“That you shall,” he cried, with a force that left no doubt in my mind.
In the morning we broke camp and started off for the strange place which we hoped to capture. A hundred miles it was across the trackless wilds, and each man was ordered to carry on his back provisions for four days only.
“Herr Gott!” cried Swein Poulsson, from the bottom of a flatboat, whence he was tossing out venison flitches, “four day, und vat is it ve eat then?”
“Frenchies, sure,” said Terence; “there'll be plenty av thim for a season. Faith, I do hear they're tinder as lambs.”
“You'll no set tooth in the Frenchies,” the pessimistic McAndrew put in, “wi' five thousand redskins aboot, and they lying in wait. The Colonel's no vera mindful of that, I'm thinking.”
“Will ye hush, ye ill-omened hound!” cried Cowan, angrily. “Pitch him in the crick, Mac!”
Tom was diverted from this duty by a loud quarrel between Captain Harrod and five men of the company who wanted scout duty, and on the heels of that came another turmoil occasioned by Cowan's dropping my drum into the water. While he and McCann and Tom were fishing it out, Colonel Clark himself appeared, quelled the mutiny that Harrod had on his hands, and bade the men sternly to get into ranks.
“What foolishness is this?” he said, eying the dripping drum.
“Sure, Colonel,” said McCann, swinging it on his back, “we'd have no heart in us at Kaskasky widout the rattle of it in our ears. Bill Cowan and me will not be feeling the heft of it bechune us.”
“Get into ranks,” said the Colonel, amusement struggling with the anger in his face as he turned on his heel. His wisdom well knew when to humor a man, and when to chastise.