Spruce lifted his fist and shook it severely. "You shut up! All of you! You'll raise your temperature! I ain't going, neither. Be quiet. It's all settled. I've seen captain, and he wants me to stay and see you boys through; all the G boys. Then we're all going together. I tell you, keep quiet."
Dick Danvers was keeping quiet enough, for one; he was wiping away the tears that rolled down his cheeks.
The others in general shared his relief in greater or less measure; but they were too ill to think much about anything except themselves. In some way, however, every one in the tent showed to Spruce that he felt that a sacrifice had been made.
"I know you hated it like the devil, and just stayed for fear some of your precious chickens would come to mischief if they got from under your wings, you old hen!" was Dick's tribute; "and I know why you went into town yesterday when the boys went off. It _is_ rough, Chris, and that's the truth!"
"Oh, it's only putting things off a bit; the captain told me so himself," said Spruce, very light and airy. But his heart was sore. The G boys understood; he wasn't so sure that all the others did understand. He caught his name on one gossiping group's lips, and was conscious that they gazed after him curiously. "Wonder if I'm scared that I stayed home, I guess," he muttered, being a sensitive fellow like all vain men. "I wish they'd see the things I've been in! Damn 'em!"
The men really were discussing his various Indian experiences and admiring him in their boyish hearts. But he was unluckily out of earshot. Unluckily, also, he was not out of earshot when a lieutenant of another regiment who had had a difference about a right of way with Spruce's captain and been worsted by Spruce's knowledge of military traditions freed his mind about that "bumptious regular who was so keen to fight, but (he noticed) was hanging on to his sick detail, now the regiment had a chance to see a few Spaniards." Spruce, in his properly buttoned uniform, his face red with the heat and something of the words, saluted rigorously and passed by, not a single muscle twitching. All the while he was thinking: "I'm glad he don't belong to _my_ town! God! If anybody was to write them things about me!"