a corduroy
bridge that would pass that whole army safely over, artillery and all,
would anybody enquire who built the bridge. Of course, if I built a
bridge that would break down, and drown somebody, everybody would know
who built it. The twenty men were mounted, and ready, and the general
told me to go to the quartermaster and get all the tools I wanted, and I
took twenty axes, ten shovels, two log chains, and was riding away, when
the general said:

"When you get there, and look the ground over, make up your mind exactly
at what hour and minute you can have the bridge completed, and send a
courier back to inform me, and at that hour the head of the column will
be there, and the bridge must be ready to cross on."

I said that would be all right, and we started out. In about forty
minutes we had arrived, at the bayou, and I called a private soldier
who used to do logging in the woods, and we looked the thing over. The
timber necessary was right on the bank of the stream.

"Jim," I said to the private, "I have got to build a bridge across this
stream strong enough to cross artillery. I shall report to the general
that he can send, along his artillery at seventeen minutes after eight o
clock this evening. Am I right?"

"Well," said Jim, as he looked at the standing timber, at the stream,
and spit some black tobacco juice down on the red ground, "I should make
it thirty-seven minutes after eight. You see, a shell may drop in here
and kill a mule, or something, and delay us. Make it thirty-seven, and I
will go you."

We finally compromised by splitting the difference, and I sent a courier
back to the general, with my compliments, and with the information
that at precisely eight o clock and twenty-seven minutes he could start
across. Then we fell to work. Large, long trees were cut for stringers,
and hewn square, posts were made to prop up the stringers, though the
stringers would have held any weight. Then small trees were cut and
flattened on two sides, for the road-bed, holes bored in them and pegs
made to drive through them into the stringers. A lot of cavalry soldiers
never worked as those men did. Though there was only twenty of them,
it seemed as though the woods were full of men. Trees were falling, and
axes resounding, and men yelling at mules that were hauling logs, and
the scene reminded me of logging in the Wisconsin pineries, only these
were men in uniform doing the work. About the middle of the afternoon w