“That’s all very well,” answers Rayner; “but I wouldn’t want to carry any such sum with me.”

“It’s different with Hull’s men, captain.  They are ordered in through the posts and settlements.  They have a three weeks’ march ahead of them when they get through their scout, and they want their money on the way.  It was only after they had drawn it that the news came of the Indians’ crossing and of our having to jump for the warpath.  Everybody thought yesterday morning that the campaign was about over so far as we are concerned.  Halloo! here comes young Hayne.  Now, what does he want?”

Riding a quick, nervous little bay troop horse, a slim-built officer, with boyish face, laughing blue eyes, and sunny hair, comes loping up the long prairie wave; he shouts cheery greeting to one or two brother subalterns who are plodding along beside their men, and exchanges some merry chaff with Lieutenant Ross, who is prone to growl at the luck which has kept him afoot and given to this favored youngster a “mount” and a temporary staff position.  The boy’s spirits and fun seem to jar on Rayner’s nerves.  He regards him blackly as he rides gracefully towards the battalion commander, and with decidedly nonchalant ease of manner and an “off-hand” salute that has an air about it of saying, “I do this sort of thing because one has to, but it doesn’t really mean anything, you know,” Mr. Hayne accosts his superior: 

“Ah, good-evening, captain.  I have just come back from the front, and Captain Hull directed me to give you his compliments and say that we would camp in the bend yonder, and he would like you to post strong pickets and have a double guard to-night.”

“Have me post double guards!  How the devil does he expect me to do that after marching all day?”

“I did not inquire, sir:  he might have told me ’twas none of my business, don’t you know?” And Mr. Hayne has the insufferable hardihood to wink at the battalion adjutant,—­a youth of two years’ longer service than his own.

“Well, Mr. Hayne, this is no matter for levity,” says Rayner, angrily.  “What does Captain Hull mean to do with his own men, if I’m to do the guard?”

“That is another point, Captain Rayner, which I had not the requisite effrontery to inquire into.  Now, you might ask him, but I couldn’t, don’t you know?” responds Hayne, smiling amiably the while into the wrathful face of his superior.  It serves only to make the indignant captain more wrathful; and no wonder.  There has been no love lost between the two since Hayne joined the Riflers early the previous year.  He came in from civil life, a city-bred boy, fresh from college, full of spirits, pranks, fun of every kind; a wonderfully keen hand with the billiard-cue; a knowing one at cards and such games of chance as college boys excel at; a musician of no mean pretensions, and an irrepressible leader in all the frolics and frivolities of his comrades.