"If it was only one, or even two days, I'd let the boys starve it out, as a good lesson to 'em," said Shorty. "But three seems like cruelty to dumb beasts."
"But what'll they say about us in camp?" groaned Si. "They'll have the grand laugh on me and you, and every one o' the boys. I'd ruther go on quarter rations for a month than stand the riggin' they'll give us, and have Capt. McGillicuddy give me one look when he asks the question about how we come to lose all our rations so soon? He'll think me a purty Sarjint to send out into the country in charge o' men, and you a fine Corpril."
"Say," said Shorty, his face illuminated with a bright idea. "We might report the rations 'lost in action.' That'd fix it fine. We had two good fights, and come out ahead. That'll tickle the Captain so that he won't be partickler what we report."
"Hurroo!" echoed Hennessey; "that's the ticket."
"But we didn't lose 'em in action, and to say so'd be a lie," answered Si, whose conscience had none of the easy elasticity of his partner's. "We could report 'em burnt up by lightnin','but we won't. They was lost by sheer, dumbed carelessness, that me and you and the boys should knowed better than to've allowed. That's all there is of it, and that's what I'm goin' to report, if I have to."
"Great Jehosephat," exploded Shorty; "you kin certainly be the stubbornest mule over nothin', Si Klegg, that I ever seen. We've done fightin' enough to excuse sich a report, or any that we've a mind to make."
"Nothin' kin justify a lie," persisted the obdurate Si.
"Holy smoke! bigger men than you—lots bigger—have squared up their accounts that way. Didn't all the Captains in the rijiment, and the Quartermaster and Commissary, and, for what I know, the Chaplain and the Colonel, git clean bills o' health after the battle o' Stone River, by reportin' everything that they couldn't find 'lost in action?'"
"Yis," added Hennessey, "and didn't my Captain, after Chickamaugy, git us all new uniforms and complete kits, by reportin' iverything 'lost in action?' Smart man, my Captain, Oi tell yez."
"Well, I don't think any the more o' them for it. We spiled our rations before the fightin' begun, they'd bin spiled if there'd bin no fightin', and I haint going to send no other words, if I've got to send any word."