by John McElroy
CHAPTER IX. A LITTLE EPISODE OVER LOVE LETTERS.
HOW exuberantly bright, restful, and happy were those long July dayson the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, after the fatigues andhardships, the endless rains, the fathom less mud, the angry, swollenstreams, the exhaust ing marches, and the feverish anxieties of theTullahoma campaign.
The insolent, threatening enemy had retreated far across the mountainbarrier. For the while he was out of reach of striking or being struck.The long-delayed commissary-wagons had come up, and there was anabundance to eat. The weather was delightful, the forests green, shadyand inviting, the scenery picturesque and inspiring, and every daybrought news of glorious Union victories, over which the cannon boomedin joyful salutes and the men cheered themselves hoarse. Grant had takenVicksburg, with 25,000 prisoners, and chased Joe Johnston out of sightand knowledge. Prentiss had bloodily repulsed Sterling Price at Helena.Banks had captured Port Hudson, with 6,000 prisoners. The MississippiRiver at last "flowed unvexed to the sea." Meade had won a great victoryat Gettysburg, and Lee's beaten army was in rapid retreat to Virginia."The blasted old Southern Confederacy is certainly havin' itsunderpinnin' knocked out, its j'ints cracked, and its roof caved in,"remarked Si, as the two boys lay under the kindly shade of a low-growingjackoak, lazily smoked their pipes, and gazed contentedly out over thefar-spreading camps, in which no man was doing anything more laboriousthan gathering a little wood to boil his evening coffee with. "'Tain'tfit to store brick-bats in now. By-and-by we'll go out and hunt up oldBragg and give him a good punch, and the whole crazy shebang 'll comedown with a crash."
"I only wish old Bragg wasn't of sich a retirin' nature," lazilycommented Shorty. "The shade o' this tree is good enough for me. I don'twant to ever leave it. Why couldn't he've waited for me, and we could'vehad it out here, coolly and pleasantly, and settled which was the bestman! The thing' d bin over, and each feller could've gone about hisbusiness."
Both relapsed into silence as each fell into day dreams the one about abuxom, rosy-cheeked little maiden in the Valley of the Wabash; theother of one in far-off Wisconsin, whom he had never seen, but whomhe mentally endowed with all the virtues and charms that his warmestimagination could invest a woman. Neither could see a woman withoutthinking how inferior she was in looks, words or acts to those whoseimages they carried in their hearts, and she was sure to suffer greatlyby the comparison.
Such is the divinely transforming quality of love.
Each of the boys had taken the first opportunity, after getting enoughto eat, a shelter prepared, and his clothes in shape and a tolerablerest, to write a long letter to the object of his affections. Shorty'sletter was not long on paper, but in the time it took him to write it.He felt that he was making some progress with the fair maid of Bad Ax,and this made him the more deeply anxious that no misstep should thwartthe progress of love's young dream.
Letter-writing presented unusual difficulties to Shorty. His trainingin the noble art of penmanship had stopped short long before his sinewyfingers had acquired much knack at forming the letters. Spelling andhe had a permanent disagreement early in life, and he was scarcely onspeaking terms with grammar. He had never any trouble conveying histhoughts by means of speech. People had very little difficulty inunderstanding what he meant when he talked, but this was quite differentfrom getting his thoughts down in plain black and white for the readingof a strange young woman whom he was desperately anxious to please, anddesperately afraid of offending. He labored over many sheets of paperbefore he got a letter that seemed only fairly satisfactory. One he hadrejected because of a big blot on it; second, because he thought hehad expressed himself too strongly; a third, because of an erasure andunseemly correction; a fourth, because of some newborn suspicions aboutthe grammar and spelling, and so on. He thought, after he had carefullygathered up all his failures and burned them, together with a numberof envelopes he had wrecked in his labor to direct one to Miss LucindaBriggs, Bad Ax, Wis., sufficiently neatly to satisfy his fastidioustaste.
He carefully folded his letter, creasing it with a very stalwartthumb-nail, sealed it, gave it a long inspection, as he thought how muchit was carrying, and how far, and took it up to the Chaplain's tent tobe mailed.
Later in the afternoon a hilarious group was gathered under a largecottonwood. It was made up of teamsters, Quartermaster's men, and otherbobtail of the camp, with the officers' servants forming the dark fringeof an outer circle. Groundhog was the presiding spirit. By means bestknown to himself he had become possessed of a jug of Commissary whisky,and was dispensing it to his auditors in guarded drams to hightentheir appreciation of his wit and humor. He had come across one of thenearly-completed letters which Shorty had thrown aside and failed tofind when he burned the rest. Groundhog was now reading this aloud,accompanied by running comments, to the great amusement of his auditors,who felt that, drinking his whisky, and expecting more, they were boundto laugh uproariously at anything he said was funny.
"Shorty, that lanky, two-fisted chump of Co. Q, who thinks hisself abigger man than Gineral Rosecrans," Groundhog explained, "has writ aletter to a gal away off somewhere up North. How in the kingdom he evercome to git acquainted with her or any respectable woman 's more'n I kintell. But he's got cheek enough for anything. It's sartin, though, thatshe's never saw him, and don't know nothin' about him, or she'dnever let him write to her. Of course, he's as ignorant as a mule. Heskeercely got beyant pot-hooks when he wuz tryin' to larn writin', an'he spells like a man with a wooden leg. Look here:
"'Mi Dere Frend.' Now, everybody knows that the way to spell dear isd-e-e-r. Then he goes on:
"'I taik mi pen in hand to inform u that Ime well, tho I've lost about15 pounds, and hoap that u air injoyin' the same blessin."
"Think o' the vulgarity o' a man writin' to a young lady 'bout hislosin' flesh. If a man should write sich a thing to my sister I'd hunthim up and wollop the life outen him. Then he goes on:
"'I aint built to spare much meat, and the loss of 15 pounds leavesfallow lots in mi cloze. But it will grow it all back on me aginmitey quick, as soon as we kin hav another protracted meetin' with theCommissary Department.'
"Did you ever hear sich vulgarity?" Groundhog groaned. "Now hear himbrag and use langwidge unfit for any lady to see:
"'We've jest went throo the gosh-almightiest campane that enny armyever done. It wuz rane and mud 48 ours outen the 24, with thunder andlitenin' on the side. We got wettern Faro's hosts done chasin' the Jewsthroo 50 foot of Red See. But we diddent stop for that till we'dhussled old Bragg outen his works, and started him on the keen jump forChattynoogy, to put the Cumberland Mountings betwixt us and him.'
"Think o' the conceit o' the feller. Wants to make that gal believe thathe druv off Bragg a'most single-handed, and intends to foller him up andkick him some more. Sich gall. Sich fellers hurts us in the opinion o'the people at home. They make 'em think we're all a set o' blowhards.But this aint nothin' to what comes next. He tries to honeyfugle thegal, and he's as clumsy 'bout it as a brown b'ar robbin' a bee-hive.Listen:
"'mi dere frend, I can't tell you how happy yore letters maik me. I'vegot so I look for the male a good dele more angshioussly than for thegrub wagon.'
"Think o' a man sayin' grub to a lady," said Groundhog, in a tone ofdeep disgust. "Awful coarse. A gentleman allers says 'peck,' or 'hash,'or Vittels,' when he's speakin' to a lady, or before ladies. I licked aman onct for sayin' 'gizzard-linen' before my mother, and gizzard-linin'aint half as coarse as grub. But he gits softer'n mush as he goes on.Listen:
"'I rede every wun of 'em over till they're cleane wore out, and then Isave the pieces, bekaze they cum from u. I rede them whenever Ime alone,and it seems to me that its yeres before another one comes. If I coodmake anybody feel as good by ritin' to 'em as u kin me Ide rite 'emevery day.'
"Thar's some more of his ignorant spellin'," said Groundhog. "Everybodybut a blamed fool knows the way to spell write is w-r-i-g-h-t. I learntthat much before I wuz knee-high to a grasshopper.
But let me continner:
"'I think Bad Ax, Wisconsin, must be the nicest plais in the world,bekaze u live there. I woodent want to live anywhair else, and Imecummin up thar just as soon as the war is over to settle. I think of uevery our in the day, and--'
"He thinks of her every hour. The idee," said Groundhog, with deepscorn, "that sich a galoot as Shorty thinks of anything more'n a minute,except triple-X, all-wool, indigo-dyed cussedness that he kin work offon some other feller and hurt him, that he don't think's as smart ashe is. Think o' him gushin' out all this soft-solder to fool some poorgirl."
"You infernal liar, you, give me that letter," shouted Si, bolting intothe circle and making a clutch at the sheet. "I'll pound your onery headoff en you."
Si had come up unnoticed, and listened for a few minutes to Groundhog'stirade before he discovered that his partner was its object. Then hesprang at the teamster, struck him with one hand, and snatched at theletter with the other. The bystanders instinctively sided with theteamster, and Si became the center of a maelstrom of kicks and blows,when Shorty, seeing his partner's predicament, bolted down the hill andbegan knocking down every body in reach until he cleared a way toSi's side. By this time the attention of the Sergeant of the Guardwas attracted, and he brought an energetic gun-barrel to the task ofrestoring the reign of law and order.
"How in thunder'd you come to git into a fracas with that herd o'mavericks, Si?" asked Shorty, in a tone of rebuke, as the Sergeant wasrounding up the crowd and trying to get at who was to blame. "Couldn'tyou find somebody on your own level to fight, without startin' a fusswith a passel o' low-down, rust-eaten roustabouts? What's got into you?Bin livin' so high lately that you had to have a fight to work off yourfractiousness? I'm surprised at you."
"Groundhog' d got hold of a letter o' your'n to your girl up inWisconsin," gasped Si, "and was readin' it to the crowd. Here's a pieceof it."
Shorty glanced at the fragment of torn paper in Si's hand, and a deepblush suffused his sun-browned cheek. Then he gave a howl and made arush for Groundhog.
"Here, let that man alone, or I'll make you," shouted the Sergeant ofthe Guard.
"Sergeant," said Si, "that rat-faced teamster had got hold of a letterto his girl, and was reading it to this gang o' camp offal."
"O," said the Sergeant, in a changed tone; "hope he'll baste the lifeout of him." And he jumped in before a crowd that was showing somedisposition to go to Groundhog's assistance, sharply ordered them toabout-face, and drove them off before him.
"Here, Sergeant," shouted the Officer of the Guard, who came running up;"what are you fooling around with these fellows for? They're not doingany thing. Don't you see that man's killing that team ster?"
"Teamster had got hold of a letter to his girl," explained the Sergeant,"and was reading it to these whelps."
"O," said the Officer of the Guard in a different tone. "Run theserascals down there in front of the Quartermaster's and set them towork digging those stumps out. Keep them at it till midnight, withoutanything to eat. I'll teach them to raise disturbances in camp."