“For two reasons, General. First, she had just rendered us an important service. Secondly, her horse was too quick for any except mine.”
“Umph! sorry for it. Never mind, she’s a friend of yours, any way, and we’ll pay her for it, Schuyler, if she comes around. But you have brought me good news. I’ll have those fellows before the sunset to-night, and Burgoyne may whistle for his rations.”
At that moment the clear note of a bugle, a little distance off, rose sweetly over the silent landscape, blowing the reveille, and Stark paused and consulted his watch, with a low chuckle, saying:
“I tell you what, Cap, our boys may not be as smart-looking as your Prussians, but you’ll find them pretty prompt for all that. I don’t believe your great Frederick could put his men under arms any quicker than Jack Stark puts his Green-Mountain Boys into the ranks. Look there.”
Adrian looked round, and smiled in approbation.
At the close of the long-call the whole bivouac had changed its appearance as if by magic, and where there had been rows of slumbering figures, now stood long ranks of armed men, rapidly assuming the order of perfectly straight lines. The voices of the sergeants calling the rolls rose on the morning air before all the bugles had ceased blowing, and the camp assumed an appearance of order and bustle, not often seen outside of regular troops.
Schuyler expressed his surprise at the discipline exhibited after so short a training, and Stark abruptly broke him off.
“No wonder, lad, no wonder. These are not German louts picked up anywhere, with heads like oxen. These are free men, come down from the times of Cromwell, with hardly a change. It needs only that they should see the necessity of order, and they’ll come to it, fast enough. Ha! what’s that?”
His last words were elicited by the sound of a shot coming from the picket-line, closely followed by two more. In a moment Adrian Schuyler was on his feet, and standing close to his horse, which was tied to a tree near by. The little squad of rangers under his orders, the only cavalry in Stark’s command, was already ranged near by, answering roll-call; and the captain sprung on his horse, with the intention of calling them out, when the voice of Stark prevented him.
“Let it go, Cap. ’Tis but a single man, coming this way!”