uthoritative tone, and the red stripes on his arm, were too much
for the guilty consciences of the skulkers, and they went back
inside the car. The tearing off the roof proceeded without further
interruption, but with considerable mangling of their hands by the edges
of the tin.

After they had gotten it off, they proceeded to roll it up and started
back for their "house." It was a fearful load, and one that they would
not have attempted to carry in ordinary times. But their blood was up;
they were determined to outshine everybody else with their tin roof, and
they toiled on over the mud and rough ground, although every{132} little
while one of them would make a misstep and both would fall, and the
heavy weight would seem to mash them into the ground.

"I don't wonder old Jake Wilson was proud of his tin roof," gasped Si,
as he pulled himself out of a mudhole and rolled the tin off him and
Shorty. "If I'd a tin roof on my barn durned if my daughter should walk
home with a man that didn't own a whole section of bottom land and drove
o' mules to boot."

It was fully midnight before they reached their pen and laid their
burden down. They were too tired to do anything more than lay their
blankets down on a pile of cedar boughs and go to sleep.

The next morning they unrolled their booty and gloated over it. It
would make a perfect roof, and they felt it repaid all their toils. Upon
measurement they found it much larger each way than their log pen.

"Just right," said Shorty gleefully. "It'll stick out two feet all
around. It's the aristocratic, fashion able thing now-a-days to
have wide cornishes. Remember them swell houses we wuz lookin' at in
Louisville? We're right in style with them."

The rest of Co. Q gathered around to inspect it and envy them.

"I suppose you left some," said Jack Wilkinson. "I'll go down there and
get the rest."

"Much you won't," said Si, looking toward the car; "there ain't no
rest."

They all looked that way. Early as it was the car had totally
disappeared, down to the wheels, which some men were rolling away.{133}

"That must be some o' them Maumee River Muskrats," said Shorty, looking
at the latter. "They'll steal anything they kin git away with, just for
the sake of stealin'. What on earth kin they do with them wheels?"

"They may knock 'em off the axles an' make hearths for their fireplaces,
and use the axles for posts," suggested Si.

"Here, you fellers," said Shorty, "give us