"Maria's out there, waitin' for us, and she's got a baby in her arms. What do you suppose she thinks we want a baby for?"Dodd stared back for what seemed a long time. Cadnan said nothing, waiting and wondering.
FORE:The waiter wiped off the table as he replaced the glasses, and Shorty lifted up the gambler's papers to permit him to do so. He laid down his own papers instead, and with them a bill.
Even through the pressure of official duties and responsibilities there would steal, like the wafting of a sweet song to the ears of the reapers in a hot field, thoughts of the coolness, the beauty and the peace of that quiet home on the Wabash, with one flower-faced girl, with white, soft arms, going about her daily tasks, singing with such blithe cheeriness that even the birds stopped to listen to a sweeter note than theirs. Some subtle fragrance from her seemed to be with him wherever he was, and whatever he might be doing. When, as the tallest Corporal in Co. Q, he stood on the right of the company, on drill and dress parade, and made the others "dress" on him, he wished that Maria Klegg could only see how straight the line was, and how soldierly the boys looked. When the Colonel personally selected him to command the squad which was to escort the Paymaster through a dangerous part of the country, he would have given much had Maria known of the trust reposed in him. And when, as Corporal of the Guard, he suppressed in his usual summary way a noisy row among the teamsters and cooks, he was very glad that Maria did not hear the remarks that a Corporal always thinks necessary to make on such occasions. Shorty did not swear with the fluent ease of before his visit to the Klegg homestead, but a little excitement gave the old looseness to his tongue. And when he sat around the guard-fire, he would refuse to be drawn into any "little games," but turn his back upon the chattering crowd, and furtively draw from his breast-pocket the remnant of Maria's dress, and feel it, and muse over it, until aroused by the call:"No he ain't," said Pete Skidmore, whose vanity was touched as well as his cupidity aroused. "Mind your own business, Mister Elliott. You're only a Corpril anyway. You hain't nothin' to do with me outside the company. I kin take care o' myself. I've beat these men twice, and kin do it again."But the smooth, creamy applejack had slipped past his lips so unexpectedly that it possessed him, before principle could raise an objection. Shorty was the kind of a man to whom the first drink is the greatest danger. After he had one almost anything was likely to happen.The two boys were evidently recruits of some months' standing, but not yet considered seasoned soldiers."Bully for you, Alf; you're a sweet singer in Israel," said Si, brushing away a suspicion of a tear. "Spread out your blankets, boys, and lay down. Git all the sleep you kin, for there's lots o' work for us tomorrow. There goes tattoo!"
