"Now, I want to know at once what this means?" Little Pete Skidmore again became the spokesman of the abashed crowd.
"Why, them men back there on the switch cautioned us above all things not to let the rebels git the drop on us when we come to that crick; that we wouldn't see nothin' of 'em—nothin' but a low bank, behind which they wuz hid, with their guns pokin' through the brush, but the moment we see the bank breastwork throwed up along the crick we must let into it. That's what it's for. The rebels throwed it up to hide behind. Them men said that the brush back there was as full o' rebels as a hound o' fleas, and that we must let into 'em the moment we see the bank, or they'd git the drop on us. They had an awful time there theirselves, and they gave us all the catridges they had left for us to use."
"You little numbskulls," said Si; "why didn't you come to use and tell us about this?"
"They told us to be partickeler and say nothin' to you. Your stayin' back there in the car showed that you didn't know nothin' about it; you hadn't bin down this way for a long time and wasn't up to the latest improvements, and you wuz jest as like as not to run us into a hornets' nest; that you wuzzent our real officers, anyway, and it didn't much matter to you what happened to us."
"Our own sins are comin' back on us. Shorty," remarked Si. "This is a judgment on you for the way you've filled up recruits at every chance you got."
"'Taint on me," said Shorty, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm not in command. You are."
"I shall be mighty glad when we git this outfit to Chattanoogy," sighed Si. "I'm gittin' older every minute that I have 'em on my hands."