"Yes," admitted Raynes, seating himself on the ground and producing his pipe. "Uniform gives me away, doesn't it?"
"Some," returned the old hunter. "There's been a thunderin' lot of ye around to-day. I've heard a heap of firing twicet to-day."
Corporal Raynes nodded.
"Wa'n't shooting up nothing real, was ye?" inquired the old man.
"No, Pop; what we call manœuvres," Baynes explained.
"Jest plain, tom-fool, sham fighting, eh?"
"That's it," nodded the corporal. "But it isn't so tom-fool, after all. It teaches soldiers a lot about the real manœuvres of war."
"Huh! I wonder ef it teaches ary mother's son of ye any better how to fight the Japs when your time comes?"
"You think we're going to fight the Japs some day, do you?" inquired Baynes, finishing the filling of his pipe.
"Think?" retorted the old man testily. "I don't have to think. Some day we've got to depend on you sogers to drive them pesky brown critters back into the Pacific Ocean, or the Japs will own the whole coast and clean up here to the Rockies."