Then he tried his "back teeth." His molars were in prime order, and his jaw power was sufficient to crack a hickory nut every time. Si crowded one corner of the hardtack as far as he could between his "grinders," where he could get a good "purchase" on it, shut his eyes and turned on a full head of steam. His teeth and jaws fairly cracked under the strain, but he couldn't even "phase" it.
"If that ain't old pizen!" said Si. "It beats anything I ever seen up in the Wabash country."
But his blood was up, and laying the cracker upon a log, he brought the butt of his gun down upon it like a pile-driver.
"I thought I'd fix ye," he said, as he picked up the fragments, and tried his teeth upon the smaller ones. "Have I got to eat such stuff as that?" with a despairing look at his veteran friend. "I'd just as soon be a billy-goat and live on circus-posters, fruit-cans and old hoop-skirts."
"You'll get used to it after a while, same's we did. You'll see the time when you'll be mighty glad to get even as hard a tack as that!"
Si's heart sank almost into his shoes at the prospect, for the taste of his mother's pie and Annabel's fruit cake were yet fresh in his mouth. But Si was fully bent on being a loyal, obedient soldier, determined to make the best of everything without any more "kicking" than was the inalienable right of every man who wore a uniform.
For the first time in his life Si went to bed hungry that night. Impelled by the gnawings of his appetite he made repeated assaults upon the hardtack, but the result was wholly insufficient to satisfy the longings of his stomach. His supper wasn't anything to speak of. Before going to bed he began to exercise his ingenuity on various schemes to reduce the hardtack to a condition in which it would be more gratifying to his taste and better suited to the means with which nature had provided him for disposing of his rations. Naturally Si thought that soaking in water would have a beneficial effect. So he laid five or six of them in the bottom of a camp-kettle, anchored them down with a stone, and covered them with water. He thought that with the aid of a frying-pan he would get up a breakfast that he could eat, anyway.
Si felt a little blue as he lay curled up under his blanket with his head pillowed on his knapsack. He thought some about his mother, and sister Maria, and pretty Annabel, but he thought a good deal more about the beef and potatoes, the pies and the puddings, that were so plentifully spread upon the table at home.