By noon the 200th began to show signs of going to pieces. The column stretched out longer and longer, like a piece of India-rubber. The ranks looked thin and ragged. Lame and foot-sore, with wo-begone faces, their bodies aching in every bone and tendon, and overcome with a weariness that no one can realize unless he has "been there," the men dropped out one by one and threw themselves into the fence-corners to rest. The officers stormed and drew their swords in vain. Nature--that is, the nature of a new soldier--could endure no more. The ambulances were filled to their utmost, but these would not hold a twentieth part of the crippled and suffering men.
"How're ye gittin' on, Shorty?" said Si, as he and his comrade still struggled along.
"Fair to middlin'," replied Shorty. "I'm goin' to try and pull through!"
"I thought I could," said Si, "but I'm 'bout played out! I am, fer a fact! I guess ef I rest a bit I'll be able to ketch up after a while."
Si didn't know till he found out by experience how hard it was to "ketch up" when a soldier once got behind on the march. Si was too fat for a good roadster, but it didn't take a great while to work off his surplus flesh. Shorty was tall and slim, mostly bone--one of the sort that always stood the marching best, crept up to the Orderly and told him that he would have to stop and puff a while and give his blisters a rest. He'd pull up with Co. Q in an hour or so.
"Better not, Si" said the Orderly; "ye know it's agin orders, and the rear-guard 'll punch ye with their bay'net's if they catch ye stragglin'."
But Si concluded that if he must die for his country it would be sweeter to do so by having a bayonet inserted in his vitals, and then it would be all over with at once, than to walk himself to death.
So he gradually fell back till he reached the tail of the company. Watching his opportunity, he left the ranks, crept into a clump of bushes, and lay down, feeling as if he had been run through a grist-mill. Soon the rear-guard of the 200th came along, with fixed bayonets, driving before them like a flock of frightened sheep a motley crowd of limping, groaning men, gathered up by the roadside.
Si lay very still, hoping to escaoe discovery; but the keen eye of the officer detected the blue heap among the bushes.