"That's all," pronounced the major briefly. "Report to your sergeant."
The boy from Troublesome saluted stiffly and left the tent.
CHAPTER XVII
It was not until summer waned to autumn and autumn passed into winter that the order came which slipped the leash and brought a day of departure.
The high-landers wore the appearance of veterans now, as they marched down to the crowded wharves, loaded with their field-equipment, and went across the gang-plank to the decks of the transport. The mountain men were still rough of exterior, though very smooth and soldierly to an eye that had seen them in their "original sin" of heathenish beginnings.
Lucinda Merton was in San Francisco on the day that the Indiana sailed. She and perhaps Henry Falkins knew why she had crossed the continent. As the regiment from bluegrass and mountains filed in their long lines over the side, she stood on the transport deck with the colonel and one of his majors and looked on. What things the lovers said that day, in the moments they stole alone, were their own secrets, but the girl's eyes and lips were smiling, and the eyes of the young major were full of light when he slipped into his blouse-pocket a small leather case—and a photograph. It was to smile at him over many campfires in the islands.
Yet, with a teasing laugh and a certain pride of section, the girl compared the central Kentuckians with the leaner, harder men of the hills, and announced:
"Those mountaineers of yours still cry out for the curry-comb, Henry."
It was the colonel who answered her. He, too, was gazing down with a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes. The colonel, for all his Chesterfieldian polish, could judge a horse or man in the raw.