Below the Majors' terrace stood an old sergeant, with a gray mustache and a kind, blue eye. Each horse had his nose in a mouth-bag and was contentedly munching corn, while a trooper affectionately curried him from tip of ear to tip of tail.
"Horse ever first and man ever afterward is the trooper's law," said Grafton.
"I suppose you've got the best colonel in the army," he added to the soldier and with a wink at Crittenden.
"Yes, sir," said the guileless old Sergeant, quickly, and with perfect seriousness. "We have, sir, and I'm not sayin' a wor-rd against the rest, sir."
The Sergeant's voice was as kind as his face, and Grafton soon learned that he was called "the Governor" throughout the regiment—that he was a Kentuckian and a sharpshooter. He had seen twenty-seven years of service, and his ambition had been to become a sergeant of ordnance. He passed his examination finally, but he was then a little too old. That almost broke the Sergeant's heart, but the hope of a fight, now, was fast healing it.
"I'm from Kentucky, too," said Crittenden. The old soldier turned quickly.
"I knew you were, sir."
This was too much for Grafton. "Now-how-on-earth—" and then he checked himself—it was not his business.
"You're a Crittenden."
"That's right," laughed the Kentuckian. The Sergeant turned. A soldier came up and asked some trifling question, with a searching look, Grafton observed, at Crittenden. Everyone looked at that man twice, thought Grafton, and he looked again himself. It was his manner, his bearing, the way his head was set on his shoulders, the plastic force of his striking face. But Crittenden saw only that the Sergeant answered the soldier as though he were talking to a superior. He had been watching the men closely—they might be his comrades some day—and, already, had noticed, with increasing surprise, the character of the men whom he saw as common soldiers—young, quiet, and above the average countryman in address and intelligence—and this man's face surprised him still more, as did his bearing. His face was dark, his eye was dark and penetrating and passionate; his mouth was reckless and weak, his build was graceful, and his voice was low and even—the voice of a gentleman; he was the refined type of the Western gentleman-desperado, as Crittenden had imagined it from fiction and hearsay. As the soldier turned away, the old Sergeant saved him the question he was about to ask.