"I reckon they'll have to cheese this racket 'fore they catch any fish," another remarked.
And all these and many other comical remarks were made by our boys, as they contemplated the new situation from the cars and patiently awaited orders to go to camp.
It was indeed a great relief to us when an orderly bestriding a jaded, mud-bespattered horse finally rode up and informed us that he would take us to camp. Accordingly we disembarked, fell into line and set out for our campground.
After a deep wading, tiresome zigzagging along miserable roads, devious and uncertain paths and blind trails, across sloppy and splashy summer-fallows, for what seemed an interminable distance, we at last reached camp.
In anticipation of our coming, the camp boys had prepared us a regulation army supper consisting mainly of beans, bacon, rice and hard tack, with the usual black coffee accompaniment. Notwithstanding the rude coarse rations, the hungry recruits laid to and ate with a wonderful relish and offered no excuses. To be sure, as the supper progressed, many humorous observations were made by the boys, touching the kinds and quality of Uncle Sam's menu and the manner of its service. Notwithstanding the coarse rations offered and the fact that every mother's son of them had been continually gormandizing ever since we left home, each did ample justice to his first army supper. Haywood discovered the corpse of a lightning bug embalmed in his plate of beans, and another equally as observing and curious fished the remains of an unknown beetle out of his rice. A detachment of daddy long legs charged to and fro across the bacon platter, and divers bugs and insects swarmed around the sputtering candles. One recruit soaked his hard tack in his coffee until it bloated up like a toad, and Ike, while wrestling with a piece of swine belly, allowed he probably "wasn't the first feller that had had holt of that."
"Ike, how do you like the grub?" asked Tom, when he had lounged down beside a stump, after eating.
"Better'n I 'spected," said Ike, "Haint got used to them tacks yet, but the pepper'n salt was passable."
Then we stowed away our luggage, finding places for our traps and boxes, and selecting sleeping places. Observing that two blankets could be utilized by two persons bunking together better than one blanket could serve one lone person, they paired off and mated up like spring geese. As might naturally be supposed, Ike and I bunked together. We spread our blankets at the roots of a tree where Haywood allowed we would be a little above high-water mark, and by the time the numerous regimental bands and bugles were sounding tattoo, we were well tucked away for the night, and though this was an entirely new experience to us, we were only too glad to stretch ourselves out in the open air between two coarse army blankets. As we pulled the drapery of our couch about us, Ike got a sniff of carbolic acid upon our blankets and asked me if I "catched onto the deathly fragrance of our bed clothes." I told him I noticed a peculiar smell.
"Smells like a woodpecker's nest," continued Ike. "Guess they've been packing limberger cheese 'r suthin' in 'em.
"No," said I, "but I suppose the blankets have been treated with some preparations of disinfection."