"He must certainly be a Kurnel," said Shorty.
"Here," continued the Wagon Master, "if you don't want them two shoat-brands jerked offen you, jump in and get them wagons acrost. That's what you were sent to do. Hump yourself, if you know what's good for you. I've done all I can. Now it's your turn."
Dazed and awed by the man's authoritativeness the boys ran down to the water to see what was the trouble.
They found the usual difficulty in Southern crossings. The stupid tinkerers with the road had sought to prevent it running down into the stream by laying a log at the edge of the water. This was an enormous one two feet in diameter, with a chuckhole before it, formed by the efforts of the teams to mount the log. The heavily laden ammunition wagon had its hub below the top of the log, whence no amount of mule-power could extricate it.
Si, with Indiana commonsense, saw that the only help was to push the wagon back and lay a pile of poles to make a gradual ascent. He and the rest laid their carefully polished muskets on dry leaves at the side, pulled off their white gloves, and sending two men to hunt thru the wagons for axes to cut the poles. Si and Shorty roused up the stupid teamsters to unhitch the mules and get them behind the wagon to pull it back. Alas for their carefully brushed pantaloons and well-blackened shoes, which did not last a minute in the splashing mud.
The Wagon Master had in the meanwhile laid in a fresh supply of epithets and had a fresh batch to swear at. He stood up on the bank and yelled profane injunctions at the soldiers like a Mississippi River Mate at a boat landing. They would not work fast enough for him, nor do the right thing.
The storm at last burst. November storms in Tennessee are like the charge of a pack of wolves upon a herd of buffalo. There are wild, furious rushes, alternating with calmer intervals. The rain came down for a few minutes as if it would beat the face off the earth, and the stream swelled into a muddy torrent. Si's paper collar and cuffs at once became pulpy paste, and his boiled shirt a clammy rag. In spite of this his temper rose to the boiling point as he struggled thru the sweeping rush of muddy water to get the other wagons out of the road and the ammunition wagon pulled back a little ways to allow the poles to be piled in front of it.
The dashing downpour did not check the Wagon Master's flow of profanity. He only yelled the louder to make himself heard above the roar. The rain stopped for a few minutes as suddenly as it had begun and Col. McTarnaghan came up with all his parade finery drenched and dripping like the feathers of a prize rooster in a rainy barnyard. His Irish temper was at the steaming point, and he was in search of something to vent it on.
"You blab-mouthed son of a thief," he shouted at the Wagon Master, "what are you ordering my men around for? They are sent here to order you, not you to order them. Shut that ugly potato trap of yours and get down to work, or I'll wear my saber out on you. Get down there and put your own shoulders to the wheels, you misbegotten villain. Get down there into the water, I tell you. Corporal, see that he does his juty!"
The Wagon Master slunk down the hill, where Shorty grabbed him by the collar and yanked him over to help push one of the wagons back. The other boys had meanwhile found axes, cut down and trimmed up some pine poles and were piling them into the chuckhole under Si's practical guidance. A double team was put on the ammunition wagon, and the rest of Co. Q came up wet, mad and panting. A rope was found and stretched ahead of the mules, on which the company lined itself, the Colonel took his place on the bank and gave the word, and with a mighty effort the wagon was dragged up the hill. Some other heavily loaded ammunition wagons followed. The whole regiment was now up, and the bigger part of it lined on the rope so that these wagons came up more easily, even tho the rain resumed its wicked pounding upon the clay soil.