Si Klegg

"Glad to see you, Mr. Klegg," said Shorty, reddening and grasping the father's outstretched hand; "but you orter 've broke that boy o' your'n o' lyin' when he was young."

"He never did lie," said the Deacon cheerfully, "and I don't believe he's lyin' now. I've heard a great deal o' you, Mr. Shorty, and I'm sure he's tellin' the truth about you."

"Drop the Mister, Pap," said Si. "We never call each other Mister here, except when we're mad."

Si took the carpetsack under his arm, and they trudged up toward Army Headquarters.

Relieved of anxiety as to his own personal safety, and having found his son, Deacon Klegg viewed everything around him with open-eyed interest.

It was a wonderfully new and strange world into which the sober, plodding Indiana farmer had dropped. The men around him spoke the speech to which his ears were accustomed, but otherwise they were as foreign as if they had come from the heart of China.{193}

Their dress, their manners, their actions, the ways in which they were busying themselves, had no resemblance to anything seen on the prosaic plains of the Wabash in his half-century of life there. The infantry sweeping over the fields in endless waves, the das.h.i.+ng cavalcades of officers and staffs, the bewildering whirl of light batteries dazed him. Even Si awed him. It was hard to recognize in the broad-shouldered, self-a.s.sured young soldier, who seemed so entirely at home in his startling surroundings, the blundering, bashful hobbledehoy boy of a few months before, whose feet and hands were constantly in the way, and into everything else that they should not be.

"Somehow, Si," he said, looking at his offspring with contemplative eye, "you seem to have growed like a cornstalk in July, and yit when I come to measure you you don't seem no taller nor heavier than when you went away. How is it?"

"Don't know, Pap," Si answered. "I feel as if I'd had more'n 10 long years o' growth since we crossed the Ohio River. Yit, you don't seem a minute older than when I went away."

"I didn't feel no older," returned the father, "until I got in that guard-house last night. Then I could feel my hair gittin' grayer every hour, and my teeth droppin' out."

"I'm afraid you didn't git much chance to sleep, Pap," said Si sympathetically.

"Loss o' sleep was the least part of it," said the Deacon feelingly.

"I kin stand a little loss o' sleep without any partickler bother. It wasn't bein' kept awake so much as the way I was kept awake that bore on me."

"Why, what happened?" asked Si.

"Better ask what didn't happen," groaned his father. "Used to have some mighty rough s.h.i.+varees when I was a boy, and'd jest settled on the Wabash. Lots o' toughs then, 'specially 'mong the flatboat-men, who'd nothin' to drink but new sod-cornwhisky, that'd fight in every spoonful.

But for sure, straight-out tumultuousness that guard-house last night gave six pecks for every bushel of a Wabash s.h.i.+varee."

Shorty looked meaningly at Si. "Guard-house fellers's likely to be a ructionary lot o' roosters. Awful sorry you got in among 'em. Was they very bad?"

"Well, I should say. When I was chucked in they wuz havin' a regular prize fight, 'cordin' to rules, as to whether Rousseau or Negley wuz the best General. The Rousseau man got licked, and then the other Rousseau men wuzzent satisfied, and proposed to lick all the Negley men in the guard-house; but the Sheridan men interfered, and made the Rousseau men cool down. They they turned their attention to me. They raised a row about a citizen being put in among them. It was a disgrace. The guard house was only intended for soldiers and gentlemen, and no place for condemned civilians. Then some one said that I had been arrested as a Knight o' the Golden Circle, on my way to Bragg, with information from the Injianny Knights. Another insisted that he knowed me, and that I wuz Vallandigham himself, brought down there to be sent through the lines.

Then I thought sure they'd kill me on the spot. I begged and pled and denied. Finally, they organized a court-martial to try me for my life.{194}

"They had an awful tonguey feller

was wrote in every liniment o' my face; that I wuz a dyed-in-the-wool b.u.t.ternut, and that the bag I'd brung along with me contained the muster-rolls of 100,000 Injiannians who'd bin swore in to fight for Jeff Davis.

"The feller that they appinted to defend me admitted the truth of all that the other feller'd said. He said that no one could look in my Southern Injianny face without seem' Secession, treason and n.i.g.g.e.r-lovin' wrote there in big letters. He could only ask the honorable court for mercy instid o' justice, and that I be shot instid o' hung, as I deserved.

"When they asked me what I'd got to say in my own defense I told 'em the truth, and said that I'd come down here to visit my son, who they all knowed they must know Si Klegg. o' the 200th Injianny Volunteers, who was an officer, and had a house with a tin roof.

"Then they all got up and yelled. They said they knowed Si Klegg only too well; that he wuz the meanest, oneriest soljer in the army, and that he looked just like me. They had him in the guard house now. He'd bin put in for stealin' a hoe-cake from a blind n.i.g.g.e.r half-way back to Nashville durin' the battle.

"They brought up the dirtiest, scaliest lookin' man in the guard-house, and said that was Si Klegg, and that he resembled me so much that they wuz sure he wuz my son. They asked him if he reckernized me as his dad, and after they kicked him two{195} or three times he said he did, but he wuz goin' to cut his throat now, since they'd found it out. He couldn't stand everything. Then they said they'd postpone execution on condition that I'd kneel down, drink a pint o' whisky, take the oath o' allegiance to Abe Lincoln, and sing 'We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.'

"I told 'em I wuz perfectly willin' to take the oath to Abe Lincoln as often as they pleased; that he wuz my man from start to finish; that I wanted Jeff Davis hung the minit we ketched him. I'd sing the song if they'd learn it to me, though I've not sung anything but hymns for the last 25 years. As for the whisky, I wouldn't tech it on no account, for I belonged to the Good Templars.

"They all seemed pacified with this except one man, who insisted that I should drink the whisky. One o' the Sheridan men knocked him down, and then the fight between the Rousseau men and the Negley men broke out afresh, and the guard come in and quieted things. By the time they'd done this they found that the man who had reckernized me as his father wuz tryin' to hang himself with a piece o' tent-rope. They cut him down, larruped him with the tent-rope, and then started another court to try me for havin' sich a son. But some officer come in and took out the Prosecutin' Attorney and the lawyer for the defense and the Presidin'

Judge and bucked and gagged 'em. This cooled things down agin till mornin'."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIS HONOR AND THE 'ATTORNEY' BUCKED AND GAGGED.]

"We might walk over to the Provost-Marshal's," suggested Shorty, "and watch for them fellers as they come out, and take a drop out o' some of 'em."{196}

"It'll be a waste o' time," said Si, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"They'll all be doing hard labor for the next 30 days, and by that time we'll likely have a good deal else to think about. Let's report at Headquarters, and then take Dad over and show him our new house."

"Yes, I'm dying to see it," said the Deacon, "and{197} to git somewhere that I kin sit down in peace and quietness. Seems to me I haven't had a moment's rest for years, and I'm as nigh tuckered out as I ever wuz in my life."

At the Army Headquarters was a crowd of officers, mounted and dismounted. Aids were arriving and departing, and there was a furore when some General commanding a corps or division came or went, which impressed the father greatly. Si and Shorty stood at "attention,"

and respectfully saluted as the officers pa.s.sed, and the Deacon tried awkwardly, but his best, to imitate their example. Two or three spruce young Orderlies attempted to guy him. but this thing came to a sudden stop when Shorty took one of them quietly by the ear, and said in a low voice:

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHORTY ADMONISHES THE ORDERLY 198]

"Don't be brash, bub. If you only knowed it, you're givin' your measure for a first-cla.s.s, custom-made lickin', and I'm the artist to do the job. That old man's my chum's father, and I won't allow no funny business 'round where I am."

"We wuz ordered to report to Gen. Rosecrans," said Si to the Orderly on duty before the tent.

"What are you to report for?" asked a member of the staff, standing near. "The General is very busy now, and can see no one. Who ordered you to report?"

"The General himself," said Si.

The sound of his voice reached Gen. Rosecrans, in side, and busy as he was, arrested his attention. With the kindly thoughtfulness that so endeared him to his soldiers he instantly remembered his promise, dropped his pen, and came to the door.{198}

"I ordered these men to report," he said to the Aid. "Bring me that checker-board which lies on my table."

The Aid did so. Gen. Rosecrans noticed the father, and, as usual, saw the opportunity of doing a kindly, gracious thing.

"You have found your son, I see," he said to him. "Sorry that you had so much trouble. That's a fine son you have. One of the very best soldiers in{199} my army. I congratulate you upon him. Boys, here is your board and men. I may drop in some evening and see you play a game. I'll be careful to clean my feet, this time."

Si and Shorty got very red in the face at this allusion, and began to stammer excuses. The General playfully pinched Si's ear and said:

"Go to your quarters now, you young rascal, and take your father with you. I hope he'll have a very pleasant time while he is in camp."

They saluted and turned away too full for utterance. After they had gone a little distance the Deacon remarked, as if communing with himself:

"And that is Gen. Rosecrans. Awful nice man. Nicest man I ever saw.

Greatest General in the world. Won't this be something to tell Mariar and the girls. And the men down at the store. I'd 've come down here 40 times jest to 've seen him and talked with him. What'd last night in the guard house amount to, after all? A man must expect some trouble occasionally. Wouldn't have no fun if he didn't. Say, Si, remember Old Susy's chestnut colt?"

"Yes," answered Si.

"I thought he had in him the makin' o' the finest horse in Posey County."

"Yes," said Si.

"Well, he's turnin' out even better'n I thought he would. Shouldn't wonder if he could trot down somewhere nigh 2:40."

"You don't say so."

"Yes, indeed. You used to want that colt mighty bad, Si."{200}