ve minutes. It wasn't going
to take any chances. The killing of the steers and the collecting of
the requisition began forthwith, and the Army dined.

And still the ten graceless individualists soared along ahead and
gathered in everything in sight. But General Kelly fixed us. He sent
horsemen down each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against us.
They did their work thoroughly, all right. The erstwhile hospitable
farmers met us with the icy mit. Also, they summoned the constables
when we tied up to the bank, and loosed the dogs. I know. Two of the
latter caught me with a barbed-wire fence between me and the river. I
was carrying two buckets of milk for the pale Vienna. I didn't damage
the fence any; but we drank plebian coffee boiled with vulgar water,
and it was up to me to throw my feet for another pair of trousers. I
wonder, gentle reader, if you ever essayed hastily to climb a
barbed-wire fence with a bucket of milk in each hand. Ever since that
day I have had a prejudice against barbed wire, and I have gathered
statistics on the subject.

Unable to make an honest living so long as General Kelly kept his two
horsemen ahead of us, we returned to the Army and raised a revolution.
It was a small affair, but it devastated Company L of the Second
Division. The captain of Company L refused to recognize us; said we
were deserters, and traitors, and scalawags; and when he drew rations
for Company L from the commissary, he wouldn't give us any. That
captain didn't appreciate us, or he wouldn't have refused us grub.
Promptly we intrigued with the first lieutenant. He joined us with the
ten men in his boat, and in return we elected him captain of Company
M. The captain of Company L raised a roar. Down upon us came General
Kelly, Colonel Speed, and Colonel Baker. The twenty of us stood firm,
and our revolution was ratified.

But we never bothered with the commissary. Our hustlers drew better
rations from the farmers. Our new captain, however, doubted us. He
never knew when he'd see the ten of us again, once we got under way in
the morning, so he called in a blacksmith to clinch his captaincy. In
the stern of our boat, one on each side, were driven two heavy
eye-bolts of iron. Correspondingly, on the bow of his boat, were
fastened two huge iron hooks. The boats were brought together, end on,
the hooks dropped into the eye-bolts, and there we were, hard and
fast. We couldn't lose that captain. But we were irrepressible.