CHAPTER V. TROUBLE ENCOUNTERED
THE BOYS MEET AN OLD FRIEND AND ARE TAKEN HOME IN A HURRY.
IT WAS not until late the next afternoon that the wagon-train finally reached Bridgeport, and the weak, wornout mules had at last a respite from straining through the mud, under the incessant nagging of the teamsters' whips and their volleyed blasphemy.
The Deacon's merciful heart had been moved by the sufferings of the poor beasts. He had done all that he could on the journey to lighten the labor of those attached to his own wagon. He had restrained as much as possible the St. Vitus Dance of the teamster's keen whip, uselessly remonstrated with him against his profanity, carried a rail to help pry the wheels out of the mudholes, and got behind and pushed going up the steep hills. At the journey's end when the exhausted brutes stood motionless, with their ears drooping and their eyes looking unutterable disgust at everything connected with the army and war, the Deacon helped the teamster take their harness off, and carry them as much corn and hay as the Forage-Master could be pursuaded to dole out to them.
The Deacon's next solicitude was to get the boys aboard a train that would start out soon. This was a sore perplexity. All was rush and bustle about the railroad yard. Trains were coming, being switched hither and yon, unloaded, and reloaded, and going, in a way that was simply bewildering to the plain farmer. Men in uniform and men in plain clothes were giving orders, and these were obeyed, and everybody seemed too busy to answer questions or give information.
"Naw; git out. Don't bother me with no questions, I tell you," impatiently said a man in citizen's clothes, who with arms outspread was signalling the switching engines. "'Tain't my business to give information to people. Got all I kin do to furnish brains for them bull-headed engineers. Go to that Quartermaster you see over there in uniform. The Government pays him for knowin' things. It don't me."
"I don't know anything about the different cars, my friend," said the Quartermaster haughtily. "That's the business of the railroad people. I simply order them to make up the trains for me, and they do the rest. There's a Yard-Master over there. Go ask him."
"Blazes and brimstone," exploded the Yard-Master; "how in the devil's name do you suppose I can tell anything about the trains going out? I'm just pestered to death by such fool questions, while the life's being worried out of me by these snoozers with sardine-labels on their shoulders, who strut around and give orders, and don't know enough about railroading to tell a baggage-check from a danger-signal. If they'd only let me alone I'd have all these trains running in and out like shuttles in a loom. But as soon's I get one arranged down comes a shoulderstrap and orders something different. Go off and ask somebody that wears brass buttons and a basswood head. Don't bother me. Get out of the way of that engine there."
In despair, the Deacon turned to a man who wore a Major's shoulder-straps.