"Old Billings, who used to be Lieutenant-Colonel, is Provost-Marshal. He's Lieutenant-Colonel of our regiment. He'll be likely to give you a great song and dance, especially if he finds out that you belonged to the old regiment. But don't let it sink too deep on you. I'll stand by you, if there's anything I can do."
"Much obliged," said Shorty, "but I'm all right, and I oughtn't to need any standing by from anybody. That old fly-up-the-crick ought to be ashamed to even speak to a man who's bin fightin' at the front, while he was playin' off around home."
"He'll have plenty to say all the same," returned the Sergeant. "He's got one o' these self-acting mouths, with a perpetual-motion attachment. He don't do anything but talk, and mostly bad. Blame him, it's his fault that we're kept here, instead of being sent to the front, as we ought to be. Wish somebody'd shoot him."
The Provost-Marshal was found in his office, dealing out sentences like a shoulder-strapped Rhadamanthes. It was a place that just suited Billings's tastes. There he could bully to his heart's content, with no chance for his victims getting back at him, and could make it very uncomfortable for those who were disposed to sneer at his military career. With a scowl on his brow, and a big chew of tobacco in his mouth, he sat in his chair, and disposed of the cases brought before him with abusive comments, and in the ways that he thought would give the men the most pain and trouble. It was a manifestation of his power that he gloated over.
"Take the position of soldiers, you slouching clodhoppers," he said, with an assortment of oaths, as the squad entered the office. "One'd think you a passel o' hawbucks half-drunk at a log-rollin', instead o' soldiers in the presence o' your superior officer. Shut them gapin' mouths, lift up them shock-heads, button up your blouses, put your hands down to your sides, and don't no man speak to me without salootin'. And mind what you say, or I'll give you a spell on bread and water, and send you back in irons. I want you to understand that I'll have no foolishness. You can't monkey with me as you can with some officers.
"Had your pocket picked, and your furlough as well as your money taken," he sneered to the first statement. "You expect me to believe that, you sickly-faced yallerhammer. I'll just give you five days' hard labor before sending you back, for lying to me. Go over there to the left, and take your place in that police squad."
"No," he said to the second, "that sick mother racket won't work. Every man we ketch now skulking home is goin' to see his sick and dying mother. There wouldn't be no army if we allowed every man who has a sick mother to go and visit her. None o' your back talk, or I'll put the irons on you."
"No," to a third, "you can't go back to your boarding place for your things, not even with a guard. I know you. You'd give the guard the slip before you went 10 rods. Let your things go. Probably you stole 'em, anyway."
Lieut.-Col. Billings's eye lighted on Shorty, with an expression of having seen him somewhere.
"Where do you belong?" he asked crossly.