as after
yez."

It was awful double-quicking over that rocky, rutty road, but taking
Shorty and four others. Si went on the keen jump to arrive hot and
breathless on the banks of the creek. There he found a large bearded
man wearing an officer's slouched hat sitting on a log, smoking a
black pipe, and gazing calmly on the ruck of wagons piled up behind one
stalled in the creek, which all the mules they could hitch to it had
failed to pull out.

It was the Wagon Master, and his calmness was that of exhaustion. He had
yelled and sworn himself dry, and was collecting another fund of abuse
to spout at men and animals.

"Here, why don't you git a move on them wagons?" said Si hotly, for he
was angered at the man's apparent indifference.

"'Tend to your own business and I'll tend to mine," said the Wagon
Master, sullenly, without removing his pipe or looking at Si.

"Look here, I'm a Corporal, commanding the advance guard," said Si. "I
order you!"

This seemed to open the fountains of the man's soul.

"You order me?" he yelled, "you splay-footed, knock-kneed,
chuckled-headed paper-collared, whitegloved sprat from a milk-sick
prairie. Corporal! I outrank all the Corporals from here to Christmas of
next year."

"The gentleman seems to have something on his mind," grinned Shorty.
"Mebbe his dinner didn't set well."

"Shorty?" inquired Si, "how does a Wagon Master rank? Seems to me nobody
lower'n a Brigadier-General should dare talk to me that way."

"Dunno," answered Shorty, doubtfully. "Seems as if I'd heard some of
them Wagon Masters rank as Kurnels. He swears like one."

"Corporal!" shouted the Wagon Master with infinite scorn. "Measly
$2-a-month water toter for the camp-guard, order me!" and he went off
into a rolling stream of choice "army language."

"He must certainly be a Kurnel," said Shorty.

"Here," continued the Wagon Master, "if you don't want them two
shoat-brands jerked offen you, jump in and get them wagons acrost.
That's what you were sent to do. Hump yourself, if you know what's good
for you. I've done all I can. Now it's your turn."

Dazed and awed by the man's authoritativeness the boys ran down to the
water to see what was the trouble.

They found the usual difficulty in Southern crossings. The stupid
tinkerers with the road had sought to prevent it running down into the
stream by laying a log at the edge of the water. This was an enormous
one two feet in diameter, with a chuckhole before