"The column's movin' agin," said Abel Waite, turn ing his attention to his team.
Shortly after daybreak the team limped painfully up the slope of Mission Ridge, through Rossville Gap, on either side of which stood Thomas's indomitable army in battle array, sternly defying the rebel hosts of Bragg and Longstreet, which swarmed over the hills and valleys in front, but without much apparent appetite for a renewal of the dreadful fray.
"Where do you men belong? What have you got in that wagon? Where are you going?" demanded the Provost officer in the road.
"We belong to the 200th Hinjianny. We've got two badly-wounded men and ha lot o' hammynition in the wagon. We want to find our regiment," an swered Wat Burnham.
"Stop your wagon right there. We need all the ammunition we can get. Lift your wounded men into that ambulance, and then go up to that side of the gap. Your division is up there somewhere."
It was late in the afternoon before the overworked Surgeon in the field hospital at Chattanooga, in which Si and Shorty were finally deposited, found time to examine them.
"You got a pretty stiff whack on your head, my man," he said to Shorty, as he finished looking him over; "but so far as I can tell now it has not fractured your skull. You Hoosiers have mighty hard heads."
"Reglar clay-knob whiteoak," whispered Shorty; "couldn't split it with a maul and wedge. Don't mind that a mite, since we got that flag. But how's my pardner over there?"
"I think you'll pull through all right," continued the Surgeon, "if you don't have concussion of the brain. You'll have to be—"
"No danger o' discussion of the brains," whispered Shorty. "Don't carry 'em up there, where they're liable to get slubbed. Keep 'em in a safer place, where there's more around 'em. But how's my pardner?"