Produced by David Widger
SI KLEGG
THRU THE STONE RIVER CAMPAIGN AND IN WINTER QUARTERS AT MURFREESBORO.
By John Mcelroy
Book Two
PUBLISHED BY
THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE CO.,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
SECOND EDITION
COPYRIGHT 1910
Contents:
PREFACE
SI KLEGG
CHAPTER I. THROUGH MUD AND MIRE
CHAPTER II. SECOND DAY'S MARCH
CHAPTER III. STILL ON THE MARCH
CHAPTER IV. THE SUNSHINE OF LIFE
CHAPTER V. LINING UP FOR BATTLE
CHAPTER VI. BATTLE OF STONE RIVER
CHAPTER VII. AFTER THE FIRST DAY
CHAPTER VIII. A GLOOMY NEW YEAR'S DAY
CHAPTER IX. VICTORY AT LAST
CHAPTER X. THE VICTORIOUS ARMY
CHAPTER XI. WINTER QUARTERS
CHAPTER XII. ADDING TO THEIR COMFORT
CHAPTER XIII. "HOOSIER'S REST"
CHAPTER XIV. DEACON KLEGG'S SURPRISE
CHAPTER XV. DEACON KLEGG'S ARRIVAL IS MISTAKEN
CHAPTER XVI. IN A NEW WORLD
CHAPTER XVII. THE DEACON'S INITIATION
CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEACON IS SHOCKED
CHAPTER XIX. THE DEACON IS TROUBLED
CHAPTER XX. THE DEACON BUTTS IN
CHAPTER XXI. THE PERPLEXED DEACON
CHAPTER XXII. TRYING TO EDUCATE ABRAHAM LINCOLN
PREFACE
"Si Klegg, of the 200th Ind., and Shorty, his Partner," were born years
ago in the brain of John McElroy, Editor of THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE.
These sketches are the original ones published in THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE,
revised and enlarged some what by the author. How true they are to
nature every veteran can abundantly testify from his own service.
Really, only the name of the regiment was invented. There is no doubt
that there were several men of the name of Josiah Klegg in the
Union Army, and who did valiant service for the Government. They had
experiences akin to, if not identical with, those narrated here, and
substantially every man who faithfully and bravely carried a musket in
defense of the best Government on earth had some times, if not often,
experiences of which those of Si Klegg are a strong reminder.
THE PUBLISHERS.
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
TO THE RANK AND FILE
OF THE GRANDEST ARMY EVER MUSTERED FOR WAR.
SI KLEOG
CHAPTER I. THROUGH MUD AND MIRE
DUTY'S PATH LEADS THE 200TH IND. SOUTHWARD FROM NASHVILLE.
"SHORTY" said Si Klegg, the morning after Christmas, 1862, as the 200th
Ind. sullenly plunged along through the mud and rain, over the roads
leading southward from Nashville, "they say that this is to be a
sure-enough battle and end the war."
"Your granny's night-cap they do," answered Shorty crossly, as he turned
his cap around back ward to stop the icy current from chasing down his
backbone. "How many thousand times 's that bin stuffed into your ears?
This is the forty-thousandth mile we've marched to find that battle that
was goin' to end the war. And I'll bet we'll march 40,000 more. This
war ain't goin' to end till we've scuffed the top off all the roads
in Kentucky and Tennessee, and wore out God's patience and all the
sole-leather in the North. I believe it's the shoe-makers that's runnin'
this war in the interest o' their business."
The cold, soaking rain had reduced the most of the 200th Ind. to a mood
when they would have {16}disputed the Ten Commandments and quarreled
with their mothers.
"There's no use bein' crosser'n a saw-buck, if you are wet, Shorty,"
said Si, walking to the side of the road and scraping off his
generous-sized brogans several pounds of stiff, red mud. "They say this
new General with a Dutch name is a fighter from Wayback, an' he always
licks the rebels right out of their boots. I'm sure, I hope it's so. I
like huntin' ez well ez anybody, an' I'll walk ez fur ez the next man to
find something to shoot. But I think walkin' over two States, backward
and forward, is altogether too much huntin' for so little shootin'.
Don't you?"
"Don't worry," snapped Shorty. "You'll git all the shootin' you want
before your three years are up. It'll keep."
"But why keep it so long?" persisted Si. "If it can be done up in three
months, an' we kin git back home, why dribble it out over three years?
That ain't the way we do work back home on the Wabash."
"Confound back home on the Wabash," roared Shorty. "I don't hear nothin'
else, day and night, but 'back home on the Wabash.' I've bin on the
Wabash, an' I don't want to never see the measly, muddy, agery ditch
agin'. Why, they have the ager so bad out there that it shakes the
buttons off a man's clothes, the teeth out of his head, the horns off
the cows. An' as for milk-sickness."
"Shorty!" thundered Si, "stop right there. If you wasn't my pardner I'd
fight you this minute. I kin join in jawin' about the officers an' the
{17}Government. A great deal of your slack that I can't agree with I kin
put up with, but you mustn't say nothin' against my home in the Wabash
Valley. That I won't stand from no man. For fear that I may lose my
temper I'm goin' away from you till you're in better humor."
With that Si strode on ahead, feeling as cross and uncomfortable
internally as he was ill-at-ease externally. He hated above all things
to quarrel with Shorty, but the Wabash Valley, that gardenspot of earth,
that place where lived his parents, and sister, and Annabel but the
subject was too sore to think about.
Presently an Aid came galloping along the middle of the road, calling
upon the men to make way for him. His horse's hoofs threw the mud in
every direction, and Si caught a heavy spatter directly in his face.
"Confound them snips of Aids," said he angrily, as he wiped the mud
off. "Put on more airs than if they was old Gen. Scott himself. Always
pretend to be in such a powerful hurry. Everybody must hustle out of
their way. I think that fool jest did that on purpose."
The rain kept pouring down with tormenting persistence. Wherever Si
looked were drenched, de pressed-looking men; melancholy, steaming
horses; sodden, gloomy fields; yellow, rushing streams, and boundless
mud that thousands of passing feet were churning into the consistency of
building-mortar.
Si had seen many rainy days since he had been in the army, but this was
the first real Winter rain {18}he had been out in.
Jabe Belcher, the most disagreeable man in Co. Q, was just ahead of him.
He stepped into a mudpuddle, slipped, threw the mud and water over Si,
and his gun, which he flung in the effort to save himself, struck Si on
the shoulder.
[Illustration: THE AID SPATTERS MUD ON SI 18]
"Clumsy lunkhead!" roared Si, as ill-tempered now as anybody. "Couldn't
you see that puddle and keep out of it? You'd walk right into the
Cumberland River if it was in front of you. Never saw such a bat-eyed
looney in my life."
"If the Captain wasn't lookin'," retorted Belcher, "I'd shut up both of
them dead-mackerel eyes o' your'n, you backwoods yearlin'. I'll settle
with you after we git into camp. Your stripes won't save you."
"Never mind about my stripes, old Stringhalt. I kin take them off long
enough to wallop you."
Si was in such a frame of mind that his usual open-eyedness was gone.
The company was wading across a creek, and Si plunged in without a
thought. He stepped on a smooth stone, his feet went from under him and
he sat 'down hard and waist-deep in much the coldest water that he ever
remembered.
"O, Greenland's icy mountains," was all that he could think to say.
The other boys yelled:
"Come on to camp, Si. That's no place to sit down."
"Feet hurt, Si, and goin' to rest a little?"
"This your day for taking a bath, Si?"
"Thinks this is a political meetin', and he's to take the chair."
"Place Rest!"
"When I sit down, I prefer a log or a rail; but some men's different."
"See a big bass there, Si, an' try to ketch him by settin' down on him?"
"Git up, Si; git up, an' give your seat to some lady."
[Illustration: SI SAT DOWN HARD 20]
Si was too angry to notice their jibes. He felt around in the icy water
for his gun, and clambered out on the bank. He first poured the water
out of his gun-barrel and wiped the mud off. His next thought was
the three days' rations he had drawn {20}that morning. He opened his
haversack, and poured out the water it had caught. With it went his
sugar, coffee and salt. His hardtack was a pasty mess; his meat covered
with sand and dirt. He turned the haversack inside out, and swashed it
out in the stream.
Back came Capt. McGillicuddy, with water streaming from the down-turned
rim of his hat, and his humor bad. He was ignorant of Si's mishap.
"Corporal Klegg, what are you doing back here? Why aren't you in your
place? I've been looking all around for you. The company wagon's stalled
back somewhere. That spavin-brained teamster's at his old tricks. I want
you to take five men off the rear of the company, go back and find that
wagon, and bring it up. Be smart about it."
"Captain," remonstrated Si, "I'm wetter'n a drowned rat!"
"Well, who in thunder ain't?" exploded the Captain. "Do I look as dry
as a basket of chips? Am I walking around in a Panama and linen clothes?
Did you expect to keep from getting your feet wet when you came into the
army? I want none of your belly-aching or sore-toeing. You take five men
and bring up that wagon in a hurry. Do you hear me?"
And the Captain splashed off through the red mud to make somebody else
still more miserable.
Si picked up his wet gun from the rain-soaked sod, put it under his
streaming overcoat, ordered the five drenched, dripping, dejected boys
near him to follow, and plunged back into the creek, which had by this
time risen above his knees. He was past the stage of anger now. He
simply wished that he was dead and out of the whole business. A nice,
dry grave on a sunny hillock in Posey County, with a good roof over it
to keep out the rain, would be a welcome retreat.
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.{22}
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.
[Illustration: STOP BEATIN' THEM MULES' 22]
"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{24} 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{25} 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."