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.
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.
"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 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 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
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 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 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