ds back there stuff you with sich
nonsense about the rebel cavalry. They won't git near enough you to
hit you with a sword half a mile long. They're like yaller dogs--their
bark's the wust thing about 'em. I'll look out for you. You'll stay
right by me, all the time, and you won't git hurt. You go back there to
my blankits and crawl into 'em and go to sleep. I'll be there as soon's
I finish this letter, Forgit all about the rebel cavalry, and go to
sleep. Ter-morrer you'll see every mother's son o' them rebels breakin'
their hoss' necks to git out o' range o' our Springfields."

Then Shorty finished his letter:

"Ime doin' my best to be a second father to little Pete.
Heze as good a little soul as ever lived, but when I talk
another boy to raise it'll be sumwhair else than in the
army.

"Yores, till deth."

Just then the silver-voiced bugles in hundreds of camps on
mountain-sides, in glens, in the valleys, and on the plains began
ringing out sweetly mournful "Taps," and the echoes reverberated from
the towering palisades of Lookout to the rocky cliffs of the Pigeon
Mountains.

It was the last general "Taps" that mighty army would hear for 100 days
of stormy battling.

The cheering ceased, the bonfires burned out. Shorty put his letter in
an envelope, directed it, and added it to the heap at the Chaplain's
tent.

Then he went back and arranged his things so that he could lay his hands
unfailingly on them in the darkness of the morning, straightened little
Pete out so that he would lie easier, and crawled in beside him.

CHAPTER XIII. THE FIRST DAY OF THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN.

AS usual, it seemed to the boys of the 200th Ind. that they had only
lain down when the bugle blew the reveille on the morning of May 3,
1864.

The vigilant Orderly-Sergeant was at once on his feet, rousing the other
"non-coms" to get the men up.

Si and Shorty rose promptly, and, experienced campaigners as they were,
were in a moment ready to march anywhere or do anything as long as their
rations and their cartridges held out.

The supply of rations and cartridges were the only limitations Sherman's
veterans knew. Their courage, their willingness, their ability to go any
distance, fight and whip anything that breathed had no limitations. They
had the supremest confidence in themselves and their leaders, and no
more doubt of their final success than they had that the sun would rise
in the morning.

Vigoro