CHAPTER XII
THE CALL TO DEADLY WORK
FOR the next three days the men were to remain at the present camp.
Instruction in the erecting of temporary field fortifications was to follow.
But Hal and Noll missed the first afternoon of this work, for they were sent over to Mason City as orderlies to Lieutenant Prescott, who, as acting commissary officer to the reunited companies, went to buy fresh foodstuffs.
Two wagons were also dispatched, the young lieutenant riding with the driver on one of the wagons, while the soldier boys rode on the other wagon.
Mason City nestled in among the mountains in what was considered one of the best health sections of Colorado. The "city" would have been termed a village back in the east. It contained four hotels, two sanitariums, a small theatre and other public buildings. It was to this town that many eastern consumptives came.
The native population of the town was less than a thousand souls. Consumptives and other travelers added a usual average of about eighteen hundred more people.
The streets were lively with people when the two wagons drove into the town.
"You men may just as well enjoy yourselves for a couple of hours, for I shall be busy in looking through the markets," announced Lieutenant Prescott, as the soldier boys climbed down from their wagon. "Report to me at the Mason House at six sharp. Remember, won't you, that's it a soldier's business to be punctual to the fraction of a minute?"