"It's just killin'," said Si to Shorty, "to watch the veteran airs our boys are puttin' on over those new fellers. You'd think they'd fit in every battle since Bunker Hill, and learned Gen. Grant all he knows about tactics. Talk about the way the old fellers used to fill us up, why, these boys lay away over everything we ever knowed. I overheard Harry Joslyn laying it into about 40 of them. 'No man knows just what his feelin's will be under fire until he has the actual experience,' says he. 'Now, the first time I heard a rebel bullet whistle,' and his face took on a look as if he was trying to recollect something years ago."
"Yes," laughed Shorty, "and you should hear little Pete Skidmore and Sandy Baker lecturing them greenies as to the need o' lookin' carefully to their rear and beware o' rebels sneakin' 'round and attackin' their trains. Hold on. Look through this brush. There's Monty Scruggs explainin' the plan o' battle to a crowd of 'em. He don't know we're anywhere around. Listen and you'll hear something."
"The enemy had reached the ground in advance of us," Monty was elucidating, in language with which his school histories and the daily papers had familiarized him, "and had strongly posted himself along those hights, occupying a position of great natural strength, including their own natural cussedness. Their numbers was greatly superior to ours, and they had prepared a cunning trap for us, which we only escaped by the vigilance of Corpril Elliott and the generalship of Serg't Klegg. I tell you, those men are a dandy team when it comes to running a battle. They know their little biz, and don't you forget it for a minute. The enemy opened a galling fire, when Corpril Elliott gallantly advanced to that point there and responded, while Serg't Klegg rapidly arrayed his men along there, and the battle became terrific. It was like the poet says:
"'Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steeds to battle driven,
And louder than the bolts of heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery.'"
"O, come off, Monty," called the more prosaic Gid Mackall; "you know we didn't have no artillery. If we'd had, we'd a blowed 'em clean offen the hill."
The whistle summoned them to get aboard and move on.
CHAPTER XXI. CHATTANOOGA AT LAST
LOST IN A MAZE OF RAILROAD TRAINS.
"WHAT'S the program?" Si inquired of the conductor, as the boys were being formed on the bank, preparatory to entering the cars. "I s'pose it's to go over there and put in a week o' hard work rebuildin' that bridge. Have you got any axes and saws on the train? How long is the blamed old bridge, anyway?"