"You'll have just about as much chance of findin' it," said Shorty dolefully, "among that mob o' famished Suckers as you would o' findin' a straw-stack in the infernal regions. But I'll go 'long with you. We can't lose the regiment in the day time."
"By the way, Shorty," said Si, happening to glance at the sleeves of the overcoats which he had picked up, "we both seem to be Sergeants."
"That's so," assented Shorty. "Both these are Sergeant's overcoats. We'll take our guns along, and play that we are on duty. It may help us out somewhere."
Things looked so quiet in front that the Captain gave them permission, and off they started. It seemed a hopeless quest. Everywhere men were ravenous for food. They found one squad toasting on their rammers the pieces of a luckless rabbit they had cornered in a patch of briars. Another was digging away at a hole that they alleged contained a woodchuck. A third was parching some corn found in a thrown-away feed box, and congratulating themselves upon the lucky find.
Finally they came out upon the banks of Stone River at the place to which Si had wandered during the night. Si recognized it at once, and also the voices that came from behind a little thicket of paw paws as those of the men with whom he had had the squabble.
Si motioned to Shorty to stop and keep silent, while he stepped up closer, parted the bushes a little, looked through, and listened.
Two men were standing by a fire, which was concealed from the army by the paw-paws. Four others had just come up, carrying rolled in a blanket what seemed to be a dead body. They flung it down by the fire, with exclamations of relief, and unrolled it. It was the carcass of a pig so recently killed that it was still bleeding.
"Hello," exclaimed the others joyfully; "where did you get that?"
"Why," exclaimed one of the others, "we were poking around down there under the bank, and we happened to spy a nigger cabin on the other side of the river, hid in among the willers, where nobody could see it. We thought there might be something over there, so we waded across. There wasn't any thing to speak of in the cabin, but we found this pig in the pen. Jim bayoneted it, and then we wrapped it up in our blanket, as if we wuz taking a boy back to the Surgeon's, and fetched it along. We couldn't 've got a hundred yards through that crowd if they'd dreamed what we had. Jerusalem, but it was heavy, though. We thought that pig weighed a thousand pounds before we got here."
"Bully boys," said the others gleefully. "We'll have enough to eat, no matter how many wagons the rebels burn. I always enjoyed a dinner of fresh pork more on New Year's Day than any other time."