"You bet," answered Shorty, "and I'll take durned good care I don't lose
little Pete Skidmore."

"Now," commanded Si, getting a good lay of the ground toward the gap,
"Attention. All ready? Forward, march."

He led off with the long march stride of the veteran, and began
threading his way through the maze of teams, batteries, herds, and
marching men and stragglers with the ease and certainty born of long
acquaintance with crowded camps. He dodged around a regiment here,
avoided a train there, and slipped through a marching battery at the
next place with a swift, unresting progress that quickly took away the
boys' wind and made them pant with the exertion of keeping up.

In the rear was the relentless Shorty.

"Close up, there! Close up!" he kept shouting to those in front. "Don't
allow no gaps between you. Keep marchin' distance--19 inches from back
to breast. Come along, Pete. I ain't a-goin' to lose you, no matter what
happens."

"Sarjint," gasped flarry Joslyn, after they had gone a couple of miles,
"don't you call this purty fast marchin'?"

"Naah," said Si contemptuously. "We're just crawlin' along. Wait till we
git where it's a little clear, and then we'll go. Here, cut acrost ahead
o' that battery that's comin' up a-trot."

There was a rush for another mile or two, when there was a momentary
halt to allow a regiment of cavalry to go by at a quick walk.

"Goodness," murmured Gid Mackall, as he set down the carpet-sack which
he would persist in carrying, "are they always in a hurry? I s'posed
that when soldiers wuzzent marchin' or fightin' they lay around camp and
played cards and stole chickens, and wrote letters home, but everybody
'round here seems on the dead rush."

"Don't seem to be nobody pic-nickin' as far's I kin see," responded
Si, "but we hain't no time to talk about it now. We must git to the
rijimint. Forward!"

Another swift push of two or three miles brought them toward the foot of
Mission Ridge, and near the little, unpainted frame house which had once
been the home of John Ross, the chief of the Cherokees.

"Boys, there's the shebang or palace of the big Injun who used to be
king of all these mountains and valleys," said Si, stopping the squad to
give them a much needed rest. "He run this whole country, and had Injuns
to burn, though he generally preferred to burn them that didn't belong
to his church."

"Roasted his neighbors instid o' his friends in a heathen sort of a
way," co