WITH A GREAT DEAL OF CUSSEDNESS IN IT.
IT WOULD have been very strange, indeed, if Si Klegg had not grumbled
loudly and frequently about the food that was dished up to him by
the company cooks. In the first place, it was as natural for a boy to
grumble at the "grub" as it was for him to try to shirk battalion drill
or "run the guard." In the next place, the cooking done by the company
bean-boiler deserved all the abuse it received, for as a rule the boys
who sought places in the hash foundry did so because they were too lazy
to drill or do guard duty, and their knowledge of cooking was about like
that of the Irishman's of music:
"Can you play the fiddle, Pat?" he was asked. "Oi don't know,
sor-r-r--Oi niver tried."
Si's mother, like most of the well-to-do farmers' wives in Indiana, was
undoubtedly a good cook, and she trained up her daughters to do honor to
her teachings, so that Si undoubtedly knew what properly-prepared food
was. From the time he was big enough to spank he had fared sumptuously
every day. In the gush of patriotic emotions that prompted him to enlist
he scarcely thought of this feature of the case. If it entered his mind
at all, he felt that he could safely trust all to the goodness of so
beneficent a Government as that for the preservation of which he had
offered himself as a target for the rebels to shoot at. He thought it
no more than fair to the brave soldiers that Uncle Sam should furnish
professional cooks for each company, who would serve everything up in
the style of a first-class city restaurant. So, after Si got down among
the boys and found how it really was, it was not long till his inside
was a volcano of rebellion that threatened serious results.
[Illustration: SI FALLS OUT WITH HIS FOOD 055 ]
When, therefore, Si lifted up his voice and cried aloud, and spared
not--when he said that he could get as good coffee as that furnished him
by dipping his cup into a tan-vat; when he said that the meat was not
good soap-grease, and that the potatoes and beans had not so much taste
and nutrition in them as so much pine-shavings, he was probably nearer
right than grumblers usually are.
"Give it to 'em, Si," his comrades would Say, when he turned up his loud
bazoo on the rations question. "They ought to get it ten times worse.
When we come out we expected that some of us would get shot by the
rebels, but we didn't calculate that we were going to be poisoned in
camp by a lot of dirty, lazy potwrastlers."
One morning after roll-call the Orderly-Sergeant came up to Si and said:
"There's been so much chin-music about this cooking-business that
the Captain's ordered the cooks to go back to duty, and after this
everybody'll have to take his regular turn at cooking. It'll be your
turn to-day, and you'll stay in camp and get dinner."
When Co. Q marched out for the forenoon drill. Si pulled off his blouse
and set down on a convenient log to think out how he should go to work.
Up to this time he had been quite certain that he knew all about cooking
that it was worth while to know. Just now none of his knowledge seemed
to be in usable shape, and the more he thought about it the less able he
seemed to be to decide upon any way of beginning. It had always appeared
very easy for his mother and sisters to get dinner, and on more than one
occasion he had reminded them how much better times they had staying in
the house cooking dinner than he had out in the harvest field keeping
up with the reaper. At this moment he would rather have kept up with
the fastest reaper in Posey County, on the hottest of July days, than to
have cooked the coarse dinner which his 75 comrades expected to be ready
for them when they returned, tired, hot and hungry, from the morning
drill.
[Illustration: SI THINKS IT OVER 057 ]
He went back to the barracks and inspected the company larder. He found
there the same old, coarse, greasy, strong, fat pork, a bushel or so of
beans, a few withered potatoes, sugar, coffee, bread, and a box of rice
which had been collected from the daily rations because none of the
cooks knew how to manage it. The sight of the South Carolina staple
recalled the delightful rice puddings his mother used to make. His heart
grew buoyant.
"Here's just the thing," he said. "I always was fond of rice, and I know
the boys will be delighted with it for a change. I know I can cook it;
for all that you've got to do is to put it in a pot with water and boil
it till it is done. I've seen mother do that lots o' times.
"Let's see," he said, pursuing his ruminations.
"I think each boy can eat about a cupful, so I'll put one for each of
'em in the kettle."
"There's one for Abner," he continued, pouring a cupful in for the
first name on the company-roll; "one for Acklin, one for Adams, one for
Barber, one for Brooks," and so on down through the whole well-known
list.
"It fills the old kettle tol'bly full," he remarked, as he scanned the
utensil after depositing the contribution for Williams, the last name on
the roll; "but I guess she'll stand it. I've heard mother tell the girls
that they must always keep the rice covered with water, and stir
it well, so that it wouldn't burn; so here goes. Won't the boys be
astonished when they have a nice mess of rice, as a change from that
rusty old side-meat!"
He hung the kettle on the fire and stepped out to the edge of the
parade-ground to watch the boys drilling. It was the first time he had
had the sensation of pleasure of seeing them at this without taking part
in it himself, and he began to think that he would not mind if he had to
cook most of the time. He suddenly remembered about his rice and hurried
back to find it boiling, bulging over the top like a small snowdrift.
[Illustration: THE TROUBLE BEGINS 059]
"I was afraid that kettle was a little too full," he said to himself,
hurrying off for another campkettle, in which he put about a third of
the contents of the first. "Now they're all right. And it'll cook better
and quicker in two than one. Great Scott! what's the matter? They're
both boiling over. There must be something wrong with that rice."
Pretty soon he had all the company kettles employed, and then all that
he could borrow from the other companies. But dip out as much as he
would there seemed no abatement in the upheaving of the snowy cereal,
and the kettles continued to foam over like so many huge glasses of soda
water. He rushed to his bunk and got his gum blanket and heaped upon
it a pile as big as a small haycock, but the mass in the kettle seemed
larger than it was before this was subtracted.
He sweat and dipped, and dipped and sweat; burned his hands into
blisters with the hot rice and hotter kettles, kicked over one of the
largest kettles in one of his spasmodic rushes to save a portion of the
food that was boiling over, and sent its white contents streaming over
the ground. His misery came to a climax as he heard the quick step of
his hungry comrades returning from drill.
"Right face; Arms a-port; Break ranks--March!" commanded the
Orderly-Sergeant, and there was a clatter of tin cups and plates as they
came rushing toward him to get their dinner--something to stay their
ravenous stomachs. There was a clamor of rage, ridicule, wrath and
disappointment as they took in the scene.
[Illustration: THE RICE GETS THE BULGE 061 ]
"What's the matter here?" demanded the Captain, striding back to the
company fire. "You young rascal, is this the way you get dinner for
your comrades? Is this the way you attend to the duty for which you're
detailed? Waste rations in some fool experiment and scatter good food
all over the ground? Biler, put on your arms and take Klegg to the
guard-houae. I'll make you pay for this nonsense, sir, in a way that you
won't forget in a hurry, I'll be bound."
So poor Si marched to the guard-house, where he had to stay for 24
hours, as a punishment for not knowing, until he found out by this
experience, that rice would "s-well." The Captain wouldn't let him have
anything to eat except that scorched and half-cooked stuff cut of the
kettles, and Si thought he never wanted to see any more rice as long as
he lived.
[Illustration: SI MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THE GUARD HOUSE 062 ]
In the evening one of the boys took Si's blanket to him, thinking he
would want it to sleep in.
"I tell ye, pard, this is purty derned tough!" said Si as he wiped a
tear out of the southwest corner of his left eye with the sleeve of
his blouse. "I think the Cap'n's hard on a feller who didn't mean to do
nothin' wrong!" And Si looked as if he had lost all his interest in the
old flag, and didn't care a pinch of his burnt rice what became of the
Union.
His comrade "allowed" that it was hard, but supposed they, had got to
get used to such things. He said he heard the Captain say he would let
Si out the next day.