[Illustration: ADDRESSED IN A ROUND BOYISH HAND.]
"I thank the captain, and beg to thank the captain's kind lady," was his invariable formula on such occasions. "I hope the boy will always do his duty."
And then he would face about and stride away with his head very high in the air and his eyes blinking hard, and almost immediately his voice would be heard sternly berating some trooper whose horse had tangled himself in his lariat, or whose "kit" was not stowed in proper shape about the saddle. It was his way of striving to hide the joy those messages brought him, and the men were quick to see through it all, and little "Reddy" Mulligan, reprimanded for the third time within a fort-night, started a laugh all through the bivouac by his whimsical protest:
"It's more good news you've been getting from Fred, sergeant, dear; isn't it now? Faith, I wish he'd play ye a thrick wanst in a while, like other byes. Maybe thin I'd be mintioned to the captain for a corporalship." And for once the veteran turned his back on the laughing troop conscious of defeat.
In '74 old Waller changed the yellow stripes and diamond of the first sergeantcy for the crimson and the star of the ordnance, and the troopers, one and all, said good-by to him with infinite regret. Perhaps Dawson, who was next in rank, may be excepted. He confidently expected to be promoted in Waller's place. But though a dashing soldier and a smart non-commissioned officer, he was not the stanch, reliable man the captain needed, and proved it by celebrating Waller's promotion in a very boisterous and unseemly manner. It was plain that he had been drinking heavily, and though Captain Charlton saved him from arrest and court-martial he would not promote him, and plainly, though privately, told him why. The troop knew it was for this reason, but Dawson swore it was all on account of Waller's influence against him when Sergeant Graham was named in regimental orders as the old veteran's successor.
That same summer, with firm hand and glistening eyes, Waller signed his consent to the enlistment of his son as trumpeter in the old troop. How he watched the boy's glowing face as the oath of enlistment, so often lightly spoken, was solemnly repeated, and Fred was bound to the service of his country. How he trembled from head to foot when, but a few weeks afterward and in the dead of night, Charlton and his men hurried forth to intercept a band of Indians who had swooped down upon the herders south of Laramie Peak. Waller could hardly buckle the cantle-straps of Fred's saddle as the little fellow, all eagerness, was bustling about his horse in the dim light of the stable lanterns. Yet when the captain and Lieutenant Rayburn came trotting briskly down the roadway and the men were silently "leading into line," it was the old sergeant's hand that grasped the boy's left foot and swung him lightly into his seat.