“Is that you, Jerry?” little Mike Malloy, drummer of Company A, whispered. His teeth were chattering.
“Yes, Mike.”
“An’ are we goin’ into battle?”
“Looks like it, Mike.”
“Oh, murther,” Mike groaned. “We’ll all be dead wid cold before we get kilt entoirely wid bullets.”
“Battalion, forward—route step—march! Close up, men; close up,” shouted Major Lee. “Don’t straggle. Drum major, sound a march.”
“How can we sound a march wid the drums soaked an’ the fifes drownded?” Mike complained.
The First Brigade was in motion, marching back down the road for San Augustine. The music proved a dismal failure. Presently, stumbling and slipping in the mud, with clothes and knapsacks weighing a ton to the man, the column was passing the camp of the Second Brigade. The Second Brigade’s fires had long been quenched, but sentries could be dimly seen; beside the road figures were lying rolled in blankets, lights were glimmering feebly in the guard tent and brigade headquarter’s tent.
The Second Brigade was not going! The First Brigade had been selected! Hooray! And the Clarke men would be sick when they knew. Jerry chuckled to himself, thinking of Hannibal, who was missing out. At the same time he wondered whether he would see Hannibal again. But General Worth was with the First. His voice had been heard. And no doubt Old Fuss and Feathers was impatiently waiting, bent upon victory.