SI AND SHORTY'S RECRUITS ENTER KENTUCKY.
THE bright, active minds of the 65 boys that Si and Shorty were put in charge of were aflame with curiosity regarding everything connected with the war. For two years they had been fed on stories and incidents of the mighty conflict then convulsing the land. Every breath they had drawn had some taste of battle in it. Wherever they went or were they heard incessantly of the storm-swept "front"—of terrific battles, perilous adventures, heroic achievements, death, wounds and marvelous escapes. The older boys were all at the front, or going there, or coming back with heroic marks of shot and shell. The one burning aspiration in every well-constructed boy's heart was to get big enough to crowd past the recruiting officer, and go where he could see with his own eyes the thunderous drama. There was concentrated all that fills a healthy boy's imagination and stirs his blood—something greater than Indian-fighting, or hunting lions and tigers. They looked on Si and Shorty with little short of reverence. Here were two men who had captured a rebel flag in a hand-to-hand fight, both of whom had been left for dead, and both promoted for gallantry. What higher pinnacle of greatness could any boy hope to reach?
They began at once seriously imitating the walk and manners of their heroes. The tall, lank boys modeled themselves on Shorty, and the short, chubby ones on Si. And there at once rose contention between them as to which was the greater hero.
"I heard," said Henry Joslyn, "that Corpril Elliott was the first to reach the rebel flag, he havin' much the longest legs, but jest as he grabbed it a big rebel knocked him, and then they all piled on to him, and about had him finished when Serg't Klegg reached there at a charge bayonets, and he bayoneted everybody in sight, until a sharpshooter in a tree shot him with an explosive bullet that tore his breast all to pieces, but he kept right on bayonetin' 'em till he dropped from loss o' blood. Then they fired a cannon at the sharpshooter and blowed him to pieces just as you'd blow a chippy to pieces with a bullet from a bear-gun."
"'Twan't that way at all," said tall, lathy Gid Mackall. "A whole lot of 'em made for the flag together. A charge o' grapeshot come along and blowed the rest away, but Serg't Klegg and Corpril Elliott kep' right on. Then Corpril Elliott he lit into the crowd o' rebels and laid a swath right around him, while Sergint Klegg grabbed the flag. A rebel Colonel shot him, but they couldn't stop Corpril Elliott till they shot a brass six-pounder at him."
The boys stood on the banks of the Ohio River and gazed eagerly at the other side. There was the enemy's country—there the theater in which the great drama was being enacted. Everything there had a weird fascination for them, as a part of, or accessory to, the stupendous play. It was like peeping under the circus tent, when they were smaller, and catching glimpses of the flying horses' feet.
And the questions they asked. Si had in a manner repelled them by his curt treatment of Harry Joslyn, and his preoccupied air as he went back and forth getting his orders and making preparations for starting. But Shorty was in an affable mood, and by pleasantly answering a few of their inquiries brought the whole fire of their questioning upon him.
"Are any o' them men you see over there guerrillas?" they asked.
"Mebbe," Shorty answered. "Kentucky's full of 'em. Mebbe they're peaceable citizens, though."
"How kin you tell the guerrillas from the citizens?"
"By the way they shoot at you. The peaceable citizens don't shoot—at least, in day time and out in the open. They lay for you with sole-leather pies, and chuck-a-luck boards and 40-rod whisky, and aid. and abet the Southern Confedrisy that way. They get away with more union soldiers than the guerrillas do. But you can never tell what an able-bodied man in Kentucky'll do. He may lay for you all day with wildcat whisky, at $5 a canteenful, to git money to buy ammunition to shoot at you at night. He's surer o' gittin' you with a canteen o' never-miss whisky, but there's more healthy excitement about shootin' at you from behind a bank. And his pies is deadlier'n his apple-jack. A man kin git over an apple-jack drunk, but Kentucky pies 's wuss'n nux vomica on fish."
"Mustn't we eat none o' their pies?" asked the boys, with longing remembrance of the fragrant products of their mothers' ovens.
"Nary a pie. If I ketch a boy eatin' a pie after we cross the river I'll buck-and-gag him. Stick to plain hardtack and pork. You'll git to like it better'n cake by and by. I eat it right along in preference to the finest cake ever baked."
Shorty did not think it necessary to mention that this preference was somewhat compulsory.
"Why don't you hunt down the guerrillas and kill 'em off and be done with 'em?"
"You can't, very well. You see, guerrilain' is peculiar. There's somethin' in the air and water down in Kentucky and Tennessee that brings it on a man. You'll see a plain farmer man, jest like them around your home, and he'll be all right, goin' about his place plowin' and grubbin' sprouts and tendin' to his stock, and tellin' you all the time how much he loves the union and how he and his folks always bin for the union. Next thing you know he'll be out behind a cedar bush with a shotgun loaded with slugs, waitin' to make a lead mine o' some feller wearin' blue clothes. You see him before he does you, and he'll swear that he was out after the crows that's bin pullin' up his corn. He'll take' the oath of allegiance like it was a dram of old apple-jack, and tears'll come into his eyes at the sight o' the Old Flag, which he and his'n has always loved. He'll go ahead plowin' and grubbin' sprouts and tendin' his cattle till the fit comes on him agin to go gunnin' for bluecoats, and off he is, to go through the whole performance agin. You kin never tell how long his loosid interval will last, nor when the fit's comin' on him. Mebbe the changes o' the moon's somethin' to do with it. Mebbe it's somethin' that they eat, like what the cattle eat out West that makes 'em go crazy."
"Will the guerrillas begin shootin' at us as soon's we cross the river?"
"Can't tell. Guerrillas's like the nose-bleed—likely to come on you at any time. They're jest where you find 'em—that's when they're jumpin' you.. When they aint jumpin' you, they're lawabiding union citizens, entitled to the protection o' the laws and to draw rations from the Commissary. To make no mistake, you want to play every man in citizen's clothes south of the Ohio River for a rebel. And when you don't see him, you want to be surer than ever, for then he's layin' for you."
Si came up at this moment with orders for them to pick up and go down to the ferry, and the lively hustle shut off Shorty's stream of information for the time being. The boys swarmed on to the bow of the ferry-boat, where they could scrutinize and devour with eager eyes the fateful shore of Kentucky.
"Don't look so very different from the Indiana side," said Harry Joslyn, as they neared the wharf. "Same kind o' wharf-boats and same kind o' men on 'em."
"That's because we've taken 'em and have our own men there," replied Gid Mackall. "It'll all be different when we git ashore and further into the State."
"Wasn't expecting nothing else," said Albert Grimes. "I've been watchin' the Sargint and Corpril, and they're acting just as if it was every day bizniss. I'm not going to expect anything till I see them lookin' serious."
They landed and walked to the depot through the streets of Louisville, which were also disappointingly like those they had seen elsewhere, with the stores open and people going about their business, as if no shadow of war brooded over the land. There were some more soldiers on the streets, and a considerable portion of the vehicles were army wagons, but this was all.
"When'll we see some rebels?" the boys asked.
"Don't be impatient," said a soldier on the sidewalk............