him tell of his visit
to Wisconsin. Before night he was allowed to go home with his sister on
parole, and Jim and I were detailed to go and help bury the dead of the
regiment.

CHAPTER XIX.

I am Detailed to Drive a Six-Mule Team--I am Covered with
Red Mud--I am Sent on an Expedition of Cold-Blooded Murder--
I Make a Dozen ex-Confederate Soldiers Happy by Setting Them
Up in Business.

After the battle alluded to in my last chapter, it took us a week or
more to get brushed up, the dead buried, and everything ready to go to
living again. A battle to a regiment in the field is a good deal like
a funeral in a family at home. When a member of a family is sick unto
death, all looks dark, and when the sick person dies it seems as though
the world could never look bright again. Every time the relatives and
friends look at any article belonging to a deceased friend, the agony
comes back, and it is quite a while before there is any brightness
anywhere, but in time the tear-stained faces become smiling, the lost
friend is thought of only occasionally, and the world moves along just
the same. So in the army. For a few days the thought of comrades being
gone forever, was painful, and no man wanted to ride the horse whose
owner had been killed, but within a week the feeling was all gone, and
if a horse was a good one he didn't stay in the corral very long on
account of some good fellow having been shot off his back. The boys
who couldn't remember what was trumps on the day of the battle---(and
a soldier has got to be greatly interested in something else to forget
what is trumps) returned to their card-playing, and no one would know,
to look at them, that they had passed through a pretty serious scare,
and seen their comrades fall all around. We told stories of our
experience in the army and at home, and entertained each other. I
couldn't tell much, except what a good shot I was with a shotgun and
rifle, and I told some marvelous stories about hitting the bull's eye.
It got to be tiresome waiting around for my commission to arrive, and I
did not quite enjoy being a commissioned high private. Everybody knew
I had been recommended for a commsssion, and they all called me
"Lieutenant," but all the same I was doing duty as a private. For two
or three clays I was detailed to drive mules for the quartermaster, and
that was the worst service I ever did perform. It seemed as though
the colonel wanted to prepare