about a mile of 'em."

Shorty grumbled: "That means a tough day's work pryin' wagons out of
the mud, and restin' ourselves between times runnin' after a lot
o' skippin', cavortin' cavalry that's about as easy to ketch as a
half-bushel o' fleas. Anything I hate it's rebel cavalry{58} all
tear-around and yell, and when you git ready to shoot they're on the
other side o' the hill."

"Well," said Si, removing a slab of sizzling fat pork from the end of
his rammer, laying it on his hardtack, and taking a generous bite, "we
mustn't allow them to take no wagons away from the 200th Ind., slosh
around as they may. We want all that grub ourselves."

"Well, hump yourselves," said the Orderly-Sergeant, as he spattered on;
"fall in promptly when assembly blows. Got plenty o' cartridges?"

Two or three hours later every man in the 200th Ind., wet to the skin,
and with enough mud on him to be assessable as real estate, was in a
temper to have sassed his gentle old grandmother and whipped his best
friend. He believed that if there was any thing under heavens meaner
than Tennessee weather it was an army mule; the teamsters had even
less sense and more contrariness than the mules; the army wagon was
a disheartening device of the devil, and Tennessee roads had been
especially contrived by Jeff Davis to break the hearts of Union
soldiers.

The rain came down with a steady pelt that drove right through to the
body. The wagon wheels sank into every mud-hole and made it deeper.
Prying out the leading ones seemed only to make it worse for the next.
The discouraged mules would settle back in the breech ings, and not
pull an ounce at the most critical moments. The drivers would become
blundering idiots, driveling futile profanity. In spite of all the mud
the striving, pushing, pulling, prying, lifting, shouting 200th Ind.
gathered up on their hands and clothes, it increased momentarily in the
road.{59}

The train had strung out over a mile or more of rocky ledges and abysses
of mire. Around each wagon was a squad who felt deeply injured by the
certainty that their infernal luck had given them the heaviest wagon,
the worst mules, and the most exasperating driver in the whole division.

"I couldn't 've made a doggoneder fool than Groundhog, that teamster,"
said Shorty, laying down his rail for a minute's rest, "if I'd 'a'
had Thompson's colt before my eyes for a pattern. That feller was born
addled, on Friday, in the dark of the moon."