rath.

Not being fit for duty, he could devote all his time to the composition
of the letter. He was so wrought up over it that he could not eat much
dinner, which alarmed Si.

"What's the matter with your appetite. Shorty?" he asked. "Haint bin
eatin' nothin' that disagreed with you, have you?

"Naw," answered Shorty impatiently; "nothin' wuss'n army rations. They
always disagree with me when I'm layin' around doin' nothin'. Why, in
the name of goodness, don't the army move? I've got sick o' the sight o'
every cedar and rocky knob in Middle Tennessee. We ought to go down and
take a look at things around Tullahoma, where Mr. Bragg{132} is."

It was Si's turn to clean up after dinner, and, making an excuse of
going over into another camp to see a man who had arrived there, Shorty,
with his paper and envelopes concealed under his blouse, and Si's pen
and wooden ink-stand furtively conveyed to his pocket, picked up the
checkerboard when Si's back was turned, and made his way to the pawpaw
thicket, where he could be unseen and unmolested in the greatest
literary undertaking of his life.

He took a comfortable seat on a rock, spread the paper on the
checkerboard, and then began vigorously chewing the end of the penholder
to stimulate his thoughts.

It had been easy to form the determination to write; the desire to do
so was irresistible, but never before had he been confronted with a
task which seemed so overwhelming. Compared with it, struggling with
a mule-train all day through the mud and rain, working with pick and
shovel on the fortifications, charging an enemy's solid line-of-battle,
appeared light and easy performances. He would have gone at either, on
the instant, at the word of command, or without waiting for it, with
entire confidence in his ability to master the situation. But to write
a half-dozen lines to a strange girl, whom he had already enthroned as a
lovely divinity, had more terrors than all of Bragg's army could induce.

But when Shorty set that somewhat thick head of his upon the doing of
a thing, the thing was tolerably certain to be done in some shape or
another.

"I believe, if I knowed whore Bad Ax was, I'd git a furlough, and walk
clean there, rather than write a line," he said, as he wiped from his
brow the sweat{133} forced out by the labor of his mind. "I always did
hate writin'. I'd rather maul rails out of a twisted elm log any day
than fill up a copy book. But it's got to be done, and