Stop that band"s ijiotic blatting. Get into line there, quick as love will let you, you unblessed Indiana spalpeans. Without doubling; right face! Forward, M-a-r-c-h!"
Col. McTarnaghan, still wearing his parade grandeur, was soon at the head of the column, on that long-striding horse which always set such a hot pace for the regiment; especially over such a rough, gullied road as they were now traveling.
Still, the progress was not fast enough to suit the impatient Colonel, who had an eye to the report he would have to make to the Brigadier General, who was a Regular.
"Capt. McGillicuddy," commanded he, turning in his saddle, "send forward a Corporal and five men for an advance guard."
"Corporal Klegg, take five men and go to the front," commanded the Captain.
"Now you b"yes, get ahead as fast as you can. Get a move on them durty spalpanes of tamesters. We must get back to camp before this storm strikes us. Shove out, now, as if the divil or Jahn Morgan was after yez."
It was awful double-quicking over that rocky, rutty road, but taking Shorty and four others. Si went on the keen jump to arrive hot and breathless on the banks of the creek. There he found a large bearded man wearing an officer"s slouched hat sitting on a log, smoking a black pipe, and gazing calmly on the ruck of wagons piled up behind one stalled in the creek, which all the mules they could hitch to it had failed to pull out.
It was the Wagon Master, and his calmness was that of exhaustion. He had yelled and sworn himself dry, and was collecting another fund of abuse to spout at men and animals.
"Here, why don"t you git a move on them wagons?" said Si hotly, for he was angered at the man"s apparent indifference.
""Tend to your own business and I"ll tend to mine," said the Wagon Master, sullenly, without removing his pipe or looking at Si.
"Look here, I"m a Corporal, commanding the advance guard," said Si. "I order you!"
This seemed to open the fountains of the man"s soul.
"You order me?" he yelled, "you splay-footed, knock-kneed, chuckled-headed paper-collared, whitegloved sprat from a milk-sick prairie. Corporal! I outrank all the Corporals from here to Christmas of next year."
"The gentleman seems to have something on his mind," grinned Shorty.
"Mebbe his dinner didn"t set well."
"Shorty?" inquired Si, "how does a Wagon Master rank? Seems to me n.o.body lower"n a Brigadier-General should dare talk to me that way."
"Dunno," answered Shorty, doubtfully. "Seems as if I"d heard some of them Wagon Masters rank as Kurnels. He swears like one."
"Corporal!" shouted the Wagon Master with infinite scorn. "Measly $2-a-month water toter for the camp-guard, order me!" and he went off into a rolling stream of choice "army language."
"He must certainly be a Kurnel," said Shorty.
"Here," continued the Wagon Master, "if you don"t want them two shoat-brands jerked offen you, jump in and get them wagons acrost.
That"s what you were sent to do. Hump yourself, if you know what"s good for you. I"ve done all I can. Now it"s your turn."
Dazed and awed by the man"s authoritativeness the boys ran down to the water to see what was the trouble.
They found the usual difficulty in Southern crossings. The stupid tinkerers with the road had sought to prevent it running down into the stream by laying a log at the edge of the water. This was an enormous one two feet in diameter, with a chuckhole before it, formed by the efforts of the teams to mount the log. The heavily laden ammunition wagon had its hub below the top of the log, whence no amount of mule-power could extricate it.
Si, with Indiana commonsense, saw that the only help was to push the wagon back and lay a pile of poles to make a gradual ascent. He and the rest laid their carefully polished muskets on dry leaves at the side, pulled off their white gloves, and sending two men to hunt thru the wagons for axes to cut the poles. Si and Shorty roused up the stupid teamsters to unhitch the mules and get them behind the wagon to pull it back. Alas for their carefully brushed pantaloons and well-blackened shoes, which did not last a minute in the splashing mud.
The Wagon Master had in the meanwhile laid in a fresh supply of epithets and had a fresh batch to swear at. He stood up on the bank and yelled profane injunctions at the soldiers like a Mississippi River Mate at a boat landing. They would not work fast enough for him, nor do the right thing.
The storm at last burst. November storms in Tennessee are like the charge of a pack of wolves upon a herd of buffalo. There are wild, furious rushes, alternating with calmer intervals. The rain came down for a few minutes as if it would beat the face off the earth, and the stream swelled into a muddy torrent. Si"s paper collar and cuffs at once became pulpy paste, and his boiled shirt a clammy rag. In spite of this his temper rose to the boiling point as he struggled thru the sweeping rush of muddy water to get the other wagons out of the road and the ammunition wagon pulled back a little ways to allow the poles to be piled in front of it.
The dashing downpour did not check the Wagon Master"s flow of profanity.
He only yelled the louder to make himself heard above the roar. The rain stopped for a few minutes as suddenly as it had begun and Col.
McTarnaghan came up with all his parade finery drenched and dripping like the feathers of a prize rooster in a rainy barnyard. His Irish temper was at the steaming point, and he was in search of something to vent it on.
"You blab-mouthed son of a thief," he shouted at the Wagon Master, "what are you ordering my men around for? They are sent here to order you, not you to order them. Shut that ugly potato trap of yours and get down to work, or I"ll wear my saber out on you. Get down there and put your own shoulders to the wheels, you misbegotten villain. Get down there into the water, I tell you. Corporal, see that he does his juty!"
The Wagon Master slunk down the hill, where Shorty grabbed him by the collar and yanked him over to help push one of the wagons back. The other boys had meanwhile found axes, cut down and trimmed up some pine poles and were piling them into the chuckhole under Si"s practical guidance. A double team was put on the ammunition wagon, and the rest of Co. Q came up wet, mad and panting. A rope was found and stretched ahead of the mules, on which the company lined itself, the Colonel took his place on the bank and gave the word, and with a mighty effort the wagon was dragged up the hill. Some other heavily loaded ammunition wagons followed. The whole regiment was now up, and the bigger part of it lined on the rope so that these wagons came up more easily, even tho the rain resumed its wicked pounding upon the clay soil.
Wading around thru the whirling water. Si had discovered, to his discomfiture, that there was a narrow, crooked reef that had to be kept to. There were deep overturning holes on either side. Into one of these Si had gone, to come again floundering and spurting muddy water from his mouth.
Shorty noted the place and took the first opportunity to crowd the Wagon Master into it.
A wagon loaded with crackers and pork missed the reef and went over hopelessly on its side, to the rage of Col. McTamaghan.
"Lave it there; lave it there, ye blithering numbskulls," he yelled, "Unhitch those mules and get "em out. The pork and wagon we can get when the water goes down. If another wagon goes over Oi"ll rejuce it every mother"s son of yez, and tie yez up by the thumbs besides."
Si and Shorty waded around to unhitch the struggling mules, and then, taking poles in hand to steady themselves, took their stations in the stream where they could head the mules right.
Thru the beating storm and the growing darkness, the wagons were, one by one, laboriously worked over until, as midnight approached, only three or four remained on the other side. Chilled to the bone, and almost dropping with fatigue from hours of standing in the deep water running like a mill race. Si called Al Klapp, Sib Ball and Jesse Langley to take their poles and act as guides.
Al Klapp had it in for the sutlers. He was a worm that was ready to turn. He had seen some previous service, and had never gone to the Paymaster"s table but to see the most of his $13 a month swept away by the sutler"s remorseless hand. He and Jesse got the remaining army wagons over all right. The last wagon was a four-horse team belonging to a sutler.
The fire of long-watched-for vengeance gleamed in Al"s eye as he made out its character in the dim light. It reached the center of the stream, when over it went in the rushing current of muddy water.
Al and Jesse busied themselves unhooking the struggling mules.
The Colonel raged. "Lave it there! Lave it there!" he yelled after exhausting his plentiful stock of Irish expletives. "But we must lave a guard with it. Capt. Sidney Hyde, your company has been doing less than any other. Detail a Sergeant and 10 men to stand guard here until tomorrow, and put them two thick-headed oudmahouns in the creek on guard with them. Make them stand double tricks.
"All right. It was worth it," said Al Klapp, as the Sergeant put him on post, with the water running in rivulets from his clothes. "It"ll take a whole lot of skinning for the sutlers to get even for the dose I"ve given one of them."
"B"yes, yoi"ve done just splendid," said the Colonel, coming over to where Si and Shorty were sitting wringing the water and mud from their pantaloons and blouses. "You"re hayroes, both of yez. Take a wee drap from my canteen. It"ll kape yez from catching cold."
"No, thankee, Kurnel," said Si, blushing with delight, and forgetting his fatigue and discomfort, in this condescension and praise from his commanding officer. "I"m a Good Templar."
"Sinsible b"y," said the Colonel approvingly, and handing his canteen to Shorty.
"I"m mightily afraid of catching cold," said Shorty, reaching eagerly for the canteen, and modestly turning his back on the Colonel that he might not see how deep his draft.
"Should think you were," mused the Colonel, hefting the lightened vessel. "Bugler, sound the a.s.sembly and let"s get back to camp."
The next day the number of rusty muskets, dilapidated accouterments and quant.i.ty of soiled clothes in the camp of the 200th Ind. was only equaled by the number of unutterably weary and disgusted boys.
CHAPTER XXII. A NIGHT OF SONG
HOME-SICKNESS AND ITS OUTPOURING IN MUSIC.
IT WAS Sunday again, and the 200th Ind. still lingered near Nashville.
For some inscrutible reason known only to the commanding officers the brigade had been for nearly a week in camp on the banks of the swift running c.u.mberland. They had been bright, sunshiny days, the last two of them. Much rain in the hill country had swollen the swift waters of the c.u.mberland and they fiercely clamored their devious way to the broad Ohio. The gentle roar as the rippling wavelets dashed against the rock bound sh.o.r.es sounded almost surf-life, but to Si, who had never heard the salt waves play hide-and-go-seek on the pebbly beach, the c.u.mberland"s angry flood sang only songs of home on the Wabash. He had seen the Wabash raging in flood time and had helped to yank many a head of stock from its engulfing fury. He had seen the Ohio, too, when she ran bank full with her arched center carrying the Spring floods and hundreds of acres of good soil down to the continent-dividing Mississippi, and on out to sea. His strong arms and stout muscles had piloted many a boat-load of boys and girls through the Wabash eddies and rapids during the Spring rise, and as he stood now, looking over the vast width of this dreary waste of waters, a great wave of home-sickness swept over him.