By this time they were hungry again. The black berries had no staying power in proportion to their filling qualities, and anxiously as they watched the western horizon, no feet of the mules bringing rations had been seen beautiful on the mountains.
They went out and filled up again on blackberries, but these seemed to have lost something of their delicious taste of those eaten earlier in the morning.
They went back, wrung out their clothes, and put them on again.
"They'll fit better if they dry on us," remarked Shorty. "And I'm afraid we'll warp, splinter and check if we are exposed to this sun any longer after all the soakin' we've bin havin' for the past 10 days."
Comfortably full abdominally, with a delicious sense of relief from the fiendish insects, the sun shining once more brightly in the sky, and elated over the brilliant success of the campaign, they felt as happy as it often comes to men.
The scenery was inspiring. Beyond Elk River the romantic Cumberland Mountains raised their picturesque peaks and frowning cliffs into a wondrous cloud-world, where the radiant sunshine and the pearly showers seemed in endless struggle for dominion, with the bright rainbows for war-banners. When the sunshine prevailed, filmy white clouds flags of truce floated lazily from peak to peak, and draped themselves about the rugged rocks. It was an ever-changing panorama of beauty and mystery, gazing on which the eye never wearied.
"Bragg's somewhere behind them mountains, Shorty," said Si, as the two lay on the ground, smoked, and looked with charmed eyes on the sky line. "The next job's to go in there and find him and lick him."
"I don't care a durn, if it's only dry weather," answered Shorty. "I kin stand anything but rain. I'd like to soldier awhile in the Sahara Desert for a change. Hello, what's that? A fight?"
A gun had boomed out loudly. The boys pricked up their ears, took their pipes from their mouths and half raised in anticipation of the bugle-call. An other shot followed after an interval, and then a third and fourth.
"They're firing a National salute at Division Headquarters in honor of the Fourth of July," explained the Orderly-Sergeant.