“Better take off them togs now, and join your company, said the major.
“I guess so,” said the rebel, and he took off his rebel uniform, and the major handed him a blue coat and pair of pants, and he put them on.
I was petrified. The fact was, the rebel was a sergeant in our regiment, who had been detailed as a scout, and had been making a trip into the rebel lines as a spy. I had made an ass of myself in the whole business, and he would tell all the boys about it. I went back to my company crushed.
CHAPTER XI.
I am Detailed to Build a Bridge-It Was a Good Bridge, but
Over the Wrong Stream—The General Appears—I am Crushed, in
Fact Pulverized!—I am Attacked with Rheumatism.
After the episode, related last week, in which I foolishly organized a regular battle, to capture a supposed rebel, who turned out to be a member of my own regiment, I expected to be the laughing stock of all the soldiers, and that my commission as corporal would be taken away from me, and that I would be reduced to the ranks, and when, the next morning, the colonel sent for me to come to his tent, it was a stand-off with me whether I would take to the woods and desert, in disgrace, and never show up again, or go to the colonel, face the music, and admit that I had made an ass of myself. Finally I decided to visit the colonel. On the way to his tent I noticed that our force had been augmented greatly. The road was full of wagons, the fields near us were filled with infantry and artillery, and there were fifty wagons or more loaded with pontoons, great boats, or the frame-work of boats, which were to be covered with canvass, which was water-proof, and the boats were to be used for bridges across streams. The colonel had not told me anything about the expected arrival of more troops, and it worried me a good deal. May be there was a big battle coming off, and I might blunder into it unconscious of danger, and: get the liver blowed out of me by a cannon. I felt that the colonel had not treated me right in keeping me in ignorance of all this preparation. I went to the colonel's tent and there was quite a crowd of officers, some with artillery uniforms, several colonels, and one general with a star on his shoulder straps, and a crooked sword with a silver scabbard, covered with gold trimmings. I felt quite small with those big officers, but I tried to look brave, and as though I was accustomed to attending councils of war. The colonel smiled at me as I came in which braced me up a good deal.
General, this is the sergeant I spoke to you about, said the colonel, as he turned from a map they had been looking at. I felt pale when the colonel addressed me as sergeant, and was going to call his attention to the mistake, when the general said:
Sergeant, the colonel tells me that you can turn your hand to almost anything. What line of business have you worked at previous to your enlistment?
“Well, I guess there is nothing that is usually done in a country village that I have not done. I have clerked in a grocery, tended bar, drove team on a threshing machine, worked in a slaughter house, drove omnibus, worked in a-saw-mill, learned the printing trade, rode saw-logs, worked in a pinery, been brakeman on a freight train, acted as assistant chambermaid in a livery stable, clerked in a hotel, worked on a farm, been an auctioneer, edited a newspaper, took up the collection in church, canvassed for books, been life-insurance agent, worked at bridge-building, took tintypes, sat on a jury, been constable, been deck-hand on a steamboat, chopped cord-wood, run a cider-mill, and drove a stallion in a four-minute race at a county fair.”