"That's just because you're a duck-legged snipe," answered Gid wrathfully. "Do you mean to?"
"Don't make any slurs at me, you spindle-legged sand-hill crane," retorted Harry.
This was enough. Blows came next. It was their way. Gid Mackall and Harry Joslyn had been inseparable companions since they had begun going to school, and they had scarcely ever let a day pass without a fight. The moment that Si and Shorty appeared within their horizon they had raised the issue of which was the best soldier, and made it a matter of lively partisanship.
Si and Shorty had been on the eager lookout for the indications of the position of the army, for places that they could recognize, and for regiments, brigades and divisions they were acquainted with, so they did not at first notice the squabble. Then they pulled the boys asunder, shook them and scolded them for their conduct.
New emotions filled Si's and Shorty's breasts. They had been away from their regiment so long that they were acutely homesick to be back to it. Such is the magic of military discipline and association that their regimental flag had become the center of their universe, and the real people of their world the men who gathered around it. Everything and everybody else was subsidiary to that thing of wonderful sacredness—"the regiment." They felt like wanderers who had been away for years, and were now returning to their proper home, friends, associations and vocation. Once more under the Flag life would become again what it should be, with proper objects of daily interest and the satisfactory performance of every-day duties. They really belonged in the regiment, and everywhere else were interlopers, sojourners, strangers in a strange land. They now sat together and talked of the regiment as they had formerly sat around the campfire with the other boys and talked of their far-away homes, their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and sweethearts.
They had last seen their regiment in the fierce charge from the crest of Snodgrass Hill. The burning questions were who had survived that terrible day? Who had been so badly wounded as to lose his place on the rolls? Who commanded the regiment and the companies? Who filled the non-commissioned offices? What voices that once rang out in command on the drill-ground, in camp and battle, were now silent, and whose would be lifted instead? "I'm af eared the old rijimint will never fight agin as it did at Stone River and Chickamauga," said Si mournfully. "Too many good men gone what made the rijimint what it is."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Shorty more hopefully. "They got two mighty good non-commish when they promoted me and you. If they done as well in the rest o' the promotions, the rijimint is all right. Lord knows I'd willingly give up my stripes to poor Jim Sanders, if he could come back; but I guess I kin yank around a squad as well as he done. This infant class that we're takin' down there ain't up to some o' the boys that've turned up their toes, but they average mighty well, and after we git some o' the coltishness drilled out o' 'em they'll be a credit to the rijimint."
The train finally halted on a side-track in the outskirts of Chattanooga, under the gigantic shadow of Lookout Mountain, and in the midst of an ocean of turmoiling activity that made the eyes ache to look upon it, and awed every one, even Si and Shorty, with a sense of incomprehensible immensity. As far as they could see, in every direction, were camps, forts, intrenchments, flags, hordes of men, trains of wagons, herds of cattle, innumerable horses, countless mules, mountains of boxes, barrels and bales. Immediately around them was a wilderness of trains, with noisy locomotives and shouting men. Regiments returning from veteran furlough, or entirely new ones, were disembarking with loud cheering, which was answered from the camps on the hillsides. On the river front steamboats were whistling and clanging their bells.
The boys, too much awed for speech, clustered around Si and Shorty and cast anxious glances at their faces.
"Great Jehosephat," murmured Shorty. "They seem to be all here."