IN THE ARMY.
"Pap" said Si, by way of introduction, "this is Shorty, my pardner, and
the best pardner a feller ever had, and the best soldier in the Army of
the Cumberland."
"Glad to see you, Mr. Klegg," said Shorty, reddening and grasping the
father's outstretched hand; "but you orter 've broke that boy o' your'n
o' lyin' when he was young."
"He never did lie," said the Deacon cheerfully, "and I don't believe
he's lyin' now. I've heard a great deal o' you, Mr. Shorty, and I'm sure
he's tellin' the truth about you."
"Drop the Mister, Pap," said Si. "We never call each other Mister here,
except when we're mad."
Si took the carpetsack under his arm, and they trudged up toward Army
Headquarters.
Relieved of anxiety as to his own personal safety, and having found his
son, Deacon Klegg viewed everything around him with open-eyed interest.
It was a wonderfully new and strange world into which the sober,
plodding Indiana farmer had dropped. The men around him spoke the speech
to which his ears were accustomed, but otherwise they were as foreign as
if they had come from the heart of China.193
Their dress, their manners, their actions, the ways in which they were
busying themselves, had no resemblance to anything seen on the prosaic
plains of the Wabash in his half-century of life there. The infantry
sweeping over the fields in endless waves, the dashing cavalcades of
officers and staffs, the bewildering whirl of light batteries dazed him.
Even Si awed him. It was hard to recognize in the broad-shouldered,
self-assured young soldier, who seemed so entirely at home in his
startling surroundings, the blundering, bashful hobbledehoy boy of a few
months before, whose feet and hands were constantly in the way, and into
everything else that they should not be.
"Somehow, Si," he said, looking at his offspring with contemplative eye,
"you seem to have growed like a cornstalk in July, and yit when I come
to measure you you don't seem no taller nor heavier than when you went
away. How is it?"
"Don't know, Pap," Si answered. "I feel as if I'd had more'n 10 long
years o' growth since we crossed the Ohio River. Yit, you don't seem a
minute older than when I went away."
"I didn't feel no older," returned the father, "until I got in that
guard-house last night. Then I could feel my hair gittin' grayer every
hour, and my teeth droppin' out."
"I'm afraid you didn't git much chance to sleep, Pap," said Si
sympathetically.
"Loss o' sleep was the least part of it," said the Deacon feelingly. "I
kin stand a little loss o' sleep without any partickler bother. It
wasn't bein' kept awake so much as the way I was kept awake that bore on
me."
"Why, what happened?" asked Si.
"Better ask what didn't happen," groaned his father. "Used to have some
mighty rough shivarees when I was a boy, and'd jest settled on the
Wabash. Lots o' toughs then, 'specially 'mong the flatboat-men, who'd
nothin' to drink but new sod-cornwhisky, that'd fight in every spoonful.
But for sure, straight-out tumultuousness that guard-house last night
gave six pecks for every bushel of a Wabash shivaree."
Shorty looked meaningly at Si. "Guard-house fellers's likely to be a
ructionary lot o' roosters. Awful sorry you got in among 'em. Was they
very bad?"
"Well, I should say. When I was chucked in they wuz havin' a regular
prize fight, 'cordin' to rules, as to whether Rousseau or Negley wuz the
best General. The Rousseau man got licked, and then the other Rousseau
men wuzzent satisfied, and proposed to lick all the Negley men in the
guard-house; but the Sheridan men interfered, and made the Rousseau men
cool down. They they turned their attention to me. They raised a row
about a citizen being put in among them. It was a disgrace. The guard
house was only intended for soldiers and gentlemen, and no place for
condemned civilians. Then some one said that I had been arrested as a
Knight o' the Golden Circle, on my way to Bragg, with information from
the Injianny Knights. Another insisted that he knowed me, and that I wuz
Vallandigham himself, brought down there to be sent through the lines.
Then I thought sure they'd kill me on the spot. I begged and pled and
denied. Finally, they organized a court-martial to try me for my
life.194
"They had an awful tonguey feller that acted as Prosecutin' Attorney,
and the way he blackguarded me was a shame. He said the word 'traitor'
was wrote in every liniment o' my face; that I wuz a dyed-in-the-wool
butternut, and that the bag I'd brung along with me contained the
muster-rolls of 100,000 Injiannians who'd bin swore in to fight for Jeff
Davis.
"The feller that they appinted to defend me admitted the truth of all
that the other feller'd said. He said that no one could look in my
Southern Injianny face without seem' Secession, treason and nigger-
lovin' wrote there in big letters. He could only ask the honorable court
for mercy instid o' justice, and that I be shot instid o' hung, as I
deserved.
"When they asked me what I'd got to say in my own defense I told 'em the
truth, and said that I'd come down here to visit my son, who they all
knowed they must know Si Klegg. o' the 200th Injianny Volunteers, who
was an officer, and had a house with a tin roof.
"Then they all got up and yelled. They said they knowed Si Klegg only
too well; that he wuz the meanest, oneriest soljer in the army, and that
he looked just like me. They had him in the guard house now. He'd bin
put in for stealin' a hoe-cake from a blind nigger half-way back to
Nashville durin' the battle.
"They brought up the dirtiest, scaliest lookin' man in the guard-house,
and said that was Si Klegg, and that he resembled me so much that they
wuz sure he wuz my son. They asked him if he reckernized me as his dad,
and after they kicked him two195 or three times he said he did, but he
wuz goin' to cut his throat now, since they'd found it out. He couldn't
stand everything. Then they said they'd postpone execution on condition
that I'd kneel down, drink a pint o' whisky, take the oath o' allegiance
to Abe Lincoln, and sing 'We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.'
"I told 'em I wuz perfectly willin' to take the oath to Abe Lincoln as
often as they pleased; that he wuz my man from start to finish; that I
wanted Jeff Davis hung the minit we ketched him. I'd sing the song if
they'd learn it to me, though I've not sung anything but hymns for the
last 25 years. As for the whisky, I wouldn't tech it on no account, for
I belonged to the Good Templars.
"They all seemed pacified with this except one man, who insisted that I
should drink the whisky. One o' the Sheridan men knocked him down, and
then the fight between the Rousseau men and the Negley men broke out
afresh, and the guard come in and quieted things. By the time they'd
done this they found that the man who had reckernized me as his father
wuz tryin' to hang himself with a piece o' tent-rope. They cut him down,
larruped him with the tent-rope, and then started another court to try
me for havin' sich a son. But some officer come in and took out the
Prosecutin' Attorney and the lawyer for the defense and the Presidin'
Judge and bucked and gagged 'em. This cooled things down agin till
mornin'."
His Honor and the 'attorney' Bucked And Gagged.
"We might walk over to the Provost-Marshal's," suggested Shorty, "and
watch for them fellers as they come out, and take a drop out o' some of
'em."196
"It'll be a waste o' time," said Si, with a shrug of his shoulders.
"They'll all be doing hard labor for the next 30 days, and by that time
we'll likely have a good deal else to think about. Let's report at
Headquarters, and then take Dad over and show him our new house."
"Yes, I'm dying to see it," said the Deacon, "and197 to git somewhere
that I kin sit down in peace and quietness. Seems to me I haven't had a
moment's rest for years, and I'm as nigh tuckered out as I ever wuz in
my life."
At the Army Headquarters was a crowd of officers, mounted and
dismounted. Aids were arriving and departing, and there was a furore
when some General commanding a corps or division came or went, which
impressed the father greatly. Si and Shorty stood at "attention," and
respectfully saluted as the officers passed, and the Deacon tried
awkwardly, but his best, to imitate their example. Two or three spruce
young Orderlies attempted to guy him. but this thing came to a sudden
stop when Shorty took one of them quietly by the ear, and said in a low
voice:
Shorty Admonishes the Orderly 198
"Don't be brash, bub. If you only knowed it, you're givin' your measure
for a first-class, custom-made lickin', and I'm the artist to do the
job. That old man's my chum's father, and I won't allow no funny
business 'round where I am."
"We wuz ordered to report to Gen. Rosecrans," said Si to the Orderly on
duty before the tent.
"What are you to report for?" asked a member of the staff, standing
near. "The General is very busy now, and can see no one. Who ordered you
to report?"
"The General himself," said Si.
The sound of his voice reached Gen. Rosecrans, in side, and busy as he
was, arrested his attention. With the kindly thoughtfulness that so
endeared him to his soldiers he instantly remembered his promise,
dropped his pen, and came to the door.198
"I ordered these men to report," he said to the Aid. "Bring me that
checker-board which lies on my table."
The Aid did so. Gen. Rosecrans noticed the father, and, as usual, saw
the opportunity of doing a kindly, gracious thing.
"You have found your son, I see," he said to him. "Sorry that you had so
much trouble. That's a fine son you have. One of the very best soldiers
in199 my army. I congratulate you upon him. Boys, here is your board and
men. I may drop in some evening and see you play a game. I'll be careful
to clean my feet, this time."
Si and Shorty got very red in the face at this allusion, and began to
stammer excuses. The General playfully pinched Si's ear and said:
"Go to your quarters now, you young rascal, and take your father with
you. I hope he'll have a very pleasant time while he is in camp."
They saluted and turned away too full for utterance. After they had gone
a little distance the Deacon remarked, as if communing with himself:
"And that is Gen. Rosecrans. Awful nice man. Nicest man I ever saw.
Greatest General in the world. Won't this be something to tell Mariar
and the girls. And the men down at the store. I'd 've come down here 40
times jest to 've seen him and talked with him. What'd last night in the
guard house amount to, after all? A man must expect some trouble
occasionally. Wouldn't have no fun if he didn't. Say, Si, remember Old
Susy's chestnut colt?"
"Yes," answered Si.
"I thought he had in him the makin' o' the finest horse in Posey
County."
"Yes," said Si.
"Well, he's turnin' out even better'n I thought he would. Shouldn't
wonder if he could trot down somewhere nigh 2:40."
"You don't say so."
"Yes, indeed. You used to want that colt mighty bad, Si."200
"I remember that I did, Pap."
"Well, Si, I'll give you that colt, and take good care o' him till you
come home, for that 'ere checker board."
When they arrived at their house Si and Shorty arranged the things so as
to give the Deacon a most comfortable rest after his trying experiences,
and cooked him the best dinner their larder would afford. After dinner
they filled him a pipe-full of kinni-kinnick, and the old gentleman sat
down to enjoy201 it while Si and Shorty investigated the contents of the
carpetsack. They found endless fun in its woeful condition. The butter
and honey were smeared over everything, in the rough handling which it
had endured. They pulled out the shirt, the socks, the boots, the paper
and books, and scraped off carefully as much as they could of the
precious honey and butter.
"It's too good to waste the least bit," said Shorty, tasting it from
time to time with unction. "Don't mind a hair or two in the butter, this
time, Si. I kin believe your mother is a good buttermaker. It's the best
I ever tasted."
200 (70K)
"Well, the butter and the honey may be spiled," said Si, "but the other
things are all right. My, ain't this a nice shirt. And them socks.
Shorty, did you ever see such socks. Ever so much obliged to you, Pap,
for these boots. Old Hank Sommers's make. He's the best shoemaker in the
State of Injianny. No Quartermaster's cowhide about them. And—"
Si stopped. He had suddenly come across Anna bel's ambrotype. He tried
to slip it into his pocket without the others seeing him. He edged
awkwardly to the door.
"You look over the rest o' the things, Shorty," he said, with a blush
that hid his freckles. "I've got to go down and see the Orderly-
Sergeant."
Shorty and the Deacon exchanged very profound winks.