Si Klegg His Transformation From A Raw Recruit To A Veteran Part 7

"Now this is something like!" said Si, as he squatted on the ground along with Shorty and half a dozen messmates. They surrounded a camp-kettle full of steaming ears and half a bushel or so of apples heaped on a poncho.

"Wish we had some o' mother's b.u.t.ter to grease this corn with," observed Si, as he flung a cob into the fire and seized a fresh ear.

All agreed that Si's head was level on the b.u.t.ter question, but under all the circ.u.mstances of the case they were glad enough to have the com without b.u.t.ter.

The ears went off with amazing rapidity. Every man seemed to be afraid he wouldn't get his share. When the kettle was empty the boys turned themselves loose on the apples, utterly reckless of results. So, they were filled full, and were thankful.

When Si got up he burst off half the b.u.t.tons on his clothes. He looked as if he was carrying a ba.s.s-drum in front of him. After he began to shrink he had to tie up his clothes with a string until he had a chance to repair damages. But during the next 24 hours he had something else to think of.

In fact, it wasn't long till Si began to wish he had eaten an ear of corn and an apple or two less. He didn't feel very well. He turned in early, thinking he would go to sleep and be all right in the morning.

Along in the night he uttered a yell that came near stampeding the company. An enormous colic was raging around in his interior, and Si fairly howled with pain. He thought he was going: to die right away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAYING THE FOUNDATION 091 ]

"Shorty," said he, between the gripes, to his comrade, "I'm afeared I'm goin' to peter out. After I'm gone you write to--to--Annie and tell her I died for my country like a man. I'd ruther been shot than die with the colic, but I 'spose 'twont make much difference after it's all over!"

9 "I'll do it," replied Shorty. "We'll plant you in good shape; and Si, we'll gather up the corn-cobs and build a monument over you!"

But Si wasn't cut off in the bloom of youth by that colic. His eruptive condition frightened Shorty, however, and though he was in nearly as bad shape himself, he went up and routed out one of the doctors, who growled a good deal about being disturbed.

The debris of the supper scattered about the camp told him what was the matter, and he had no need to make a critical diagnosis of Si's case.

He gave him a dose of something or other that made the pain let up a little, and Si managed to rub along through the night.

Fortunately for Si, and for more than half the members of the regiment, the army did not move next day, and the doctors had a good opportunity to get in their work.

At the usual hour in the morning the bugle blew the "sick-call." A regiment of tanned and grizzled veterans from Ohio lay next to the 200th Ind., and as Si lay there he heard them take up the music:

"Git yer qui-nine! Git yer qui-nine!

Tumble up you sick and lame and blind; Git a-long right smart, you'll be left be-hind."

"Fall in fer yer ipecac!" shouted the Orderly of Co. Q. Si joined the procession and went wabbling up to the "doctor's" shop. He was better than he had been during the night, but still looked a good deal discouraged.

It was a regular matinee that day. The Surgeon and his a.s.sistants were all on hand, as the various squads, colicky and cadaverous, came to a focus in front of the tent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RUDE AWAKENING 093 ]

The doctors worked off the patients at a rapid rate, generally prescribing the same medicine for all, no matter what ailed them. This was the way the army doctors always did, but it happened in this case that they were not far wrong, as the ailments, arising from a common cause, were much the same.

Si waited till his turn came, and received his rations from the Hospital Steward. Of course, he was excused from duty for the day, and as he speedily recovered his normal condition he really had a good time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VISITS THE DOCTOR 094 ]

A few days after this the whole regiment was ordered on fatigue duty to repair an old corduroy road. Si didn't want to go, and "played off." He told the Orderly he wasn't able to work, but the Orderly said he would have to shoulder an ax or a shovel, unless he was excused by the doctor.

He went up at sick-call and made a wry face, with his hands clasped over his body in the lat.i.tude of his waistband.

The doctor gave him a lot of blue-ma.s.s pills, which Si threw into the fire as soon as he got back to his quarters. Then he played seven-up all day with Shorty, who had learned before Si did how to get a day off when he wanted it.

Si thought it was a great scheme, but he tried it once too often. The doctor "caught on," and said, the next time Si went up, that castor oil was what he needed to fetch him around. So he poured out a large dose and made Si take it right then and there.

The next time fatigue duty was ordered Si thought he felt well enough to go along with the boys.

CHAPTER XI. THE PLAGUE OP THE SOLDIER

INTRODUCTION TO "ONE WHO STICKETH CLOSER THAN A BROTHER."

"h.e.l.lO Si; goin' for a soljer, ain't ye?"

"You bet!"

"Wall, you'd better b'lieve its great fun; it's jest a picnic all the time! But, say, Si, let's see yer finger-nails!"

"I'd like ter know what finger-nails 's got to do with soljerin'!" said Si. "The 'cruitin' ossifer 'n' the man 't keeps the doctor shop made me shuck myself, 'n' then they 'xamined my teeth, 'n' thumped me in the ribs, 'n' rubbed down my legs, 'n' looked at my hoofs, same 's if 'I'd bin a hoss they wuz buyin', but they didn't say nothin' 'bout my finger-nails."

"You jest do 's I tell ye; let 'em grow, 'n' keep 'em right sharp. Ye'll find plenty o' use fer 'em arter a while, 'n' 'twont be long, nuther. I know what I'm talkin' 'bout; I've been thar!"

This conversation took place a day or two before Si bade farewell to his mother and sister Marier and pretty Annabel and left the peaceful precincts of Posey County to march away with the 200th Ind. for that awful place vaguely designated as "the front!" He had promptly responded to the call, and his name was near the top of the list of Company Q.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LET YER NAILS GROW; YE'LL NEED 'EM" 097 ]

Si already had his blue clothes on. By enlisting early he had a good pick of the various garments, and so got a suit that fitted his form--which was plump as an apple-dumpling tolerably well. It was left for the tail-enders of the company to draw trousers that were six inches too long or too short, and blouses that either wouldn't reach around, and left yawning chasms in front, or were so large that they looked as if they were hung on bean-poles.

Of course, Si couldn't be expected to do any more plodding farm work, now that he had "jined" the army. While the company was filling up he spent most of his time on dress parade in the village near by, eliciting admiring smiles from all the girls, and an object of the profoundest awe and wonder to tha small boys.

One day Si was sitting on the sugar-barrel in the corner grocery, gnawing a "blind robin," and telling how he thought the war wouldn't last long after the 200th Ind. got down there and took a hand and got fairly interested in the game; they would wind it up in short meter.

Such ardent emotions always seethed and bubbled in the swelling b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the new troops when they came down to show the veterans just how to do it.

One of the town boys who had been a year in the service, had got a bullet through his arm in a skirmish, and was at home on furlough, came into the store, and then took place the dialog between him and Si that opens this chapter.

Si wondered a good deal what the veteran meant about the finger-nails.

He did not even know that there existed in any nature a certain active and industrious insect which, before he had been in the army a great while, would cause his heart to overflow with grat.i.tude to a beneficent Providence for providing him with nails on his fingers.

When the 200th left Indiana all the boys had, of course, brand-new outfits right from Uncle Sam's great one-price clothing house. Their garments were nice and clean, their faces well washed, and their hair yet showed marks of the comb. At Louisville they stuck up their noses, with a lofty consciousness of superiority, at the sight of Buell's tanned and ragged tramps, who had just come up on the gallop from Tennessee and northern Alabama.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SAY, CAP, WHAT KIND O' BUG IS THIS?" 099 ]

If the new Hoosier regiment had been quartered for a while in long-used barracks, or had pitched its tents in an old camp, Si would very soon have learned, in the school of experience, the delightful uses of finger-nails. But the 200th stayed only a single night in Louisville and then joined the procession that started on the chase after the rebel army. It generally camped on new ground, and under these circ.u.mstances the insect to which allusion has been made did not begin its work of devastation with that suddenness that usually marked its attack upon soldiers entering the field. But he never failed to "git there" sooner or later, and it was more frequently sooner than later.

One afternoon, when a few days out on this march, a regiment of Wisconsin veterans bivouacked next to the 200th Ind. The strange antics as they threw off their accouterments attracted Si's attention.

"Look a' thar," he said to Shorty. "What 'n name of all the prophets 's them fellers up to?"

"Seems like they was scratchin' theirselves!"

"I s'pose that's on account of the dust 'n' sweat," said Si.

"It's a mighty sight worse 'n that!" replied Shorty, who knew more about these things than Si did. "I reckon we'll all be doin' like they are 'fore long."