Si Klegg Experiences Of Si And Shorty On The Great Tullahoma Campaign Part 30

"Shorty's all right if he don't get a setback. The danger from the blow on his head is pretty near past, if something don't come in to make further complications. He has been pulled down pretty badly by the low fever which has been epidemic here since we have settled down in camp, but he seems to be coming out from it all right."

"I've come down here to do all that's possible for these two boys. Now, how kin I best do it?" asked the Deacon.

"You can do good by helping nurse them. You could do much more good if there was more to do with, but we lack almost everything for the proper care of the wounded and sick. We have 15,000 men in hospital here, and not supplies enough for 3,000. When we will get more depends on just what luck our cavalry has in keeping the rebels off our line of supplies."

"Show me what to do, give me what you kin, and I'll trust in the Lord and my own efforts for the rest."

"Yes, and you kin count on me to a.s.sist," chimed in Shorty, who had come up. "I won't let you play lone hand long, Deacon, for I'm gittin'

chirpier every day. If I could only fill up good and full once more on hardtack and pork, or some sich luxuries, I'd be as good as new agin."

"You mean you'd be put to bed under three feet of red clay, if you were allowed to eat all you want to," said the Surgeon. "There's where the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. If you could eat as much as you want to eat, I should speedily have to bid good-by to you. For the present, Mr. Klegg, do anything that suggests itself to you to make these men comfortable. I need scarcely caution you to be careful about their food, for there is nothing that you can get hold of to over-feed them. But you'd better not let them have anything to eat until I come around again and talk to you more fully. I put them in your charge."

The Deacon's first thought was for Si, and he bestirred himself to do what he thought his wife, who was renowned as a nurse, would do were she there.

He warmed some water, and tenderly as he could command his strong, stubby hands, washed Si's face, hands and feet, and combed his hair.

The overworked hospital attendants had had no time for this much-needed ministration. It was all that they could do to get the wounded under some sort of shelter, to dress their wounds, and prepare food. No well man could be spared from the trenches for hospital service, for the sadly-diminished Army of the c.u.mberland needed every man who could carry a musket to man the long lines to repel the constantly-threatened a.s.saults.

The removal of the soil and grime of the march and battle had a remarkably vivifying effect upon Si. New life seemed to pulse through his veins and brightness return to his eyes.

"Makes me feel like a new man, Pap," he said faintly. "Feels better than anything I ever knowed. Do the same to Shorty, Pap."

"Come here, Shorty, you dirty little rascal," said the Deacon, a.s.suming a severely maternal tone, at which Si laughed feebly but cheerily, "and let me wash your face and comb your hair."

Shorty demurred a little at being treated like a boy, and protested that he could wash himself, if the Deacon would get him some warm water; but he saw that the conceit amused Si, and submitted to having the Deacon give him a scrubbing with a soapy rag, giving a yell from time to time, in imitation of an urchin undergoing an unwilling ablution. Si turned his head so as to witness the operation, and grinned throughout it.

"I think you'd both feel still better if you could have your hair cut,"

said the Deacon, as he finished and looked from one to the other. "Your hair's too long for sick people, and it makes you look sicker'n you really are. But I hain't got no shears."

"I know I'd feel better if I was sheared," said Shorty. "Hain't neither of us had our hair cut since we started on the Tullyhomy campaign, and I think I look like the Wild Man from Borneo. I think I know a feller that has a pair o' shears that I kin borry."

The shears were found and borrowed. Then ensued a discussion as to the style of the cut. The boys wanted their hair taken off close to their heads, 'but the Deacon demurred to this for fear they would catch cold.

"No, Si," he said; "I'm goin' to cut your hair jest like your mother used to. She used to tie one of her garters from your forehead down across your ears, and cut off all the hair that stuck out. I hain't any garter, but I guess I kin find a string that'll do jest as well."

"There," said the Deacon, as he finished shearing off the superabundant hair, and surveyed the work. "That ain't as purty a job as if your mother'd done it, but you'll feel lighter and cleaner, and be healthier.

If hair was only worth as much as wool is now, I'd have enough to pay me for the job. But I must clean it up keerfully and burn it, that the birds mayn't git hold of it and give you the headache."

The Deacon had his little superst.i.tions, like a great many other hard-headed, sensible men.

"Well, Mr. Klegg," said the Surgeon, when he made his next round, "I must congratulate you on your patients. Both show a remarkable improvement. You ought to apply for a diploma, and go into the practice of medicine. You have done more for them in the two or three hours than I have been able to do in as many weeks. If you could only keep up this pace awhile I would be able to return them to duty very soon. I have an idea. Do you see that corn-crib over there?"

"The one built of poles? Yes."

"Well, I have some things stored there, and I have been able to hold it so far against the soldiers, who are s.n.a.t.c.hing every stick of wood they can find, for their cabins, or for the breastworks, or firewood. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it, unless I have personal possession. I believe you can make it into a comfortable place for these two men. That will help them, you can be by yourselves, you can take care of my things, and it will relieve the crowd in the tent."

"Splendid idea," warmly a.s.sented the Deacon. "I'll c.h.i.n.k and daub it, and make it entirely comfortable, and fix up bunks in it for the boys. I know they'll be delighted at the change. I wonder where Shorty is?"

The Deacon had just remembered that he had not seen that individual for some little time, and looked around for him with some concern. It was well that he did. Shorty had come across the haversack that the Deacon had brought, and it awakened all his old predatory instincts, sharpened, if anything, by his feebleness. Without saying a word to any body, he had employed the time while the Surgeon and Deacon were in conversation in preparing one of his customary gorges after a long, hard march.

He had broken up the crackers into a tin-cup of water which sat by his side, while he was frying out pieces of fat pork in a half-canteen.

"My goodness, man!" shouted the Deacon, spring ing toward him. "Are you crazy? If you eat that mess you'll be dead before morning."

He sprang toward him, s.n.a.t.c.hed the half-canteen from his hand, and threw its contents on the ground.

"That stuff's not fit to put into an ostrich's stomach," he said. "Mr.

Klegg, you will have to watch this man very carefully."

"Can't I have none of it to eat?" said Shorty, dejectedly, with tears of weakness and longing in his eyes.

"Not a mouthful of that stuff," said the Surgeon; "but you may eat some of those crackers you have soaked there. Mr. Klegg, let him eat about half of those crackers no more."

Shorty looked as if the whole world had lost its charms. "Hardtack without grease's no more taste than chips," he murmured.

"Never mind, Shorty," said the Deacon, pityingly; "I'll manage to find you something that'll be better for you than that stuff."

The Surgeon had the boys carried over to the corncrib, and the Deacon went to work to make it as snug as possible. All the old training of his pioneer days when literally with his own hands, and with the rudest materials, he had built a comfortable cabin in the wilderness of the Wabash bottoms for his young wife came back to him. He could not see a brick, a piece of board, a stick, or a bit of iron anywhere without the thought that it might be made useful, and carrying it off. As there were about 40,000 other men around the little village of Chattanooga with similar inclinations, the Deacon had need of all his shrewdness in securing coveted materials, but it was rare that anybody got ahead of him. He rearranged and patched the clapboards on the roof until it was perfectly rain-tight, c.h.i.n.ked up the s.p.a.ces between the poles with stones, corncobs and pieces of wood, and plastered over the outside with clay, until the walls were draft proof. He hung up an old blanket for a door, and hired a teamster to bring in a load of silky-fine beech leaves which, when freshly fallen, make a bed that cannot be surpa.s.sed. These, by spreading blankets over them, made very comfort able couches for Si, Shorty and himself.

Then the great problem became one of proper food for the boys. Daily the rations were growing shorter in Chattanooga, and if they had been plentiful they were not suited to the delicate stomachs of those seriously ill. Si was slowly improving, but the Deacon felt that the thing necessary to carry him over the breakers and land him safely on the sh.o.r.es of recovery was nourishing food that he could relish.

He had anxiously sought the entire length of the camp for something of that kind. He had visited all the sutlers, and canva.s.sed the scanty stocks in the few stores in Chattanooga. He had bought the sole remaining can of tomatoes at a price which would have almost bought the field in which the tomatoes were raised, and he had turned over the remnant lots of herring, cheese, etc., he found at the sutler's, with despair at imagining any sort of way in which they could be worked up to become appetizing and a.s.similative to Si's stomach.

"What you and Si needs," he would say to Shorty, "is chicken and fresh 'taters. If you could have a good mess of chicken and 'taters every day you'd come up like Spring shoats. I declare I'd give that crick bottom medder o' mine, which hasn't it's beat on the Wabash, to have mother's coopful o' chickens here this minute."

But a chicken was no more to be had in Chattanooga than a Delmonico banquet. The table of the Major-General commanding the Army of the c.u.mberland might have a little more hardtack and pork on it than appeared in the tents of the privates, and be cooked a little better, but it had nothing but hardtack and pork.

The Deacon made excursions into the country, and even ran great risks from the rebel pickets and bushwhackers, in search of chickens. But the country had been stripped, by one side or the other, of everything eatable, and the people that remained in their cheerless homes were dependent upon what they could get from the United States Commissary.

One day he found the Herd-Boss in camp, and poured forth his troubles to him. The Herd-Boss sympathized deeply with him, and cudgeled his brains for a way to help.

"I'll tell you what you might do," he said at length, "if you care to take the risk. We're goin' back with some teams to Bridgeport to-morrow mornin'. You might git in one of the wagons and ride back 10 or 15 miles to a little valley that I remember that's there, and which I think looks like it hain't bin foraged. I was thinkin' as we come through the other day that I might git something goo'd to eat up there, and I'd try it some day. No body seems to 've noticed it yit. But it may be chock full o' rebels, for all I know, and a feller git jumped the moment he sets foot in it."

"I'll take my chances," said the Deacon. "I'll go along with you to-morrer mornin'."

The Deacon found that a ride in a wagon was not such an unqualified favor as he might have thought. The poor, half-fed, overworked mules went so slowly that the Deacon could make better time walking, and he was too merciful to allow them to pull him up hill.

The result was that, with helping pry the stalled wagons out and work in making the roads more pa.s.sable, the Deacon expended more labor than if he had started out to walk in the first place.

It was late in the afternoon when the Herd-Boss said:

"There, you take that path to the right, and in a little ways you'll come out by a purty good house. I hain't seen any Johnnies around in this neighborhood since I've bin travelin' this route, but you'd better keep your eye peeled, all the same. If you see any, skip back to the road here, and wait awhile. Somebody 'll be pa.s.sin' before long."

Thanking him, the Deacon set out for the house, hoping to be able to reach it, get some fowls, and be back to Chattanooga before morning. If he got the chickens, he felt sanguine that he could save Si's life.

He soon came in sight of the house, the only one, apparently, for miles, and scanned it carefully. There were no men to be seen, though the house appeared to be inhabited. He took another look at the heavy revolver which he had borrowed from the Surgeon, and carried ready for use in the pocket of Si's overcoat, and began a strategic advance, keep ing well out of sight under the cover of the sumachs lining the fences.

Still he saw no one, and finally he became so bold as to leave his covert and walk straight to the front door. A dozen dogs charged at him with a wild hullabaloo, but he had antic.i.p.ated this, and picked up a stout hickory switch in the road, which he wielded with his left hand with so much effect that they ran howling back under the house. He kept his right hand firmly grasping his revolver.