"I'm from Kentucky, too," said Crittenden. The old soldier turned
quickly.
"I knew you were, sir."
This was too much for Grafton. "Now-how-on-earth--" and then he checked
himself--it was not his business.
"You're a Crittenden."
"That's right," laughed the Kentuckian. The Sergeant turned. A soldier
came up and asked some trifling question, with a searching look, Grafton
observed, at Crittenden. Everyone looked at that man twice, thought
Grafton, and he looked again himself. It was his manner, his bearing,
the way his head was set on his shoulders, the plastic force of his
striking face. But Crittenden saw only that the Sergeant answered the
soldier as though he were talking to a superior. He had been watching
the men closely--they might be his comrades some day--and, already, had
noticed, with increasing surprise, the character of the men whom he saw
as common soldiers--young, quiet, and above the average countryman in
address and intelligence--and this man's face surprised him still more,
as did his bearing. His face was dark, his eye was dark and penetrating
and passionate; his mouth was reckless and weak, his build was graceful,
and his voice was low and even--the voice of a gentleman; he was the
refined type of the Western gentleman-desperado, as Crittenden had
imagined it from fiction and hearsay. As the soldier turned away, the
old Sergeant saved him the question he was about to ask.
"He used to be an officer."
"Who--how's that?" asked Grafton, scenting "a story."
The old Sergeant checked himself at once, and added cautiously: "He was a lieutenant in this regiment and he resigned. He just got back
to-day, and he has enlisted as a private rather than risk not getting to
Cuba at all. But, of course, he'll get his commission back again." The
Sergeant's manner fooled neither Grafton nor Crittenden; both respected
the old Sergeant's unwillingness to gossip about a man who had been his
superior, and Grafton asked no more questions.
There was no idleness in that camp. Each man was busy within and without
the conical-walled tents in which the troopers lie like the spokes of a
wheel, with heads out like a covey of partridges. Before one tent sat
the tall soldier--Abe--and the boy, his comrade, whom Crittenden had
seen the night before.
"Where's Reynolds?" asked Crittenden, smiling.
"Guard-house," said the Sergeant, shaking his head.
Not a scrap of waste matter was to be seen anywhere--not a piece of
paper--not the faintest odour was perceptible; the camp was as clean as
a Dutch kitchen.