by John McElroy
CHAPTER XI. WINTER QUARTERS
THEY BUILT THEM A HOUSE AND GOT IN OUT OF THE RAIN.
THE NEXT day Sunday after the battle dawned as clear, bright andsparkling as only a Winter's day can dawn in Tennessee, after afortnight of doleful deluges. Tennessee Winter weather is like thefamous little girl with the curl right down in the middle of herforehead, who,
"When she was good, she was very, very good, And when she was bad, she was horrid."
After weeks of heart-saddening down-pour that threatened to drench lifeand hope out of every breathing thing, it will suddenly beam out in aday so crisp and bright that all Nature will wear a gladsome smile andlife become jocund.
When the reveille and the Orderly-Sergeant's brogans aroused Si andShorty the latter's first thought was for the strip of canvas which hehad secured with so much trouble from the wagon-cover, and intended tocherish for future emergencies. He felt his neck and found the stripthat he had tied there, but that was all that there was of it. A sharpknife had cut away the rest so deftly that he had not felt its loss.
Shorty's boiler got very hot at once, and he began blowing off steam.Somehow he had taken an especial fancy to that piece of canvas, and hiswrath was hot against the man who had stolen it.
SHORTY RETALIATES. 126]
"Condemn that onery thief," he yelled. "He ought to be drummed out o'camp, with his head shaved. A man that'll steal ought to be hunted downand{127} kicked out o' the army. He's not fit to associate with decentmen."
"Why, Shorty," said Si, amused at his partner's heat, "you stole thatyourself."
"I didn't nothin' o' the kind," snorted Shorty, "and don't want yousayin' so, Mr. Klegg, if you don't want to git into trouble. I took itfrom a teamster. You ought to know it's never stealin' to take anythingfrom a teamster. I'll bet it was some of that Toledo regiment that stoleit. Them Maumee River Muskrats are the durndest thieves in the brigade.They'd steal the salt out o' your hardtack if you didn't watch 'em notbecause they wanted the salt, but just because they can't help stealin'.They ought to be fired out o' the brigade. I'm going over to their campto look for it, and if I find it I'll wipe the ground up with the fellerthat took it. 'Taint so much the value of the thing as the principle. Ihate a thief above all things."
Si tried to calm Shorty and dissuade him from going, but his partnerwas determined, and Si let him go, but kept an eye and ear open fordevelopments.
In a few minutes Shorty returned, with jubilation in his face, thecanvas in one hand and a nice frying-pan and a canteen of molasses inthe other.
"Just as I told you," he said triumphantly. "It was some o' them MaumeeRiver Muskrats. I found them asleep in a bunch o' cedars, with our nicetent stretched over their thievin' carcasses. They'd been out on guardor scoutin', and come in after we'd gone to sleep. They were stillsnorin' away when I yanked the tent off, an' picked up their fryin'-panan' canteen o' molasses to remember 'em by."{128}
"I thought you hated a thief," Si started to say; but real comrades soonlearn, like husband and wife, that it is not necessary to say everythingthat rises to their lips. Besides, the frying-pan was a beauty, and justwhat they wanted.
It became generally understood during the day that the Army of theCumberland would remain around Murfreesboro' indefinitely probably untilSpring to rest, refit and prepare for another campaign. Instructionswere given to regimental commanders to select good camping ground andhave their men erect comfortable Winter quarters.
The 200th Ind. moved into an oak grove, on a gentle slope toward thesouth, and set about making itself thoroughly at home.
Si and Shorty were prompt to improve the opportunity to house themselvescomfortably.
Si had now been long enough in the army to regard everything that wasnot held down by a man with a gun and bayonet as legitimate capture. Hepassed where one of the Pioneer Corps had laid down his ax for a minuteto help on some other work. That minute was spent by Si in walking awaywith the ax hidden under his long overcoat. Those long overcoats, likecharity, covered a multitude of sins.
The ax was not sharp no army ax ever was, but Si's and Shorty's muscleswere vigorous enough to make up for its dullness. In a little while theyhad cut down and trimmed enough oak saplings to make a pen about thesize of the corn-crib at Si's home. While one would whack away with theax the other would carry the poles and build up the pen. By{129} eveningthey had got this higher than their heads, and had to stop work fromsheer exhaustion.
"I'll declare," said Si, as they sat down to eat supper and survey theirwork, "if father'd ever made me do half as much work in one day as Ihave done to-day I should have died with tiredness and then run awayfrom home. It does seem to me that every day we try a new way o' killingourselves."
"Well," said Shorty, arresting a liberal chunk of fried pork on the wayto his capacious grinders to cast an admiring glance on the structure,"it's worth it all. It'll just be the finest shebang in Tennessee whenwe git it finished. I'm only afraid we'll make it so fine that Gen.Rosecrans or the Governor of Tennessee 'll come down and take it awayfor him self. That'd just be our luck."
"Great Scott!" said Si, looking at it with a groan; "how much work thereis to do yet. What are we goin' to do for a roof? Then, we must cut outa place for a door. We'll have to chink between all the logs with mudand chunks; and we ought to have a fireplace."
"I've bin thinkin' of all them things, and I've thunk 'em out," saidShorty cheerfully. "I've bin thinkin' while you've bin workin'. Doyou know, I believe I was born for an architect, an' I'll go into thearchitect business after the war! I've got a head plumb full of thenatural stuff for the business. It growed right there. All I need issome more know-how an' makin' plans on paper."
"O, you've got a great big head, Shorty," said Si, admiringly, "andwhatever you start to do you do splendid. Nobody knows that better'n me.But what's your idee about the roof?"{130}
"Why, do you see that there freight-car over there by the bridge"(pointing to where a car was off the track, near Stone River), "I'vebin watchin' that ever since we begun buildin', for fear somebody else'ddrop on to it. The roof of that car is tin. We'll jest slip down therewith an ax after dark, an' cut off enough to make a splendid roof. Ialways wanted a tin-roofed house. Old Jack Wilson, who lives near us,had a tin roof on his barn, an' it made his daughters so proud theywouldn't go home with me from meetin'. You kin write home that we have anew house with a tin roof, an' it'll help your sisters to marry better."
"Shorty, that head o' your'n gits bigger every time I look at it."
Si and Shorty had the extreme quality of being able to forget fatiguewhen there was something to be accomplished. As darkness settleddown they picked up the ax and proceeded across the fields to thefreight-car.
"There's someone in there," said Si, as they came close to it. Theyreconnoitered it carefully. Five or six men, without arms, werecomfortably ensconed inside and playing cards by the light of a fire ofpitch-pine, which they had built upon some dirt placed in the middle ofthe car.
"They're blamed skulkers," said Shorty, after a minute's survey of theinterior. "Don't you see they hain't got their guns with 'em? We won'tmind 'em."
They climbed to the top of the car, measured off about half of it, andbegan cutting through the tin with the ax. The noise alarmed the meninside. They jumped out on the ground, and called up:{131}
"Here, what're you fellers doin' up there? This is our car. Let italone."
"Go to the devil," said Shorty, making another slash at the roof withthe ax.
"This is our car, I tell you," reiterated the men. "You let it alone, orwe'll make you." Some of the men looked around for something to throw atthem.
Si walked to the end of the car, tore off the brake-wheel, and cameback.
"You fellers down there shut up and go back in side to your cards, ifyou know what's good for you," he said. "You're nothing but a lot ofdurned skulkers. We are here under orders. We don't want nothin' but apiece o' the tin roof. You kin have the rest. If any of you attemptst
o throw anything I'll mash him into the ground with this wheel. Do youhear me? Go back inside, or we'll arrest the whole lot of you and takeyou back to your regiments."
Si's authoritative tone, and the red stripes on his arm, were too muchfor the guilty consciences of the skulkers, and they went backinside the car. The tearing off the roof proceeded without furtherinterruption, but with considerable mangling of their hands by the edgesof the tin.
After they had gotten it off, they proceeded to roll it up and startedback for their "house." It was a fearful load, and one that they wouldnot have attempted to carry in ordinary times. But their blood was up;they were determined to outshine everybody else with their tin roof, andthey toiled on over the mud and rough ground, although every{132} littlewhile one of them would make a misstep and both would fall, and theheavy weight would seem to mash them into the ground.
"I don't wonder old Jake Wilson was proud of his tin roof," gasped Si,as he pulled himself out of a mudhole and rolled the tin off him andShorty. "If I'd a tin roof on my barn durned if my daughter should walkhome with a man that didn't own a whole section of bottom land and droveo' mules to boot."
It was fully midnight before they reached their pen and laid theirburden down. They were too tired to do anything more than lay theirblankets down on a pile of cedar boughs and go to sleep.
The next morning they unrolled their booty and gloated over it. Itwould make a perfect roof, and they felt it repaid all their toils. Uponmeasurement they found it much larger each way than their log pen.
"Just right," said Shorty gleefully. "It'll stick out two feet allaround. It's the aristocratic, fashion able thing now-a-days tohave wide cornishes. Remember them swell houses we wuz lookin' at inLouisville? We're right in style with them."
The rest of Co. Q gathered around to inspect it and envy them.
"I suppose you left some," said Jack Wilkinson. "I'll go down there andget the rest."
"Much you won't," said Si, looking toward the car; "there ain't norest."
They all looked that way. Early as it was the car had totallydisappeared, down to the wheels, which some men were rolling away.{133}
"That must be some o' them Maumee River Muskrats," said Shorty, lookingat the latter. "They'll steal anything they kin git away with, just forthe sake of stealin'. What on earth kin they do with them wheels?"
"They may knock 'em off the axles an' make hearths for their fireplaces,and use the axles for posts," suggested Si.
"Here, you fellers," said Shorty, "give us a lift. Let's have ahouse-raisin'. Help us put the roof on."
They fell to with a will, even the Captain assisting, and, after a gooddeal of trouble and more cut hands, succeeded in getting the piece oftin on top of the pen and bent down across the ridge-pole. Si and Shortyproceeded to secure it in place by putting other poles across it andfastening them down with ropes and strips of bark to the lower logs.
"Your broad cornice is aristocratic, as you say," said the Captain, "butI'm afraid it'll catch the wind, and tip your house over in some bigstorm."
THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL. 133]
"That's so," admitted Shorty; "but a feller that puts on airs always hasto take some chances. I don't want people to think that we are mean andstingy about a little tin, so I guess we'll keep her just as she is."
The next day they borrowed a saw from the Pioneers, cut out a hole forthe door, and another for the fireplace. They made a frame for the doorout of pieces of cracker-boxes, and hung up their bit of canvas for adoor. They filled up the spaces be tween the logs with pieces of wood,and then daubed clay on until they had the walls tight. They gathered upstones and built a commodious fireplace, daubing it all over with clay,until it was wind and water tight.
"What are we goin' to do for a chimney, Si?" said{135} Shorty, as theirfireplace became about breast-high. "Build one o' sticks, like theserebels around here? That'll be an awful lot o' work."
SOLID COMFORT. 135]
"I've had an idee," said Si. "I ain't goin' to let{136} you do all thethinkin', even if you are a born architect. When I was helpin' drawrations yesterday, I looked at the pork barrels, and got an ideethat one of them'd make a good chimney. I spoke to Bill Suggs, theCommissary-Sergeant, about it, and he agreed to save me a barrel whenit was empty, which it must be about now. I'll go down and see him aboutit."
Si presently came back rolling the empty barrel. They knocked the bottomout, carefully plastered it over inside with clay, and set it up ontheir fireplace, and made the joints with more clay. It made a splendidchimney. They washed the clay off their hands, built a cheerful fireinside, cooked a bountiful supper, and ate it in the light and comfortof their own fireside. It was now Saturday night. They had had a week ofseverer toil than they had ever dreamed of performing at home, but itsreward was ample.
"Ah," said Shorty, as he sat on a chunk of wood, pipe in mouth, andabsorbed the warmth, "this is something like home and home comforts.It's more like white livin' than I've had since I've bin in the army.Let's act like men and Christians tomorrow, by not doin' a lick o' worko' any kind. Let's lay abed late, and then wash up all over, and go tohear the Chaplain preach."
"Agreed," said Si, as he spread out their blankets for the night.
It had been threatening weather all day, and now the rain came down witha rush.
"Ain't that music, now," said Shorty, listening to the patter on theroof. "Nothin' sounds so sweet as{137} rain upon a tin roof. Let itrain cats and dogs, if it wants to. The harder the better. Si, there'snothin' so healthy to sleep under as a tin roof. I'll never haveanything but a tin roof on my house when I git home. And we've got theonly tin roof in the regiment. Think o' that." But Si was too sleepy tothink.
