"why, we're single men, and y'u might fetch along a couple of
squaws!"

"Holy smoke!" screeched Mr. Long, dancing on one leg.

"What's up with you, y'u ape?" inquired Specimen Jones. He looked at the
departing peddler and saw Sergeant Keyser meet him and salute with
stern, soldierly aspect. Then the peddler shook hands with the sergeant,
seemed to speak pleasantly, and again Keyser saluted as he passed on.
"What's that for?" Jones asked, uneasily. "Who is that hobo?"

But Mr. Long was talking to himself in a highly moralizing strain. "It
ain't every young enlisted man," he was saying, "ez hez th' privilege of
explainin' his wants at headquarters."

"Jones," said Sergeant Keyser, arriving, "I've a compliment for you.
General Crook said you were a fine-looking man."

"General?--What's that?--Where did y'u see--What? _Him?_" The
disgusting truth flashed clear on Jones. Uttering a single
disconcerted syllable of rage, he wheeled and went by himself into
the barracks, and lay down solitary on his bunk and read a newspaper
until mess-call without taking in a word of it. "If they go to put
me in the mill fer that," he said, sulkily, to many friends who brought
him their congratulations, "I'm going to give 'em what I think about
wearin' disguises."

[Illustration: "'AIN'T Y'U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?'"]

"What do you think, Specimen?" said one.

"Give it to us now, Specimen," said another.

"Against the law, ain't it, Specimen?"

"Begosh!" said Jack Long, "ef thet's so, don't lose no time warnin' the
General, Specimen. Th' ole man'd hate to be arrested."

And Specimen Jones told them all to shut their heads.

But no thought was more distant from General Crook's busy mind than
putting poor Jones in the guard-house. The trooper's willingness, after
eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to
his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight
months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often
dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of
life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The
American "statesman" does not care about our army until it becomes
necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew all
this well; and realizing that these soldiers, who had come into
winter-quarters this morning at eleven, had earned a holiday, he was
sorry to feel obliged to start them out again to-morrow mor