THE RAIN.
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.
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
and127 kicked out o' the army. He's not fit to associate 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 molasses 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' carcasses. 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' molasses 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
Cumberland 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
passed 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 multitude 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. By129 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 chink 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. Nobody 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 outshine everybody else with their tin roof, and
they toiled on over the mud and rough ground, although every132 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, fashion 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."
They fell to with a will, even the Captain assisting, and, after a good
deal of trouble and more cut hands, succeeded in getting the piece of
tin on top of the pen and bent down across the ridge-pole. Si and Shorty
proceeded to secure it in place by putting other poles across it and
fastening them down with ropes and strips of bark to the lower logs.
"Your broad cornice is aristocratic, as you say," said the Captain, "but
I'm afraid it'll catch the wind, and tip your house over in some big
storm."
The House Beautiful. 133
"That's so," admitted Shorty; "but a feller that puts on airs always has
to take some chances. I don't want people to think that we are mean and
stingy about a little tin, so I guess we'll keep her just as she is."
The next day they borrowed a saw from the Pioneers, cut out a hole for
the door, and another for the fireplace. They made a frame for the door
out of pieces of cracker-boxes, and hung up their bit of canvas for a
door. They filled up the spaces be tween the logs with pieces of wood,
and then daubed clay on until they had the walls tight. They gathered up
stones and built a commodious fireplace, daubing it all over with clay,
until it was wind and water tight.
"What are we goin' to do for a chimney, Si?" said135 Shorty, as their
fireplace became about breast-high. "Build one o' sticks, like these
rebels around here? That'll be an awful lot o' work."
Solid Comfort. 135
"I've had an idee," said Si. "I ain't goin' to let136 you do all the
thinkin', even if you are a born architect. When I was helpin' draw
rations yesterday, I looked at the pork barrels, and got an idee that
one of them'd make a good chimney. I spoke to Bill Suggs, the
Commissary-Sergeant, about it, and he agreed to save me a barrel when it
was empty, which it must be about now. I'll go down and see him about
it."
Si presently came back rolling the empty barrel. They knocked the bottom
out, carefully plastered it over inside with clay, and set it up on
their fireplace, and made the joints with more clay. It made a splendid
chimney. They washed the clay off their hands, built a cheerful fire
inside, cooked a bountiful supper, and ate it in the light and comfort
of their own fireside. It was now Saturday night. They had had a week of
severer toil than they had ever dreamed of performing at home, but its
reward was ample.
"Ah," said Shorty, as he sat on a chunk of wood, pipe in mouth, and
absorbed the warmth, "this is something like home and home comforts.
It's more like white livin' than I've had since I've bin in the army.
Let's act like men and Christians tomorrow, by not doin' a lick o' work
o' any kind. Let's lay abed late, and then wash up all over, and go to
hear the Chaplain preach."
"Agreed," said Si, as he spread out their blankets for the night.
It had been threatening weather all day, and now the rain came down with
a rush.
"Ain't that music, now," said Shorty, listening to the patter on the
roof. "Nothin' sounds so sweet as137 rain upon a tin roof. Let it rain
cats and dogs, if it wants to. The harder the better. Si, there's
nothin' so healthy to sleep under as a tin roof. I'll never have
anything but a tin roof on my house when I git home. And we've got the
only tin roof in the regiment. Think o' that." But Si was too sleepy to
think.