"There'd bin a fight right, there, if it hadn't bin for the officers. I wanted awfully to take a fall out of a big Sergeant who said that Thomas might be a good enough man for Chairman of a convention o' farmers, but when he went to war he wanted to have sich leaders as Sherman, McPherson, and Logan, and Osterhaus. But he'll keep. We agreed to see each other later, when we'll have a private discussion, and if he has any head left on him he'll freely acknowledge that nobody in the Army o' the Tennessee is fit to be named in the same day with Pap Thomas."
"Better turn him over to me, Shorty," said Si, meditatively. "I think I'm in better shape for an argument just now than you are. You've bin doing a good deal in the last few days, and I'm afraid you're a little run down."
"No; he's my meat. I found him, and I'll take care o' him. But there's just one thing that reconciles me to this business. In spite o' all this sashayin' and monkeying we seem to be continually edgin' up closter to them big cliffs where the rebels are, and something's got to bust purty soon. It's jist like it was at Tullyhomy, but old Rosecrans ain't runnin' things now."
"But Thomas is in the center, as he was then, and we're with him," said Si hopefully. "There's tattoo, Le's crawl in."
The other boys had been affected according to their various temperaments by the intricate and bewildering events of the past few days. The first day or two they were all on the tenter-hooks of expectation and anxiety. Every bugle-call seemed to be a notice for them to rush into the great battle. Every time they saw a regiment moving, they expected to follow and fall into line with it. They wondered why they were not sent in after every skirmish-line they saw advancing. When a rebel battery opened out in the distance they girded themselves in expectation of an order to charge it. But Si and Shorty kept admonishing them that it would be time enough for them to get excited when the 200th Ind. was called on by name for something; that they were not expected to fight the whole campaign, but only to do a limited part of it, and they had better take things easy, and save themselves for their share when it should come to them.
It was astonishing how soon they recognized this, and settled down to more or less indifference to things that did not directly concern their own regiment. They were just at the age to be imitative, and the example of the veterans around them had a strongly-repressive effect.
So, after the second or third day of the turmoil of the opening campaign, they ceased to bother themselves openly, at least, as to why their regiment did not move when others did, as to why they did not go to the help of others that were fighting, and as to when they were to be summoned to make a desperate assault upon the frowning palisades of rock which were literally alive with rebels and belching cannon.
When the regiment was lying still they occupied and amused themselves, as did the others, according to their several bents. The medical-minded Alf Russell watched the movements and deportment of the Surgeons at every opportunity, and was especially interested in everything that he could catch a glimpse of, from feeling a man's pulse to extracting a bullet. The lathy Gid Mackall, whose appetite did not need the sharpening it got from the free mountain air, put in much of his time cooking, all possible variations of his rations with anything else that he could get hold of, and devouring the product with eagerness. In spite of Si's strict prohibition against card-playing, the sleepy headed Jim Humphreys was rapidly, but secretly, mastering all the tricks and mysteries of camp gambling, and becoming an object of anxiety to the older gamesters whenever he pitted himself against them. Sandy Baker, whose tastes ran to mechanics, "tinkered" constantly with his rifle and equipments, studying the nature and inner workings of every part, and considering possible improvements. Sprightly Harry Joslyn was fascinated with the details of soldiering, and devoted himself to becoming perfect in the manual of arms and the facings. Little Pete Skidmore was keenly alive to all that was going on, and wanted to know everything. When he could trust himself not to get lost from his regiment, he would scurry over to the nearest one, to find out who they were, where they had come from, what they had been doing, and whither they were likely to go. But Monty Scruggs was constantly in the public eye, as he loved to be. His passion for declamation pleased officers and men. He really declaimed very well, and it was a reminder to them of home and the long-ago school days to hear him "spout" the oldtime Friday afternoon favorites.
Therefore he was always called upon whenever there was nothing else to engage the men's attention, and his self-confidence and vanity grew rapidly upon the liberal applause bestowed on him. He was a capital mimic, too, and daring as well, and it was not long before he began to "take off" those around him, which his comrades enjoyed even more than his declamations.
The llth of May, 1864, saw all the clouds of battle which had been whirling for days in such apparently diverse directions, gathering about the deep gorge in Rocky Face Ridge through which the railroad passed. "Buzzard Roost," as this was named, was the impregnable citadel behind which the rebel army had taken refuge after its rout at Mission Ridge the previous November, and the rebel engineers had since exhausted every effort to make it still more unassailable. The lofty mountain rose precipitously for hundreds of feet on either side the narrow gorge, and the last hundred feet was a sheer wall of perpendicular rock. The creek which ran through the gorge had been dammed, so that its waters formed a broad, deep moat before the mouth of the gorge. The top of the ridge swarmed with men, and to the rear of the gorge guns were massed in emplacements to sweep every foot of the passage.