"Don't care. This is my own gun. I think more of it than any gun ever made, and I ain't goin' to take any chance of losin' it."
"Well, then, you'll take a chance of losing your supper," answered the Sergeant, "or rather you'll be certain of it, for the orders are strict against taking guns into the supper-room. Too many accidents have happened."
"Well, then," said Shorty stoutly, "I'll do without my supper, though I'm hungrier than a wolf at the end of a long Winter."
"Well, if you're so infernal pig-headed, you've got to," answered the Sergeant, nettled at Shorty's obstinacy. "Go back beyond the gunstack, and stay there. Don't you come nearer the door than the other side of the stack."
Shorty's dander rose up at once. At any other time he would have conclusions with the Sergeant then and there. But the remembrance of his charge laid a repressive hand upon his quick choler, and reminded him that any kind of a row would probably mean a night in the guard-house, his gun in some other man's hands, probably lost forever, and so on. He decided to defer thrashing the Sergeant until his return, when he would give it to him with interest. He shouldered his gun, paced up and down, watching with watering mouth the rest luxuriating in a hot supper with fragrant coffee and appetizing viands, to which his mouth had been a stranger for many long months. It cost a severe struggle, but he triumphed.
Si, in his own hungry eagerness, had not missed him, until his own appetite began to be appeased by the vigorous onslaught he made on the eatables. Then he looked around for his partner, and was horrified not to find him by his side.
"Where's Shorty," he anxiously inquired.
Each looked at the other in surprise, and asked:
"Why, ain't he here?"
"No, confound it; he ain't here," said Si, excitedly springing to his feet; "he has been knocked down and robbed."