?"

And the Captain splashed off through the red mud to make somebody else
still more miserable.

Si picked up his wet gun from the rain-soaked sod, put it under his
streaming overcoat, ordered the five drenched, dripping, dejected boys
near him to follow, and plunged back into the creek, which had by this
time risen above his knees. He was past the stage of anger now. He
simply wished that he was dead and out of the whole business. A nice,
dry grave on a sunny hillock in Posey County, with a good roof over it
to keep out the rain, would be a welcome retreat.

In gloomy silence he and his squad plodded back through the eternal mud
and the steady downpour, through the miry fields, through the swirling
yellow floods in the brooks and branches, in search of the laggard
company wagon.{22}

Two or three miles back they came upon it, stuck fast in a deep
mud-hole. The enraged teamster was pounding the mules over the head with
the butt of his blacksnake whip, not in the expectation of getting any
further effort out of them he knew better than that but as a relief to
his overcharged heart.

"Stop beatin' them mules over the head," shouted Si, as they came up.
Not that he cared a fig about the mules, but that he wanted to "jump"
somebody.

[Illustration: STOP BEATIN' THEM MULES' 22]

"Go to brimstone blazes, you freckle-faced Posey County refugee,"
responded Groundhog, the teamster, in the same fraternal spirit. "I'm
drivin' this here team." He gave the nigh-swing mule a "welt" that would
have knocked down anything else than a swing mule.

"If you don't stop beatin' them mules, by thunder, I'll make you."

"Make's a good word," responded Groundhog, giving the off-swing mule a
wicked "biff." "I never see anything come out of Posey County that could
make me do what I didn't want to."

Si struck at him awkwardly. He was so hampered by his weight of soggy
clothes that there was little force or direction to his blow. The soaked
teamster returned the blow with equal clumsiness.

The other boys came up and pulled them apart.

"We ain't no time for sich blamed nonsense," they growled. "We've got
to git this here wagon up to the company, an' we'll have the devil's own
time doin' it. Quit skylarkin' an' git to work."

They looked around for something with which to make pries. Every rail
and stick within a quarter of a mile of the road was gone. They had been
used up the previous Summer, when both armies had passed over the