"
"Then, in heaven's name, why didn't you join the cavalry?" inquired Baker.
Dan looked at him a moment, and then threw the apple core at a water bucket
that stood upside down upon the grass. "Well, I couldn't go on my own
horse, you see," he replied, "and I wouldn't go on the Government's. I
don't ride hacks."
"So you came into the infantry to get court-martialled," remarked Bland.
"The captain said down the valley, you'll remember, that if the war lasted
a month, you'd be court-martialled for disobedience on the thirtieth day."
Dan growled under his breath. "Well, I didn't enter the army to be hectored
by any fool who comes along," he returned. "Look at that fellow Jones, now.
He thinks because he happens to be Lieutenant that he's got a right to
forget that I'm a gentleman and he's not. Why, the day before we came up
here, he got after me at drill about being out of step, or some little
thing like that; and, by George, to hear him roar you'd have thought that
war wasn't anything but monkeying round with a musket. Why, the rascal came
from my part of the country, and his father before him wasn't fit to black
my boots."
"Did you knock him down?" eagerly inquired Bland.
"I told him to take off his confounded finery and I would," answered Dan.
"So when drill was over, we went off behind a tent, and I smashed his nose.
He's no coward, I'll say that for him, and when the Captain told him he
looked as if he'd been fighting, he laughed and said he had had 'a little
personal encounter with the enemy.
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