Si Klegg, Book 3

The matter of the secure transmission of the mails between camp and home began to receive his earnest attention. He feared that the authorities were not taking sufficient precautions. The report that John Morgan's guerrillas had captured a train between Louisville and Nashville, rifled the mail car, and carried off the letters, filled him with burning indignation, both against Morgan and his band and the Generals who had not long ago exterminated that pestiferous crowd.

He had some severe strictures on the slovenly way in which the mail was distributed from the Division and Brigade Headquarters to the regiments. It was a matter, he said, which could not be done too carefully. It was a great deal more important than the distribution of rations. A man would much rather lose several days' rations than a letter from home. He could manage in some way to get enough to live on, but nothing would replace a lost letter.

Then, he would have fits of silent musing, sometimes when alone, sometimes when with Si in the company, over the personality of the fair stocking-knitter of Wisconsin and the letter he had sent her. He would try to recall the exact wording of each sentence he had laboriously penned, and wonder how it impressed her, think how it might have been improved, and blame himself for not having been more outspoken in his desire to hear from her again. He would steal off into the brush, pull out the socks and letter, which he kept carefully wrapped up in a sheet of the heavy letter paper, and read over the letter carefully again, although he knew every word of it by heart. These fits alarmed Si.

"I'm af eared," he confided to some cronies, "that rebel bullet hurt Shorty more'n he'll let on. He's not actin' like hisself at times. That bullet scraped so near his thinkery that it may have addled it. It was an awful close shave."

"Better talk to the Surgeon," said they. "Glancing bullets sometimes hurt worse'n they seem to."

"No, the bullet didn't hurt Shorty, any more than make a scratch," said the Surgeon cheerfully when Si laid the case before him. "I examined him carefully. That fellow's head is so hard that no mere scraping is going to affect it. You'd have to bore straight through it, and I'd want at least a six-pounder to do it with if I was going to undertake the job. An Indiana head may not be particularly fine, but it is sure to be awfully solid and tough. No; his system's likely to be out of order. You rapscallions will take no care of yourselves, in spite of all that I can say, but will eat and drink as if you were ostriches. He's probably a little off his feed, and a good dose of bluemass followed up with quinine will bring him around all right. Here, take these, and give them to him."

The Surgeon was famous for prescribing bluemass and quinine for every ailment presented to him, from sore feet to "shell fever." Si received the medicines with a proper show of thankfulness, saluted, and left. As he passed through the clump if bushes he was tempted to add them to the collection of little white papers which marked the trail from the Surgeon's tent, but solicitude for his comrade restrained him. The Surgeon was probably right, and it was Si's duty to do all that he could to bring Shorty around again to his normal condition. But how in the world was he going to get his partner to take the medicine? Shorty had the resolute antipathy to drugs common to all healthy men.

It was so grave a problem that Si sat down on a log to think about it. As was Si's way, the more he thought about it, the more determined he became to do it, and when Si Klegg determined to do a thing, that thing was pretty nearly as good as done.

"I kin git him to take the quinine easy enough," he mused. "All I've got to do is to put it in a bottle o' whisky, and he'd drink it if there wuz 40 'doses o' quinine in it. But the bluemass's a very different thing. He's got to swaller it in a lump, and what in the world kin I put it in that he'll swaller whole?"

Si wandered over to the Sutler's in hopes of seeing something there that would help him. He was about despairing when he noticed a boy open a can of large, yellow peaches.

"The very thing," said Si, slapping his thigh. "Say, young man, gi' me a can o' peaches jest like them."

Si took his can and carefully approached his tent, that he might decide upon his plan before Shorty could see him and his load. He discovered that Shorty was sitting at a little distance, with his back to him, cleaning his gun, which he had taken apart.

"Bully," thought Si. "Just the thing. His hands are dirty and greasy, and he won't want to tech anything to eat."

He slipped into the tent, cut open the can, took out a large peach with a spoon, laid the pellet of bluemass in it, laid another slice of peach upon it, and then came around in front of Shorty, holding out the spoon.

"Open your mouth and shut your eyes, Shorty," he said. "I saw some o' the nicest canned peaches down at the Sutler's, and I suddenly got hungry for some. I bought a can and brung 'em up to the tent. Jest try 'em."

He stuck the spoon out towards Shorty's mouth. The latter, with his gunlock in one hand and a greasy rag in the other, looked at the tempting morsel, opened his mouth, and the deed was done.

"Must've left a stone in that peach," he said, as he gulped it down.

"Mebbe so," said Si, with a guilty flush, and pretending to examine the others. "But I don't find none in the rest Have another?"

Shorty swallowed two or three spoonfuls more, and then gasped:

"They're awful nice, Si, but I've got enough. Keep the rest for yourself."

Si went back to the tent and finished the can with mingled emotions of triumph at having succeeded, and of contrition at playing a trick on his partner. He decided to make amends for the latter by giving Shorty an unusually large quantity of whisky to take with his quinine.

Si was generally very rigid in his temperance ideas, He strongly disapproved of Shorty's drinking, and always interposed all the obstacles he could in the way of it. But this was an extraordinary case—it would be "using liquor for a medicinal purpose"—and his conscience was quieted.

Co. Q had one of those men—to be found in every company—who can get whisky under apparently any and all circumstances. In every company there is always one man who seemingly can find something to get drunk on in the midst of the Desert of Sahara. To Co. Q's representative of this class Si went, and was piloted to where, after solemn assurances against "giving away," he procured a halfpint of fairly-good applejack, into which he put his doses of quinine.

In the middle of the night Shorty woke up with a yell.

"Great Cesar's ghost!" he howled, "what's the matter with me? I'm sicker'n a dog. Must've bin them dodgasted peaches. Si, don't you feel nothin'?"

"No," said Si sheepishly; "I'm all right. Didn't you eat nothin' else but them?"

"Naw," said Shorty disgustedly. "Nothin' but my usual load o' hardtack and pork. Yes, I chawed a piece o' sassafras root that one of the boys dug up."

"Must've bin the sassafras root," said Si. He hated to lie, and made a resolution that he would make a clean breast to Shorty—at some more convenient time. It was not opportune now. "That must've bin a sockdologer of a dose the Surgeon gave me," he muttered to himself.

Shorty continued to writhe and howl, and Si made a hypocritical offer of going for the Surgeon, but Shorty vetoed that emphatically.

"No; blast old Sawbones," he said. "He won't do nothin' but give me bluemass, and quinine, and I never could nor would take bluemass. It's only fit for horses and hogs."

Toward morning Shorty grew quite weak, and correspondingly depressed.

"Si," said he, "I may not git over this. This may be the breakin' out o' the cholera that the folks around here say comes every seven years and kills off the strangers. Si, I'll tell you a secret. A letter may come for me. If I don't git over this, and the letter comes, I want you to burn it up without reading it, and write a letter to Miss Jerusha Ellen Briggs, Bad Ax, Wis., tellin' her that I died like a man and soldier, and with her socks on, defendin' his country."

Si whistled softly to himself. "I'll do it. Shorty," he said, and repeated the address to make sure.

The crisis soon passed, however, and the morning found Shorty bright and cheerful, though weak.

Si was puzzled how to get the whisky to Shorty. It would never do to let him know that he had gotten it especially for him. That would have been so contrary to Si's past as to arouse suspicion. He finally decided to lay it where it would seem that someone passing had dropped it, and Shorty could not help finding it. The plan worked all right. Shorty picked it up in a few minutes after Si had deposited it, and made quite an ado over his treasure trove.

"Splendid applejack," he said, tasting it; "little bitter, but that probably comes from their using dogwood in the fires when they're 'stilhn'. They know that dogwood'll make the liquor bitter, but they're too all-fired lazy to go after any other kind o' wood." He drank, and as he drank his spirits rose. After the first dram he thought he would clean around the tent, and make their grounds look neater than anybody else's. After the second he turned his attention to his arms and accouterments. After the third he felt like going out on a scout and finding some rebels to vary the monotony of the camp-life. After the fourth, "Groundhog," unluckily for himself, came along, and Shorty remembered that he had long owed the teamster a licking, and he felt that the debt should not be allowed to run any longer. He ordered Groundhog to halt and receive his dues. The teamster demurred, but Shorty was obdurate, and began preparations to put his intention into operation, when the Orderly-Sergeant came down through the company street distributing mail.

"Shorty," he said, entirely ignoring the bellicosity of the scene, "here's a letter for you."

Shorty's first thought was to look at the postmark. Sure enough, it was Bad Ax, Wis. Instantly his whole demeanor changed. Here was something a hundred times more important than licking any teamster that ever lived.

"Git out, you scab," he said contemptuously. "I haint no time to fool with you now. You'll keep. This won't."

Groundhog mistook the cause of his escape. "O, you're powerful anxious to fight, ain't you, till you find I'm ready for you, and then you quiet down. I'll let you know, sir, that you mustn't give me no more o' your sass. I won't stand it from you. You jest keep your mouth shet after this, if you know when you're well off."

The temptation would have been irresistible to Shorty at any other time, but now he must go off somewhere where he could be alone with his letter, and to the amazement of all the spectators he made no reply to the teamster's gibes, but holding the precious envelope firmly in his hand, strode off to the seclusion of a neighboring laurel thicket.

His first thought, as he sat down and looked the envelope over again, was shame that it had come to him when he was under the influence of drink. He remembered the writer's fervent Christianity, and it seemed to him that it would be a gross breach of faith for him to open and read the letter while the fumes of whisky were on his breath. He had a struggle with his burning desire to see the inside of the envelope, but he conquered, and put the letter back in his pocket until he was thoroughly sober.

But he knew not what to do to fill up the time till he could conscientiously open the letter. He thought of going back and fulfilling his long-delayed purpose of thrashing Groundhog, but on reflection this scarcely commended itself as a fitting prelude.

He heard voices approaching—one sympathetic and encouraging, the other weak, pain-breathing, almost despairing. He looked out and saw the Chaplain helping back to the hospital a sick man who had over-estimated his strength and tried to reach his company. The man sat down on a rock, in utter exhaustion.

Shorty thrust the letter back into his blousepocket, sprang forward, picked the man up in his strong arms, and carried him bodily to the hospital. It taxed his strength to the utmost, but it sobered him and cleared his brain.

He returned to his covert, took out his letter, and again scanned its exterior carefully. He actually feared to open it, but at last drew his knife and carefully slit one side. He unfolded the inclosure as carefully as if it had been a rare flower, and with palpitating heart slowly spelled out the words, one after another:

"Bad Ax, Wisconsin,

"April the Twenty-First, 1863.

"Mister Daniel Elliott, Company Q, 200th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.

"Respected Sir: I taik my pen in hand toe inform you that I am wel, and hoap that you aire in joying the saim blessing. For this, God be prazed and magnified forever."

"Goodness, how religious she is," said he, stopping to ruminate. "How much nicer it makes a woman to be pious. It don't hurt a man much to be a cuss—at least while he's young—but I want a woman to be awfully religious. It sets her off more'n anything else."

He continued his spelling exercise:

"I am verry glad that my sox reached you all rite, that they fell into the hands of a braiv, pious Union soldier, and he found them nice."

"Brave, pious Union soldier," he repeated to himself, with a whistle. "Jewhilikins, I'm glad Bad Ax, Wis., is so fur away that she never heard me makin' remarks when a mule-team's stalled. But I must git a brace on myself, and clean up my langwidge for inspection-day."

He resumed the spelling:

"I done the best I could on them, and moren that no one can do. Wimmen cant fite in this cruel war, but they ought all to do what they can. I only wish I could do more. But the wimmen must stay at home and watch and wait, while the men go to the front."

"That's all right. Miss Jerusha Ellen Briggs," said he, with more satisfaction. "You jest stay at home and watch and wait, and I'll try to do fightin' enough for both of us. I'll put in some extra licks in future on your account, and they won't miss you from the front."

The next paragraph read:

"I should like to hear more of you and your regiment. The only time I ever beared of the 200th Indiana regiment was in a letter writ home by one of our Wisconsin boys and published in the Bad Ax Grindstone, in which he said they wuz brigaded with the 200th Indiana, a good fighting regiment, but which would stele even the shoes off the brigade mules if they wuzzent watched, and sumtimes when they wuz. Ime sorry to hear that any Union soldier is a thief. I know that our boys from Wisconsin would rather die than stele."

"Steal! The 200th Injianny steal!" Shorty flamed out in a rage. "Them flabbergasted, knock-kneed, wall-eyed Wisconsin whelps writin' home that the Injiannians are thieves! The idee o' them longhaired, splay-footed lumbermen, them chuckleheaded, wap-sided, white-pine butchers talking about anybody else's honesty. Why, they wuz born stealin'. They never knowed anything else. They'd steal the salt out o' your hardtack. They'd steal the lids off the Bible. They talk about the 200th Injiannny! I'd like to find the liar that writ that letter. I'd literally pound the head offen him."

It was some time before he could calm himself down sufficiently to continue his literary exercise. Then he made out:

"Spring's lait here, but things is looking very well. Wheat wintered good, and a big crop is expected. We had a fine singing-school during the Winter, but the protracted meeting drawed off a good many. We doant complain, however, for the revival brought a great many into the fold. No moar at present, but belave me

"Sincerly Your Friend,

"Jerusha Ellen Briggs."

Shorty's heart almost choked him when he finished. It was the first time in his hfe that he had received a letter from any woman. It was the first time since his mother's days that any woman had shown the slightest interest in his personality. And, true man like, his impulses were to exalt this particular woman into something above the mere mortal.

Then came a hot flush of indignation that the Wisconsin men should malign his regiment, which, of course, included him, to the mind of such a being. He burned to go over and thrash the first Wisconsin man he should meet.

"Call us thieves; say we'll steal," he muttered, as he walked toward the Wisconsin camp. "I'll learn 'em different."

He did not see anybody in the camp that he could properly administer this needed lesson to. All the vigorous, able-bodied members seemed to be out on drill or some other duty, leaving only a few sick moping around the tents.

Shorty's attention was called to a spade lying temptingly behind one of the tents. He and Si had badly wanted a spade for several days. Here was an opportunity to acquire one. Shorty sauntered carelessly around to the rear of the tent, looked about to see that no one was observing, picked up the implement and walked off with it with that easy, innocent air that no one could assume with more success than he when on a predatory expedition.