The Colonel’s face was red, and he swore in his quiet voice; but the lips of the lieutenants by the open locker quivered fitfully in the silence.
“Don’t mind Pidcock,” Evlie remarked. “He’s a paymaster.” And at this the line officers became disorderly, and two lieutenants danced together; so that, without catching Evlie’s evidently military joke, I felt pacified.
“And I’ve got to have him to dinner,” sighed the Colonel, and wandered away.
“You’ll get on with him, man—you’ll get on with him in the ambulance,” said my friend Paisley. “Flatter him, man. Just ask him about his great strategic stroke at Cayuse Station that got him his promotion to the pay department.”
Well, we made our start after breakfast, Major Pidcock and I, and another passenger too, who sat with the driver—a black cook going to the commanding officer’s at Thomas. She was an old plantation mammy, with a kind but bewildered face, and I am sorry that the noise of our driving lost me much of her conversation; for whenever we slowed, and once when I walked up a hill, I found her remarks to be steeped in a flighty charm.
“Fo’ Lawd’s sake!” said she. “W’at’s dat?” And when the driver told her that it was a jack-rabbit, “You go ’long!” she cried, outraged. “I’se seed rabbits earlier ’n de mawnin’ dan yo’self.” She watched the animal with all her might, muttering, “Law, see him squot,” and “Hole on, hole on!” and “Yasser, he done gone fo’ sho. My grashus, you lemme have a scatter shoot-gun an’ a spike-tail smell dog, an’ I’ll git one of dey narrah-gauge mules.”
“I shall not notice it,” said Major Pidcock to me, with dignity. “But they should have sent such a creature by the stage. It’s unsuitable, wholly.”
“Unquestionably,” said I, straining to catch the old lady’s song on the box:
“‘Don’t you fo’git I’s a-comin’ behind you—
Lam slam de lunch ham.’”