"Well, excuse me; I forgot myself," I replied with ill-concealed disgust. "I wasn't employed by you to teach you discipline. But if you can persuade your sergeant to come over, I'll see if I can interest him in these papers."
But the sergeant refused to take instructions from "one of them swell-headed regulars who think they know it all." The company clerk, however, cheerfully placed himself under my tutelage and picked up the work rapidly.
By taking invoices of the property Lieutenant Lang had on hand and comparing them with the invoices of what he had received, I soon found what was deficient. I then set his men to work looking about the post and gathering up, from among the rubbish and castaway property abandoned by the outgoing garrison, every old article of quartermaster's and ordnance stores and camp and garrison equipage that could be found. I then asked the lieutenant to call on the commanding officer for a board of survey, who inspected and condemned the stuff and ordered it burned, thereby relieving Lang of his accountability for it.
There was still a considerable shortage of arms and things that I could not pick up about the post and get condemned, but, on learning that this company had been engaged in a skirmish with the rebels in Missouri recently, I covered a considerable deficit on the returns as "lost in action," on the affidavits of soldiers, and accounted for some other stuff as legitimately "worn out or expended in the public service."
By these and other methods usually resorted to in the regular service to cover deficiencies I soon had Lieutenant Lang's accountability reduced to the property he actually had on hand; and, while doing so, instructed his company clerk so that thereafter he could easily keep the accounts in safe shape.
My work for Lang attracted considerable attention from the other company commanders and they soon got to dropping in to consult me in regard to making out papers and all sorts of military matters.
At the expiration of my contract, Lieutenant Lang cheerfully paid me the two hundred dollars--which I deposited with Weisselbaum to the credit of the firm--and expressed himself as glad to get out of his recent dilemma so cheaply.