"If they do," chimed in Si, "they kin pick up plenty more just as good around somewhere, when daylight comes. That's what pioneers is for."
"Si, you ketch on like a he snappin' turtle," said Shorty joyfully. "We'll jest help ourselves to them guns and cartridge-boxes, and then move our camp over a little ways, and skeet out airly in the mornin' for the front, and we'll be all right. Don't say nothin' to the Lieutenant about it. He'll be all right, and approve of it, but he mustn't know anything of it officially. You git the men up and I'll go over and give the Lieutenant the wink and tell him that we've found a much better bivouac about a mile further on."
While the pioneers were struggling with their task, and the air down by the creek was filled with shouts and commands, Si and Shorty, with some of the others, quietly appropriated enough stands of arms to complete the equipment of their squad.
Shorty took much credit for his honesty and forbearance that he did not touch a single one of the pioneers' belongings but their arms. A little later the squad was in bivouac a mile away.
At the earliest dawn of Sept. 20 they were awake, and after a hasty breakfast moving out the Rossville road for the battlefield. Only an occasional shot from a nervous picket, peering into the deep fog, or angry spatter from a squad of scouting cavalry disturbed the stillness of the beautiful Autumn morning. The bright rays of the level sun were bringing out the rich tints of the maples and dog woods on the mountain-sides in all their gorgeous richness. Nature was smiling so benignantly on every side that it needed the turmoil and rush in the winding roads to remind one that somewhere near men were in bitter contrast with her divine serenity. But the roads were crowded with ammunition and ration wagons pushing out to the front, and with mounted officers and Orderlies making their way as rapidly as possible back and for ward with orders and messages.
Lieut. Bowersox left the road with his detachment and made his way across the fields, over ditches, ravines and creeks, through the thickets and the brush, and at last came out on top of Missionary Ridge at the north side of Rossville Gap.
With eager eyes they scanned the landscape of billowy mountains and hills to the east and south.
A fog obscured all the lowlands, but far out columns of thin smoke rising lazily on the still air showed where 150,000 men were marshaling for bloody conflict.
"That Major I spoke to," said Lieut. Bowersox, as Si and Shorty looked anxiously in his face, "is on the corps staff, and he says the whole infernal Southern Confederacy is out there for blood. They jumped us yesterday like a pack of famished wolves. But Rosecrans had just got his army together in time, though some of the divisions had to march till their tongues were hanging out. All the boys were dead game, though, and they stood the rebels off everywhere in great shape. He hasn't the faintest idea where the 200th Ind. is. The divisions and brigades have been jumped around from one end of the line to the other till he has but little more idea where any regiment is than if it was in the moon. The only way for us is to make our way as fast as we can to the front, where they need every man, and trust to luck to find the regiment. We'll probably not find it, but we'll find a place where they need us badly."
"Le's go ahead, then," said Si firmly, "as fast as we can. We'd much rather be with the regiment, but we'll take whatever comes wherever it comes, and do our level best."