Si Klegg Thru The Stone River Campaign And In Winter Quarters At Murfreesboro Part 14

THE NEXT day Sunday after the battle dawned as clear, bright and sparkling as only a Winter's day can dawn in Tennessee, after a fortnight of doleful deluges. Tennessee Winter weather is like the famous little girl with the curl right down in the middle of her forehead, who,

"When she was good, she was very, very good, And when she was bad, she was horrid."

After weeks of heart-saddening down-pour that threatened to drench life and hope out of every breathing thing, it will suddenly beam out in a day so crisp and bright that all Nature will wear a gladsome smile and life become jocund.

When the reveille and the Orderly-Sergeant's brogans aroused Si and Shorty the latter's first thought was for the strip of canvas which he had secured with so much trouble from the wagon-cover, and intended to cherish for future emergencies. He felt his neck and found the strip that he had tied there, but that was all that there was of it. A sharp knife had cut away the rest so deftly that he had not felt its loss.

Shorty's boiler got very hot at once, and he began blowing off steam.

Somehow he had taken an especial fancy to that piece of canvas, and his wrath was hot against the man who had stolen it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHORTY RETALIATES. 126]

"Condemn that onery thief," he yelled. "He ought to be drummed out o'

camp, with his head shaved. A man that'll steal ought to be hunted down and{127} kicked out o' the army. He's not fit to a.s.sociate with decent men."

"Why, Shorty," said Si, amused at his partner's heat, "you stole that yourself."

"I didn't nothin' o' the kind," snorted Shorty, "and don't want you sayin' so, Mr. Klegg, if you don't want to git into trouble. I took it from a teamster. You ought to know it's never stealin' to take anything from a teamster. I'll bet it was some of that Toledo regiment that stole it. Them Maumee River Muskrats are the durndest thieves in the brigade.

They'd steal the salt out o' your hardtack if you didn't watch 'em not because they wanted the salt, but just because they can't help stealin'.

They ought to be fired out o' the brigade. I'm going over to their camp to look for it, and if I find it I'll wipe the ground up with the feller that took it. 'Taint so much the value of the thing as the principle. I hate a thief above all things."

Si tried to calm Shorty and dissuade him from going, but his partner was determined, and Si let him go, but kept an eye and ear open for developments.

In a few minutes Shorty returned, with jubilation in his face, the canvas in one hand and a nice frying-pan and a canteen of mola.s.ses in the other.

"Just as I told you," he said triumphantly. "It was some o' them Maumee River Muskrats. I found them asleep in a bunch o' cedars, with our nice tent stretched over their thievin' carca.s.ses. They'd been out on guard or scoutin', and come in after we'd gone to sleep. They were still snorin' away when I yanked the tent off, an' picked up their fryin'-pan an' canteen o' mola.s.ses to remember 'em by."{128}

"I thought you hated a thief," Si started to say; but real comrades soon learn, like husband and wife, that it is not necessary to say everything that rises to their lips. Besides, the frying-pan was a beauty, and just what they wanted.

It became generally understood during the day that the Army of the c.u.mberland would remain around Murfreesboro' indefinitely probably until Spring to rest, refit and prepare for another campaign. Instructions were given to regimental commanders to select good camping ground and have their men erect comfortable Winter quarters.

The 200th Ind. moved into an oak grove, on a gentle slope toward the south, and set about making itself thoroughly at home.

Si and Shorty were prompt to improve the opportunity to house themselves comfortably.

Si had now been long enough in the army to regard everything that was not held down by a man with a gun and bayonet as legitimate capture. He pa.s.sed where one of the Pioneer Corps had laid down his ax for a minute to help on some other work. That minute was spent by Si in walking away with the ax hidden under his long overcoat. Those long overcoats, like charity, covered a mult.i.tude of sins.

The ax was not sharp no army ax ever was, but Si's and Shorty's muscles were vigorous enough to make up for its dullness. In a little while they had cut down and trimmed enough oak saplings to make a pen about the size of the corn-crib at Si's home. While one would whack away with the ax the other would carry the poles and build up the pen. By{129} evening they had got this higher than their heads, and had to stop work from sheer exhaustion.

"I'll declare," said Si, as they sat down to eat supper and survey their work, "if father'd ever made me do half as much work in one day as I have done to-day I should have died with tiredness and then run away from home. It does seem to me that every day we try a new way o' killing ourselves."

"Well," said Shorty, arresting a liberal chunk of fried pork on the way to his capacious grinders to cast an admiring glance on the structure, "it's worth it all. It'll just be the finest shebang in Tennessee when we git it finished. I'm only afraid we'll make it so fine that Gen.

Rosecrans or the Governor of Tennessee 'll come down and take it away for him self. That'd just be our luck."

"Great Scott!" said Si, looking at it with a groan; "how much work there is to do yet. What are we goin' to do for a roof? Then, we must cut out a place for a door. We'll have to c.h.i.n.k between all the logs with mud and chunks; and we ought to have a fireplace."

"I've bin thinkin' of all them things, and I've thunk 'em out," said Shorty cheerfully. "I've bin thinkin' while you've bin workin'. Do you know, I believe I was born for an architect, an' I'll go into the architect business after the war! I've got a head plumb full of the natural stuff for the business. It growed right there. All I need is some more know-how an' makin' plans on paper."

"O, you've got a great big head, Shorty," said Si, admiringly, "and whatever you start to do you do splendid. n.o.body knows that better'n me.

But what's your idee about the roof?"{130}

"Why, do you see that there freight-car over there by the bridge"

(pointing to where a car was off the track, near Stone River), "I've bin watchin' that ever since we begun buildin', for fear somebody else'd drop on to it. The roof of that car is tin. We'll jest slip down there with an ax after dark, an' cut off enough to make a splendid roof. I always wanted a tin-roofed house. Old Jack Wilson, who lives near us, had a tin roof on his barn, an' it made his daughters so proud they wouldn't go home with me from meetin'. You kin write home that we have a new house with a tin roof, an' it'll help your sisters to marry better."

"Shorty, that head o' your'n gits bigger every time I look at it."

Si and Shorty had the extreme quality of being able to forget fatigue when there was something to be accomplished. As darkness settled down they picked up the ax and proceeded across the fields to the freight-car.

"There's someone in there," said Si, as they came close to it. They reconnoitered it carefully. Five or six men, without arms, were comfortably ensconed inside and playing cards by the light of a fire of pitch-pine, which they had built upon some dirt placed in the middle of the car.

"They're blamed skulkers," said Shorty, after a minute's survey of the interior. "Don't you see they hain't got their guns with 'em? We won't mind 'em."

They climbed to the top of the car, measured off about half of it, and began cutting through the tin with the ax. The noise alarmed the men inside. They jumped out on the ground, and called up:{131}

"Here, what're you fellers doin' up there? This is our car. Let it alone."

"Go to the devil," said Shorty, making another slash at the roof with the ax.

"This is our car, I tell you," reiterated the men. "You let it alone, or we'll make you." Some of the men looked around for something to throw at them.

Si walked to the end of the car, tore off the brake-wheel, and came back.

"You fellers down there shut up and go back in side to your cards, if you know what's good for you," he said. "You're nothing but a lot of durned skulkers. We are here under orders. We don't want nothin' but a piece o' the tin roof. You kin have the rest. If any of you attempts to throw anything I'll mash him into the ground with this wheel. Do you hear me? Go back inside, or we'll arrest the whole lot of you and take you back to your regiments."

Si's authoritative tone, and the red stripes on his arm, were too much for the guilty consciences of the skulkers, and they went back inside the car. The tearing off the roof proceeded without further interruption, but with considerable mangling of their hands by the edges of the tin.

After they had gotten it off, they proceeded to roll it up and started back for their "house." It was a fearful load, and one that they would not have attempted to carry in ordinary times. But their blood was up; they were determined to outs.h.i.+ne everybody else with their tin roof, and they toiled on over the mud and rough ground, although every{132} little while one of them would make a misstep and both would fall, and the heavy weight would seem to mash them into the ground.

"I don't wonder old Jake Wilson was proud of his tin roof," gasped Si, as he pulled himself out of a mudhole and rolled the tin off him and Shorty. "If I'd a tin roof on my barn durned if my daughter should walk home with a man that didn't own a whole section of bottom land and drove o' mules to boot."

It was fully midnight before they reached their pen and laid their burden down. They were too tired to do anything more than lay their blankets down on a pile of cedar boughs and go to sleep.

The next morning they unrolled their booty and gloated over it. It would make a perfect roof, and they felt it repaid all their toils. Upon measurement they found it much larger each way than their log pen.

"Just right," said Shorty gleefully. "It'll stick out two feet all around. It's the aristocratic, fas.h.i.+on able thing now-a-days to have wide cornishes. Remember them swell houses we wuz lookin' at in Louisville? We're right in style with them."

The rest of Co. Q gathered around to inspect it and envy them.

"I suppose you left some," said Jack Wilkinson. "I'll go down there and get the rest."

"Much you won't," said Si, looking toward the car; "there ain't no rest."

They all looked that way. Early as it was the car had totally disappeared, down to the wheels, which some men were rolling away.{133}

"That must be some o' them Maumee River Muskrats," said Shorty, looking at the latter. "They'll steal anything they kin git away with, just for the sake of stealin'. What on earth kin they do with them wheels?"

"They may knock 'em off the axles an' make hearths for their fireplaces, and use the axles for posts," suggested Si.

"Here, you fellers," said Shorty, "give us a lift. Let's have a house-raisin'. Help us put the roof on."