told them to leave me alone and I would go to sleep. They went out of the tent and I could hear them speculating on my case. Jim said he knew I had diabetis, and lung fever combined, with sciatic rheumatism, and brain fever, and if I lived till morning the horse doctor could take it out of his wages. The horse doctor admitted that my case had a hopeless look, but he once had a patient, a bay horse, sixteen hands high, and as fine a saddle horse as a man ever threw a leg over, that was troubled exactly the same as I was. He blistered his chest, gave him a table-spoonful of condition powders three times a day in a bran mash, took off his shoes and turned him out to gra.s.s, and in a week he sold him for two hundred and fifty dollar. I laid there and tried to go to sleep listening to that talk.
Then, some of the boys who had heard that I was sick, came along and inquired how I was, and I listened to the remarks they made. One of them wanted to go and get some burdock leaves, and pound them into a pulp, and bind them on me for a poultice. He said he had an aunt in Wisconsin who had a milk sickness, and her left leg swelled up as big as a post, and the doctors tried everything, and charged her over two hundred dollars, and never did her any good, and one day an Indian doctor came along and picked some burdock leaves and fixed a poultice for her, and in a week she went to a hop-picker"s dance, and was as kitteny as anybody, and the Indian doctor only charged her a quarter. Jim was for going out for burdock leaves at once, for me, but the horse doctor told him I didn"t have no milk sickness. He said all the milk soldiers got was condensed milk, and mighty little of that, and he would defy the world to show that a man could get milk sickness on condensed milk. That seemed to settle the burdock remedy, and they went to inquiring of Jim if he knew where my folks lived, so he could notify them, in case I was not there in the morning. Jim couldn"t remember whether it was Atchison, Kan., or Fort Atkinson, Wis., but he said he would go and ask me, while I was alive, so there would be no mistake, and the poor fellow, meaning as well as any man ever did, came in and asked for the address of my father, saying it was of no account, particularly, only he wanted to know. I gave him the address, and then he asked me if he shouldn"t get me something to eat. I told him I couldn"t eat anything to save me.
He offered to fry me some bacon, and make me a cup of coffee, but the thought of bacon and coffee made me wild. I told him if he could make me a nice cup of green tea, and some milk toast, or poach me an egg and place it on a piece of nice b.u.t.tered toast, and give me a little currant jelly, I thought I could swallow a mouthful. Jim"s eyes stuck out when I gave my order, which I had done while thinking of home, and a tear rolled down his cheek, and he went out of the tent, saying, "All right, pard." I saw him tap his forehead with his finger, point his thumb toward the tent, and say to the boys outside:
"He"s got "em! Head all wrong! Wants me to make him milk toast, poached eggs, green tea, and currant jelly. And I offered him _bacon_. Sow belly for a sick man! There isn"t a loaf of bread in camp. Not an egg within five miles. And milk! currant jelly! Why, he might as well ask for Delmonico"s bill of fare, but we have got to get "em. I told him he should have em, and, by mighty! he shall. Here, Mr. Horse-doctor, you stay and watch him, and I and Company D here will saddle up and go out on the road to a plantation, and raid it for delicacies.
"You bet your life," says the Company "D" man, and pretty soon I heard a couple of saddles thrown on two horses, and then there was a clatter of horses feet on the frozen ground. I have thought of it since a good many times, and have concluded that I must have dropped asleep. Any way, it didn"t seem more than five minutes before the tent nap opened and Jim came in.
"Come, straighten out here, now, you red-headed corpse, and try that toast," said he, as he came in with a piece of hard-tack box for a tray, and on it was a nice china plate, and a cup and saucer, an egg on toast, and a little pitcher of milk, and some jelly.
"Jim," I said, tasting of the tea, which was not much like army tea, "you never made this tea. A woman made that tea, or I"m a goat. And that toast was toasted by a woman, and that egg was poached by a woman. Where am I?" I asked, imagining that I was home again.
"You guessed it the first time, pard," said Jim, as he threw the blanket over my shoulders, as I sat up on the bunk to try and eat. "The whole thing was done by the rebel angel."
"Rebel angel, Jim; what are you talking about? There ain"t any rebel angels," and I became weak and laid down again.
"Yes, there is a rebel angel, and she is a dandy," said Jim, as he covered me up. "She is out by the fire making milk toast for you. You see, I went out to the Brown plantation, to try and steal an egg, and some bread, and milk, but I thought, on the way out, as it was a case of life and death, the stealing of it might rest heavy on your soul when you come to pa.s.s in your chips, so I concluded to go to the house and ask for it. There was a young woman there, and I told her the red-headed corporal that captured the female smuggler, was dying, and couldn"t eat any hard-tack and bacon, and I wanted to fill him up on white folks food before he died, so he could go to heaven or elsewhere, as the case might be, on a full stomach, and she flew around like a kernel of pop-corn on a hot griddle, and picked up a basket of stuff, and had the n.i.g.g.e.r saddle a mule for her, and she came right to the camp with me, and said she would attend to everything. She"s a thoroughbred, and don"t you make no mistake about it."
I must have gone to sleep when Jim was talking about the girl, for I dreamed that there was a million angels in rebel uniforms, poaching eggs for me. Pretty soon I heard a rustle of female clothes, and a soft, cool hand was placed on my forehead, my hair was brushed back, a perfumed handkerchief wiped the cold perspiration from my face, and I heard the rebel angel ask Jim what the doctor said about me. Jim told her what the horse doctor had said about curing a horse that had been sick the same as I was, and then she asked if we had not sent for the regular doc-doctor. Jim said we had not thought of that. She asked what had been done for me, and Jim told her about the French mustard episode, and the cayenne pepper tea. I thought she laughed, but it had become dark in the tent, and I couldn"t see her face, but she told Jim to go after the regimental surgeon at once, and Jim went out. The angel asked me how I felt, and I told her I was all right, but she said I was all wrong. I thanked her for the trouble she had taken to come so far, and she said not to mention it. She said she had a brother who was a prisoner at the-North, and if somebody would only be kind to him if he was sick, she would be well repaid. She said the last she heard of him he was a prisoner of war at Madison, Wis., and she wondered what kind of people lived there, away off on the frontier, and if they could be kind to their enemies. That touched me where I lived, and I raised up on my elbow, and said:
"Why bless your heart, Miss, if your brother is a prisoner in old Camp Randlll, in Madison, he has got a pic nic. That town was my home before I came down here on this fool job. The people there are the finest in the world. All of them, from old Grovernor Lewis, to the poorest man in town, would set up nights with a sick person, whether he was a rebel or not. Your brother couldn"t be better fixed if he was at home. The idea of a man suffering for food, clothing, or human sympathy in Madison, would be ridiculous. There is not a family in that town," I said, becoming excited from the feeling that any one doubted the humanity of the people of Wisconsin, "but would divide their breakfast, and their clothes, and their money, with your brother, egad, I wish I was there myself. I will be responsible for your brother, Miss."
She told me to lay down and be quiet, and not talk any more, as I was becoming wild. She said she was glad to know what kind of people lived there, as she had supposed it was a wilderness. In a few minutes Jim came back and said the doctor was playing poker with some other officers, in a captain"s tent, and he didn"t dare go in and break up the game, but he spoke to the doctor"s orderly, and he said I ought to take castor oil. That didn"t please the little woman at all, and she told Jim to go to the poker tent and tell the doctor to come at once, or she would come after him. It was not long before the doctor came stooping in to my pup tent. His idea was to have all sick men attend surgeon"s call in the morning, and not go around visiting the sick in tents. He asked me what was the matter, and I told him nothing much. Then he asked me why I wasn"t at surgeon"s call in the morning. I told him the reason was that I was wading in a swamp, after the rebels that ambushed some of our boys the day before. "Then you"ve got malaria," said he. "Take some quinine tonight, and come to surgeon"s call in the morning."