gasped Sergeant Hupner,
his astonished gaze roving over the densely packed masses of humanity.

An artillery band was playing at its loudest and gayest.

"I wonder," repeated Sergeant Hupner, "if the circus is playing to a
crush like this."

No; it wasn't. Over under the Howe and Spangleton big-top, with its
plain and reserved seats for eighteen thousand people, consternation
prevailed.

The Army had proved the winning attraction for Denver's
amusement-seeking crowds!

Only some eleven hundred and fifty people had paid to see the afternoon
performance at the circus. In chagrin, the management hurriedly passed
in free some two hundred more loungers on the lot.

"I never even dreamed of a streak of luck like this!" grumbled
Proprietor Howe to his partner, Spangleton.

"I hope we'll never meet it again. What has struck us this blow under
the belt?"

"The confounded regular Army," growled Howe. "I've just telephoned over,
and I hear that folks are packed in so tightly at the Army show that the
people are able to breathe only half the usual number of times to the
minute."

"Then they'll hit us just as bad to-night," growled Spangleton. "Howe,
with the Army to play against, we'd save money by pulling down our tents
now and striking the rails for the next stand."

Just a minute or so before two o'clock the artillery band left the
bandstand and marched back to camp.

Now, all in an instant, the military parade formed.

At the head was the cavalry band, followed by a squadron (two troops or
companies) of splendidly mounted fighting men, their accoutrements
jingling.

As the cavalry, its band blaring joyously, passed out before the people,
the Signal Corps men followed on foot. Now the artillery, preceded by a
mounted band that was just now silent, swung into line. Right behind the
artillery, with its men perched up on the seats, their arms folded, or
else driving the horses from saddles, came more men on foot, the
ordnance detachment.

Now a third band, the Thirty-fourth's, marched on to the scene, silent,
like the artillery musicians. After the third band in the line came the
first battalion of the Thirty-fourth--at its head Colonel North and
Major Silsbee, with their respective staffs, all on horseback. And now
behind them marched, with the precise, easy rhythm of the foot soldier,
the four companies, A, B, C and D, all moving like so many fine,
automatic, easy-jointed machines.

The mounted detachments ha