"Tare and 'ounds!" swore the Colonel in the classic he used when excited, "am I niver to have a dacint inspection? Orderly, bring me me harse. Stop that band's ijiotic blatting. Get into line there, quick as love will let you, you unblessed Indiana spalpeans. Without doubling; right face! Forward, M-a-r-c-h!"
Col. McTarnaghan, still wearing his parade grandeur, was soon at the head of the column, on that long-striding horse which always set such a hot pace for the regiment; especially over such a rough, gullied road as they were now traveling.
Still, the progress was not fast enough to suit the impatient Colonel, who had an eye to the report he would have to make to the Brigadier General, who was a Regular.
"Capt. McGillicuddy," commanded he, turning in his saddle, "send forward a Corporal and five men for an advance guard."
"Corporal Klegg, take five men and go to the front," commanded the Captain.
"Now you b'yes, get ahead as fast as you can. Get a move on them durty spalpanes of tamesters. We must get back to camp before this storm strikes us. Shove out, now, as if the divil or Jahn Morgan was after yez."
It was awful double-quicking over that rocky, rutty road, but taking Shorty and four others. Si went on the keen jump to arrive hot and breathless on the banks of the creek. There he found a large bearded man wearing an officer's slouched hat sitting on a log, smoking a black pipe, and gazing calmly on the ruck of wagons piled up behind one stalled in the creek, which all the mules they could hitch to it had failed to pull out.
It was the Wagon Master, and his calmness was that of exhaustion. He had yelled and sworn himself dry, and was collecting another fund of abuse to spout at men and animals.
"Here, why don't you git a move on them wagons?" said Si hotly, for he was angered at the man's apparent indifference.
"'Tend to your own business and I'll tend to mine," said the Wagon Master, sullenly, without removing his pipe or looking at Si.
"Look here, I'm a Corporal, commanding the advance guard," said Si. "I order you!"
This seemed to open the fountains of the man's soul.
"You order me?" he yelled, "you splay-footed, knock-kneed, chuckled-headed paper-collared, whitegloved sprat from a milk-sick prairie. Corporal! I outrank all the Corporals from here to Christmas of next year."