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You stay here, on the chance o' them comin' back, and I'll take a circle around there to the left and look for 'em. If I don't find 'em I'll come back and we'll go down to the Provo-Marshal's." "Goodness, I'd rather be shot than go back to the rijimint without 'em," groaned Si. "How kin I ever face the Colonel and the rest o' the boys?"
I want to say good-by to the folks, and then strike out for Jeffersonville. I've reported that I'm able for dooty agin, and there's orders at home for me and Shorty to go to Jeffersonville and git a gang o' recruits that's bin gethered there, and bring 'em to the rijimint."
That feller tied to a tree is Tony Wilson. He's refused to dig trenches agin. O, I tell you, they're a daisy lot." "Shorty," admonished Si. "You mustn't talk that way before the boys. What'll they think o' the rijimint?" "Think of it?" said Shorty, recovering himself. "They've got to think of it as the very best rijimint that ever stood in line-of-battle.
You ought to be mighty proud you got a chanst to git into sich a rijimint." "We are; we are," the boys assured him. "But we're awful anxious to see jest what it's like." "Well, you'll see in a little while the boss lot o' boys. Every one of 'em fightin' cocks, thoroughbred not a dunghill feather or strain in the lot. Weeded 'em all out long ago. All straight-cut gentlemen.
The others came up with a tumultuous welcome to both. "Where's the camp?" asked Si. "Jist bey ant jist bey ant them cedars there not a musket-shot away," answered Jim, pointing to the place. "What'd you mean, you infernal liars, by tellin' us that the rijimint was gone?" said Shorty, wrathfully to the men whom he had met, and who were still standing near, looking puzzled at the demonstrations.
He knows a good rijimint when he sees it, and he's certain to want the 200th Injianny in the very foremost place. Hustle along, boys." As they neared their camp they were delighted to find it in a similar uproar to the others, with the men cheering, the brigade band playing, and the men throwing everything they could find on the brightly blazing bonfires.
Shorty knew his man of old, and just the basis on which to open negotiations. "Groundhog, I've just had my canteen filled with first-class whisky none o' your commissary rotgut, but old rye, hand-made, fire-distilled. I got it to take out to the boys o' the rijimint to celebrate my comin' back. Le' me have just one drink out of it, and I'll give it to you if you'll tell."
Just as I think I'm goin' to have it, something interferes. That feller's bin so long ripe for a lickin' that I'm afraid he'll be completely spiled before my chanst comes." "But I can't git over missin' so many familiar voices in command, and hearin' others in their places," said Si. "That battalion drill they wuz havin' as we come in didn't sound like our rijimint at all.
"Do them rijimints look like the 200th Injianny?" anxiously inquired Harry Joslyn, pointing to some camps on the mountain-side, where the men were drilling and engaged in other soldierly duties. "Them," snorted Shorty contemptuously. "Them's only recruits that ain't got licked into shape yet. When you see the 200th Injianny you'll see a rijimint, I tell you. Best one in the army.
"Not uncomfortably warm, and purty general, like the gal who promised to be a sister to the hull rijimint," mused Shorty, as he refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. "But, then, it is better to be kindly remembered by sich people as them than to be slobbered over by anybody else in the world.
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