ingly solemn, unhappy New Year's Day for the
Union soldiers on the banks of Stone River. Of the 44,000 who had gone
into the line on the evening of Dec. 30, nearly 9,000 had been killed or
wounded and about 2,000 were prisoners. The whole right wing of the
army had been driven back several miles, to the Nashville Pike. Cannon,
wagon-trains, tents and supplies had been captured by the rebel cavalry,
which had burned miles of wagons, and the faint-hearted ones murmured
that the army would have to surrender or starve.

There was not ammunition enough to fight an other battle. The rebel army
had suffered as heavily in killed and wounded, but it was standing on
its own ground, near its own supplies, and had in addition captured
great quantities of ours.{96}

The mutual slaughter of the two armies had been inconceivably awful
inexpressibly ghastly, shuddering, sickening. They had pounded
one another to absolute exhaustion, and all that sullen, lowering,
sky-weeping Winter's day they lay and glared at one another like two
huge lions which had fanged and torn each other until their strength had
been entirely expended, and breath and strength were gone. Each was too
spent to strike another blow, but each too savagely resolute to think of
retreating.

All the dogged stubbornness of his race was now at fever point in Si's
veins. Those old pioneers and farmers of the Wabash from whom he sprang
were not particularly handsome to look at, they were not glib talkers,
nor well educated. But they had a way of thinking out rather slowly and
awkwardly it might be just what they ought to do, and then doing it or
dying in the effort which made it very disastrous for whoever stood in
their way. Those who knew them best much preferred to be along with them
rather than against them when they set their square-cornered heads upon
accomplishing some object.

Si might be wet, hungry, and the morass of mud in which the army was
wallowing uncomfortable and discouraging to the last degree, but there
was not the slightest thought in his mind of giving up the fight as
long as there was a rebel in sight. He and Shorty were not hurt yet, and
until they were, the army was still in good fighting trim.

The line of the 200th Ind. was mournfully shorter than it was two days
before, but there were still several hundred boys of Si's stamp gathered
resolutely{97} around its flag, the game little Colonel's voice rang out
as sharply as ever, and the way the b