"Yes," said a voice behind him, "and you'll find it just that way
throughout the army."
Crittenden turned in surprise, and the ubiquitous Grafton went on as
though the little trick of thought-reading were too unimportant for
notice.
"Let's go down and take a look at things. This is my last day," Grafton
went on, "and I'm out early. I go to Tampa to-morrow."
All the day before, as he travelled, Crittenden had seen the station
thronged with eager countrymen--that must have been the way it was in
the old war, he thought--and swarmed the thicker the farther he went
south. And now, as the two started down the hill, he could see in the
dusty road that ran through the old battlefield Southern interest and
sympathy taking visible shape. For a hundred miles around, the human
swarm had risen from the earth and was moving toward him on wagon,
bicycle, horseback, foot; in omnibus, carriage, cart; in barges on
wheels, with projecting additions, and other land-craft beyond
classification or description. And the people--the American Southerners;
rich whites, whites well-to-do, poor white trash; good country folks,
valley farmers; mountaineers--darkies, and the motley feminine horde
that the soldier draws the world over--all moving along the road as far
as he could see, and interspersed here and there in the long, low cloud
of dust with a clanking troop of horse or a red rumbling battery--all
coming to see the soldiers--the soldiers!
And the darkies! How they flocked and stared at their soldier-brethren
with pathetic worship, dumb admiration, and, here and there, with a look
of contemptuous resentment that was most curious. And how those dusky
sons of Mars were drinking deep into their broad nostrils the incense
wafted to them from hedge and highway.
For a moment Grafton stopped still, looking.
"Great!"
Below the Majors' terrace stood an old sergeant, with a gray mustache
and a kind, blue eye. Each horse had his nose in a mouth-bag and was
contentedly munching corn, while a trooper affectionately curried him
from tip of ear to tip of tail.
"Horse ever first and man ever afterward is the trooper's law," said
Grafton.
"I suppose you've got the best colonel in the army," he added to the
soldier and with a wink at Crittenden.
"Yes, sir," said the guileless old Sergeant, quickly, and with perfect
seriousness. "We have, sir, and I'm not sayin' a wor-rd against the
rest, sir."
The Sergeant's voice was as kind as his face, and Grafton soon learned
that he was called "the Governor" throughout the regiment--that he was a
Kentuckian and a sharpshooter. He had seen twenty-seven years of
service, and his ambition had been to become a sergeant of ordnance. He
passed his examination finally, but he was then a little too old. That
almost broke the Sergeant's heart, but the hope of a fight, now, was
fast healing it.