It was awful double-quicking over that rocky, rutty road, but taking Shorty and four others. Si went on the keen jump to arrive hot and breathless on the banks of the creek. There he found a large bearded man wearing an officer's slouched hat sitting on a log, smoking a black pipe, and gazing calmly on the ruck of wagons piled up behind one stalled in the creek, which all the mules they could hitch to it had failed to pull out.
It was the Wagon Master, and his calmness was that of exhaustion. He had yelled and sworn himself dry, and was collecting another fund of abuse to spout at men and animals.
"Here, why don't you git a move on them wagons?" said Si hotly, for he was angered at the man's apparent indifference.
"'Tend to your own business and I'll tend to mine," said the Wagon Master, sullenly, without removing his pipe or looking at Si.
"Look here, I'm a Corporal, commanding the advance guard," said Si. "I order you!"
This seemed to open the fountains of the man's soul.
"You order me?" he yelled, "you splay-footed, knock-kneed, chuckled-headed paper-collared, whitegloved sprat from a milk-sick prairie. Corporal! I outrank all the Corporals from here to Christmas of next year."
"The gentleman seems to have something on his mind," grinned Shorty. "Mebbe his dinner didn't set well."
"Shorty?" inquired Si, "how does a Wagon Master rank? Seems to me nobody lower'n a Brigadier-General should dare talk to me that way."
"Dunno," answered Shorty, doubtfully. "Seems as if I'd heard some of them Wagon Masters rank as Kurnels. He swears like one."