boys," said the plucky little Colonel, who had only worn Sergeant's stripes when the regiment crossed the Ohio River. "We've preempted this bit of real estate, and we'll hold it against the whole Southern Confederacy. Break for that fence there, boys, and every fellow come back with a couple of rails."
It seemed as if he hardly ceased speaking when the boys came running back with the rails which they laid down along the crest, and dropped flat behind them, began throwing the gravelly soil over them with their useful half-canteens. In vain the shower of rebel bullets struck and sang about them. Not one could penetrate that little ridge of earth and rails, which in an hour grew into a strong rifle-pit against which the whole rebel brigade charged, only to sustain a bloody repulse.
The war would have lasted a good deal longer had it not been for the daily help of the ever-useful half-canteen.
CHAPTER III. THE OLD CANTEEN
THE MANY AND QUEER USES TO WHICH IT WAS AT LAST PUT.
WHEN Josiah (called "Si" for short) Klegg, of the 200th Ind., drew his canteen from the Quartermaster at Louisville, he did not have a very high idea of its present or prospective importance. In the 22 hot Summers that he had lived through he had never found himself very far from a well or spring when his thirst cried out to be slacked, and he did not suppose that it was much farther between wells down South.
"I don't see the use of carrying two or three pints o' water along all day right past springs and over cricks," he remarked to his chum, as the two were examining the queer, cloth-covered cans.
"We've got to take 'em, any way," answered his chum, resignedly, "It's regulations."
On his entry into service a boy accepted everything without question when assured that it was "regulations." He would have charged bayonets on a buzz-saw if authoritatively informed that it was required by the mysterious "regulations."
The long march the 200th Ind. made after Bragg over the dusty turnpikes the first week in October,
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