"I hain't never lost no children yit, and I hain't goin' to begin with you."
The storm grew more violent every minute, limbs were torn from the trees, and fell with a crash, and torrents rushed down from the mountain side, across the road. Si strode on resolutely, as if the disturbance were nothing more than a Summer zephyr. He waded squarely through the raging streams, turning at times to help the next boy to him, strode over the fallen limbs, and took the dashing downpour with stolid indifference.
"Close up, boys! Close up!" shouted Shorty from time to time, "Don't mind a little sprinkle like this. It'll lay the dust, and make marchin' easier. Come along, Peter, my son. I'm not goin' to lose you."
Night suddenly came, with pitchy darkness, but Si steadily forged onward. Then the rain ceased as suddenly as it began, but the road was encumbered with fallen timber and swirling races of muddy water. They seemed more uncomfortable even than when the rain was falling. They were now nearing the mill, and the sound of a fitful musketry fire came to their ears.
"They've sneaked up in the storm to attack the mill," Si called out to Shorty. "Close up and prepare for action."
"Goodness," gasped Gid Mackall, much of whose vim had been soaked out of him by the fearful downpour, and who was oppressed by fatigue, hunger, and the dense blackness of the night in the strange woods. "You don't have to fight when you're wetter'n a drowned rat, and so tired you're ready to drop, do you?"
"That's what you do," said Shorty, wiping off his musket. "That's the way you'll have to do most o' your fightin'. The miserabler you feel the miserabler you want to make the other fellers feel. Boys, turn your guns upside down and let the water run out. Then half-cock 'em, and blow into 'em to clean the water out o' the tubes. Then find a dry rag somewhere about you, and wipe off the nipples. We want every gun to go off when the order is given. Don't anybody load till Si gives the order."
The drenched but excited boys followed his directions with nervous haste. Shorty took one gun after another and examined it, while Si went forward a little ways to reconnoiter. The calm deliberation of the partners steadied the nervous boys.
"Load," called back Si, from the vantage ground of a little knoll, upon which he was standing, trying to see into the darkness beyond. A volley from out in front responded to the sound of his voice, and bullets knocked bark off the big chestnut behind which he had shrewdly taken refuge.
"Jest as I expected, Si," Shorty called back to him. "The rebels have throwed back a squad to watch for us."