it should be done. Bell
finally said that he'd be damned if he wouldn't rather have no command
at all than one with Devers in it. The first day Devers's horses were
herded to graze far out on the slopes,--five hundred yards beyond those
of any other troop,--and Tintop said he wished Captain Devers hereafter
not to allow his herd to be driven beyond those of the rest of the
regiment. Next day they were kicking up a dust not fifty yards from
Tintop's tent,--as far inside the cordon as they had been outside
before,--and Devers plausibly explained that he wanted to be sure he
wasn't too far away. The third day, after a long march with Indians on
every hand, Tintop ordered "double guards and side lines when the herds
went out to graze." The horses of the other troops were ridden out by
the men to good grazing-ground some five hundred yards from the bivouac
fires, and there the riders slipped off and the side lines were slipped
on; but Devers's horses were side-lined as soon as unsaddled, and then
the poor brutes, thus hobbled fore and aft, were driven, painfully
lurching, out to graze. Tintop boiled over at the sight of so
unhorsemanlike a proceeding and rode wrathfully at Devers to rebuke him.
"Why, colonel," said Devers, "I wouldn't have done it for the world, but
Mr. Gray was so positive in saying it must be done when they went out, I
couldn't do otherwise. Of course if he'd said when they _got_ out I----"
And though Tintop swore savagely through his teeth that Devers knew
well just what was meant, as did every other troop commander, he
couldn't prove it. Next day, before the side lines were put on, in some
mysterious way Devers's herd was stampeded and ran six miles before they
could be rounded up, and he explained it was all because they weren't
side-lined in the first place, as they were always accustomed to being,
and as the regulations required they should be in the Indian country.
This was another thing to make Tintop blaspheme. Every day for a week
something was amiss, and, having gone to the length of his own tether,
Devers took to saying that it was all Mr. Davies's fault or Sergeant
Somebody's,--"Mr. Davies had just joined and was utterly inexperienced."
Then Tintop gave Devers positive orders not to content himself with
telling people to do thus and so, but to see that the orders were
obeyed, and Devers then took his pipe and his blankets and
ostentatiously spent hours of the afternoon out on the open prairie, a