By the time that the coffee had boiled for a few minutes each soldier returned his cup to the ground beside him. A dash of cold water from his canteen was sufficient to "settle" the coffee.
Now, each man placed two or three strips of bacon in his frying pan and laid it on the coals. While these morsels were sizzling the soldier turned his attention to sweetening his coffee. Then, when the bacon was cooked to his satisfaction, each man brought out his field hard tack, munching alternately on biscuit and meat.
"Yesterday was Sunday, and we had raised biscuits, roast beef and potatoes, with real gravy," grunted Dowley. "If a stingy government would give us more wagons we could have that every day."
"In war time," broke in Sergeant Hupner, "you might feel lucky if you saw the Army oven working once in a month. I've been there, and I've had to live for weeks on bacon, hard tack and coffee. Sometimes we didn't have the coffee or the bacon, either."
"That's a dog's life," grumbled Dowley.
"No; it's a man's life, at need, but only a man can stand it in the field," returned the sergeant gravely.
After supper many of the men smoked, but Hal and Noll, as they did not indulge in the weed, strolled down toward the trail.
"Isn't this great?" breathed Hal Overton, staring off over the distant mountain tops. "The field duty, I mean."
"It's great, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything," agreed Noll. "But it would do no good to try to tell anything of the sort to fellows like Hooper and Dowley."
"They're bad eggs," muttered Hal. "I wonder how such men ever got past with their references and managed to be accepted for the service."