"I hope we'll never meet it again. What has struck us this blow under the belt?"
"The confounded regular Army," growled Howe. "I've just telephoned over, and I hear that folks are packed in so tightly at the Army show that the people are able to breathe only half the usual number of times to the minute."
"Then they'll hit us just as bad to-night," growled Spangleton. "Howe, with the Army to play against, we'd save money by pulling down our tents now and striking the rails for the next stand."
Just a minute or so before two o'clock the artillery band left the bandstand and marched back to camp.
Now, all in an instant, the military parade formed.
At the head was the cavalry band, followed by a squadron (two troops or companies) of splendidly mounted fighting men, their accoutrements jingling.
As the cavalry, its band blaring joyously, passed out before the people, the Signal Corps men followed on foot. Now the artillery, preceded by a mounted band that was just now silent, swung into line. Right behind the artillery, with its men perched up on the seats, their arms folded, or else driving the horses from saddles, came more men on foot, the ordnance detachment.
Now a third band, the Thirty-fourth's, marched on to the scene, silent, like the artillery musicians. After the third band in the line came the first battalion of the Thirty-fourth—at its head Colonel North and Major Silsbee, with their respective staffs, all on horseback. And now behind them marched, with the precise, easy rhythm of the foot soldier, the four companies, A, B, C and D, all moving like so many fine, automatic, easy-jointed machines.
The mounted detachments had brought forth rounds of rousing applause as they swept by, but when the infantrymen—the real, solid, fighting wall of the Army came in view, its men moving with the perfectly gaited, steady whump, whump! of superbly marching men, the spectators began to yell in frantic earnest.
The cavalry band ceased its stirring strain. Instantly the mounted drum major of the artillery swung about on his horse, holding up his baton, then bringing it down with the signal, "play."