"Why, do you see that there freight-car over there by the bridge" (pointing to where a car was off the track, near Stone River), "I've bin watchin' that ever since we begun buildin', for fear somebody else'd drop on to it. The roof of that car is tin. We'll jest slip down there with an ax after dark, an' cut off enough to make a splendid roof. I always wanted a tin-roofed house. Old Jack Wilson, who lives near us, had a tin roof on his barn, an' it made his daughters so proud they wouldn't go home with me from meetin'. You kin write home that we have a new house with a tin roof, an' it'll help your sisters to marry better." "Shorty, that head o' your'n gits bigger every time I look at it." Si and Shorty had the extreme quality of being able to forget fatigue when there was something to be accomplished. As darkness settled down they picked up the ax and proceeded across the fields to the freight-car. "There's someone in there," said Si, as they came close to it. They reconnoitered it carefully. Five or six men, without arms, were comfortably ensconed inside and playing cards by the light of a fire of pitch-pine, which they had built upon some dirt placed in the middle of the car. "They're blamed skulkers," said Shorty, after a minute's survey of the interior. "Don't you see they hain't got their guns with 'em? We won't mind 'em." They climbed to the top of the car, measured off about half of it, and began cutting through the tin with the ax. The noise alarmed the men inside. They jumped out on the ground, and called up:{131} "Here, what're you fellers doin' up there? This is our car. Let it alone." "Go to the devil," said Shorty, making another slash at the roof with the ax. "This is our car, I tell you," reiterated the men. "You let it alone, or we'll make you." Some of the men looked around for something to throw at them. Si walked to the end of the car, tore off the brake-wheel, and came back. "You fellers down there shut up and go back in side to your cards, if you know what's good for you," he said. "You're nothing but a lot of durned skulkers. We are here under orders. We don't want nothin' but a piece o' the tin roof. You kin have the rest. If any of you attempts to throw anything I'll mash him into the ground with this wheel. Do you hear me? Go back inside, or we'll arrest the whole lot of you and take you back to your regiments." Si's authoritative tone, and the red stripes on his arm, were too much for the guilty consciences of the skulkers, and they went back inside the car. The tearing off the roof proceeded without further interruption, but with considerable mangling of their hands by the edges of the tin.