CHAPTER XI. SHORTY'S CORRESPONDENT
GETS A LETTER FROM BAD AX, WIS., AND IS ALMOST OVERCOME WITH JOY.
SHORTY had always been conspicuously lacking in the general interest which his comrades had shown in the mails. Probably at some time in his life he had had a home like the rest of them, but for some reason home now played no part in his thoughts. The enlistment and muster-rolls stated that he was born in Indiana, but he was a stranger in the neighborhood when he enrolled himself in Co. Q.
His revelations as to his past were confined to memories of things which happened "when I was cuttin' wood down the Mississippi," or "when I was runnin' on an Ohio sternwheel."
He wrote no letters and received none. And when the joyful cry, "Mail's come," would send everybody else in the regiment on a run to the Chaplain's tent, in eager anticipation, to jostle one another in impatience, until the contents of the mailpouch were distributed, Shorty would remain indifferent in his tent, without an instant's interruption in his gun cleaning, mending, or whatever task he might have in hand.
A change came over him after he sent his letter to Bad Ax, Wis. The cry, "Mail's come," would make him start, in spite of himself, and before he could think to maintain his old indifference. He was ashamed, lest he betray his heart's most secret thoughts.
The matter of the secure transmission of the mails between camp and home began to receive his earnest attention. He feared that the authorities were not taking sufficient precautions. The report that John Morgan's guerrillas had captured a train between Louisville and Nashville, rifled the mail car, and carried off the letters, filled him with burning indignation, both against Morgan and his band and the Generals who had not long ago exterminated that pestiferous crowd.
He had some severe strictures on the slovenly way in which the mail was distributed from the Division and Brigade Headquarters to the regiments. It was a matter, he said, which could not be done too carefully. It was a great deal more important than the distribution of rations. A man would much rather lose several days' rations than a letter from home. He could manage in some way to get enough to live on, but nothing would replace a lost letter.
Then, he would have fits of silent musing, sometimes when alone, sometimes when with Si in the company, over the personality of the fair stocking-knitter of Wisconsin and the letter he had sent her. He would try to recall the exact wording of each sentence he had laboriously penned, and wonder how it impressed her, think how it might have been improved, and blame himself for not having been more outspoken in his desire to hear from her again. He would steal off into the brush, pull out the socks and letter, which he kept carefully wrapped up in a sheet of the heavy letter paper, and read over the letter carefully again, although he knew every word of it by heart. These fits alarmed Si.
"I'm af eared," he confided to some cronies, "that rebel bullet hurt Shorty more'n he'll let on. He's not actin' like hisself at times. That bullet scraped so near his thinkery that it may have addled it. It was an awful close shave."