“You said just the contrary to us.  We were in no hurry, and only moved because you insisted on it.”

“Gentlemen,” said the captain, taking his pipe from his mouth with an air of extreme gravity, “it was no plan of mine.  There is a man among us who is determined to have everything his own way.  You may express your opinion; but don’t expect him to listen.  You may be as reasonable as you like:  oh, it all goes for nothing!  That man is resolved to rule the roost and he’ll set his face against any plan that he didn’t think of himself.”

The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his grievances; then he began again: 

“For twenty years I have been in the British army; and in all that time I never had half so much dissension, and quarreling, and nonsense, as since I have been on this cursed prairie.  He’s the most uncomfortable man I ever met.”

“Yes,” said Jack; “and don’t you know, Bill, how he drank up all the coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!”

“He pretends to know everything,” resumed the captain; “nobody must give orders but he!  It’s, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do that; and the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there; for nobody knows as well as he does.”

We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not aware of their extent.  The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we recommended him to adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his military experience had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be “hard,” when the emergency requires it.

“For twenty years,” he repeated, “I have been in the British army, and in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred officers, young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any man.  Oh, ‘anything for a quiet life!’ that’s my maxim.”

We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet life, but that, in the present circumstances, the best thing he could do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to put a period to the nuisance that disturbed it.  But again the captain’s easy good-nature recoiled from the task.  The somewhat vigorous measures necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of grumbling about them.  “Oh, anything for a quiet life!” he said again, circling back to his favorite maxim.