"I'm thinking more of others—who should be here," was the answer. "Yet those two have so much to leave." And Brayton, following the glance of his captain's eyes, fully understood.
The morning grew warm as the sun began to climb above the distant low-lying hills to the east. The dust soon rose in dense clouds from beneath the crushing hoofs, and, leaving Brayton with the troop, Barclay cut across the chord of a long arc in the trail and reined up alongside the major. The command at the moment was moving at a sharp trot through a long, low depression in the prairie-like surface. Brooks returned the captain's punctilious salute with a cheery nod and cordial word of greeting.
"With your permission, sir, I will fall back a hundred yards or so, divide the troop into sections, and so avoid the dust."
Brooks glanced back over his shoulder. "Why, certainly, captain," said he. "I ought to have known the dust would be rising by this time. It's eight o'clock," he continued, glancing at his watch. Barclay turned in saddle and signalled with his gauntlet, whereat Brayton slackened speed to the walk, and a gap began to grow between the rearmost horses of Mullane's troop and the head of "D's" already dusty column.
"Ride with us a moment, won't you, Barclay?" called the major, significantly, as his subordinate seemed on the point of reining aside to wait for his men. "I want you two to know each other." And the new and the old captain of "D" Troop, who had courteously shaken hands with each other when presented in the dim light of the declining moon at four o'clock, now trotted side by side, Lawrence eying his successor with keen yet pleasant interest. He had been hearing all manner of good of him during the wakeful watches of the night, and was manfully fighting against the faint yet irrepressible feeling of jealous dislike with which broader and better men than he have had to struggle on being supplanted. Do what he might to battle against it, Lawrence had been conscious of it hour after hour, and felt that he winced time and again when some of the callers spoke even guardedly of the changes Barclay was making in the old troop, changes all men except the ultra-conservative ranker element (as the ranker was so often constituted at that peculiar time, be it understood) could see were for the better.
"You and Barclay lead on, will you, Ned?" said the major, in his genial way. "I wish to speak with Mullane a moment." Whereat he reined out to the right and waited for the big Irishman to come lunging up. Mullane was already spurring close at his heels, gloomily eying the combination in front. "There are Oirish and Oirish," as one of their most appreciative and broad-minded exponents, Private Terence Mulvaney, has told us; and it galled the veteran dragoon to see his junior in rank bidden to ride even for the moment at the head of the swiftly moving column. So, reckless of the fact that his individual spurt would call for a certain forcing of the pace along his entire troop, now moving in long column of twos, Mullane had spurred his horse to close the twelve-yard gap between himself and the major's orderly, determined that there should be no conference of the powers in which he was not represented.
"Captain Mullane," said Brooks, "I see it is getting dusty. You might divide into sections, as 'D' troop has done, and keep fifty yards apart, so that the dust can blow aside and not choke your men."
"This is 'L' Troop, sorr, and my men are not babes in arrums," was Mullane's magnificent reply. At any other time he might have felt the pertinence of the suggestion, but here was a case where a doughboy captain, bedad, had instigated the measure for the comfort of his men. That was enough to damn it in the eyes of the old dragoon. The answer was shouted, too, with double intent. Mullane desired Barclay to hear what he thought of such over-solicitude; but Barclay, riding onward sturdily if not quite so easily as was Lawrence, gave no sign. He was listening, with head inclined, to the words of the keen campaigner on his right.
Brooks was quick to note the intention of the Irish officer, and equally quick to note the flushed and inflamed condition of his face, the thickness of his tongue. "So ho, my Celtic friend," thought he, as he saw that two canteens were swung on the off side of Mullane's saddle, one at the cantle under the rolled blanket, the other half shaded by the bulging folds of the overcoat at the pommel, "I suspected there was more whiskey than wit in your eagerness at the start; now I know it."
But even to Mullane the major would not speak discourteously. "We all know 'L' Troop is ready for anything, captain," he smilingly answered, "but I have to call for unusual exertion to-day, and the fresher they are to-night the better. Let them open out, as I say," he continued; and Mullane saw it was useless to put on further airs.