Chapter XIX. The Battle of Stone River - Page 2

"We all may be where we'll need lots o' cold water more than anything else," said Abe grimly.

"Well," said Kent blithely, "if I'm to be made a sweet little angel I don't know any day that I would rather have for my promotion to date from. It would have a very proper look to put in the full year here on earth, and start in with the new one in a world of superior attractions."

"Well, I declare, if here isn't Dr. Denslow," said Harry, delightedly, as he recognized a horsemna, who rode up to them. "How did you come here? We thought you were permanently stationed at the grand hospital."

"So I was," replied the Doctor. "So I was, at least so far as general orders could do it. But I felt that I could not be away from my boys at this supreme moment, an I am here, though the irregular way in which I detached myself from my post may require explanation at a court-martial. Anyhow, it is a grateful relief to be away from the smell of chloride of lime, and get a breath of fresh air that is not mingled with the groans of a ward-full of sick men. It looks," he continued, with a comprehensive glance at the firmament of Rebel camp-fires that made Murfreesboro seem the center of a ruddy Milky-way, "as if the climax is at last at hand. Bragg, like the worm, will at last turn, and after a year of footraces we'll have a fight which will settle who is the superfluous cat in this alley. There is certainly one too many."

"The sooner it comes the better," said Harry firmly. "It has to be sometime, and I'm getting very anxious for an end to this eternal marching and countermarching."

"My winsome little feet," Kent Edwards put in plaintively, "are knobby as a burglar-proof safe, with corns and bunions, all of them more tender than a maiden's heart, and painful as a mistake in a poker hand. They're the ripe fruit of the thousands of miles of side hills I've had to tramp over because of Mr. Bragg's retiring disposition. Now, if he's got the spirit of a man he'll come out from under the bed and fight me."

"O, he'll come out--he'll come out--never you fear," said Abe, sardonic as usual. "He's got a day or two's leisure now to attend to this business. A hundred thousand of him will come out. They'll swarm out o' them cedar thickets there like grass-hoppers out of a timothy field."

"Boys," said Harry, returning after a few minutes' basence, "the Colonel says we'll go into camp right here, just as we stand. Kent, I'll take the canteens and hunt up water, if you and Abe will break some cedar boughs for the bed, and get the wood to cook supper with."

"All right," responded Kent, "I'll go after the boughs."

"That puts me in for the wood," grumbled Abe. "And, I don't suppose there's a fence inside