he can't drive without it. Le's git the mule
loose first."

They got the mule out and turned him around toward the wagons.

"Now," said Shorty, addressing Groundhog, "you white-livered son-in-law
of a jackass, git back to that wagon as fast as you kin, if you don't
want me to run this bayonet through you."

There was more straining and prying in the dreary rain and fathomless
mud to get the wagons started.{66}

"Shorty," said Si, as they plodded alongside the road, with a rail on
one shoulder and a gun on the other, "I really believe that this is the
toughest day we've had yet. What d'you s'pose father and mother'd say if
they could see us?"

[Illustration: EARNING THIRTEEN DOLLARS A MONTH 57]

"They'd probably say we wuz earning our $13 a month, with $100 bounty
at the end o' three years.," snapped Shorty, who was in no mood for
irrelevant conversation.

So the long, arduous day went. When they were not pulling, pushing,
prying, and yelling, to get the wagons out of mudholes, they were
rushing over the clogging, plowed fields to stand off the nagging rebel
cavalry, which seemed to fill the country as full as the rain, the mud,
the rocks and the sweeping cedars did. As night drew on they came up
to lines of fires where the different divisions were going into
line-of-battle along the banks of Stone River. The mud became deeper
than ever, from the trampling of tens of thousands of men and animals,
but they at least did not have the aggravating rebel cavalry to bother
them. They found their division at last in an old cottonfield, and were
instantly surrounded by a crowd of hungry, angry men.

"Where in blazes have you fellers bin all day?" they shouted. "You ought
to've got up here hours ago. We're about starved."

"Go to thunder, you ungrateful whelps," said Si. "You kin git your own
wagons up after this. I'll never help guard another wagon-train as long
as I'm in the army."

CHAPTER VI. BATTLE OF STONE RIVER

THE 200TH IND. IS PRAISED FOR BRAVERY.

THE fagged-out 200th Ind. was put in reserve to the brigade, which lay
in the line-of-battle. After having got the train safely into camp, the
regiment felt that it was incapable of moving another foot.

While their coffee was boiling Si and Shorty broke off a few cedar
branches to lay under them, and keep out the mud. The rain still
drizzled, cold, searching and depressing, but they were too utterly
tired to do anything more than spread their over coats o