"What was your name before that?"
"Jim."
Whereat there was a titter in the ranks of prisoners. Some of the guard even allowed their mouths to expand, and the groups of volunteers, chuckling in keen enjoyment, came edging in closer.
Instantly the voice of the officer of the guard was heard ordering silence, and faces straightened out in the twinkling of an eye.
The elder officer, the captain, grew a trifle redder, but he was master of himself and the situation. It is with school-boys as with soldiers, their master is the man whom pranks or impudence cannot annoy. The officer of the day let no tone of temper into his next question. Looking straight into the shifting eyes, he waited for perfect silence, and then spoke:
"Jim what? I wish the name under which you served in your previous enlistment."
"Never said I'd served before."
"No. You declared you had not. But I know better. You're a deserter from the Seventh Cavalry."
The face under the shrouding campaign hat went gray white with sudden twitch of the muscles, then set again, rigid and defiant. The eyes snapped angrily. The answer was sharp, yet seemed, as soldiers say, to "hang fire" a second.
"Never seen the Seventh Cavalry in my life."