ARE GIVEN AN INITIATION INTO ARMY LIFE.
BY the time Shorty had gotten the boys fairly tented, he was ordered to
take a squad and guard some stores at the Division Quartermaster's. Si,
instead of going on camp-guard, had to go out to the grand guard. When
he came back the next morning the Orderly-Sergeant said to him:
"See here, Si, you've got to take that squad of kids you brung into your
particular charge, and lick 'em into shape. They need an awful sight
of it, and I hain't got any time to give 'em. I've something else to do
besides teaching an infant class. I never was good at bringing children
up by hand, anyway. I ain't built that way. I want you to go for them
young roosters at once, and get 'em into shape in short meter. Marching
orders may come any day, and then we want everybody up and dressed.
There'll be no time for foolishness. Those dratted little rats were all
over camp last night, and into more kinds of devilment than so many pet
crows. I've been hearing about nothing else this morning."
"Why," said Si, "I supposed that they was too tired to do anything but
lay down and go to sleep. What'd they do?"
"Better ask what they didn't do," replied the Orderly. "They done
everything that a passel o' impish school boys could think of, and what
they couldn't think of them smart Alecks down in the company put 'em up
to. I'm going to put some o' them smarties through a course o' sprouts.
I like to see boys in good spirits, and I can enjoy a joke with the next
man, but there's such a thing as being too funny. I think a few hours o'
extry fatigue duty will reduce their fever for fun."
"Why, what'd they do?" repeated Si.
"Well, in the first place, they got that Joslyn and Mackall to mark a
big number 79 on their tents, and then put the same, with their names,
on a sheet of paper, and take it up to the Captain's tent.
"The Captain was having a life-and-death rassle with Cap Summerville
over their eternal chess, when he's crosser'n two sticks, and liable
to snap your head off if you interrupt him. 'Hello, what do you want?
What's this?' says he, taking the paper."
[Illustration: Them's our names and addresses 59]
"'Them's our names and addresses,' says the brats, cool as cucumbers.
Thought we ought to give 'em to you, so's you'd know where to find us,
in case you wanted us in a hurry, say, at night.'
"The blazes it is,' says Cap, and Cap Summerville roared. 'You get back
to your quarters quick as you can run. Don't worry about my not finding
you when I want you. It's my business to find you, and I've got men to
help me do it. I'll find you sometime in a way that'll make your hair
stand up. Get out, now, and never come around my tent with any such
blamed nonsense as that.'
"And Cap Somerville took advantage of the break to snap up Cap's queen,
which made him hotter'n ever.
"When the boys got back they found them smart Alecks, Bob Walsh and Andy
Sweeney, waiting for 'em, and they consoled 'em, saying, That's just the
way with that old bull-head. Never'll take no good advice from nobody
about running' the company. Thinks he knows it all. You see how he runs
the company. He haint got the addresses o' half his men this minnit, and
don't know where they are. That's the reason so many o' our letters from
home, and the good things they send us, never reach us. He ought to keep
a regler directory, same as in the other companies.'"
"Then some o' them smarties found out that Scruggs was stuck on his
spouting. Seems that he was the star declaimer in his school. They laid
it in to him that I was soft on hearing poetry spouted, especially after
night, when the moon was up, and everything quiet in camp, and that I
was particularly tender on 'Bingen on the Rhine.' You know that if there
is anything I'm dead sore on it's that sniveling rot. There used to be a
pasty-faced boy in school that'd wail that out, and set all the girls to
bawling. Then they gave us an entertainment just before we left, and all
the girls were there, and Pasty-Face he must be the star attraction.
He wailed out his condemned old There-was-a-soldier-of-the
Legion--laying-i-n-Algiers, and all the girls looked at us as if we
were already dead, and they'd better look out for new beaux. My own
particular geranium did not lose any time, but married another feller
before we got to Stone River. That made me hate the blasted caterwaul
worse'n ever. Then that white-eyed, moon-struck Alfonso used to be
yowling it at every chance, until he went to the hospital, and he got
all the rest so that they were sputtering rags and tags of it. But I've
been sorer than a bile on the condemned sick calfishness ever since I
brung my chum Jim Bridgewater off the field at Chickamauga, and watched
him die as the moon rose, back there at McFarland Gap. Well, what do
these smarties do but fill up Scruggs with the idea that the best way to
make himself forever solid with me was to stroll down close to my tent
and casually let off 'Bingen on the Rhine' in his best style. I'd just
got down to work on them pesky pay-rolls, having kept Monaghan two days
in the guard-house, so's to be sure that he'd be sober enough to help
me--and you know Monaghan's lightning with the pen when he's sober--when
that possessed sap-sucker Scruggs began blatting out 'Bingen on the
Rhine' till you could hear him down to the Colonel's quarters. It made
me so mad that I knocked over the ink as I jumped up, and spoiled the
triplicate rolls that we'd got about half made out. I snatched up a club
to simply mash the bawling brat, but they got him away before I could
reach 'im. They explained to Scruggs afterward that I was subject to
fits whenever the moon was in her last quarter, and they'd forgotten to
look at the almanac that evening. O, but I'll soak 'em for that yet."
"Trouble is," said Si, laughing, "the boys've bin layin' around doin'
nothin' too long. They're fuller o' devilment than a dog is of fleas."
"But I haint told you half," continued the Orderly-Sergeant. "Them
smarties were quick to find out that Alf Russell and Jim Humphreys
leaned strongly toward religion, and they filled 'em with the idea that
Cap McGillicuddy was a very devout man, and held family devotions every
evening in his tent, in which his company joined."
"Great goodness," gasped Si. "They never heard Cap's remarks when we
balked on a right wheel in company column."
"Well," continued the Orderly, "Cap had been waxed by Cap Summerville
two games hand-running, and they were nip-and-tuck on the third,
and just as impatient and cross as they always are when they're
neck-and-neck in the last heat. The tent-flap raised, and in walked
Russell and Humphreys soft and quietlike, as if they were going into the
sitting-room for evening prayers. They had their caps in their hands,
and didn't say anything but brushed their hair back and took their seats
in the first place they could find, which happened to be Cap's cot. Cap
didn't notice 'em till after Cap Summerville had caught his queen and
then checkmated him in two moves. You know how redhot Cap gets when he
loses a game of chess, particularly to Cap Summerville, who rubs it in
on him without mercy.
"Cap looked at the boys in astonishment, and then snapped out: 'Well,
what do you boys want?' 'We've just come in for evening prayers,' says
they, mild as skimmed milk. 'Evening what?' roared the Cap. 'Evening
prayers,' says they. 'Don't you have family devotion every evening?
Cap Summerville couldn't hold in any longer, and just roared, and the
fellers outside, who'd had their ears against the canvas listening to
every word, they roared too. Cap was madder'n a July hornet, and cussed
till the ridgepole shook. Then he took the two boys by the ears and
marched 'em out and says: 'You two brats go back to your tents and stay
there. When I want you to come to my tent I'll send for you, and you'll
wish I hadn't. You'll do praying enough if you're on hand when the
church call's sounded. You'll be mightily different from the rest of my
company if you don't prefer going on guard to church. Get, now!'"
"Now the Captain oughtn't to say that about the company," protested Si.
"I for one go to church every chance I get."
"O, yes, you do," sneered the Orderly-Sergeant. "Who was it, I'd like
to know, that sent word back to the boys in the rear to steal the
Chaplain's horse, and keep him hid for a day or two so's he couldn't
get up and hold services, because you boys wanted to go fishing in the
Tennessee River?"
"Yes, I did," Si confessed; "but it was because the boys begged me to.
We'd just got there, and it looked as if the biting was good, and we
probably wouldn't stay there longer'n over Sunday."
"Well, I ain't done yet," continued the Orderly-Sergeant. "That little
snipe, Pete Skidmore--"
"Good gracious, he wasn't lost again, was he?" gasped Si.
"That's just what he was, the little runt, and we had the devil's own
time finding him. What in Sam Hill did the Captain take him for, I'd
like to know? Co. Q aint no nursery. Well, the bugler up at Brigade
Headquarters blowed some sort of a call, and Skidmore wanted to know
what it meant. They told him that it was an order for the youngest
man in each company to come up there and get some milk for his coffee
tomorrow morning, and butter for his bread. There was only enough issued
for the youngest boys, and if he wanted his share he'd have to get a big
hustle on him, for the feller whose nose he'd put out o' joint 'd try
hard to get there ahead o' him, and get his share. So Skidmore went off
at a dead run toward the sound of the bugle, with the boys looking after
him and snickering. But he didn't come back at roll-call, nor at tattoo,
and the smart Alecks begun to get scared, and abuse each other for
setting up a job on a poor, innocent little boy. Osc Brewster and Ol
Perry, who had been foremost in the trick had a fight as to which had
been to blame. Taps come, and he didn't get back, and then we all became
scared. I'd sent Jim Hunter over to Brigade Headquarters to look for
him, but he came back, and said they hadn't seen anything of him there.
Then I turned out the whole company to look for him. Of course, them
too-awfully smart galoots of Co. A had to get very funny over our
trouble. They asked why we didn't get the right kind of nurses for our
company, that wouldn't let the members stray out of their sight? Why
we didn't call the children in when the chickens went to roost, undress
'em, and tuck 'em in their little beds, and sing to 'em after they'd
said 'Now I lay me down to sleep?' I stood it all until that big,
hulking Pete Nasmith came down with a camp-kettle, which he was making
ring like a bell, as he yelled out, 'Child lost! Child lost!' Behind
him was Tub Rawlings singing, 'Empty's the cradle, baby's gone.' Then I
pulled off my blouse and slung it into my tent, and told 'em there went
my chevrons, and I was simply Scott Ralston, and able to lick any man in
Co. A. One o' their Lieutenants came out and ordered them back to their
quarters, and I deployed the company in a skirmish-line, and started 'em
through the brush toward Brigade Headquarters. About three-quarters o'
the way Osc Brewster and Ol Perry, when going through a thicket, heard
a boy boo-hooing. They made their way to him, and there was little
Skidmore sitting on a stump, completely confused and fagged out. He'd
lost his way, and the more he tried to find it the worse he got turned
around. They called out to him, and he blubbered out: 'Yes, it's me;
little Pete Skidmore. Them doddurned fools in my company 've lost me,
just as I've bin tellin' 'em right along they would, durn 'em.' Osc and
Ol were so tickled at finding him that they gathered him up, and come
whooping back to camp, carrying him every step of the way."
"Well, I declare to gracious," ejaculated Si. "But there's one left yet.
Didn't anything happen to Sandy Baker?"
"O, yes," groaned the Orderly. "He had to be in it, too. He took
advantage of the tumult to fall into the company well. We didn't know
anything about it till we come back from hunting Skidmore. By that time
he was so chilled that he could hardly holler any more, and his teeth
chattered like a nigger minstrel's bones. I'd got a can of brandied
peaches down at the sutler's, and it took all the brandy to bring him
around, and I had nothing left but the peaches. Now, while I like a
little variety in camp-life as well as the next man, I don't want no
more ructions like last night's. I'll put you in charge of those kids,
and hold you responsible for 'em. I don't care what you do with 'em, so
long's you keep 'em quiet, and don't disturb the company. Kill 'em, if
you want to, but keep 'em quiet. I've got to finish up them pay-rolls
tonight."
"You bet me and Shorty'll stop these smart Alecks from imposin' on the
poor little greenies," asserted Si.