road.

There was nothing to do but plod off through mud and rain to the top of
a hill in the distance, where there was a fence still standing. A
half an hour later each of the six came back with a heavy rail on his
shoulder. They pried the wagon out and got it started, only to sink
again in another quagmire a few hundred yards further on.

Si and the boys went back to get their rails, but found that they had
been carried off by another squad that had a wagon in trouble. There was
nothing to do but to make another toilsome journey to the fence for more
rails.

After helping the wagon out they concluded it{24} would be wiser to
carry their rails with them a little way to see if they would be needed
again.

They were many times that afternoon. As dark ness came on Si, who
had the crowning virtue of hopefulness when he fully recognized the
unutterable badness of things, tried to cheer the other boys up with
assertions that they would soon get into camp, where they would find
bright, warm fires with which to dry their clothes, and plenty of hot
coffee to thaw them out inside.

The quick-coming darkness added enormously to the misery of their work.
For hours they struggled along the bottomless road, in the midst of a
ruck of played-out mules and unutterably tired, disgusted men, laboring
as they were to get wagons ahead.

Finally they came up to their brigade, which had turned off the road
and gone into line-of-battle in an old cotton-field, where the mud was
deeper, if possible, than in the road.

"Where's the 200th Ind.?" called out Si.

"Here, Si," Shorty's voice answered.

"Where's the fires, Shorty," asked Si, with sinking heart.

"Ain't allowed none," answered his partner gloomily. "There's a rebel
battery on that hill there, and they shoot every time a match is
lighted. What've you got there, a rail? By George, that's lucky! We'll
have something to keep us out of the mud."

They laid down the rail and sat upon it.

"Shorty," said Si, as he tried to arrange his aching bones to some
comfort on the rail, "I got mad at you for cussin' the Wabash this
morning. I ain't a fluid talker such as you are, an' I can't find words
to say{25} what I think. But I jest wisht you would begin right here
and cuss everybody from Abe Lincoln down to Corporal Si Klegg, and
everything from the Wabash in Injianny down to the Cumberland in
Tennessee. I'd like to listen to you."

CHAPTER II. SECOND DAY'S MARCH

THE LONG C