TO THE RANK AND FILE     

       OF THE GREATEST ARMY EVER MUSTERED FOR WAR.     

   

    

       SI KLEGG     

  

       CHAPTER I. SHORTY BEGINS BEING A FATHER TO PETE SKIDMORE.     

       "Come, my boy," Si said kindly. "Don't cry. You're a soldier now, and soldiers don't cry. Stop it."     

       "Dod durn it," blubbered Pete, "I ain't cryin' bekase Pm skeered. I'm cryin' bekase I'm afeared you'll lose me. I know durned well you'll lose me yit, with all this foolin' around."     

       "No, we won't," Si assured him. "You just keep with us and you'll be all right."     

       "Here, you blim-blammed, moon-eyed suckers, git offen that 'ere crossin',"       yelled at them a fireman whose engine came tearing down toward the middle of the squad. "Hain't you got no more sense than to stand on a crossin'?"     

       He hurled a chunk of coal at the squad, which hastily followed Si to the other side of the track.     

       "Hello, there; where are you goin', you chuckle-headed clodhoppers?"       yelled the men on another train rushing down from a different direction.       "This ain't no hayfield. Go back home and drive cows, and git out o' the       way o' men who're at work."     

       There was more scurrying, and when at last Si reached a clear space, he had only a portion of his squad with him, while Shorty was vowing he would not go a step farther until he had licked a railroad man. But the engines continued to whirl back and forth in apparently purposeless confusion, and the moment that he fixed upon any particular victim of his wrath, he was sure to be compelled to jump out of the way of a locomotive clanging up from an unexpected direction and interposing a train of freight cars between him and the man he was after.     

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