Sophy's suggestion was carried out. Abraham Lincoln was directed to get out the spring wagon, and the Deacon helped hitch up, while the "women folks" got ready.
While they were at the station getting Sam Elkins to re-examine the dots and dashes on his strip of paper, the Eastern express arrived, bringing the morning papers. The Deacon bought one, and the girls nervously turned to the war news. They gave a scream of exultation when they read the revised returns of the killed and wounded, and found under head of "Wounded, in Hospital at Chattanooga":
"Corporal Josiah Klegg, Q, 200th Ind.
"Private Daniel Elliott, Q, 200th Ind."
"Mother and girls, I'm goin' to Chattanoogy on the next train," said the Deacon.
It was only a few hours until the train from the East would be along, and grief was measurably forgotten in the joy that Si was still alive and in the bustle of the Deacon's preparation for the journey.
"No," he said, in response to the innumerable suggestions made by the mother and daughters. "You kin jest set all them things back. I've bin down there once, and learned something. I'm goin' to take nothin with me but my Bible, a couple o' clean shirts, and my razor. A wise man learns by experience."
Mother and girls were inconsolable, for each had something that they were sure "Si would like," and would "do him good," but they knew Josiah Klegg, Sr., well enough to understand what was the condition when he had once made up his mind.
"If Si and Shorty's able to be moved," he consoled them with, "I'm going to bring them straight back home with me, and then you kin nuss and coddle them all you want to."
The news of his prospective journey had flashed through the neighborhood, so that he met at the station the relatives of most of the men in Co. Q, each with a burden of messages and comforts for those who were living, or of tearful inquiries as to those reported dead.