“And Garryowen?” The Custer blue eyes danced.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well,” continued General Custer, “you may report at post headquarters as headquarters bugler. But I require a good one. Remember that.”
“Yes, sir. I will, sir,” stammered Ned. His heart again thumped, his joy choked him, he knew that he was like a beet.
A bugler, selected in turn from the company buglers, always was on duty at headquarters as the orderly bugler; but Ned had been omitted, until he knew the calls perfectly. Now at last he was chosen; he was entitled to take his bedding to the orderly’s room at the headquarters building; he would stay there and sleep there, and would be near the general constantly, to blow calls for the post and to go on errands wherever the general or the adjutant might send him—or where Mrs. Custer, either, might want to send him. Some of the buglers liked this duty; some didn’t, though all liked a chance at the kitchen and Eliza’s cooking! But for Ned it wasn’t the cooking, especially: it was being there with General Custer.
Another company of the Thirty-seventh Infantry arrived, and also several companies of the Thirty-eighth Infantry, a colored regiment. They were a strange variety of soldiers; many of them right from plantations down south, and not yet disciplined to army life. They were to garrison the post while the Seventh Cavalry was absent!
Now at the close of March the expedition was ready to start. Cartridge boxes and belts were full, clothing repaired, horses shod, and according to the cavalry the infantrymen (who were called “doughboys”) all had their shoes resoled. Ned well knew that the general was outfitted better than anybody; for at headquarters he had seen Mrs. Custer flying busily about the house, gathering things to stow in the stout blue mess-chest bearing the letters “G. A. C., 7th Cav., U. S. A.”
In the little room which was his as orderly bugler or trumpeter Ned awoke early, full of eagerness. This was the day of the start, and he must do the starting. According to the trumpeter orders, written by the adjutant and tacked on the wall, and to the clock, “First Call” was not due for twenty minutes. So he must wait, until at the exact second he issued forth into the pink dawn, before the office, as it was called. Standing erect and soldierly at the foot of the steps, facing in all directions, he blew on his battered brass bugle from the quartermaster’s supplies the warning “First Call.”
In due time the company buglers began to gather, around the flag-pole; until as the sun rose it was time for the reveille. At word from the sergeant of the guard (who yawned) all put bugles to lips and sounded the initial note. “Boom!” belched the morning gun; up to the top of the pole sped the flag, floating out gloriously; and through the bright morning air pealed, from the buglers beneath it, the rollicking reveille: