and file did not care for picket duty. Sam Bowen--ordered by
Lieutenant Clemens to go on guard one afternoon--denounced his superior
and had to be threatened with court-martial and death. Sam went finally,
but he sat in a hot open place and swore at the battalion and the war
in general, and finally went to sleep in the broiling sun. These things
began to tell on patriotism. Presently Lieutenant Clemens developed a
boil, and was obliged to make himself comfortable with some hay in a
horse-trough, where he lay most of the day, violently denouncing the
war and the fools that invented it. Then word came that "General" Tom
Harris, who was in command of the district, was stopping at a farmhouse
two miles away, living on the fat of the land.

That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris, and they regarded his
neglect of them as perfidy. They broke camp without further ceremony.

Lieutenant Clemens needed assistance to mount Paint Brush, and the
little mule refused to cross the river; so Ab Grimes took the coil of
rope, hitched one end of it to his own saddle and the other end to Paint
Brush's neck. Grimes was mounted on a big horse, and when he started it
was necessary for Paint Brush to follow. Arriving at the farther bank,
Grimes looked around, and was horrified to see that the end of the rope
led down in the water with no horse and rider in view. He spurred up
the bank, and the hat of Lieutenant Clemens and the ears of Paint Brush
appeared.

"Ah," said Clemens, as he mopped his face, "do you know that little
devil waded all the way across?"

A little beyond the river they met General Harris, who ordered them back
to camp. They admonished him to "go there himself." They said they had
been in that camp and knew all about it. They were going now where there
was food--real food and plenty of it. Then he begged them, but it was no
use. By and by they stopped at a farm-house for supplies. A tall, bony
woman came to the door:

"You're secesh, ain't you?"

They acknowledged that they were defenders of the cause and that they
wanted to buy provisions. The request seemed to inflame her.

"Provisions!" she screamed. "Provisions for secesh, and my husband a
colonel in the Union Army. You get out of here!"

She reached for a hickory hoop-pole that stood by the door, and the army
moved on. When they arrived at Col. Bill Splawn's that night Colonel
Splawn and his family had gone to bed, and it seemed unwise to disturb
them. The