CHAPTER IX. SI GETS A LETTER
AND WRITES ONE TO PRETTY ANNABEL, UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
"COMPANY Q, tumble up here and git yer mail!" shouted the Orderly one afternoon, soon after the 200th Ind. turned into a tobacco patch to bivouac for the night. It had been two weeks since the regiment left Louisville, and this was the first mail that had caught up with it.
It seemed to the boys as if they had been away from home a year. For a whole fortnight they hadn"t heard a word from their mothers, or sisters, or their "girls." Si Klegg couldn"t have felt more lonesome and forsaken if he had been Robinson Crusoe.
In the excitement of distributing the mail everything else was forgotten.. The boys were all getting their suppers, but at the thought of letters from home even hunger had to take a back seat.
Si left his coffee-pot to tip over into the fire, and his bacon sizzling in the frying-pan, as he elbowed his way into the crowd that huddled around the Orderly.
"If there ain"t more"n one letter for me," said Si softly to himself, "I hope it"ll be from Annabel; but, of course, I"d like to hear from Ma and sister Marier, too!"
The Orderly, with a big package of letters in his hand, was calling out the names, and as the boys received their letters they distributed themselves through the camp, squatting about on rails or on the ground, devouring with the greatest avidity the welcome messages from home. The camp looked as if there had been a snowstorm.
Si waited anxiously to hear his name called as the pile letters rapidly grew smaller, and he began to think he was going to get left.
"Josiah Klegg!" at length shouted the Orderly, as he held out two letters. Si s.n.a.t.c.hed them from his hand, went off by himself, and sat down on a log.
Si looked at his letters and saw that one of them was addressed in a pretty hand. He had never received a letter from Annabel before, but he "felt it in his bones" that this one was from her. He glanced around to be certain n.o.body was looking at him, and gently broke the seal, while a ruddy glow overspread his beardless cheeks. But he was secure from observation, as everybody else was similarly intent.
"Dear Si," the letter began. He didn"t have to turn over to the bottom of the last page to know what name he would find there. He read those words over and over a dozen times, and they set his nerves tingling clear down to his toe-nails. Si forgot his aches and blisters as he read on through those delicious lines.
[Ill.u.s.tration: IT"S FROM ANNABEL 081 ]
She wrote how anxious she was to hear from him and how cruel it was of him not to write to her real often; how she lay awake nights thinking about him down among those awful rebels; how she supposed that by this time he must be full of bullet-holes; and didn"t he ge" hungry sometimes, and wasn"t it about time for him to get a furlough? how it was just too mean for anything that those men down South had to get up a war; how proud she was of Si because he had "listed, and how she watched the newspapers every day to find some thing about him; how she wondered how many rebels he had killed, and if he had captured any batteries yet--she said she didn"t quite know what batteries were, but she read a good deal about capturing "em, and she supposed it was something all the soldiers did; how she hoped he wouldn"t forget her, and she"d like to see how he looked, now that he was a real soldier, and her father had sold the old "mooley" cow, and Sally Perkins was engage to Jim Johnson, who had stayed at home, and as for herself she wouldn"t have anybody but a soldier about the size of Si, and "Squire Jones"s son had been trying to shine up to her and cut Si out, but she sent him off with a flea in his ear.
"Yours till deth, Annabel."
The fact that there was a word misspelt now and then did not detract in the least from the letter, so pleasing to Si. In fact, he was a little lame in orthography himself, so that he had neither the ability nor the disposition to scan Annabel"s pages with a critic"s eye. Si was happy, and as he began to cast about for his supper he even viewed with complacence his bacon burned to a crisp and his capsized coffee-pot helplessly melting away in the fire.
"Well, Si, what does she say?" said his friend Shorty.
"What does who say?" replied Si, getting red in the face, and bristling up and trying to a.s.sume an air of indifference.
"Just look here now. Si," said Shorty, "you can"t play that on me. How about that rosy-cheeked girl up in Posey County?"
It was Si"s tender spot. He hadn"t got used to that sort of thing yet, and he felt that the emotions that made his heart throb like a sawmill were too sacred to be fooled with. Impelled by a sudden impulse he smote Shorty fairly between the eyes, felling him to the ground.
The Orderly, who happened to be near, took Si by the ear and marched him up to the Captain"s quarters.
"Have him carry a rail in front of my tent for an hour!" thundered the Captain. "Don"t let it be a splinter, either; pick out a good, heavy one. And, Orderly, detail a guard to keep Mr. Klegg moving."
[Ill.u.s.tration: SI CARRIES A RAIL 083 ]
Of course, it was very mortifying to Si, and he would have been almost heartbroken had he not been comforted by the thought that it was all for her! At first he felt as if he would like to take that rail and charge around and destroy the whole regiment; but, on thinking it over, he made up his mind that discretion was the better part of valor.
As soon as Si"s hour was up, and he had eaten supper and "made up" with Shorty, he set about answering his letter. When, on his first march, Si cleaned out all the surplusage from his knapsack, he had hung on to a pretty portfolio that his sister gave him. This was stocked with postage stamps and writing materials, including an a.s.sortment of the envelopes of the period, bearing in gaudy colors National emblems, stirring legends, and harrowing scenes of slaughter, all intended to stimulate the patriotic impulses and make the breast of the soldier a very volcano of martial ardor.
When Si got out his nice portfolio he found it to be an utter wreck. It had been jammed into a shapeless ma.s.s, and, besides this, it had been soaked with rain; paper and envelopes were a pulpy ruin, and the postage stamps were stuck around here and there in the chaos. It was plain that this memento of home had fallen an early victim to the hardships of campaign life, and that its days of usefulness were over.
"It"s no use; "tain"t any good," said Si sorrowfully, as he tossed the debris into the fire, after vainly endeavoring to save from the wreck enough to carry, out his epistolary scheme.
Then he went to the sutler--or "skinner," as he was better known--and paid 10 cents for a sheet of paper and an envelope, on which were the cheerful words, "It is sweet to die for one"s country!" and 10 cents more for a 3-cent postage stamp. He borrowed a leadpencil, hunted up a piece of crackerbox, and sat down to his work by the flickering light of the fire. Si wrote:
"Deer Annie."
There he stopped, and while he was scratching his head and thinking what he would say next the Orderly came around detailing guards for the night, and directed Klegg to get his traps and report at once for duty.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SI WRITES TO "DEER ANNIE." 085 ]
"It hain"t my turn," said Si. "There"s Bill Brown, and Jake Schneider, and Pat Dooley, and a dozen more--I"ve been since they have!"
But the Orderly did not even deign to reply. Si remembered the guard-house, and his shoulder still ached from the rail he had carried that evening; so he quietly folded up his paper and took his place with the detail.
The next morning the army moved early, and Si had no chance to resume his letter. As soon as the regiment halted, after an 18-mile march, he tackled it again. This time nothing better offered in the way of a writing-desk than a tin plate, which he placed face downward upon his knee. Thus provided, Si plunged briskly into the job before him, with the following result:
"I now take my pen in hand to let you know that I am well, except the doggoned blisters on my feet, and I hope these few lines may find you enjoying the same blessings."
Si thought this was neat and a good start for his letter. Just as he had caught an idea for the next sentence a few scattering shots were heard on the picket-line, and in an instance the camp was in commotion. "Tall in!" "Be lively, men!" were heard on every hand.
Si sprang as if he had received a galvanic shock, cramming the letter into his pocket. Of course, there wasn"t any fight. It was only one of the scares that formed so large a part of that campaign. But it spoiled Si"s letter-writing for the time.
It was nearly a week before he got his letter done. He wrote part of it using for a desk the back of a comrade who was sitting asleep by the fire. He worked at it whenever he could catch a few minutes between the marches and the numerous details for guard, picket, fatigue and other duty. He said to Annie:
[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ARMY WRITING-DESK 087 ]
"Bein" a soljer aint quite what they crack it up to be when they"re gittin" a fellow to enlist. It"s mity rough, and you"d better believe it. You ought to be glad you"re a gurl and don"t haf to go. I wish"t I was a gurl sometimes. I haven"t kild enny rebbles yet. I hain"t even seen one except a fiew raskils that was tuk in by the critter soljers, they calls em cavilry. Me and all the rest of the boys wants to hav a fite, but it looks like Ginral Buil was afeared, and we don"t git no chance. I axed the Ordly couldn"t he get me a furlow. The Ordly jest laft and says to me, Si, says he, yer don"t know as much as a mule. The Capt"n made me walk up and down for an hour with a big rail on my sholder.
"You tell Squire Joneses boy that he haint got sand enuff to jine the army, and if he don"t keep away from you I"ll bust his eer when I git home, if I ever do. Whattle you do if I shouldn"t ever see you agin? But you no this glorus Govyment must be pertected, and the bully Stars and Strips must flote, and your Si is goin to help do it.
"My pen is poor, my ink is pale, My luv for you shall never fale.
"Yours, aflf.e.c.kshnitly, Si Klegg."
CHAPTER X. SI AND THE DOCTORS
HE JOINS THE PALE PROCESSION AT SICK-CALL.
SI KLEGG was a good specimen of a healthy, robust Hoosier lad--for he could scarcely be called" a man yet. Since he lay in his cradle and was dosed with paregoric and catnip tea like other babies, he had never seen a sick day, except when he had the mumps on "both sides" at once. He had done all he could to starve the doctors.
When the 200th Ind. took the field it had the usual outfit of men who wrote their names sandwiched between a military t.i.tle in front and "M. D." behind, a big hospital tent, and an apothecary shop on wheels, loaded to the guards with quinine, blue-ma.s.s, castor oil, epsom salts, and all other devices to a.s.suage the sufferings of humanity.
The boys all started out in good shape, and there had been hardly time for them to get sick much yet. So up to this stage of the regiment"s history the doctors had found little to do but issue arnica and salve for lame legs and blistered feet, and strut around in their shiny uniforms.
But there came a day when they had all they could attend to. On going into camp one afternoon, the regiment, well in advance, struck a big field of green corn and an orchard of half-ripe apples. Of course, the boys sailed in, and natural consequences followed.