"No doubt o' that," said Shorty. "He ain't worth a groan in the infernal regions at the front. He only takes the place and eats the rations of some man that might be of value."
"See here," said Wilson, pointing to a pile of letters and telegrams on his desk. "These are protests against Billings being superseded and sent away. More are coming in all the time. They are worrying the General like everything, for he wants to do the right thing. But I know that they all come from a ring of fellows around here who sell whisky and slop-shop goods to the soldiers, and skin them alive, and are protected by Billings. They're whacking up with him, and they want him to stay. I'm sure of it, but I haven't any proof, and there's no use saying anything to the General unless I've got the proof to back it."
"Wonder if I couldn't help git the proof," suggested Shorty, with his sleuth instincts reviving.
"Just the man," said the Chief Clerk eagerly, "if you go about it right. You're a stranger here, and scarcely anybody knows that you belong to Headquarters. Get yourself back in the shape you were this morning, and go out and try your luck. It'll just be bully if we can down this old blowhard."
Shorty took off his belt and white gloves, unbuttoned his blouse, and lounged down the street to the quarter where the soldiers most congregated to be fleeced by the harpies gathered there as the best place to catch men going to or returning from the front. Shorty soon recognized running evil-looking shops, various kinds of games and drinking dens several men who had infested the camps about Nashville and Murfreesboro until the Provost-Marshal had driven them away.
"Billings has gathered all his old friends about him," said he to himself. "I guess I'll find somebody here that I kin use."
"Hello, Injianny; what are you doin' here?" inquired a man in civilian clothes, but unmistakably a gambler.
Shorty remembered him at once as the man with whom he had had the adventure with the loaded dice at Murfreesboro. With the fraternity of the class, neither remembered that little misadventure against the other. They had matched their wits for a wrestle, and when the grapple was over it was over.
Shorty therefore replied pleasantly:
"O, jest loafin' back here, gittin' well o' a crack on the head and the camp fever."